Lord of the Aerth

Word count: Approx. 1,500
Notes/Warnings: None.


I woke up and had no idea where I was.

My head was aching and my mouth tasted like fuzzy death. There was sunlight—aggressive and unpleasant—shining in my hastily closed eyes. And that’s how I knew I wasn’t in my bed. My bedroom gets no direct exposure to the sun.

My second and third clues that I wasn’t in my own bed were the big, sharp rock digging into my side and the dew-wet grass tickling my face.

I groaned and shaded my eyes, then tried opening them again.

I appeared to be in an empty field in the middle of nowhere—nothing but grass, wildflowers, and low bushes for as far as the my aching eyes could see.

Myriad aches forgotten, I bolted up and too my feet, certain that I’d finally drunk myself batshit-crazy the night before. I turned in a slow, disbelieving circle, mouth dropped open in a gape as I took in the damn grass and sky.

In a strange reversal of the natural order, the former seemed to be a deep, cobalt blue. The latter was a soft, dreamy green, dotted here and there with fluffy white clouds.

Suddenly the world began to spin nauseatingly. So I stopped turning in circles . . . but that didn’t help matters, for within seconds, I was collapsing to my knees and heaving.

After long, unproductive moments, the heaving stopped, and the urge to toss my cookies passed. But it left behind the vertigo and the headache.

I groaned again, and my eyes rolled up to the green, green sky, and I passed out.

*

I woke up again and again had no idea where I was.

This was not an unusual occurrence for me—not with the way I’d been drinking for the past year. I often woke up in unfamiliar beds—or on park benches—after nights spent with whoever’d have me. Some of those nights, like this past one had been, were blackout nights, where I couldn’t have remembered what I’d done if someone held a gun to my head and demanded answers.

At twenty-nine, I was living a life that I not only wasn’t proud of, but that, at seventeen, I would never have predicted I’d wind up living in the first place. Every morning I opened my eyes and still found myself among the living only confirmed this.

I’m throwing my life away. Drowning it in cheap booze and regret, I would think every Morning After. Except this one.

On this one, however, I was lying flat on my back in overgrown, dewy grass, staring up at a cloud shaped like a turtle and wondering if I was dreaming, when a boy’s anxious face hove into my view and he slapped me. Hard.

“Ow! The fuck?!”

“Sorry! I—you wouldn’t awaken and . . . I grew worried!” he said in a low, faintly accented voice. He sounded almost . . . English . . . except that whatever tongue he was speaking wasn’t English. “Are you . . . are you alright now, Majesty?”

“I think—” I began haltingly, rubbing my stinging cheek. Then I paused. Whatever lyrical, flowing language which wasn’t English that the boy spoke, I not only understood it, but I was speaking it, too. Maybe even thinking in it. “I . . . think I’m alright . . . considering. . . .”

“That’s—wonderful, Majesty,” the boy said, lowering his eyes and sitting back on his heels. He seemed at a loss for anything else to say, so I sighed, and tried to sit up. He immediately moved to help me, not that I needed it. Except for the lingering headache, I felt fine. The vertigo and nausea were gone.

“Thanks, kid,” I said, rubbing my stubbly face and looking around. I’d known I wouldn’t like what I saw and I didn’t. The same field of cobalt grass and wildflowers . . . and not far from where we sat was a small herd of—flock of—well, I didn’t know what they were. They looked like a cross between sheep and goats, with a dash of cow thrown in for height.

And they had six legs.

I moaned, closing my eyes and counting to ten. When I opened them, everything looked exactly as it had ten seconds ago, only the boy was staring at me like I had two heads. But he quickly lowered his eyes again.

“Let me revise that: I am most definitely not alright,” I muttered, sneaking another peek at the sheep-goat-cow-things, some of which were making a lowing sound not unlike a cow’s. Then I looked back at the boy, as he seemed to be the least weird thing about my surroundings. He was stocky, not tall, about sixteen or seventeen, and cute, with skin the color of really good milk chocolate. Frizzy, riotous curls peeked out from under a brown woolen cap, and the rest of his clothes—brown worsted vest and trousers, and a blue pull-over shirt—looked like what I’d imagine a shepherd might have worn in the early 20th century.

The wide, round dark eyes that kept darting to my own then away were intelligent, if wary and puzzled.

“Where am I?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know. It for damn sure wasn’t Park Slope, Brooklyn. “Who are you?”

“I am Gwydyr son of Gwydain, Majesty.” The boy darted another wary glance at me, and inclined his head respectfully. “And you’re in Whayfhar. The Northeastern-most corner of your empire. In the Glendara Province, nearest the town of Mycroft.”

None of which made any sense to me.

But my mind, playing catch-up, latched onto one thing he had said, and been saying. “Uh . . . Majesty? My kingdom. I’m not even sure this’s my planet. This definitely ain’t my kingdom.”

The boy’s—Gwydyr’s gaze landed on my face for a bit longer, this time. “Beggin’ your pardon, Majesty, but you do. Do you not know who you are?” His full mouth was turned down in a worried frown.

“Of course I know who I am. It’s you who’s got me all wrong, kiddo.” That last word came out in English—I supposed there was no word for kiddo in whatever crazy language I was speaking. “I’m Zach Gilman of Brooklyn, New York, and I ain’t king of nothin’, except maybe ten-shots-for-ten-bucks Jaeger night at the Continental.”

Now, Gwydyr just looked confused. “Beggin’ your pardon, Majesty, but I don’t know what a Jaeger or a Continental is. And further beggin’ your pardon, but—” and here Gwydyr dug into his right vest pocket and came out with a small copper coin, which he handed to me. Puzzled, I took it, jumping a little at the spark of static electricity that passed between us when our fingers brushed. “But you are king of something. Well, emperor, I should say. Emperor of the United Kingdoms of Aerth.”

“Emperor of what, now?” I demanded, thinking—rightfully so—that he was putting me on. But his solemn face never changed and his gaze was steady on mine.

“Of the United Kingdoms of Aerth, Majes—erm, sir,” he corrected himself when I glared at him, then glanced away, up at the green sky. “You’re Emperor Caldwyn the Just, Lord of Leith, and Emperor of the Nine Allied Kingdoms.”

I snorted again, thinking it’d be just my luck to wake up in some weird, mixed up place, with no memory of how I got there, and only a crazy kid for company. “The fuck I—am.” The last word came out on a tiny, stricken wheeze as I really looked at the coin Gwydyr had given me.

On one side was a cunningly rendered device—a coat of arms, it seemed to be, featuring a sun and a falcon. But that’s not what interested me. What interested me was the flip side of the coin I’d been turning over and over in my fingers.

As is usual with coins, there was a profile on the head’s side: a man’s face, all harsh angles, neither ugly nor handsome, with a rather stubborn set to the mouth, an aquiline nose and chin, and a grim, intense gaze.

It was the face I saw in the mirror every morning . . . except for this one.

The coin slipped from between my nerveless fingers and fell onto my knee, whereon it rolled down to the cobalt grass. Gwydyr deftly plucked it up, careful not to touch my leg in doing so.

I, in the meanwhile, was growing short of breath.

“Are you . . . alright, Majesty?” Gwydyr asked tentatively, pocketing the coin and casting a wary eye on me once more. His voice suddenly seemed to echo, as if coming from the other end of a very long tunnel. And the world was spinning again.

I opened my mouth to answer him with I-don’t-know-what-all, and passed out.

Again.

TBC