Sweet Sixteen, Chapter 6 ~ The First Rule, part 2

Sien wondered what she was thinking down there in her lawn chair next to the pool.  What kinds of things did the Queens think about?  Well, ruling Airidan, naturally, but what about before they were discovered?  Did they think about the same things every other girl or woman thought about, or did they know somehow that they were special and above such mundane things?  Of course, they had their gifts of magic to set them apart, and ones such as Ameri of South Farat had been renowned in their own worlds before the Heirs of Auriel ever set eyes on them.

But this Eliasha Markson lived in a mundane world and, as far as he had seen, went about her life much like any other girl in her position.  He’d been watching her for a month now and hadn’t seen her work any magic.  But probably that was because he hadn’t gotten close enough.

He shifted his weight on the tree branch where he perched, and lowered the binoculars around his neck.  This was the closest perch with a good view that he could access safely — it was in a neighboring yard right near the brick wall that separated the Marksons’ sprawling house from another mansion and its estate.  He was sure that his father’s bus could fit in the hallways of each and every one of these ridiculously huge homes.  The tree was a maple, an old one, and it gave him full view of the Marksons’ back yard.  He could use his binoculars to zoom in, but unfortunately unless people were near the wall or talking to each other loudly he couldn’t really make out what they were saying.  So he hadn’t found out much.

He knew who the members of the family were: the short, strawberry blonde woman was the mother and she liked to sit outside with a laptop computer, or work in her flowerbed.  She didn’t grow any vegetables in the garden, just flowers, Sien had noted with some boredom.

There were three older children, the youngest of the three was named Eric and he was the one who had a half pipe in the back corner of the yard.  He often had friends over who played around on his sports equipment with him or swam in the pool and did cannonballs off the diving board.  Sien didn’t find him particularly interesting, but some of his friends were girls and watching them swim or lounge by the pool was not a bad way to pass the time, when Elly was in the house where he couldn’t see her.

Elly was the oldest, but he hadn’t known that until she told him yesterday that she had three younger siblings.  Before that it had been a toss up between her and her other brother, Marc.  He was shorter than Eric but Sien could tell he was the older of the two boys by the way he acted.  If he was ever around when Eric and his friends were in the back yard he tried to make himself the boss.  He was also more muscular; it appeared that he worked out with weights, though Sien hadn’t seen him do it and figured his gym was in the house.

Sien couldn’t see much inside the house, only a few rooms with windows facing the back that weren’t curtained.  Luckily, or maybe unluckily, he had a fairly good view of two of Elly’s bedroom windows when he used the binoculars.  He could see her desk, the door to the hallway, her bed, and the doorway to her walk-in closet.

This was ideal for watching her, seeing what she did, but then he felt guilty because he saw things that it was not respectful to witness.  Not when it was the Queen of Seven he was watching.  Elly didn’t shut her curtains when she dressed and undressed, and at night especially it was easy to see everything.  He knew that he should probably look away at such times, for not only was it dishonorable to spy on a Queen, it was punishable by a rather gruesome death.  At least, if this were Airidan and she were the proven Queen.

But it wasn’t Airidan and she wasn’t proven yet, and with that he eased his conscience enough to not only watch, but to train the binoculars on her and slowly zoom in, entranced.  After all, he rationalized, maybe she would do something magical while dressing and if he didn’t watch he’d miss it.  So far the most magical thing she had done was stand in front of the mirror on the back of her closet door and inspect her body, pinching at places she thought had too much flesh on them, such as her thighs.  She’d cupped her breasts in her hands and pushed them up, turning side to side while frowning at her reflection.  That had certainly worked its “magic” on Sien, but even though he almost fell out of the tree he knew it wasn’t the sort of thing that would bring down the armies of Lsi.

He knew it was wrong, watching her at those times.  All excuses aside, it was wrong.  The Queen of Seven was not for him, was not for any man, so it was pointless to entertain daydreams about her.  Ah, but she was beautiful.  He was sure that she was more beautiful than Avalana of Ib had ever been; the Queen of Five who was renowned for her beauty as well as her deadly illusions.  He could hardly call himself male if he didn’t find her attractive . . . and after all it didn’t sully her if he looked, especially since she didn’t know he was doing it.  But no.  It was wrong.  All wrong.

He knew what his father thought — that he’d just become infatuated with a girl and mistaken his own fascination, his lust, for the magical connection the House of Auriel had always had with the future Queens of Airidan.  It couldn’t be clearer if Ren had sighed “Ah, youth” or admonished him not to think with his dick.  And hanging out in a tree drooling over Elly was not going to prove his father wrong any day soon.

You’re becoming downright creepy, a peeping tom, he admonished himself.  The only thing of real use he’d learned from spying on Elly and her family was that her mother looked pretty good for a woman with teenaged children.  He didn’t know how old she was exactly but by doing the math he figured even if she’d had Elly when she was twelve she had to be older than she appeared.  Of course, this was America and women were very vain and insecure about age.  She could be in cahoots with an exceptionally skilled plastic surgeon or gotten her hands on a black market substance to inject into her face.

Or, it could prove that Elly fulfilled the Third Rule, “ . . . that she come from a long lived race, but not be an immortal . . . .”

So what if people rarely lived past 100 years in this world, who said that Elly’s parents were from this world?  Sien’s parents had not been.  He didn’t go advertising it and he doubted the Marksons would either.

Sien had not seen the father until yesterday evening.  The man looked very similar as his sons, tall with loosely curling black hair and an easygoing manner (well, Eric was easygoing, anyway) and, more importantly, did not look all that much older.  But surely he was.  He owned this big house in a posh neighborhood after all, didn’t he?  You couldn’t be young if you lived like this.

Sien didn’t know much about the family beyond that.  He didn’t know where the father had been all this time, besides Elly’s very vague answer; “on tour.”  Whatever Markson did it must make a lot of money, though.

There was one more child, a girl much younger than her teenaged siblings, raven haired like her father and brothers, but there wasn’t much interesting to note about her and she didn’t spend much time in the back yard.  There was a boy about her age who shadowed her whenever Sien saw them, and for a while he’d thought that the boy was another sibling — after all he had the same hair and similar features to the older boys — but Sien had heard him call Elly’s mother “Aunt Liseli” a few times.

All in all, however, he had nothing of any real use, and to be honest with himself, he had to admit that he’d have given up his tree perch long ago if it wasn’t for the tantalizing scenes that took place in Elly’s bedroom.  But he was fixing that.  He’d worked up the nerve to talk to her, though talking to the Queen of Seven seemed, at times, almost as taboo to someone like him as defiling her body would have been.  But now that he’d done that she knew who he was (at least, his name) and seemed to like him, he could learn about her and verify the rules in a much more productive way than skulking after her.  Perhaps if she trusted him enough she would just tell him, or show him, her gift of magic.  Wouldn’t that make things easier!

You need to get a job, he reminded himself.  He needed enough money for Ridgewalter for at least a little while, and if he raided what little his father had left there’d be nothing to eat with, not to mention keep the motorcycle in gas.  He really should have a job already, just because his father couldn’t work and there was nothing keeping him from it.  He just hadn’t gotten around to it.  All that summer they’d been on the verge of repairing the bus and leaving, and for the last month he’d been obsessed with his find.

Well, it was high time he did something.  If he expected to get anywhere with Elly he had to shape up really quick . . . she could never see the Golden Jade Campground.  And he had to stop thinking about her as a pretty girl so much and start thinking about her as a woman who was chaste, powerful, deadly. . . .  A woman who belonged to Airidan, not him.  Airidan was far more important than he was.