Breadan sulked in the buggy on the short ride back to the one story building the royal family of Orkney called home. He practiced formal address in his head, just to be sure he would not embarrass himself. While most fae courts spoke the language of the local humans if they were forced to live among them, the undines of mainland preferred to speak fae. To any court it was universal, travel as far as you might on soil or sea, fire or air. Queen Dierdre complained that the language on the windswept isles changed as often as the weather. She couldn't remember from one year to the next if it was in fashion to speak Norse, Orkney Norn, Scottish, or English depending on the whims of the human population. It was easier to establish one permanent language in the home. Fae speak lent itself brilliantly to poetic expressions, songs, and spells. Breadan was too young for poetry and too poor for spells, so he did not practice the formal language as often as he should.

There were no strange carriages drawn up along the cottage fence, but the most important visitors never arrived by land. They used portals to move from one fixed gate to another, then rode elf steeds the remainder of the trip. He spied three silver mares cropping greedily at the clover that grew under the kitchen window. Three visitors. Who could they be? Breadan allowed Valerian to straighten his clothes before she opened the door and ushered him into the quiet house.

He heard the polite clink of teacups on saucers coming from the parlor and approached carefully, hoping to get a look at them before they noticed him standing in the hall. A number of well dressed fae women were talking over small plates of scones. He noticed their small circlets right away, understated signs of royalty. They seemed out of place, like diamonds sewn on a dairy maid's dress. Their silk robes trailed over the queen's padded benches. One wore a dress decorated with so much white fringe it formed a waterfall of cords over her entire body. Her white hair blended with the fringe so well that he could not tell where either ended. The strands flowed with every movement of her shoulders.

The younger woman with dark hair wore a dress of fine layers, so blue it looked like topaz transformed into cloth. They relaxed against lamb's wool upholstery, worked in the finest needlepoint patterns that could be found in Orkney. Dierdre had a passion for local artistry. Everything in the parlor and the rest of her home reflected the most popular themes in Orkney design. Ships, dolphins, seals, flowers, and lean hunting dogs were carved, painted, or sewn onto every surface. The three women and his mother turned to look at him exactly when the heel of Breadan's shoe flipped the edge of the rug up and made it slap back to the floor.

"Your Majesty, let me introduce Prince Braeden of Orkney, my only son." Dierdre pointed out the lady in white. "Breadan, this is Queen Coralie. The lady in blue is Princess Diamanta, and to her right is the seer, Melusine. They visit us from High King Moreau's court for your birthday."

"Saluton." Breadan half bowed to the ladies and his mother. "I hope you find our land pleasant during your visit, Godmother."

"Come closer, son. I'd forgotten how quickly children grow, Dierdre. We should have visited sooner. Now I'm not sure the gift we brought him is grown up enough for such a fine young man." Coralie pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at the boy's mother.

"Let him be the judge of that. I'm sure the prince will enjoy anything you give him, mother." Diamanta nodded and sipped her tea.

"I do not know why I let you humor me," she smiled. "Now he has no choice but to pretend he likes the gift. Bring out the sphere, my daughter. I hope you like horses, Breadan."

Diamanta gently opened her reticule. With utmost care, she pulled a crystal ball from the bag and placed it on the table. It was almost a full hand span wide. He saw tiny creatures swirling inside, as if suspended in an invisible tide.

"You brought magic fish?" His young face was patiently blank. He might not act or dress like a prince most of the time, but he was still raised like one. He knew how to be polite, especially to the high queen and her daughter. "I will take great care with them, Godmother." He looked at them seriously. In the sphere, five silver fish the size of his thumbnail transformed into dolphins. The dolphins turned into sharks. The sharks turned into kelpies. "Nixies!" He squealed. His whole body shook with excitement. "Dagon's fins, I've wanted one all my life!" Breadan knew he should apologize for swearing in front of his godmother, but could not pull his eyes away from the nixies long enough to do it.

"These are bred from the finest steeds in my stable, young man. One stud and five unrelated mares will get you started. What you make of them is up to you. You must not open the sphere until they trust you, or they will come right back to me. Only you can feed them and talk to them. In a few weeks you can let them out." Coralie realized Breadan was not paying attention and spoke to his mother instead. "Dierdre, I hope you don't mind if my herd master visits quite often? These five are the best silver hybrids in the world. He only parted with them on the strictest terms, that he be allowed to train the prince in handling them twice a week."

"Of course. This is a most extravagant gift, your Majesty. He is only a boy. If he had not seen them already, I might have been forced to refuse." Dierdre glanced at Breadan, who was so caught up in staring at his new pets that he missed the conversation behind his back.

"Nonsense. It is only a token of our desire for continued peace between our households." Coralie frowned slightly. "Five nixies more or less in my stables is next to nothing. Look how happy he is."

"Your Majesty, I cannot and will not accept reparations." Dierdre's stiff posture suddenly relaxed and she looked at her son. He was kneeling next to the table to bring his head level with the sphere. His eyes followed the nixies until his chin rested on the table. Light from the enchanted water inside reflected in his brown eyes. She could almost see the tiny elf steeds jumping across the mirrored surface of the circlet that held back his messy brown hair. "But I will accept a gift from a god mother to her son, with my thanks." She laughed softly. "If I didn't, he would probably just run away to live with the selkies. Pli dankon."

"Pli dankon." Breadan smiled. He had been following every word. It was the best birthday present any boy had ever received in the history of the world. How much work could these gorgeous creatures take? Anything was worth it. They seemed nice enough. Shape changing nixies. Only the finest of magical steeds could master the tricks he watched them do. Wild ones only knew four or five shapes, but pure breds could turn into anything. Even a carriage or boat. He had never owned anything so fine.

"Your majesty is a miracle worker." The humor in Dierdre's voice was clear. "You have stunned my son into silence."

Breadan, 1980.

Breaden groaned and rolled over in bed, stretched his arms, then allowed the heavy quilt to settle back around him. Over night the wind teased and plucked at the walls of his stone house like the fluting call of a loon. High on the chain of islands that Scotland currently claimed as theirs, the Orkneyjar rarely fell calm on land or sea. Orcadians had a bold culture of their own that proclaimed an independence as fierce as the tides that washed their beaches.

As far as he spread his awareness on the small, low island, he heard no sounds of people. No servants clattered the morning dishes or told him to get up when he slept late, because this small tuft of grass housed nothing but grass, birds, ruins, and seals. Like over seventy percent of the Orkney Islands, only seals and their selkie cousins basked on the rocky, indented beaches. During the endless summer days, they enjoyed mild temperatures inspite of the rough seas. A selkie rarely bothered building houses unless they took a human mate to prevent inbreeding, so the only house here was his own, and it was in such bad repair that only the smallest of spells caused it to look a complete ruin.

The shape changing seal men had no trouble wooing women from the mainland. Orkney meant seal island, after all. A little trifle like finding your man's pelt hidden in the attic lost it's shock value in the face of a large diamond engagement ring. Selkies possessed the gift of finding wealth in the straits between the islands. Vikings used Hoy as a base for raiding settlements from Norway to Scotland as far back as 845 CE. If a captain was foolhardy enough to extend his raiding season as the nights grew longer and darker, the gails and whirlpools of Orkneyjar taught him the error of his ways. Everything they fought for fell easily to the sea floor, lost to the world of men. Selkies never told anyone if they found a treasure shipwreck, not even each other. They took what they liked and left the rest, so as not to spoil the fun of discovery for everyone else.

If they fancied life on land, a selkie first fixed up whatever old family house they wished to return to if it were still standing. They lived in comfort, wanting nothing. If they fished, fish jumped into the nets. If they raised sheep, those sheep could graze on nothing but kelp in the winter if the grazing land lay dormant and dead. Comfort was easy for the selkies of Orkneyjar. Not so easy for the undines.

The undine population had dwindled for centuries due to a treaty between the Orcadians and the entire fae world. One Braeden's family chose to honor. The islands were beautiful, a little slice of paradise with fertile soil and sweet water. Freezes were short, and food production plentiful. Many more humans could come and live here, work here, and pollute it beyond recognition, but they did not. The humans recently built a power plant that harvested energy from the waves of the tide instead of burning coal. They used the power of the wind and lit their towns more cleanly than ever before. The taint of technology that turned forests to ash and beaches to oil slicks in other parts of the world was minimal, as it always had been.

The truce maintained this balance, and selkies in the governing body of the islands kept it so. In return, the Wild Hunt was not permitted here. Unwilling abductions, captive bards, and changeling a stolen child were not allowed, because that human might have a selkie mother, father, or child. In other lands if an underwater castle's roof collapsed, an undine mage might torture a human to death for the magic released and use that to repair the place. Here, only years of hoarding the energy that humans naturally give off gathered enough power for a major work.

He kicked the quilt off and dressed in a hurry, grabbing whatever wool pants and knit sweater waited for him in the top drawer. The old chest of drawers creaked when he pushed it closed. The drawer fronts didn't match up straight with the frame anymore, warped by humidity and salt in the air. The wool always smelled like home. Breadan's mother, Dierdre, kept it stocked with clean, fresh sweaters for him to wear. She loved to spoil him, even from a distance, and instructed the house's brownie to send all of his laundry to her servants. She was far too busy to visit his island in person.

Dierdre had a plan to stimulate the production of power through creativity. The idea was to encourage the humans to make more artistic things like hand thrown ceramics and blown glass from local resources. Every sweater in the chest was knit locally by the crafting community that Dierdre supported. Whenever a young girl learned a new pattern, a sweater finished, a new one begun, something special happened.

Magic. Something about the pulse of a busy human town. Every new thing a human made or did threw out a spark that floated in the air and water, giving each city it's own energy. It's own life. Even humans felt it. That is why cities that devoted money to the arts were brighter, cleaner, and more joyful. Even something as simple as a hand made sweater brought magic and beauty into being. Dierdra kept very busy harvesting what she could before the natural cycle of power took it beyond her reach. If left in the air too long, fresh creativity seeped into the rocks and formed rivers only the strongest mages could tap into, if they were even permitted. The streams of power beneath Orkneyjar belonged to the brownies, dryads, and kobolds, who were not inclined to share.

Peace between the many types of fae and human on the island was a constant dance of compromise that Breadan's Irish father had no patience for. Duke Keenan had tried. He wanted a better title than the one he was born with, so he courted Deirdre, Queen of Orkney. The land might be small, and the palace court smaller, but he stood a good chance of marrying up the social ladder. The two became lovers, because he was charming and handsome, and her generously proportioned body attracted men like bees to honey. Even so, the Queen was not an easy catch. She always answered his proposals in the same way. Whenever he asked about an official marriage, she told him she would think about it later. Fae courtships could last days or decades where royalty was concerned, but his confidence was shaken. She was a thousand years old, and a Queen, and could have anyone she wanted.

Keenan complained about the old castle being unfit for the court. He jumped at every chance to criticize it's crumbling walls. When the sea reclaimed the underwater castle by flooding it in the middle of winter, Keenan scorned the idea of splitting up the court and living quietly on the islands until repairs could be managed. He pressured Queen Dierdre to find a mortal to kill and finish repairs quickly. When Dierdre held firm that the peace must not be disturbed for little things like an old pile of bricks, he broke off their affair and returned to Ireland. Six, eight, and nine months later, the Queen and two other ladies were blessed with the only positive thing to come out of the cad's visit. Breadan and his two younger half brothers were born.

Dierdre simply rolled her eyes and said she'd known her lover was fertilizing more than one field. The young ones were never ready to settle into a commitment, unless they had souls. So Keenan's oldest son was given the title of Prince mere months before the hothead paid the ultimate price for his foolishness. Luc Laurentius had granted him an honorable death.

Prince Breadan rolled his head around on his shoulders and opened the door. He looked like a typical fairy youth, a mirror image of his dead father, but his thick mane of black hair came from his mother's side. Awash in morning light, butterflies played on the common purple heather that surrounded his garden plot. Much of his food grew in the fertile soil outside his door, only steps away. Small water sprites, servants of the crown, tended herbs, squash, tomatoes and other plants for him. The vegetables were delicious, but the soil quality had very little to do with why he chose to live on this particular when he moved away from home fifty years ago. He moved here to spend more time training his most prized possession. His horses.