Princess for the Alien Commander by Tammy Walsh

Sofia

“Woah there, Princess,”Bill said.

“I told you,” I said through gritted teeth. “Don’t call me that.”

I could see the argument forming on his lips:

“But you are the Princess…”

He was smart enough not to utter it and kept his mouth shut and instead issued another warning.

“Keep away from the edge, Prin— Uh, please. If you fall, the king won’t be best pleased.”

I swear if he calls me Princess one more time…

What?

What was I going to do?

I was in the middle of nowhere, in a country I had long since dismissed as something belonging to a dream I’d once had, and I was under armed escort of men loyal to my father—my sovereign father!

I pulled the okmath I was riding to one side.

“Better?”

Bill looked on the verge of asking me to come over a little further from the cliff edge before thinking better of it and simply nodded.

The okmath paused and shook his long mane of glistening hair that shimmered like rainbows.

I placed a hand on Deet’s neck and gently rubbed him behind his fourth ear the way he liked.

He stamped his back foot with joy.

I’d never ridden an okmath before but I took to it easily.

Twice as tall as a human, okmaths were native to Fod and the kauah’s traditional method of transport.

Although it wasn’t the fastest way through these dense woods, it was the safest.

“A shuttlecraft could get blown from the sky,” Bill had said.

That really filled me with confidence.

“Why would anyone want to blow us from the sky?” I gulped.

“Because of the war.”

He must have seen the perplexed look on my face as he took a deep breath and said:

“Everything will be explained to you when we reach the palace.”

The palace.

I still couldn’t believe I was a princess.

And I was going to live in a palace!

I wondered how many servants I would have.

Would there be one to pull my chair back and comb my hair?

And another to do my makeup?

The thought alone made me laugh.

Servants were going to have a tough time dealing with my knotted locks!

The pasture land was greener than any I had ever seen and rolled on for miles over the hills.

A solid block of blue sky met it, forming sharp relief against the hazy turquoise of distant mountains.

A scarf of dense foliage perched like pompoms on spindly branches that appeared too weak to bear that unimaginable weight.

I drifted to one side to peer over the bluff of a hill and my breath was wrenched from my throat at the sheer magnificence of the scene spread out before me.

Golden sunlight broke through a thin cloud that drifted over the mountain’s peak and glinted sharply off the river that rolled endlessly toward an invisible sea.

“Woah there, Princess,” Bill said with predictable timing.

I ground my teeth again, so loud that I was sure he must have heard it.

One glance at his concerned expression told me who would suffer the fallout if any harm should come to me.

I considered racing down the hillside—no matter how precipitously steep it was—just to spite my chaperones.

I sensed Deet could handle it.

We could rush into the river, swim across, and then…

What?

Explore.

I fell in love with the wilds of Fod the moment we arrived.

It was a wild and dangerous place.

Already I had seen a dozen poisonous species and each time I did, I pointed them out to Camila, who shrank like a turtle into its shell.

She wasn’t quite so enamored with the place as I was.

But I did as Bill asked and turned away from the cliff edge.

My eyes caught on long spindly petals that perched like fingers from the butt of a tree root.

It was the same plant Bill and Steve had dropped into Mom’s grave.

“That’s an ut’ika flower, the emblem of House Brant,” Camila said, pulling up alongside me.

She bent down to pick one up.

She sniffed it and offered it to me to do the same.

It smelled of strawberries and cream dipped in honey!

I buried my nose in it and couldn’t get enough.

“Careful,” Camila said. “It’s devastatingly beautiful and dangerous to boot.”

“Dangerous how?”

“It’s poisonous. A particularly nasty little concoction that kills its victim within thirty seconds.”

I gawped at the flower and knocked it out of her hands.

Camila laughed.

“It’s not dangerous unless you know how to extract it.”

Still, I wasn’t sure I wanted it anywhere near me!

“House Brant?” I said. “Isn’t that the king’s emblem?”

She nodded.

“Yours now, too.”

She hadn’t approved of my decision to return to Fod, but it was against her nature to hold a grudge.

That was, until I heard my mother’s story and how she had come to escape my father’s clutches.

I began to feel I had never really known my mother at all—or Camila for that matter.

Each time Camila’s story veered in an unexpected direction, I wondered how it was possible I could have forgotten so much of it.

I’d been seven at the time.

Surely I was old enough to recall some of the frantic adventures that led to our escape?

They traversed the openness of space, heading further into its dark recesses, without fully knowing where they were heading or where they would go next.

“We stole into the night when your father turned his terrible temper from your mother and toward you,” Camila said. “‘I can put up with his anger,’ she would say. ‘I chose to marry him, even if I didn’t know what he was truly like until it was too late. But Sofia never chose to be her father’s daughter. She shouldn’t have to suffer for it.’”

I wished, not for the first time, that my mother was still alive so I could speak with her about what had transpired.

“She was happy being married to the king at first,” Camila said, “the way all newlyweds are. But it didn’t take long for the king to reveal his true colors.”

She checked over her shoulders to ensure our chaperones couldn’t overhear us.

“His true color turned out to be as dark as hell itself, the same shade of the shriveled heart beating in his chest.”

I listened, enrapt and yet terrified.

I’d never known Camila to speak so ill of someone before.

“He beat her,” Camila said, “unleashing his fury upon her with every strike. I tried to help her, but what could I do? I was a servant with no power.”

Her head hung limply.

“Every so often, she would show up with a fresh set of bruises. The king is nothing if not clever, and always ensured to beat her across the body and never across the face where others might see.”

“Why didn’t she run away sooner?” I said, growing angry that Mom would let herself be a victim like that.

“Because your father wasn’t always violent. In the beginning, he was kind and sweet, and your mother had been very happy. And your father knew your mother wouldn’t run, not when he had the power to take her children from her. Your mother might have continued that way if it wasn’t for the development that happened two months shy of your seventh birthday.”

Camila wet her lips before continuing.

“The king went off crazier than usual and woke you from your dreams. You saw them and cried for him to stop. Instead, it only served to enrage your father further. He raised his arms to strike you, but your mother put herself between you. In that instant, she knew she could no longer stay and must leave.”

My mouth hung open, aghast at what’d transpired and not remembering the event at all.

Had I repressed it?

It wasn’t exactly the kind of memory a child wished to cling to.

“What about my brother?” I said. “He wanted to stay?”

“He was already seventeen years old,” Camila said. “Old enough to begin his military training. Besides, your brother was the apple of your father’s eye. He never would have let your mother take him.”

To have to leave a child behind in order to save the other is not a decision any mother should ever have to make, but she loved you enough to make it.”

Mom had given me a warning—to never go back to my father.

She must have known he would track us down, would want me to return to him.

She’d warned me, and I had ignored her.

I was heading back into the lion’s den.

Had I made a terrible, terrible mistake?

A large treesplit our path in two, so I pulled on the reins to lead Deet around it.

I took the narrower path, which put me on the very cusp of a ravine so steep it disappeared over the side.

Deet caught a rock, sending it skittering across the near-vertical surface, disappearing from view.

“Woah there, Princess,” Bill said.

My jaw tightened and I snapped.

How many times did I have to tell him?

“Don’t call me Prin—”

The cliff cracked and gave way, yanking me along with it.

“—eeeeess!”

Deet dug in his six heels to slow our descent and succeeded only in carving twin furrows through the craggy surface.

I gripped the reins in tight fists and squeezed my heels into Deet’s soft underbelly.

We slid down the cliffside, all my attention focused on the blind edge a hundred yards out.

Beyond that, and we were doomed to fall to our deaths.

My heart thundered in my chest, disbelieving this was really happening.

This couldn’t be how I died.

It just couldn’t!

I’d survived a five-year siege at the dras’s hands!

I’d survived starvation and poverty!

I wasn’t about to let a weak rock be the end of me!

Deet whined and snorted noisily through his broad nostrils.

Looking ahead, I could see what he was concerned about.

The sheer cliff came to an abrupt end and the fall on the other side would spill onto an empty expanse for I didn’t know how far.

Then I spotted our only chance of getting through this.

A single curl of tree perched on the very edge of the precipitous cliff.

Small and feeble-looking, I wasn’t sure it could take both my and Deet’s weight.

Could I give up on Deet if push came to shove?

Just imagining his clumsy weight falling through space made me sick to my stomach.

No, I decided.

I wouldn’t give up on him.

Not unless I had no choice.

But it was a long way.

I yanked on Deet’s reins and the creature dug in his heels, churning up the loose rocks and pebbles.

We had no chance of slowing to a stop but if Deet was strong enough, he might be able to alter our direction enough to hit the single sprig of tree that might be our saving grace.

He did as I ordered but not enough.

I pulled harder on the reins.

“Just a little more…” I grunted.

Deet managed all I asked of him.

Now we were on a one-way trip to salvation. All we needed to do now was snag that branch and we could wait for the others to rescue us.

A few more seconds of sliding and we would make it.

“Grab hold of the tree!” I yelled as if the creature could actually understand me.

Whether he could or not, I didn’t know, but he reached for it with his trunk at the same moment I grasped it with my hands.

In the blink of an eye, the sapling snapped and we sailed off the cliff and fell, descending to the forest far, far below.

Desperate reality settled in.

I would never meet my father, never get to enjoy palace life, or see the kind of life I could have had.

All those years desperately fighting off death… only to find it waiting for me off the shoulder of a foreign cliff on an unknown planet.

I could have wept.

In fact, I just might do that…

Then Deet threw up his trunk and trumpeted a high-pitched song…

But not one of sorrow.

It was of elation.

He was pleased he was going to die?

Of all the okmath I could have chosen, why did I go for the crazy one?

Then a tremendous noise like sheets flapping on a washing line cracked and a pair of wings—no, not wings but some kind of sail erupted from Deet’s underside and caught the wind.

I jerked forward hard, buried in Deet’s soft fur.

As he pulled up, it reduced the pressure so I could sit up.

We floated easily over the tops of the trees.

“You can fly?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Deet growled in the back of his throat and it vibrated up my legs.

He shot me a look that might have said, “Luckily for you!”

He wasn’t really flying, of course, but floating—not that I was picky!

We sailed down, down, down, in a smooth and steady arc toward the tree line…

Then it disappeared beneath us and the rushing surface of the powerful river rose up to meet us.

I reached down a hand to skim its glassy surface and felt the ice-cold liquid press against my hand.

I flicked a little over Deet’s face.

He growled, reached down, filled his trunk, and blasted me with a bucketload.

“No fair!” I screamed.

Deet whistled happily.

He was coming in to land on the other side of the river but couldn’t quite make it.

We came within a dozen yards of the river’s opposite bank and swam the rest.

When we reached the other side, Deet shook himself off, dousing me and making his fur stick up like a pompom.

Deet approached a thick thatch of purple grass and set to grazing on it.

I planted my fists on my hips and looked back over the distance we’d fallen.

Camila and the soldiers, tiny with distance, were still perched on the cliffside, peering down at us.

Even if they shouted, there was no way I could hear them.

With a clear view of just how massive the forest was, moving from this spot probably wasn’t the best idea.

I would stay where I was until they found me.

Besides, the soldiers knew this place better than I ever would.

A twig snapped in the foliage behind me.

I spun around to meet it.

Deet sprung to attention too, his fur standing up on end like an Earth-cat, hackles rising and growling loudly.

More twigs snapped in the dense forest foliage.

Whoever it was on the other side either didn’t know we were there or were unafraid of letting us know they were present.

Please be more of my father’s soldiers, I prayed. Please let them see me fall and come here to rescue me.

The foliage parted and a dozen large shadows stepped into the light.

No such luck.

They were kauah and they looked mad as hell.