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“Love Knows No Boundaries?”

by [Paul Doyle]



     Miyoko stirred in the sultry tropical Cancun night, stretching and trying to ignore the ever-growing headache. Next to her, David whistled through his teeth, far off into slumberland. She had fallen passionately in love with the honest, down-to-earth construction worker, and despite questions about her mysterious, incomplete background, David completely fell for her charms. After six months neither could take it any longer, so they ran off to Cancun and got married on the beach at sunrise, yesterday morning. Now they celebrated their honeymoon in style, rarely leaving the hotel room.

     And yet there were many, many unanswered questions. Not about David, because he came as he was and had nothing to hide. His family had been almost too kind, never once being impolite when they found contradictions in Miyoko’s story that her whole family had died in the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake, then emigrated to San Francisco after a deep yet brief mourning. First she’d said she lived in Kobe in an old building which had been built well before Japan’s current earthquake standards, then she’d said she lived in South Hyogo, also affected by the earthquake. Though David’s parents weren’t sure what to think, they simply changed the subject. Miyoko had gotten quite a headache that night.

     It couldn’t possibly compare to this . . . indigenous type of headache. Indigenous, not because she appeared to be a dark-haired, almond-eyed, athletic and trim urban Japanese beauty . . .

     She lay awake, staring at the ceiling, finding the air conditioning repressive. Miyoko knew neither the A/C nor her anxieties sustained her headache. She briefly considered waking David and melting again in his very strong yet tender embrace. Yet he was still shattered from earlier, and he couldn’t possibly solve her problems.

     A tear forming in her eye, Miyoko cast a gentle spell, sending David into an even deeper, more restful sleep. Her temples throbbed from the unnatural strain. She couldn’t hold this form for much longer, and more important, this charade couldn’t continue. How would David, who laughed at the very mention of ghosts and UFOs, react? Would love truly know no boundaries?

     Miyoko turned off the air conditioning and opened the windows, immediately feeling refreshed. Yet the warm breeze and floral scents of the tropical night aggravated her headache, which now stabbed inward from the temples. Fumbling about, she clumsily removed the bug screen with atypical gracelessness. She quivered and shook like her blood sugar level had fallen dangerously low. Finally she stopped prolonging the inevitable, and instantaneously changed form to her true fairy self.

     Wings shimmering, naked body glowing, Miyoko rose from the camisole which had fluttered to the floor. The headache had now disappeared, but her guilt remained. She flew up to the foot of the bed and viewed her human husband, monstrously large from this perspective. Daintily, mincingly, she flitted up to his stubble-filled cheek and planted a kiss. Before she flew out the window she flew to the dresser mirror and viewed herself, her true self, strikingly similar to her human form except for the two pairs of translucent, delicate wings sprouting from her back. Normally being in her true form would have endlessly cheered her, yet she felt so sad and torn. Her prodigious magical talents, far beyond those of a fairy of her relatively young age, had come back to haunt her. Her insatiable curiosity for homo sapiens, a species most fairies despised or looked down upon, had gotten the better of her. She had been in human form for so long she had somewhat forgotten what it meant to be a fairy.

     Weeping repressed tears, Miyoko tumbled out the window and took wing, careening from the hotel toward a nearby garden where many of her kind cavorted, carefree. She needed to be with them, to again be whimsical and full of laughter, yet she did not want to stir up too much of a commotion. Fairies generally shunned negativity.

     They immediately stopped what they were doing and wondered if she would be okay. Some of them recognized Miyoko, because even though fairies had favorite places, most of them liked to travel about the world meeting other fairies. It made life more appealing, for a fairy’s life expectancy extended several centuries, and there was always the risk of life getting dull, which was a fairy cultural no-no.

     “Maybe I just need a long rest,” Miyoko said in her native language. She smiled despite the tears welling in her eyes. Not having a typical fairy’s boundless nocturnal energy, she alighted upon a comfortable lime tree branch.

     “A broken heart?”, asked one of the other fairies.

     “No, no,” chuckled Miyoko. “That’s yet to happen. I’m afraid of breaking HIS heart.”

     “Oh!”, tittered the other fairy. “Well, I hope you get over it. Male fairies aren’t the most faithful lovers, and most frankly aren’t cut out to be fathers. Don’t forget there’s other routes to explore,” she babbled. Then she looked at Miyoko straight in the eye. “Do you want to have children?”

     Miyoko sighed, somewhat indignant. “That’s a bit personal, you know.”

     “Why should you really care? It’s not healthy for a beautiful lady like you to get all broody and jealous about these things. That’s way too human-like. Don’t go there, if I were you. Humans are loud and ugly and smelly and completely neglectful of their surroundings. Sure, some of them are cute, but they have short lifespans. And besides, humans are inferior beings. They are fundamentally stupid and destructive and ignorant.”

     “Well, that’s just a bit stereotypical!”, laughed Miyoko. “That’s like humans saying all fairies are frivolous and mischievous and chaotic. And that our nakedness is a purely sexual thing.”

     The other fairy giggled. “That’s part of the reason why humans are so stupid. They assume that because we usually don’t need clothing, we must be very sexual beings. And if that isn’t scary enough, there’s always a small handful of fairies, male and female, who want to be like humans. Silly fae. They must have fallen on their heads while learning to fly.”

     Feeling her temper rising, Miyoko took flight.

     “Word always gets around!” the other fairy called after her. “We’ll find out your lover’s identity, one way or another.”

     Gritting her teeth and ignoring the chorus of laughter, Miyoko flitted about the Cancun hotel strip at rooftop level, watching the ocean waves crash and pull away from the seemingly endless beach. For a second she thought completely like a fairy, awed by the natural beauty and terrified by the notoriously bad riptide danger many humans chose to ignore, being the stupid imbeciles humans tended to be.

     She gasped, thinking of David, asleep in their hotel suite. He wasn’t the most intelligent man in the world. Yet he was such a trusting, caring man, so tender and strong and infinitely more attractive than any male fairy who’d made advances on her. His human shortcomings balanced nicely with an inner calm and balance, qualities generally seen in only the oldest and wisest of fairies.

     Oldest and wisest of fairies . . .

     That was it! Miyoko brightened and turned away from the beach and followed the moon, flying toward downtown Cancun. When fairies traveled, they generally liked to know in advance where the strongest elders lived, in case their help was required. Around here and the rest of the region they lived near or among the ancient ruins. They cavorted and consulted with the many, many spirits “reputed” to exist by indigenous humans who were generally looked down upon by patronizing American and European tourists who saw them as somehow inferior.

     Miyoko knew David had laughed at some of that stuff, too, while looking through the travel guides to the Yucatan region. “Don’t make the snake god mad!”, he had chuckled over a beer, a comment that silently angered Miyoko. Yet she smiled anyway, and had a beer of her own. She didn’t love him any less.

     Her train of thought snapped when she realized she was being followed. Peering away from the soothing moonlight, she detected a dozen fairies, including the fairy who’d angered her.

     “Human lover!”

     The strongest, most powerful fairy in the region lived near Chitzen Itza, not far away from the centerpiece pyramid, the temple commonly called “El Castillo.” During the daytime the place was totally overrun by human tourists, but during the night the supernatural and the paranormal reigned supreme.

     “We can set you up on a date with a male FAIRY, you know!”

     Miyoko ignored them. They lacked her maturity level and her magical prowess. Chitzen Itza was much too far away, given the circumstances . . . at some point during midmorning, the housekeeping people would be coming to clean the room. David would probably get a rude awakening from them, disoriented by a magic as strong as allowed for everyday use. Then they’d all see the window wide open, the screen door removed, and no Miyoko anywhere in sight . . . what were they to think? Abduction? Suicide?

     Alarmed, angered by her decision to not simply open the balcony door and fly off, Miyoko hastened her pace. No, she couldn’t settle for advice from the local “elders” because more often than not they were backstabbing charlatans who took advantage of fairies with mediocre skills. This wasn’t just the pattern here in the Yucatan; wherever a fairy went, the most beneficial and powerful elders tended to live well out of the way.

     Miyoko ignored the catcalls, and focused on the solid, rectangular top of El Castillo. She had never been to Chitzen Itza, though she had seen plenty of images over the Internet and elsewhere. Though she had become a powerful mage in her own right, there was still a potentially lethal, large margin of error, even though a place like Chitzen Itza was almost as universally recognizable as the Great Wall of China or the Eiffel Tower.

     “Suppose he knocked you up, human lover?”

     Despite herself, Miyoko yelled angrily. She mentally targeted the top of El Castillo, flexed her formidable mind, and said far fewer spell-words than most fairies needed.

     She blinked—

     —And then unblinked. She still found herself screaming and immediately regained her composure. She fluttered half a kilometer above the tropical jungle, about a hundred meters from the clearing. Just overhead, the leading edge of a thunderstorm rolled in, the moistness cooling her naked body. El Castillo loomed a short distance away. She couldn’t help but laugh, seeing she still had much room for improvement. Without her wings, Miyoko would have fallen to her death. Would there ever be time to continue her studies, considering she intended to be with David for the rest of his all-too-brief human life?

     Far above, lightning crawled underside the anvil of the thunderhead. As she looked on, awed, a much closer bolt tore blindingly into her periphery, slamming into El Castillo. Miyoko shrieked, the deafening thunder reverberating in all directions.

     She refocused. Thick raindrops fell.

     “I have been expecting you, Miyoko. Don’t worry about the ruins. Thousands of lightning bolts have struck these structures, and yet they still stand, largely intact.”


     She neared El Castillo, looking about for the source of the matronly voice.

     “You have traveled far and are much more fatigued than you realize, Miyoko. You are all but drained of magical strength. Now please let me help you.”

     In a heartbeat, Miyoko found herself perched atop a rock inside a very large, dark and damp room. Lightning flickered through a nearby hole, illuminating ancient, slime-covered hand carved stairs. She realized the “rock” was a stalagmite, and the room was a cavern.

     “Welcome to Cenote, Miyoko. I am named after the Mayan goddess Ixtaccíhuatl.”

     The cavern lit up with magical light, revealing a tangled forest of stalactites, stalagmites and tree roots penetrating the cavern roof and reaching to the limestone-rich water pool which glowed green with an inner light.

     “This is your home, Venerated One, I mean, um . . .”

     The ancient, eternally young-looking fairy landed on the stalagmite and perched next to Miyoko. “Normally I would have you address me as Mother Ixtaccíhuatl, yet you know as much Mayan as I know Japanese. You have been through quite a lot lately. You are emotionally, physically and magically spent. So just for now, you may address me as Ixtac. But not Izzy. That’s just plain disrespectful.”

     They both giggled.

     “Yes, this is my home. Actually, I live underneath the lake. No human since the ancients has ever been down there and survived to tell the tale, so I’m reasonably comfortable here, even though the human tourists stop by here once they’ve gotten tired of the overwhelming crowds at Chitzen Itza, which is just a short distance from here.”

     The worst of the thunder and lightning subsided, and now a steady, gentle rainfall fell on the surface, some of it dripping through the hole down the treacherous staircase.

     “It’s funny how so many of us are named after humans, or after human spirits, no matter what culture,” mused Miyoko.

     Ixtac grasped Miyoko’s bare shoulders. “You are not the first, my dear prodigy.”

     Miyoko sighed. “I sensed that. I must tell David the truth.”

     “He is a good man and will learn to accept the truth, though the adjustment will be very awkward. Yet in the end it will be a wonderful, mystical event of the first order. This is the first human-fairy marriage since the days of old. But that is not what I meant.” The supremely powerful fairy hugged her. “Miyoko, you are pregnant!”

     She wept happily, then pushed back with a start. “I am endangering the baby!”

     “All previous instances have miscarried because of the shape shifting. You will have to revert back to human form without delay, and stay that way until the child is born. You have only been pregnant for a few hours, so there is no complication. Yet.” The elder fairy rested her hand on Miyoko’s shoulder and chanted, lightly rocking back and forth. Miyoko felt positive energy flowing into her, and immediately sensed what she knew would become fraternal twins, a boy and a girl of mixed blood, starting to develop inside of her. The magical lighting illuminating the caverns wavered, then shorted out. Miyoko felt the gentle hand pull away from her shoulder.

     A nearby, stray lightning bolt illuminated the face of an extremely old, wizened Ixtac. “Go now,” she quavered. “My power is drained and I must rest for weeks. You will be able to stay in human form well past your delivery date. We will be in contact at or around that time, my dear apprentice.” Ixtac chanted a few more words, and the surroundings shifted.

     Miyoko found herself in human form, still naked, curled up to David in the Cancun hotel room. With a negligent wave, the bug screen and window fixed themselves.

     She intended to thoroughly enjoy the rest of the honeymoon!

---THE END---



Word count: Just under 2500 words.

Written 14-15 September 2005 from scratch, after losing partial rough draft (first few paragraphs) written in August 2005.

Partially inspired by the famous Wim Wenders film, Wings of Desire

This is also a long-promised story for [liiga], based on this artwork: http://www.deviantart.com/view/9081938/

Story (c)2005 , Paul J. Doyle. All rights Reserved.