Free Horns for the Harem Girl by Lynn Red

that she remembered so fondly.
    “Girls!” he called to her sisters. “Come quickly! Helly,” that’s what he called her, “is home on vacation from the palace!”
    As the girls filed in, the first one, her sister Alara, noticed that she was covered in sand, and the second that she smelled a bit like an animal. She’d laughed that off. “We had to take horseback to get here,” she said. “There were fires in the city,” she didn’t bother to explain that the ibex who brought her here was the very one responsible for said fires, “and so the palace had to be evacuated for security reasons.”
    If any of them disbelieved her, none made it clear by the way they looked at her or the way they embraced her.
    “Alara!” her father finally said, with a loud clap of his hands. “Let’s celebrate!”
    “With what?” Selene, the middle sister, said. “We’ve nothing to eat, and hardly any water left in the barrels.”
    Flustered for a moment, her father looked back and forth before regaining his composure. “Well, with whatever we have! It doesn’t matter. The rains will come, the land will provide. Your sister is home and we’ll celebrate. Now, do as I say!”
    With a grumble, two of the five girls rose to their feet and tromped off. “We haven’t even a goat to give us milk,” she heard one say as they went. “What are we supposed to—?”
    A great crashing sound, from somewhere at the other end of the small house, interrupted her. “Papa!” Alara shouted, “come here!”
    Helena and her father exchanged a quick glance before both got to their feet and went down the hall to find a goat with his head happily buried in the garbage can under the sink in the kitchen. The sink was running... which it had not done in quite some time, not since the well had gone dry and water had to be delivered by barrel.
    “What is this?” he said in the animal’s direction. “My word,” he exhaled. “Look out there.”
    This adventuresome fellow was not the only new addition to the family. In the pen which used to house camels, cattle, rams and goats, were all those things – which hadn’t been present for years. Not only that, but huge bales of dried grass had been deposited all around, and the water tanks were not only replenished, but new and enormous.
    “What in the world?”
    Her father’s mouth hanging open, Helena smiled and shook her head. Turning into an ibex is one thing, but replenishing a family’s farm with more than they ever had before? That’s more than magic .
    “Helena?” Her father was tapping her shoulder as she was lost in thought. “This... all came with you? How did we not hear? How did you not wake us in the night?”
    The truth was she didn’t have any idea. Moreover, she hadn’t a clue when all this had appeared or how it had been transported. In truth she barely even believed that what she knew happened the night before happened at all. But the proof was right in front of her, braying and chewing on an empty juice carton.
    “I guess we can celebrate,” Alara said, smiling despite her normally sour demeanor. “And I guess having a sister in the harem has more advantages than just being rid of a sister,” Alara’s twin, Jatala, said. They shared a demeanor, but not a voice. Jatala’s was higher and more nasal than that of her sister.
    Clapping again, her father ordered the girls to get a goat, and prepare a feast, while he himself sat down and took a long, happy drink from the cold water that squirted out of the spigot when he turned the handle. “I don’t know how, or why, we’ve been so blessed. But when you see the prince next, thank him for us. I’m sure this is his doing,” her father said.
    “I will,” Helena said with a wistful smile. “Next time I see him, if I see him again, I’ll thank him for all of us.”
    *
    T wo days came and went, spent in gorging themselves and laughing. Along with the animals and the water tanks had come great big barrels – two of