She's All Thaumaturgy

by A. K. Caggiano

  “What you did, to the trees,”—Gael’s eyes sharpened—“There is an elf who may be able to help you control it.”

  “Who?” she asked quickly, leaning in.

  “At the base of Mount Doria, north of the forest, there is a small hut on the outskirts of the village of Kaspar.” Gael’s voice was quieter now, and quicker, and she placed a hand lightly on Elayne’s shoulder. “He is quite old and eccentric, but he was born in Heulux, he has intimate knowledge of the nexus, and he may be the only one who can cross the miasma.”

  “Cross the miasma?”

  Gael opened her mouth to speak again, but stopped, her eyes flicking away. Elayne followed her gaze to see Iowen standing a few paces back from them with a set of elves behind her. Even the most practiced elves who were committed to enigmatic stoicism showed emotion when it was strong enough. Iowen’s eyes narrowed.

  Gael turned toward them, folding her hands before her once more. “Ah, Syl and Follyn, our most skilled at glamour.”

  Iowen’s face softened again, and she blinked, nodding at the two. These elves were younger—if there were a way to distinguish—with brighter eyes and smiles that suggested mischief. One was exceptionally thin and tall as if he had not quite filled out yet, the other shorter than average and with accentuated curves. They were both on the verge of being frighteningly beautiful, but when they saw Elayne, they were visibly taken aback.

  Iowen told them that Elayne was their charge and to “do what you will with her.” She hesitated but they both rushed at her, each grabbing a hand and pulling her forward.

  “Sister,” the taller one said, excitement sparkling in his fuchsia eyes, “We have work to do.”

  ***

  Elayne found herself being plopped into a squishy seat, hope of escape low as she sunk into its center. The taller elf, Follyn, was standing back and assessing her, spindly fingers caressing his smooth, tapered chin. Syl scampered around the room, or rather platform, high up amongst the trees with willowy branches tied together for makeshift walls at either side. She collected bottles on a silver tray and gracefully set them on a table at Elayne’s side.

  “My, my,” Syl breathed, perfumey and sweet, as she knelt down and thrust her face into Elayne’s, “Quite the hack job, eh?” She prodded gently at Elayne’s hairline.

  “Brutal.” Follyn examined the bottles one by one and placed them back down. His voice was high and thin when he laughed. “But nothing we can’t handle.”

  “Of course.” Syl slipped nimble fingers behind Elayne’s neck, and in one move undid her bun. Her mass of dull, grey hair tumbled over her shoulders, and the elf began to carefully brush through it, humming as she went. Her own hair was in soft waves all around her face with a coppery pink tint to it.

  Elayne cleared her throat. “Is this going to hurt?”

  Follyn finally chose a bottle with a wry smile, lifting a snow-white brow. “Not too much.”

  “Just don’t go overboard on the contouring.” Syl worked at a knot with gentle tugs. “Remember, she’s half human too.”

  The tall elf sighed and floated toward one of the walls where the branches had been pulled apart and bound to make a window-like opening. “Human, like that one down there.”

  Syl’s dark eyes sparkled, and she leaned in even closer to Elayne. “I remember him, the one that brought you here. He’s very cute.”

  “I suppose.” Follyn drifted over to them and tipped the bottle so that something silvery slid out into his palm.

  “You know Frederick?” Elayne blurted out, and the two glanced at one another and then back to her.

  “Well, we didn’t meet him,” Follyn told her, returning the bottle to the tray and rubbing his hands together. “But he came with some other Yavarindi knights a few years back, and then when he left, Legosen went with him to stay.” With the kind of sigh that told her he was quite unhappy about it, he knelt beside Syl and gripped Elayne’s face, pressing his fingertips into her jawline. “Such a waste.”

  “Wait!” Syl shouted, and he pulled back. “We need an afore!”

  Follyn nodded as if it all made perfect sense, and Syl swept through the space between them. The air crackled and a dinky crawled out into existence. The dinky went right to work, suspending itself in midair and weaving with its countless, spindly arms to craft an image of fine thread and pale colors, and soon Elayne was looking back at a portrait of herself, boils and all, absolutely hideous and horrified.

  “Oh, it’s terrible,” Elayne whispered, quickly looking away.

  “I know!” Syl squeaked, giving the dinky a little pat as it and the image poofed away into nothingness. “Now, let’s fix it.”

  Again, Follyn put his hands on her face, and Elayne seized up. “Uh,” she started to sputter, wanting to distract herself from the pain he had promised, “Wh—what did Frederick come here for?”

  “We had a centaur problem.” Syl stood and began sifting through the bottles herself. “It was totally awful, but they’re immune to a lot of our magic, and we didn’t want to exactly kill them or anything, but their feelings were so not mutual. Wow were those mages something!” She had a dreamy look on her face as she hugged one of the bottles to her chest and sighed.

  “Centaurs?” Elayne felt a pinch and winced, and Follyn murmured an apology between whispered magical words in a foreign tongue. She’d heard about the centaurs—been told directly, in fact, through a letter from Iowen two years ago—but when she had gone to King Harry with their request for help, was told the human empire couldn’t get involved. Admitting her failure to them had been awful, and indeed she thought they would never forgive her, let alone help her now, but here she was, with Frederick, collecting on his debt. “Gods,” she whispered, “He came on his own? Without the crown’s sanction?”

  “Soldiers look nice in their armor, of course,” Syl was saying as she poured a few different tinctures into a mortar, “But so much better out of it. I suppose that’s why they weren’t wearing Yavarindi symbols.”

  A warm fuzziness settled on Elayne’s cheeks, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the work Follyn was doing or the realization Frederick had taken such a risk to help the Trizians. Then her vision began to blur.

  “Not the eyes!” Syl was frantic, nearly dropping her pestle.

  Follyn clicked his tongue, and with a sigh, Elayne’s vision came back. “You are ridiculous, you know that?”

  “Stuff it,” the round-faced elf tittered as she dipped a comb into her concoction. “Humans have lovely eyes.”

  “Well”—Follyn huffed and stood—“If you’re fond of shit-colored things, I suppose. No offense.”

  Elayne frowned. She had inherited her father’s eyes and not the elven lavender of her mother. “None taken.”

  With a relieved sigh, Syl went around and began brushing through her hair once again. “So, Iowen says you’re going to Heulux.”

  Elayne’s eyes widened. “She said what now?”

  “Well, she didn’t tell us that exactly.” Follyn placed a hand under his chin and smirked at her. “But we know who you are, and we can figure out what you’re up to.”

  “Oh, well…” Elayne glanced down at her lap. “I don’t really—”

  “It’s so brave,” said Syl from behind her.

  “Brave.” Elayne took a breath. “Sure.”

  “And when you’re there,” Syl said, her voice dropping down for the first time as she came back around to Elayne’s front, “Maybe you could tell my sister that I miss her, and I hope she can come home soon. If you bump into her or whatever.”

  “Your sister?”

  Syl nodded, smiling, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “Layna. She’s got hair like me. I did it just before she went traveling.”

  “I don’t think she could get in,” Elayne said carefully, “The border has been impenetrable for—”

  “Ten years. I know. I miss her a lot.” Syl bit her lip, then shook her head and stepped back, a broad smile plastering itself on her face. “The
re! I think we’ve done it!”

  Follyn grunted, then leaned forward and tapped her on the nose with a sharp prick. “Yes. I believe we’ve made an improvement. You look more like an elf anyway.”

  Syl pressed a handheld looking glass at her, and Elayne nearly pulled away, but the momentary glance she got made her freeze. A stranger looked back, though her thin brows were knit in the same way that Elayne held her own, and her dainty lips were parted in the same shock that Elayne felt. Silvery hair—not coarse and grey but fine and shimmering—cascaded around her face, not too pointed as Syl had insisted, but tapered like an elf, with a narrow, sharp nose and a slip of a chin. She blinked, and the deep brown eyes of the image blinked back. Her own, undoubtedly.

  “I didn’t know elves could do this,” she murmured breathlessly.

  “Oh, elves can’t, but we can.” Follyn smirked, nudging his comrade.

  Syl giggled. “We learned it from the fae.”

  Elayne shivered—fae were things of legend, monstrous creatures from tales of old—and she touched her cheeks and prodded at her forehead to make sure it didn’t disappear. Sure enough, it stayed.

  “They’re nice once you get to know them.”

  It may have been a joke, but Elayne would never know as Syl pulled her back up to her feet and announced she simply had to come down to dinner now, everyone would be there, and their work was too good not to be shown off.

  “Wait.” Follyn held up his hand then sliced through the air with a sharp nail, and a dinky clambered into existence. “We have the afore, now we need the hind. Smile, Duchess.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Night had fallen in the elven enclave, and Frederick was getting worried. Surely Legosen hadn’t exaggerated his kin’s skills, but Elayne was a special case. He wrapped a hand around the hilt of his sword, feeling the warmth that ran through it. Certainly if he, a human, could alight steel with earthly energy, an elf could clear up someone’s skin in what—a day? Maybe two? Then they could return to the castle where Elayne would begin training in the qualities to become queen. He hadn’t worked those details out yet, but he figured Rosalind could help—she could be convinced of a lot if he told her it was in her friend’s best interest—and they still had an entire moon’s cycle before Quilliam’s coronation when he would have to choose his bride.

  And yet she still hadn’t come down from the tree.

  “No way!” Rosalind’s voice exploded from behind him. An elven archer called Taryn had been struggling to show her how to properly draw a longbow. The arrow she’d finally let loose was sticking out of the tree behind and to the left of her target, but her face glowed like she’d hit it square on. Bix stood at her feet and was clapping, a new slingshot tucked under his arm.

  “I can’t say I believe it’s really your weapon.” The archer was a tall, pale elf, not so different from Legosen, but then Frederick always had a tough time telling them apart. He vaguely remembered Taryn for his eagerness to defend his people from the centaurs. Taryn kept his patience remarkably as Rosalind insisted on trying out a number of armaments she’d come across. He corrected her aim consistently and skillfully protected her from nothing much except herself. She didn’t notice, but then that was how elves usually liked it.

  “I believe the staff is the best fit.” The archer picked up a long stave from the rack at his side, held it up beside her, then traded it out for something shorter. This one was only a bit taller than Rosalind, straight down its center but twisting organically at both ends and buffed smooth. “Here,”—he held it out—“this belongs with you.”

  Rosalind hadn’t been careful or slow in any of her impromptu training, but she finally hesitated so that he had to take a step closer and press the staff into her hands.

  “Wow.” The woman tested its heft a moment then delicately flipped it around in her hands. One end was wrapped with an earthen-colored cord and the tip caught the light, small stones embedded in the dark wood.

  He pointed to the crystals. “A staff is ideal for a magic wielder, elven or mage. These can be used to draw up the energy in the world around you.”

  Rosalind’s face faltered. “Oh, I don’t have any magic. Well, I can do this!” She swept a hand through the air and called up a dinky that skittered out through its fissure and waved two of its many legs at her. “This is Chuck. Chuck, Taryn.” The dinky made a squeak and waved at the elf with the arms, or perhaps legs, at the other end of its amorphous body. Taryn gave it an odd hand gesture back, clearly confused; dinkies were hard enough to call up for most humans, but by name it seemed impossible.

  When the dinky who Rosalind had called Chuck disappeared again, her smile went with it. “But that’s really all. I’m no mage.” She offered him back the staff.

  “No, no.” He held up his hands. “It suits you. You can also whack things with it, and I doubt very much it would ever break. Consider it a gift.”

  Rosalind threw herself at the elf, nearly knocking him to the ground. He didn’t know what to do with the human woman wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and shouting thank yous at him—this was not how elves did things—and so Taryn stood stiffly under the embrace. Rosalind didn’t seem to notice, though if she did it wasn’t likely she would have let up.

  “Oh, good, Ro’s made a friend.”

  Frederick turned to see two elves standing just behind him. They’d come up silently on him, like most elves did, and were strikingly beautiful, as most elves were, but one was not quite the right height. Her nose was a bit more rounded than pointed, her face a bit more heart-shaped than long, and her skin and eyes were darker. “Elly?”

  Elayne’s face brightened, and it was as if he were seeing her for the first time since they were twelve. She had always been happy to see him back then, but he hadn’t seen her smile—really smile—since.

  “Oh, my gods!” Rosalind nearly trampled Frederick as she pushed passed him to envelop Elayne in an embrace. She lifted the girl off the ground and spun her around. “I didn’t recognize you at all!” Rosalind had never known Elayne before the curse, only coming to court in the last few years, so the shock of the change was different for her, he assumed. But for Frederick, this was the old Elayne—if older and, well, something else he couldn’t quite pick out—staring back at him from just over Rosalind’s shoulder. It was like the last ten years fell away around him, the training, the insignificance, the loneliness, and he was just a kid again.

  When she was placed back on the ground, Elayne struggled to catch her breath. She touched her own cheek, mumbling, “I haven’t…I just needed…” Her eyes fell on Frederick again as her words drifted off.

  He realized he still hadn’t said anything, but even then the words didn’t seem to want to come. What could he even say? So instead, he turned to Iowen. “Thank you.”

  “Gael sends her regards.” Iowen bowed her head. “We would like to offer you lodging for the night as the sun has set, and I assume you do not want to traverse the woods again quite so soon.”

  The elves invited them to a meal of strongly spiced greens, hearty breads, and cheeses they insisted were made of nuts and beans, but Frederick doubted despite never seeing a goat or a cow sauntering about. Rosalind had convinced Taryn to accompany them so that she could ask him more questions, and he obliged her, his demeanor softening when she introduced him as her friend to Elayne. Bix had also made friends in the elves who had been so intrigued by him earlier, answering his myriad of questions about how their homes were constructed and their food was grown. They giggled at every answer but provided even the most mundane details without weariness.

  Frederick, however, hadn’t broken himself of his self-imposed loss for words. He sat across from Elayne and caught her eye over and over, but she broke away from it every time. By the meal’s end she had lost the smile she’d begun with and excused herself when their plates were nearly empty. Frederick reflexively stood when she left, staring after her, then followed.

  They had dined in a hall made from band
ed together branches with globes of brightly colored seeing stones hanging from its roof, and so outside, there was a darkness that Frederick had to acclimate to. He squinted into the shadows, dimmer versions of the lights bobbing softly along the paths the elves had worn from tree to tree. Elayne’s figure had made it down one of the paths and was almost completely out of sight, so he hurried after.

  When he caught up to her, she was bent over at the edge of a small pond. It was dark, but the pond was surrounded by little clusters of mushrooms that had their own blueish glow, reflecting in the stillness of the water. There was probably something he should have said—there often was—but the moment had passed. Instead he cleared his throat as he came up behind her. “I’m sorry.”

  She sighed, still looking down into the water. “What for?”

  “Uh.” He scratched his neck, not exactly sure, it just seemed right to say. He caught her reflection in the pond for only a moment before she dipped in a finger and the image rippled away. “For being weird, I guess?”

  “Oh, okay.” Elayne stood and turned to him, leaving very little space between. “It’s all right though, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah!” he answered, a bit too quickly for his own liking. “I mean, I told you elves know what they’re doing.”

  Elayne nodded, her eyes darting to the ground. “It’s fake,” she said quietly. “I’m still me underneath.”

  “Haven’t you always been?”

  She knitted her brow. “I mean the cursed face, it’s still there, but they said the glamour will last at least a hundred years which is more than enough. I think they overdid it a little though.”

  Frederick stared at the top of her head, strands of her silvery hair glimmering in the blue lights. “Overdid it?”