by Tara Grayce
“Farrendel is fine.”
Good, considering that’s what she’d taken to calling him in her head. Thinking about him as Farrendel was a lot less intimidating than Laesornysh.
A HAND WAS on her shoulder. A slight, gentle shake. And a baritone voice was saying something she couldn’t understand. A pause, then the voice spoke again. “Wake up.”
Essie blinked and pushed herself onto an elbow. They were still in the elven version of a train car they’d boarded after disembarking from the boat on the Tarenhieli side the river. The train glided nearly silently on a set of rails that hadn’t looked like the iron Essie had been expecting, though she hadn’t gotten a good look in the dark as she’d been swaying on her feet in exhaustion.
As soon as she’d been shown inside the train car with its two long rows of plush benches facing each other, she’d curled up, told Farrendel to wake her when they neared Estyra, not fully expecting he would, and dropped off to sleep.
But he had. That was something to think about. Was he being nice to her or was there something more to the gesture? Or maybe something less? He might not have thought anything of it since she’d need to be awake to get off the train regardless.
Essie sat up and peered through the large windows of this passenger car.
The train was gliding through a deep, dense forest. Most of the trees and the undergrowth were nothing but a blur passing close to the train with a few of the farther tree trunks seemingly lingering longer before they too were swept from sight.
Sight. She could see the trees outside the window. It was still gray and hazy, but morning had come even if she couldn’t see the sky or the sunrise.
Ahead, lights glittered amongst the trees, still too indistinct for her to make out details. A few shafts of sunlight streamed long and slanting from in front of them and to the left. The sun must be peeking above the horizon somewhere.
Essie nearly pressed her face to the window to see better but stopped herself just in time. She couldn’t act like a child here, not among these seemingly ageless elves. She didn’t need to give them any more reason to dismiss her. Or turn away in disgust.
Still, she couldn’t help a few bounces in her seat as they neared the fabled elven city.
The undergrowth cleared and the tree trunks widened, soaring higher and higher into the sky. She craned her neck as she peered through the window. How had these trees grown so tall? They were taller than any building in Escarland. Taller even than some of the rolling hills they called mountains back in her homeland.
The train began a gentle curve, skirting the edge of what appeared to be truly gigantic trees. To the left side of the train behind the bench where King Weylind and Farrendel sat with inscrutable expressions, there was only forest.
But on her side of the train, a bustle of activity appeared. Gauzy awnings and leafy canopies designated what appeared to be shops on the ground floor of this forest while winding staircases that appeared to be made from the trees’ own living branches wound upward into the spreading branches overhead. Did the elves live above their shops much as her people did back in Escarland? Or were there more shops up there?
She caught glimpses of swinging bridges connecting some of the trees together while on the forest floor, the suggestion of streets wound between the trees. Not the straight, grid-like streets of her home city of Aldon, but meandering streets that followed the pattern of the forest.
Here, the land dictated the city, not the other way around.
The train slowed and glided to a halt by what must be a train platform. Here in Estyra, it was more a moss-covered rise with a ring of trees keeping sentinel.
A squad of six elves waited in the center of the flat stones. Four of them were obviously guards in the way they stood tall, carrying swords and bows on their backs. The other two were just as expressionless, but they didn’t carry any weapons. Perhaps they were servants to carry any luggage the king had brought on this diplomatic mission.
Had word been sent ahead about the addition to their number? Surely King Weylind would’ve at least wanted to warn his staff to expect Essie, as well as let his family know their youngest brother was bringing home a bride.
How big a family did Farrendel have? Essie seemed to remember King Weylind was married. Did he have children? What about other siblings? She had heard there were elven princesses, but she wasn’t sure how many or if they had more brothers. Between the elves’ tendency to keep to themselves and the tensions breaking down diplomacy, there hadn’t been a lot of information about the elven royal family making its way to Escarland.
When was the elven wedding going to take place? Tomorrow? The day after? After the rush of her first wedding to Farrendel, Essie didn’t know if the elves planned to also rush the second wedding or if their customs dictated they needed more time. Where would she stay before the wedding?
Where would she stay after the wedding? Was Farrendel expecting for them to be husband and wife and all that came with it right away? Or would he marry her and shove her off into a corner of the elven palace and ignore her as if she wasn’t his wife?
What did living as husband and wife even look like for an elf couple under normal circumstances?
Unless she found someone willing to answer her questions, she would just have to bumble along and hope Farrendel found her missteps endearing rather than annoying.
Would it even matter if he found her annoying? The whole point of this marriage was peace between their kingdoms. That was it. Not romance. Not love. Not even kindness was truly required. In the end, it didn’t matter if Farrendel liked her or ignored her or whatever as long as peace was achieved.
Essie would make the best of it. With or without her new husband’s love or kindness or even consideration. Even if he never said a word to her at all.
Which, was entirely possible. He’d said a total of seven maybe eight words to her so far. Quite the eloquent elf she’d married, that’s for sure.
An elf that was standing by the doorway to the train car, staring at her.
How long had she kept him waiting? Had she awkwardly been staring off into space?
She hopped to her feet. “You’re lucky I only say a fraction of the questions I have in my head.”
That got a tilt of his head in reaction. Great. He was probably already regretting being stuck with her, and they hadn’t even gone through with the second wedding yet.
He held out his arm, and she tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow as she’d done before. This time, however, he took her wrist with his free hand and adjusted her grip so that her hand rested lightly on his forearm.
“So that’s why you gave me that look.” It was gratifying to know what she’d done wrong back in Escarland. Apparently, elves did the whole escort-on-the arm-thing like this. Essie glanced up to find Farrendel looking down at her with some stormy look in his silver-blue eyes. “Yes, that look. I still haven’t figured out if it means you’re angry with me, annoyed, bored, disgusted you’re stuck married to a human, or just plain confused. Or maybe you’re inwardly laughing at me. I really can’t tell.”
Essie forced herself to bite off her words before she kept talking. All this silence was driving her to talk far more than she normally would at home. Back home, there were so many people to listen to that she didn’t need to fill the silence with chatter.
That could be the thing she missed most from home. Conversations. Interaction. If all elves were as silent as Farrendel and his brother, then living with the elves would be lonely.
Farrendel was still looking down at her. Studying her, maybe.
She couldn’t keep the words in any longer. “Are all elves as silent as you? Or maybe you can’t speak a lot of Escarlish and this whole time most of what I’ve been saying has been gibberish to you and that’s why you keep looking at me in confusion.” She waved toward the platform. “In that case, we’d better get going. Looks like everyone else is waiting for us.”
Essie took a step in that direction, bu
t Farrendel still didn’t move.
He swung his gaze away from her. “I am not angry.”
With that succinct pronouncement, he set off from the train and onto the platform with ground-eating strides. Essie trotted to keep pace at his side. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about exercising to keep in shape with all the fast walking and trotting she had to do to match Farrendel’s longer stride.
They joined King Weylind, and the four bodyguard elves who had been waiting on the platform closed around them.
As they strolled along what served as a broad, probably main street in Estyra, elves stepped from the shops and nodded to their king. A few waved and smiled. It felt oddly relaxed. No one was bowing or completely halting what they were doing as the king walked by, like they did in Escarland when Averett traveled into town.
The smiles faltered, though, when the elves’ gaze focused on her. With her hair mussed from sleep and wearing Farrendel’s clothes, she probably looked like some human waif he’d taken in out of the goodness of his heart.
Ahead, the tallest and broadest tree she’d seen yet loomed over them. Lights twinkled among the leaves and branches, playing off touches of gold that seemed to be a part of the living tree.
“Ellonahshinel.” Farrendel spoke in a low tone, not looking at her as he said it. “In your language, it means Heart of the Forest.”
If she’d been less in awe of the tree before her, she may have taken more time to celebrate the fact that he’d just spoken a whole sentence to her.
But this tree Ellonahshinel was like nothing she’d ever seen before. Leaves as broad as she was tall shaded the forest far overhead. Many of the branches were as broad as a road, and elves were walking back and forth on them as easily as if they were on the ground instead of hundreds of feet in the air.
Built in the center where all the branches met to form the massive trunk was a palace of wood and gold and green. Living branches formed walls and spiraling towers. Windows glittered in the light of what sunlight managed to penetrate the foliage overhead.
It had to be the elven palace. A place few humans had ever been allowed to see from the outside, yet she was going to see the inside. Perhaps even live there, depending on if Farrendel had a room there or lived somewhere else. She wasn’t sure what sort of accommodations the elven king had for his siblings.
A set of broad stairs appeared to be grown into one of the massive tree’s roots. Essie couldn’t stop herself from gaping as they ascended the stairs up the root and circling the trunk until they entered through a curving archway of branches into what had to be the entry hall for the elven palace.
There, a whole group of elves waited for them. Three tall, dark-haired women waited with two younger elves, a male and a female. Their postures were relaxed, the hints of smiles gracing their faces, until their gazes swiveled in Essie’s direction. Then eyes hardened. Smiles disappeared.
Essie kept her own, serene smile in place. No need to get offended just yet. This was, after all, just as sudden to all of them as it had been to her family.
An elf woman with brown hair stepped forward, the younger two elves behind her. A crown matching King Weylind’s rested against her hair. With the warmest smile Essie had yet seen among the elves, the elf woman gripped King Weylind’s upper arms and said something in elvish.
King Weylind held her upper arms in return, his own warm smile in place.
Was this King Weylind’s wife? What was the elf queen’s name? Essie tried to remember. Surely, she’d heard it once or twice over the years.
King Weylind moved to grip the shoulders first of the younger male elf, then the teenage female elf. Both of them looked not that much younger than Farrendel. That had to be strange, for elf families. With how long they lived and the decades or even centuries that could occur between siblings, the generations had to get rather muddled.
Essie glanced up at Farrendel. Was he going to introduce his family to her?
Had she introduced her family to him back in Escarland? With the whirlwind of planning the wedding, then the wedding itself, she couldn’t remember.
The two other elf women in the room also greeted King Weylind. The first had long, flowing back hair while the other’s hair verged more on brown than black.
Were these sisters? Cousins? Was this all the family, or were some attending to duties as Essie’s family had been and unable to come?
The whole pack of them turned to stare at Farrendel and Essie. Well, mostly Essie. She tried not to shift under their scrutiny. Compared to them, she must look a frightful sight. Flaming red hair frizzing around her head. Farrendel’s much too large clothes sagging from her. While all of the elves were stunningly beautiful with their long, straight hair and flawless pale skin. Even the male teenage elf was a beautiful kind of handsome.
She studied them, seeing some resemblance in the shape of their eyes and the line of their mouths to King Weylind and Farrendel.
But...she flicked a glance at Farrendel’s silver-blond hair and back to their dark hair. Why did all of Farrendel’s relatives have such dark hair while his was blond?
It was a question she didn’t dare ask. Not yet, anyway. She’d ponder it for a while first. Maybe she could find a book on elven genealogies in this palace’s library. Surely, it had a library. Elves had invented books way back when humans were still using scrolls.
King Weylind said something and gestured toward Farrendel and Essie. Essie drew herself as tall as she could and smiled what she hoped was a friendly-looking smile to elves.
No one smiled back. Instead, the elf woman with the black hair, one Essie guessed was a sister, turned to King Weylind and said something in a sharp tone.
Angry. Essie gritted her teeth and forced her smile to remain in place. It had been too much to hope for that she would be greeted as a sister, but why would they be angry already? It wasn’t like Essie had even had a chance to do anything to offend them besides simply exist.
King Weylind replied, but whatever he said didn’t calm the black-haired sister down. She snapped something back, pointing at Farrendel, then Essie, and back to King Weylind.
Farrendel took a half step forward, putting his shoulder in front of Essie as if to shield her. His tone was nearly as sharp as the sister’s had been, but firm somehow. Essie couldn’t pick out a word of what he was saying, but it did seem like he went on for several paragraphs.
Good to know he could string together several sentences when he wished. Just not when he was talking to her.
The black-haired sister crossed her arms and glared. The brown-haired sister’s shoulders sank a fraction. She nodded and said something in elvish to Farrendel.
Whatever she said made the other sister huff. The elf queen said something in a smooth, diplomatic tone that relaxed some of the tension Essie sensed in the room.
Farrendel turned back to Essie, stepping to one side so he could face her and his family. He gestured to the elf queen and the two younger elves. “Queen Rheva and my niece and nephew Brina and Ryfon.”
All three of the elves made a hand motion, touching their fingertips first to their mouth, then to their foreheads. It must be some greeting gesture. At least, it didn’t seem to be an insult.
Essie bobbed as much of a curtsy as she could while wearing Farrendel’s tunic and trousers. “It is nice to meet you.”
Farrendel waved first to the sister with the black hair, then to the one with the dark brown hair. “These are my sisters Melantha and Jalissa.”
Melantha made a sniffing sound, but Jalissa’s mouth twitched in what could have been a tentative smile. Essie smiled in return.
Farrendel then gestured to Essie and said something in elvish. Essie managed to catch her own name Elspeth and the word amirah, meaning princess.
She widened her smile. “But you can call me Essie.”
A slight wrinkle formed on Melantha’s nose. She looked like she wanted to say something sharp once again, but Farrendel held up a hand and said something to her
in elvish, his tone almost pleading.
All at once, her stance softened. She spoke in a low, earnest tone, whirled, and strode from the room with her long, silken dress flowing in dark green waves behind her.
First chance she got, Essie was going to learn to speak elvish and hone her ability to read it. Not being able to understand what was going on was terrible. At least Farrendel seemed to understand her language and appeared to be fluent, when he did speak. It would’ve been so much worse if they couldn’t understand each other in any language.
King Weylind also said something to Farrendel before he and his family exited the room in the direction Melantha had gone, leaving just Essie, Farrendel, and Jalissa in the entry hall.
Farrendel turned to Essie. “The wedding will be tonight.”
Essie barely tamped down her start of surprise. Tonight? So soon?
“Rheva and Melantha have agreed to arrange it while Jalissa will help you prepare.” Farrendel gave Essie’s back a gentle nudge, as if he thought she needed prodding to go with Jalissa.
Maybe she did. She didn’t know Farrendel at all, but he was at least more familiar than this place or Jalissa or anything around her.
Essie drew in a deep breath. She’d agreed to this. It was a little late to start panicking or have second thoughts.
Farrendel started for the door, but he paused next to Jalissa. “Look after her.”
He’d spoken in Escarlish. So that she’d know he was looking out for her?
“I will, shashon.” Jalissa patted his arm, then turned to Essie. “Come. We will talk. Do you know anything about our wedding ceremonies?”
Essie shook her head. “No. They aren’t something my people are invited to often.”
The small twitch of a smile was back on Jalissa’s face. “No. Not in many years. I see I have much to teach you before tonight.” She glanced at Farrendel’s retreating back. “But, for my brother, I will.”