The clerk put it to her forehead and said “Sheriff” three times, which elicited a small buzzing from the stone. After four such buzzes, a voice, scratchy and staticky, came from the stone, it was the sheriff.
“Yes Lila? What’s the emergency?”
“We just got notified about a lost child in town sir.” She put a hand over the stone like people did their cell phones back on earth and spoke to us. “What was the child's name?” Tol’geth told her, and she relayed the information. “What does he look like? The Sheriff needs to know for the search to start properly.” She explained. When Tol’geth floundered as he had with me, I stepped in again.
“Uh, ma’am, my friend here is looking for a lost elvish child, named Tim, which is short for Tim’el’ek. He is elvish, he will look just as old as a young human adult, but he is not fully mature mentally.” The next part I was guessing at but I thought was a safe bet. I looked at Tol’geth as I said it though, so he could stop me if I got anything wrong.
“I believe he would probably speak with a different accent from the elves around here, as he’s a child from an ambassadors retinue currently at the elvish settlement across the river. Is that right Tol’geth?” I asked as the man just stood there. He nodded when asked, but other then that his face was stone sober, as Lila relaid the information to the Sheriff. While she did that I mouthed the words “pointy ears” and touched mine as a reminder. She nodded and turned her chair away as she listened intently for a response.
We heard a loud crash from the hallway and I poked my head out to find the two elves, and Ailsa trying to play a game of tag. They had knocked over a small wooden framed picture that had been hanging there, and Ailsa was attempting to fix the shattered frame with magic. Our eyes met and I put a finger to my lips. Ailsa nodded, and I ducked back inside.
Lila was putting the stone back into the box when I got back. “Well, he says he thinks he knows where the boy is.”
“Great! Where is he? We’ll go get him no need for the Sheriff to bother with it.” I said excitedly smiling at Tol’geth who had a more skeptical look on his face.
“See” Lila said “That's the problem. He’s in our jail for stealing fruit.” That stunned me a little.
“Okay, how long is the punishment?” I asked cutting Tol’geth off before he could get furius and go full Hulk.
“Three days, he’s already served it. The issue is, it gets extended for every day he doesn’t apologize which is part of the punishment under town charter. Steal food, three days in jail, a verbal apology in front of the entire town just before the markets open, a quarter of your earnings until the thing is paid off if its expensive, which isn’t going to be a problem in this case of course, it was just a bushel of apples. He’s already paid that with the small amount of cleaning labor we have inmates do around the office.
“The charter is very clear on the apology part though, and both the Sheriff and the apple cart owner wants it. Well, actually the cart owner wants a written apology he can post at her stall for all to see, which is not covered in the charter, and the shariff already said he won’t force the boy to do that.”
“The problem is the boy is refusing to give one, so I'm afraid we’re at a bit of an impasse.” she said sadly. “Until he is willing to apologize he’s not leaving that cell.” Lila pointed towards one of the two doors that lead from her room to adjacent ones.
“I will retrieve him and we will leave.” Tol’geth declared and started walking towards the door Lila had pointed at. Before he could really move I put a gentle hand on his chest to stop him. The man looked down, and then at me with wide, slightly inquisitive eyes.
I spoke softly, barely a whisper. And though I knew that Lila could more than likely hear every word, I wanted it to be as private as counsel could be. “There’s a right, and a wrong way to deal with this Tol’geth. You don’t want to cause trouble for your patrons across the river do you? From what I understand the tension is already high between the two groups. Am I wrong?” Tol’geth thought about it before nodding his head in agreement.
“Good, give me a minute then. Let's talk to the sheriff directly when he gets in. Maybe see if we can talk the boy into issuing the apology, and if not then we can always appeal to the sheriff and the mayor directly, call it a, diplomatic incident or something. Yeah?” Again my friend thought about it, before nodding in agreement.
I sighed in relief and turned back to Lila. I caught her quickly putting away what I thought was a large crossbow that had been pointing at Tol’geths back. My eyes went wide, as they met hers and she just smiled at me as if nothing had happened. Tol’geth didn’t see it of course, as it took him a few seconds to turn around in the tight squat confines of the office. She is not everything she seems this one.
“Um, alright then. So. Do you think that we might be able to talk with the boy? Get him to apologize ourselves?” Lila thought about it for a moment, before nodding.
“I think that should be alright. Though, not the big guy. Sorry shoulders, you’re going to have to stay out here. That rooms too small, you might get stuck.” Tol’geth laughed at her quib and the air of tension was thinned.
“I often have such troubles,” he said as he took a seat on a large low bench opposite Lila’s desk, against the wall with the door we entered through. Even sitting down the man was a good head taller than the woman.
Shaking my head and smiling at the juxtaposition of the two, I nodded to Lila, as I opened the door to the jailer room.
----
If ever I had a murdering bone in my body that I had to restrain, it was with Tim the “high elf prince.” I learned later, as I had suspected, that every male high elf born above the level of commoner, from craftsmen up, was called a prince or princess. But the way this boy went on about it, I could have sworn he thought he actually was one! That is, when I finally got him to talk.
After introducing myself, that I was here at the behest of Tol’geth a Varidian man of Barisel, and there to help him navigate through the local law system, all I got was silence. For the first five minutes he refused to even look at me through the bars, just sitting on the cot provided him in his cell, sulking. Okay, maybe he’s just got a bad attitude because he misses his mom or is really embarrassed. Maybe he’s scared or something.
When I insinuated as much, after about five minutes of talking to myself and the walls by saying “You know, when I was a kid I would have been very scared in your situation.” The boy glared hot daggers at me as If I had insulted every member of his bloodline down to the adam and eve of the elves with the most gravest of insults.
I forced myself to stay calm, which was helped by the fact that this elvish child was visibly youthful. He looked like he might have been eighteen or nineteen at the latest. Not much younger than the other two, but young enough to earn him subconscious sympathy and patience from my brain.
When he started talking by saying “All of you are beneath my notice, and I am only a child. My sire’s would never have sent a lowly mortal like you to fetch me. Your claims of a Varidian ally from Barisel are dubious at best, the mongrels would never stoop to working with lesser beings like you, and they live in mud and pig shit.” He said this in high elvish, but thankfully I knew highelvish because of the books I had read. So I surprised him when I responded in his tongue.
“You are an arrogant child. The Varidians of Barisel are honor bound protectors and guides” or so Tol’geth had told me over the fire last night, before my rendition of Star Wars. “They swear themselves an oath of honesty and loyalty to any from your fair green land, which includes you young one.”
He scoffed at that “Young?! I am nearly twice your age human. What are you? Thirty? I am nearly seventy years of age. I have lived longer then your entire existence.” He wasn’t wrong, but I also knew he was still only a child.
“Your sires will be quiet upset with you when they learned that you were not only captured by mere humans, but that you were so foolish that you didn’t know how to a
void an incident like this in a simplistic, rustic even by human standards, city like Cutters Hollow.” That got his attention and for the next ten or so minutes I had to endure a litany of abuses and rants about his lines purity and prestige and power. About thirty seconds into it I sat back, cleaned my nails, and let the boy rant.
Once there was a pause in his angry tirade all I said was “And that entitles you to an apple you didn’t pay for, how?” Tim went quiet then, and sat back down on his cot. His eyes filled with tears, and he began to silently cry. A human child would have wept, cried, gone angry or resentful, but this quiet suffering from fear, humiliation, and no doubt at least a little guilt, was somehow more disturbing.
“Hey, Tim.” I said, as I moved closer to him, sitting on the floor directly in front of his cell. “Why don’t you tell me what happened? No guilt tripping from me anymore, I promise.” After a few seconds he looked over at me on the floor, laid down flat on his cot, wiped the tears away and began to talk.
He had just wanted to hang out with the older, cooler elf children. He didn’t even know their names, but he was told by his father who had brought him to this “sun forsaken backwater” to learn how they dealt with their inferior cousins the “wood elves”, not to play or hang around with them. Seeing as the Lo’sarian elves called themselves Green, or Greatwood elves, wood elf was probably a bit of a pejorative, or at least careless shorthand. A bit like calling an American a Yankee overseas.
The boy had followed the two older elf children when he had overheard them talking about going to play pranks on the humans across the river. They crossed the water at night, using logs to swim over the slower moving but deep water, and he had followed. They had snuck through the city at night, and Tim, the ever enterprising tag along, had done so as well. Until that is, he found a very interesting store filled with books in the window. Books written by hands that were not high elvish, or even elves in general. He had stopped and read the titles, in the market daydreaming about what they were about, until the market started opening up and the merchants started bustling around.
The two young green elves he had followed were nowhere to be found, and it was breakfast time. He searched through the stalls, thinking that the market was the communal breakfast that he had heard about in some human villages, and took a few apples from the basket of an old hag, who upon realizing he didn’t have coin to pay for the now half eaten fruits, had called for the law-man who had arrested him. He had been here for about five days now, he was scared, lonely, indigent, and worried that his father would leave him to rot in this wet, cold, forrest. Something that, at least according to Tim, his father had threatened on more than one occasion during this visit already.
For my part I listened carefully, I even took notes on a small piece of scratch parchment using a pencil I had stepped out and asked Lila for while Tim had been yelling. The boy hadn’t noticed I was gone by the time I returned.
When he was finished with his story, I let the silence sit there for a little bit before speaking. “That is a sad tale indeed” I said with as much gravitas as I could muster for what amounted to a ten year old wondering off after the cool kids in the neighborhood and getting lost in the woods. The entire thing I laid at the feet of an arrogant, mean spirited, absent minded, and if I understood things correctly slightly bigoted father. I would like to lock him in that cell with Tol’geth for an hour, I thought spitefuly.
“But” I said slowly drawing out the word and infusing it with a bit of tantalizing hope. “I think that we can get you out of this mess, at least on the Human side of things.” Tim sat up a little, his eyes, and surprisingly enough his ears, still slightly red from the crying.
“How?” Tim asked. “The law-man of this village hates me, he won’t even listen to what I have to say!” He complained.
“Perhaps he would be more inclined to listen, if you didn’t insult him and his race first?” I asked as gently as I could. Seeing as I was a member of that race.
Tim scoffed “I don’t think that would work.”
“You would be surprised how genuinely honest most law-men are in human lands. Not all of course, some are corrupt, but most are decent folk who could make more money, and earn more prestige by doing other work, but who do their jobs as a form of service to others. I have met this law-man, and take a wizards advice…” I said as I leaned in and touched my nose with one finger, I have always wanted to do that. “... he is a good one, if a bit of stiff.” About as stiff as having a seven foot bean pole shoved up his…
“You, you really think so?” I nodded.
“I think that events spiraled out of control here due to two things.” I said trying to be diplomatic about it. “First, the fact that the Goodman Sheriff has other duties he is attending too as of late, primarily the Militia captainship he sees too. With the goblin clans getting antsy about the last few boat shipments into the twins this time of year, the poor man has little time to attend other issues such as hearing the pleas of a noble elf who was new to human customs and culture in the area, and made a criminal mistake, no matter how minor.” I was pulling some of this stuff out of my butt, true, so sue me. I was trying to get the kid out of here so I could get to more important things. Besides it was more like educated guess work then outright lies.
“And what's the second reason” Tim asked as he fully sat up on his bed and paid attention.
“Well I already somewhat mentioned it, but your ill familiarity with the region, customs, and culture of the wood cutters here, which lead to your slight, if technically” I stressed the last word. “Illegal, actions.” The boy was nodding along more and more with every word I said.
“So, I have made an arrangement with the Shariff for you to resolve this issue by tomorrow morning.” I said as if I was wise and had worked out something special for the boy.
“And what is that?” He asked perking up a bit.
“The old woman who you ‘technically’ stole the fruit from, wants nothing from you but a simple apology.” The boy’s face fell slightly.
“I can’t do that, the woman in the other room already explained that It would have to be public. I could now allow my family to lose face in such a way, particularly not when bowing to a lesser civilizations demands.” I nodded as if I didn’t find the issue he raised offensive, demeaning, and bigoted in perhaps the same fashion as his already problematic father. A father I would be having words with as soon as possible.
“Ah, I understand. And so I will negotiate to have it happen in such a way as to satisfy all involved. Trust me, I believe you have been through too much already to put you through even more humiliation.” That statement was true, I thought he had been through far too much for one so young and immature. From my estimation he was maybe ten or eleven years old in his mental development. He was far more intelligent than any ten or eleven-year-old human would ever be, but he was just as immature.
He nodded, agreed as long as I could accommodate his requirement, and I left. A half sleeping and board Tol’geth trailing after me.
---
We met up with the rest of our party about an hour or so later, and I explained everything. Tol’geth only nodded and explained some of the politics between the High Elves, and the Green Elves from places like Lo’sar. It was a simple story of colonies like Lo’sar being seen as more rustic, backwater, and more prone to, egalitarian, mindsets. Later I confirmed with Ailsa about my suspicions.
“So basically the Green Elves are the hippies of the elven world, why the High Elves are the highly conservative and slightly prejudice British Empire?” I asked her once we had found a hotel near to where Riggil lived. The man had taken us there and then paid for two rooms and food, one for me and Ailsa, and another for the two children and Tol’geth. It was the least he could do after not giving us a fair cut. Now that I had a bit of space from my overreaction to it, I still thought it was a dick move, even if it was technically legal since I was under quest-contract with him.
“Essentially ye
ah, but High Elves aren't even really the originator group. There’s another place far away that is the original colony of the elves on Ethria named E’tarra, E’tarria, something like that. It's an island chain in the middle of the ocean.
“Those guys are reeeeeeeeeally snobbish. They make High Elves seem like mud farming socialists by comparison.” She was surfing the old-style internet as she talked. Apparently, cat videos were her new favorite thing. She kept the volume down, and watched everything at nearly 2.5x speed, so it was hard to catch everything that was being said and done from my vantage point.
After a few minutes passing in comfortable silence, realized there was something that I had to get off my mind. “Hey, Ailsa?”
“Yeah, meathead?”
“When do you stop being my guide, and what happens then?”
“Oh, that again.” She minimized the screen in front of her, and flew over, landing next to me on the bed I had chosen as mine. “Well, usually what happens is after about two weeks, a guide is summoned back to their pocket dimension. I’m still technically a “dangerous Faie” after all.” She sounded bitter about that, and who could blame her? Her people were the least of the Fae, the most like the mortal races, and yet they had been punished just as harshly as the other court Fae had been.
“Oh, I see.”
“Yeah. But there are some options for extensions and stuff that the gods might be able to use, so we’ll have to see what happens. Right now don’t worry about it, okay? No reason too, we still have more than a week left.”
“Right,” I said with as much confidence as I could. “So, I have another question.” My fairy friend let out an exasperated sigh and minimized the screen she had just pulled up again.
“What is it this time?” She asked, and annoyed expression clear on her face.
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