Nevernever

by Will Shetterly

  I shook my head to say she wasn’t, though I didn’t know if she could see that in the dark. I settled her on some grass and tucked the blanket around her, then blew on the ashes of our fire and found that a few red embers remained. A couple of dry leaves began to burn when I placed them on the coal, so I added twigs and slowly rebuilt the fire. I threw dirt over the place where she’d vomited. Then I tried to go back to sleep. Her sickness hit her again about fifteen minutes later.

  Her fever grew worse. So did the diarrhea and vomiting. I gave her cold bannock for breakfast the next morning, but her body rejected that right after she ate. I made a tea with bark stripped from a willow I’d noticed when fetching water for dinner. The tea seemed to help her pain. Averting my eyes, I took her coveralls and dressed her in my extra shirt and jeans. I washed the coveralls in a shallow stream, rinsing and wringing and beating them on a rock until I was exhausted, then hung them on a limb to dry. They were silver-gray.

  That afternoon, she laughed and said, “I didn’t think I’d miss the peca quite so much. Wouldn’t’ve come with you if I’d known. Ought to start a new gang. Magical Addicts. A gang for gutless Dead Warlocks. Whattaya think?”

  Later that night, shortly before she became delirious, she said, “I don’t know why you stay with me,” and she patted my hand.

  Even later, she begged me to take her back to Bordertown, to do something, anything, to get her some peca, or she would die. Had I thought she could survive the trip, I might’ve taken her. I could have postponed revenge. How could she suffer if I let her die?

  Finally she cursed me as an evil dog bastard and called me elven names that I didn’t recognize. Her strength came and went. Once she flailed at my chest and face with her fists until she collapsed, and I carried her back to her bed.

  Her lucid moments became increasingly rare. During one, she whispered, “Wolfboy?”

  I said, “Err?”

  “If I don’t make it, the bike’s yours.”

  “Rro.”

  “To activate its spellbox, say, ‘Hiyosilver.’ ‘WhoaIsaywhoa’ shuts it down.”

  “Rrff.”

  “One thing I’d appreciate. Run up the Tooth to Thirty-seven Avalon. Knock on the door and tell ‘em the foundling’s dead. If a balding elf in a suit answers, you can spit on him before you go.” She coughed, then added, “Or rip his lungs out, Jim.” She’d been quiet long enough that I thought she was asleep when she whispered, “Wolfie? Forget that last bit, okay? Tell Dad he did the best he could.”

  I didn’t sleep during those three days, or if I did, it was never for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time. I hunted for herbs that might help her, but I didn’t dare go far from the camp. I gave her water and tea. I baked some plain bannock and crumbled some into the willow-bark tea. Maybe it helped her. Mostly I sat beside her and held her hand.

  Her fever broke on the fourth morning. That’s when the wild elves came.

  Chapter 15—Wild Times with the Wild Elves

  I woke near noon. Since I’d slept for three or four hours without interruption, I touched Leda’s forehead to see if she’d been quiet because she was getting better or getting worse. Her temperature felt almost normal. She was still very pale, bringing her elven pallor too close to corpse white, but her features were peaceful, her breathing easy. She opened her eyes, smiled at me, and went back to sleep immediately. I realized I’d smiled, too. I hoped she’d seen that as a vicious grin.

  Carrying the frying pan and water jug to the stream, I asked myself over and over again why I hadn’t abandoned her already. The answer was more important than the world around me, or maybe I simply hadn’t had enough sleep.

  Whatever the reason, I almost bumped into the wild elf as I came through a clump of bushes. He stood in the middle of the narrow trail, waiting downwind of me, his body striped in camouflage by the shadows of the forest. I froze, more surprised than frightened.

  He was obviously descended from the True Blood. He had the height, the pale skin, the pointed ears, the silver eyes, the star white hair. He wore a commando knife hung from a thong over one shoulder, a string of plastic trinkets tied around his forehead, and nothing else. His hair was waist length, loose around his slender body. An eagle had been daubed in red on his hairless chest, and a spider in yellow on his smooth cheek.

  We stared at each other. I couldn’t think of a sound that might seem soothing, and I couldn’t make myself purr, wag my butt, and bash into his knees with my forehead.

  He lifted one hand to tap his chest. “Weyaka’an.”

  I lifted the water bottle toward my chest and imitated him. Maybe this was a gesture of greeting. When he remained still, I set down the water bottle and frying pan to scrawl WOLFBOY in the dirt. The wild elf stared at it, then frowned. “Your name? Or your species?”

  NAME, I wrote. SPECIES, TOO, MAYBE. YOU FROM BORDERTOWN?

  “Bordertown?” He squinted, then grinned. “Ah, the humans’ city! No.” He came closer, stopping about a foot from me, too intimately near for my comfort. He frowned, then moved his hands in the air like a mime tracing a shell around my body. I didn’t know what he intended. I growled a warning while remaining perfectly still.

  “There’s a spell on you.”

  I nodded.

  “This isn’t your true form.”

  I shook my head.

  “Come. We will help.”

  I wondered why he should want to help me, but I only pointed toward my camp.

  “The young woman?”

  I nodded, then was suddenly suspicious. If he knew of her, he’d spied on us. Had he seen smoke from our fire? I’d been less cautious than usual. How long had he watched us? Had he waited to approach us until she’d begun to recover? Why had he waited for me on the trail, rather than approaching us both in—

  I turned, abandoning the water bottle and frying pan, and raced away. Behind me, Weyaka’an called, “Wait, Wolfboy!” I heard him follow, as quickly and as quietly as me.

  Except for our fire, the camp was deserted. “Wolf—” Weyaka’an began. I whirled and leaped for his throat. He ducked aside. “Wait! Others are taking her to Aula’ai. We shall help her. Be comforted.”

  My fur tingled, and I growled another warning.

  “She is important to you. We know. The city poisons have gone from her. We can make her what she was. You, too. Trust us.”

  He spoke the last words almost as a command. Perhaps they were one, because I did trust him. I let my arms fall to my side.

  Someone behind me said in Elvish, “He is docile?” It was a woman’s voice, young, husky, imperious. She spoke with what Strider calls a True Blood’s snot-nosed accent.

  Weyaka’an nodded. “At last.”

  “Good.” I heard the woman approaching, but I felt no need to turn to look at her. When she stepped in front of me, I saw she was of the same type as Weyaka’an, perhaps of the same family. She wasn’t beautiful by Bordertown standards, being too thin and too tall, with her neck and her nose too long, yet I could’ve watched her for hours. Her hair was held in a silver ring on the crown of her head. Its ends fell to her buttocks. She wore sandals of woven hemp, and nothing else. Her only decoration was a black bird, perhaps a raven, painted across her right cheekbone.

  She walked around me, squinting at me as Weyaka’an had when we met. Her eyes were the moon hue of her hair. “A curse.”

  “Yes, Lady.”

  “Laid by whom?”

  He shrugged. “An elf.”

  “An elf.” The woman nodded. “Thank you. If I ask whence he came, will you say, ‘From the lands of short-lived Man?’ If I ask what we might do next, will you—”

  “I cannot tell,” he said softly.

  “You told him we could restore him? That should make him wag when we are near.”

  “Human gratitude is a fragile thing.”

  The woman cocked an eyebrow at him. “The sky is blue, the grass green, your subservience insincere, and my love—for you and all my husbands�
�true.”

  He smiled with something I thought shy embarrassment, and spread his hands before him. “Shall we change him now?”

  She nodded. Her next words were in another elven tongue, similar in sound to what they’d spoken earlier, but nothing like the Elvish I’d learned from Strider and Tick-Tick. She barked several words, then he did, then she, then he. I couldn’t tell if he was repeating her sentiment and rephrasing it, or completing her thoughts, or adding something else to the ritual. It happened too quickly to follow. I paid no attention to what they did because I began to hurt worse than I had when I was first Changed.

  I screamed and fell to the ground. The wild elves smiled as I passed out.

  •

  I woke on soft grass in the shade of a sequoia and knew I was no longer near the ruins. I must’ve been brought into the oldest part of the woods of the Borderlands. The knowledge didn’t alarm me. It didn’t even interest me. The elven woman was at my side, stroking my brow with a cool, damp cloth. She smiled and touched her sternum. “Eilva’ar. Eilva’ar.”

  “Wolfboy,” I said. Then I realized what I’d done. Eilva’ar stared at my expression, covered her mouth, and giggled.

  I was wearing the same clothes I’d worn earlier, but they were looser on me. I felt the air on my bare face and neck and hands and ankles. I wanted to laugh. I stood, then turned around and around, looking at myself and grinning.

  Eilva’ar and I were at the edge of a glade surrounded by sequoias. Small groups of naked elves sat or lay about under each tree. They looked over at me with expressions of fond concern, like Eilva’ar had when I woke. That made me laugh more and more. I felt much as I had when the Doctor smeared peca paste into my open wrist.

  “I’m not Wolfboy. I’m—” I remembered Ronald Reagan Vasquez, who I’d been when I ran away, and Just Ron and Gone, who I’d been when I was human in Bordertown. None of them were the person I’d become.

  “Fool,” Eilva’ar said in Elvish, with the same innocent smile. She tapped my chest. “Fool.”

  She thought I didn’t understand Elvish, but I wasn’t insulted. “Fool,” I agreed. The name seemed affectionate, like Sai’s “Bowser-brains” when she wanted to sound annoyed with me and wasn’t.

  Several trees away, a group of young elves began to sing. Their voices were perfect, their range greater than any human’s. The bass was a tall female who could mimic thunder. The soprano was a boy who sang as high as hummingbirds or bumblebees.

  Near us, men and women were weaving tapestries rich with stylized deer and eagles. Farther away, older elves sat conversing, occasionally puffing from a shared pipe or sipping from tiny wooden cups. The smell of bread made me notice another group tending a clay brick oven. In the glade, children and adults played a game with a leather ball that involved four waist-high wooden goalposts. There seemed to be two or three teams, yet everyone laughed when anyone scored. Beyond the ballplayers, at the far side of the glade, a tall male addressed a group of skinny children with shaggy hair and high, batlike ears.

  As I studied the elves, I realized I was looking for someone. In English, I said, “Eilva’ar? Where’s Leda? Ah, Scent of Heather?”

  “Scent of heather?” She gestured and whispered something; the air was suddenly sweet with the smell of mown heather.

  “No.” I laughed, delighted by the magic. “The elf who was with me.”

  “Ah. I don’t know. Weyaka’an is over there, Fool.” She pointed at the lecturer, then glanced at me and smiled. “Perhaps he can help you.” I returned her smile and circled the ballplayers to interrupt Weyaka’an.

  He sat cross-legged before his class with his back to the largest sequoia. The children scrambled up and ran away giggling as I approached. I stared after one, a girl with tangled white hair who was no taller than my waist, and wondered why I was looking.

  Weyaka’an bowed slightly to me. “Didn’t I say we could help?”

  “Yeah. I mean, yes. Thanks.” He studied me as if something might be wrong, which I didn’t understand. I said, “Where’s Scent of Heather? The elf I was with?”

  “With healers. She’s still very weak.”

  I felt a cool tingle on the fur on my back, or rather, where my fur would’ve been. “We’ll, ah, have to go soon, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh? We are sorry to learn this, friend.”

  I shrugged and smiled my sadness.

  “There is something you should know. Your curse...”

  “Yes?”

  “We can lift it while you remain among us, but if you leave, it will return. Perhaps so strongly that no one will be able to lift it again, not even for a brief while. I am sorry.” Weyaka’an sighed. “You are welcome to stay here until you decide what you will do. We have had humans among us before. We enjoy your presence.”

  I blinked, then thought, Why not stay? You’re not a monster anymore. They like you. They’ll care for you. Live here forever among the wise savages. Don’t worry. Be happy.

  “Are you, perhaps, a musician?” Weyaka’an asked.

  “No.”

  A flicker of disappointment crossed his face. I wondered if he’d ask if I was a clown, then knew he didn’t need to.

  “A poet?”

  Before I could speak, I heard a commotion of elven voices. Several naked women fluttered around an elf in a high-collared red dress who stalked through the ballplayers’ game as though it were not there. The central woman’s hair, as long and as white as any of the others’, had been bound in strands of rubies and diamonds.

  Her mouth moved fiercely, with more animation than seemed appropriate for anyone wearing those clothes. I heard Leda yell, “Wolfboy! Yo! Wolf-face! Get your shaggy butt out here!” It took a moment to connect the elf in red with Leda’s voice.

  “Leda?” I said numbly, then corrected myself. “Scent of Heather?”

  “Ah.” Weyaka’an squinted across the glade. “She is feeling, um, better, I see.”

  Leda broke free of the crowd, ran toward me, then stopped abruptly. “Wolfboy?”

  “Yes.” I grinned. “They fixed me.”

  “Yeah.” She didn’t seem impressed, which saddened me. “Let’s shake this scene, okay, Gene?”

  Her attendants hovered uncertainly some twenty feet away. The ballplayers had stopped their game to watch. Eilva’ar strode toward us from the tree where she’d tended me. An old male elf hurried to keep up with her. His hair was as sparse and as fine as spiderwebs.

  At my side, Weyaka’an stroked his jaw and studied me. I told Leda, “What’s the hurry? It’s nice here. They’ve helped us.”

  “Helped?” She spit, and the wild elves looked shocked.

  “Besides, if I return, I’ll turn back into Wolfboy.”

  She tucked her chin and glared at me. “Say what?”

  “I’ll turn back into Wolfboy.”

  “You’ll...?” She spun to face Eilva’ar. “What’ve you done? What the hell have you done!”

  “You are not pleased?” Eilva’ar asked in Elvish.

  “I didn’t ask any favors,” Leda said, still in English.

  “Had you, we might not have granted them.” Eilva’ar kept to Elvish. “You each have what you desire. He is human and happy. You have your magic back.”

  “In truth?” Leda asked in Elvish, her accent that of Dragon’s Tooth Hill. She gestured upward. A rainbow sprang into existence between her hands. “Or is this more of your—” The rainbow faded into multicolored lights that fell onto the grass like mist.

  “No!” The old elf spoke for the first time. “We are of the Blood! We would not use our own for entertainment! Not without consent!”

  Weyaka’an said, “Father, she’s of the city. She cannot know us.”

  Eilva’ar put her hand on the old elf’s shoulder. “Rest, Aula’ai. All is well.”

  The old man frowned, then hobbled away. “The Game was better when I was young,” he muttered, loud enough that we all could hear.

  Eilva’ar laughed. “He does not rea
lize that the world has changed.”

  Leda said, “So? Do you?”

  Weyaka’an nodded. “Of course. That is why we keep ourselves from it.”

  “Except to take the occasional human for a pet,” Leda said in Elvish. She put her hands on her hips and switched to English. “Well, this one you can’t keep, Bo Peep. C’mon, Art, time to depart.”

  I shook my head, giving up on understanding what all of this meant. “I’ll lose everything again.”

  “You don’t have a thing to lose! Can’t you tell what they’re doing?”

  I gnawed my lip, and finally said, “Yes. Aren’t you grateful?”

  “Course I am, dickbrain. To you, not them!”

  “Then let me stay.”

  She whirled to face the elf woman. “Release him!”

  Eilva’ar smiled. “He is the price for the return of your magic.”

  “Great. Take it away again.”

  “Oh?” Eilva’ar leaned her head to one side. “It is not so easy.”

  “Your damn game?”

  “The Game,” Eilva’ar said. The watching elves nodded, pleased.

  “We didn’t agree to your game.”

  “You came to our lands,” Weyaka’an said. “You have received our gifts.”

  Eilva’ar said, “Are you strong enough?”

  Leda said, “Could you delay this, at least?”

  “Ask, would we?”

  “I’m strong enough.” Leda looked at them all, then said slowly, deliberately, “The old one is right. You don’t know how to play anymore. Your game is a sham.”

  “Ah.” Eilva’ar smiled. “The challenge.” The others nodded in unison. “And now, the terms.”

  “You have no right...” Leda began, then said, “Forget it. What terms?”