by Raven Bouray
Chapter 23
Three days. It had been three days of nothing but sleeping, eating, and keeping the fire burning. Oh, and staring at the grey and brown rockface, which was now peppered with archaic drawings that were mostly nonsensical, some ciphering but mostly just crude art drawn with a small white rock. Her captor had left her alone for nearly half of the time each day doing Muliera knows what and even when he returned, he was nothing but a stone wall of cloak and silence despite her poor attempts at small talk. What did elves even really small talk about? Like her chatter before when they were at least somewhere green, it was as if she was talking to herself and such things did not bode well for her sanity.
She also had plenty of time to think again, and it was both a good and bad thing. Mostly she thought about home, her nice warm bed, and delicious food, which was not unusual for her. Her parents, who must be worried out of their minds searching for her, perhaps assumed she had died and stopped. That particular caravan of thoughts led her to a place where she felt cold and alone. It had taken some digging to bring her mind up from that particular pit of despair.
But after a while, she just kept replaying the same songs and tunes over and over again. Emmaline was unaccustomed to having any sort of time where she had to amuse herself. Her days were filled with lessons and meals and more lessons. A bored mind was a troublesome one, her mother and father would tell her often.
Perhaps her father at this point had actually asked for her grandfather's help. Her grandfather had probably begrudgingly helped as she was just an expendable daughter instead of a priceless son.
But the waiting had left her in the end merely irritated. This delay only put her plans for this adventure to end on a brief hold. The capital would be the end and the faster they got there, the faster she would be back in her own bed again. It was the only thing that still kept her going, and she thought of it often. Though she did not wish for her abductor to face any terrible charges as he had actually been somewhat kind to her, protective but oblivious to any personal needs. Before they came for him, she would tell him to run. Again something deep inside her told her that it was the right thing to do.
Emmaline picked up her chalky rock and started on a section of wall that was untouched. As she wrote with long strokes of her wrist, she was aware of a set of eyes on her back. From memory and long hours of practiced muscle memory, she wrote down ciphers, adding and subtracting problems, her dwarvish alphabet, then her common alphabet. By the time she had finished all her exercises, her wrist ached and her hand was peppered with white dust.
A squeak of alarm emerged from her throat when she turned around and found her captor barely a pace away, staring over her shoulder at her near perfect work. “Can I help you?”
“Pack up. We are leavin’.” His tone was impassive, and he barely looked in her direction before turning away.
Emmaline glared at his back while he retreated. She dropped the rock, and it cracked against the stone before rolling away. With an audible huff in his direction, she walked to Arya and loaded up her knapsack before jumping onto the mare’s bare back once more.
Arya obediently plodded up to him with Emmaline in a gentle sway on her back, and she continued to glare at him as they headed into the fog.
Their path was definitely more rocky this time and had far more blocked offshoots than she had seen before. That quake had not felt large enough to cause this kind of displacement but the evidence of the fresh rock was irrefutable. This place was really dangerous after all. “Is it always like this, elf man?” Emmaline asked but did not really expect an answer.
To her surprise though, he did. “Yes. For the mos’ part.”
“How does this place even really exist without everything collapsing down into the earth? If such a small thing can cause all this rock to break off and fall?”
“Magic. It be both fearin’ and wonderin’.” The answer was simple and oddly insightful, at least to Emmaline.
“It just seems rather terrifying now.” Her wry response elicited a cough from her captor, which could have been mistaken for a chuckle.
They didn’t stop to eat but just kept walking along, carefully picking their way around so that Arya could stay on her hooves. They did, however, change direction several times. It felt as if they were going backwards at times rather than forward, but with the sun absent in the sky, her sense of direction was skewed. They only slowed down and found a place to stop when it grew too dark to see the ground well. He ordered no fire to be built tonight, but the glowing moss provided enough light to see by.
She sat down across from him in the close space and bit into her meager dinner yet again. Her captor had pulled out a knife to cut away the stalk and root of his dinner before he put it away again and bit into it with an audible crunch. “So how long will this take, sir?” She called him different things during their time together while she made small talk. Elf, elf man, elf boy, and even calling him ‘you.’
He didn’t speak for a long while, eating his food methodically, and when he finished, she heard him clear his throat. “I do ‘ave a name.”
“Really? I’m shocked. I just thought I would call you whatever came to mind instead. And before when I asked about it, you decided to avoid answering so you can’t complain of it now.”
Her sarcastic reply earned her a huff of disapproval.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like that. I would like to hear your name so I can finally stop calling you ‘elf’.” There. That was far more diplomatic.
“Kelithor Thallenon.”
“That’s a mouthful of a name, but I suppose I have no room to complain.” She wiped her hand off on her shirt and offered it to him. “Emmaline D’Terin, pleased to finally make your proper acquaintance, Kelithor Thalle--non,” she articulated slowly. “It only has been a couple of weeks after all. Later is better than never.”
Kelithor… Yes Kelithor, more person, less mystery now that she had a name to put to his hood... just stared forward at her hand, not moving, but she felt the air around him change curiously. Just as she was about to drop her hand, he reached out his glove and grasped her palm firmly.
His palm, even through the glove, was warm and it made her fingers tingle oddly, but she resisted the urge to retract her hand from the sensation. “And ye as well.” He rumbled.
With the formalities over, they released each other simultaneously, and Emmaline dropped her hand to grab at her flask to take a long drink of cool water. When she had finished, she looked at him again. “Kelithor is an interesting name but a bit of a mouthful, and for some reason, I don’t think it really fits you. Would you mind if I called you Kel instead? That seems better somehow.”
Her companion, Kelithor now, stiffened as if he had been struck, and she backpedaled, “Kelithor it is, sorry. Didn’t mean to offend you.” That hood of his had lifted and the darkness beneath persisted, but she could swear that he was staring directly into her eyes. Gooseflesh erupted along her arms and back and she shivered.
She turned from him but still felt his stare even as she laid out her blankets on the ground to go to sleep. Everything about him was just so strange. Emmaline closed her eyes, and sleep found her rather quickly.
Chapter 24
Girl and elf had been in the Wilds a solid and full week. A week filled with rock, fog, and yet more rock. They continued to move through, but it seemed as if they were standing still. Each time they approached a cave, Kelithor took special attention to avoid it, even though she knew that if they went deeper, they could bypass many of the rock paths they had to traverse. Not that she blamed him. Her episode in the last cave had not been the most dignified or the best experience for either of them.
As they moved through with each passing day, she waited for another tremor to bring down the whole place around them but none ever came.
The only good thing about the last few days, aside from knowing his name, was that when she spoke, sometimes he actually answered. If she asked about certain plant
s or small creatures that were unfamiliar to her, he would give her the answers as best he understood them. Kelithor also seemed to switch disposition seemingly without much warning, going from kindness to irritation from one breath to another.
When she thought she had found the trigger to his mood, he would change once more, and finally after he snapped at her, she gave up trying to tiptoe around his mental state and decided to keep talking. Whatever his issues were, they seemed to be inside him rather than with her.
Her running, soft spoken commentary on the plants, rocks, and small animals filled the air between them, and each time she spotted something, she pointed it out much like a small child would. Some of the creatures here in this dismal and dead feeling place were oddly beautiful. Lizards were brightly splashed with reds, blues, purples, greens and yellows in patterns that seemed painted on. Small rodents even shimmered and glowed, and some flowers hung on with all their strength to the inhospitable landscape that smelled more vibrant than they looked. Even the moss which glowed at night was miraculous.
She spotted another furred creature called a mole burrowing into the ground near where they walked and gave a happy cheer. Kelithor snorted, and she huffed in reply. Of course, aside from that little tidbit of his name, he was still ever the mystery.
So when they stopped again, her curiosity got the better of her. “So Kel, what--” He glanced in her direction. “Sorry, Kelithor. So Kelithor, are you going to tell me why you picked me of all people to drag through the countryside and into this godsforsaken hole? Do I have a price on my head in the elven lands? Is this an elaborate joke by one of my suitors? Because I keep thinking about it since that seems like all I can really do here, and even though I have asked you a few times, you have stayed stoically silent and keep preventing me from leaving, even going so far as to haul me back physically. So aside from the cryptic answer of ‘duty’ you gave to me, I want to know why and I want to know now or I can make things even more annoying for you.”
His posture changed, stiffening, then hunching over as if in thought. “I do no’ know. I was no’ sure if ye were even the righ’ one. I though’ I would know, but I did no’. And--.”
His reply only confused her more. “Hold. You weren’t even sure if I was the one you were supposed to retrieve? Did you not have a painting or drawing of me to make sure you were even going after the right person? I could have been home in bed now instead of here? Are you--.” Rage suffused her tone and she was about to unload more onto him when he made a silencing motion with his hand. She gaped at him.
“Ye mus’ stop speakin’. Ye are makin’ my head ache.”
Emmaline let out a soft snarl but stopped her tirade. Headache. She would make other things ache if he silenced her like that again.
“No’ a thin’ was as it should ‘ave been. But some thin’ were the same. Your eyes fer one. No’ many ‘ave tha’ purple as yours are. Ye look proper age. Your hair was no’ the same. An’ ye were like any other girl, nothin’ set ye parting.”
“If you are going to speak in riddles--.”
“Ye should know me.” His response stopped her short, and she stared at him with a bewildered expression.
“How would I know an elf? I’ve never met one before you.”
“But ye ‘ave!” He nearly shouted, frustrated at her or himself, she didn’t know. He stood up and paced the ground. “Ye know my face. Or ye used to. It is no’ the same as it were. All thin’ is no’ the same.”
“More riddles? Fine. If you don’t want to tell me, then I’m just going to go to sleep. Wake me if you want to start speaking sense.”
“Ye would no’ believe if I told ye truth tha’ I know.”
“Fine. Tell me the truth you know. But the notion that there is more than one version of the truth would make Sapenta furious, I think.”
“I was at your birth.” These words were softer, spoken with something that she might have mistaken for affection.
And if that were the case, he must be older than she thought he was. “How did an elf manage to find himself on Erudin Isle? My mother has never mention a crazy elf in all of her story of my birth.” Now she knew that he must be mad or at least very mistaken. But if she were the wrong person, would he just leave her here or at least get her out of this pit and onto land again so she could make her way back to her family? He must have the wrong person.
“Erudin Isle?” He stopped pacing and turned to face her fully. The timbre of his voice had changed now to one of curiosity rather than agitation.
“Yes. Erudin Isle, and if you had really been at my birth, you would already know that. I lived there for close to five years before my parents crossed the Beryl Sea and took me back home. Of course I couldn’t tell you what it looked like or where we stayed, even though it was the place of my birth and early childhood. I only have my parents’ memories and stories about the clear water and beautiful buildings that spanned the island.”
“Why do ye no’ know?”
She wasn’t sure why she kept talking because her past was really none of his business. “On our way back, I was reckless and climbed a tree that was too high for me. I fell and injured myself. Hit my head and got a rather nasty cut that festered. I was fevered for almost two weeks and when it broke, I couldn’t remember anything. Not even my own name. The healers said I could get my memories back with time, but the longer they stayed away, the less likely it would be, but I never really minded.”
“Ah.”
“Ah? That’s all you have to say after that uproar from before?”
“Yes. Sleep. Ye should sleep. Thin’ no more of this.” The quality of his speech had altered. He sounded...almost relieved. Or happy? That was a good sign at least.
With her mind racing with more questions than answers, she unrolled her sleeping blanket and nestled into it before shutting her eyes. The next time she opened them, her world had shifted once more.
Wind roared and whipped around her body as she tore through the air. Dewy moisture peppered her as she soared into white, fluffy clouds. Beneath her, the sea glittered in a ripple of blue, white and green and shimmered with the scaly bodies of fish and other creatures under the waves.
Twirling up above the clouds, she looked to her left and long golden feathers met her gaze rather than skin but she couldn’t seem to care. Her breast pulled and relaxed while her wings beat soundlessly, and she let out a laugh while simultaneously diving downward toward the water. Wings tucked close to her body, she became a dart of gold with the wind screaming past her ears until the very last second when she snapped her wings and banked just above the crystalline water. Never had she felt so alive and free. Not when she and Arya raced through open fields or when she raced on foot through the small forest of her home. This was true freedom.
After several rounds of this game, she turned toward the land and flew fast to the rather large forest with a tree bigger than any she had ever seen. There was no possible way that a tree such as that could exist. None.
It was probably half the width of her entire castle home. A tree castle. Flying closer, she noticed windows, balconies, flowers of every shade and size, and lights. It was someone’s home. Flapping and working her wings, she climbed away from the forest again and into the cloud cover. Slowing her ascent just as she broke the clouds again, she hovered in place and a sound prickled at her ears. Her face, or beak, or whatever she had on to look with swiveled in the direction of the sound and she pushed down through the clouds to look and within a breath, the scene of her flight had changed from clear blue sky to darkened sky. Storm clouds, black and grey with heavy intent. Lightning flashed from nearby clouds, and she flew downward away from the danger of harsh rain and being struck by a wayward bolt. Thunder rolled and vibrated across the air with a savage promise of doom to any who were near.
The rain began when the last tremors of thunder had left the air.
Water seeped quickly under her sun warmed feathers and cooled her body. She searched for a safe place t
o land and flew closer to the ground. Men appeared in dark clothing, seemingly conjured from thin air by some malevolent force, and she tried to veer away. The cold made her slow and too late did she turn. The whirl and clack of a machine firing warned her mere moments before a hard stone struck at her body and rope caught one of her wings in a tight hold.
She hit the ground with a cry of pain and thrashed around in a desperate attempt to free herself. Her feathers slid uselessly against slick grass and her claws tore mud with no traction. A man approached, older and with skin looking of stone or slate, darker than any she was used to seeing. The man had a cruel tilt to his angular face, and his eyes burned white as if he were blind, but he stared right at her with a smile that chilled her to the bone. He carried a black bladed knife in one hand and gripped it tightly. His merrily sinister smile never faltered as he raised the knife and brought it down with both hands.