by B. J. Smash
As I tossed the dirt over her, she hummed a tune. The more dirt that landed on her face, the more mumbled it became, until…nothing. I patted the dirt down a bit with the shovel and turned to Drumm.
“Let us go now,” he said.
“Gladly,” I agreed.
The whole run back, I was skittish. I had jumped when a rabbit ran across the path, I jumped when an owl hooted from a tree that we passed, and almost tripped when I saw a deer. And so it was, when Drumm grabbed my arm, warding me away from a skunk…I jumped. We would have been fine had I not yelled out. Too bad for us when the skunk turned and sprayed. It had to be the most putrid smell I'd ever experienced.
“Good going, Ivy. We shall have to bathe in the river, but first we must deliver the yellow ribbon to Izadora.” His face scrunched up like a prune, and all the while he couldn't help but smile.
“I have a headache,” I stated firmly. The smell was so potent, it was a wonder I could see straight.
“I do as well, but things are as they are.” He took off running, and I followed closely behind him.
***
“So, how was Mother?” Izadora answered the door as the beautiful young maiden, clenching her nose. Her red-brown hair was glossy and vibrant, bouncing around her shoulders. “I see you had a run-in with a skunk.”
“Aggie is fine. She told me to find Montague.” I rubbed my temples.
“Montague? No one has seen him for ages.”
“She told me to head to the sea and write a message in the sand. I have to do it today.”
“A message to summon him? I suppose it will work. Did you get the ribbon?”
I pulled the ribbon out of my pocket. In the light I could see some sort of black letters along the length of the ribbon.
“Ah, I see you have her broach. I've always wanted that broach. Good piece, it is,” Izadora said.
“She told me to wear it to ward off Izaill.”
She glanced at the broach again. “It might help.”
Drumm set the shovel beside the fireplace. “I'll be outside waiting. This smell is making me ill.”
“And by the way, you missed one important piece of information when you sent me to dig up your mother's grave. You could have informed me that she was alive! And she wasn't even in a coffin!” I exclaimed.
“What would she need a coffin for?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder, “Besides, you wouldn't have dug her up had you known she was alive. Now let's get to work.”
Izadora wrapped the yellow ribbon around the rolling pin. When it was perfectly aligned, the letters formed into words.
“Aha! First I must take seven hairs from a real maiden's head—one with a pure soul. That would be you. Come closer.”
Stupefied, I said, “Me? Are you sure?”
“Of course I am sure. It says so on the ribbon. Why do you think Izaill buried the ribbon with Mother? He knew I couldn't get to it. Then he placed the rolling pin in Magella's boat. He knew I couldn't go there to get it myself. You are the one who fetched these things for me, and you are the maiden the yellow ribbon speaks of.” She took me by the arm and drew me closer. “Bend your head down.”
I thought it best to obey her command, and so I slowly bent my head down so that she could pull out the seven hairs. With each hair that she pulled out, a pain shot through my skull, and it stung.
“Ouch!”
“Only one more to go.” She pulled the last hair out, to my relief. My head smarted, and I reached up and rubbed the sore spot.
“Now I need”—she read the yellow ribbon under her breath—“one fingernail clipping from a male elf.”
I stood there staring at the yellow ribbon. “Did you say a male elf?”
“Of course I did. Where is the boy? Where is Drumm?”
“He's outside with the dogs. How would he know where to find a male elf?” I asked, thinking that she was becoming more and more senile every day.
“Fetch him for me.”
Leaving the house, I jogged along the bridges until I saw the top of Drumm's head. He stood among some purple flowers, throwing sticks for the dogs.
I called for him. He ran up the stairs, and when he reached me, he said in his weird accent, “What would you like?”
“I think Izadora has lost her mind.”
“Ha-ha! That's nothing new. What does she want?”
“Izadora just said, or at least I think she said, she needed a fingernail clipping from a male elf. And then she told me to get you.”
“Oh did she, now? Well, let's get in there then.” He looked at me with his shining turquoise eyes. “My nails are getting kind of long.”
“What are you saying? You…you…you—”
“Are an elf. A light elf. You haven't figured that one out for yourself yet?”
He knew that I didn't know. “How could I possibly know?” I said.
“The pointed ears…the speeds that I can run—that didn't clue you in? The arrows I carry on my back? The silver bow? None of that made you wonder?”
“I thought…I just thought you were weird. That's all.” I nervously twirled my hair with my fingers. “You mean to say elves are…real?”
“Of course. And what do you mean ‘weird’? You are one to speak.” He laughed. “Just take a look at your own ears. What did they do to them?”
Both of my hands reached up to grab the tops of my ears. The scarring was rough to the touch. “I fell from a tree. They were scuffed.”
“Hmm. Scuffed, you say?”
Before I could reply, Izadora yelled out, “What is the holdup? Get in here.”
He turned and walked away, his muscular back disappearing from sight. After a few moments, I followed. How could elves possibly be real? And what did my ears have to do with anything? They had always been this way, from the time I was a child. I don't remember them being any different.
I walked in to see Izadora cutting the tip of Drumm's pointer fingernail with a gold knife. “Hold still, so that I don't cut you.”
He glanced at me. He surely was an exotic fellow, with those eyes and the full lips. I always assumed he was just different, but I didn't know just how different he was.
“Ivy here doesn't know about her ears,” he informed Izadora.
She had finished slicing a nail off and threw it into a wooden bowl, along with my seven hairs.
“I know she doesn't. We shall fix them when I am done here,” Izadora said.
“Fix them?” I grabbed my ears again, and held on. It never really made sense that I had fallen and scraped the tops of my ears off. I knew that. All of my life I had just assumed that when I was born, my father had plastic surgery done to correct some sort of deformity of my ears. I had accepted that I had deformed ears. So what? But what did that have to do with Drumm and elves and bows and arrows? And, oh my God, he was an elf? A real elf?
They both had their eyes on me for a moment, and then Izadora poured flour from a canister into a wooden bowl. Then she poured in yeast, salt, and a red liquid from a vial. She walked into the living room, took three things from three different bottles, and returned to the kitchen, dropping them in the bowl.
“You must know the truth. Do you not?” Izadora began to stir the contents of the bowl. “You must know what you are. You have no clue?”
My gut sank. I wasn't stupid but more in denial of what they were trying to tell me. “You are trying to tell me…” I looked Izadora in the eyes, and then I turned to look Drumm in the eyes. “You're telling me that I am an…”
I couldn't finish my sentence, and so Drumm and Izadora did it simultaneously. “An elf.”
I laughed then; I laughed quite hard. When would I wake up from this dream? I began speaking my thoughts aloud. “I had come up to Maine to visit my grandmother, just wanting a pleasant visit while my father went on a hunting trip. He ends up lost or stolen, which is so unrealistic to begin with. I then meet Ian, who sends me out to meet Izadora, who sends me on a mission to steal a rolling pin from her crazy sister
, who then threatens my very life. Then I am told that I must dig up the grave of Izadora's mother to retrieve a yellow ribbon. The old woman, Aggie, who is buried alive then tells me to find Montague to finish undoing the spell that she is under.” I found myself pacing the floor, but I continued to babble my thoughts aloud. “My sister is under some sort of obligation to Magella, and I don't even know if she can be helped. There is an even crazier old man on the loose who is called Izaill, brother to the other crazies.” I paused to scratch my head. “To top everything off, I get sprayed by a skunk tonight, and I find out that I'm an elf.”
Both Izadora and Drumm decide to laugh at this point of the conversation that I was having with myself, snapping me back to reality.
And then I realized, that I just had to accept it all.
I thought that I was so far displaced from reality, when what was real was right in front of me. I couldn't choose what was real and what wasn't. I just had to accept it. “What's so funny?”
“You are beside yourself with this news, I see.” Izadora cackled.
“Well, I am going to need some proof. Some real proof that I am an elf.” I stopped pacing and stood with my arms folded over my chest. I tapped my foot and waited impatiently. “It is easy for me to accept that you are some sort of magical person or witch, whichever you are, but it is not so easy to accept that I am what you call an elf.”
Izadora stopped stirring the mixture, handing Drumm the wooden spoon. “Stir this.” She disappeared into the next room, returning with a jar of which the contents I couldn't tell. Taking the cover off, she dipped two fingers into the jar, pulling out a white salve. “Stand still.” She placed the salve on either side of my head, rubbing the contents into my ears. “Once you were whole. When they took your ears, they took a part of you. I now return to you what was taken, making you once again whole. By the name of the earth, the air, the water, and fire.”
I felt my ears start to burn and itch so much so that I thought I'd go mad. I tried to reach up and rub them, but Izadora held my arms down; and she was strong for an old woman. Moments later, as the room began to spin, I felt something pop out of the tops of my ears. The burning sensation stopped, and I sank to the floor, trying to gain my bearings.
After I had caught my breath and the room stopped spinning, I reached up with shaking hands to touch the tops of my ears. They felt different. The tops were pointed. I looked to Drumm, then at his ears. They were regular ears, tapering off to a point. I hated to admit it, but I liked his ears. It was a good thing, to like his ears, because I knew that mine were now the same.
***
“You two have to bathe, you're killing me. Go downstream, quickly, and come right back. We'll have a good talk about things. Now, hurry.” Izadora handed Drumm soap and tomato juice. “This lilac soap, I personally made myself. It will work, trust me.”
We walked along the brook next to Izadora's tree house, about a quarter of a mile downstream. We found a stone bridge and, on the opposite side where the water ran through, was a pool of water to bathe in. The dogs came along, wanting to play “chase the stick.”
“Here, take the tomato juice and soap. You bathe first. I'll wait up here. And don't worry, I won't look,” Drumm said, throwing a stick for the dogs, who barked loudly and ran off tackling one another.
I knew that if Drumm said he wouldn't look, then he wouldn't look. He wasn't like anyone I'd ever met, and I deemed him trustworthy. I stripped down to my bra and underwear, splashed into the water, and washed my hair with the tomato juice; according to Izadora, it would take the smell out. Then I used the lilac soap she had made, and by the time I was done, I couldn't smell the skunk spray at all.
“I left clothes by the rocks,” he yelled over his shoulder.
I rinsed my clothes and laid them over a branch. Dripping, I got out to put on the clothes he'd left me. They were some of his clothes, and I had to doubt they'd fit me, but my other clothes were soaking wet. I picked up a pair of green-gray colored shorts and put them on. Sure enough, they fit for the reason that they conformed right to my body. I put the brown tank top on, with the same result.
“How do they fit so good?” I asked. This was amazing!
“You can turn around,” I said.
He turned and grinned. “They are eleven hunting clothing. Whoever puts them on, they will shrink or expand to fit.”
“I thought you wore robes and stuff.”
“Ha! Only sometimes,” he said.
“We really are elves?”
“We really are.”
“I have so many questions then.”
“Just get back to the house, and we'll talk about it then,” he said.
I unpinned the silver rose broach and stuck it in my pocket. My life seemed so different now. I didn't really know how to except all of this; in fact, I believed that I was still in some sort of shock.
“Go ahead and go back. I'll only be a minute.”
I grabbed my wet clothing from the tree branches, but dropped my shorts on the ground. Both of us bent down to pick them up, and we bumped heads. “Ouch,” we both said.
I had never seen him this up-close before. His skin was smooth and beautiful; his big broad smile was so perfect; his eyes were so otherworldly. I swallowed hard, hoping that he didn't notice.
He stood first. “I'll only be a minute.” He took off his shirt, showing his sinewy back muscles, and walked into the water.
I booked it back to Izadora's, with one of the dogs in tow. I couldn't stand around there acting like a fool. I hoped that he hadn't noticed my reaction.
Surprisingly, I felt like I could run faster now—faster than any human ever should be able to. It was like I could feel my leg muscles better…like I could dig deeper and utilize them more. I arrived at the steps and noticed that my breathing was also steady and not even labored in the least.
And yet as I sat on the steps waiting for Drumm, I knew that I wasn't only human, now, was I?
Chapter Eighteen
We sat at the outdoor table for tea and scones. “You said that when they took my ears, they took a part of me. Who were you referring to?” I asked Izadora.
“Your grandmother. Your father. They didn't want you to know. They had them cut. But when you cut an elf’s ears, they never heal on their own. They will scar, but they will not heal. You were not but a young child when they did this. They wanted it done before you went to school. You won't remember the surgery. They even gave you a tea to help you forget.”
“What tea did they give me?”
“A special tea. With special herbs and ah…things to help you forget,” Izadora said.
“How do you know all of this?”
“It was I…that made that tea for them.”
My mouth dropped. “You?”
“They came to me for help. I didn't agree with their choice to shelter you, but they convinced me that it was for the best. I knew you'd be back. And here you are. I've fixed you.”
I scrunched my face up in disapproval.
“Don't look at me that way. I've undone what I helped do.”
“Do you have a mirror?”
Drumm left the table, went inside, and returned with a silver hand-held mirror. Handing it to me, he said, “Your eyes may appear different as well.”
He wasn't kidding. When I held up the mirror to look at my ears, my eyes popped out at me. They were a more vibrant green and almost unnatural, but clearly to me, they were natural. Also, it was almost as if I could see better, clearer. I was beautiful.
“Who would have thought having one’s ears repaired would entail other changes to the body?” I asked them.
“Indeed. You may run faster too,” Izadora said.
“I already know,” I said, remembering the run back from the bath.
“We'll see who can run the fastest now. I have been holding back—way back.” Drumm smiled and shook his head.
I didn’t doubt him in the least.
I stood up and walked over to the
railing and gazed out at the forest. The wind had picked up, and a nice cool breeze ruffled my hair. The smell of lilacs and mint wafted in the air, and for the time being, I felt content. For as far as I could see, there were other trees with more bridges. I had no idea where they all led to. Leaning on the railing, I said, “Is that why my legs feel so much energy if I don't run every evening?”
“Yes,” they both said at once. They remained seated at the table.
“The need to run is an elven trait. We run. We run with the wild horses…Well, we ride them too, but we have a need to run. Our history is filled with battles we have won for our speed,” Drumm said.
“Battles?” I asked.
“Another time. I will explain that another time. Right now, I think you may have a more pressing question,” Drumm said.
It was true. The question I needed to ask was about to change my life forever. I didn't understand though, as I looked so much like my father. “My parents aren't my real parents, are they? Can you tell me who they are?” I turned to look at their expressions, and I read nothing in their faces. Izadora spoke first.
“Your father is your real father, dear. It's your mother. You and Zinnia have different mothers.”
I turned away from them so they couldn't see my reaction.
After all I had heard today, this piece of news came as a real shock. I contemplated Izadora's words for a few minutes. I had never known my mother; I was told that she died shortly after I was born, and Zinnia told me that she hardly remembered anything about her. I had seen pictures, but I would be the first to admit that I'd never felt any connection to her. I'd held my parents’ wedding photo countless times, staring into the eyes of the woman that I thought was my mother. She had been beautiful with her dark hair and blue eyes, small, perfect nose, and high cheekbones. I always knew that Zinnia had resembled her more than I did. I had wondered why my hair could be so blonde and my jaw square, so unlike Zinnia…and my eyes were bigger. But it had to be the blonde hair that threw me off. My father's hair is the same color brown as Zinnia's, and the only other person in my entire family with blonde hair was Aunt Clover—and that came from a bottle. Feelings of being different had haunted me.