Cold Front

by Nikolai Joslin

  I cast a look over to where Regan sat. She was two seats forward and across the aisle. Her head was pressed against the glass, and her chest rose and fell slowly. Fast asleep. “She’s the one. She’s the girl I’m going to marry. I can’t imagine losing her to something like this.”

  “Then I’m sure everything will be fine. You’ll work it out.” He chewed his lip and lowered his voice. “Speaking of Jaysun, have you seen him since your last dream?”

  “No.” Lying seemed to be a new part of my daily routine.

  “Good. See? We told you it was nothing to worry about.” He seemed relieved. It appeared at least Ston had been worried it was more than just a dream. Unfortunately, I knew it wasn’t.

  “Yeah.” I looked out the window, eager to get away from the conversation. “When do we get there?”

  “Maybe another two hours,” he answered.

  We didn’t talk anymore after that. We just sat in silence and watched dark shapes pass by the window and listened to Cinder make low barking noises in his sleep.

  THE TRAIN was beginning to slow to a stop when Ston got out of the seat and started tapping everyone on the shoulder to wake them. I saw Cam’s arms stretch high above her head, and she tilted her head to the side, short platinum blonde hair falling across her face. I ignored the jump in my chest and spoke to Cinder instead.

  More elves. What do you think they’ll be like?

  Probably the same. Overly formal for the most part and distrustful of anything that isn’t elvish, he replied gruffly.

  You’re probably right. But they could have some differences. After all, they don’t seem to deal with each other very much. Liam talks about them like they’re a completely different society. I’m sure something has to be different.

  Yeah, different enough to get them banished in the mountains to be forgotten until they’re needed again.

  Cinder, are you okay?

  Why did the elves cast them aside? He won’t tell us. He’s ashamed of it. And perhaps he should be. Maybe it’s no better than what the humans did to the underfae. The unspoken words “and the cinderwolves” hung between us. Though they had been slightly different circumstances, I could see why Cinder would feel that way. Even I did and I wasn’t a cinderwolf.

  I’ve thought about it some. The elves have always been the least accepting, especially in the past, coming pretty close to humans. There’s definitely going to be something different about these elves, something Liam’s great-great-grandfather saw as a blemish on the face of the elves.

  Guess we’re going to find out what it is.

  “You’ll like the next few hours, Casey. It’s walking,” Liam said as we got off the train, a light smile touching his lips.

  “You’ll never let it go, will you?” I groaned.

  “I’m just saying, you walked everywhere. And from what I hear, you were walking before I showed up.” He shouldered his bag and pulled out his phone to look at the GPS.

  “It’s a lot less noticeable,” I mumbled under my breath.

  “Dirty smelly elves, dark elves, humans, and a giant wolf are less noticeable than taking a car?”

  “Cinder would never fit in a car. And nobody was watching us. We stayed in the woods a lot.” I pulled myself onto Cinder’s back and rubbed between his ears. Riding Cinder was second nature now. Being close to him like this was comforting. I felt much safer on him than farther away.

  “Fine, fine, I’ll drop your walking obsession. It’s about an hour and a half that way.” Liam pointed into the pitch-black trees. We had been dropped off in the middle of a mountain range where a small town lay. It was mostly dead. There was a rundown train station that received goods the town needed.

  “You want to go into a strange forest in the middle of the night?” I had assumed we would sleep here and leave in the morning. Apparently I was very wrong.

  “Oh come on, it’ll be like last year all over again!” Cam said and shook my leg playfully as she walked past.

  “This is a normal thing for you guys?” Wulf asked skeptically.

  “It used to be. We hunted down a necromancer last year, walked all over the place,” Regan answered. “Casey grew up in the same building as every single person she knew. She wasn’t allowed to have a phone, not that she needed one, and had only been in a car a handful of times, not to mention this necromancer was supposed to be a secret, so we stuck to the forest and some pretty shady hotels. Looks like we’ll be doing it again. At least this time we have a map of the place. None of us had phones back then. Cam was too poor, Ston had just come up to the surface, Casey and I lived in the Temple almost all our lives, and Liam was a prince who lived in a pretty small city.”

  “I lived in the middle of the ocean and had a phone. I was a goddamn slave and still had a phone. You all are insane,” Wulf scoffed but followed Liam as he led us into the forest.

  “None of us had a second to spare on games or the Internet,” I said with a shrug and held my hand up to release a ball of bluish white light.

  THE WALK was strangely quiet, to a point that made me uneasy.

  “Where are the animals? Or the insects? Or something, anything at this point?” I quietly asked Liam. “Not everything can be asleep right now.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been here. I didn’t even know it existed. My parents only told me about it when they were dying, knowing I would have to handle it,” Liam answered, his voice softening when he spoke of his parents. “They said I needed to find a way to fix it, that they were afraid to but that they knew it was time. They said it was you who showed them that.”

  “They were good people. It is usually up to the younger generation to fix the last generation’s problems. At least they knew what was wrong and wanted to change it.”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything else, leaving me to wonder about the strange silence that engulfed us and what would be at the elvish city.

  After about an hour, there was a crack to our left. Liam and Regan turned, guns in hand and pointing at the dark figure in the trees while Ston, Cam, and I readied our Life Forces. Wulf looked back and forth between all of us before slowly putting his fists up in front of him and whispering to Cam, “I didn’t get the memo about weapons and all that.”

  “Show yourself!” Liam shouted. “Step into the light!”

  A man who looked about twenty stepped forward, and everyone around me went still, my own jaw going slack.

  The elf who stood before us was black, not black in the way Ston was, where his skin was such a dark shade of purple that he blended into the shadows, but black in the way humans were. His skin was dark, even more so than the thick trees that surrounded us, and I could barely see the difference between his pupil and iris. His ears were longer than Liam’s or Ston’s and he held his chin high as he looked at us. A black elf. I had never heard of such a thing. We had always been taught that elves were fair of skin and most had golden eyes, and yet here stood one with skin darker than many humans.

  “What are you doing here? These woods are dangerous for people like you. They say there are dragons in the mountains.” His lips tilted upward in a smirk as he looked between us.

  I shook myself from my daze and straightened up slightly. “We came to ask for your help.”

  “The humans need the help of the elves? Of elves like me?” His eyes flicked over to Liam. “I’m surprised we are even remembered by our brothers, let alone humans.”

  Liam’s cheeks flushed red and he lowered his gaze. “I was hoping what happened could be resolved. I only learned about this city’s existence a week ago. Most of the other elves are unaware. I think what my great-great-grandfather did was wrong, and while I can’t take back what happened or fix what is wrong with the elves in my home, I want to help start. I do not know where to begin. I was hoping I could talk to whoever is in charge of this city to learn about what needs to change as I am ignorant of many of your problems,” he admitted quietly.

  The elf narrowed his eyes slightly. “Who
are you? What makes you think you can fix this?”

  “I am King Liam, son of Maarius.” I heard him hesitate on the word king, like he wasn’t ready to say it.

  “Well, shit,” the elf said before looking to the ground and dropping to a knee. “Is this what I’m supposed to do? Man, we haven’t seen royalty here since before I was alive. I have no idea how to do this.” It was strange hearing an elf speak so casually who wasn’t Liam, and even Liam wasn’t exactly casual.

  “You don’t need to do that, really. I haven’t done anything to deserve it. Just… just stand and take me to your city. We can talk more there.”

  He stood up, but kept his head down. “Sure, sure, I’ll take you there. It’s about ten minutes this way.” He jerked his head to the right where he had come from and started showing us the way with Liam at his side. After a few minutes, I heard him ask Liam, “Did you mean it? Wanting to help us?”

  “I do. Last year we worked with mages to save the humans from an evil. I….” I saw him look over his shoulder to Ston who was talking to Wulf about something, not even paying the slightest amount of attention. “I fell in love with a dark elf. And now we’re working with creatures I didn’t even know about to help save the humans again. I can’t help all of these people and not give a second thought to my own. My great-great-grandfather should never have done this; it’s wrong. He did exactly what the humans did, only at least the humans realized it was wrong and tried to reverse it. They still have many problems and prejudices, and I’m sure that we will as well, but we need to see progress. Perhaps it is a good thing that most of the elves don’t know about your existence. They may have less racism ingrained into them if they’re unaware. Or perhaps there will be more. I’m not really sure. I expect a lot of pushback, but I think we’ll have plenty of support too.”

  “We didn’t think this would happen, honestly. Our leaders always talk about the possibility, about how they talked to the king and queen again, about how the future has a lot to hold, but none of us believe it. I doubt even they do.”

  “Your leaders?” Liam questioned.

  The man nodded. “We vote on two women and two men to help guide us. They dealt with your parents last. We had heard of their death, and we knew about you, but had never seen you. There were rumors that you were afraid of us. Now I know it’s that you didn’t know about us. We were celebrating their life tomorrow actually. You came at a good time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A celebration of life.” The elf watched Liam curiously, as if he were some strange animal. “You know, a festival to celebrate someone who has died and what they accomplished with their lives.”

  “We don’t do that. We mourn their passing, not celebrate.”

  “We don’t do this because they died, but because they lived. It’s to help us remember how they were in life, not in death. There is feasting, dancing, singing, games, and quite a bit of drinking. Mourning is only for those still alive, but celebrations of life are for those dead and alive. It is respectful and good for moving on with your life. It’s a better way to remember someone, full of food, drunk on wine, and full of song.” The elf let out a throaty laugh and slapped Liam’s back.

  The two were about the same height, but while Liam was slim and refined, this man was boisterous and broad. Going to see these elves would be good. I believed Liam could learn a lot from them. I thought we all could.

  The elf raised a hand above his head as we came into view of the city. It was completely different from Haven. Liam’s city had tan stone walls closing it in, but this one was made of living trees and branches that had been braided together, illuminated by soft yellow lights. “When the city was built, everyone would come and sing to the trees and it is said that we even invited mages to come and sing with us to help them grow like this,” he said when he saw me staring.

  “It’s beautiful,” I whispered.

  “That it is,” he agreed.

  “Kyle, what are you doing?” A woman’s voice came from on top of the wall.

  “Inviting the king to dinner!” he shouted back.

  The branches had been braided into a tall arch and underneath the beautifully carved doors opened to let us in. Behind them stood an abundance of elves, more than I had ever seen in one place in Haven. Some had skin almost as white as mine and others were darker than the stranger who walked beside us, but all of them had pointed ears, sharp angles, and were stunningly beautiful, like every elf I’d met so far.

  “King Liam, son of Maarius and Lilith, has come with some of his friends! It sounds like we are going to be saving some human lives pretty soon!” Kyle’s voice boomed. He grabbed Liam’s hand and held it above his head as the small crowd clapped and whistled. “But for now they need a place to rest and recover from their long journey. It has been a long night for all of us. Someone go find the leaders, let them know of our friends.” A few people scampered out of the crowd, and Kyle turned his attention back to us. “Let us wait outside of the Hall. You can tell me a little about how we can help you.” He waved his hand, a gesture for us to follow him, and began maneuvering through the crowd.

  Cam caught up to me and I slid off Cinder’s back to talk to her. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” I whispered.

  “Insane. Look at the trees. They live in those. They have stairs and doors and everything,” she said, pointing to one as we passed.

  They were huge trees, thick and tall and made of hard wood. Most of them had spiraling stairs made of entwined branches that led to a balcony and a door. “This must have been done with magic,” I mused.

  “You heard him: they brought mages to sing. Perhaps the mages did a little bit more than practice their musical talents.”

  “To think that elves would accept help from mages. These elves are so different from the ones in Haven,” I said quietly.

  “They’ve spent generations away from each other. They were bound to have some differences.”

  I nodded in agreement, and while what Cam said was true, the differences didn’t seem to extend to the dark elves. Everyone glared at Ston as he walked by like they had in Haven. Ston either didn’t notice or didn’t show it; perhaps he had been getting a lot of practice with the time he had spent in the city with Liam.

  We came to a stop in front of an enormous tree with a large wooden door. “This is where the leaders meet. We can wait here until they show up. So, tell me what you think we can do for you?”

  “We’re at war right now. With the dark elves and some other creatures who disappeared long ago with them.”

  The man eyed Ston suspiciously. “And yet you take one here with you?”

  “He’s the one who warned us of the attack on my home,” I said in his defense.

  “Ston is on our side,” Liam added. “He’s been helping us prepare and defend against them. I would trust him with my life.”

  “And what about ours?” the man asked calmly.

  “With anyone’s. He is one of the best men I’ve ever met.”

  He nodded slowly. “I’ll take your word for it until I know more. You came here in the middle of the night for soldiers?”

  “Not exactly. That’s part of the reason, but truthfully I could care less about soldiers. We already have many, so for now you can send any extra people you have to Haven and guard them from any threats. What we really need is information. I’m not exactly sure of what we’re looking for, so I can’t say much on that. Wulf and Casey will have to talk to your leaders about it.”

  Wulf’s head snapped toward the conversation when he heard his name. He had been staring at the houses and trees surrounding us, completely caught up in this place, which was to be expected. “Yeah. We gotta find gold,” he murmured.

  “Gold?” Kyle raised an eyebrow and cast a sideways glance to Liam.

  Wulf nodded. “And monks.”

  “Your friend is pretty strange,” he remarked quietly.

  “Don’t be so rude, Kyle.” The sharp voice came from behind him. I
peered around Kyle to see a woman with dark skin and long locks in a flowing white dress and thin gold chains around her neck. Beside her stood a woman in tight-fitting jeans and a flowing blue shirt. She had shaved her head, and there was an intricate tattoo of swirls and circles on the left side of her scalp that trailed down the back of her neck. The two looked positively regal.

  “Sorry, Zera.” He looked down at his feet and took a step back. “King Liam, I present to you two of our leaders here at Virne. Zera and Maya.”

  Liam stepped forward and held a hand out to Zera, the woman in the white dress, who smiled fondly and took it in her own, placing another hand on the back of his. “You have no idea what it means to us that you’re here. Perhaps we can finally move forward. You will find that not all of us will be so happy with your presence, however. You must understand that we have spent a long time being ignored and cast aside by your family. There is a very long history of inequality between us. Not everyone will be so open to change. I am just glad that you are.”

  “When I learned about your city, I knew we couldn’t stay like this. I want to hear how I can help begin bringing us together again. You know better than anyone what you have been through and what I can do to end this.”

  Her smile widened as she said, “I am glad that our king is you, Liam. You have the opportunity to do so much, and it is very refreshing to see someone so eager to do just that. Come, let us go inside. You can bring your friends as well, of course. Except he”—she cast a look to Cinder—“will have to stay outside.”

  No. I don’t want to, Cinder said stubbornly.

  I had to agree with him on this one. “If you could possibly reconsider, he is my spirit animal, and I would like him there. He won’t harm anything. He’s just another set of eyes for me.”