Stellan took both of my hands in his. Warmth spread from them to my heart. I looked into his eyes as he leaned even closer. My breath quickened as his lips pressed against mine, and at first, I was apprehensive. But as he kissed me gently and slowly, a feeling of sheer bliss passed between us, and I forgot about everything else, all of my worries. I simply let myself be swept away by the closeness we both felt.
When the kiss ended, Stellan squeezed my hands one last time and vanished into the night. I stood breathless against the door, my heart pounding and the rest of me feeling faint and woozy. I didn’t move for what seemed like a long time, even though my internal clock told me just minutes had passed. My mind was finding it hard to comprehend what had just happened. I couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened.
I had just had my first kiss…with an elf. I had to giggle at how absurd the sentence sounded in my head. But it was true.
Stellan had kissed me. Stellan really did like me. Did I like Stellan? I definitely liked his kiss. What would happen now? Would he court me like Cass and Addison? Did I like Stellan that way?
Yes, I decided.
A boy had never reacted this way toward me before. No boy had ever liked me this way before. The feeling was new and wonderful. Even though I knew this was probably moving too fast, I couldn’t stop myself from falling for him. It was completely, utterly inevitable. I didn’t want this rush of feelings to end, and I already wanted to be with him again. I yearned to be near him, to feel his warm hands entwined with mine. Being away from him, even so soon after our kiss, was beginning to make my heart ache.
Stellan and Ramsey, elf and elfen, confident and confused, outgoing and shy, beautiful and beautiful, all words to describe what we were, and I liked the sound of that.
I really liked the sound of that.
***
The next morning I woke at exactly four on the dot. Feeling happy and rested, I took a shower and dressed in a pale yellow sundress. I had a smile on my face from the minute I woke up, remembering the kiss I had shared with Stellan last night.
Before heading over to Addison’s I looked in Zora’s wardrobe and found a brown shoulder bag to carry my money and the directions to Blaire’s. Today is going to be a very long day, I realized. However, it would be worth it if I found out anything more about my missing sister.
When I closed the front door and turned to walk away, something colorful caught my eye. I looked back to see the most gorgeous flowers surrounding my house. They looked dazzling, and just as lovely as Addison’s flowers. I smiled and knelt down beside the troughs. The flowers smelled heavenly. Each one was different, which made the house look unique. It brightened up the “unused” look the house had yesterday. It actually looked like someone lived there, like a real home.
With an added bounce in my step, I walked briskly to Addison’s. I found her kneeling by her own flowers. She held a tin watering can over the troughs, her green skirt smudged with spots of dirt. Her short-sleeved blouse was already brown, so the mess didn’t show as much. I knelt down beside her and gave her a hug.
“Thank you,” I told her.
“You’re welcome. I take it you liked the flowers?”
“I love them!”
“I’m sorry they are all different. I didn’t know what kind you liked, and I wanted to surprise you. I thought it would cheer you up a little, take away the stress.”
“They’re perfect,” I assured her.
Addison stood up and brushed the dirt off her skirt. I got up as well and followed her inside. Aaliyah met us as we walked in.
“Aren’t the flowers beautiful?” she asked.
“Yes! I swear, Addison has a gift and I’m not talking about a kind of ability.”
“Okay, enough with the praise, please!” Addison laughed and went to wash her hands in the kitchen sink. “They’re only flowers,” I heard her mutter as she took a seat at the table.
“Sit down for breakfast, Ramsey. It’s almost ready,” Aaliyah encouraged.
“Thanks, but I feel bad for eating all of your food. I should start buying and making my own meals.”
“Don’t feel bad at all! I’m not a very busy elfen, and I like cooking. The only job I have is selling fruit at the market down the street every few days.”
“Even so, I do want to go to the market and stock my fridge with some food; at least just enough to get me through the few days I have before we leave for Tarlore. I’d like to try my hand at cooking elf cuisine myself. Maybe if I’m good enough, I can have you over for dinner too.”
“That would be lovely.” She smiled. “Here, eat some breakfast before you go.”
Aaliyah set down a bowl of her orchard-grown fruit and some buttered bread. While we ate, I discussed with Aaliyah when we would go to the orchard. I still had to visit Blaire, stop at the market, visit the bookstore, and go to the jeweler. We decided on meeting back at her home at eleven. She would be waiting with a packed lunch for both of us. Addison would spend her day at school. I didn’t ask her about our upcoming trip, but I knew that after school her mind would be focused on what we would need to travel. I wanted to help somehow, or at least know what she was doing, but I didn’t say anything. I had enough on my plate already, and I didn’t know how I could help her anyway.
I thanked them both for preparing breakfast again and left for Blaire’s. I was in a hurry because I wanted to make sure I accounted for everything on my list.
However, before I could take more than five steps away from the house, Stellan appeared before me, stopping me from getting a head start on my busy day.
“Where were you this morning?” I asked.
“I was…thinking,” he replied.
“Thinking about what?”
Instead of answering, he took my hands and kissed me on the cheek. I looked up at him and frowned.
“What?” he asked.
“You missed, Stellan. I didn’t think you were that uncoordinated.”
“I apologize. I guess I’m still a little tired, or maybe I was unfocused by your beauty.”
I rolled my eyes and blushed simultaneously. He smiled and kissed me on the lips this time, and I was glad to see his wary attitude gone once more. Maybe the more time we spent together, the more comfortable he would feel, and the happier he would stay.
I felt warm and cheerful as his arms moved to hold me close to him. I wrapped my arms around him and sighed.
“What?” he asked, as he removed his arms from around my waist.
I smiled. “I’m happy,” I said, a little surprised that it was the truth. I had thought with my sister missing and my mind jumbled with unanswered questions, I would be depressed and moody. That was not the case. Although I was a little overwhelmed at times by the huge responsibility of finding my sister, I was also grateful for all I had already gained. That included Stellan.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” he replied.
“So…what is this?”
“This?” he asked.
“I mean, what are we? What does this make us?” I asked.
“Like…relationship wise?”
“Exactly, are you…courting me now? That sounds so weird….” I looked down, feeling embarrassed. His fingers lifted my chin as he planted another kiss on my lips.
“I’d like to,” he said sincerely.
“What does that mean? Is it like dating?” Man, is this conversation awkward, I thought.
“Dating?” He looked confused.
I tried to find the right words to explain. “It’s a human thing. We go on dates. We go places together, we kiss, and we have a relationship. What is courting? Isn’t that like preparing for marriage?”
“Not really. It’s close to what you are saying. It’s only for marriage when the parents arrange something, and anyway, elves don’t get married often. It’s just an old age term we took from the English back in the Human Realm.”
“I see. Then I would like it if you did court me.”
I still giggled at
the thought, and couldn’t stop myself from blushing. It just sounded weird. It reminded me of old movies, like the ones that represented the fifteen-hundreds or something.
“Good,” he said.
I checked my internal clock and realized the longer I stayed with Stellan, the more behind I became on my duties. I sighed, wishing I didn’t have any responsibilities and could spend the day with Stellan’s arms around me. However, my better judgment won the internal conflict inside of me and I realized, with a pang, that I had to go. Finding my sister was more important than exploring my new relationship with Stellan.
“It’s after five and I really have to get going. I’m sorry,” I told him, frowning.
He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I’ll see you later at dinner.”
“Okay,” I said.
He squeezed my hand and then I was off to meet Blaire. All the while, my heart was pounding and my mind was on Stellan.
***
Let’s just say Blaire’s house was not what I expected. Instead of the normal brown and wooden style décor I had become accustomed to seeing in the Elf Realm since I had arrived, it was all white, with a white picket fence and flower pots lining a walkway leading up to the door. It looked too modern for this Realm, and just like the kind of house a woman dreamed about after she got married.
Confused, I walked up to the door and knocked. The door was forest green and the windows next to it trimmed with green as well. These were the only elf-like details about the house, which seemed quite odd to me.
If I thought that was strange, what came next was far beyond that. The door opened to reveal a tall pointy-eared elfen with lovely green eyes. That was the normal part.
She also had a warm tan glow to her skin and brown hair that reminded me of my sister Dina’s, chestnut and shining. It flowed over her shoulders in long waves. I covered my hand over my mouth in a gasp and blinked to make sure I was seeing correctly.
Elves did not have brown hair or tan skin.
“Are you Blaire?” I asked, shocked.
“Come on in, Ramsey, and we’ll talk.”
I nodded, still in shock, and followed her in. It was a lovely house, but once again felt too modern for an elfen. Then again, Blaire wasn’t just any elfen. That was obvious already. Addison had been right when she said Blaire was different from other elves.
“Sit down, please. I’ll go and get the tea,” she told me.
I sat down, still unable to speak. She came back moments later with a tray, teacups, and a kettle. She poured us each tea that smelled like a mixture of peaches and an herb I couldn’t place. The soothing aroma calmed me and relieved the shock of seeing Blaire for the first time.
“Before we really talk, I’ll set some things straight,” she said, in a businesslike manner. “I’m an elfen.”
“That relieves some of the confusion. I think.” I half-smiled. She didn’t smile back, so I cleared my throat and looked down, embarrassed. Apparently, there wasn’t any room for jokes here. Instead, Blaire continued speaking.
“My parents were both elves. I am some kind of genetic mistake. At least that is how others explain it.” She pointed to her hair and brushed a hand over her arm to show off her tan skin. “I just call it different. Humans are different. They have different hair and skin color. I never understood why elves couldn’t. My parents ignored it at first, saying that it was just a ‘baby’ thing and I would grow out of it. I turned five and I still hadn’t changed. No one knew what had caused it. I was the freak among elves. Funny, right, considering they are supposed to be mythical creatures?”
She didn’t pause long enough for me to respond to her sarcastic statement.
“When I was six, the town made a decision. I would have to go to the Human Realm. I didn’t fit in here, so I would have to be sent somewhere that I could. Someplace where being different was just fine, at least that is what the elves thought.”
“What? How? I thought it was….”
“Illegal?” she inferred.
“Yeah,” I said.
“When it happened to me, Queen Taryn hadn’t begun ruling yet. The law hadn’t been made. Everyone knew you were there already. They thought it would be as simple as dropping me off and never looking back. When you left, you were only one year old, but when I left, I was six and I had a mind of my own. My parents took me to the Human Realm and found a family to take me in. After they got over the whole elfen thing, they were ready to be my new parents. However, I was not ready to be their new child. I waited a year, gathering all of the information I could about elves. I waited, I was patient, and I put off returning in hopes that the elves of Birchwood might forget me, because when I returned, I wasn’t planning on leaving again.”
“What did you do then?”
“When I felt the time was right, I waited for midnight, made an elf circle, and came home. It took me a while to find Birchwood City again, but soon I was back on my doorstep. However, there was one little problem. It wasn’t my doorstep anymore. My parents had left after sending me away. They were so overtaken with guilt that they couldn’t live in Birchwood anymore without remembering what they had done to me, how they had just gotten rid of me. I could have followed the footsteps of my parents and relocated to their new city, but I quickly dismissed the whole idea. I didn’t want a family who rid themselves of their own daughter and then ran away because they felt guilty… No offense.”
“It’s okay,” I told her, swallowing a lump in my throat.
“Your situation is completely different, Ramsey. Your parents loved you,” she reminded me.
“I know,” I agreed, though I couldn’t help but feel a bit of resentment toward my birth parents even so.
Maybe Blaire was wrong; maybe everyone was wrong. Maybe my parents hadn’t loved me. Maybe that was why they sent me to the Human Realm, and for no other reason than that. Maybe I wasn’t so special.
Then, I dismissed the terrible thoughts. I had to be special, somehow. How else would I be able to find my sister? I had to have some kind of an edge. Maybe my secret would be what would lead me to Zora. I had to hold on to that.
I felt ashamed when I realized Blaire was waiting for me to pay attention so she could finish. I had somehow drifted off, my head in the clouds. After I muttered a quick apology, Blaire resumed her story.
“Anyway, I was left alone and without a home. The city, feeling ashamed, decided to raise me together. I stayed with various families at different times. They accepted me as different and tried their best to ignore it. Unfortunately, when my sixteenth birthday came around and my ability was non-apparent, everyone questioned what kind of elfen I would be as I grew older, or if I was an elfen at all. Then an idea came to them. With the war raging and most elf men – and some elfens – racing off to battle, the city was in shambles. Elfen wives and mothers were finding it hard to keep up with the cleaning while taking care of their children and the men who lived in the city had to work. Their solution: Have Blaire be the city’s personal “maid.” In exchange, I could acquire my own house, food, clothes, and personal items free of charge. So here I am, twenty-two years old and a house cleaner.”
“The war has been going on for over twenty years?”
It was all I could ask, because I didn’t know how to respond to her story. It was awful, and I didn’t know what to say to comfort her. I could detect tears in her eyes, and when Blaire caught me looking, she quickly brushed them away with the back of her hand.
“Twenty-nine years, actually,” she replied.
Trying to keep the subject away from straying back to her parents, I asked, “So why do you have such a different house? Did the elves here actually build you a house like this?”
“No, I decided what it would look like. Then I paid elves to build it for me. I liked the houses in the Human Realm. My belief is that if I’m different, I should embrace it; different elfen, different house.”
“I’m sorry for what happened to you, Blaire. Believe me; I know what it’s like
to be different. It’s not that my life is any harder, but being different as an elfen, or as anyone for that matter, is hard. I know that.”
“That is why I am going to help you,” she said, clearing her throat, all traces of earlier sadness gone. She was serious now.
“How can you help me?” I inquired.
“Zora and I were close friends, believe it or not. She wasn’t like the others.”
“I believe that,” I realized, a little stunned at how well I was beginning to know my sister without even meeting with her face to face.
“Before she was taken, she knew they were coming for her,” Blaire confirmed.
“She hinted on that in the journal she wrote for me,” I said with surprise.
Blaire responded with a nod. “One week or so before she was taken by the Element fairies, she came to my house to ask me for a favor. She wanted me to give you something just in case something bad happened to her. I asked her what she meant and she said it didn’t matter. I just needed to promise. I was the only one she trusted with this task.”
“Did you accept?”
“Would you be in my house now if I had not?” she asked me.
“I guess not,” I agreed. “So what was the promise?”
“I promised I would give you this.”
She pulled a velvet box from her skirt pocket and opened it. Inside, shining like a falling star, was a slender, diamond-shaped crystal. Blaire took it from the box, revealing a thin black cord attached to it.
“What is it?” I asked, admiring its beauty. “It’s gorgeous.”
“It’s called a Mood Diamond,” she said.
“Is it like a Mood Ring? We have those in the Human Realm. They change color depending on your mood.”
“It’s not quite the same thing,” she said, her face showing the same confused expression as Stellan’s did when I talked about human things. “For two people who are bonded or related by blood like you and your sister, this necklace serves as a connector. Zora wore one as well, at least during the week they took her. It’s a tool elfin Spell Masters created years and years ago, as a way for loved ones to keep in contact over long distances,” she explained.
The Elf Girl Page 15