by Karleigh Bon
Ej tried to speak in the language of humans, but he was so slow at it, or maybe he didn’t want to speak it. Fionna found it easier just to speak in Elvish. She rather liked the melodic sound of EJ’s soft silvery voice. He turned out to have kind humor and was a tease about everything.
Master Farghal was pleased that she had finally figured it out. Fionna had a quick mind, and he knew she could master it if she just focused on the task.
“It helps that they have affection for one another as well.” Farghal smiled to himself.
+++
After the chores were done and, dinner had been eaten Fionna and Eijlam went out into the yard to enjoy the evening stars. This night was different because they were talking, practically non-stop, since they started. Fionna brought her pipe and a leaf outside to share. Remembering his disgust, she took it as a challenge to get him to try it.
“Just once...” she said in a whiny voice trying to persuade him.
“Elves do not smoke pipes.”
“This one does,” she said, loading the bowl.
“Wizards are also always male,” he feigned an overbearing, authoritative look at her in fun as he said it.
“Not this one,” she said, passing him the pipe, blinking her eyes in a sweet girly way.
He scowled at her, placing his mouth on the end of the mouthpiece. He inhaled too much too fast. The smoke caught in his throat, and he began to have an uncontrollable choking fit that made his eyes and face turned red.
She somehow managed to keep a straight face as he handed the pipe back to her, after looking at it severely. He rolled over on his back in the grass, wheezing up at the stars that were filling the evening sky.
“Not good Fionna, that stuff is evil.” His eyes were still watering from the experience.
“You have to get used to it EJ. I think everyone chokes the first time.”
“...And they keep doing it? What kind of madness drives them on so!” He was utterly baffled at the thought of it.
“It is the effect of the dried leaf. Smoking the wizard pipe is relaxing to the digestive tract. Very medicinal, you see. That is why they usually do it after dinner.” She took a gentle puff and let it breathe out to show him how it is done correctly.
“I could think of better things to do as the sun is down low,” he said, trying to look charming with his eyebrows but it really didn’t work for him.
“What?” she asked in pure bald-faced innocence. The pipe was distorting the far corner of her mouth, and smoke slowly drifted out of her nostrils.
“You look like a dragon,” He teased, laughing at her with a playful light push to the arm.
Fionna smiled at that and looked away, concentrating on her pipe. She was laying on her belly, and it was all he could do to keep from jumping on her and playfully wrestling with her. It was the pipe that kept him at a distance. The leaf did smell sweet. He just couldn’t understand the draw.
“Let me try your pipe again,” he said resolutely using the distraction to practice some restraint. He sat up and tried to suck on the mouthpiece again only to blast out another cough.
“Lightly this time, with more of a puff,” she instructed him.
He didn’t feel the urge to choke and die this time.
“Hmm, it is a strange thing.”
He gave the pipe back to her and let the smoke trickle out of his nostrils as she did.
“Look, dragon-kind too.” He smiled his shimmering smile as he looked sideways at her. He let out a tiny cough of smoke, trying to control the discomfort it was causing him. His cuteness was almost more than she could handle. She laughed and looked the other way.
“Are all elves as silly as you EJ?”
With sudden seriousness, he rolled down closer to her on one elbow.
“Elves are playful with each other Fionna. We are as strong in love as in grief.” He picked off a piece of grass that was tangled in her hair.
“The ocean water runs deep Fionna, and the spirit of the Edhellen is a thousand times deeper.” He tried not to look directly at her beautiful body lying next to him.
“It boils close under the thinnest surface...” his face was clearly struggling for control as he thought of what it might be like to just lean over and kiss her.
“That is why we practice, for hundreds of years, restraint,” he said, with a dramatic crescendo in his voice.
He paused, wanting to do more than only stare at her. She put the pipe aside and turned towards him, watching with interest as he continued.
“Passion burns hot Fionna,” he was just showing off now, “...love and kindness are given freely to kin and trusted friend because life can be cut short by a dire injury to body, heart or spirit…”
Eijlam felt a hitch in his throat as his mind vaguely revealed something beyond his grasp. It distracted him from his thoughts about her. He tried to ignore the sharp pain rising in his gut. It was like the molten burn he had experienced when he was first brought back. It churned slowly threatening to break him apart from the inside out.
“It takes so long to grow to adulthood... and yet, life goes on twenty times longer. After a while, elves appear stoic or unkind to the outside realm of men, but it is just that we have the certainty of another day, so we are not hurried to waste living with anger or fighting. Life is then always a most precious gift to the Edhellen...”
His voice lowered in grief as his eyes aged and turn distant. How had he not known all this ten minutes ago?
He looked puzzled as he continued, “...And then, as time in this mortal realm takes you almost to eternity, the spirit thins and eventually every one of us is compelled to go back home to … Ilmatar.”
Eyes Wide Open
Chapter Twelve
Eijlam’s words came out slow and precise as memories came flooding back. He turned his face to the ground as he remembered his brother, and his mother, and the days just before she had left them.
“Some can be reborn after a time. Some ... never come back...” he trailed off with his face screwed into an angry frown. Eijlam grew quiet and pale in the moonlight.
“I am here now because of that.” His voice was resolute in his knowledge. He was no longer confused as he slowly drifted into numb shock realizing what she and the wizard had done. He looked sadly at Fionna as if she’d betrayed him by not leaving him asleep. He had chosen long ago never to come back to this realm.
“I am told your mother’s name is Thendiel,” Fionna said, not knowing anything about what was going on.
Eijlam moaned at the sound of his mother’s name. He looked at her in utter despair. As their eyes met she realized something was terribly wrong. EJ felt like she just punched him hard in the gut. The burn flared into a roaring fire inside him as he pressed his face into his hands.
“I am remembering ... that…” EJ desperately gasped for breaths that didn’t come. His hands and face soaked with his tears splashing down his arms in hysteria. He fell over on the grass.
“EJ, what is it?”, Fionna asked. Frightened and confused by his sudden transformation all she could say is, “I am sorry, so sorry… Please EJ, tell me what is wrong. I did not mean to say it. Oh, gods, what have I done to you!” Fionna thought her saying his mother’s name was the reason he collapsed. She could not know EJ was buried in an avalanche of voices and memories as his past life came flooding back.
Fionna put her arms around EJ and cried out to the wizard Farghal, “Papa ... help meeee Papa,” not knowing what else to do to console Eijlam in his sudden pain.
Farghal rushed to their side and helped lift Eijlam off the ground. Fionna followed behind as the wizard half carried EJ back into the small cottage.
“Why did you bring me here, wizard!” Eijlam demanded to know. The once beautiful Elvish words came screaming out of his mouth. Everything rational seemed to have gone out of him as he paced back and forth like a caged animal in front of the hearth.
“This was to be expected,” Farghal answered placidly, trying to be a calming
voice of reason.
“We thought you might be angry when you came to realize your life again… It is easy to sleep unaware in the passage of time in the soft waves of Ilmatar.”
“Then why must I be made to suffer?” Eijlam asked. “Had I not made my choices? Why are you hurting me so?” Eijlam was half out of his mind in despair at finding himself alive again in the mortal realm.
Fionna, with her newly found mind-speak, was having a hard time blocking out the uncontrolled grief and anger EJ was projecting.
“Please ... stop!” Her eyes pleaded with him. So blinded was he by his anguish he could not even look at her.
“Who is this, we, you speak of? I know what you are wizard!” Ej’s neck bulged under the strain of his anger as he turned on Farghal full force compelling the wizard to speak.
“You are ordered to answer… truth now!”
Farghal would have gladly answered Eijlam because of the affection he had for him and Fionna, but he choked as he felt pressure squeezing around his lungs from the impact of Eijlam’s untrained power.
“You stepped into your father's realm by accident,” he wheezed, almost entirely out of breath.
Seeing what was happening Fionna plunged herself into EJ’s shoulder screaming, “Stop EJ, STOP! You are hurting him!”
Eijlam was startled into seeing the wizard's suffering. He didn’t understand what had just happened, so he turned away harshly, shaking Fionna off. Rubbing his right temple with his hand sent his hair into a mad disheveled mess. Fionna stumbled away to the hearth, crying.
“Tell me this is not your truth,” Farghal tried to reason with him. He could breathe again as Eijlam focused his mind elsewhere.
Eijlam struggled against his rage as he sought to remember details, but the pain of grief skewed his mind. He reeled around, holding his head as the memories of that day came pouring back.
“I was watching my mother leave,” he keened. “She was too young… too young to feel the weight of time, but she was leaving us!”
He was horrified as he spoke, “I know it was my fault ... for her weakness, I should not have been born! I was the one, I was the one who should have been leaving... not her ... but the horses came for her!” He growled through clenched teeth glaring sadly at the wizard.
He stalked around the room again as his eyes turned cold. Farghal hoped he would not accidentally use his powers on him again or hurt Fionna. He started gathering and concentrating energies for defense, just in case.
Ej tried to find a less bitter clarity, but he could not.
“My own brother believed it! I caused her to die… He shamed me and I ran far away ... I was going to the river to think... I ended up ... HERE!” EJ’s eyes grew large; surprised at the force of his own abrupt loudness.
Fionna wanted to say she would never believe what he thought was true. Clearly, this was all a huge misunderstanding. He had to be reasonable, but before she could speak, another wave of grief crashed into his heart. He writhed in the burn of it.
“DAGO NIN!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. The blast from his voice started a roaring wind that swirled around the room banging and knocking things to the floor.
“Why am I here? I must be gone. I want to be gone!” he shouted through clenched teeth as he stood in the eye of the storm. An eerie calm surrounded Eijlam when his eyes saw the knife blending into the wooden table in front of him. It lay half-hidden among dishes, and some dusty scrolls that the wizard had been studying, just before all this began.
EJ impulsively grabbed for it, and in one swift motion, cut into his own throat.
Fionna could hear the thumping of his heart slow, as true death came for him. She gasped in horror as his face jerked back from the force of his actions. For one long frozen moment, Eijlam’s eyes looked into hers, as if to apologize for what he had just done, but it was too late. Red blood gushed down his neck over his other hand clutching at the damage. She instinctively reached forward. His eyes rolled back in his head as he lost consciousness. The echoes of Fionna screaming filled the room as he collapsed into her blood-spattered arms.
The wizard turned, and in an instant, his staff flew to his open hand from its place against the wall. He swung it upward. Words of power filled the air, and time stood frozen before the bloody knife could even hit the floor.
It all had happened so fast.
Days of the Fall
Chapter Thirteen
When Eijlam woke, his neck was bandaged. His wound had already begun to heal. He looked pale and resolute staring up at the all too familiar wooden beams above his bed. Wizard magics paralyzed his body. He lay there in silence still confused and angry. In the other room, he could hear Fionna crying. He felt the depths of how far he'd fallen into the abyss of grief.
"Why was I even born… to cause such pain," he thought to himself. Feeling his misery, he turned his face to the wall.
"You must try to talk to him, Fionna. You are his only hope of survival," Farghal said tiredly. They were in the main room of the house, talking about what had just happened.
"He did not even see me when it mattered most. I am nothing to him." Her heart broke at the thought of that. She looked towards his room fearfully as if there was a rabid animal in there. She felt guilty as she covered her face in her hands, sobbing at the table.
"His actions were not your fault Fionna," he tried to console her with a hand on her shoulder as he spoke. "I should have warned you this was coming. It is part of his healing, and we do not have the luxury of the Lady Galbraeth or the ancient Eldar kings. They have all left this realm.”
Farghal truly cared about his fosterling. He hated to see Fionna so distressed, but he needed her for this task. He was under orders, and he must not fail.
"Then what hope is there for him, papa?" she asked, feeling the despair of the situation.
"Why would he want to stay if everyone he knows and loves is gone? He is like an elfling in a grown body. He must be at least six-hundred by now, and yet he is not. All this seems so cruel," her eyes pleaded, hoping to escape any further responsibility he expected of her.
"How hard it is turning out to bring one boy back into the realm from which he was born! We cannot lose him now,” the wizard pleaded in frustration.
Fionna had a hurt look on her face as she was about to make another comment. Instead, she bit her tongue and practiced some restraint. EJ had taught her about self-control, and in remembering him as he once was, she burst into sobs again. Her wet eyes flashed at Farghal, betraying her true feelings for Eijlam.
"He will not be this way forever Fionna. Once he is over this shock, the truth of his memories, and his kindness here, will come back to him."
"Okay... okay, I will do what I can." She sadly gave in to Farghal's wishes knowing he would not let her off the hook. She abruptly stood up and left the room to try get some rest. The wizard had reversed EJ's blood flow, so her face and clothes were spotless, but she wanted to set fire to her dress. Instead, she tore it off and angrily threw it into the corner as she fell face down crying on her bed.
+++
The wizard Farghal sat himself down near the hearth fire heavy in thought, he took a deep breath. "How lucky we are Eijlam didn't seem to know his powers, or we might have all been seriously injured."
He didn't want to frighten Fionna more than the situation already had so he kept this to himself. He would not believe that the kindhearted Eijlam they had known these past weeks would genuinely want to harm them once he was over his shock. He rather liked the boy, and he was sure Eijlam was fond of Fionna too.
+++
Having grown up around only humans and wizards, Fionna never knew anything about Elven life until Eijlam simply shared himself with her. She was having a hard time keeping her heart from breaking for this insane boy that she was tasked with bringing back to this life.
“His life. A life he does not want anymore. Even, with me in it…” she sputtered as more tears ran down her face.
"I a
m orphaned too papa. What are you doing to my own heart?” Her whole neatly balanced and ordered life turned upside down, all because of the intrusion of Eijlam. She felt like running away.
"...and yet, if any harm should come to him,” she thought to herself, "I think I would lose my mind!”
Fionna clutched the edges of her pillow. Burying her face, she screamed. At first, she screamed in frustration and anger, and then she screamed again for her sadness and loss. Then Fionna screamed for EJ's loss until she dropped into exhausted, dreamless sleep.
+++
"I miss you," was all she could say while looking down at the food she brought for him. She sat quietly near the stony-faced Eijlam. It was hard to believe this was the same kindhearted Edhellen who arrived here only six weeks ago. Three days have passed, and he refused to talk or eat or even look at her.
"I miss you," she repeated herself as her eyes welled up with tears.
Eijlam was confused at the extreme range of emotions he was experiencing. He scared himself and was finding out now, he was relieved that the wizard had restrained him so he could think on it. Three days he was inside his head, reliving the events that led up to his breakdown.
The one thing he knew he did not want to do is hurt this strange girl any more than he already had.
“Fionna has proven nothing less than kind and a friend to me," EJ kept reminding himself. The battle inside his mind and heart raged on.
The wizard’s paralysis enchantment was left to wear away slowly. Farghal knew that if EJ didn't find enough reason to stay, there would be no stopping him from going. He wanted to give him every chance to understand all the consequences of his actions before he made any more rash decisions.
"Peditham hi sui vellyn?" He finally spoke to the silent girl who'd been sitting by the bed for days; his eyes still fixed upon the rafters.