An Apprentice to Elves

by Sarah Monette

  “You were fighting,” she said.

  “Roughhousing,” he argued. He wasn’t sullen, at least. It was a plain statement of fact. “Fighting is if you want to hurt somebody.”

  She reached out and flicked some drying mud off the raveling braid sewn onto his cuff. He tried to look abashed, and then he thought about it a little more and tried not to look abashed. Neither effort was particularly successful.

  “Be that as it may,” she said dryly.

  He stepped back, in order to get a better angle on her expression. It had the side benefit of clearing his up somewhat, too, and removing the interior of his nostrils from her direct line of sight.

  “Whether you meant to hurt anyone or not, you did cause damage.” She gestured to the drying rack with the back of her hand. She knew the gesture made her look foreign; the Northmen were more likely to point with a chin. And yet it stayed with her. She continued, “Who’s going to clean this up?”

  He blinked at her. Behind him, Tunni and Varin giggled. So much for loyalty. She made herself a note to talk to Skjaldwulf about them before Vethulf noticed there was a problem and took it into his head to perform some corrective action of his own.

  “I am?” he said uncertainly.

  Not entirely stupid, then. “You are,” she said. “And you’re going to scrub your shirts and trews out, too. And scrape the mud off those hides.”

  Varin and Tunni giggled all the more, biting their lips to hide their mirth.

  She turned to them, tilting her head back. “And you two,” she said. “Don’t think I somehow missed your part in all this. While Canute is cleaning up the mess you’ve made in the kitchen yard, you two can shovel out the stable yard. And when you’re done with that, I imagine you, too, will have some laundry to do. And all three of you are going to take that broken drying rack to Sokkolfr, and he is going to teach you to repair it.” Sokkolfr would not thank her, but if it could teach the tithe-boys to think about where they put their great, careless, “roughhousing” feet, it would be worth it.

  And she would find something for Ulfhundr, too, something boring and fiddly and worth the nuisance his sister was proving herself to be.

  * * *

  As her apprenticeship approached its ending and she contemplated the vigil and test that would attend her elevation to journeyman and the setting of the first status-marking inlays in her teeth, Alfgyfa reckoned it out and realized that she had spent as much of her life here in Nidavellir, a strange tall pale creature among the alfar, as she had among the wolves and men of the Franangford wolfheall. More, for she had been some time at her mother’s breast before that, even though she did not remember it, and her mother had been of the bondi, the townsfolk: a crafter.

  She might be more alf than woman, then. But she wasn’t very much alf, either, and even when the other apprentices treated her well—even when they forgot she was not just odd-looking, white-skinned, and strange-eyed, but alien—their very forgetting reminded her, because though they treated her sometimes as one of their own, she wasn’t. She couldn’t see in the dim light as they could, nor effortlessly lift an anvil that weighed twice as much as she—though one of her own weight, that she could heft if she could get her legs under it—nor sing five-part harmony in her own throat. Her words in the alf-tongue came always stilted and flat and without the nuance she slowly learned at least to hear even if she could not reproduce it.

  She did learn to manage an approximation, however. As she witnessed Girasol’s early attempts to learn to speak, Alfgyfa realized that it was a skill, not something inborn. She set herself to learn. Practicing on her own in the trellwarrens for months, she taught herself to produce two harmonics. An overtone and an undertone allowed her to add some of the nuance and layers of meaning that one alf-word would contain when spoken by Tin or any of the others in the household.

  She guessed, after long practice and many attempts, that a third set of harmonics might just be physically impossible for her. The alfar must have some sort of resonant chamber in their throats that caused the full range of base note and four harmonic pitches. She was a human, and she would never be as at home with the alfar as she had been among the wolves.

  The trellwarrens were a mercy to her because she could be absolutely alone there, as nowhere else in the alfhame. And for a girl who had been accustomed, from a very early age, to run wild in the wood alone, secure in the knowledge that she was protected by the stewardship of the konigenwolf and her pack, the constant society of the alfhame was sometimes painfully wearing.

  And most wearing of all was the ritual.

  Everything a svartalf did was attended by some sort of liturgy, ceremony, or observance. The coal for the forge fire always had to be stacked in the same pattern and lit the same way, with the same words said over it. The floor always had to be swept in the same pattern—there was a chant for floor sweeping—and the spices and vegetables in a dish always had to be measured precisely the same way, and added to the skillet in exact order. It was meant, Tin gave Alfgyfa to understand, to provide a meditative structure to the tasks of the day.

  Alfgyfa found it mostly stultifying. And the laundry seemed to collect all the worst of it together.

  If it had only been a matter of the laundry itself, Alfgyfa would have liked it quite a lot. The big cavern was open to the sky. As a result—at least in the seasons when there was more daylight than dark—she usually attended it in different hours than the svartalfar, who found it inconvenient to wrestle mountains of sopping wet linens about while wearing the long robes and veils that sheltered them from the sun. So the laundry cavern was a place of some privacy for her.

  And the cavern itself was a wonder. Having grown up running in and out of the labyrinths of the aettrynalfar as if they were a neighbor’s cottage, Alfgyfa had been familiar with hot springs, geysers, flowstone, and natural wonders of the geothermal variety. But this was all that—its heat, in fact, helped keep the svartalf gardens productive in the long cold polar summers of the Iskryne—and more. There were pools set aside for bathing and splashing in, and pools set aside for quiet meditation. They ran the gamut from boiling—at the top of the cavern, where the hot spring bubbled up into a pool and then fell in a long, smoking plume to the next tiered basin—to merely tepid, and in the shelter of the southern wall there was always snow.

  In her free time, Alfgyfa enjoyed all of these things—and she swam better than any of the svartalfar, whose dense bones and muscles made them distinctly nonbuoyant. It was nice not to be third best at everything. And she certainly enjoyed the beauty of the setting—the sulfur-lined fumaroles, the veils of steam, the brilliant minerals crystallized at the edge of pools.

  But the actual work of laundering clothing was miserable, backbreaking labor. The svartalfar’s outer garments—their quilted, appliquéd, embroidered, and bauble-adorned layers of robes—were hung, aired, powdered, and brushed, or spot-cleaned as necessary. But underneath, they wore linens like any man. (Well, not precisely like any man, perhaps, as Alfgyfa could think of few wolfcarls who would fit in a svartalf’s skivvies.) And those linens were made of yards of heavy unbleached cloth that had to be boiled, chanted over, pounded, chanted over, lathered with a black, slimy lye and ash soap that left Alfgyfa’s hands raw and red, meditated upon, rinsed, twisted, rinsed again, and stretched on the hottest rocks to dry while being chanted over still.

  And then they had to be ironed, folded or hung, chanted over, and sorted back to their various owners by the tiny runes embroidered along the underside of the collar.

  As near as Alfgyfa could tell, the main reason to become a journeyman was so that you could thrust your soiled undershirts and breast-bindings at the nearest apprentice and never have to think about them again until they appeared back in your wardrobe, ready for reuse. The heat was unbearable, the work heavy, the outcome uninteresting. The soap got in every cut and burn the forge left her. The water blistered her hands while her toes grew red, itchy chilblains from squatting too long in the
snow. It was hateful work, and Alfgyfa loathed it, so much that Pearl and Manganese had forbidden her to speak of it.

  And yet, ironically, it wasn’t the laundry she so despised that got her in the worst trouble; it was the weapons practice that she loved.

  It was a deeply inculcated svartalf belief that no smith should forge any weapon she could not wield. And so two hours of Alfgyfa’s day were given over to practice with the heavy, gorgeously wrought spears and axes that were the chief weapons of the svartalfar. She had been sent to ’prentice a smith, and a smith’s training she would receive. The fact that she was female, which among humans, even in the wolfheallan, meant she had to bear children, not arms, meant to the svartalfar that she was expected to bear arms exceptionally well. “Allowances being made,” Tin had said dryly, “for your disadvantages.” She was weaker than her sparring partners because of her species, not her sex, but it was the reach of their arms she would have killed to be able to match.

  Usually, even though she went in anticipating her inevitable defeat, the practice was the highlight of those parts of Alfgyfa’s schedule that remained after the real highlight of the forge work was done, but the practice matches held between the weapons classes of the various Masters were a different matter. This one was between Alfgyfa’s class and a class of clerks, who learned weapons play because their caste—makers of contracts, keepers of accounts, arbiters of trade disagreements—used dueling to settle disputes among themselves as the smithing caste did not.

  She had been dreading it a little. Meeting new alfar always left her feeling as if they were staring at her with their crystal-bead eyes and whispering into one another’s long, pointed, many-ringed, trailing ears every time she did something to remind them that she was an alien. Such as being fair haired, or pale skinned, or straight spined.

  But her first two bouts went well. She lost them both, of course, but she had expected no different. The Clerks’ Guild took their passage of arms seriously, and the ’prentices she fought were stronger, if not older than she—and their reach combined with their lower center of gravity made them deadly. The first one beat her with a staff combination that left her sprawled on her behind, bruised and grinning. The second wielded an eight-pound war hammer with the sort of delicacy you’d expect of a darning needle. Alfgyfa managed to keep on her feet against him, but she only avoided a broken arm because she had good armor, and he had good control of the strength of his blows.

  She bowed to the victor, the tears of pain she blinked against one more additional small sting, and while the ’prentice who had clobbered her collected the medal the advocates allotted each winner, she went to find the chirurgeons and an ice pack. One benefit to living in the Iskryne: one need never go far to fetch snow.

  But when they drew stones for the third bout, the apprentice who matched Alfgyfa’s raw black-red garnet crystal, an apprentice who had to be as close to her journeyman test as Alfgyfa was, threw hers back into the pot and said loudly, “I’m not fighting that. I’m not touching it. What if it has aettrynalf venom all over its hide?”

  The hall went immediately and deathly quiet. The clerk ’prentices standing on either side of Alfgyfa’s opponent shifted their weight away, although it was an open question whether it was because they were embarrassed by the rudeness—unusually direct for the svartalfar, who preferred their insults veiled, oblique, wrapped in layers of allusion, and lethal—or because they expected Alfgyfa to rip the stupid bitch’s throat out with her teeth.

  Not that it wasn’t tempting.

  Alfgyfa took a deep breath and tried to unclench her fists, to let the knife-sharp edges to her vision soften again. She had been trying—genuinely trying and not just because she was tired of Tin’s lectures—to keep better control of her temper. And she was aware of Pearl and Girasol standing foursquare beside her; for all that they were sometimes rivals and sometimes pests, they had closed ranks with her without an eyelash’s worth of hesitation. Girasol was even doing his best imitation of his mother’s glare.

  In his piping child’s voice (still carrying only the three harmonics of children’s speech, instead of the full five), Girasol said, “Don’t worry about Mischmetal, Alfgyfa. She’s got to redo her journeyman-work.” Since the beginning of all the other bouts had been held up while the advocates conferred over what to do about Alfgyfa and Mischmetal, it carried quite loudly, as svartalf voices tended to do.

  Svartalfar habitually kept their voices low for just that reason (although Mischmetal certainly hadn’t bothered). They could claim that Girasol was too young to know that. But if that were the case, Alfgyfa thought, he also ought to be too young to be quite so attuned to the politics of an entirely different guild. He could never be a Mother, but if he survived the byproducts of his own wit, Girasol was someday going to be a Smith to be reckoned with.

  Pearl placed a knotty, twig-fingered hand on the crook of Alfgyfa’s elbow. Gently, he led her to where the other ’prentices and Tin clustered. She walked more sideways than not, unwilling to turn her back on Mischmetal or the advocates.

  Meanwhile, there had been a great fluttering of robes and clattering of ring-rattle-headed staves and chiming of jingles among the advocates as they huddled. Now one broke away from the others and moved forward. It was elderly Tourmaline with his reed-thin crystal-sewn braids that shaded, ombré, from black where they dragged the stone floor to silver at his scalp. The dozens of parts between them had been painted with ochre, and showed dull red against his sooty skin.

  Every alf in the cavern watched as Tourmaline stumped to Mischmetal. He spoke to her so softly his words were lost in their own harmonics, and with his face concealed by the flat drape of his braids, Alfgyfa couldn’t see the shapes his lips made, no matter how she craned.

  Whatever he offered, it met with a flat refusal. Mischmetal chopped one long hand sideways.

  Tourmaline shrugged—an impressive affair under his layers of ornament. Then he turned and, staff clacking and jingling with each step, came to Tin.

  She met him with Alfgyfa at her side.

  “Mastersmith,” Tourmaline said, “Apprentice Mischmetal forfeits the bout. Your apprentice claims the prize.”

  He handed her a flat stamped metal bauble. Before he turned away, he made a point of lifting his head to catch Alfgyfa’s eye. His braids broke round his pointed ears like water flowing past a jagged stone. The tips were so long they trailed behind him, tufted with silver hair like antennae.

  “It is not a reflection on you,” he said softly.

  Alfgyfa forced herself to return his smile. “Thank you,” she said, her tongue curling at the taste.

  When he left, Tin handed her the silver jingle without comment. Alfgyfa held it so tight it bit into her palm, and kept her temper.

  “So this is my victory,” she said, when Tourmaline’s stately progress had left only Tin and Pearl and Girasol close enough to hear. I thought I’d like it better.

  Tin touched her shoulder lightly, reaching up with her endless arm to do so. “It will not be the last one.”

  Alfgyfa nodded but decided not to try smiling. “I need a drink, Master.”

  “Go and get one,” Tin said. “Then we will see about your next bout. But first, pin that jingle to your cloak.”

  “Master?” Alfgyfa spun to look at her and saw the lined face peering up at her, crow-black tattoos no darker than the shade of horse-black skin, but distinguishable by their highlights: cool instead of warm.

  Tin spoke under the overtone of empathy and the second overtone of determination. “When they try to shame you, you wear their scorn like ribbons. That is all.”

  Her face was still, as if she spoke from some deep, calm well of experience. She plucked the jingle from Alfgyfa’s fingers, clucking at the spot of blood, and pinned it boldly to the breast of her cloak, close enough beside Alfgyfa’s apprentice badge that they would chime against each other, though there were only two baubles there.

  “Get your drink,” she said. She turned h
er shoulder to Alfgyfa. A dismissal.

  Alfgyfa drew her shoulders up and tossed her braid back. The stone under her soft-soled boots as she went to the water servers felt as smooth as the weight of the gazes following her. One of the alfar who stood in the middle of the square formed by the four tall tables, each with its insulated well for hot or cold drinks, gave her small ale mixed with cider. She sipped it slowly, watching the round of combats resume. Mischmetal had drawn a stone again and was waiting for her match. Alfgyfa thought it would be wiser to wait until she was engaged in combat before going to choose her own next stone.

  Mischmetal found her partner—Alfgyfa’s own crèche-mate Manganese—and they claimed a space on the floor. A human holmgang was fought on a hide staked to the ground; in deference to their greater reach, svartalf bouts took place in a circle with a diameter the same as the span of a large adult female alf’s arms.

  Alfgyfa liked that there was more room for footwork. She watched as they saluted each other, Mischmetal’s trellspear against Manganese’s double-bitted axe, and began to circle. One of the many sacrosanct svartalf traditions was that once combat had begun, there could be no interference from outside the circle, so there was always an odd little ripple of silence that spread out as a match began. Alfgyfa watched a while, biting her lip to keep from hoping audibly that Manganese would break Mischmetal’s arm. She finished her shandy and gave the mug back to the alf, then was just about to edge around the combats to the advocates and draw her own next stone when Girasol’s voice called her name. She turned to mark him, and saw him running toward her—that hunched, deceptively fast svartalf scuttle.

  He was going to run right between Mischmetal and Manganese. And nobody except Alfgyfa was even remotely close enough to do anything about it.

  Svartalf children matured quickly, but at Girasol’s age of not-quite-eight, he was still young enough—child enough—not always to be thinking about what he was doing, where he was going … what he was running headlong into, even when he should know better, should damn well know not to cross the line of a sparring circle without being absolutely certain that the match was finished and that both combatants had seen him coming and brought their arms to rest.