“It is 3822. I can understand how a traveler might land in foreign soil, but how would you know the name of the place and not know the year, which surely is common throughout the empire?”
“3822 from when? I mean what event occurred to begin the count?” Daniel asked.
Barton stared trying to make sense of the question. Was this the madness returning finally? The bowl seemed inadequate to the task of weapon now that the stranger seemed more in control. “Why, the beginning of things. The time when the world was created from chaos and man and animal and fish and plant were set upon it. The time when magic sung itself into being and divided into humans, elves, dwarves and the others.”
“I think this is going to be a long night.” Daniel said sardonically.
“Do you expect some magic to change the order of things?” It was Barton’s turn to be nervous. If this mage or wizard or whatever had the power to travel, what else might he have done? Calm down old fool, he thought, if this youngster were so powerful how did he end up in this dungeon with the likes of you?
Daniel sat quietly sorting things out. It’s like England or Wales or whatever, but it’s not. They have a different history, time and belief system and this guy keeps rattling about magic. “Barton, since we seem to have nothing else to do would you mind telling me about this place? A little history, politics, maybe, and start with who you are and why you are here. Maybe that will help me figure this out.”
Barton could see no reason not to talk of events, so he ordered his thoughts and began.
“Twenty years or so ago, the Baron, the old Baron, traded with the elves for what he wanted. Ten years ago he died suddenly. Many say he was poisoned by his son, the current Baron. Such talk always occurs when a ruler the people are happy with passes suddenly and otherwise in the prime of health. The young Baron was not yet twenty and sought prestige and power.
Things were peaceful until then. Humans and elves lived together. Well, the elves in their woods and the humans in their towns, but peacefully traded and talked and worked together. It was not uncommon to see an elf walk the city streets or a human live in the woods.
“But the king had been fighting wars and needed ships, which meant trees. So hoping to please the King, the young baron began taking trees. At first the elves helped with the selection, but the Baron was impatient and to curry royal favor he began cutting trees wholesale. The elves met and protested and then suddenly, bands of men began attacking the elf settlements. Quietly at first, then more boldly as his plan worked. Finally, when it became clear that the Baron was behind the attacks, the elves sought to speak with him and discover a solution. He had six elders imprisoned in this dungeon and executed for attempting to assassinate him.”
“Were they going to kill him?” Daniel asked.
“No,” Barton replied, “it’s not the elves’ way. Besides, had they intended to kill him they wouldn’t have sent in a group of elders. They would have used other means.
“Well, the Baron used that fabricated story as an excuse to attack the elf villages openly and killed a lot of their kind. The elves fought back and the killing on both sides made things worse. Most of the elves moved deeper into the woods, the rest scattered and don’t join together in large groups unless it’s deep in the woods and secret. It’s been that way for nine years.”
Daniel was fascinated by the tale. Elves, magic, and evil Barons, he loved this kind of story. Except, he reminded himself, he was in this story now.
“You said there was magic. Does everyone have it? I always think of the elves with magic, so do they have any, do the humans have it, too?”
“The elves have most of the magic but not all.” Barton scratched his beard stubble trying to figure out how to explain something so commonly understood by all. Maybe the blow to the face had addled the stranger’s brain.
“Here let me show you,” Barton said. He stood and walked to the corner of the cell. He rummaged in the straw for a few moments then with his hands clasped together returned to sit across from Daniel again.
Daniel could see the movement and hear Barton rummaging. When he sat back down he was closer to Daniel and a little easier to see.
Barton took a deep breath and made himself relax. He thought of an apple, a red shiny apple. As he did, he began to hum, and let the tune and rhythm permeate his body.
Daniel heard the hum become louder and stronger with notes both clear and yet blended smoothly together. He’s humming and sort of chanting at the same time, Daniel observed, and I know this tune. This is the same kind of thing dad collects. Daniel was getting excited. He was about to see what the locals thought of as magic and smiled because he knew his dad would kill to see this.
Barton was sweating now, the chanting and concentration was taking a lot of energy and effort.
Daniel was hardly breathing in anticipation of what the tune would produce. Suddenly, Barton stopped chanting, his breathing heavy from effort, he opened his hands. There in his palms sat a round object the size of a small apple.
It was so shiny Daniel could see the dim light reflect off it. Barton smiled and extended the apple to Daniel. “It’s for you, to break your fast.”
Daniel reached for the apple and examined it slowly. As he thought about the entire performance he realized there had been no magic only chicanery. The old guy had just fished it out of the straw and said he was doing magic. It was a great piece of showmanship like the magic he knew back home, but not real magic, just illusion and poor lighting. Daniel looked the apple over carefully and saw that it was odd. In the bad light it had no blemishes or imperfections of color. It was reddish. It was perfectly red, exactly the same shade of red everywhere. It was more like an artificial apple than a real one.
“Go ahead and taste it,” Barton said. “It is perfectly safe.”
Daniel took the apple and pulled it in two with his fingers. It made that fresh crisp sound an apple should make and the inside was a flawless white. There was also no pith. An odd species but why not, this certainly wasn’t Kansas and he was hungry. Daniel bit into the apple and the sound of teeth sinking into the crisp flesh was followed quickly by the sounds of aggressive spitting.
“This tastes like shit,” Daniel choked out between his attempts to get the offal taste out of his mouth. “What is this thing? Am I poisoned?” He started to wipe his tongue on his clothing but caught himself before he added injury to insult.
“This is the answer to several of your questions,” Barton laughed. “The song is the power, the chant is often a description to aid the magician in visualizing his desire and it is, or was, shit. As you see or taste, perhaps, I am a poor magician who struggles hard to produce an incomplete magic. To bring together all of the senses, to match every detail requires the magician to have rare skill and power. There are few outside the elves who can do this, and to create a perfect apple, exact in every detail, can be accomplished by few even with elven blood. This is only an apple, it often takes a ring of elves to do larger and complex magics and years to be able to work together well.”
“Are you part elf then?” Daniel asked.
Between the growing moonlight and the torchlight leaking in under the door, the accumulation was just starting to provide enough light for Daniel to make out expressions on Barton's face. He could see the odd character was clearly considering how or if he would answer. Barton's face relaxed and he took a deep breath apparently committed to at least telling a story.
"My father preferred hunting and trapping, so my family grew up on the edge of the woods. In those days, elves and people got along fine even though they usually didn't mix much except at markets, fares, and trade days. My father brought us up to respect the woods and the elven ways. Now, I was the youngest of my brothers and sisters so the elves in the area had already had quite a few years to get to know the family and know what kind of folks we were. So by the time I came along, they didn't hardly bat an eye if one of us turned up in their village or fol
lowed them through the woods.
“Everybody knows that elves live a lot longer than regular people, but most of that lifespan comes as adults. Children are pretty much children and all seem to grow up at about the same speed. The young elves and I got along fine and though we all knew we were different, when you're exploring the woods or splashing up a stream those differences don't seem to amount to much. Two of the elves, a brother and sister, became like my own family. We grew up together and they taught me a lot of the elven ways. I was always respectful and they tried really hard to teach me, but being human I guess I never had the patience or the natural ability to do more than skirt around the edge of real magic.
"It takes a real talent to turn offal or a piece of wood into an apple, or a ball of straw into first-class cheese. You have to keep the song pure and the picture perfect. The words of the chant are nothing more than reminders to help with the seeing, tasting, and smelling of that cheese. If you lose focus sometimes just for a second or two, the color will be wrong or the taste may be bland or worse. The elves never tried to hold me back, so I learned a lot of the music and over the years I've learned some ways around a lot of my limitations and developed enough skill to get by."
FOUR
Barton sat there for a while, staring as if he were focused on a scene playing at a great distance. He appeared to Daniel as if he had talked himself into another place in time. The twinkle of the snake oil salesmen had been replaced by a sadness or at least melancholy. "I was a very young man and fancied that somehow I would make Malaina mine. I knew she would live several of my lifetimes, and that's one of the reasons the elves don't often mix with humans, but when you're young anything seems possible.
“If you're enough in love, there's an unspoken agreement not to talk about things like that. You just sort of live appreciating each day you have and don't think much about the tomorrows. We both knew that sooner or later I would grow old and she would have to go on alone.
“What I never considered was a war between elves and humans. That she could be killed, leaving me alone, just wasn't one of the things I ever even imagined. I'll give you a piece of advice boy, one of the things most people don't know is that when you fall in love with an elf you fall in love for life. Something about them is just different, and I don't mean them being tall or having pointy ears. There is the patience and the depth to them that never seems to run out, and they always have that look in their eye like they know a secret you can't ever guess. It's a kind of a sad look and I used to think all that came from living so long, but even the young ones have it so it must just be born in. I spent a lot of my time trying to find ways to amuse her and make that look disappear, even if it was only for a short while."
Barton paused then, obviously thinking back and looking at the pictures in his mind's eye. "I guess when you know you're going to live for five hundred or a thousand years some of the things we humans do because we feel the need to hurry, must give them all a chuckle.
"I never did ask her to marry me. We never even really talked about it, we just had that feeling and it didn't seem necessary. Of course, back then, even though mixing with the elves wasn't frowned on like it is now, an elf-human couple was still pretty uncommon. But you put a man and a woman together, whatever race they may be, and things happen. There are a lot of folks about your age, some living in the cities, some living in the woods, and some in between. They are half-and-half. Must be a couple of thousands of them. They are called a lot of different names but if you walk into a city and ask for the Half quarters most people don't bat an eye.
"They don't have an easy lot these days. Neither side seems all that interested in accepting them, like they might be spying for the others. The ones that came out looking mostly human tend to live with humans as outcasts, and the ones that look mostly elf live on the edge of the woods. They may even have it worse of the two because the humans sure won't have them and the elves don't much trust anything human anymore."
Daniel was now pretty sure he was crazy. He would like to have thought that Barton was some crazy old guy telling tall tales, but the fact that he was sitting on a dirt floor wrapped in a potato sack, covered with bruises and scrapes, and locked in what looked all the world like a castle dungeon, made him want to cling to the idea that this was some strange side effect of the recordings. As Daniel was trying to get a grip on the situation, he was distracted from his own thoughts when Barton chuckled.
"That's more than I've talked in quite a while unless I was trying to separate someone from a little copper. It's obvious that you don't have any money and don't have many prospects of getting any, besides, I figure you're pretty safe to talk to. If any of the Baron's men remember you're down here it will only be because the Baron’s decided to use your death as a little entertainment for the crowd."
Daniel didn't like the sound of this discussion at all. And he was more than a little nervous that somehow this might not be a dream or a coma. When you die in a dream do you die in real life? He wondered.
"Why would they want to execute me?" Daniel asked. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”
"Don't worry too much about it," Barton said with a shrug, "the tournament’s got another couple of days of break down and clean up and they're likely to have forgotten about you by then."
"That's really very comforting," Daniel said without much enthusiasm.
"It's all this trouble between humans and elves. It has left a lot of people scared and out in the cold. Everyone's afraid of the Baron, even his own people. Everybody's looking over their shoulder. Some of the half-breeds look like elves and can't do magic, and some look like humans and can. It was a lot simpler when elves did magic and humans didn't do magic and everybody got along."
Daniel wanted to learn more, but the old man seemed to have run down with that last sentence. Daniel had a lot of questions, but decided to ask one that was less painful. "So, how many different tunes are there?"
Barton was evaluating the boy sitting across from him. He was beginning to look at Daniel as a person instead of simply as a means or a madman. Of course, there was nothing to say he couldn't be both. Or maybe all three. Well, he thought, as the madman said, in for a penny, in for a pound.
“Daniel, let us say for the moment, that you arrived here by magic of your own doing. That raises many questions, and some interesting possibilities. In my life with the elves and since, I have heard of no one who could travel except for the more powerful of the elves from ancient times. Are you sure you have no elf blood in you?” Barton asked.
Daniel didn’t know who his parents were, but he smiled as he thought the one thing he did know was that whoever they were, they were not elves. “I never knew my parents but where I come from there are no elves, or fairies, or magic. We have books and stories about them, but that’s all they are, stories.
“I come from a place called the USA. It is thousands of miles to the west of here across the ocean. We have no magic. We have science and technology and machines. No elves, no trolls, no knights, and no wizards.”
Barton watched as Daniel talked. A land with no elves was possible, or at least so few elves that they lived hidden among the humans. But traveling across the great ocean was a feat of impossibility. This was all very puzzling to Barton. The stranger claimed to know nothing of magic and was indeed convincing in his tale. Yet, he thought nothing of crossing the great ocean. “Do people in your land travel such distances so easily?” Barton asked.
“Most people own cars, machines that you can drive and go great distances, or if you are in a hurry you can travel by jet. A jet can get you here from our East Coast in about six hours. If you’re not in a hurry you can travel by ship and that takes several days.”
Barton could only stare. Such claims were so absurd that even a madman would not likely be so creative, yet the stranger described them as commonly as walking. “If you have no magic how is this accomplished?”
Now Daniel looked hard at Barton for the first
time. It was clear that Barton was torn between amazement and disbelief. Somehow Daniel found that comforting, it gave his own sense of unreality a little well needed company. “No magic, we have powerful machines that carry us at great speed. In the air, they’re called airplanes or jets, and on the ground they are called cars. People fly to England every day and lots of other places. But it sure doesn’t look like this when they get here.”
It was silent in the cell for a while as both Barton and Daniel thought about what they had said and heard. Everything to Daniel felt real, and the detail and complexity of the situation simply had too much clarity to be a dream. But he could not bring himself to accept what he perceived. He wracked his brain trying to remember how he was really injured.
Barton, on the other hand, had heard the ravings and rantings of many lunatics and others who had simply been in their cups too long. None of them, he knew, could ever have concocted such stories with such detail and so matter-of-factly. In his mind, Barton believed that Daniel had performed a very difficult high-level magic by accident. That was more difficult to comprehend than planecars and airjets and the other machines Daniel talked about so casually.
Elves- the Book of Daniel Page 3
