What Do You Say to a Naked Elf?

by Cheryl Sterling

  “Does the name ‘Anjinaine’ mean anything to you?” she asked, watching his face closely.

  Bryant paled significantly. “She is my foster sister. My parents died shortly after my birth, and her family took me in. She lives in Shallen.”

  Jane nodded. Yes, it made sense to be named after someone he loved dearly. She shuddered, preparing herself for the next question, going for broke, all the cards and marbles and chips on the table.

  “How about Marion Drysdale?”

  A strangled sound came from deep within him. The last vestige of color washed from his face, and he sat down heavily on the floor, a devastated heap. The pale morning sun threading through the windows dimmed.

  “Yes,” he said in a whisper. “A long time ago.”

  He didn’t elaborate. Jane didn’t need to ask. With care, because it still hurt to do so, she moved her left arm, pulling up the loose sleeve to expose the tattoo emblazoned at the top.

  “And this? Have you seen this before?”

  The words leapt out. Neon colors, strobe lights, and phosphorescent glow in the dark paint couldn’t have made them more obvious.

  Bryant stared at it, stock-still. Finally, he wet his lips and turned his gaze to hers, torture in his eyes.

  “ ‘Forever joined, heart upon heart, world upon world,’ ” he quoted. “Yes. I wrote that for her.”

  “Her?” Charlie asked, miles from their intricate world.

  “Marion,” Bryant said, a caress in his voice, never looking from Jane.

  She felt her heart tighten. Knowing his next words, she tried to brace herself.

  His voice quavered as he said, “I think I’m your father.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Jane felt as if she’d been stabbed again. Her heart twisted in pain.

  “No,” she protested, holding out her hand, trying to keep the truth at bay. “My father was Ray Drysdale. He died from a heart attack four years ago. My parents were married for thirty years. They had a happy marriage!” She shouted the last words, jumping from her chair. Moving to the other side of the room, far from Bryant, she asked, “How dare you say otherwise?”

  Fear choked her. She didn’t want to believe him, even against all the mounting evidence. How could her mother abandon her family to come here and have an affair?

  Sitting on the floor, leaning back against the chair, Bryant stared at her. Tears filled his eyes. He held a shaking hand to his face.

  “I never knew,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t have let her go if I’d known. Believe me, Anjinaine—”

  “Don’t call me that,” she cried. “My name is Jane Drysdale. Not Anjinaine. Not Ann Jane. Just plain Jane. No middle name. Capital J, small a, small n, small e. Jane.”

  Her heart raced feverishly. She wanted to throw something at him in retaliation for all the hurt he’d inflicted on her. Her gaze swept the room, looking for a heavy object, and came to rest on a cross-stitched sampler hanging on the wall. Staring back at her, in shades of blue wool, were the same words she’d tattooed on her arm.

  With a cry of anguish, she slumped to the floor. Charlie rushed to her side. Weakly, she batted at him, still angry with him for lying to her, but he ignored her. Lifting her, he carried her to the bed in the corner and sat down. From the relative safety of his arms, she decided to delay her anger at him. She could only fight one battle at a time.

  Sniffling into his shirt, Jane looked up at the sound of a knock on the door. Hugh stuck his head through the doorway.

  “What’s the delay—” He stopped and stared at Bryant. “Trouble?” he asked after a moment.

  “Trouble,” Charlie replied. “We’re going to be a while. Can you make sure we’re not disturbed?”

  Hugh nodded and left, quietly closing the door.

  Charlie moved her head so she had to face him. “It’s time for answers to some of your questions,” he said softly. He touched her hair, tucking a strand behind her ear, his fingers outlining the tip.

  As if I need reminding. Jane met his gaze and found a strength in their brown depths. She’d leaned on him in the past for much worse than this. This will be a piece of cake. Only it’s awfully hard to swallow.

  “Yes,” she agreed, wanting to burst into tears.

  Charlie wiped her cheeks with the ball of his thumb. Taking her hand, he led her to a rocking chair. He and Bryant sat opposite.

  “Now,” he said, addressing their guide. “Let’s start at the beginning. We need to hear this tale.”

  Bryant nodded and brushed at the tearstains on his cheek with the back of his hand.

  “First,” he said, looking at Jane. “I must know. Marion—your mother—is she well?”

  “She’s fine,” Jane replied, the resentment she felt against this man replaced with warmth as she thought of her mother. It had been almost six weeks since she’d last seen her.

  “Good.” The older man nodded. He looked ready to say more, but stopped, a great pain darkening his features.

  Charlie stirred at her side. “Bryant,” he prompted.

  “Yes, yes.” Bryant nodded again and took a deep breath, picking his words with care. “Twenty-seven years ago, I was a raw young man of twenty-three. I’d traveled all of Lowth and decided it wasn’t big enough. I went to Earth.” He chuckled ruefully, a slight smile on his lips at the memory. “It didn’t last long, two days perhaps. Marion inadvertently came back with me.”

  “How?” Jane asked, her mind clicking. “I mean, the portal opens along I-96. I’m not even sure the road was there at that time. Why would she be alongside the road, following a stranger?”

  Of course, that’s what she’d done. At his look of puzzlement, Jane glanced toward Charlie.

  “You know the portal is unstable,” he said. “Not only does the timing fluctuate, but also its location.”

  His words hit her like an ax. “You mean, if I went back today, I might not come out by my car?” Where would she end up and how would she get home without her purse, which contained cash and her ID? Not that it would do any good, melted by the heat, lying in her car in the graveyard for extra crispy Neons.

  Charlie nodded. “It’s possible.”

  “Then the night you followed Tivat—”

  “We might not have returned near the Sentinel.”

  Another thought crossed her mind. She looked at Bryant. “What do you mean, twenty-seven years ago? I’m twenty-four.”

  He hesitated before answering. “She was part of my life for three years.”

  “No.” A cold pit opened in her stomach. “Kevin is two years older than me. He’s not Elf . . . is he?” Oh, God, her mother cheated not once but twice.

  Charlie reached over and touched her arm. She swung back to him, seeking logic and reason.

  “We don’t know much about it,” he said. “But we think time fluctuates as well.”

  “Time,” she murmured. “The space-time continuum thing.” She’d watched enough Quantum Leap episodes to know how that worked. It also explained how no one had ever said anything about her mother disappearing.

  Swallowing too much information hurt her brain. She’d assimilate all the facts later, when she could sort it out.

  “Go on,” she told Bryant.

  “Marion followed me by accident when I returned. The portal closed and stayed that way for three years.”

  He looked from Charlie to Jane. “She was distraught. She’d left behind a husband and children. It killed her to think of not seeing them again.”

  Jane tried to imagine her mother at that time. She’d have been twenty-five, married seven years, a mother for five. Of course she’d have been upset. And I’ve repeated the pattern, she thought, her mouth dry.

  “I took her to Shallen to stay with my family,” Bryant continued. “At that time, the portal emptied near Malik. I checked it almost every day; nothing was more important to me than making her happy by returning her home. But it remained closed.” He leaned back, stretching his legs.

  “Eventually, sh
e climbed out of her depression and accepted that she’d be in Lowth the rest of her life.”

  Charlie moved his chair closer to Jane and squeezed her hand. The coldness in her stomach spread. What if she couldn’t get back? Lowth seemed to have plans for her. . . . She shook her head, focusing on this unknown chapter in her mother’s life.

  Poor Mom. Every day that passed took her farther away from Daddy, Sheila and the boys.

  Except her Daddy hadn’t been Ray Drysdale. And her mother hadn’t been gone long enough—Earth time—for him to realize his wife carried another man’s child. With a start, Jane knew she would have done exactly as her mother had: forget about Lowth and go on as if nothing had happened. No wonder she’d been so upset when Jane tattooed the Elven verse on her arm.

  “Did you love her?” she asked Bryant, noting for the first time that his green eyes were her own.

  A softness infused his face. “With all my heart. Two years after her arrival, I married her.”

  “And?” she asked, entranced by his narration. It was if she were listening to a bedtime story, not the tale of her parents.

  Sadness darkened his eyes. “We’d almost given up visiting the portal. I don’t know why we went to the meadow that day, except the weather was perfect. We packed a lunch—”

  “And made love,” Jane finished, thinking of her last time with Charlie.

  Bryant nodded.

  How I spent my summer vacation. Conceived in a meadow, the union of a human woman and an Elf. Unbidden, Jane’s gaze strayed to Charlie. It had been two weeks since Midsummer’s Eve. She’d know soon if she carried his baby.

  “We talked of having children,” Bryant said, following her train of thought. “To take the place of the ones she’d lost. We agreed it would be named after me if it was a boy, and Anjinaine, my sister, if it was a girl. Ironic, isn’t it, that her replacement child ended up being raised with them?”

  Jane wanted to cry at this tale of bittersweet love. “What of when she left?”

  Pain flashed across Bryant’s face. “We had so little time. The portal started to close. She had to make a decision in seconds—stay with me, or return to her family.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “She made the right choice. I’ll never fault her for that, but it hurt unbearably. It still does. I don’t know if I could have survived if I’d known she carried my child.”

  Conflicting emotions assailed Jane—compassion, shock, desire to believe him, and an equally strong abhorrence of the whole subject. She looked to Charlie for guidance. She could count on him to give her a fair assessment.

  “Nothing else explains what’s happened since you’ve been here. It seems incredible, but I think he tells the truth.”

  “What of Lowth?” she asked. “I still feel as if it has a hand in this, that we’re being led down a path of its choosing. Maybe my ears and what I do with the wind and the rain are because Lowth wants me to be something else, some unknown factor in this puzzle.”

  Bryant held up a finger to make a point. “I can control the wind and rain,” he said, sealing the deal on her paternity. “As I said, my parents died when I was an infant, but I’ve been told they had strong powers.”

  Jane slumped in her chair, finally accepting the truth. “Where do we go from here?”

  “To Malik,” Bryant replied. “To Blacwin. I sent your mother home to Earth. I’ll do the same for my daughter.”

  Daughter. Jane swallowed the word. It sounded foreign.

  “I think,” Charlie said, “this needs to be kept a secret, with only the three of us knowing the truth. We’ve had complications enough on this trip.”

  Jane nodded, though seeing Eagar’s face when he learned of this tempted her.

  “Deal,” she said, her gaze on Bryant. “Forgive me if I can’t call you Dad.”

  “Perhaps not yet,” he agreed, smiling sadly.

  Within half an hour, they were on the road again. Jane took the blame for the delay, telling an impatient Eagar that she’d felt ill and had to lie down.

  After the midday meal, Charlie rode to Jane’s side. Since leaving the cabin, she’d been quiet. Too quiet; a dangerous situation in his experience.

  “Care to talk about it?” he asked. His pony stumbled, and he pulled on the reins to bring it back onto the path. They’d passed from Bryant’s valley and ridden the steep inclines of the lower Andair Mountains. Tomorrow they’d reach the swift-moving Fendi River and more dangerous trails.

  Jane shot Charlie a glance meant to melt steel. “I’m not talking to you,” she said, turning her head away.

  The flush of anger in her cheeks warmed his blood. He was glad she was getting spunky again.

  “It’s not like you to pout,” he said.

  “It’s not like you to lie.” She kicked her pony, which trotted forward several steps before resuming its sedate pace.

  He realized what was bothering her. “Aren’t you upset, hearing about Bryant and your mother?”

  “Don’t change the subject. You’ve known about my ears for two weeks, and you’ve said nothing. And, yes, I am upset about Bryant. How would you feel if your world was spun upside down? My father isn’t who I thought he was, my mother lied to me, and, on top of everything, I’m half Elf.”

  “I’m half Elf, too,” he said, angry that she thought so little of her newfound heritage. “But I know who my father is. It isn’t the man Hugh found in the woods, it’s the man who raised me—Owen Tanner. Your father is the man who took care of you when you were sick. He’s the man who came to your rescue—and I can bet you had to be rescued frequently. It’s not someone you met a few hours ago.” The fervor with which he spoke was surprising. Jane moved him, made him want to do wild things, to be spontaneous. Crazy Charlie of Malin.

  “We’re still connected, Bryant and I,” she argued, bent on proving her point.

  “No more than I am to Isleighah,” he said. He regretted the words the moment he said them.

  She pounced like a starving man onto a banquet. “That’s another thing. Hugh told me we’re close to the path to Isleighah. Why won’t you go there and ask if they knew your parents?”

  Old memories returned—childhood ridicule for being different, the grim determination to fit in. Jane brought it all to the surface. Unconsciously, he looked to the northeast, remembering the woodland kingdom from the only time he’d been within its borders. Cool, green forests, barely touched by the Dymynsh, cascading waterfalls, a softness of magic.

  Angry for allowing himself to be seduced by the thought, he shook it off. “My job is to guard you,” he grunted.

  “It will only be a few hours out of our way—”

  “No. I don’t want to talk about it.” He couldn’t have been more adamant in his refusal to go. Didn’t she understand how little he cared about that part of his life?

  “Stubborn man.”

  “Smart man,” he corrected. “It doesn’t interest me.”

  “Liar.”

  “I learned a long time ago to pick my battles.” And you won’t win this one.

  Jane switched topics with a speed that made him dizzy. “Is that why you lied to me about my ears?”

  He leaned forward in his saddle, allowing a slight breeze to stir under his tunic and around his wings. “You’ve had a lot to think about the last few weeks, Jane. The changes in your appearance didn’t strike me as important.”

  Her green eyes darkened with hurt. “Do you know how hard it’s going to be, returning to Earth with these things? The Spock jokes will be unending.”

  “What?” She still baffled him.

  “Never mind. I can’t function in society with these ears.”

  She could in his society. Had she thought about staying here? She talked about going back, or him joining her. There was a third option. It hurt that she hadn’t thought of it.

  “You yelled at me about lying to you, but you haven’t been straight either. What else have you lied to me about?” She continued listing his sh
ortcomings.

  “Capp’ear’s not dead,” he blurted. Damn, he hadn’t wanted to say it so baldly.

  “What?” She almost fell off her pony.

  He shrugged. “You wanted the truth.”

  Sarcasm dripped from her words. “Your truths come about two weeks after the fact. I thought you killed him.”

  “Well . . . I probably did. He couldn’t have lived long with that wound. He fled while I tended to you, and we were too concerned about your injury to look for him.” Concerned? He’d been scared to death she’d die on him. Even now, she should have been resting instead of traipsing over mountains.

  “You think he died?” Jane asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “How could he survive?” The knife had gone into Capp’ear’s shoulder to the hilt. He’d had no medical attention. . . .

  Hardness edged Jane’s words. “How did he survive the swamp? Nothing he does is normal.”

  “Forget about him.”

  “Yeah, I have other problems, don’t I? A father returned from . . . well, wherever; an upcoming meeting with a crazed wizard; and a boyfriend who can’t tell the truth.” Angry, she kicked her pony, and this time, it trotted away.

  Boyfriend?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I’m still mad at him, Jane tried to convince herself two days later. Watching Charlie ride at the front of the line, his wings folded under his loose shirt, the way he clenched the pony’s side with his thighs—the man made her hot. It seemed like forever since they’d been together.

  And there was no hope of being together. At least, not until she’d defeated Blacwin, a showdown that loomed closer. Hugh estimated less than a week before they’d be at Shallen’s gates.

  This morning they’d passed the turnoff to Isleighah. Charlie again refused to listen to her pleas to get in touch with the fairies. They were so close, and if the stubborn, mule-headed man would listen to her, he might find some answers to his past.

  If Lowth was manipulating her, and her elf heritage meant something important, could Charlie’s fairy blood be as significant? She couldn’t shake the feeling that they needed to have a better understanding of his roots.