by C. Gockel
“A quick death is more than the queen gives our people!” the elf declares so loudly it is almost a shout.
Tara almost shouts back, and then she has a sudden rush of déjà vu, of being back on the street with the definitely human police officer with Dr. Eisenberg. The police officer and Tara had been shouting past one another … and she feels like that’s what’s happening between her and Naleigh now. She gulps, and her eyes slide around her. She’s in a swamp, surrounded by tiny stone houses with thatch roofs. The sod underneath her feet is damp, she smells stagnant water, and the night is filled with the sounds of strange insects and a strange cooing noise coming from the thatched building directly across from the jail. The only thing that sets this apart from a medieval village is a lamp post near the prison. Instead of a torch, or an electric light, it has a globe at the top with several bugs crawling within, casting an eerie green glow from their bellies. The light shifts and wavers as they move.
“Not much to look at, is it?” says the elf. “It is the queen’s doing.”
It is drab and terrible, but… “Why is Lionel so important?” Tara demands. She remembers all the magic he has. “Is he some sort of powerful sorcerer?”
Naleigh snorts. “Hardly. Except for his talent for opening World Gates, he’s got only enough magic to be a servant.”
Tara touches her face again, and remembers the illusion of clothes Lionel had made.
Naleigh goes on. “But why would he understand more than that? He was born a peasant. I’ve no idea why he was made steward.”
Tara blinks. He sounds jealous. Also … “Steward? Is that like a butler?”
Naleigh scowls. “Yes, it’s like a butler,” he says.
“So, he’s nobody?” Tara says, hope rising in her chest. “Surely there are rules for prisoners of war and—”
“Any servant of the queen is an enemy, and will be punished accordingly,” the man declares.
Tara takes a step back.
He sighs. “But you are not. You have been enchanted, and he’s probably taken more from you than you realize. I am going to help you get home. We don’t want war with humans.”
“I don’t want Lionel to die or be tortured,” Tara says, her eyes flickering around. They’re alone in what she guesses passes for the town square.
The elf says, “He’d not care so much for you.”
Tara remembers Lionel giving her water to drink first and is acutely aware of the lack of pain in her face. Naleigh’s words solidify something in Tara. She knows she’s over her head here. She can’t tell the difference between the Dark Elves and the Light Elves—they all look like Legolas to her—but she knows she can’t leave Lionel behind because Naleigh is wrong. Lionel didn’t enchant her to get her aide. Maybe Lionel is wrong too in some ways if this queen is so evil, but they’re all wrong.
Instead of saying that, she just ducks her chin. “I guess I really don’t have any choice, do I?” She tries to sound scared. Fortunately, she is terrified, and it’s not really a stretch.
“You really don’t,” Naleigh says. “Humans are weak, and the Delta of Sorrows would eat you alive.”
Which is why there’s no one else guarding her, Tara suspects. Tara looks at him from beneath her lashes. She’s got a few inches of height on him. “I’ll follow; you lead,” she says meekly.
Naleigh gives what to Tara appears to be a very arrogant nod. Turning his back, he begins walking toward the village edge, the keys to the cell jingling on his belt.
Tara grips the water bottle more tightly. She follows him quietly until they are just two steps into the trees, and then, gritting her teeth, she brings the bottle down hard on the back of his head.
Like hauling an elf through your garage, hitting someone over the head is another one of those things that looks easier in the movies. The impact from the swing runs all the way up her arm, right to her teeth, and the damn bottle doesn’t even break. Tara’s mouth drops open in dismay. She’s afraid she’s just given herself away for nothing. But then Naleigh wavers, and goes to his knees. Putting his hands over his head, he cries, “What are you—?”
“Sorry,” she cuts him off with a whisper, “but you can’t kill him.” Kneeling down, she rips the keys from his belt.
Naleigh tries to stand, but tips over and begins vomiting.
“Sorry, sorry!” Tara whispers again, dashing away. The village is empty and she is completely unopposed as she runs into the little jail. There’s only one cell, and even in the dark, with just the dim light of the bug lamp filtering in through the door, she finds it. She peeks in the bars. She can’t be certain in the gloom, but it looks like Lionel is sitting with his head in his hands by the wall. “Lionel, get up!” Tara hisses, fumbling to get a key into the lock—there are a couple and she’s going to have to try them all.
Lionel lifts his head, his face pale as the moon. “Tara?” he whispers.
The first key clicks, and Tara smiles, swinging the door open.
“Let’s go!” she says.
Lionel stumbles to his feet, and she throws his arm over her shoulder like she had that first night. He’s taller, but not really heavier. She thinks she can see the outline of his hip bones through her sweats. Outside, she hears Naleigh shout something in Elvish. Or Dark Elvish. Or whatever they speak.
Stumbling beside her, Lionel whispers, “Tara, you can’t make it with me. My leg—”
“You’re making it,” Tara says, tears prickling at her eyes. “I just beaned a man for you.”
Lionel mutters, “Gibberish,” but he doesn’t stop moving.
They step outside, into the full glow of the bug light. Tara blinks and finds herself staring down the shaft of a crossbow bolt. She gulps. Lionel goes still. She hears the strange cooing noise, and what sounds like a deep clucking. From the forest, she hears shouts and fast footsteps. Tara feels her legs go weak. She has really, really blown it.
From the crossbow comes a snap. Tara gasps and waits for pain.
Pain doesn’t come. The man with the crossbow stares down at the bolt. It’s broken in half. Behind her, Tara feels heat, and in front of her there is orange light and a crackling noise. The loud clucking turns into rooster-like screams. Lionel drags her sideways, and the guy with the crossbow looks up from his weapon to the spot Tara and Lionel had been.
He shouts something in Elvish, spins in place, and looks right through them. Tara looks down, wondering for a moment if she’s ceased to exist … and can’t see herself. She looks in Lionel’s direction and he’s gone too, but she can feel the weight of his hand on her shoulder, and the brush of his side against hers. It’s the weight of him that keeps her from screaming and bolting. She takes a deep breath and reminds herself that Lionel told her he can make himself invisible … why not her, too?
Lionel pushes her past the guard, his steps becoming rapidly surer. From the forest, more elves with crossbows emerge, they shout, and Tara sees one loading his weapon, his gaze directly on her. She bends down, and Lionel copies her motion. She hears a whiz overhead, and a thunk as the bolt strikes another house. The man curses, and Lionel pushes her forward. The light that had been in front of them leaps … it’s flames in the thatch of the roof across from the jail, and they’re walking straight for it. Behind her there’s a crash, and sparks fly. She hears a loud thumping in front of them and the wooden door of that building explodes outward. A giant chicken nearly two feet taller than her rushes directly at Tara. Lionel yanks her to the left, and she just misses being trampled. More chicken-horses stream from the building, squawking in terror. As they lurch past, she realizes that they have bodies of horses attached to their chicken necks, chicken feet, chicken wings, and chicken-feathered tails that fill the air with feathers … She smells something like burning hair times eleven, hears shouting, and she’s paralyzed in place as the chicken-horses mill about her, flapping their apparently mostly useless chicken wings and screeching. Over their backs she sees frustrated elves. Suddenly, Lionel’s weight is gone and s
he’s standing alone in a rain of sparks. Her heart falls, and then she hears Lionel. “On two!” She feels hands beneath her arms, but can’t see anything except the side of a huge chicken-horse right in front of her. One behind her bumps her forward, the hands under her arms pull, and she hears Lionel cry, “Two!” even though she never heard the “One”, and she’s awkwardly draped over a chicken-horse’s back.
It jerks forward and up, wings flapping madly. They’re not as useless as Tara had thought, and she finds herself staring down at an elf village that seems to be made of fire. Every hut is alight, and elves are running everywhere. The chicken lands a little beyond the jail with breath-stealing impact. Tara feels something hot on her neck, and hears Lionel curse, and the smell of burning hair is way too close. The chicken-horse leaps again, flapping its feathers, and the heat turns to a burn so painful that Tara cries out. The chicken lands just beyond the village, and the cry turns to a huff of impact. The chicken-horse runs to the trees. She feels Lionel’s hand on the back of her neck, and hears him murmur softly in Elvish.
She still can’t see him, but she feels his knees in her side, and one of his hands slides over her butt—which is probably the only thing keeping her aboard the horse-chicken, but still makes her feel like an idiot. In the movies, the cowboy always pulls the girl up sidesaddle style, or at least lets her get a leg over the beast. But she guesses Lionel isn’t really a cowboy, and a giant chicken isn’t really a horse. The trees are a blur beside them, and Tara struggles to sit. “Can we please stop so I can at least …?” Get my butt out of the air. She can’t quite say the last for embarrassment, and she isn’t sure she’s heard over the chicken-horse’s squawking, but it slows to nearly a stop, and Lionel’s leg appears by her nose. Or rather, a shadow appears by her nose, where before she’d seen slight starlight and trees through his body.
“Tara, llee wanlewee, nil,” he says.
He can’t understand her. But perhaps he senses her discomfort, because he shifts his hands to her stomach, and helps her reorient herself. He keeps one arm around her waist, even when she’s astride. His thighs brace her on either side, and her back is against his chest. The night is chilly, and she’s glad she’s wearing her winter coat … Lionel must be cold. He’s only wearing socks and her sweats, and those aren’t fitting him well anymore. She glances down, and can see her hands, dark shadows against the chicken-horse’s head plumage.
“Hippalectryon,” Lionel says, patting its neck.
The beast coos slightly.
It takes a moment for their former conversation to come back to her. “Chicken-horse,” Tara mutters. “Where are we going?” She asks before she remembers he can’t understand her … Why can’t he understand her? They’re no longer inside the Promethean Wire cell.
His hand tightens around her stomach, and he gives the chicken-horse a light kick on the flanks. They whiz through the trees again, water splashing all around them. Tara’s not sure how long they travel, but her legs are getting tired, and the adrenaline must be wearing off, because she feels the burn of exhaustion behind her eyes when they reach a hillock with only a single enormous tree at the top. The chicken-horse heads straight up it. Tara’s just thinking that they’re awfully exposed, and she doesn’t know how to convey that, when Lionel surprises her by saying, “The water distorts my magic. But it’s dry here and I can understand you.”
They’re underneath the tree’s low boughs, and he slips from the chicken-horse, offering her a hand that she can just make out by the starlight. “Do you want to rest for a moment?” he asks. Chicken-horse shifts beneath her and Tara looks around. “Aren’t you worried about us being seen?”
“Yes,” he says, which makes Tara’s stomach clench.
“But we’re lost and I need to climb the tree to see where we are.”
“Oh.” It comes out of her like a tiny hiccup. Chicken-horse shifts again, and Tara has to grab onto its neck to not fall off. It occurs to Tara that without Lionel, she’s going to be kissing the dirt. She slides off, spins around, finds Lionel much closer than she expected, and her eyes level with his chin.
She gulps and looks up. She can just make out his light eyes in the darkness.
“I think I know a way to understand you in the swamp,” he whispers, not backing up.
“That would be good,” Tara murmurs. She feels the lack of space between them acutely. She wants to back up, and at the same time she wants to step forward and wrap her arms around him. The events of the evening are catching up with her, and despite her terror, she is so glad he isn’t dead. He has a soulmate … but a hug … that would be just friendly, right?
She doesn’t move.
Lionel does move. The inches between them vanish and he puts his hands on either side of her face. Her gaze falls to his lips, and the urge to kiss them is so strong that she scrunches her eyes shut. She is not that type of woman … he’ll soon be back with his soulmate … and …
His lips press against her forehead, and heat and electricity spreads from the spot to her toes. His body loosens, and he sighs into her hair. His fingers flutter on her cheeks, leaving an echo of warmth with their brush. Tara’s fingers drift to his chest, to push him away, but then she doesn’t. She lets her hands rest there, curling them into the now-tight sweatshirt. She savors the energy running through her—maybe it’s magic.
At last Lionel pulls back, but his hands stay on her cheeks. “Did that hurt?”
He’s still too close. Tara bows her head, to keep from thinking about kissing him. She’s suddenly very aware of how much she smells like burnt hair. “Nope.”
“Did it work?” he whispers.
Stepping back and out of his reach, Tara finally dares to look at him. “Did what work?” There’s a good foot between them now. She shivers. It seems too far.
His face splits in a wide smile. “It did work.”
One of her eyebrows rise and she waves a hand in the dark. “So now you’re speaking gibberish, trying to confuse me … because that’s fun, in the middle of a swamp, while we’re running for our lives.”
“Actually, I’m speaking Elvish, not gibberish,” he says, cocking an eyebrow.
“No, you’re not, you’re …” Tara throws a hand to her mouth. The long string of syllables that just came from it weren’t English, Spanish, or anything she learned in the four years of French she took in high school.
“And you are speaking Elvish, too,” he says. The smile is gone. “I’ve never done that before, but I’ve read about it.” He lets out a long breath. “The language is imprinted in your mind now. You should be able to understand Elvish without magic, in the dark waters, and in a room without magic.”
Tara touches her forehead. “You couldn’t just perform the same trick on yourself and speak English?”
He shakes his head. “I wish I could. I can only imprint languages I truly know—Elvish, Asgardian, Vanir, and Muspelheim … and I suppose I could give you what I know of Jotunn.”
Now would be a great time to say something funny about how she’d had to learn French the hard way or … or … something, but all she can say is, “Oh,” and then, “I guess you should climb that tree.” She puts a finger to her lips, surprised at the lyrical syllables that just poured from them.
Lionel smiles one more time, takes a few steps back, trips, almost lands on his butt, and scowls as he catches himself.
“Are you all right?” Tara asks.
“Fine,” he mutters, and it’s dark, but she swears his ears press against his head. Without another word, he goes to the tree trunk, leaps, catches a branch, and pulls himself up.
Tara wants to call up to him, ask him what he’s looking for, but she stays quiet, surveying the land around them, and hugging herself in the chill. There isn’t much to see. All the tree trunks look alike to her, their branches like jagged black claws in the bright starlight and glow of an oddly shaped moon.
Her eyes widen at the sky … there is no Big Dipper, or North Star. She almost laughs,
feeling like she’s tumbled into a Star Trek episode. The night hums around her, with what she thinks are insects, although nothing has bitten her. Chicken-horse coos and tucks its head back into a wing. Somewhere she hears a plop in the water, and then another. Tara backs against the tree trunk. It’s wet, slimy, and cold.
She hears another plop, and what sounds like a bird call.
Chicken-horse lifts its head, gives a squawk, and bolts in a circle around the tree. With a shriek and the flap of wings, it takes off into the air, leaving Tara coughing in a cloud of feathers. Swatting them away, Tara finds herself staring down the barrel of a gun. In English, the white-haired elf from the cell hisses from the other end, “Tara Lupita Gibson, don’t say a word.”
Tara opens her mouth to scream, but no sound comes out.
The hippalectryon takes to the air, and Lionel’s concentration is broken. His heart falls. The animal’s instincts had kept them safe in the dark swamp. Without it, they’ll need any information he can gain from his perch. He’s heard of “safe houses” close to the Golden Road that divides the Delta of Sorrows from the queen’s lands. Travelers can hole up within, safe from the swamp’s monsters. But from the tree he can’t see any sign of the Golden Road.
He swallows, and feels an echo in his bones of the pain of only hours earlier. He’s afraid to know what he looks like now. Tara’s kiss had reassured him that he doesn’t look monstrous. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t an abomination. He thinks about the question he cannot answer when people learn of his rise in social station. Who is your father? He’d always reply, my mother’s soulmate was Sol. When he tried to ask his mother, all she said was, don’t ask silly questions.
All his life, he has looked like the son of Sol. Why change now?
His stomach clenches and he shakes his head. He cannot think about that now. He needs to focus on how they got here. His memories from their time in transit are disjointed, but he thinks he remembers Dark Elves in the fortress around the World Gate discussing moving him and Tara to the “interior.” They had expected the outpost to be overrun by Light Elves.
