“Help us do what?” Sigfried looked both skeptical and eager.
“To learn, to grow in your gifts, to be ready to face the perils you will soon face.”
“Perils?” the princess asked stiffly.
“Perils!” Sigfried exclaimed enthusiastically. “What kind of perils? Will it involve bombs? Explosions? Horrible dismemberments? Disasters? Disembowelments?” He turned to the dragon. “Lucky, quick! What other perils begin with ‘dis?’”
“Dark powers grip your world, and darker still are waking,” said the elf. “Harsh is the path that lies before you. You will need all of your gifts, if you are to triumph.”
“Dark powers! Wicked!” Siggy jumped down from where he sat atop the root-wall and clapped his hands together once. “Let’s go slaughter baddies! Lucky can breathe fire on them, and I can stab them with my knife. Or maybe magic them? Only I don’t think opening a door at them is going to do much. I need to learn more magic. Especially, kick-butt destructive magic. You, Weird Elfish Tree Person, can you teach me to throw a fireball? What about a lightning bolt?”
“We’ll learn to throw lightning in Music,” Rachel murmured.
“Someday, shmumday.” Siggy waved a hand at her dismissively. “I want to know what this extremely…” he stared at the inordinately-curvaceous, seven-foot tall elven woman for an uncomfortably long time before blinking twice. “er…generous…tree lady can teach me now.”
Siggy strode toward the elf as he spoke. A few feet from her, his eyes lost their focus. His expression became confused. Lucky darted forward and wrapped around him, opening his mouth, as if to breathe fire on the elf.
Siggy backpedaled with a quick indrawn breath. “That was…weird. I thought I saw armies marching through darkness…ugly blokes with horns. A dark man with eyes of fire and wings of smoke glared at me.”
“That happens sometimes,” the elf said kindly. “Come walk with me, and I will tell you of your gift.” She reached out to Sigfried.
Rachel took her own slow step backward, for she had remembered something important.
Elves were dangerous.
The Unwary did not grasp this. Rachel’s older sister Sandra, who loved all things mundane, had explained to her how the Unwary thought fairy folks to be supremely natural, at one with forest and streams, like Lenni Lenape braves or Maori tribesmen. They believed the risks in dealing with elves were mainly from the tricks fairies liked to play on mortals.
They did play tricks, true, but that was not from whence came the true danger.
The most perilous thing about elves was that they were not natural. They were native to the other world, the world of fey. They clothed themselves in magic, the way humans clothed themselves in cotton and wool. Where they walked, the material world awoke. Trees grew eyes. Tables picked up their legs and scuttled like spiders. Knives turned on their wielders and slashed them. Elves breathed the atmosphere of dreams and enchantment. It was not an atmosphere beneficial to humans.
Elves were dangerous, in and of themselves.
Rachel swallowed with some difficulty. “Maybe you shouldn’t go, Sigfried.”
“And miss out on a gift?” Siggy charged forward. Lucky snaked suspiciously beside him. “Lead the way, weird tree lady. I fear nothing.”
“Except ghosts,” Joy murmured from the open bag. Siggy shot back a dark look. Despite her trepidations, Rachel could not keep her lips from quirking in amusement.
The girls waited in nervous silence. Sigfried walked with their hostess. Her steps gracefully avoided the tender plants, while his stomped forward heedlessly. Marvelous fragrances rose from the herbs, as he crushed them underfoot. Here and there, snaking through the garden, they caught a glimpse of the golden and red glitter that was Lucky the Dragon.
A deep frown marred the princess’s perfect brow. “I don’t trust her.”
“But Mr. Gideon vouched for her,” said Rachel. “She must be the friend he mentioned.”
“Mr. Gideon disappointed me deeply,” intoned the princess. “I believed we had a meeting of minds, but I was mistaken. He may not be reliable either.”
Rachel started to object that she had understood Mr. Gideon but demurred. That would only make the princess’s back stiffer. Instead, she turned and examined the glade. Her eyes lingered on the hollow in the tree. What was it was like inside? Wild and rugged and dripping with sap? Neatly-appointed chambers carved into the living wood? This was the very kind of place her hero, Daring Northwest, wrote about in his books. She longed to peek inside.
She could not wait to return to school and tell Gaius everything. If only she could tell him about the inside of the tree, too.
Sigfried came rushing back, waving a small bag and a leather-bound book. “She said I’m destined to be a great Alchemist! These herbs? Each one improves the effects of certain magical essences, when added to talismans and elixirs. See this one?” He held up a silvery-green sprig with waxy silver-blue berries. “It’s moonberry. And this,” he held up a plant with an orangey sheen, “is scarpelhoar. Here’s a little book that explains how to use them. And here is a bag of seeds, so I can plant my own. But, until they grow, the Tree Lady said I can gather all the herbs I want.” His grin could have blinded the charioteer of the sun. “Me! A great Alchemist!”
“I have a destiny,” Joy piped up from the bag. “There’s a prophecy about me and a girl my age. We’re supposed to stop a terrible evil. I only know this because I heard my mother and father talking once late at night. I am pretty sure they didn’t want me to hear. Was one of you born early in the morning on the winter solstice fourteen years ago? That’s part of the prophecy. The other is about the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. That’s me.”
“I was born on the summer solstice,” observed Nastasia. “Not the winter.”
“Huh. That’s close…but not it,” Joy pouted. “Weird.”
“Weren’t you born in Australia, Nastasia?” Rachel asked.
The princess nodded.
“Then, your summer solstice is our winter solstice, right?”
“Miss Griffin, I believe you are correct.” Nastasia inclined her head toward Rachel. “Perhaps, I am the other girl in your prophecy, Miss O’Keefe.”
“You!” Joy let out a squeal of delight. Sticking her head and shoulders out of the bag, she squeezed the princess’s hand. “I knew we were meant to be friends. You’re the greatest. The best person in the universe! You’re better than peanut butter! Better than salt! Salt could take lessons from you in how to be savory.”
Nastasia did not yank her hand away, but she looked uncomfortable.
“Whatever.” Sigfried rushed back into the garden, where he began picking the mixed herbs by the handfuls and stuffing them in his pockets. “I’m collecting loot!”
“Miss Romanov?” The elf’s bell-like tones rang like chimes in the breeze.
The princess took a deep breath. Then, with supreme dignity, she climbed over the root-wall and joined the elf lady. Rachel watched with longing as the two of them disappeared into the Roanoke Tree. Sighing, she went to help Sigfried gather plants.
The pale silver-green herb and the metallic orangey one grew amidst stalks of other plants. One, a golden plant with a flame-like design on the leaves, bore many tiny pink flowers. Another had a small reddish leaf that exuded a strong, spicy perfume. Rachel used one of the bags she had been given for the royal yarrow and moly. The scent rising from the severed stalks was glorious, though she had no words to describe the fragrances.
As she breathed in the exotic herbs, she wondered suddenly what the elf would tell her. What would her gift be? Would she like it? Sigfried was delighted to discover he had the potential to be a great Alchemist. She could hear him boasting about it to Lucky. Rachel was glad for him, but she feared she might have found that destiny disappointing.
She chewed thoughtfully on her lip. All three of her friends were chosen ones with some great fate or task they were destined to perform. Did she have a prophecy, too? If she did not, was that
bad?
Sigfried, Nastasia, and Joy were super sorcerers—the best young sorcerers anyone had seen in generations—while Rachel was just…Rachel. Thinking about it, she decided she would rather not have a prophesied destiny. Being compelled to carry out some pre-designed plan did not appeal to her. She wanted to be free to find the future that best suited her.
Rachel picked herbs and breathed in the amazing fragrances. The more time went by, the more her thoughts wandered back to the gap in her memory. How had she climbed over the stone wall? When had she done it? Why had she gone? Her mind worried at the missing moments the way the tongue worried the tender gum left behind by a lost tooth. She did not want a magic gift or a destiny.
What she wanted was to make certain that nothing ever interfered with her memory.
Nastasia emerged from the tree and glided back to where she had left her bag and broom.
“What about me?” cried Joy. “Do I have a gift?”
“Let us see, child.” The elf stood again in the garden. “Come along.”
Joy scampered from the bag and ran inside.
Siggy returned, his arms laden with cuttings. “Um…can I put some in your house-bag, Princess? I’ve run out of room in my pockets.”
Nastasia gave him a weary but kind smile. “If you must. But you must remember to remove them, when we return to our dorm.”
“Oh, I will…the giantess-tree-lady told me how to spread them out to dry. I’m hoping Griffin will give me a ride to the roof.”
“Of course.” Rachel added what she had gathered to Siggy’s supply. “Nastasia, what did she tell you? Are you an alchemist, too?”
Nastasia shook her head. “She taught me how to control my visions…so that I don’t need to go places when I touch people, unless I wish to. Or rather, she taught me the first step. She has promised to come into my dreams at night to show me the rest.”
“Truly?” Rachel cried. “Did she give you a proper explanation? Why do you have them?”
Nastasia frowned thoughtfully. “She said I had inherited a power to travel, but that this power required a ritual in order to use it properly—a ritual I have not completed. At the moment, all I can do is travel in dreams. She says I am traveling to a dream of the place that the people I touch come from. Not to the real place.”
“If you took Zoë Forrest with you,” Rachel’s mind worked furiously, “could you step out of the dream and visit the real place? That would be…”
She could not finish for the violence of the longing that seized her. To see other worlds! To walk on their distant soil! There had to be a way Nastasia could take all of them!
“Perhaps,” the princess spoke diffidently.
Rachel stared at her friend, unable to comprehend Nastasia’s lack of enthusiasm.
“Did you touch her?” Siggy asked eagerly. “The Tree Lady, I mean?”
Nastasia nodded. “We traveled together to the dream of her past.”
“So you can take people with you?” cried Rachel, almost too breathless with joy to speak.
“If I go from the dreamlands, yes.”
“What did you see?” cried Rachel and Sigfried together. Their gaze met, burning with mutual wanderlust. They nodded at each other, an unspoken promise.
“We saw another her, a younger version,” said the princess, “from before she suffered some kind of disaster and came to our world. Her younger dream-self did not understand who we were. I am not certain the dream-her could see us properly.”
“Who was she?” asked Rachel curiously.
“A queen among the Lios Alfar, in a world called Hoddmimir’s Wood, an endless forest with more than one layer to it.”
“More than one layer?” Siggy frowned, puzzled.
“Trees grew out of the canopy of other trees. It was beautiful, yet strange.”
“I saw that!” Rachel cried. “Just a few minutes ago, in a dream or something.”
The princess continued, “The current version of our hostess seemed—amused, perhaps?—by the past queenly version, who was more imperious.”
“So she’s from another world,” asked Siggy, “and she remembers? What’s it like?”
Before Nastasia could answer, Joy came out from the hollow, pouting disgruntledly.
“My gift was stupid.” Joy stomped across the garden. “Your turn, Rachel.”
The elf turned to Rachel. “And you, little one. I saw in my dreams that I could help you, but I could not see what form that help would take.”
Rachel bit her lip. “Do I have a special destiny?”
The elven woman shook her head, her face both radiant and tremendously kind. “I am sorry, child. Only a few are chosen for special prophesied destinies.”
Rachel nodded. A quiet happiness filled her. She liked the idea that her future was free.
“Is there something you desire?” pressed the elf.
“I want to remember,” Rachel blurted out. “I want to be protected against having my memory changed ever again. As it was today…when I approached this tree.”
As the elf woman gazed at her, Rachel felt suddenly vulnerable, as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff in a strong wind, as if her heart were laid bare before this woman who now had the power to hurt it.
“My mother is Idunn, the caretaker of Yggdrasil,” said the elf. “I spent many long years in the shadow of the World Tree. Wandering among its roots, I gleaned a few of its Runes: ‘I know a twenty-first. All those who seek to remember should cherish it. If I wish to recall events that have come to pass, no power shall deter me.’ It can even protect you against what made you forget your approach to this great Tree.”
“Can you…?” Rachel breathed.
Hope gathered within her chest, burning like a glowing star.
“Yes, I can.” The gracious elven lady extended her hand. “Come, Rachel Griffin…”
Rachel woke with a start. Nothing had changed, but the sense of hush, like a breath she had caught but not yet released, vanished. The stars in the elven woman’s eyes dimmed, and her skin lost some of its luminescence. She looked like a mundane elf now, if such a concept made sense. Lucky growled and darted off into the distance.
Siggy swore. “He’s gone dumb again!”
A jet black Raven flew over the Tree. It landed on a low branch and cocked its head, eyeing the small gathering. His blood red eyes fixed on Rachel. A shiver ran through her body.
The Raven opened its mouth and croaked in a hoarse rasp, “Is this how you repay my kindness, Illondria? By helping these children destroy my world?”
Chapter Twenty-One:
The Raven and the Elf
The graceful elf’s voice rang like a bell, “Guardian, I am trying to help you.”
“Help me?” croaked the Raven. “By weakening the already fragile Walls of my world?”
The great black bird drew itself up until it seemed twice as large. Its blood red eyes glared at them. Rachel and the other girls huddled together. Siggy pulled out his knife.
“I have no such wish,” said the elf.
“I could have left the gates sealed, Illondria, and watched as your delicate form melted into the chaos beyond,” croaked the Raven. “Instead, I granted you shelter. Nor have I forced my will upon you, to change your memories. Was this not a great gift that I bestowed?”
“It was, dear one,” she bowed her head.
“Then why do you seek to impede me?”
“You need help,” the elf insisted. “I know you fear your world’s destruction. Every time refugees are dragged here, you lessen the harm by integrating them. In doing this, you have wiped out all traces of the damage—including the clues as to who caused the damage. If you continue, without assistance, this world will break. And soon. I have foreseen it.”
The Raven made a cawing noise that sounded unpleasantly like dark laughter. “Little Elf, you have seen nothing but dreams. This world will remain safe, so long as the Walls are repaired. The only tool I have to repair them is Oblivion. Yet,
you would take even this from me?”
“Your own people began it, Guardian, and they will have to stop it. But, they cannot end the cataclysm, if they cannot see the traces left by their enemy.”
“Already, people here are moving against those responsible,” the Raven replied. “They do not need to be given the keys to the gates to do it.”
The elf did not seem daunted. “I see otherwise, dear one.”
“You speak of what you can see,” the Raven croaked grimly. “Have you told these children what you see of yourself? Tell them what happens to you now—since they brought too many this day. Will you be honest with them, and let them make their decision, knowing all?”
The elf looked away. Rachel smelled roses and sorrow. “My fate does not concern them.”
The Raven flew off the branch and landed on the ground. It hopped a few times. Then, an eight-foot-tall man with immense black wings stood in its place. He was beautiful, the way the most perfect of statues were beautiful—pure and holy and pristine. He wore black slacks but no shirt or shoes. His eyes were a brilliant scarlet. A blinding ring of light hovered above his head. Reaching up, he pulled it from the air. In his hand, it turned into a golden hoop.
A strange joy seized Rachel, tingling up and down her arms and legs. A man with the wings of a bird: it was like her statue—the statue of the winged woman that had so inspired her.
Then, a shiver down up her spine. The statue had been wingless, when she returned to see it a second time. Worse than wingless. When she returned, there had been no evidence that wings had ever been there. How had that happened? Had this Guardian-being removed the evidence of the statue’s wings, the same way that, according to the elf, he removed the evidence of those who were dragged here from Outside? And, if so, why?
The eight-foot-tall, winged figure, whom Rachel still thought of as the Raven, turned to the princess. His voice rang out like a trumpet.
“Princess Nastasia Romanov,” he said, “this woman endangers her life. The more people who know she is here, the more certain the chance of her death. There were only supposed to be three of you. Three would have been safe.”
The Raven, The Elf, and Rachel (A Book of Unexpected Enlightenment 2) Page 24
