by K T Durham
There was a stomping of footsteps and much clanging. The crow yelped and squawked noisily in protest, and before long Elly heard a fluttering of wings. Then there was silence. She could hear her own ragged breathing.
“Good riddance!” the man’s voice called out triumphantly. Elly got on all fours, careful to avoid any spiky branches, and peeked out from the bushes. The crow was gone. She first saw the muddy yellow rubber boots, then she looked up, up, up.
It was the shoemaker!
Horace Cobble belched. “Fancy interrupting my breakfast!” he muttered before trudging back to the house, shutting the door quietly behind him. He did not want to wake his sleeping wife.
Elly stayed as still as a statue near the edge of the bush as she listened carefully. It was very quiet, save for the distant call of a bird. It wasn’t a crow. Grimacing, she looked down; there was a long, bleeding gash on her right leg.
She swooned, not used to seeing the sight of blood.
Quickly transform into human proportions, Ellanor!
Elly did as she was told, realizing she was prey to many surrounding predators. She quickly crawled out of the rose bush onto grassy ground and transformed. Back to human size, she found herself wedged between the brick wall of the house and the rose bushes. The branches of a great elm tree shielded her from the rain that was pelting down.
There was only one place she could go to for help now.
Yes, Ellanor. It is time to seek them out. The broken portal is with them, after all.
She bit her lip. Thank you for warning me about the crow, Greymore. You saved my life. I’m sorry for losing my temper with you last night.
Greymore gave a low chuckle. It is quite all right, Ellanor. I knew you would come around. Now, go.
Smoothing out the wrinkles in the skirt of her torn dress and picking out bits of brambles from her hair, she walked up to the green-painted door and knocked loudly, three times. She licked her parched lips and willed herself to stand straight.
“Who is it?” a voice called out grumpily, displeased with yet another interruption. There was a pause; then the door swung open.
Horace glared at the girl standing at his doorstep. “What do you want?” he demanded. She couldn’t possibly have the gall to sell bloomin’ school cookies at this ungodly hour, could she?
Then he saw the bleeding wound on her leg, and her ashen face. “What in the world… ?” he began, but then he stopped short and stared at her, slowly taking in the shock of sodden black hair, the leaf-shaped ears, those brilliant green eyes, and the tattered purple dress.
Several moments passed before he found his voice again. “Oh, dear Lord,” he croaked, clutching the doorknob for support.
Elly felt herself swaying, her vision greying out. Horace bellowed, “Miriam!”
When Elly opened her eyes, she found herself sprawled in a tangle of soft, warm blankets. The room was dimly lit by a small bedside lamp. There were muffled voices and footsteps. For a moment, she was so disoriented that she quite forgot where she was.
Then it all flooded back: the crow, the pain, the brambles, and blacking out.
She winced and felt for her right leg. It had been bandaged up. Slowly, she got out of bed. Leaning against the wall for support, she groped her way to the door, opened it a smidgen, and peeked through the gap.
There was a clattering of pans and slamming of cupboard doors as a plump, silver-haired lady bustled about in the kitchen. Elly gave an involuntary shudder when she spotted the black cat perched on a nearby stool like a large ball of wool, eyes closed in half-slumber. Shadows danced on the walls as a cozy fire crackled at the hearth near the kitchen.
Then the cat opened her eyes, looked straight at Elly, and hissed with displeasure. Elly jumped in surprise and accidentally bumped the door wide open.
Miriam turned and gasped, dropping the potato she was peeling.
“You’re up!” she cried, rushing over. “Oh, I was so worried when you passed out with that nasty gash on your poor leg! It must have caused quite a shock. You’d been unconscious since Horace found you at our doorstep this morning; and now it’s supper time!” She wiped her hands down her apron and looked back at her cat nervously. “Stay there, Snowy!”
“Supper time?” Elly croaked, her throat awfully parched. That meant she hadn’t eaten for almost a whole day. Her stomach growled.
Miriam ushered her to a plump floral-patterned armchair in the family room. “Here, come sit down, sit down. Let’s have a cup of tea, shall we?” Elly collapsed on the cushioned seat, still feeling a little shaky in the knees.
Before rushing back to the kitchen, Miriam turned to her cat again. “Snowy, you better behave yourself! I don’t want to see a single scratch on her!” she said sternly, wagging a finger.
The cat narrowed her yellow eyes and leapt off the stool in a huff. Elly could hear her mutter, “At her current size I’m not likely to gobble her up now, am I?”
Miriam came back with a tray holding a teapot and teacups. Once she sat down next to Elly and poured the tea, she leaned forward and looked at the pale-faced girl closely.
“Your name is Elly, right?”
Elly nodded as she hungrily took a gulp of the lukewarm tea. It wasn’t chamomile; it had a slightly woody taste, not at all unpleasant.
Miriam smiled and clasped her hands on her lap nervously. “I’m Miriam, in case you’ve forgotten. My husband Horace is in his workshop.” She glanced around the room. “My cat Snowy has gone off sulking.”
She turned back to Elly with anxious eyes. “We are so sorry about what happened last time, Elly. Snowy isn’t normally aggressive, I swear. She must’ve gotten a little jealous; or else she mistook you for a little pet on account of your tiny size. When you flew out the window, we were so worried you’d been badly hurt. Thank goodness you’re still in one piece!”
She paused and asked the question that had been bothering her. “That wound on your leg… it wasn’t from Snowy, was it?”
Elly shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no! Snowy didn’t actually leave a scratch on me the other time. No, this morning I was attacked by a crow.”
Miriam’s eyes went round. “Oh, you poor dear!” she cried. The old lady was looking at her with such concern and tenderness that Elly missed her mother all the more. Tears filled her eyes and slipped down her cheeks.
Miriam patted her on the back. “There, there. We are just so glad you are all right now. I was going mad with worry, wondering if my cat was responsible for injuring you!”
She paused, then looked towards the hallway. “Stop eavesdropping and come introduce yourself properly!” she called out.
There was some muffled muttering. Then Horace sidled out, two hands behind his back like a bashful schoolboy.
Elly was glad to see him; he had practically saved her life from that hideous crow, after all. She smiled so radiantly that for a moment he quite forgot himself and stood there staring at her, speechless. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Well, I’m glad you’re better now,” he mumbled.
“Thank you both so much for helping me. I didn’t know where else to go.” Her voice was still hoarse, and it trembled.
Horace shifted awkwardly on his feet before excusing himself, mumbling something about shoes and deadlines. At his retreating back, Miriam grinned and whispered, “Don’t worry. He seems like an old grouch, but he’s really a softie at heart. You should have seen him fussing over you after you passed out. He carried you into the house like a chivalrous knight!”
Elly imagined an armoured Horace brandishing a sword in one hand, and holding a pair of sparkling shoes in the other. She giggled.
For supper, Miriam had prepared lamb chops with boiled potatoes for Horace and herself, and a delicious broccoli and pumpkin salad with freshly baked bread for Elly, who gratefully finished her meal without leaving a morsel. For dessert, Elly trie
d home-made apple pie with vanilla ice cream for the first time. Her eyes sparkled as she swallowed her first bite. “Wow, it’s scrumptious!” she exclaimed, mentally putting it on her list of favourites alongside pineapple buns, blueberry muffins, and strawberry jam on toast.
By that time, Horace had begun to relax. Mug of root beer in hand, he laughed uproariously at the way Elly marvelled over every vegetarian food item she had not tried before.
“My wife may not be any good as a cobbler, but she sure makes one fine cook!” he said proudly, rubbing his bulging stomach and loosening the top button of his old waistcoat that looked close to bursting at the seams. Snowy sulked under the table at Miriam’s feet, disgruntled with all the attention Elly was getting.
After supper, Elly talked late into the night with the Cobbles in front of the crackling fire. Enthralled, they sat perched on the edge of their seats, holding onto her every word. She told them everything that had transpired from her birthday, the goblin’s treachery, falling through the portal, her unsuccessful attempts at tracking down Organoth blue amber, masquerading as a human, to the attack of the crow early that morning. They interrupted occasionally to clarify a point here and there.
When they asked Elly to describe her homeland, she sighed wistfully. “Alendria is… luminos. In your language, the closest word is beautiful. But in my language… luminos has a meaning beyond that of beautiful. It’s difficult to explain.”
She looked at the Cobbles and smiled. “The Tree of Life, which we simply call the Tree, is where elves dwell in Alendria. The Tree is our world. It is a tree so massive that its branches function like platforms of land, housing everything from great cities like Evergreen, to small towns like Morwen Valley.” She cringed as she thought of Edellina, then took a sip of her warm chamomile tea before resuming.
“The magnificent canopy has leaves that alternate between gold and silver throughout the year. Evergreen is the biggest city in the southern region where it is always warm; up in the north, where the Vierran elves live, it is always cold. The sky there is nothing like what you see here. It is always awash with a splash of different colours of the rainbow. The Star of Freya constantly shines like a beacon, even during the day.”
Her face turned dark. “The goblins live underground, beneath the Tree. They hate us. All I know is that their underworld is the antithesis of ours—it is endlessly dark, cold, and putrid. Nothing good ever grows there.”
“Who is Freya?” Miriam asked curiously. Elly had mentioned the name several times.
Elly smiled. “Freya is our Maker. She created elves, and our homeland Alendria. Legend tells that Freya transformed into a star to look over us, for she loves us so.”
Miriam leaned back in her armchair and sighed. “That sounds so beautiful. Like something from an epic poem.”
Horace cleared his throat and scowled. “But what about those nasty goblins? Where did they come from, exactly?”
“Well…” Elly’s brow furrowed. She had never really thought about that before. The existence of the goblins was a reality that seemed as normal as the unpleasant existence of snakes. “I think the goblins have been dwelling in the underworld for as long as elves have lived in Alendria. I suppose the Maker created everything, but I can’t understand why creatures as foul and evil as the goblins were ever created in the first place.”
“Well, I suppose even Alendria isn’t utopia,” Miriam murmured. When Elly looked at her questioningly, she smiled. “Utopia is a perfect world. But such a world holds up only in theory.”
Horace took another gulp of root beer. “What about this… this Royan of yours? You mean, it’s actually… alive?” He eyed the book on her belt warily, half expecting it to spout some magic.
Elly smiled. “My Royan, Greymore, is flowered from a royal acorn of the Tree. A Royan stays with an elf for about two hundred years. By that time, a Royan matures and ripens enough in its acorn form to return to the Tree, where it then flowers, and all that it has learned from its keeper will be assimilated into the intelligence repository of the Tree and shared with the elven community.”
Miriam and Horace gawked at her wide-eyed. “Two… two hundred years?” Miriam asked meekly.
Elly laughed. “Yes. I suppose you now get the idea that elves have a far greater lifespan than that of humans. In general, elves can live for one thousand years.”
“One thousand years!” shouted Miriam and Horace in unison.
Elly giggled. “Yes! So we age very slowly, but we can still die prematurely of extreme grief and severe injury, though our physical constitutions are much stronger than those of humans.”
At this, Horace snorted. “How did we get the short end of the bargain?” he muttered.
Miriam was shaking her head in wonder. “If I may ask, Elly… how old are you?” Please don’t be older than I am, she prayed. That would be too strange.
Elly smiled. “I just turned twelve years, whereas my grandpapa is nearly eight hundred years old. To elves like him, who have lived in the world so long, I am like a little shoot beside a grand oak tree that has seen many summers.”
Miriam cocked her head. “What about this coming of age ceremony you mentioned? Since elves are blessed with long life, why is the meagre age of twelve years old so significant? Shouldn’t you, say, come of age at one hundred or something?”
Elly grinned. To her surprise, she was rather enjoying all these questions. Perhaps talking about Alendria made her feel closer to home. “The number twelve bears much significance in our realm. Grandpapa once explained it to me…” Her eyes took on a far-away look as she recounted her grandfather’s words.
“My dear Elly, once an elf turns twelve years old, they begin to undergo some significant changes—physically, mentally, and emotionally. This transformation, called pharowyn in Yahana, takes place over the course of the next twelve years, until an elf turns twenty-four. Then, it’s as though time stands still. Physically, you stay unchanged until your six hundredth year, when elves finally begin to show outwards signs of ageing.” At this, he had smiled and gestured at his wrinkles and long silver hair. “But even then, compared to humans, we age with grace, free of bodily ailments, for which we should be thankful.”
Miriam and Horace gaped at each other. “My, this pharowyn sounds awfully like puberty to me,” she murmured, recalling her son’s turbulent adolescence.
“Followed by an unjustly and ridiculously extended adulthood, and painless old age,” Horace grumbled. Then he frowned and turned to Elly. “So, the Royan returns to the Tree and shares what it has learned over two hundred years. In that case, the intelligence repository is sort of like the Internet, right?”
Miriam nudged him. “I don’t think she knows what the Internet is, Horace. We’re no experts, either.” They had never used a computer in their lives.
She turned to Elly and smiled. “Apart from those gruesome goblins, Alendria sounds unfathomably gorgeous, Elly. I can’t quite imagine just how beautiful it is. It sounds even more beautiful than Santorini.”
Elly looked at her quizzically. “Santorini?”
Horace belched. “It’s an island in Greece. Miriam is dead set on going there before we both expire. But I don’t know how, since we can’t even afford a trip to Wales at the moment!” Miriam glowered at him, then dropped her eyes to the floor and sighed.
After Elly told them about Edellina, Horace frowned and stretched out his legs. “So you’re saying… to get back to Alendria, you need to fix the portal with something called Organoth blue amber?” He got up and went over to a wooden chest that was tucked at the bottom of a tall bookshelf.
“I should’ve listened to Miriam and put this thing away safely. My grandfather would not have been proud of me,” he lamented. With a grunt, he lugged it out and wrenched the lid open. Then he carefully retrieved a small wooden box with both hands.
He gestured to Elly. “You should ope
n this.”
Nodding, she lifted the lid gingerly. Nestled in the black, velvety fabric was the broken portal. She sighed. It was her fault that the portal broke in the first place.
Miriam patted her on the shoulder. “It was an accident, dear. I must have given you quite a fright when I opened that dusty old cupboard.”
They insisted that Elly keep the broken portal with her. “You’ll need it with you if you want it repaired on the spot or something,” Horace said gruffly, secretly resolved to help Elly find Organoth blue amber. But he had never even heard of blue amber.
Elly nodded and smiled gratefully. “Thank you.” Horace and Miriam then looked on with amazement as she unstrapped the small book from her belt, opened it, and started talking to it in her language. Then she took out the two pieces of broken portal and placed them on top of the blank white pages. Suddenly, the broken portal vanished into thin air! Miriam and Horace gasped; the pages were no longer blank; instead, there was a picture of the broken portal as though an artist had just expertly drawn it. This was the first magical thing they had seen Elly do.
Elly smiled. “This is how we carry things around with us. We don’t carry physical, bulky baggage like humans do. Greymore will keep the broken portal safe for me,” she explained.
By the time they all staggered to bed, it was well past one o’clock in the morning. The temperature had plummeted, and Elly was loathe to leave the fireplace.
After washing for the first time in four days, Elly, at Miriam’s insistence, changed out of her tattered purple dress. Miriam held up something with blue and white checkers for Elly. The fabric looked a little worn, but it was soft to the touch.
“These pyjamas belonged to our son Charlie when he was a boy,” Miriam murmured, fingering the material. “We kept some of his old clothes as keepsakes, as all sentimental parents do. We shall do something about your clothing situation tomorrow,” she said firmly.
Miriam looked around the room with wistful eyes when she tucked Elly into bed. “This used to be Charlie’s room. He moved out after he graduated from Cambridge. Now, he’s a grown man leading a busy life with his work and family in Surrey.” From her expression, Elly guessed that she missed her son very much.
