The elves are not like men. And though men tell tales of elves, they get them wrong more than right and shine a better light on themselves than they do on the elves. People say that elves steal their children and whisk them away to Elfland to play with them and dote on them as if they were glimmering toys. This is as far from the truth as the truth is from a liar’s tongue. No. Elves do not love children. That is why they call them changelings. They are growing things and elves live long and do not change. There is nothing that makes an Elf more uncomfortable than watching something age. The elves are free and tall and proud and nothing do they hate more than doting on that which is helpless, pathetic and mewling.
It was no different some ages ago, when the queen of Elfland had grown big in the belly, to her shame, and changed as it is the burden of her sex to change. She had run and hidden in a forest of men as is an elf maiden’s way. Modestly, she kept herself well-hidden from the eyes of her people, not wanting to offend them. There she gave birth to a son amongst roots and vines, henbane and doll’s eyes and May apples. She saw he was a bonny child, a mirror of his father and herself, and that was the only reason she did not abandon him right then and there and run shivering back to Elfland in horror at his youth, for youth can only remind one of age.
And so with the child in her arms, she set off toward the habitations of humans. While she held her child against the agelessness of her body, like a cowbird she looked for a home for him. She peered into the windows of human houses for those who were gravid. She watched woman after woman until she found one wan and pale, whose belly did not grow big, whose child did not have the lamp of life lit as strongly as the others. It was she, a woman named Sara, whom the queen chose to care for the elf prince. Sara lived in a big house for humans, a thing they called a castle.
And on the night when this Sara gave birth to a child not destined to live through the night, the Queen of Elfland slipped into the nursery and waited for the light of its life to pass away. She took it from its cradle and placed her hale and healthy boy in its place. Over her son, she cast a spell to make him look for a time like the other child, but he would soon break through that shell of magic into his own glory.
She then took the body of the other child, put it in her elven basket and returned home to her people. The elves have a fascination with dead children though they abhor the living ones. For the dead, with a bit of a spell, could be made to stay the same forever, like a doll. So, this dead child was dressed in splendor and placed in the Hall of Eternity, a golden castle that looked more like the meaning of that word than anything man could make, and there he rested in glory.
Now the prince of Elfland was well lodged in a human home with a mother and father not his own. The father, who was a stout and fat man, joyed to no end that his loins could bring forth such an exemplary child of height and handsomeness that his nurses blushed for his beauty. But the mother… Ah, the human mother, with a human heart and body that had grown a child within it, knew that her son was not her son. Sara’s mother’s heart wept when she saw the elven child. And Sara began to mutter that the child was not her own.
The father hushed her gently at first. Then he frowned and said they could not have a better son than the one they had, and she should be content. But Sara’s heart wondered and wandered after her child, remembering tales of how elves whisked children to Elfland and put their own demon seed in their place, and she began to speak louder and louder against the boy. But the boy, who was innocent in his own placement and was a sweet child, did not understand her looks and felt her words like rain against his fiery Elvish heart. This caused the boy to make himself more sweet to her and everyone else. And the sweetness that is natural to all mortal children is even more so with Elvish children who have a magic in their looks and lisps. And everyone loved him even more if that were possible and pitied him for having such a mother.
Queen Sara was quite alone in her muttering. People began to think her mad. They called her in whispers and behind her back “the Quazy Queen.” Finally, she was shut up in a small room in the castle where she died mourning her child. And the Elven prince, now named, Avante, grieved her passing like a good son, as she had been the only mother he knew. Many people blessed his heart but thought in their own that he had nothing to lament. Years passed and the king took another wife who loved Avante as her own, for she could have no children, and he was happy.
Avante grew to manhood like any human in the slow wear of years, but after that he aged no more. All around him grew ragged and wrinkled, and he remained fair. Then the old rumors began of elves and unnaturalness, but Avante was clever. Even without a firm mastery of Elvish magic, he was able with the help of herbs to whiten his hair, and with the loose arrangement of clothing and such things to make himself suitable looking age wise. Thus, he maintained his rule. He abdicated the throne in his one-hundred-and-fiftieth year to a grandson who looked less hale than he and said he would travel. He never returned to that Kingdom again.
Now, in Elfland, the king and Queen were well and whole. And since no one wanted the upset of having an heir around, no one bothered to find the child the Queen had left in a mortal Queen’s house and tell him of his heritage. So, Avante walked the earth like Methuselah, like the wandering Jew, like a ghost. Time passed until the hour when the Queen of Elfland saw something that made her rise from her husband’s knee. She ran off after it and the King could not help but follow her, and they never returned.
These were the circumstances in Elfland that led to the pundits’ being called together and the stars being consulted. It was foreseen that three girls were needed for the prince to become King of Elfland. A plan was made and the elf lady who would bear the first child was sought out and told the possible glorious destiny of her daughter. She was instructed to find the future king and to give him the babe, so he could choose for himself which he would want for a wife and queen.
This elf lady’s name was Mardinyalel. At first, she was horrified to discover that she would one day be with child and have to change, but when she heard that her daughter might bring honor to her family, she calmed. Things were arranged suitably and with much joy, laughter and running with her elf husband, so that she did soon became changed with child.
Then Mardinyalel sighed and set out from Elfland on what she could only assume would be a weary journey through the haunts of man. As quickly as possible, she intended on finding the new king of Elfland, giving him the good news, and unburdening herself of her daughter, so she could go home. So, Mardinyalel opened a portal to the lands of men. She was quite surprised by the changes that had taken place in the world since her youth ages ago.
She opened the portal to the only human place she knew. She had been raised by poor folk in a small stone house with a straw roof. There had been cows, goats and chickens in the yard and in the house. It had been a dreadful existence. She had been forever grateful that her mother had actually remembered her (for, as we know, some elf mothers do not), and come for her at the human age of sixteen and taken her away to Elfland.
But now, there was no house and no yard and no grass or trees or animals or anything real, not even a rock. There was a hard black slab of some man-made substance for her to walk on, not cobblestone or even brick, but some tarry madness of sharp imprisoned broken stones. And the buildings around her soared over her in hard shapes, with thousands of glittering glass windows that falsely and immodestly reflected the day. And for the first time an elf mother clutched her belly and feared for her child’s soul in this human world.
Mardinyalel stared across the portal and watched the oddly dressed people. They wore mere strips of cloth when they had once worn pounds of leggings and skirts and pantaloons and vests and brocades. Mardinyalel did not know which was worse. Nor was there any magic in them anymore. In the days past, humans had craved magic, to give them beauty and grace, to lighten their lives, but now they were dull and greedy and had more of the look of gold-digging trolls than upright peo
ple. Again, she feared for her daughter’s honorable and pure spirit.
Mardinyalel stepped back from the portal in horror. Her gauzy dress quivered like a fading rainbow. What had happened to man? Where were the witches and wizards and the magic folk that kept balance? Where was the beating fiery heart of man, the deep eyes that could see and the speech that was slow and telling?
Mardinyalel did not cross through the portal but remained somewhere between Elfland and Earth. She used her magic only to search for the lost king, but she would not cross over. It was a few Elfin days before she bore her daughter in this place that was no place at all. And she held the lovely child who was more beautiful than any human child in her arms, for her daughter had dark black eyes as all the Elven women in her family had. And Mardinyalel kissed the child even as her search for the young King ended. The eye of the portal found him living in a small human habitation.
Mardinyalel watched the king as she rocked her child and thought of what to do since she was now loath to leave her daughter in a place of men. She pondered going to some lonely spot in Elfland where the unicorns grazed and the manticores roamed and there raise her daughter alone. But something about the King made her stop.
The Elf King still looked like a very young man, but his eyes were old and lonely, and he had a hardness to him that is the hardness of a man whose mother and people have forgotten him. He had a lost-ness too. This trait only belonged to men who did not know who they were. And this lost-ness and this aloneness spoke to Mardinyalel even across the mists of the portal. It spoke of need and healing that do not exist in Elfland, as all is well there. Mardinyalel saw that the king was a bit like a man, and that disturbed her, for a man should not rule in Elfland.
She looked down at her elven daughter and saw the flash of elvish magic in her eye. Mardinyalel thought perhaps that spark of Elfland, that brightness of honor and purity, was needed by this new King. So, she stepped through the portal and stopped before him. Unlike a man, he was not frightened at the sight of her. Like a man, he spoke before he was spoken to.
“Sure took you long enough,” he said.
Mardinyalel ignored his rudeness and gave a graceful bow. “I am an Elvish lady of the house of The Mist that Rises from the Tongues of a Thousand Lilies, and this is my daughter, yet unnamed. I have been commanded to bring her to you. She is one of three who may be your Queen when it is time for you to sit upon the throne of Elfland.”
Then with all reverence, Mardinyalel placed the babe in the King’s arms.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked, looking at the baby.
“She is yours to do as you will. Raise her to your liking or your disliking, my lord, but she will be what she is, an Elven lady with a heart of fire like her mothers before her.”
“And what about me?” he said, “I’ve been waiting like a thousand years for my mother to come. Isn’t she supposed to get me and bring me to Elfland, or did I get it wrong? Are the stories wrong?”
“My lord, it grieves me to tell you, your father and mother have faded away, and when you pick your queen, you will become the new king of Elfland.”
“So, that’s it? You just dump this kid on me, with no apologies, no explanations, and I’m supposed take her and make her my Queen?”
“Two others will come. Which one is to be your Queen is your choice.”
“Wow. I get a choice? Really? Because it looks to me like you are dumping three brats on me against my will. I mean, how am I going to take care of them? Have you looked around? I’m not exactly rich. How am I going to explain this to anybody? She has no birth certificate. Nothing. It was hard as hell for me to get an ID. I’ll be arrested for kidnapping and pederasty!”
“There is great magic still in you, my lord. Take care of my daughter who comes from an honorable family. I would have no shame besmirch her,” Mardinyalel said. Then she turned away, and with the second sigh she had ever sighed in her life, she left.
“Great. Just great,” the king of the elves cried after her.
And that was that. The Elven King now had a potential wife on his hands who cried and wet herself. And though it should have been a glorious day, the beginning of the end of his banishment amongst men, he found little to be joyous in.
The difficulty lay in the fact that his off-the-books job as a tax preparer paid little, and his studio apartment was barely big enough for him. He could not joy, as did past great elves, in myriads of wealth. In this mortal day and age there were machines and such that tracked men’s movements. One had to have a Social Security number to work any job. So, the king was an illegal alien in America and felt himself even more burdened than before with this child. He would now have to spend all his food money on diapers and formula.
Hours later, the King finally put the wriggling young elf child to sleep on his pull-out sofa bed. He laid himself by her; the bar in the middle of the bed dug right into his spine. He stared at the cracked ceiling of his apartment in Brooklyn and counted the number of travelers on the roach roads that traversed it. He lay listening to never-ending war cries of the Rat kings behind the walls. Finally, he fell asleep.
The next day, Avante, or Allen as he was now known in the fallen tongue, rose, tasted foulness in his mouth and went to wash his teeth. He stretched and stumbled toward the bathroom. Then he stopped, turned around and checked the bed for the sleeping baby.
He found the bed empty. Though that might have heralded his freedom from all kinds of trouble, he was horrified. He began searching the room up and down, calling, “Baby, baby?” He did many a thing unfitting to a king, like crawling upon his hands and knees and looking under the sofa-bed, tossing bedclothes about in despair and wonder and cursing a lot. Finally, he stopped and looked about to see where the child could have gone, but it was too small to go anywhere.
“Where the hell did the baby go?” he asked himself, incredulously.
“What is a baby?” a voice said behind him.
He spun around to find a child of at least five standing in the floor naked accept for a disposable diaper hanging from one leg.
“You’re big!” the king exclaimed.
The child looked down at herself. “Well, I am bigger than I was when I got here but not bigger than you so, so not really big.”
He gaped at her. What boggled the king and what was unbeknownst to the impatient elf race was that children of elves grow at an accelerated rate when around other elves. It seems that, like their parents, they cannot wait to get away from the helpless, ignorant and perpetually guarded state of childhood.
“You can talk too,” the King stammered.
“Well, that is obvious,” she said with a cold twinkle in her dark eyes.
“How?”
She frowned a bit and thought, tapping her chin, “Well, I think it began when my mother kissed me. She seemed to pass on to me all kinds of wonderful knowledge. I know how to make a portal to Elfland and other magicks, how to dance with fairies, and, oh, the taste of berries that don’t grow here, and the look of Elfland. Shall I sing to you about it? Oh, I can sing!” she cried in a happy rush.
And Allen could not help but frown and tell her “no,” since at that moment he realized that his mother had not even kissed him before she had left him.
And so it was with the first child who was no longer a child in five days but a tall and lovely elf woman with dark hair and eyes that looked like the sky at night when it is full of stars. She had a regal bearing, a still mouth that hardly smiled, a way of knowing things and influencing people though she remained aloof from humans like a sun is aloof from the earth. So, Allen named her Sun. And through her he learned of the way of Elfish people, their prides and their secret eyes and still lips.
She taught him the proper way for an Elf to dance and all the old and glorious songs that were good and right to sing, and also a way of playing elf music on human instruments. She got them both good paying jobs with her magic, and taught him all the spe
lls her mother had left for her. So, when the second Elf lady came with the second child, the King of Elfland was a little more elf than man.
And the second lady’s name was Cathar-taris. She was one of the most joyous of the joyous elves. She had a laugh that made the flowers giggle in the fields about her. When the elders came to her and told her that she would be with a daughter who might be the queen of Elfland, she clapped her hands and ran into her husband’s arms. And there was much glad chasing and tickling and sparkling and floating before the change came on her. On that day, Cathar-taris sighed and smiled a quiet smile of one who had done her job well. The change came fast, only a few days and she soon had need to make a portal to the King of the elves. She saw him through the portal a serious man, with serious eyes and a tall pale elven maiden beside him, and she could not help but laugh at them.
During that spasm, her daughter tumbled into the world. Her mother lifted her up, up into the air, and danced with her because she was a beautiful child with eyes as green as the grasses of Elfland and hair dark and rich like summer honey. Cathar-taris turned from the portal and took time to show this lovely child to her husband. It was not their first child, and she had learned from trial and error that he liked to see them before they left.
Bandar-lay pronounced the child the most lovey and caressed her locks and pressed his lips to her innocent brow. They both danced with this child with no name until they were tired. Then Cathar-taris knew it was time to bring her to the king. So, she stepped through the portal she had made. This time the King of Elfland said nothing and waited for her to speak.
Cathar-taris bowed a light graceful bow like a flower when the wind has bent it a moment. “I am Cathar-taris, Lady of Bandar-lay, child of the Land of a Thousand Laughing Rivers. I have been commanded to bring you one who may be your wife.”
“I do not think I need another one,” Allen said foolishly, since he was still yet a bit of a man.
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