Chapter 13 #2
I never thought I’d feel joy again, but I had, yesterday, in my little kitchen for just that small window of time. Even after being bitten by a creature of shadow, I could still feel the joy. It was possible.
“That creature looks like the frightening Yeti from our Christmas Stories.” I pointed to the shadow monster with sharp fangs and eyes as black as night that loomed in the clouds among the snow of the tall mountain of Winterthorn.
“This beast?” The king asked, mouth downturned, thoughtful. “It is said that the first shade monster sprang from the depths of that mountain, and that he haunts the mountain still to this day.”
The king led me over to a table stacked with large tomes and scrolls.
He unfurled an aged scroll the color of a creamy eggshell.
Illuminated script and images popped out from the page in ethereal gold, black and white.
The illustrations depicted a beautiful woman with brown hair, a human woman.
In her hand, a paintbrush. The paintbrush flashed star-like sparkles as she created a masterwork of art.
“Is that a human woman painting…magic?” I asked breathlessly.
Her brown eyes bore into mine, the knowing look on her beautiful face.
Confidence. Her clothes were of a fashion from hundreds of years ago, with her dress and corset tightly wrapped about her bosom.
Her skirts billowed out with large folds of elegant fabric.
I couldn’t help but see myself in her fine features, though I was far from the confident graces of this strong woman.
“That is one way to put it.” The Elf King opened another scroll. This image depicted a man throwing clay on a wheel. Another with a woman with a quill and paper, another blowing glass. Human after human, master craftsman and somehow, impossibly—magic wielders.
“When the elves came to this world over a thousand years ago, there was a mighty war between our peoples. Human and elf fought over land and wealth. There was great distrust between our two peoples.” The Elf King said, his hand lingering on the beautifully illustrated page.
There still is, I wanted to mumble.
“But my grandfather, the first Elf King in this realm, sought peace. He offered to extend magic to the humans in exchange for this land we now possess, the Land of Ravensong,” the king explained, though this was not the way I’d heard it described.
I’d learned that a human woman brokered for peace on our behalf and was granted magic. The magic that brought peace between our peoples. But I didn’t say a thing, eager to hear the elves’ side of the tale.
“The treaty brought peace between our peoples, granting magic to the rare human at birth, just as we elves receive our magic.”
“I thought all elves were gifted with one magic or another,” My face heated. Magic that could’ve saved my father two years ago. Most of the elves I’d met seemed to be blessed with the gift, and others, like Rafia, just hadn’t exposed their abilities to me yet.
“No, Little Baker.” The Elf King’s full lips turned down at the sides. “Magic is rare even among the fair folk, therefore it is highly treasured.”
I turned away from the king’s bright gold eyes, so wide, so…
honest. I could not deny the candor in his bearing.
It was true; not all elves had magic. A hammer and chisel chipped away another piece of stone encasing my heart.
Perhaps my father’s ailment was truly beyond those elves at the parade.
But they’d turned away so quickly, distaste snarling their features.
No. They may not have been able to help my father, but they’d also been…
disgusted at our human frailties. I’d seen it lining their cold expressions.
“Human magic died six hundred years ago.” The king continued as though I wasn’t still condemning their entire race.
“How? What happened?” Maybe if I could understand what happened to our magic, we could recover it once again. Then the elves wouldn’t hold a monopoly on power, magic, and wealth.
“No one quite knows, but it was around the same time that the first shade monster appeared.” The Elf King stared at the map of Ravensong and pointed to the white peaks in the north. “In this mountain. The time of The Great Darkness.”
“We need to find out.” I placed down the parchment I’d been studying. “They have to be connected somehow, the magic that humans used to possess and the birth of the first shade monster.”
“I thought the same, but it is a dead end.” The king lowered his gold eyes to mine. “The knowledge is lost in the heart of that mountain. The magically binding treaty between our peoples has been lost to time.”
The king brought out a large tome covered in leather-bound snowflakes. I opened it gingerly and peered inside. I couldn’t read the language of the elves; I’d only taken two years of the language in school. But the pictures drew me in.
“See here.” The Elf King pointed to a sprawling fortress at the base of a large white mountain covered in ice and snow.
“Winterthorn. It was the land of the first Elf King, my grandfather. It is said to be an ice castle far more vast and impressive than this very castle, for it was the first stronghold of the elves. Its ballrooms and halls were enchanted to stay warm all year long, while the ice walls were frozen in time for eternity.”
I stared at the drawings, the etchings, the images of sprawling ballrooms and elegant bed chambers and winding staircases, and my breath caught. “It’s breathtaking.”
“Yes.” The Elf King said, though his eyes were not on the book, but on me. Had I imagined it?
Heat filled my cheeks, but the king turned his eyes away and cleared his throat. “Yes, but all knowledge before The Great Darkness was lost as my people were forced to flee the land of our forefathers and rebuild here.”
I looked at the king, at the sorrow etched across his stiff brow. His beauty made his pain all the more tragic.
“I’m sorry,” I found myself saying.
“My father lost his mother and father on that dreadful day six hundred years ago,” the king said, eyes far away.
“Father spoke of it often. Of the magic, the balance we had to restore, but he never knew how to accomplish it without the treaty. Humans were always wary of the elves, but once magic was taken from them, that wariness turned into fear and then into hatred. My father attempted to bring back the magic, to heal the wounds of our two peoples in the last hundred years. He sought out the best craftsman of your people, hoping to one day discover that magic had been rekindled in your race once more.”
“And the maidens?” I asked flatly. If his vision of his father was so rosy, how would he explain the women he took every few years for a hundred years?
The king fixed me with a bewildered expression, almost as if he were surprised and…hurt. “That is a discussion for another time.”
I clamped my mouth shut, but still felt the anger simmering beneath the surface. He may think of his father as some kind of hero, but any creature that needed that many maidens to satisfy was no hero to me. And it seemed his son was no different. I could stay silent no longer.
“So, this is why you stole me away from my family? From my life?” I whispered, though my words dripped with thinly veiled venom. “On the hope, the maybe, that I would have this magic and then what? Somehow fix this? Rid the elves of this shadow blight?”
The king blinked, his eyes growing wide. His mouth a straight line. “I have the right to claim any human I wish.”
“You are not my master,” I said, anger rising as I attempted to back it down.
I was surrounded by potentially dangerous magic-wielding elves, but I had to speak my mind.
“And I do not have any magic. I am just a human baker. And I had a life I loved. I have a little sister, so very much like your little brother. I have a mother who is stern, but never wavering in her love for me and now I will die as some shadow wraith in the middle of the land of the elves because of this plague.”
This last little bit of my words came out in a whisper. In a plea. My throat tightened and tears stung my eyes. I will not cry in front of the king. I will not.
But the tears fell all the same. My chin trembled, and I turned my face away.
I hadn’t been dismissed by the king, but I could not stay here any longer standing bare before the king.
I turned to run from the library, from the large male that must be laughing at my pain.
I fled from his face, but as I made it to the bookshelf, the king spoke into the silence—words that chilled my bones to their core.
“You do have magic, Little Baker. I knew it the moment you fed me that pastry in your bakery. It is you. You are meant to save us all.”