Chapter 3
Thank Aldorin for the rain. Soft droplets thud against the quenched ground like doses of medicine, bringing life back to the forest.
The green-sweet tang of rain hangs in the air, fresh and humid and wet. A chill rings off the impact of each raindrop, and it takes everything in me not to join the young elven children scurrying about to worship the gift from the heavens. I would, but my job requires me to remain in the shadows.
My eyes flash to my knife, sturdy in my calloused hand. I’d flintknapped the blade myself. The glassy obsidian refuses to reflect anything, instead greedily absorbing the light around it. It’s not alive, but in my hands, it has a heartbeat that pulses with the magic I’ve released into it.
Outside my stone hut, elf children dance in the mud, and the rain grows heavier, supplying the rhythm for their ritual. Their bare feet squish and slide, and whenever one falls, another helps them up.
The children do not laugh, for they know releasing a giggle would result in their immediate deaths or arrests.
The law against laughter had been decreed many years ago and applied specifically to elves.
My guess is as good as anyone’s why such a thing would be outlawed.
But as with our curses, we find ways to work around the law.
These children make a joyous clamor with their hands, slapping them in the air and smiling with sparkling fanged teeth.
Their pleasure is visible in their grins and glowing golden eyes.
It is nearly enough to distract me from remembering the corpses we’d found last week, ravished and half eaten by whatever monster heard their laughter and carried out the will of the king.
A knock sounds on the arched entrance of my stone haven. Pluto, a sunshine-haired elf and my closest companion, bends his neck inside, raising his eyebrows for permission to enter.
His pale skin is flecked with crystalline droplets, and his ears, like mine, are arrow-shaped and decorated with ebony piercings which dot along smooth, curved cartilage.
They are trophies bestowed upon us to show others how many mighty beasts we’ve eviscerated.
I have twelve. Pluto has seven. I like to remind him of this often.
I nod for him to enter. He sits next to me on the dirt ground.
We watch the children with bated breath and wait for one of them to let loose a giggle or cackle.
Doing so would force us to attack whatever beast lurks in the shadows, whether a messenger or traitor ordered to inflict punishment for their “wrongdoing.”
We lost one child last week to a wraithlike creature.
I shift my knife to my other hand and rub my thumb along the shiny surface. Its coolness levels my head.
They are fine , I remind myself. You are protecting them.
“...glad for the rain. It’s unfortunate we can’t share their enjoyment,” Pluto says flatly. He squints at the dancing children, and gloom flashes in his deep blue irises.
Our eyes are cursed to reveal our deepest emotions, and while he is usually great at keeping himself neutral, he struggles to hide anxiety or sadness. I think all of us do.
My thumb goes still on the blade as I turn to the straw-haired elf.
“You don’t mean that.” When he averts his gaze, I angle the knife at the opening of my hut and sigh.
“We are unlike the younger generations. We were not raised around this suffocating law. We are not accustomed to it. However, they…” will never know the luxury of laughing freely.
I allow my voice to trail off before my words can be mangled with sadness.
If we were to enjoy the forest’s natural gifts as the children do, our emotions would betray us to whatever arbiter the king has ordered to do his bidding. Our training limits us to protecting the young, not each other, which means we must avoid all things fun.
Still, I miss how it feels to laugh.
Pluto frowns, but he doesn’t say anything. Mutual understanding passes between us, a kind that doesn’t require words. His pale, bony hand curls around mine, cold from the rain.
Others in our age group watch the children from their huts, bodies trained to advance on any threat to Nwatalith, our village.
Allowing the kids to play like this coats my tongue with bitterness.
We are using them to bait predators, and I should hate that fact, but instead, I find myself competing with my brethren for the chance to attack.
Should one of our kind produce joyful melodies with their laughter, we must slay whoever lays eyes upon them.
Gods know we’ve been starved of such an opportunity as of late.
Normally, we hunt creatures of the Aldorin wood for sport rather than for the protection of our young.
Those monsters are tasty, and their magical centers—their eluviam s—strengthen ours as well as any mortal supplement.
Above protecting the vulnerable, however, most of us desire that power for ourselves. I am no exception.
I glance at my blade again, savoring the slight warmth it radiates and the tinge of red that glows deep within.
I’d given it some of my own energy in addition to the eluviam of the Aldorin forest rat I’d scavenged a few weeks back.
I transferred it with a cool brush of my fingers, but it takes a more developed eluviam to make a weapon both invincible and lethal.
I can already feel the magic fading.
Since I was removed from my posts as raider and mercenary and brought to protect our village’s children, the enchantments I’ve made to the blade have been wasted.
I sigh, returning my focus to the spotted rays of sun shimmering off the slowing raindrops.
Today’s downpour will be brief, and the children will return to their huts early.
Until they’re eighteen, elven children reside with sages, who offer wise counsel to the young and are like parents to orphaned youths.
Every few years, the fairies declare war on our people, laying siege to weaker settlements and shredding through larger ones like Nwatalith.
Our spies are rarely successful at thwarting their plans, and the results are always devastating.
Our young are safest with our village’s wise and old. Pluto is soon to be one of them, not due to his age, but because our village is shrinking. The recent siege and subsequent murder of Alcottia, our eldest protector and healer, left us more vulnerable than we’ve been in a long time.
A fairy tribe killed her.
Bastards.
My fingers clench the rough leather hilt of my knife.
The most recent siege happened a year ago, right under our noses, while I was out scouring a fairy camp for information.
I’d stumbled upon their wicked red and blue fire and took the opportunity to poke around.
Their absence should have indicated they were off somewhere wreaking havoc, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to steal valuable information.
Thanks to me, we haven’t had a siege since then.
Also thanks to me, we lost about a third of our village that day. Men, women, children. Young and old. Friends and family.
It wasn’t worth it, because now I’m stationed where a previous protector kept watch over our young instead of where I should be: hunting the fairies before they devise any more cruel plans.
Fairies have orphaned the rest of our young. Their methods are consistently vile, poisoning the adults before slitting their throats in the night. The children wake as orphans, forever traumatized when they discover their blood-drained parents.
It takes longer to recover from our losses each time, and the fairies know it. That’s why they’ve become more strategic with their attacks, especially after I’d stolen at least a year’s worth of leafprint documents.
Sadly, forces like ours didn’t exist seventeen years ago, when fairies killed my parents.
I’d only been four at the time, but even an elf that young knows a dead parent from an alive one.
My parents had been mated, which marked them for death.
Romanced by the powerful magic of Aldorin, newly paired lovers are blessed with identical glowing insignias on their arms, signifying their bond.
Mated pairs become one under the order and protection of our goddess, Aldorin, and share in one another’s pain.
It’s a phenomenon recognized as sacred across all elf villages and tribes, since it is considered rare for such a blessing to occur.
Thank the gods, because I know I’d hate to be bound to a stranger.
If I were interested in marriage at all, I’d much rather choose my partner.
My one and only past lover found his mate, abandoning me. After spending years together, his body reacted as though magnetized to an elf he’d just met while out on a hunt. He gave me a curt apology, and I never saw him again.
Mating between elves, we are taught, occurs on the rare occasion where two elves are equally yoked in power and ability. I’ve honed my skills to a level where it would be near impossible for another to match me, so I won’t need to worry about Aldorin damning me to the same fate as my parents.
Sometimes, though, I wonder if Pluto and I will drift through life together as we always have, watching each other’s backs while one of us does something dangerous.
Sometimes I dream our lives will never change, that he thinks of me as family, because he is family to me.
If either of us became mated, what would become of the years we spent together, in pain, in comfort?
He pulls me out of my thoughts by resting a hand on my shoulder.