The Sleeper Awakens
We’ll be the better for it…
But how can we be better for being reduced?
When the pack gets too big, the wolf knows!
The agony lay in accepting the truth. Once the choice was made, the rest was just details. One step after another – all leading to the same place.
* * *
The First Step
The landscape was a vision of alien beauty: forests of giant mushrooms under a pearly-white sky. The massive mushroom caps were a rich green streaked with purple, and between stands of the fungi grew ferns the size of oaks, with leaves in every shade of gold. Beyond the forest a series of sharp peaks rose into the sky, their summits obscured by haze of the moist air. The roar of rushing water could be heard, though the river lay out of sight, and when the breeze shifted the air held the faintest taste of ozone.
**Haken’s folk call it Haven,** the Waykeeper explained. **A land free of large predators, of mild weather and abundant water, between mountains and ocean. A new home. They are even now raising the walls of their new settlement.**
“It’s beautiful,” Foxglove breathed.
“It’s… strange,” Reader fretted.
“It is not meant for Wolfriders,” Sparkstone said firmly.
Littlefire had returned to the remnants of the Evertree Wolfriders after nearly a full season of travel. There were only fifteen of them now, with the Hunt’s defection: sixteen if one counted Rue’s swelling belly. She had fought to stay at the Egg even as her mother, lovemate and Recognized had all fought to tear her away.
Everyone hoped she was carrying a girl. The reduced Wolfriders counted only six lifebearers, and Willow was assumed by all to be past her fertile years.
Swift was right – the tribe had recovered from worse losses in the past, but only just. And never had their blood been spread so thin between a handful of cousins. Nearly every soul in the tribe could claim descent from either Strongbow or Redlance, often several times over. And everyone knew what happened when a wolfpack kept breeding too long between close kin.
Whenever the Wolfriders chose to found their new holt, they could not keep to the old Way. On that count, the increasingly divided souls inside Littlefire’s body were both in complete accord.
**We have found five possible new holts,** the Waykeeper continued to send Kit and Littlefire’s choral thoughts. **All clear of humans or trolls for five days’ hard ride. Four are on Abode: the Shadow Vale south of these mountains, the cloud-forests on the coast of the Stormsea, the northwest coast of the New Land, and the mouth of the Sunset River. None quite matches the forests of the Evertree, but all could serve. For now. But the humans will keep spreading across the land, and the trolls will keep tunnelling under it. They have already claimed all of Coldhaven, while the dreadclaws rule Beacon. And the Homeland is no longer safe for us.**
“So you say,” grumbled Woodsmoke, one of the few hunters who had defied Eyetooth and stayed behind. From his sour disposition, Littlefire imagined he regretted his last-minute change of allegiance.
“So I say,” Duskwind piped up.
“Me too,” Foxglove said. “You weren’t at the Tree! You don’t know – it didn’t get inside your mind.”
“It is our home,” Sparkstone insisted. “Our mother and father – our living Palace! We were all born in its embrace, and we should all die within it!”
“And so we will, sooner rather than later, if we go back,” Duskwind warned.
“You don’t know that, Father. Now that Mother has been avenged, now that the bloodsong has cooled, the spirits of the Evertree may welcome us back.”
“Still having the dreams, are you?” Duskwind asked archly. “Does Sunstill plead with you to return? She has given up on me, it seems.”
“Why not, when you refuse to listen to her? Yes, I still hear Mother in my dreams. And Chief Redlance, and Pool the Healer… and many others who have shed their skin.”
“And they beg you to return to them, don’t they? To be united once more, head, hand and heart? You saw how that ended for Pool.”
Sparkstone bristled. “I’m not such a fool that I cannot see this may be a lure… or my own wishful dreaming. But can you not consider that what happened at the Holt was a horrible mistake – one that we can still amend?”
“Sparkstone Amend-All,” Littlefire said without bitterness. “You should have inherited your father’s healing gifts. But not everything broken can be mended. We know that well…”
A flash of pain contorted his features, then he mastered himself once more. “We cannot live as we once did – that’s clear now. The old Way was never meant for the world this has become. It must learn to stretch and bend if it wishes to survive. If the tribe wishes to survive.
“We weren’t all born at the Evertree,” Littlefire reminded them. “We know the Wolfrider spirit can thrive beyond the borders of any one Holt. And we still think there is a place for our kind – if we are willing to grow. We have a chance to blaze a new trail, to be more than wolves, more than stags. To embrace the larger truth, while still honoring the smaller one.
“Haken’s followers plan to complete the move to Homestead before the end of the summer – over five hundred elves looking to build themselves a nation – no mere retread of Oasis, but something completely new. There is talk that Two-Edge will give up his throne at Blue Mountain and follow. We all share blood with the Sun Folk and the trollkin. Our brother Sust leads his own band of mounted hunters, as does our daughter Mink. Our uncle Grayling was a Wolfrider chief for thousands of years, and he wishes to embrace the wolfsong again. Duskwind, your parents are there at Haven even now. If we join with these Homesteaders, there will be new Recognitions, new alliances, a strengthening of our tribe. A rebirth of our tribe – combining the best of the Wolfrider spirit with the fire of fresh blood and new Ways.”
Burl gave a snort. “Like these College folk’s Ways? Trading with humans and trolls? Locking themselves inside stone and feeding off the flesh of captive beasts?”
“The meat from their sheep does taste sweeter than any I’ve ever had back in the Homeland,” Foxglove offered.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Newgreen quipped. “Their sheep look sweeter than any of those rangy beasts you’ve ever managed to bring in.”
“Pfft, fattened on grass and slaughtered in secret,” Burl sneered. “That’s no honorable kill.”
“High Ones know I’d rather not see my death coming,” Hollyhock muttered. “I imagine the sheep are the same.”
“Coward,” Woodsmoke muttered.
“Aye,” Burl agreed. “Sweet meat, soft beds, pretty baubles – all ways to make life easier. Who says life was meant to be easy? That’s not what the wolfsong sings. Isn’t that the lesson Mother Timmain taught our ancestors? That a life without struggle is a life half-lived?”
“And yet Timmain chooses to live here, at the Egg,” Foxglove pointed out.
Burl scowled at the reminder. “She doesn’t seem much like the Timmain of the howls,” was all he would say.
“You want struggle, Burl?” Littlefire barked, and his voice was subtly altered, pitched somehow higher than usual. “I’ll give you the greatest fight of your life – and a place in the greatest howl we’ll ever sing! A new land, a new tribe! We will still have the forest and the wolfsong. But it will be a song in a different key. A richer harmony for the new voices.”
Still many looked dubious. At length Rue spoke. “We have no wolves left… and I doubt we’ll find any on Homestead. What can we be, if not Wolfriders?”
“You are elves. You can be whatever you choose to be. Whatever you’re willing to strive to be.” Littlefire’s voice fell back into its familiar tenor. “But you must choose. We are not Eyetooth, to bully you into submission. We are not Furrow, to answer defiance with a heavy hand. But we cannot be Waykeeper any longer. The cost is too great.
“We are leaving this world for Homestead, to forge a new path. We ask you to follow. But the choice must be yours.”
An awkward silence fell over the assembled elves. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to speak first. Foxglove tightened her grip on her spear and made to rise. But before she could, Sparkstone spoke up.
“We thank you for your good counsel,” he said. “You have been mother and father both to us all in a way even Timmain has not. She birthed us, but you have raised us. And we will forever be grateful.”
He got to his feet. “But it’s clear what we must do. We have recovered our strength here at the Egg. Now it is time to go home. We will ask for one more flight in the Palace, and we will find a patch of forest somewhere north of the Evertree. We will set up a new Holt and we will howl for new wolves. We will do what we do best: hunt, howl and survive. We will spend every waking moment of the summer preparing for the white-cold. We will endure. And if the Evertree should ever spread its roots far enough to reach us, we will greet our spirit-kin as true Wolfriders, and we will ask for peace. But if they require war of us, then we will we answer in kind. We will never again turn tail and flee like a human’s cringing near-wolf!”
Sparkstone’s impassioned speech was greeted with the same empty silence as Littlefire’s. The Holt chief’s brow furrowed. He held out a hand to his tribe. “Come,” he insisted. “Wolfriders?”
Foxglove rose, spear in hand, and strode over to join Littlefire.
Rue grimaced and struggled to her feet, thrown off-balance by her now-prominent belly. Burl helped her up with a hand to the small of her back, and together the hunters stepped into line beside Foxglove.
Ivy was the next to move. Then Newgreen and her lifemate Hollyhock. Then Highsun and Cattail, and old Hindsight. Duskwind took one long, weary look at his eldest son, then rose and made his choice.
Ten elves stood by Littlefire. Only Woodsmoke, Willow and Reader remained seated. Sparkstone stared at the defectors in horror. “Wolfriders?” he repeated, utterly at a loss. “You… you cannot mean this. You wish to surrender your birthright? To become as rootless as all the immortal elves, to live and die on a world not your own?”
“Poke this,” Woodsmoke muttered under his breath. “I’ll be gutted if I stick around to listen to that!”
In three swift strides, he was standing next to Rue, looking ill at ease, but standing taller than he had since the Hunt’s departure. Willow looked at her lifemate, then clucked her tongue and murmured a command to Reader.
Mother and son rose from their seats on the rocky ground. Sparkstone could only gape at them as they crossed over to Littlefire’s side.
“Lifemate?” Sparkstone sputtered.
“Come now, Sparkstone,” Willow said. “You’ve made your point. No one thinks less of you. But the tribe has decided.”
“The tribe…” he repeated, dumbstruck. “I am your chief!”
Woodsmoke snorted in derision.
“I am your lifemate,” he said to Willow, more fiercely.
Willow gave him a sad look. “And the tribe has decided,” she repeated firmly.
Sparkstone looked to his son, a shaggy-haired elf with his mother’s fair coloring and the faintest wisp of facefur below his ears. “Reader?” he begged. Reader dropped his eyes to the ground, but did not make a move to leave his mother’s side.
“Enough, Sparkstone,” Willow repeated. “It’s over.”
“Aye, so it is.” Sparkstone fumbled at his hip for his dagger. Unsheathing it, he clumsily sawed at his chief’s lock. The leather thong and several locks of ginger hair came away. “But I’ll not forsake my own soul for this quest. I choose to live and die on this world, and to join the spirits at the Evertree when the time comes to shed my skin.”
“A lone wolf?”
“That’s up to you. You must decide, lifemate. Are you with them, or me?”
Willow stared at him curiously. “You would ask me that? You would demand that of me? I have been at your side since we were hunters together. You know where my heart lies. And you would make me choose between my tribe and my mate?”
“I have made my choice, according to my soul’s truth. And if I leave this tribe alone, then that will be by your choice.”
Something approaching pity crossed her face. Then she made her expression hard. “I have already chosen. It is you who are choosing to walk away from me. From all of us.”
Sparkstone reeled from the blow. He searched the faces of his former tribemates, but they all seemed to be desperate to look elsewhere. None would meet his gaze, save Willow and Littlefire.
“You!” Sparkstone accused Littlefire. “You mean to destroy us!”
“We mean to save you,” came Littlefire’s sober reply.
* * *
**We’re going now,** Wesh and Tayr told the cocoon that had sat undisturbed inside the Egg for the better part of the year. **The others are ready, we only need to call for the Ark. Sparkstone… he’s still not coming. He says he’s going to stay here for a while… see if he can bond with any of Cheipar’s wolves.**
**I think he’s still hoping Willow will change her mind,** Littlefire added privately. **High Ones know Willow is still hoping he’ll change his.**
**He won’t,** Kit insisted.
**Probably not. It’s not what we wanted… it’s nothing like how we wanted it to go.**
**But… maybe it’s what we all needed.**
**It hurts,** Littlefire admitted. **Kit told me it would. I… I didn’t know how much.**
A hand came down on Littlefire’s shoulder, hard enough to make him jump. He looked up and smiled wanly. **But at least Papa Skot’s finally stopped trying to tie my hair up in a chief’s lock when I’m not looking!**
“I’m telling you, it would look good on you.”
**I’ll be back – we’ll be back to visit,** Littlefire promised the cocoon. **I… I just wish I could say goodbye properly.**
He felt a prickle at the back of his mind, like the itch of a fleabite on his scalp. **Then – puckernuts! – let me out already!**
Littlefire swung around to look at Skot, only to be rudely pushed aside as Skot dove for the cocoon. “Outta my way,” he hissed, as he tore at the wrapstuff with his bare hands. Unable to penerate the first layer, he snatched up his short sword and sawed at the strings, until the outline of an elf began to emerge.
Littlefire helped him tear off the last few wispy layers, exposing Pike’s round face. The old howlkeeper slowly opened his eyes, the color of dreamberries, and blinked up at them sleepily.
Skot let out a whoop of joy and vaulted onto the bed, catching Pike up in his arms, tearing away the last of the cocoon so Pike could embrace him in turn. Pike let out a breathless laugh as Skot crushed the air out of his lungs, then looked up at the rocky ceiling.
“This isn’t Howling Rock…” he murmured.
Skot laughed and thumped him hard on the back. “Eight drukking months and that’s what he has to say to me! Oh, I love you, squirrel-cheeks!” He seized a fistful of auburn hair, and kissed his lifemate greedily until the Wolfrider pushed him off with a gasp.
“Eight months?! Wha – what happened? Where’s Kahvi? Did…” he looked from Skot to Littlefire in confusion. “Did we win?”
“We’re still here, aren’t we? And old Kahvi is dust on the wind – poke it, Pike, didn’t you listen to anything I told you?!”
“I dunno…” Pike rubbed at his temple. “Turtle?” he turned to Littlefire. “You’re leaving us? Back to the Evertree?”
Wesh and Tayr felt a stab of envy for Pike’s innocence of the last eight turmultuous months. “No… there’s no going back now.”
* * *
Only fourteen elves boarded the Ark when it appeared over the Egg. Sparkstone did not emerge from his self-imposed exile in the forest to bid them farewell. “I’m so sorry, Willow,” Foxglove said awkwardly, when it was past time to leave. “I knew he was a stubborn old wolf, but I never thought–”
“He’d hold fast? Oh, I did. I know him inside-out, you see. Recognition does that.” Willow pressed her hand to the crystal wall of the Ark, watching the forested mountainside shrink beneath them as the Ark rose higher into the night sky. “But even it can’t promise you’ll think or feel as one.”
“But you’ve been together for so long…”
“It doesn’t matter in the end. We have to be who… and what we are. Asking him to leave this world behind for the tribe’s sake… it’s just as unfair as asking me to leave my kin for his sake. I could wait forever for him to change his mind. But that would mean giving up everything that’s good for me. No one should have to do that. Waykeeper taught me that. He’s taught all us of that: before we can be true to our tribe, or our mates, or even our cubs, we must be true to ourselves.”
They heard a ragged catch of breath behind them, like the beginnings of a cough… or a sob. Littlefire stood within earshot, watching them with a stricken expression.
“Waykeeper–” Foxglove began, but then a flash of light startled them all, and when the light faded the Ark was descending over an alien woodland.
* * *
The Second Step
A lost seed must find safe soil in which to sprout.
We’ve found it. We couldn’t ask for better. But even the gentlest sprouting is a painful transformation.
They had known that everything would be different on Homestead, but knowing was nothing compared to feeling. Deep belly pains from the strange food. Deeper headaches from the heavy air. Broken sleep from the longer nights and days, and broken bones from the stronger worldpull. Blood thinning in their veins even as magic thickened in their nerves.
Wesh and Tayr had promised them great howls of those first days, but they found there was little they wished to remember.
Even the sun was different on Homestead: colder and smaller, a dull white ball in a hazy sky. The seasons – such as they were – turned slowly. Gone was newgreen and death-sleep, longsun and whitecold. Now cool-dry faded into warm-dry, to warm-wet and back to cool. In the time it took for the Daystar to go from midsummer to midsummer, a year and a half had passed by Abodean reckoning.
They set up a camp among the giant mushrooms, a full day’s walk from the settlement of Haven. Newgreen’s plantshaping magic – which had lain all but dormant for centuries inside the self-shaping Evertree – came to life with remarkable speed, and soon the mushrooms’ great woody stalks held bowers and dens not unlike those they all remembered from the Homeland. Newgreen even managed to coax some dreamberries to grow in the strange purple soil. Burl and Foxglove swore they had never gotten so muzzy-headed from Abode-grown berries.
The days of great hunts and great feasts were behind them. Now the hunters learned to content themselves chasing down pugscuttlers on foot. Fish and river crabs made up the bulk of their diet, along with forest fruits, and the smaller mushrooms. They lost much time to illness in the first months, when they barely know what was safe to eat and what wasn’t. But Duskwind’s healing powers were stronger than they’d ever been, and though more than one elf wished for death during the worst of the pains, none were lost.
They still called themselves Wolfriders, though there were no wolves to be found. But there were jackrunners – the grotesque descendents of Melati’s shapechanged jackals, brought over from the World’s Spine and turned loose on the far side of the White River. Melati assured them the beasts had a fear of rushing water, and would never cross the river to trouble the Wolfriders. Yet it wasn’t long before the elves could hear strange howls late at night, like some distorted memory of their old life.
One night Rue tried howling back, and elf and jackrunner sang together, their music filling the forest. But by the next night the jackrunners had moved on, and the forest was eeriely quiet again.
The seed had sprouted, but it had yet to take root. They were not thriving – not yet. But that would come in time. They all chose to believe that. They lived each day by the Waykeeper’s creed: that they could be whatever they wished if they had the will to see it through.
“I can’t do it…”
“Waykeeper?” Foxglove approached nervously. It was late evening: the sunset glow was slowly retreating, and the rings traced band of silver light across the sky. The tribe was supping together on a rare tuskhopper kill, but Littlefire had withdrawn to the edge of the Holt. Foxglove found him under a drooping mushroom cap, struggling to banish the tear-tracks from his cheeks.
“Waykeeper, what is it?” she asked, sinking to her knees beside him. “How can I help? Please – what can I do?”
“Nothing. This is our fight… we must bear it alone. We must – I must…” he gritted his teeth and held his breath as a shudder of pain – or grief – shook his slight frame. “I know what I have to do. But I don’t know how I can bear it!”
“What? Surely the worst is behind us now?”
Littlefire burst into fresh tears. “I’m hurting him,” he wept. “And I’m hurting her. And we don’t want to, but we’re both so afraid to take that next step. But we must – it’s the only way. Willow is right. We must be true to our own souls! But how can we do this to each other?”
“Please, Waykeeper. You’re speaking in riddles.”
He seized her hand in his and squeezed with a grip of iron. “You said… ‘I love you.’ Who do you love? Littlefire or Kit?”
Foxglove flushed and tried to pull her hand free. “Please –”
“Who?”
“Both,” she stammered out. “You’re one and the same to me – to all of us! You are Waykeeper, our mother and father both. I… I don’t know where one of you ends and the other begins. Is – isn’t that so?”
Littlefire laughed bitterly, and dropped her hand. “Once. Once we thought as one, felt as one. Or at least we thought so. But since the Tree… he’s been made to see – and she’s been made to feel – and we cannot go on like this!”
“You can’t be thinking… Waykeeper, you cannot leave us! We need you – all of you! You say you’re no chief, but you’re the only chief we have now. You’re our High One!”
“I’m n-no High One,” he stammered, and tugged at his forelock.
“I say you are. And there are eight-and-five elves back there who would agree with me! You’re the only one who can hold us together. We all followed you into the stars, for Kiv’s sake! Stop that!” she snapped as he kept twisting and plucking at his hair with increasing ferocity. She wrapped her arms about him and held his hands tight in her own. “We need you – I need you!” she insisted. “And I swear, if you let me, I’ll see you through… whatever it is you must do. Only promise you won’t leave us.”
“I thought I was stronger than this,” he sobbed.
“You are. You’re strong enough to face anything. Both of you.”
Littlefire surrendered to her firm embrace, tucking his head against her shoulder like a cub. “I’m so afraid… I can’t do this alone.”
“I’m here,” she promised. “Always.”
* * *
The Third Step
Roots begin to take hold on Homestead – ones of starstone and ones of spirit.
It is getting better.
They’re ready now. We’re ready now.
A cool spring afternoon saw the entire Wolfrider clan within the walls of Haven.
The settlement had grown steadily throughout the turnings of the seasons, as the crystal towers of the Ark had risen above it. Deep starstone anchors tapped the seedrock deposits, steadily converting them to living stone and increasing the size and power of the great crystal turrets. Abodean crops grew in neat rows alongside several modified strains of local produce. The fleshvines prospered in the dark chambers underneath the Ark – the farmers even had a surplus to trade with the Wolfriders. The hunters refused to eat it, of course. But Littlefire soon developed quite a taste for the grown meat.
The Wolfriders visted Haven often – to trade, to visit kin, to seek out new friendships and lovematings. Even Burl summoned the courage to greet new faces – though he gorged on dreamberries to steel his nerve, and hid his fear behind a mask of bad-temper.
A steadily-trodden game trail now linked village and holt. Haken predicted that it would not be long before Haven’s outer limits would infringe on the mushroom forest, and the Wolfriders would need to decide whether to flee further south, or whether to submit to civilization at last. Most of Haven’s inhabitants would wager troll-gold on flight over submission.
But on this late spring afternoon, Haken meant for all to celebrate. Though only a select few were permitted within the Ark itself, the feasting and dancing had already begun outside.
Inside the antechamber to Melati’s workship, Two-Edge paced restlessly, wringing his great hands. Haken stilled him with a touch to his shoulder. “Peace, my grandson,” he urged, but his hand trembled slightly, and he clenched and unclenched his fingers as he waited.
“You will let us know if you need any help with the cliffs,” Chani was saying to Aroree behind them. “We have so many rockshapers eager to experiment…”
“Rrrraugh – got you!” Beast exclaimed, snatching up the little elf-child once again trying to toddle away from his side.
“Mama!” Naga protested, reaching for the closed door. But Beast slung her in the crook of his arm and proceded to tickle her with his long claws, until she giggled and squirmed with delight, her quest for her mother forgotten.
“Do take care,” Maleen fretted. “Just because she’s laughing doesn’t mean you–” but Beast turned an exasperated glance her way and she fell silent. She sidled up and stroke Naga’s honey-red curls, so much like Ruffel’s. “There now, sweetling. I should think it’s almost time for your daysleep.”
Naga wriggled in Beast’s grasp as if in protest at the very idea, and Beast swiftly transferred her to his other arm, hoisting her up so she could cling to his shoulder spines with her chubby fists. She began to gum one bony point thoughtfully, and Maleen closed her eyes in a silent prayer for strength.
At length the crystal door slid open, and they all turned. Melati and Weatherbird slowly emerged, gently supporting the frail, white-skinned figure between them.
“Easy now,” Weatherbird cautioned. “Take as much time as you need.”
Step by uncertain step, the elf-woman between them shuffled into the light, eyes downcast, her entire being focused on putting one slender foot in front of the other. The increased gravity was an added burden to thin bones that had grown in weightlessness, and she teetered precariously on shaking legs, despite the strong hands at her elbows. Having exhausted herself after a few steps, she swayed, head still bent, as if it was too great a burden to lift. Her thick black hair did not quite reach her shoulders, but it lay wet and heavy against the back of her neck.
Slowly, deliberately, Winnowill raised her head, and beheld her son with her own eyes for the first time in ten millennia.
“Two-Edge…” she breathed, her newborn voice hoarse.
“Mother!” Two-Edge groaned, and stretched out his hands.
She found enough strength to push away from her caretakers. With a soft, dove-like cry, she staggered towards him, tripping over her long legs and the hem of the simple moth-fabric gown. Two-Edge rushed forward to catch her to ease them both to the floor, until she was perched on his knee, her hands sunk deep in his white hair, her tears falling on his beard as she clung to him and wept “My son, my sweet little son,” in a broken refrain.
“I could never hold you before,” he cried. “But I have you now, and I’ll never let you go!”
“Never,” she confirmed. “I’ll never leave you again! I’ve come home at last – there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
They clung to each other, laughing and weeping at once. Then Two-Edge helped her rise, and she looked over his head at her parents. “My lord and lady…” she began to make a reverent bow, but Haken growled, “None of that!” and enfolded her in a one-armed embrace.
Her duty done, Melati returned to her lifemate’s side. Naga lisped “Mama” and reached for her, and Melati took her up with a grin.
“There’s my little snakelet.” She bobbed her gently up and down. “See that fine lady over there? That’s your Auntie Winnowill. You’re going to learn so much from her one day, yes you are.”
* * *
Like any newborn, Winnowill’s strength ebbed and waned in sudden bursts. She had little stamina to partake in her own feast, but she sat as proudly as any Glider lord, propped up by cushions, taking in the sights with greedy eyes.
The feast was for Melati as much as Winnowill. Littlefire had to wait until long after midnight to catch a moment alone with her. At the last moment, Wesh and Tayr’s courage nearly deserted them, but Foxglove’s gentle touch at Littlefire’s elbow propelled him forward.
“M-melati. A word?”
“Ah, Littlefire. Only the one? I’m quite insulted.”
Littlefire found an awkward smile for her jest. “I – we – wanted to know – now that Winnowill is reborn… can your – your Cradle be used to grow another elfin body? N-not just a piece like you did for Greenflame, but a whole shell.”
“Of course. It’s my fondest dream to make a world where death is strictly a temporary state.”
“And… any spirit could choose to reborn?”
A frown crossed Melati’s face. “Most will not, I’m afraid. Most souls make their peace with death and dive deep in the spirit pool. Most old ones, anyway. Winnowill is very uncommon to possess the will to live again – I suppose she gets that from our lady mother. And of course, a spirit will find it far easier to return to its original shell – or as close a match as I can craft. I was fortunate with Winnowill – I had a sample of her cellular matrix. If Lord Voll wanted to reincarnate, for example, it would be a far more arduous task to make a shell to suit his spirit.”
“Head, hand and heart,” Littlefire said. “They’re all bound together.”
“You do realize what an exceptional case you are – for one shell to house two souls in such balance?”
“That’s why I – we – wished to talk to you.” Littlefire cast a nervous glance back at Foxglove, waiting patiently just out of earshot, then swallowed and plowed ahead. “Kit’s shell fed the forest long ago. But her child Mink lives still. And Grayling shares blood with her father Strongbow. If we give you drops of their blood, could you grow Kit a new body?”
Melati stared at him in amazement. “This is not a request to make lightly.”
“We don’t. We… we have considered for years. And now we see: it’s the only way forward. We no longer feel as one, think as one. The Wolfriders deserve the chieftess Kit will make… without the chains binding her. And Littlefire deserves the peace he seeks, the freedom from being the Waykeeper. This skin has become too small for us to share. Kit must have one of her own again.”
Elfquest copyright 2016 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2016 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2016 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts