Cholla
The true scope of Oasis could only be properly appreciated from the air. Floating high above the Sun Folk’s new home, Rayek was able to take in its intricate geography, the product of fifteen turns of rockshaping. The central mountain spire continued to dominate the landscape, like a miniature Blue Mountain rendered in sandstone. Inside the main box canyon lay a freshwater spring, and a patchwork of fields and winding lanes connecting the familiar Sun Villager huts. Smaller valleys lay tucked between defensive cliff walls, into which the rockshapers had fashioned hidden tunnels and clever staircases. Though the Gliders made only a small fraction of Oasis’s population, it was the wish of Haken that all elves could move as freely as birds through the maze of rock.
Beyond the concentric rock walls that formed their primary protection against outsiders, the rambling hillside was crowded with ugly cacti and deformed cloud-trees. Rayek smiled to himself; the daughter of Redlance and Nightfall had finally found a use for her abysmal treeshaping skills. One look at the landscape would tell a wandering human that it was madness to linger. Yet the beasts did not mind the unnatural surroundings, and Rayek spotted a small herd of crescent horns on the northern flats. The Jackwolf Riders, led by Grayling, were already in hot pursuit. There would be fresh meat to share tonight; Rayek had no need to supplement the Sun Folk’s larder with a kill of his own.
The sun beat down on his back; it was nearing the time for the noonday sleep. As Rayek turned back to the central valley, he saw a trio of tiny dots scampering over the broken ground between the two ringwalls. From his height, all elves looked miniscule, but a second glance told him these were even smaller than the usual Sun Folk. One head was dark, one copper-haired. But his gaze was drawn to the the third little elf, lagging well behind the others, and the shock of white hair that crowned its head.
Taimi… no! You foolish kitling!
He dropped from the sky like a hawk, but he could already see that intervention came too late. As the white-haired dot grew to become a little girl, her steps faltered and she wilted to the sand.
**LEETAH!** Rayek sent frantically. **Taimi needs a healing!**
He alighted on the ground just as the two boys realized their companion had fallen. The girl lay on the ground, gasping for breath, her limbs jerking like a dying ravvit’s, her face already turning dusky.
“Taimi!” the older boy cried. “Oh, scat! Rayek, is she–?”
**What do you think?** Rayek snapped back, as he gathered his baby sister in his arms. **Are you trying to kill her?!**
“We can take her to Mother,” the younger boy insisted. “She’ll be all right – we just need to–”
**You’ve done enough!** Rayek took off without a backward glance, cradling the girl against the sudden rush of wind. **Taimi?** he locksent. **Taimi, I am here. Remember your breathing. Remember – oh, kitling, what were you thinking?!**
Leetah had heard his summons; she was awaiting them in her chambers within the central spire. After eight turns of the seasons, she knew well what her patient required. Rayek had scarcely laid the frail elf-child on the bed before Leetah’s aura extended over her, calming her trembling heart, giving it the strength it needed to find its rhythm again. Slowly – too slowly for Rayek’s liking – the dusky tinge left his sister’s face. Her breathing gradually slowed and deepened, guided by Leetah’s example. By the time Jarrah and Ekuar arrived at the healer’s house, drawn by Rayek’s frantic summons, Taimi was resting comfortably.
“My little blossom,” Jarrah soothed, as she sat at her daughter’s bedside. “Did you wilt in the hot sun?” She took Taimi’s pulse and frowned. “Oh, your heart is still stampeding.”
“Hurts…” Taimi murmured.
“I know it does, kitling. That is why you must take care.”
“She’s still in pain?!” Rayek rounded on Leetah.
“Hush now. Your sister needs to sleep.”
“Should we summon Flitrin, healer?” Jarrah asked.
“No!” Taimi cried. “Not wrapstuff! Please Mama, I’ll be good. I won’t run anymore. I promise. But no wrapstuff.”
“Oh, kitling, it’s not a punishment,” Ekuar spoke up.
“She doesn’t like it!” Rayek snapped. “You know she’s afraid of wrapsleep.”
**Peace, brownskin,** Ekuar locksent. **You’re frightening her.**
**No, you are! You know just seeing that cursed Preserver makes her heart race. She’s already had one stampede today! She could barely breathe when I found her. She was all but turning blue!**
**I know,** Ekuar’s sending was laden with patient sorrow.
**You must not distress her!**
**I know that too.**
**Then how can you be so cursed calm?**
**Because it helps Taimi. And because this is nothing new. Running or not. Afraid or not. This is her life, brownskin.**
Rayek heard the truth of the sending, and he felt the anger drain out of him. It was easy to forget, even though he visited every moon-dance without fail, that for every bad day he witnessed, Jarrah and Ekuar saw so many more.
Jarrah gave her daughter a cup of squat-needle juice, sweetened with honey. In time, the boys arrived at the door, shame-faced and breathless. Klipspringer hung back, his head bent in guilt, but Pool hurried up to the bed, anxious to make amends.
“Taimi, how are you feeling? Wow, you got to go for a flight, didn’t you? Are you better now? You feel better! You’ve got that glow you always get when Mother heals you – I can feel it all tingly-like. Bet you’re sleepy now. Well, you just rest. Don’t worry about the race. We’ll say neither of us won.”
“Pool…” Leetah began gently. “You know what your father and I have told you about playing with Taimi.”
“The race wasn’t my idea, Mother! It wasn’t. I warned her. I told her she shouldn’t be running! She knows she not supposed to.”
“But you ran with her anyway,” Rayek growled. He glared at Klipspringer, still penitent in the doorway. “And you? What’s your excuse?”
“I have none,” the youth said solemnly. He might be nearly as tall as a Glider, with skin almost as brown as Rayek’s, but whenever he spoke, his gentle voice and grave manners always invited comparison to his grandsire Redlance. “I was the elder. I should have forbidden it.”
“Don’t be angry with ’Springer, Rayek,” Taimi protested. “He told me I shouldn’t. I wanted to run. I wanted…” she bent her head and lowered her voice. “I just wanted to play. Like Pool does.”
“Oh, sweet kitling,” Jarrah soothed. “But you know you cannot.”
“It’s not fair,” Taimi protested. “How come Pool can run and climb and swim and I can’t?”
“You know why.”
“’Cause I’m sick,” Taimi repeated miserably. “But everyone else who is sick can be healed. So why can’t I? It’s not fair!” she repeated stubbornly.
“No,” Rayek agreed. Nothing about his sister’s life was fair.
“You are not ill, Taimi,” Leetah insisted. “Simply… frail. We have discussed this.”
“It’s ’cause you weren’t born from Recognition,” Pool piped up, in a helpful tone. “I told you – Mother can’t fix that!”
The pained silence that fell could be cut with a knife. And when Rayek spoke, his voice was as sharp as his lifemate’s blade. “What did you say?”
Too late Pool realized he had misspoken. Rayek’s tone and Jarrah’s horror-struck expression told him as much. But by the way he turned to Leetah imploringly, he clearly had no idea why.
“It’s only what you said, Mother. You told me –”
**What have you told your wretched son?** Rayek locksent.
“Pool, this isn’t the time,” Leetah cautioned.
“But it’s only what you said! She’s just jealous because I’ve got my magic-feeling and she doesn’t! I told her–”
“What did you tell her?” Jarrah asked, as she hugged her daughter protectively. “Taimi? What did Pool say to you?”
Now Taimi was crying. “He said I’d never be special! I’ll always be sick and weak because you and Papa aren’t Recognized. And he’ll always be better than me at everything!”
“That’s not what I said!”
“But that’s what she heard,” Rayek growled. “You little mongrel! Who are you to stand over my sister? She may have a weak heart, but at least her blood is all elfin!”
“Rayek!” Leetah snapped.
“You tell your wolf-blooded son that he is better than the grandchild of a High One?!”
Leetah drew herself up tall. “I told him only the truth. Recognition exists to create the strongest children, to bind two souls best suited to give life to a third. I never said children born outside Recogniton were any less valued. Simply that to make a child that is special takes the bonding that happens when eyes meet eyes.”
**Oh, and you have every right to be proud of your special boy!** Rayek locksent viciously. **Every bit as foolish and spiteful as his sire, and every bit as mortal!**
Leetah recoiled from his thoughts, but only for a moment. **You Recognized a Wolfrider long before I did,** she replied. **And while you might find some pleasure in shaming a child, it will do nothing to change the truth.**
**What truth?**
**That Pool can change his nature, should he choose. But Taimi cannot. She is not the strongest of children. In truth, she is the weakest I have encountered. Her heart is improperly formed, and while I might be able to reshape it, she is far too frail to survive the attempt. When she is older, perhaps. With the Palace’s help. Perhaps not even then. Perhaps she must wait until we rediscover the art of growing new shells for ourselves, as Haken says the Firstcomers once did. But if she had been born in a tribe without a healer, she would never have survived her first year.**
**Her father is a child of the Firstcomers!** he exploded in sending.
**And he has been weakened by a long, hard life. Perhaps too weakened to be siring healthy children. A cruel truth, perhaps. But Taimi will not be served by gentle lies.**
**Better to call her misbegotten?**
**She is what she is! And she must learn to accept it. Unless you’d like Flitrin to wrap her up and let her outrun Pool in her dreams!**
A spasm of rage gripped him as he remembered how the last attempt to cocoon the sickly child had precipitated the worst fit he had ever witnessed. Even with Rayek holding her hand and sending to her, Taimi had sobbed and whimpered “Please, I’ll be good, please don’t,” until Flitrin had sealed off her mouth. It had struck Rayek has the cruelest of torture, as bad as any the Black Snake could have devised.
Even sealed, she had continued to beg in sendings, long after she should have fallen into the wrapstuff trance. He had torn her free himself and vowed he would never let them cocoon her again.
“Rayek,” Ekuar touched his shoulder. One glance at the old elf told him that Ekuar could well guess at the contents of their locksendings. His eyes held the same resigned sadness as before.
“Come,” he said. “Let’s take your sister home. She needs her rest.”
**You keep your son away from her,** Rayek sent openly to Leetah in parting.
As an honored elder of Oasis, Ekuar had been offered a fine set of rooms inside the spire, just one floor before Haken’s own chambers. But he preferred to live out in the valley, in a simple farmer’s hut like the kind in which his lifemate had grown up. Rayek recognized the same tapestries from his childhood home adorning the walls of Taimi’s room. He carried the child to her bed and laid her down gently. “Here.” He passed her a stuffed toy in the shape of a zwoot. “Here’s Zwoodle.”
“I’m not a baby,” Taimi grumbled. Still, she clutched her soft toy tightly.
“Sleep now. You need to recover your strength.”
She nodded glumly. “I’ll sleep.”
“No one will call for Flitrin. I promise.”
She blinked up at him gratefully. Her eyes were violet like her mother’s, yet as large and moving as Ekuar’s. Rayek ruffled her hair with a brother’s tenderness. The white strands were so fine, it was the easiest thing to coax them up into a fluffy halo, reminiscent of the fuzz that grew on the cholla cacti. Only the white fluff that coated the cholla plants was a miniature forest of spines, while Taimi’s hair was soft as moth-fabric.
“And pay no mind to what Pool says,” Rayek told her. “You are special!”
She made a face. “I’m not strong. I don’t have any magic. I’m not good at anything – all I’m good at is being sick.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is! I can’t do anything. Pool has his magic-feeling and Fennec can track and hunt better than anyone, and Klipspringer’s fast as a jackwolf and little baby Eyrie was born floating!”
“My magic only began to appear in my twelfth year.”
“Liar. You were seven. I remember – you told me once.”
“You see? You have the sharp mind of a memorykeeper! Then you must remember Ahdri was older than I before she came into her rockshaping gift.”
Taimi seemed unimpressed.
“Your very existence is your gift,” Rayek said. “It is not that Recognition makes a better child – it is simply that for generations, our folk thought it the only way to make a child. Even those like Pike and Spar – they are born of forced Recognition. It remains a great rarity to have a child conceived out of love alone.”
“Go-Backs are born out of Recognition all the time,” Taimi said. “They never have magic.”
“The Go-Backs live a hard life. They have had to learn how to breed by sheer will. But that too is a great achievement,” he admitted. Strange, that he had never realized it before. “Our kind is not meant to reproduce itself easily, but the Go-Backs have defied their limitations. As your parents have. Recognition is said to choose souls to bind, to create new life. But your parents chose for themselves! They created your soul of their own free will! And that makes you infinitely more special than any child of Recognition.”
Taimi regarded him skeptically. “More special than you?”
“Much more special,” he insisted tenderly. “You are the grandchild of the Firstcomers. Your blood still remembers the stars. That is why your heart labors so to keep it flowing. If you cannot strengthen your body, then you must strengthen your mind. Study with Lord Haken and Door. They can teach you all you need to know about what it truly means to being an elf.”
“They just sit around all day. I already know how to do that.”
No, you have had your fill of sitting still, he admitted. You want to run wild over the rocks with your agemates. You want to be a child.
He didn’t know what to say that hadn’t already been said. So he settled for sitting at her bedside and stroking her hair, as he had once done for Venka, until she fell asleep. When her breathing had turned deep and slow, he rose to leave her to her dreams.
**I just want to be better than Pool at something,** she sent, as clearly as if she had been wide awake. Rayek was struck by the power in her sending. He remembered the raw, untempered telepathy from her convalescence in wrapstuff. With such a focused mind, how could anyone doubt she was the trueborn heir to the High Ones?
A thought occurred to him. A most childish one, really, quite unworthy of a Palacemaster.
**Perhaps I can teach you something… better suited to your nature than Pool’s.**
He stayed nearly a month, working with Taimi while Jarrah worked the fields and Ekuar tended the rocks. They would retire to a secluded ravine or a quiet corridor within the mountain, and practice their telepathy. Rayek taught her how to stare down an opponent without blinking, how to focus her sending star to one elf alone, and how to link minds with someone and let her heart beat in time with another’s.
Between Rayek’s hovering presence and whatever lectures Leetah had given him, Pool stayed away from Ekuar’s hut for many days. But one morning Rayek looked over to the garden where Taimi was watering the seedlings, and saw the Wolfrider boy approach her.
“Hey, Taimi. Wanna come to the jackwolf dens with me?”
“Nope. Busy.”
“Aww, come on. Freshet just had a litter last night – five of them. Maybe one of them will be your wolf-friend. You could keep up with me if you had a jackwolf to ride.”
“I don’t like riding.”
“You only say that because you’ve only ridden zwoots! Jackwolves are much better. They’re the best! But you won’t find one as good as Greedygut. One day I’ll ride him in the hunt just like Father – I bet one day I’ll be as good a rider as Fennec – better!”
“And you’ll have as many fleabites as Fennec. Probably more.”
“Your parents probably wouldn’t let you have a wolf-friend,” he said spitefully. “They’d be too worried you’d hurt yourself. And you probably would. But you always can sit up on the cliffs and watch me ride,” he added cheerfully. “Not that you’d walk up there. You’d get too out of breath. But someone could float you. And you could watch me do all the things you can’t–”
Taimi looked up at him sharply, her violet eyes narrowed to angry slits. Pool froze in midsentence, his mouth open, his eyes glazed and unfocused. His arms fell slack at his sides and he swayed slightly on his feet.
**Now there’s something Pool can’t do,** Rayek sent smugly.
Taimi turned and grinned at her brother. “I did it!” she crowed.
**I never doubted it. You’re my trueborn sister, after all.**
She spread her arms and dropped him a flamboyant bow she must have picked up from one of the Gliders. Then giggling, she skipped off to tell someone of her feat.
“Slowly!” Rayek called to her back. “Don’t exert yourself!”
Taimi obediently slowed to a proud walk. Rayek glanced back at Pool. A thin line of drool was beginning to dribble from his open mouth. “Wolf-bloods,” Rayek sighed ruefully.
Abruptly, the spell wore off, and Pool spat out the rest of his words. “-Do! And you–” he broke off as he realized Taimi was no longer standing in front of him. He blinked rapidly, while Rayek silently counted the flutters of his eyelashes.
And… now, I think.
“OWWWWW!!!!” Pool howled, as the piercing headache that inevitably followed paralysis struck him right between the eyes. He might as well have gulped too many mouthfuls of flavored snow. “No fair! I’m telling Mother!”
You do that, Rayek thought. She’ll tell you that if you poke a cholla plant, you’re liable to end up full of prickles.
Elfquest copyright 2014 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 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2014 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.