The Face of the Enemy
Part Two
Melati plucked listlessly at her harp, skipping up and down between the strings. Yosha chuckled. “It takes more than three notes to make a song, you know.”
She was in no mood for his playful teasing. Her eyes scanned the scene from her stone balcony. The flats sat empty; the majority of the elves had already sought out shelter from the sun. High above them a solitary elf circled like a hawk, held aloft by silk wings. It had to be Feathersnake, Melati decided. Bonebat’s wings were of healer-shaped flesh, and Windkin knew better than to exert himself in the midday heat.
“Do you think Feathersnake likes me?” she asked idly.
“Why wouldn’t he?”
He was being deliberately obtuse. It made her feel spiteful. “But… do you think he’d like me? You know… as a lovemate.”
“Oh.” Yosha’s voice betrayed not so much as a hint of dismay.
“He’d make a good initiator,” she added, just to see how much she could taunt him. “Mahree’s always singing his praises.” She stole a glance at him, waiting to see a crack appear in his cheerful mask.
“You’re a little young,” Yosha remarked skeptically.
“No younger than others were.”
“And a little skinny. I hear Feathersnake likes ’em rounder.”
Hit for hit, Melati thought. Well played, soulbrother. She glanced down at her slim form, as yet rather lacking in maidenly curves. Yosha let her digest the barb before he asked, “Pool?”
“What about him?”
“Well, you’re not usually cruel without a reason. So what has he done?”
“He’s meeting with Lord Haken right now.”
“Why?”
“Probably wants permission to drag me kicking and screaming into the Palace with him,” she said flatly. “He wants me to go to the New Land and ‘meet the family,’” she sneered. “My family is here. My life is here.”
“I could go with you,” Yosha offered. “We could see Cricket.”
“Ugh. You go running to him then. If you can’t wait the two months ’til his next visit.”
“Don’t you ever want to see what’s beyond our walls?”
She shrugged. “Haken’s shown me. It’s nothing special. Forests and wild elves and troll kingdoms and those stinking humans.” Nothing could compare with the world they had build at Oasis.
“Anyway, I have seen one thing beyond our walls,” she said. “A secret cave, all my own.”
“Liar. You’ve never been outside the walls by yourself. Neither of us have.” Two eights was the age of majority in Oasis, and until then they were only allowed to explore beyond the mountain walls under the watchful eye of an adult elf.
“You don’t know everything about me,” she said loftily. “Soulbrother or not.”
“Tell me then.”
Melati glanced back at the doorway of her chambers, to make sure they were still alone. She beckoned Yosha closer. “Just below the Bridge of Memory, there’s a fault line in the rocks. Last year I rockshaped a small tunnel to the outside.”
Yosha was stunned. “How? The rocks always seal up again, from all the spirits inside them. And anyway, the rockshapers would sense it.”
“They didn’t! I think it was too small for them to notice. It lets out into a steep gully… almost as hard to climb as the walls themselves. But I’ve climbed it. Many times. There’s an outcropping out in the Thorn Fields, less than a hour’s walk from the wall. I’m making a cave there,” she said proudly. “It’s going to be my own private oasis. I’ve even sunk a well, and I think I can call up a hotspring.”
Yosha studied her skeptically. “I don’t believe you. You haven’t been studying rockshaping that long.”
“I’ll show you. If you can promise not to go running your mouth! Promise?”
He nodded. **I promise, my soul’s sister,** he sent solemnly. “When will we go?”
“Why not tonight? After lights-out.”
He hesitated. “What if we get caught?”
“We won’t. The sentries are only watching the main gates. And it’s not like you sleep tucked up with mama anymore,” a mocking edge crept into her voice. “Out the window and back in bed before midnight. Easy.”
“Why don’t we go now? While everyone is resting?”
“Are you cracked? We can’t go into the thorns in this heat. No, it has to be at night.” She smiled. “Unless you’re afraid to climb in the dark?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Good. Then tonight.”
“Tonight,” he agreed in a firm voice, though she could see the hesitation in his eyes. No matter. He’d do anything rather than be called a coward. And once she’d taken him out past the walls, he’d never dare break his word and reveal her secret lest he share her punishment. Whatever scolding she’d get from Haken and Chani, he would receive ten times worse from his mother.
“Good. I’ll come find you after the lanterns go out–” She started, and the harp dropped from her hands to clatter against the stone. Two strings snapped. “Careful.” Yosha began to reach for it, then stopped when he saw Melati’s eyes aglow. “Sending?” he asked.
“From Lady Chani – there’s a human here!” Melati cried, disgusted.
“A human?” Yosha sat up taller. Like Melati he had never seen such a beast in the flesh, only heard of them in sendings and hearthside tales. “Inside the walls?”
“At the Sun Gate. The Pride has captured one. Lady Chani says to come if I want to see it.”
“Let’s go then!” he said eagerly.
He made for the inner door and the spiral staircase at the center of Tallest Spire. Melati took a more direct route. She jumped off the balcony and used her floating magic to slow her descent. She dropped down from one level to the next, skipping off the railings of the other balconies decorating the exterior of the Spire. On the second level she nearly bowled over old Minyah, who was lingering outside to water her pot plants.
“By Savah’s crown, girl!” Minyah hollered. “Either fly properly or use the stairs!”
“Sorry!” Melati cried over her shoulder.
She skimmed over the flats, barely an elf-span above the rocky soil. She had yet to truly master the art of flight; the pull of the earth still kept her low to the ground. But she could glide as fast a tuftcat could run. With no other elves out on the paths to impede her, she soon reached the Sun Gate at the eastern border of Oasis.
She heard the Pride before she saw them; the snarls of tuftcats and the heated voices of elves. Five of the cats had formed a circle around their stricken prey, while the riders faced their lord. Pool was there too, shifting nervously on his feet next to Door and Spar. He looked up in alarm as he saw Melati approach. But Haken only had eyes for the errant hunters.
“We found him out at Table Flats,” Coppersky was explaining. “He was alone, clearly dying.”
“Then you should have finished him off and left him to rot!” Haken replied.
“We thought…” Sust spoke up hesitantly.
“What?!”
“We thought you might want to question him. We haven’t seen a human inside the Thorn Fields since… forever!” he exclaimed. But Melati knew that was hyperbole. In the early days of Oasis, there had been close encounters with humans. But then Sust was both Wolfrider and Go-Back by birth – Melati was mildly impressed he could remember yesterday.
Melati touched down at a safe distance. Chani beckoned her closer.
“Melati?” Haken saw her at last. “Stay back – these creatures are dangerous.”
“Not this one,” Chani said. “Come and see, child. It’s high time you got a proper look at our enemies.”
Melati felt Pool’s critical eyes on her as she joined her foster mother. The hunters called the cats to disperse, and Chani guided the girl closer to the dying human.
He was nothing at all like any of the sending pictures she had seen. Indeed he looked quite harmless. Tall, to be sure – he might be even as tall as Haken, had he the strength to stand. But he did not. He was clearly very old by his kind’s reckoning: his skin was wrinkled and brittle as old leather, and his long hair was white and tangled. He was barely conscious, and she could see that his eyes were clouded over with sickness. When he opened his mouth to breathe through cracked lips, the smell of decay was nauseating. He had almost no teeth, and his gums were swollen and weeping foul blackness.
“Had he any mount?” Chani asked the hunters. “Any possessions?”
Tufts shrugged, and the scarf she wore over her head slipped and fell away, revealing her shorn pate. Daughter of Tass and Coppersky, she had inherited hair that would have put Haken’s to shame in richness, if only she could be bothered to let it grow. But she preferred to shave her head, save for a few sidelocks she wore teased into ragged braids. She was the next youngest elf in Oasis after Melati and Yosha, and in a way, they both owed their existence to the slender huntress: had Tass not Recognized Coppersky on a visit to Oasis, her lovemate Cricket might never have lingered, never caught Maleen’s eye and triggered the chain of events that led to Yosha and Melati’s births.
“All he has is what he’s wearing,” Tufts said. “I found him trying to cut into a squatneedle to drink its juice, but the only tool he had was a dull stone.”
“Lost, do you think?” Chani mused. “Separated from his tribe?”
“Or abandoned,” Coppersky said. “Maybe his tribe’s on the march and he couldn’t keep up.”
“Maybe he knew he was dying and wandered off to die alone,” Sust offered. “Cats do that sometimes.”
The human was coming around. His cloudy eyes struggled to focus. He mumbled something in a guttural tongue.
Haken stepped forward and stood over the old man. The sun was behind him, throwing a long shadow. To Melati’s astonishment, Haken threw his long cloak back over his shoulder, exposing the mutilated stump of his left arm. Behind her she heard Tufts draw in a hiss through clenched teeth. Haken never showed his injury in public. But the old human seemed to understand. “M-mann-ak?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Aye, it’s Manach,” Haken said, in the human tongue Melati knew from his sending stories. “The Maimed One, the Lord of Death. Why have come to me?”
“Manach no sey,” the man whimpered. “H’aghroosh’al ach sen doch’tigal.”
“I don’t know his words,” Haken said. He tried again in the human tongue. “What tribe are you? Why have you come here?”
But the man continued to shake his head and mumble words they couldn’t understand. Chani sighed sadly. “Perhaps he comes from very far away. Perhaps their language has changed.”
“What do you mean, changed?” Melati asked.
“It happens,” Haken admitted. “Humans age so quickly. So do the things they make. Even words. Then new things are made to take the place of the old. I can’t learn anything from this one.”
The commotion had roused a few spectators from their huts. Haken motioned for Door and Spar to keep them back at a safe distance. Yosha finally arrived, late and out of breath as usual. Maleen left her mount’s side to go to him.
“Can’t you touch minds with him, lord?” Melati asked Haken. “Pull what you need from his thoughts?”
“It doesn’t work like that, child. Human minds lack the openness of ours. Their minds are closed, their thoughts locked away.”
“But… could you not open his mind? The powerful among us can send to beasts when we have to.”
“Not easily,” Pool pointed out. “Wolfriders used to, before our blood ran thin. But humans… their minds are even less developed than beasts. To open a mind you need a door, and the humans have none.”
His arrogance grated on her. “Then break down a wall and make a door,” she challenged.
Haken smiled wryly. “You’re welcome to try, little one.” He gestured to the dying human.
Melati hesitated, until she saw Pool’s incredulous stare. Then she spun on her heel and marched towards the human.
“What are you doing?” Pool gasped.
“Calm yourself, healer,” Haken said. “My lady is right, this beast is no threat to us. It is right Melati should be able to study him close.”
“Why? Why should she need to? Oasis is meant to be a refuge from humans.”
“Sust, your cats bring their young half-dead morsels to teach them to hunt, don’t they?”
“Yes, lord.”
“Well, then.”
“Melati is a healer, not a hunter!”
“And you are the only one who thinks the one precludes the other.”
Melati listened to them argue. Her lord’s confidence in her filled her with pride. It gave her the courage to keep walking, to sink to her knees at the human’s side and look into his eyes.
He was truly hideous. No wild animal ever reached such a state of advanced decay before being killed and consumed. He stank; his very skin reeked of disease, and to make matters worse he had pissed himself in his terror. She hesitated, hands outstretched. She could see the vermin crawling in his hair.
The human was gibbering in delirium, each word borne on a cloud of foul breath.
“Come away from there, Melati,” Pool ordered. “There is nothing to learn here.”
You dare to give me orders?
She overcame her revulsion and seized the human’s head in her hands. Her fingers directed her sendings into knives, piercing deep inside his mind. Haken had spoken truly; compared to elves – even to tuftcats or trolls – their minds seemed withered, sealed off. The organ of thought was large, crammed with neurons that even now were firing rapidly. Yet the part of the mind responsible for connections – the door Pool had spoken of – was completely absent. She was sickened. This being was utterly incapable of truly relating to any other. The very thought of going through life so isolated was terrifying to Melati. The blindness, the ignorance… the unfathomable loneliness! She was seized with pity for the poor beast. It was a wonder he could even recognize other creatures as alive, when his every thought was so confined to his own existence.
She wanted to help him. She wanted to show him what lay beyond his walls.
She probed with her mind, looking for a weak spot in his armor. At last she found one such place, a tiny opening in the web of crackling skyfire that made up the outermost horizon of his thoughts. She pushed inward, seeking to widen the tiny faultline. If she could reach in… make contact… surely the structure of his mind would bend to her will, like rock under her hands.
But she couldn’t reach his thoughts. She felt the intricate web tear under the power of her magic. She felt the whole complex of his mind teeter, then collapse like a game of stacking-sticks. Still, she couldn’t make a connection. His body kept fighting her. She felt the skyfire racing through his body. She felt his flesh heave under her hands.
“Melati!”
Someone seized her elbow, pulled her back. She felt her awareness wrenched back into her body. She stared at the human in horror.
What have I done to him?
Blood poured from his nose and mouth. It streamed from his ears and even from the corners of his eyes. He convulsed in his death throes, his brittle bones snapping as they battered against the ground. When the end came he froze in a final spasm, his back arched, his sightless eyes turned black by ruptured blood vessels.
“What did you do?” Pool demanded, his voice a wolf’s snarl. He shook her, raising her half to her feet. “What did you do?”
“Nothing!”
“Let her go!” Haken ordered. Pool dropped Melati, and she staggered away from the foul corpse. Her hands were covered in human blood; she wiped them on her dress without thinking. She looked up and found the riders of the Pride all looking at her with varying expressions of horror.
“Is this how you teach your healers?” Pool was raging. “By torturing dying animals?”
“I wasn’t–” Melati protested. “I was just trying… I wanted to fix him!”
“Hunters do worse when they bring down a kill,” Haken dismissed. “Not that you would know.”
“No, I would not. I live to protect life. To nurture it.”
“But not your own young.”
“I am here to remedy that failing. But I see I have waited too long to return. You’re raising her to be a second Winnowill!”
The name dropped heavy like a stone. Everyone turned to Haken in anticipation of the storm. Even Melati felt a shiver of fear for her sire. Had he been gone so long that he had forgotten the first rule of Oasis?
“What do you know of my daughter?” Haken challenged, his voice a deadly whisper. “She died long before you were born.”
Pool swallowed, cowed in the face of Haken’s quiet rage. Still, he had enough wolf in him to hold his ground. “My sire knew her deeds well enough,” he said. “So did the Mother of Memory. Paingiver! Loveless One! And in Savah’s name, I will not allow you to lead my daughter down that same path!”
Melati stood frozen. She had no idea her sire had such courage. He did not so much as drop his eyes when Haken stepped up to him so that they stood toe-to-toe, though his shoulders began to shake as he was forced to look up, and up, to hold the High One’s gaze.
Haken spoke in a voice so soft Melati needed to reach out with her healer’s senses to hear. “Perhaps your sire told you of my deeds. Be glad the years have tempered me. I will tell you this only once. You have no claim to Melati. You have no right to invoke Savah’s name, infant that you are. I will grant you mercy this once, so that all can see the Lord of Oasis takes pity on those sick in spirit. But if you challenge me once more, either in public or in private, or if ever you dare to slander my daughter… you will never set foot inside these walls again. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you, lord,” Pool said.
“Good. Now get out of my sight.”
Pool cast one last resentful look at his daughter before he departed. Melati became aware of the breath she had been holding, and released it.
Chani came over to her. “Oh, my dear, your pretty dress. Don’t worry. I’m sure we can wash that blood out.”
She draped a long arm over Melati’s shoulder, and Melati hugged her gratefully. “I didn’t mean any harm,” she whispered.
“Shh. I know you didn’t. And there is no harm done. Pay no mind to Pool.”
“But the human!”
“He would have died anyway. It was a mercy – and I daresay just as quick as a dagger.”
“His mind… it was so empty! It was like he didn’t have a soul!”
“I’m not sure humans do. Perhaps that’s why they’re so dangerous. But you’ve learned something today. Both about humans, and about your own limits.” She gave Melati’s shoulders a gentle squeeze. “This was an important day. Come, we’ll have some cider and talk about it.”
Melati let Chani lead her away. As they passed by Yosha, she looked to him hopefully, and he tried to smile back. But for the first time she saw him look at her with fear in his eyes.
* * *
“He’s sick,” Pool hissed in the privacy of his mother’s chambers. “And he’s teaching her his sickness!”
“Lord Haken has always chosen the path of aggression,” Leetah agreed. “It is his nature. As your nature is the path of compassion. So choose gentleness this time. Go to Melati and apologize. In another day or two, seek out Haken and make your amends. You cannot afford to be have your sire’s temper now.”
“My sire.” Pool sat down on the bench next to her. “I have been thinking of him more and more since Melati was born. Strange… for so many years he was nothing but a distant memory… I could scarcely recall his face, his voice. But now I’m always wondering ‘What would Scouter say to this? What would he do in my place?’”
“He would stand his ground like a stubborn old wolf, and he would pay for it. You do not need to wonder. You were there when it happened.”
Pool nodded. In the end, Scouter had been nearly as gnarled and white-haired as that human, yet the wolf in him had been stronger than ever. He and the council had clashed so many times, and Scouter had grown so brazen in his defiance, that Haken had finally given him an ultimatum. The High One must have known Scouter would spring willingly into the trap.
Leetah had offered to share his exile, but he would have none of it. They had been lifemates for four thousand years, and now his life was nearing its end. He had left Oasis with his jackwolf and a few supplies; no one expected him to last more than a moon-dance in the Burning Waste alone. But three more years had passed before Leetah awoke with the terrible knowledge that Jial was gone.
“Melati is beyond me now, isn’t she?”
“Not yet. But you are running out of time.” **And you are right, Pool. What Haken is teaching her… it will lead her down the same path as the Loveless One.**
“Loveless… yes. There is no love in her eyes. No gentleness, no compassion. The way she talked about Ruffel… she is more like a snake than an elf.”
**Hush. Save such thoughts for locksendings alone. You can save her, Pool. You can turn her back onto the true path of the healer. I have tried, but she has closed her heart to me. So do what I cannot. Heal where I cannot. Whatever Haken says, you are her father, and he cannot replace you. His love is hard, demanding. Many elves have died trying to prove themselves worthy of it.**
**You mean, in Blue Mountain?**
**Not only there. Think of all the Heroic Dead… and ask yourself how many of those deaths were truly necessary. Pool, you feel everything so much more than the rest of us. It is your gift, and your burden. Your grief set Melati on this path. But your love can save her.**
“I wish I had your faith, Mother.”
“Go to her. I know you seldom felt you had the love of your sire. You did, kitling… but not in the way you needed. Now is your turn to do better. Use your gift. Feel what she needs, and offer it to her freely.”
Pool obeyed, though his heart wasn’t in it. He waited until after twilight had fallen, when the supper hour would be concluding. This high in the mountains, the temperature plunged after sunset. He kindled a fire in his hearth and drew the heavy curtains against the chill. Melati refused to answer his sendings, and he knew better than to go through Haken. So he sent to Chani.
**Please, I only wish to apologize. Tell her that after I have said my piece, I will not trouble her again.**
After a moment’s hesitation, he felt her spirit sigh. **Wait. I will see what I can do.**
He waited. Soon enough Chani’s sending touched his mind anew. **She is not in her rooms. You will just have to sit on your words a little longer. I imagine that will prove easy for you.**
So much for the Lady of Oasis being the more forgiving of the pair. **She has gone out? At this hour?** Pool parted the wool curtain to glance outside. The clearstone lanterns strung between the huts were still burning, but the mountain walls were lost in shadow. Surely it was far too late for a child to be out alone.
**She is almost a maiden, Pool. I do not pen her in at night like a zwoot.**
**Do you know where she is? **
**Probably off dallying with Yosha, to the judge by the way she was squirming at supper. Take my advice, healer. Leave her be. I will tell her that you send your apologies, and she will choose whether or not to see you.**
**Very well.** Selfishly, Pool was relieved to be spared another confrontation. But he couldn’t quite shake the feeling of discomfort at the thought of his daughter sneaking out in search of lovegames.
Still, better Yosha than another. Everyone had been expecting them to Recognize since their birth, after all.
* * *
**It’s not lights-out yet,** Yosha locksent in annoyance, when Melati signalled him from outside his hut.
**It’s close enough. I couldn’t bear to stay inside any onger. Come on.**
After a few minutes, she saw Yosha clamber out of his bedroom window. **Mother’s still sitting up, we have to be quiet,** he warned as they crept away from the huts.
**I’m not the problem.** Melati floated a few inches above the ground while Yosha’s sandals scuffed against the sandy soil. They were almost seen, first by a lantern-snuffer, then by a tipsy couple wandering home after supper with friends. But they stuck to the shadows and at last reached the narrow pathway that led up to the Bridge of Memory.
The climb was easy at first – Ahdri had shaped the steps wide and flat. They crouched low as they snuck past a row of huts built into the mountainside. Higher up the stairs petered out into a gravelly incline, and then the path disappeared altogether from the jagged rock face.
“Let’s… let’s stop here a minute,” Yosha said, letting his weight rest on a thin ledge. He looked up the side of the mountain. It was nearly sheer now. The only handholds were to be found in a thin seam that ran all the way up to the arching Bridge, like a stone ladder. The Bridge was not really meant to be crossed; Ahdri had shaped it merely as a memento for the elders, a reminder of their first home. But to the generations born in Oasis, it was simply another challenging rock to climb.
“How much further up is your tunnel?” Yosha asked, regarding the ladder of handholds dubiously. In daytime it was easy enough to negotiate. But by moonlight, it was a daunting prospect.
“See that shadow there?” Melati pointed to a dark smudge in the rockface. “You edge around that cornice, and it brings you to a landing. From there you just have to haul yourself through the gap in the rocks.”
“I can’t see it.”
“You will when you get closer to it. Come on.”
**Mel… I don’t think this is such a good idea.**
**Oh, come on, you zwootling. I’ll lock minds with you. Will that help?** She reached out with her thoughts as she done earlier that day, pushing beyond the normal level of sending. But unlike the human, Yosha’s mind had a door, and it opened willingly. Her thoughts mingled with his, and her strong will gave him strength. She lent him her courage and felt him reluctantly muster his own. He began to climb again.
Melati led the way up the last few elf-spans, climbing more slowly now, feeling the weight of Yosha’s fear in her limbs. She found it harder to concentrate on the handholds. She usually floated up the rockface, her hands and feet only grazing the stone. But she couldn’t float and hold Yosha’s mind at the same time. No matter. She had been scaling the cliffs long before she had unlocked her airwalking talents. She could remember how to do it the hard way.
Her sandal skidded on a dusty foothold. A bolt of sudden terror raced through her, almost severing their connection. Fighting to concentrate, she summoned just enough floating magic to steady herself. Her sandal soles had worn too smooth for proper rockclimbing; she would have done better to climb barefoot.
She looked up at the cornice they had to skirt around. It seemed far out of reach. For the first time since stealing out of the village below, she felt genuine fear. She wobbled on the rocks and a soft whimper escaped her lips. She had never felt so helpless before. She readied her floating powers to save herself.
But then, unbidden, a feeling of calm and strength washed over her.
**I’m here, Mel,** came Yosha’s thought. **I’m here with you.**
To her amazement, it was now his sending which was supporting her. She had always been the stronger one. She had always been the goad driving him on. He was the one who always needed her help, not the other way around. Shame and disgust rose in her gorge. She was not used to being the weaker one.
Again, a wave of gentle encouragement bore her up. He felt her shame – how could he not, when their minds were so tightly entwined? Yet he didn’t judge. He bore her no resentment – though she so often treated him as little more than a pet. He wanted nothing but to help her… to love her.
She understood now why he was satisfied with so little of her affection. A feeling of utter tranquility rose up from him to envelop her. Such a strange feeling, so different from her own constant restlessness. She had been raised to be always on the alert, always hungry for more. But Yosha’s soul was at peace.
She could drown in this feeling, let it wash away all she was….
No! We are not one soul in two bodies! I am Melati! I am my own master! I am no one’s prey!
She yanked her thoughts free of his, and severed the connection as swiftly as slamming a door. She closed her mind to everything but the rock under her hands and feet, the whisper of the wind in her ears.
“Mel–”
She heard his feet scuff on their footholds.
“Don’t leave me!” he cried.
She looked down at his trembling form, an elfspan below her. One foot dangled over empty air. His right hand scrabbled desperately at the cliff face.
Get your foot up, you fool! she wanted to scream. Always three paws on the rock!
His left hand lost its purchase. He began to slide… so slowly at first that she almost didn’t understand it. She always thought when someone fell, it would be as grand and terrifying as an eagle’s dive. This was so gentle… like a drop of water rolling down a waterspout.
“Melati…” he whimpered.
Too late she thought of her floating magic.
And then he was gone, his final cry of “Melaaaaaaaatiiiiii!” echoing off the rocks.
She reached out with her magic, trying to lasso his outstretched hand. But the pull of the earth was too strong.
* * *
Pool heard the open sending. So did everyone in Oasis. A crowd had already gathered by the huts under the Bridge of Memory. Pool pushed his way through the horror-struck elves. “Let me through – let me through!” he cried.
Elves were weeping. Someone was standing on tiptoe to see better, while someone else was shouting, “Don’t look, oh High Ones, don’t look!”
Pool found Melati on her knees, head and hands bent over a bloody mound of flesh. Pool stared at it, uncomprehending for a moment. Then he saw the tattered cloth trousers, the snakeskin belt… the tuft of silver hair as yet unstained by dark blood.
“Oh… High Ones, what have you done?!”
What had come to rest at the bottom of the mountainside was scarcely identifiable. The chest was crushed, the body bent sharply at the waist, hips and legs twisted away from the rest of him. By the way his limbs had tangled together, he had broken every long bone in his body on the descent. And the head… Pool fought the sudden flood of bile that rose in his throat.
Over his shoulder, someone else lost that fight. The stench of fresh vomit mingled with the reek of spilled blood.
Incredibly, Melati was still trying to heal him. Her healing aura pulsed and shifted, further distorting the ruin of Yosha’s face. “Help me…” she whispered. “I need help….” She looked up at Pool in disbelief. “Don’t just stand there, you fool! Help me!”
Pool knew it was futile. Still, he crouched down and touched Yosha’s mangled hand. He felt the shattered bones click as they shifted under the torn skin. He let out his senses… and found the dreadful confirmation.
“He’s gone,” he said.
“No, no, he’s not. He can’t be. I can fix this. I can! Where is Leetah? Where is Lady Chani? I can do this, I just need some help!”
He could hear himself in her desperate voice. He was back in that bloody bed, fourteen years ago, trying to patch together a broken husk.
“Maleen!” someone cried.
He turned. The huntress was trying to push her way through the throng, and her neighbors were doing their utmost to hold her back. “Is it Yosha?” she demanded, her voice rising in panic. “Let me see – I need to see – Yosha, my Yoshaaaaaaaaaaa!”
Her hands rose to her face. Her nails raked at her eyes, to blot out that last, horrible sight of her son. Hands seized her and restrained her before she could harm herself. She screamed, a long wordless cry of anguish. Pool rushed to her and extended a healing aura. But Maleen tossed her head and rebuffed his sendings.
“My son! My SON!”
The other villagers had Maleen securing held. Pool turned back on his daughter. She was staring at Yosha’s crushed face with new eyes. It seemed Maleen’s wild grief had broken through her denial.
“What happened?” Pool demanded, and he heard his sire’s growl in his throat.
“We… we were climbing,” Melati murmured tonelessly. “He slipped. I tried to float him. But I wasn’t strong enough.”
“YOU!” Maleen howled. “You killed him! You killed my precious boy! He was your soulbrother and you killed him!” Weeping, she sagged in her captors’ arms. “I told him not to climb – I told him–”
“I didn’t…” Melati protested. But her voice held no conviction.
Haken arrived on scene, scattering the other spectators by his mere presence. Even he recoiled at the sight before him. But he recovered himself quickly. “What has happened?” he demanded. “Melati?”
Pool answered before she could. “She led Yosha to climbing the cliffs. In darkness!”
“I didn’t mean…” Melati whispered. “Can’t you fix him, Haken? Like you did with Chani?”
“Oh, child…” Haken said mournfully.
“It’s no different! She was broken, so is Yosha. Her spirit came back. His will too. We just need to heal him.” She reached for him again, but Maleen’s shriek stopped her.
“NO! Don’t you touch my boy! Haven’t you done enough?”
“For pity’s sake, someone cover him,” Haken ground out.
Someone produced a zwoot-wool cloak. Pool spread it over the fallen elf. Melati continued to sit, motionless, as Yosha’s blood slowly began to seep through the weave.
Pool took her by the arm and yanked her to her feet. She didn’t even seem to notice his roughness.
“I… I don’t understand…” Melati whispered. “I didn’t mean….”
Pool was too grieved to temper his sending. **This is what you are, Melati, whether you will it or not! Lifetaker!**
“No – no, I’m not!”
**The moment I first saw your face – I saw the Enemy staring back at me. You are death made flesh. My flesh – my curse! I wish to the stars you had never been born!**
She stared at him wide-eyed. Her lips began to form a denial, but she had no defense against the brutal truth of her sire’s thoughts.
“Please…” she whispered instead.
He released her arm, he recoiled from her as if she stank of death. He turned and ran from the scene, unable to bear the sights and sounds of tragedy a moment longer.
* * *
Haken sent immediately to the Palace. It arrived within the hour, bearing Cricket and his family. Yosha’s body was borne away under Leetah’s instructions. In the privacy of her chambers, she reset his bones in a vague approximation of the elfin form, and washed off the worst of the blood. Then with Cricket’s help, she gently wrapped him in a shroud, bound with cords.
Cricket paused to cut off one lock of silver hair, then another. “So Maleen and I can keep something of him,” he explained.
Leetah nodded, then tucked the last bit of sheet around Yosha’s head and tied it off.
“It’s always been our way to let the wolves have our husks,” Cricket remarked.
“Disgusting. Maleen will not stand for that. I will not stand for it. He is a son of Oasis. He is not meat for wolves.”
“No, just meat for worms,” Cricket sighed. He rubbed at his swollen eyes with the heel of his hand. But though his voice caught in his throat, no more tears would come. “It doesn’t matter,” he sighed. “We’re all just meat in the end. Making something grow from the ground is just as good as feeding our wolf friends.”
“Would Yosha have liked that?” Melati spoke from the shadows, startling them both.
“Great Sun, child, how long have you been there?” Leetah demanded.
“Long enough. Cricket, do you think Yosha would have liked that? To be… laid to rest as a Wolfrider?”
“I think you should leave,” Leetah said.
“He talked about you so much,” Melati continued. “He could never wait until your next visit. I think… he wanted to go to the Great Holt, when he was older.”
“Enough!” Leetah snapped.
“No, it’s all right,” Cricket said. “Thank you, Melati. It… makes me glad to hear it. Maybe his spirit is already there. But your grandmother’s right. He was a son of Oasis. His husk should be treated as one.”
“I can’t bear the thought of burying him inside the walls,” Melati said tearfully. “He always talked about wanting to see what was beyond the mountains. That’s – that’s what we were doing when he fell. Trying to see off the Bridge of Memory. We’d never done it at nighttime before. We wanted to see how far we could see. I… I know we give our dead to the ground… but couldn’t we give Yosha to the ground outside Oasis? He could feed the Thorn Fields. He’d like that. He always wanted to be a rider when he was older. He wanted to protect Oasis. He could do that now.”
“That’s not your decision to make,” Leetah said. “And I think you’ve done quite enough for one night.”
Melati did not move from the doorway. “Please. I don’t want him under the fields. I can’t bear to think of him buried next to….”
“You might have thought of that before you led him on that fool’s climb,” the healer said. But Cricket looked at her thoughtfully.
“He would have wanted to protect Oasis?”
Melati nodded. “It was all he ever talked about.”
“It’s just meat now,” Cricket sighed at last. “Does it really matter what it feeds?”
* * *
They held a memorial for Yosha at dawn. The jackwolves and their riders howled, while the Sun Folk joined hands and shared sendings of the young lad snatched away too soon. Haken vowed that Yosha’s name would be added to the list of Heroic Dead. There was nothing more laudable, he said, than challenging one’s limitations.
Maleen was in no shape to attend; Pool had cast a sleeping trance over her so she could begin to heal. Melati did attend either. She bound Yosha’s shrouded body to a zwoot and left Oasis by the Great Gate. She wanted to bury him herself, she said. It was her first step in atonement. No one argued with her. It seemed a harsh penance, but an appropriate one.
She returned alone with the zwoot at midday, quiet and haunted. She went into her rooms to sleep, but when Chani went to rouse her for supper, she was gone.
When Chani sent to her, she hit a psychic barrier. But the faintest echo told her the girl was somewhere high in the mountain walls… perhaps even beyond them.
The Lady of Oasis did not press the matter. Now more than ever was the time for patience. If Melati needed time and space for her healing, then she was not after all so different from her sire.
When the Palace left at dusk, Pool was aboard it. Door would follow in a month, as agreed. But the healer could not bear to stay another moment inside what had become for him a city of the dead.
When Maleen awoke from her trance, she seemed calmer. Cricket offered to stay for a time, and she was grateful for it. She never asked what happened to Yosha’s body. For her, as for Cricket, it was just an empty husk.
* * *
Mother Moon was rising as Melati stole through the forest of cacti towards the rocky hummock, accompanied by the dark Preserver. She knew the route through the prickly maze by heart now. The rock formation itself was soft sandstone, about the size of the kilnworks at Oasis. A tangle of dried creepers signalled the concealed passage just beyond a thin wall of rock.
Melati touched the stone and it melted away. She stepped into the passage and paused just long enough to light her handheld lantern with her gaze before she sealed up the rock wall behind her.
She followed a staircase down into the main chamber. Some ten feet underground, the air was cool. Melati shrugged off her wool cloak and floated her lantern up until she could hook it on its ceiling-anchor. Then she turned her attention to the other lanterns, hanging unlit in a row from the ceiling. She stared hard, summoning the memories of all her lessons with Haken, until the lanterns sprang to life with a series of bright pops.
The shrouded body lay where she had left it, on the floor beneath the lanterns. She returned to it and began to shape a large stone slab that slowly raised the bundle from the ground.
“I told you I’d show you my cave,” Melati whispered, brushing her hands gently over the cloth.
“What longred-highthing mean?” the Preserver demanded. “No tell Flitrin about cave.”
“Hush. Flitrin tell no one, remember? Not even Lord Haken. Flitrin promise.”
“Flitrin promise,” the Preserver agreed glumly. “Not even Lord Highthing. Why longred-highthing here?”
She ignored Flitrin’s queries. Instead she set to work with her little dagger, snipping the cords that held the shroud in place. When she pulled the sheet away, she scowled at the still-mangled form. Leetah had done little beyond sponging off the worst bloodstains and straightening his limbs.
“No matter. I’ll set you right.”
She examined the body with her eyes and her hidden senses. The broken bones were incidental – once she set the blood flowing again she could easily knit them together. The punctured lungs would prove a little more challenging, but it was nothing she couldn’t manage.
“Your head… now, that’s the tricky part.”
He had left perhaps half of his skull behind on the rocks. One whole side of his face was obliterated. Only one eye remained, closed in repose. Under the clotted blood and hair, she could see the contents of his skull, misshapen and already beginning to putrify.
“You didn’t leave me much to work with,” she sighed.
No matter. It would just take time…
She would show Pool that she was no lifetaker. She would show them all.
She imagined the praise they would shower upon her. She imagined Yosha’s proud smile as he shared in the acclaim.
She would see him smile again. And he would forgive her for shutting him out before.
“Flitrin, make wrapstuff.”
“But… whyfor?” Flitrin asked. “No seed inside. Meat go bad already.”
“Flitrin DO!” she commanded fiercely.
Grumbling, the Preserver set to work.
Melati breathed a sigh of relief as she watched Yosha’s body disappear under silver threads. He would be safe here, while she mastered the skills she needed to resurrect him. She wasn’t ready yet; she still had much more to learn. But Yosha’s spirit could wait. And now, so too could his body.
Everything would be set right. It would just take time.
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.