Behind the Walls
Part One
Bluestar had been warned about the extremes of Oasis, but still he found it astounding, that the sun-baked valley so intolerably hot in midday could be as cold as the Painted Mountains in winter once the sun set. He shivered despite the thick weave of zwoot-wool poncho. A year sailing the temperate seas on the Sea Holt had made him forget the bite of mountain air.
The night sky a great overturned bowl, held aloft by the mountain peaks and studded with bright stars. Mother Moon was waning, and Daughter Moon had already set; beyond the glow of Maize’s lantern, he could make out only shadows. But his agemate ran on ahead, guided by memory.
“Come on, slowpokes!” Jethel called over his shoulder.
“Heehee! Waterleaf like sillyhead gigglehead!” the Preserver sang as it kept pace over Jethel’s shoulder.
Bluestar rolled his eyes. “You would,” he muttered under his breath. Jethel was thirteen years old, but most days he acted more like he was seven. At a very mature ten – everyone told him so – Bluestar felt a proper elder by comparison.
Still, he was a guest in Jethel’s tribe, and he knew he had to be gracious. The Oasis boy was clearly overjoyed to have another cub to play with – and perhaps it was the lack of agemates that had made him so childish. “It must be a novelty for you too, to have another elf your own age,” Maize had said when she’d introduced them. Bluestar had smiled politely. He didn’t bother to say that he’d been playing with the humans of High Hope since he was a toddler.
They left the last of the farm plots behind them – the western walls loomed high overhead, blotting out a third of the sky. “Jethel, be careful,” Maize warned, but the child ran out of reach of the lantern’s light.
“This way,” he called back from the dark. “It’s just through here.”
“Jethel – you know those caves are off-limits.”
“It’s not in a cave; it’s just next to it. Come on, Maizie, don’t be such a mother hen! I wanna show Bluestar.”
“Why are the caves off-limits?” Bluestar asked Maize as they followed the sound of Jethel’s voice.
“Don’t be frightened.”
“I’m not. I’m curious. Why are the caves off-limits?”
“They’re just old, that’s all,” she said. “The rockshapers haven’t been tending them for ages.”
They left the clear path to tread over sand and crushed rock. Bluestar winced as he felt a shard of stone poke through the thin leather of his sandal. The rocks rose around them in crumbling hoodoos. Maize held the lantern high to help Bluestar find his way.
“Why not?”
Maize hesitated. “I don’t know really know. We don’t need them anymore, I guess.”
“Why did you need them before?” Bluestar wriggled between two columns of sandstone protecting a stone-strewn clearing. Maize’s lantern illuminated a honeycomb structure in the rock wall directly ahead. He counted six… no, seven yawning holes in the stone, all similar in shape and size, all clearly artificial despite the indifferent scrubbing of erosion.
“These used to be the jackwolf dens,” Maize said at length.
Jethel was digging in the dirt by one of the cave mouths. “I found it last month,” he explained excitedly. “I knew I couldn’t show my parents – they’d just take it away from me and tell me it’s dirty. Come see, Bluestar.”
Bluestar walked over as Jethel lifted his find from its hiding place. “Oooh,” Waterleaf sang. “Growler-growler head bone!”
It was indeed a canine’s skull, weathered and chipped by age, the bone leeched as thin as an egg shell. Bluestar reached out and ran his fingers over the snout in a sad sort of wonder. Something didn’t seem quite right about the skull. Perhaps it was only the poor light, and his own ignorance of anatomy, but he could have sworn the muzzle should have been longer, and the dome of the braincase higher.
“It was a hound!” Jethel said, in the same tone as another elf might say ‘It was Madcoil.’
“A jackwolf,” Bluestar corrected. He touched a snaggletooth protruding at a sharp angle from a diseased jaw. “This one was sick.”
“They all were, towards the end,” Maize explained. “Put it back now, Jethel. How’d you like to be ages dead and have someone disturb your bones?”
“It’s only a monster,” Jethel said authoritatively. “’Least it’s a good monster – a dead one!”
“Hey! I’m a Wolfrider, remember,” Bluestar said, his hackles rising. “And we’ve got wolves in the New Land twice as big as that one–”
Bluestar saw the blur of motion half a heartbeat ahead of Jethel. He was already shifting onto the balls of his feet – the better to fight or fly – when the creature sprang out of the cave mouth and snapped its great slavering jaws a hair’s breadth away from the youth.
Jethel dropped the skull and scuttled back on his hands and knees, screaming all the while in a loud quavering note of fear. The hound slowly advanced, emerging into the light of Maize’s lantern.
Bluestar stared at the creature in amazement. It had been canine once, but now there wasn’t an inch on the hound that hadn’t been dramatically altered. Instead of a jackwolf’s ruddy, spotted coat, the hound wore only the sparsest down over its naked skin, save for a wild mane of fur at its neck. The skull was heavier: the muzzle thick and short, the eyes bulging in their sockets. The feet ended in scaly claws better suited to a lizard than a wolf, and from its shoulders – High Ones! – sprouted serpentine tentacles that ended in a pair of hooked claws.
“Argh! Get away, get away!” Jethel screamed, kicking feebly with one leg. The hound made playful nips at the toe of his slipper. A lizard-paw came down on the jackwolf skill and crushed it underfoot.
“Maizieeeeeeee!” Jethel called out. Belatedly, Bluestar remembered their minder, and wondered if she had been struck just as helpless by the sight.
But no. “Stop moaning, Jethel!” she snapped. “It’s just Three. Three, stop that!”
The shapechanged hound halted its approach, one paw poised in midair, and turned a quizzical expression towards the elf maiden. “You know they can smell fear,” Maize said sternly. “You keep squirming and wailing like that and you’re only getting him fired up.”
“What’s he doing here?” Jethel demanded. “What’s he doing here?!”
“You are in his territory,” mocked a feminine voice, low and dangerous. Bluestar regained control of his muscles at last, and forced himself to turn away from the slavering hound, towards the speaker who floated a handspan above the rocky slope.
“Carrun,” Maize greeted her politely. In response, the elf moved within reach of the lantern’s light. She was a dark-skinned maiden, with black hair dressed in a multitude of braids. She wore a hunter’s costume that seemed as first to be leather; but as the flickering light played across its surface Bluestar realized it was snakeskin, dyed a deep red.
“Bluestar, this is Carrun, Eyrie’s daughter,” Maize explained.
Bluestar nodded. “H’llo.”
“You were wise not to panic,” Carrun told him. “The peace hounds pose no threat to honest, loyal elves,” she swept a disdainful glance at Jethel, “but they can still be provoked by more primitive emotions.”
“I’m loyal!” Jethel wailed.
“Your stench tells Three otherwise,” Carrun said.
“I’m telling my father!”
“Tell him what? That you were nosing about in forbidden caves?”
“Carrun,” Maize cajoled. “He’s just a kitling. Leave him be.”
Carrun whistled shrilly and the peace hound turned away from Jethel. It paced to Carrun’s side and sat down, waiting patiently for a command. At rest it was almost as personable as a human’s near-wolf. If one could ignore the tentacles and the clawed-feet.
“His name is… Three?” Bluestar asked, to make conversation.
“There are eight peace hounds,” Carrun explained. “There have always been eight – no more, no less. When one dies, Lady Melati makes another. Each of us has the charge of one hound.”
“Us?” he asked, daring her to speak the words.
“The Red Snakes,” she said the title without hesitation, without even a glimmer of shame. The elite elfin hunters known and feared by reputation alone; the story went that the name had first been coined by others, as an insult to their leader, but the Snakes had adopted it with pride. Bluestar had refused to believe it until this moment. Even the most untutored child recognized the allusion, after all.
“They used to be jackwolves?” Bluestar asked next.
“So I’m told. The jackwolves died out long before I was born. My father Fennec used to be a Rider, of course. When you could still ride them.”
“What happened to them?”
“Stagnation,” she dropped the dreaded word casually. “So much interbreeding, the blood got stale. The Riders tried to capture new jackals to add to the pack – they even brought wolves from the Wolfrider holts to sire new pups. But it was too little, too late. All the clean water in the world won’t flush out a tainted well.”
“Couldn’t the healers help?”
“Of course. Lady Melati made them into peace hounds.”
Bluestar screwed up his face. “I mean… kept them jackwolves?”
“Why? We didn’t need them to hunt anymore. We had the Pride… and later we had the fleshvines. Anyway, the peace hounds are much more useful. They can not only sniff out predators, but wrongdoers among our own kind.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Jethel protested.
“Everyone’s done something,” Carrun said dismissively. She glanced at Maize and softened. “Well, expect for you, Maizie. It’s all right,” she said when she saw Bluestar inch closer to the peace hound. “He won’t bite. He’s never so much as scratched an elf in his life, this one.”
Bluestar held out a hand, as he’d been taught to do with strange canines, and the peace hound sniffed it, before rewarding him with a foamy lick.
“He’s the first Shapechanged I’ve seen inside the walls,” Bluestar said. “We saw a shieldback on the road up from the Bite, but it was very far away.”
“What, haven’t you seen a peacoo yet? Or one of the gigaquail?”
“Those are Shapechanged?”
Carrun laughed at his confusion. “A child of the College and he can’t tell the difference! Oh, Lady Melati will be flattered to hear it. They were among her first works.”
“She doesn’t live here, does she?”
Carrun shook her head. She was warming to him steadily as he continued to show polite curiosity. “She visits from time to time. When she’s needed. But we Snakes serve in her stead here in Oasis. She is the head, we are the hands,” she intoned, like a vow.
“What does she do, out in the desert?”
“Makes monsters,” Jethel sneered, his bravado coming back, fed by his injured pride. “The desert’s full of her cast-offs. Hounds that stand on two legs and bats that walk instead of fly, and even Shapechanged humans!”
“That’s a lie, and a stale one,” Carrun chided.
“What about the Master of the Shapechanged?” Jethel challenged.
“Really, Jethy!” Maize said. “That tale’s as old as Squatneedle Spire.”
“Huro saw the Master. Last summer!”
“Huro stared at the sun too long as a child,” Maize dismissed.
“What’s the Master of the Shapechanged?” Bluestar asked.
“A dreamberry tale,” Maize said. “I remember my grandmother saying the Master of the Shapechanged would eat me up if I didn’t go to sleep on time.”
Jethel drew himself up a little taller. “He’s the leader of the monsters – the ones that run wild in the desert. No one has even seen him up-close, but they say as tall as Lord Haken. He’s got claw-feet and a long tail and a twisted body, but he run like a human – or an elf! And he sings to the Shapechanged – but it’s not any singing like we know. It’s like… the bleat of a zwoot and the roar of a tuftcat and the jabber of human speech. And they say–”
“They say!” Carrun rolled her eyes. “As if Lady Melati would ever dirty her hands with human flesh!”
“You saying he doesn’t exist?” Jethel charged.
Her hesitation was only momentary. “Oh, I’m sure he exists,” she said with an airy wave. “Many versions of him have existed over the years. Every time a hunter hears a beast’s roar or sees a strange paw print, ‘the Master of the Shapechanged’ claims another victim. Why do the Shapechanged even need a master when they already have a mistress?”
“Why indeed,” Maize said authoritatively. “Now come along, Jethel. I’m sure Bluestar is tired. He’s not used to our thin air.”
Bluestar didn’t bother to point out that he’d taken five days to ascend from sea level, and that he’d grown up in mountains almost as high as the World’s Spine. He was too interested in the red-suited hunter, and that moment’s pause when she’d had to decide which lie to tell.
His mother was right: there were many walls inside Oasis.
* * *
He’d met the first wall in the Council Chamber, staring up into the strangely flat eyes of the High One. Haken: youngest of the Firstcomers, “Lord” to the elves of Oasis, “All-Father” to those who respected him, and “Snake’s Sire” to those who did not. Bluestar had been raised on tales of his exploits, both victorious and tragic.
Bluestar knew something of High Ones; he had spent many an afternoon with Timmain, practicing his deep-sending. He understood that there was something profoundly… alien about them, and he knew to how to maintain a safe distance from their other-ness. Foolishly, he had thought those lessons had prepared him to meet Haken.
But he was wrong. Haken was nothing like Timmain.
He was present in a way Timmain could never be, his mere aura as overpowering as an aggressive locksending. The All-Mother always seemed vaguely detached, as if her thoughts were scattered on so many levels of reality at once. But Haken focused all his energy into his stare. He radiated old magic.
And yet his gaze was guarded. He held his aura out like a shield. Compared to the welcoming presence within the College, Haken’s profound defensiveness made Bluestar think of a raw wound.
Don’t look, he told himself. Don’t look at his arm.
He could see the vaguest outline of a stump under the half-cloak Haken wore over his left shoulder. He forced himself not to linger on it, to meet the High One’s pitiless stare.
“So…” Haken said at length. “This is Weatherbird’s child.”
Bluestar dipped a bow in the Oasis fashion, back straight, arms swept outward, like a bird bobbing at a pool. The gesture seemed to please the lord. A smile ghosted over Haken’s lips.
“I have known your mother for a long time,” he said. “She is… an elf of superlative talent.”
“She’s told me much about you, my lord,” Bluestar replied promptly.
And how she had. **Lord Haken didn’t raise those spires just to keep humans out,** she’d warned him, during their last communion on the astral plane. **And the closer we come to the Reappearance, the more restless he grows behind his walls. He’s hiding many things in Oasis, I fear. Things he won’t share with the rest of the Circle. But even the meanest wolf can let his guard down around a little cubling. So play the cubling and who knows what he and his might let slip.**
**I thought Lord Haken was your friend?**
**No, cubling. You trust your friends.**
“And you’re not too tired from your journey?” Haken asked. “What did you think of the Steam Road? My grandson’s kin are quite marvellous, are they not? A credit to their elf-blood, of course.”
Bluestar allowed himself a genuine smile. “I liked the train,” he said honestly. “But it was a little scary, being in the dark all the way.”
“Surely you must be used to tunnels. You’re a child of the Egg.”
“The Egg has windows. Lots of them.”
“Trust me, the cool dark of the trollkin’s tunnels is infinitely preferable to the Burning Waste,” Haken said. “Besides, we can’t allow those jabbering apes to know where we’ve sunk our highway, now can we?” he added with a hint of a smirk. Bluestar wondered if he meant the humans or the pure-blooded trolls. Perhaps both. Two-Edge’s kingdom had spread out for hundreds of leagues around Blue Mountain, but there were still a dozen other petty kings scattered underneath the Homeland, all vying for power, united only in their hatred for King Smith. And if the humans of the World’s Spine loathed their god Manach as much as they feared him… well, Haken had done much to earn both emotions.
“They know where the Sea Holt docks,” Bluestar offered. “And we didn’t see anyone spying on us when we came into harbor.”
“You can thank the Shapechanged for that. My daughter Melati’s creatures keep the bay well-defended. How did you find life with the Waveriders? I confess I thought it a great folly, to set such a young child out at sea.”
Again, Bluestar decided honesty was his best course. “I liked it. Well… once I stopped getting seasick. And I’m not the youngest to ever sail. They have whole families on the Sea Holt – half the crew was born at sea!” He considered his next words carefully “But I’m glad I’m back on land. I learned a lot on the ship. Now I’m ready to learn more.”
“And so you shall. Your mother has already told me much of your training; it will be my pleasure to continue it. You’re already a fourth-level sender, I understand.”
Bluestar grinned bashfully. “I want to take the test for the fifth level, but Father says I need to wait until my next birthday.”
Haken chuckled. “Of course he would.” **And you can locksend, can’t you?** he went on silently. **And project yourself onto the astral plane?**
**Yes, lord.**
**And how old were you? The first time you… ‘went out’ as your diminutive kin like to call it?**
**Seven,** he sent, felt the lie humming in his thoughts, and quickly amended, **nearly eight.**
**Still a feat to be proud of. The only elf to have surpassed it is your own grandfather Sunstream. What else can you do?**
“I have some of Father’s animal magic–”
“That’s not real magic.”
“Father teaches it at the College!”
Haken chuckled. “Well, if it makes him feel useful…”
“He can send at the fifth level!” Bluestar snapped, full of indignation.
“You’re very fond of your sire, aren’t you?” Haken’s tone seemed equal parts amused and puzzled.
“He’s my father!” Bluestar said, as if to a child.
“Of course he is. And he surely wants you to improve yourself.”
Bluestar felt himself squirm under Haken’s intense gaze. He tore his eyes away, to glance at the crystal sculpture sitting between Haken’s throne and the empty seat reserved for his consort. A triple-roofed hut was lovely rendered in shimmering translucent stone. Bluestar felt the air humming around it.
Haken noticed his shift of attention. “You can feel it, can’t you? The call of the starstone. The Little Palace may be but a fragment of the Homeshell, but even its power is enough to unlock abilities long dormant.” **But your magic isn’t dormant, is it? I can sense it, thrumming just beneath your skin… power of the like never before seen on this blighted world. Old magic, from the days of my forbearers, when our mastery over the basic elements of reality was not considered anymore magical than the ability to draw breath.**
“What else can you do?” the High One asked, in an idle tone that seemed almost rhetorical. Bluestar swallowed and said nothing.
**What else can you do?** he asked more forcefully in locksending.
“I… I don’t know,” Bluestar said. “Well… I’m trying out floating. I can make a coin stand on its end–”
**I don’t mean first-level novelty trick.**
**I don’t know what you mean, lord.**
**Don’t try to lie to me in sending. Your mother ought to have taught you better than that.**
Bluestar felt the weight of Haken’s stare like a physical pain. He dropped his gaze to the floor.
**Show me,** Haken demanded.
“Please… I promised Mother I wouldn’t.”
Haken’s hand slapped down on the arm of the throne, propelling himself upright in a somewhat jerky motion. “Promised to deceive me? Does your mother think so little of me? Does she forget than I am Lord of Oasis and you are under my care for the next year?”
“No, no, it’s not like that. It’s only…”
**I am your lord, Bluestar.** His sending was an undeniable command. Bluestar hung his head. When he spoke, his voice broke on a whimper.
“It’s… Mother says it’s dangerous! She says I’m not allowed to practice it without her.”
In the face of his submission, Haken softened. “Your mother has entrusted you to my care, child. And you forget – I am a High One. There is no danger while you are here.” His words were gentle, but his sending was iron when he instructed, **Now show me.**
Bluestar closed his eyes and clenched his fists. He gathered all his strength and focused on the tiles under his feet. He felt the ground move.
When he opened his eyes he stood an armspan to the left of where he’d been. Haken was staring at him in wonder.
“Telemutation,” he murmured. The word sounded as foreign as the human tongue.
“Is that what it’s called?” Bluestar asked. “I… Mother and I just call it ‘flitting.’ Like a Preserver, you know.”
“How long have you been able to do that?”
“It started when I was six. I got startled one day and I… well, I jumped without jumping. Just one step to the side. Mother helped me focus and I learned how to do it on purpose. But she made me promise not to try it without her. I’ve never been able to do more than an armspan, but the Egg is really crowded. She was always worried I’d overdo it and end up inside a wall or something!”
“Did she not tell Aurek of this? Or Timmain?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. She never told me if she did.”
“Child, you really have no idea, do you? This is a magic I’d never thought to see again. Even on the Homestar it was among the rarest of talents. The last elf I knew to master it died when I was only a child myself.”
Bluestar gulped air. “From flitting?”
“No. From other things. But your mother is right. It is not a trifle to be played with. Forgive me for being so… harsh. I understand now. I will help you with this, Bluestar. In time. A few paces is a fine start, but with greater control you can indeed ‘flit’ right through walls. For now though, you will keep your promise to your mother.”
Bluestar smiled with relief. It had worked. A small truth can conceal a greater lie, his mother had taught him. The trick is knowing just how much truth you must reveal. It seemed he had chosen wisely. High One and child talked of lighter subjects for a time, then Haken called for Maize.
“I have no doubt you’ll find your quarters here more civilized than a cabin on the steam train,” Haken said. “Or the Sea Holt, for that matter.”
* * *
Bluestar needed only an eight-of-days to fall into the rhythms of life at Oasis: waking with the sun, the mornings spent playing with Jethel, the afternoons slept away and the cool evenings devoted to languid amusements. Before long he was intolerably bored.
There was simply nothing to do for a curious child. Perhaps he had been spoiled, after two years of adventures, first in the rainforest, then on the seas. But even in familiar confines of the College, he’d never been so idle. There’d been chores and studies and the constant exploration of an ever-changing Egg.
But Jethel didn’t want to explore. There was nothing within the walls he hadn’t seen a million times. He had no chores to speak of, and he had no interest in learning, nor in teaching Bluestar for that matter. “Why do you know what to know about that?” he’d ask with a wrinkle to his nose, every time Bluestar pressed him about a particular plant, or a local custom, or the mechanics of the water wheel. He couldn’t even read yet! “Why bother? I won’t need it unless I become a scribe.” And the only games he seemed to like were contests of strength, which he handily won and gloated about.
And for all his talk of educating Bluestar, Haken seemed in no hurry to begin classes. All his time seemed to be taken up in meetings with his rockshapers. Bluestar wondered why; he could see no major building works underway. But every time Bluestar dared to seek him out in Tallest Spire, he would find the High One closeted with Ekuar or Ahdri or Door.
“As serious as Sunstream,” Haken chided gently. “And as impatient as Rayek. Don’t be so hasty. Take some time to get to know your new home.”
He was trying, High Ones help him. But there was only so much one could learn wasting every morning at the swimming pools, listening to Jethel crow about how long he could hold his breath underwater.
So by the eighth morning, Bluestar asked if he could follow Maize about her day instead.
“Really? It’s nothing interesting, I promise. I just work in the fields. You might be better off going to the kiln with Mother.”
Cholla smiled. “I could teach you how to use a potter’s wheel,” she offered.
“Thanks, Auntie, but I want to see the farms. I’ve seen humans grow crops – there are rice terraces all around High Hope. But I want to learn how elves do it.”
Klipspringer raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you want to be a ‘dirt-digger?’ I don’t know who’d be more outraged – Lord Haken or your great-grandfather.”
“Uncle Rayek doesn’t call me a ‘dirt-digger,’” Maize pointed out.
“Ah, but you’re a magical dirt-digger,” Klipspringer said. “That makes all the difference.”
“Did Meerkat teach you how to plantshape?” Bluestar asked Maize as they set off together for the fields. Waterleaf flew overhead, buzzing happily to itself.
“Oh no, she was off the College for most of my childhood, and I’ve never left Oasis. No, Grandma Spar taught me a few tricks, but most of it I just picked up on my own.” Maize laughed. “The family all placed wagers on what magic I would inherit – rockshaping or plantshaping. I guess we had enough rockshapers already.”
“You’ve never left Oasis?”
“Oh, I don’t mean I’ve never been outside the walls!” she giggled at the thought. “I’ve been out in the Thorn Fields, of course. And over to Melati’s Ruin – and Tufts even took me down the Steam Road to see the coast once. But when I saw the sea I got… this sick sort of feeling deep in the pit of my stomach. Like it wasn’t right.”
“You don’t want to visit new places?”
Maize shrugged. “Maybe when I grow up.”
Grow up? Bluestar thought skeptically. She was already over a hundred years old. But then everything seemed to move so much more slowly in Oasis.
He studied Maize as they walked. She was in many ways the dead spit of her mother, the same tiny chin and high cheekbones, the same owl-eyes and white-blond hair – though Maize wore hers in dozens of little braids, beads of jet and amber woven throughout to resemble the multi-colored kernels of her namesake. But he could see Klipspringer in her too: the wide mouth, the upturned nose, and the long bones of a Glider.
She didn’t look at all like a freak of nature. And yet, according to Pool, that’s exactly what she was. “An aberration,” he’d pronounced, when Bluestar had once asked about her miraculous birth. “She’s more than a tyleet – she’s a… construct! A violation of all laws of nature.”
She didn’t look like a construct. The peace-hounds did. Bluestar still felt a chill down his spine whenever he saw one – and he saw them regularly on patrol with their Red Snake handlers. But Maize seemed like any tyleet – preternaturally cheerful, perhaps, but otherwise indistinguishable from any other elf.
“It’s a shame you didn’t come in Rainsign,” Maize remarked as she led him over to the corn fields. “You could have seen the planting.”
“You plant fresh seeds every year?”
“Mm-hm. We sow in Rainsign and we reap in Bonedry. By then the stalks are as tall as a zwoot’s head.”
At present the stalks were just barely at Bluestar’s knee. Maize bade him crouch down and feel the thick earth. It was dark and loamy, and crumbled pleasantly in Bluestar’s hands.
“The soil here has always been richer than elsewhere in the mountains,” she explained. “And over the years, rockshapers and plantshapers have worked together to improve on it. The right balance of minerals and invisible life-forms. It’s like a sponge, see? It can soak up the water of the rains without flooding, and it can continue to release moisture all throughout the dry months.”
The stalks in the wheat fields were taller. “Our main crop is maize and wheat. But we also have our vegetable fields. And of course, many of the farmers still tend their own household gardens. Though most of what we grow is tended communally. Grandmother Jarrah oversees it all.”
“Where do you grow the meat?” Bluestar asked.
“The fleshvines? Oh, they’re all in the caves underneath Tallest Spire.”
“But… don’t they need sunlight? They are plants, aren’t they?”
“Oh, I don’t know what you’d call them,” Maize said. “But they don’t need sunlight. Just the feedbroth and fresh water and the seedrock to anchor in.”
“Seedrock?” Bluestar repeated, dumbfounded. “You have seedrock here? But I thought it only came from the Painted Mountains. Aurek said it only grows there!” Seedrock was the rarest stone on Abode: the only kind that responded to elfin magic like the starstone of Palace. Bluestar had always thought his home the only source of it.
“Oh, Aurek gave us some. Years and years ago – long before I was born. Grandpa Ekuar put it to work here.”
Put it to work…. such a simple phrase could mean so many things. His mind raced. He couldn’t say why he was so unsettled, beyond a child’s sense of possession. That’s our rock, he wanted to insist. It’s what makes the Egg special! But that was unworthy of him. Aurek had started the College to spread the gift of magic – he could hardly sit on the seedrock like a troll on his hoard.
Still… it bothered him. Seedrock responded to magic. The Egg itself was made of seedrock laced with starstone crystals– and its gentle revolution steadily converted the simple minerals into living stone.
Oasis was a place that turned jackwolves into peace-hounds. What would it do with seedrock?
“Bluestar?” Maize asked.
“Hmm? Sorry. I was… up in the clouds there.”
“Well, you come by it honestly, given your bloodline,” Maize laughed lightly.
“Silverbaby highthing always buzz-buzz busyhead,” Waterleaf agreed.
An hour’s leisurely walk took them to the southern limits of Oasis. Bluestar brushed his hand along the smooth stone wall. Unlike the jumble of sandstone hoodoos by the old jackwolf dens, this rock was tended regularly. He had no rockshaping gift himself, but any child of the Egg could sense the residual magic clinging to the stone.
They stopped under the shade of a cloud-tree. A peacoo sitting high in the branches let out a soft trill. Waterleaf perched on a branch and tried to mimic its song. It took only a few shrill tweets from the Preserver before the peacoo decamped for quieter surroundings.
“Tell me about Melati,” Bluestar asked next.
“What about her?”
“What’s she like? I mean… I’ve heard stories. But they were mostly from Pool and–”
Maize bared her teeth in a sharp hiss, like an angry cat.
“That,” Bluestar said. “And I know Pool and Mother quarrelled about me coming to Oasis – and I know why… a little. But I want to learn more. From someone who knows her – not just the stories others tell about her.”
“Did you ask Jethel?” she asked, one eyebrow arching skeptically. “I’m sure he could tell you a fine tale.”
Bluestar matched her expression. “Jethel can’t tell where north is half the time.”
Maize laughed. “Oh, that’s so cruel. And so true.” She looked up at the peacoo in the tree. “Melati is… she’s the lifeblood of Oasis. She doesn’t visit often, it’s true. But she’s everywhere – in the birdsong we hear, in the water we drink, in the meat we eat. Elves like Jethel’s father… they fear her – and they make themselves blind to all she’s done for us. Without Melati, we’d still be sending warriors out to chase off humans. We’d still be slaughtering innocent beasts for flesh! Can you believe the Pride used to have to hunt! That when my parents were young there were days of… of want! Here in Oasis! Wants even Lord Haken could not satisfy.”
He heard the reverence in her voice. “Like your parents wanting children?” Bluestar guessed.
“Yes. Exactly.” She nodded vigorously, setting the beads in her braids rattling. “Mother says Pool was convinced it could never happen. All the healers were. They’d said it was impossible – that Mother was asking too much. Said we can’t always have what we want – can you imagine?!
“The other healers gave up trying. But Melati never did. Not after all those failed Recognitions and incomplete healings – not even when Mama miscarried me!” she laughed carelessly.
Bluestar stared. “So it’s true what Pool says? That you’re…”
“Twice-born? Oh yes. And don’t make that face – it’ll stick that way if you’re not careful. Yes, Mama only carried me for… a little over a year. Her heart couldn’t take it – trying to pump blood for the two of us. So I went into the Cradle for another year. I don’t remember it, of course. Although sometimes I dream of it.”
“How… how did it work? What was it even made of?” Visions of fleshy wrapstuff filled his head. “Did she… just take a goat and fleshshape it right there and stuff you inside?”
Maize laughed long and hard at the image he conjured. “Oh bless you, no. No, she had it ready. I don’t know what she made it from. Maybe a piece of fleshvine? I’ve never thought to ask. I just know it was… like a big fleshy egg. And it kept me warm and kept me fed and helped me grow until I was big enough to be born properly.”
“Mark my words,” Pool had accused, “the meat-trees, the constructed wombs… she’ll be growing elves before long.”
“That’s the incredible thing about her, Bluestar,” Maize continued. “She never gives up. She never stops until she’s got what she wants. And what she wants is for everyone to be safe and happy!” she finished cheerfully, utterly oblivious to the shudder that ran down Bluestar’s back.
“But not everyone understands that,” she added sadly. “And they make it so hard for her to be here.”
“Is that why she made the peace-hounds? To sniff out her enemies?”
Maize’s expression turned cool. “What strange questions you ask. No, of course not. She already knows who her enemies are.”
* * *
“Melati? Oh, she’s a piece of work, that one,” Sust ruled as he straddled the cylindrical lump of flesh. To Bluestar’s eyes it looked like the sausages the humans of High Hope liked to make. Only this sausage was the size of full-grown elf, and wrapped in a shiny pink skin that made him think of a piglet. It tapered to a rounded stump at one end, like a neck in need of a head. The other end was a gash cauterized with a hot blade.
Around them, six massive tuftcats lay sunning themselves on the rocks. They took no interest in Sust or the cub; even in late afternoon, it was too hot for curiosity. But when Sust drove the blade of his short-sword into the sack of flesh, the smell of hot blood immediately roused the Pride. Sust took Bluestar’s shoulder and gently guided him out of the way of the hungry cats.
“I never thought she’d come to much good,” Sust went on. “I mean, how could she – mother dead, father run off… and then that wretched business with Maleen’s boy.”
“Maleen has a son?”
“Had. Cousin of yours, actually. But he's old bones now.... And when Melati started messing around with shapechanging… well, I was one of the loudest voices shouting her down.”
“Was?”
Sust smirked. “Your ol’ uncle had to eat his words, didn’t he? Look at all the good she’s done.” He swept his hand to indicate the animals now feasting on the lump of meat certainly seemed as real as a fresh kill. But for the lack of bones, one would never guess it was carved off the fleshvine like fruit from a tree.
Bluestar still shuddered at the memory of that ‘tree’ – roots like tentacles soaking in pools of nutrient-filled broth, supporting a trunk as wide around as three elves linked hand-in-hand, and branching vines of meat and skin that clung to the cavern walls. The way the flesh of the trunk seemed to palpate with a heartbeat… and the stench of burned meat whenever the carvers sliced off a thick cut of meat. The tree was covered in shiny scars from frequent harvests.
“It can’t feel pain,” Maize had insisted. “No more than a tree having its branches pruned.”
“It was an animal once,” Pool had taught him. “A beast that once ran free. A beast that deserved a clean death – not this endless torture – a mindless, soulless thing… eaten alive yet denied death.”
“Look at those cats!” Sust went on. “Born and raised in plenty – going back more litters than I can count. When I was your age, tuftcats were so vicious no one thought I could bond with one. But take away hunger and fear and danger and they go gentle as zwoots!”
“And that’s… good. Turning cats into zwoots.”
“Would you rather be fighting every day just to stay alive? I wouldn’t. Why would it be any different for tuftcats?” Sust saw his skepticism and smiled. “Let me guess: my brother’s still teaching ‘You can’t control the worldsong – you can only respect it.’” He rolled his eyes. “You know how we keep our Pride from going the way of the jackwolves?”
“Melati?” Bluestar guessed. But Sust laughed.
“Naw, simpler than that. Every eighty years or so we go find a longtooth. Oh, not here, of course. But there are prides of them up northwesterly way. They’re cousins of tuftcats – we figure tuftcats are just longtooths that made it across the Ice Bridge to the New Land. So we pick a real wretched-looking one – chased out of his pride, starving. And we give him a new home.”
“And your cats accept the longtooth?”
“Why wouldn’t they? We’ve bred them to be friendly. And you think the longtooth’s gonna be too proud to join up with the tuftcats? See that one over there – with the long tail?”
Bluestar nodded. The spotted cat was noticeably slimmer than his pridemates, and while he had the tufted ears and maned jaw of a tuftcat, he sported a fluffy tail, easily twice the length of the little stubs the others possessed.
“His great-grandfather Snaggle was pure longtooth. I remember when we brought him back here. Took him three days to start letting the tuftcats groom him. Two months to play with them. In one season he was trying to mate with Bekah’s cat. You’ll never tell me Snaggle would have rather ‘respected the worldsong.’”
“So you don’t hunt anymore?”
“Why bother? I’m no savage – I don’t need to go kill things to feel alive. Not like some elves! Sure I used to hunt. We used to need to. Now we don’t. Don’t see we got the right – killing something when you don’t need to. My Papa Pike always taught me – never take more than you need. Only humans take more than they need.”
“But you still hunt something, don’t you?” Father said…” but he trailed off.
“Your father said what?”
“He said ‘Don’t let your Uncle Sust drag you off one of his hunts.’”
“Oh, we still have chases!” Sust grinned. “If we didn’t these furballs would be fat as zwoots too! We’re planning one tomorrow – you oughta come watch. Actually, no. You oughta come ride with us!” He smirked.
“But Father said–”
“Of course he did. Just like he always tells your mama to stay out of trouble. And does she ever listen?”
Bluestar hesitated. “Sometimes…”
“Uh-huh. And Haken sometimes smiles. You know what I think? I think your mama would never have gotten into so many fixes if your papa had just kept his big mouth shut.”
Bluestar raised a skeptical eyebrow at the description, but Sust didn’t seem to notice the irony. “And I think he knows it. I think he does it just to get into trouble so he can get her out of it. And I think he only warned you about my hunts so you’d ask me about them!”
Bluestar nodded thoughtfully. It did make a certain sense.
“Sooo… it stands to reason… he’d never warned you off them if he didn’t want you to come anyway and have the time of your life!” Sust finished with a grin.
Well, when he put it that way…
Elfquest copyright 2015 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.