“It’s in the wrong direction and it’s too far away.”
He shrugged, striding towards it anyway. “You never know. I’ll check it out; you stay here and follow anything else.” He disappeared into the forest beyond, leaving her amongst the rustling bracken.
She crossed her arms with a huff and bent her head to listen for any call. A squirrel chittered a distant protest, a stream’s song tinkled like silver bells, and the wind in the trees whispered with distant voices.
Distant voices.
Tellie froze. That wasn’t just the trees, those were voices. She pulled in a breath to call for Kelm, but then held it. Those strangers would hear her too. Perhaps they’d heard her already. So she should go after her friend for safety, yes, that was the smart thing to do.
But curiosity bloomed in her heart, rose to her head, and tingled to the very tips of her toes. Hardly anyone came this far into Shadowshade. Were they from the village or perhaps more travelers?
Casting a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure Kelm wasn’t returning, she crept towards the undulating voices. The nearer she approached, the clearer the voices rang, but no less soft and sibilant. Her skin prickled as she realized they were speaking in another language. Bird, medallion, and dark strangers almost forgotten in the thrill of mystery, she knelt in the fern and crawled on.
At last, she caught her first glimpse of them from between her concealing fronds of sword fern, and her breath was stolen away.
An entire company of folk gathered in the glade, dismounted from their grazing horses. They dressed in clothes unlike any she’d seen, not even travelers from elegant Korince. Tunics swept around their slender bodies and fell halfway to their thighs, layering over leggings and knee-high leather boots. Cloaks draped down their backs, one end clasped to the shoulder, the other to their hip. The color of their attire was muted and soft, like the fog of morning hills or river mist, except for their cloaks which were dark forest green and seemed to flicker with leaf-scattered sunlight.
Three gathered in the center of the glade, while the others silently patrolled the borders.
The dark strangers at the inn had spoken the truth…
…elves had come to Shadowshade Forest.
Their race was undeniable, even without the confirmation of slender, pointed ears peeking from their long hair. It was something about their vibrant eyes, something about the way they moved. They existed in an aura of agelessness and beauty that no one could deny.
Tellie swallowed, mouth dry. How had the strangers known the elves would be coming? Perhaps they came here often in secret, and the whole of Denji didn’t know.
One of the three in the center of the glade stood apart from the rest. He seemed strangely old, bent over as if under a great weight, and his hair shone silvery white. As she watched, he drew a slim sword from amongst his draping robes and drove it into the ground. Around it he hung a shredded, dark blue cloak, and around the hilt he dropped a silver circlet that gleamed in the light. One of the other figures beside him murmured quiet words that she did not understand. It struck her that these strangers shared a solemn, sad moment, and that she was rude to be spying, yet she could not look away.
The magpie’s call broke the mournful quiet, and to Tellie’s astonishment, it flew through the air and alighted upon the bent shoulder of the silver-haired elf. Gently, he held up a hand, and it dropped the moon necklace onto his fingers.
Tellie’s gasp was drowned out by the gasps and cries of the surrounding folk. Expressions of disbelief flickered across their fair faces, and they drew close to the necklace as if they expected it to vanish before their eyes.
Only the white-haired one did not seem surprised. Indeed, he seemed calm. Very calm as he looked up and stared right into Tellie’s eyes.
Drawing in a sharp breath, she crawled backwards into the fern—right into awaiting hands.
With a shriek, she lunged away, but she jerked to an abrupt halt at the end of her captor’s arm. She twisted to find one of the patrolling strangers, a scarf concealing his lower face so that only his eyes, dark and intense, peered back at her. His other hand came forward, spun her back around, and clasped her other shoulder. Quite casually, he lifted her off the ground, hands grasping her arms, and carried her the last few steps out of the brush into the clearing.
A circle of gleaming blades met her eyes, each elf tensed for battle. She choked out another cry as her feet touched the ground, but the elf did not release his grip. The ring of warriors relaxed, their tension easing into something nigh to exasperation. One of the three central figures, a tall elf with a golden circlet around his flaxen hair, stepped forward and spoke a few foreign words to Tellie’s captor.
“Let me go!” Tellie shouted, struggling against the steady hold. “I’m not a thief or spy…or…anything bad!”
“Of course not,” the one with the circlet said soothingly. “Forgive us, our guards are ordered to keep us safe, and while you are but a child, we weren’t expecting anyone out here. Let her go, Valryd. She is no threat.”
The one holding Tellie let go, but she could still feel his tension hovering behind her as he obviously hadn’t dismissed her as a threat.
Now free, she drew in a deep breath and straightened her dress. She glanced around at the surrounding folk with undisguised curiosity. The fact that they could speak the common tongue brushed a load of fears off her chest.
The man who ordered her release looked at her in growing unease. It was the sort of face adults made when they’ve been discussing something too mature and serious for a child’s ear and fear they might have been understood. “You can go,” he said. “We won’t detain you.”
“But you’re elves,” she blurted. “I’ve heard about you!”
His eyebrows drew together. “I’m sure you have. Now run along before your parents miss you. And say nothing of this.”
“Leoren,” a soft voice said.
Tellie started and turned to see that the third of the central party was a woman with dark brown hair and violet eyes.
“Leoren,” the woman said again. “Gently.” She smiled with genuine warmth that the girl found rare from adults. “I’m sorry if we seem rude, child, but we were in the middle of a memorial. Is there something you wanted?”
Shocked to be addressed so courteously, Tellie’s mouth hung open without an answer. Elves. What would Kelm think? She could barely wait to tell him when she got back to the inn—
The inn. Her skin went cold. The strangers at the inn. The necklace.
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice very small. “But your bird stole my necklace.”
Several of the elves exclaimed and murmured to each other in their own language. Tellie blushed and stepped backward. She stumbled against the elf who had caught her and jerked away, fear pressing back in from all sides. Had she ever heard stories about what actually happened to travelers who encountered elves?
The man and the woman drew back behind the bodies of their guards, and she could hear the whisper of their swift and soft conversations with the hidden silver-haired man. Tellie began to stand on her tiptoes to see and hear better, but the guards blocking her view were staring back at her with chilly, dangerous eyes, and she quickly pretended not to be so interested by the secret conference.
The woman remerged, eyes curiously intent, but still gentle. “I am Casara. What is your name?”