The story of our beloved firehair begins even before her birth. It was said that Ember "called the wolfblood to her" (see volume 7: "The Cry from Beyond") while still in the woumb. The result was that Ember was born a full-blooded wolfrider, while her twin brother, Suntop, was immortal. They were born in the Sun Village, the first set of twins in the collective memory of either the Wolfriders or the Sun Folk (although not actually the first set of twins in Wolfrider history, as is evidenced in the Blood of Ten Chiefs anthologies. It is likely that the existance of these others was simply lost to history by the time they were born).
Ember's first five years of life were spent peacefully in the Sun Village, though not without excitement. From birth, she had been raised to be chieftess of the Wolfriders, and so was taught a Wolfrider's skills early. She learned to "hunt" after her own fasion, although this mostly involved sneaking up and surprising people. It was suggested that she completed some kind of training with Strongbow; however, it was never shown in the comics.
Her life changed drastically when her father left Sorrow's End to seek other elves, though at first it was simply a matter of waiting for him to return. Life went on without Cutter, Ember even gaining her first wolfbond (named Choplicker) while he was gone. When Savah, the Mother of Memory, became trapped outside of her body on the spirit plane, Ember suddenly found herself on a quest to find her father, along with the rest of the Wolfriders, Leetah, and Suntop, who held a message in his head for Cutter. Though the journey was parilous, she tried to put on a brave face, setting a precedent for the way she would react to any dangerous situation in the future.
Eventually, Ember, Suntop, and Leetah ended their search in the Forbidden Grove; but only after seeing the Wolfriders swept away by giant birds, narrowly escaping on a panicked zwoot, and being wrapped in preserver webbing. Once released, the young Ember took to the "green-growing place" like a fish to water, asking to be taught how to walk in the trees almost immediately. Her first taste of the forest was short-lived, however, as soon she and her family were swept up in the events of the Gliders of Blue Mountain, culminating in the capture of her twin by the malignantly insane Winnowill.
Upon freeing Suntop, and subsequently, Savah's spirit, Ember and her family were again abducted, this time by the Glider's Lord Voll, dubbed "funny old bird" by the little chieftess. He took them as far as the Frozen Mountains, followed closely by the Wolfriders, before he was slain by trolls and the Wolfrider tribe was left to fend for themselves. In the heat of battle with the trolls, little five-year-old Ember, not knowing any better, wanted to help. As a result, her mother was forced to kill a troll to save her life, deeply scarring Leetah's healer mentality on her behalf.
They were soon rescued by the Go-Backs, a tribe of snow-elves used to combating the mountain trolls, though not without losses. One-Eye was killed, and Cutter came very close to death before Leetah was able to save him. The union of these two tribes led to the Elf-Troll War for the Palace of the High Ones, during which Ember had to watch both her parents went off to battle while she stayed behind with the other children and a few protectors. The lodge was, in fact, attacked while the warriors were away, leaving Ember and the other children to fight a battle of their own. They won, but it left Ember disillusioned to the glories of battle, and she was found crying by the troll that fell on Redlance when the others returned.
Being only a child, the wonders of the Palace of the High Ones, the prize of war, held little intrest for Ember. Upon hearing the history of the High Ones through her twin's mouth, her only words were, "You sure talked a lot!" (see volume 4: "Quest's End"). After seeing the palace, the Wolfriders decided not to return to Sorrow's End, but to make a new Holt in the Forbidden Grove. Given Ember's love of the forest and facination with the little winged preservers, she was undoubtedly thrilled.
Her next three years were spent in the Forbidden Grove, learning about the ways of the forest, and of the Wolfriders in their natural home. Her first "chief practice", so to speak, happened after Aroree snatched Dewshine's baby, Windkin, and was pursued by Dewshine, Cutter, Scouter, Clearbrook, Skywise, Treestump, Strongbow, Moonshade, Leetah, and Suntop, from different respective directions and from different times. Redlance, to cheer her up from being left behind, called her the chief until the others returned and charged her with giving the orders to protect the Holt. The various tricks and traps they came up with managed to drive off the humans who came to hunt the "demons", and were a great source of pride to her ever after.
Fairly soon after this second set of events at Blue Mountain, two very important things happened. Suntop heard a mental cry for help, and Rayek learned to make the palace fly. And Ember was again quickly whisked away on a quest centered around her brother and his magic abilities, this time to a whole new land. It wasn't long after they arrived at the cry's source that Rayek had whisked the Palace, including Ember, Suntop, Leetah, Skywise, and Ekuar, ten thousand years into the future.
The Wolfriders had survived the ravages of time, wrapped in cocoons of preserver webbing, though they were quite a bit older than they had been what seemed only a night ago. For Ember, the concept that her one night had been equvalent to 10,00 years was nearly impossible to comprehend, and so a part of her ignored what she was told and continued to believe that everything was just as it had been before, despite the face-fur on many of her tribesmates and the differences in the human population. She grew to adolescence in the Thorny Mountain Holt, generally ignoring the changes that she refused to believe had happened over the slow course of time that she had not seen.
The changes caused tension between Ember and her father, because she couldn't understand the pain he had felt during the time she was away, or his seemingly baseless over-protectiveness. The two of them got into a huge spat over Cutter's decree that she could not go to Sorrow's End in the Palace with a group of her tribesmates, including Leetah and Suntop. Ember saw it as an obtrusive restriction of her freedom, and when Cutter refused to share the true reasoning behind it, she became furious, and tricked her way into going to Sorrow's End, anyway. It was only there that she finally came to terms with the fact of her long absence, and sympathized with what her father must have felt. It was also in Sorrow's End that she gained her first lovemate: Mender, the healer-son of Woodlock and Rainsong, who had been younger than her before the time jump, but was now much older.
Not long after this "Rite of Passage", the Palace was stolen and shattered by Winnowill. In the ensuing months, while the humans collected the shards of the palace, Cutter greatly upped the amount of "chief training" he gave her, sometimes even asking for her opinions and defering to her suggestions. Though she didn't know why it was happening, she noticed, even telling him, "You've been drumming a chief's do's and don'ts into my skull for moons! Let's do something fun for a change, Father!" (see volume 10: "Shards").
The reason was soon revealed: Cutter intended to split the tribe, one half to fight the humans and recover the shards, and the other, the half led by Ember, to find a new Holt so that the tribe would continue if they failed. At only two-eights old, Ember felt unprepared for the responsability, and confessed to Mender that she was afraid of making mistakes. Once she chose her tribesmates and was off, she took to asking advice for every little decision, often following each question with so many more that no one had time to answer. It was not until everyone in the tribe pretended not to know the answer to one of her problems that she was able to confidently figure something out for herself, gaining the confidence to wear her own chief's lock.
Even having found her courage, being a chief was no easy task. Her little tribe encountered dangers aplenty in their search for a Holt, and she found an unexpected disapproval from Moonshade. In the end, it took a hallucination of Moonshade's just to get her back to square one with the tribal elder, and a clever solution to the problem of starvation to gain her admiration and approval. However, their reconciliation was so complete that Moonshade made Ember a hair ornament that she wore ever after, a symbol to show the world that she was able to see the things which others overlooked, in order to know what was best for the tribe.
Eventually, Ember's band found its way to Howling Rock, decided to stay, and began making a home of the numerous caves in the area. One thing they did not expect was to find another elf living there: but find one they did! Teir, lone wanderer and enigmatic stranger, appeared to be no threat to the wolfriders, but no freind, either. That is, until Ember befreinded him.
Ember's feelings about Teir were mixed and confusing. On the one hand, she had to admit that it was her duty as chief to be suspicious of anything strange that could possibly hurt her tribe. On the other, she was drawn to him, and even found herself missing Mender less and less. However, the others learned to distrust his animal magic, and the power that he might have over them through their wolfblood. Though he saved Ember's life at one point, Leetah drove him away, misjudging his intentions.
It was also discovered that Teir's magic drew to Howling Rock shapechanged beasts of Winnowill's creation, leading to a horrific battle, and the consequential abuse of Leetah's powers to drive them off. In the process, Teir's magic was burned out, leaving Ember to make the heart-rending decision of issuing him an edict: remain with the tribe as he was, while he would not draw shapechanged, or have his powers restored by Leetah and be driven away so as not to endanger the pack. Though both felt betaryed, they still knew that they loved each other, and Teir left with a promise to find her again someday.
Cutter, meanwhile, had won the war with the humans, and flew to Howling Rock in the palace, resulting in a great reunion of practically the entire elf race. after things calmed down, Ember announced that she wished to return to Howling Rock with any who chose to follow her, to clean up the monserous creatures that the deceased Winnowill had left behind. So she remained chief of her own new faction of Wolfriders.
The next twelve years of her life were spent as leader of this tribe, in search of the creatures of Winnowill's making. During this time, she slipped back into her easy relationship with Mender, and watched as her tribe grew with the births of Pool and Sust. But just after the Wild Hunt (as they called their branch of the Wolfriders) had dispatched a monster just outside of Port Bane, Teir resurfaced. Tensions sprang up between Teir and Mnder, with Ember caught in the middle as a prize. She didn't take too kindly to this, and spent quite a while trying to keep the peace in her tribe while also asserting her own freedom and right to choice.
When howling Rock was found by humans, specifically the son of the feared Djun, the tribe was forced to flee to the troll caverns to avoid open conflict with them. Angrief Djun then hired a skilled elf-hunter, Lehrigen, to find them and capture the healer, Mender. The elves found themselves unprepared for a human as woods-wise as "The Still One" (as they called him), and failed to drive him out of the forest they had hastily found sanctuary in. Ember wished to make a freind of him, as she admired his talents and considered him a waste as an enemy. It was Teir's flouting of her commands, however, that spoiled Ember's attempt at peace with him, eventually leading to the Still One's abduction of Pool and Dewshine. She refused his offer to trade them for Mender, and as a result, was downcried and challenged by Scouter.
To put it shortly, Scouter won his challenge, and Ember was left abandoned in the snow. He traded Mender for his lifemate and son, then broke his word not to persue and attempted to kill Lehrigen. Ember, rescued by Teir after he left Scouter's tribe, was infuriated by the way he was leading, and undertook to save Mender herself, hoping in the process to prove to Scouter that killing humans was not the answer. In the end, she managed to prove to the Still One that elves were not all the heartless creatures he had thought, and Scouter decided to return her chief's lock.
In the Now, forty years after the Lehrigen incident, Ember's tribe resides on Khulki's Mountain, with Ember and Teir apparently having become lifemates, and the extent of their contact with the other Wofriders unknown.
Elfquest art copyright 2002 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved.
