"Mother?"
Silence.
I had never heard such complete silence before. I found myself whimpering before I could stop it- maybe because it hurt, maybe because I just wanted to fill up the silence.
However, I heard footsteps coming at once, lighter footsteps than my mother would have used. I covered my mouth to muffle the sounds that wouldn't stop and wormed further into the leaves that hid me. If one of the raiders found me...
Well, I didn't really know what would happen, but I knew it wouldn't be good.
I held as still as I could, and listened. The footsteps had stopped, and I hoped that meant whoever was coming had gone away. However, I could too easily picture one of the raiders standing there, sniffing the air lightly, trying to catch a scent of the sweat and fear that I exuded.
"Ah."
The simple word, directly above my hiding place, frightened me so much that I screamed.
There was a pause, as if whoever was there hadn't expected such an extreme response. During that time, I kicked out of the leaves and began to run. My dress flapped around me, torn up the sides by the branches that crowded this part of the forest. At least that meant I could run faster-
Until I tripped over a root and heard a sharp crack that sent pain flaring up my leg.
"Why did you run?"
I closed my eyes. Perhaps I had been mistaken before, and thought the voice to be that of a raider when it was really just someone from the village. However, hearing it speak again, I had no doubts. It was too silvery and musical to be the voice of anyone I knew from our small village.
Too silvery and musical to be human.
"Why did you run?" the voice asked again, as if the speaker actually expected an answer.
I lay still, panting with the pain in my leg, and peered up out of half-slitted eyes, waiting until he bent over me. Then I opened my eyes fully and spat in his face.
Most of them would have lashed out then, in the extreme anger that marked their kind, and killed me. It was what I was hoping for, actually. Better than the slow death by torture that I would have otherwise, or whatever worse fate he had planned for me.
This one just wiped his face and looked at me with wide, gently amused eyes. "You have spirit, then," he said, as calmly as if he had been looking for that. "That's good. It means that you're less likely to die of despair." His silver, diamond-shaped eyes stirred then, altering from the color of metal to the color of rainclouds. I blinked. I had heard of things like that, but never actually witnessed it. "I am afraid that you are the only survivor."
He said it as if sorry, looking away and to the side, not meeting my eyes. I shifted a little, hissed in pain, and then frowned.
"Why are you sorry?"
He looked at me. "Your parents are dead, I would guess," he said. "And your friends, and anyone else you ever knew." He paused, as if he was going to say something more, and then shook his head.
"But Elwens destroyed them."
He winced again. "Then I am doubly sorry." He didn't look really surprised, though.
"Aren't you made happy by that?"
"No. Should I be?"
Damn it, this was too hard. Everyone I knew was dead, and my leg was broken, and an Elwen who wouldn't either kill me or tell me that he planned to torture me was standing there and confusing me. I started to shake, and then to weep.
"Ah, there. There."
To my astonishment, he was touching me- not angrily, not lewdly, but gently, his hands fluttering about my head and hair like birds. He murmured a low stream of words in what I guessed was his own language; it just sounded like a river of birdsong mixed with bells to me. I had heard the same words fall from the lips of the attacking Elwens, and had never imagined that the language could sound so gentle. I found the tears slowing and then stopping, and even the pain in my leg seemed to grow less.
Then I realized that he was bending over my leg, one hand resting on the point where it bent in the wrong direction, his eyes closed. Gray-green liquid, sparkling in odd ways that made me not want to look at it, ran across the break. For a moment, I was afraid that he was going to put me to death after all. I had heard stories about Elwens, about how they wouldn't tolerate anyone who wasn't always strong.
But the pain continued to ease, and then I felt one of the broken bones shift and flow and melt as it shifted back into what felt like an ordinary position. There was no denying that it was magic, the same kind of magic that this stranger's kind had used to slaughter my parents and my friends and everyone I had ever known, but it was easing the pain instead of engulfing me in fire, as my father had been, or tearing my face off with acid, as I had seen happen to one of my brothers.
When he removed his hands, my leg was still bent. But it went back into its proper position the moment I moved it, and the faint twinges of pain faded into the kind of ache that I usually got when I had just banged my hand on a tree.
"I-"
"What's your name?"
I looked up and saw that his silver eyes were clouded. For whatever reason, he didn't want to talk about what he had just done. I nodded, a little, and then said, "Cyrisa."
He smiled, a very faint smile compared to the ones he had given me before. Perhaps the magic had exhausted him. "I am Kirrin." He stood and stretched, impossibly graceful even if he was tired. "I need water. Will you show me where I might find a fountain?"
I nodded and stood, leading him in the opposite direction from the remains of my village. I felt almost impossibly calm, and thought that was probably the result of magic as well. I should have been- at least, I would have thought that I should have been if I had ever thought about it- weeping and screaming and vowing to join my parents in death, but somehow I wasn't. The emotions were there, but locked as behind a thick wall of fog. I couldn't get at them, could see their outlines only dimly.
Right now, the most important thing was water.
*****************************
I studied Kirrin as he drank, cupping his hands in the pool where the spring flowed from the rock and then drinking as if he had been starved of water for the past few days. He looked much like any other Elwen I had seen, at least in the few glimpses I had caught of them before now. His skin was a dark walnut-brown, the product, I thought, of many days in the sun. His hair was brown- almost human, I thought at first, but then he bent to drink again and the sun flashed and glimmered on threads of red in the brown. He was lean and tall, like all his kind, and I could see at least one knife openly on his belt; he probably had more. His voice and his grace and many other things about him were too beautiful to be human, as much as I didn't like to admit that my race looked ugly next to Elwens.
But the thing about him that I found most strange was his gaze- and not the way it changed and shifted colors, either. When he straightened and sought me out once more with his eyes, I saw a weight of sadness that I had never seen anywhere else in them.
"Thank you, Cyrisa," he said softly, his voice scarcely any different from the murmur of the water. "That is the first drink I have had the leisure to take in a long while."
"Why?" I was still suffering- or benefiting?- from the effects of his magic, and so I was more interested in why he might have had to stop drinking than I was in thinking about what I was going to do now.
Kirrin studied me. Then his mouth quirked up in the first smile I had seen him give. It was only half a smile, though, and more bitter than anything else. The sadness in his eyes deepened until it seemed as if I looked on stormclouds. "I would not burden you with such things," he said gently. "How many summers have flashed for you?"
I stared at him in confusion. He shook his head a little and said, "I meant, how many summers have you seen?"
"Sixteen."
He nodded. "Still very young. And you will have grief of your own to bear, after this day. I would not give you my own."
Perhaps it was just his assumption that I was young after this day, but I felt inclined to challenge him. "And how many summers have flashed for you, Kirrin?"
He arched his eyebrows. "More than four thousand," he said very gently.
I flushed and looked down at my hands. Of course. That was the other thing it was easy to forget about Elwens, since I didn't see them often. Elwens lived much longer than we did, thousands and thousands of years, though they usually didn't die of old age.
"That is no reason for you to feel inferior."
I looked up in astonishment. Kirrin smiled at me, and this time the smile was gently amused, in the way that his eyes had been when I first looked at him. I caught a glimpse, I thought, of what he was- or perhaps what he could be, or what he had once been- when he smiled at me that way. Dazzling power lurked just beneath the surface, a sun more than sufficient to dispel the clouds in his eyes.
"I know that you must not be used to Elwens saying that," he said quietly. "But it is true. My kin and I are as the stars made us. You are as your gods made you. Just because humans do not live as long is no reason for me to scorn you." He looked deeply into my eyes. "Or for you to envy me. There are times I would trade running centuries for flashing decades."
I exhaled and pushed my hair back behind my ears as I stooped to drink. "Not very often, I think."
When I looked up, I saw him smiling. It was yet more of a hint of the smile he could be giving if-
What?
If someone were not chasing him? If he were not laden with all the sadness of the world, as it seemed? If fate wasn't hounding him?
Understand, that though these thoughts passed through my mind at the time, they had no such words. It's only years later, thinking about them, that I can really understand what I felt and thought when I met Kirrin. He was unlike anyone I had known. Not human, but not like his murderous kin that had descended and raided my village for no better reason than that we were human.
I had never known there was more than one kind of Elwen in the world before.
Slowly, I came to realize that Kirrin hadn't responded, beyond a smile, to my last comment. I looked up at his eyes, and saw that he was staring to the east. His gaze was filled with stormclouds again, and he clenched his fists, then let out a long, loosening breath as I watched. His body shook once, as before a blow, and then stiffened as if to meet another such blast.
He noticed me watching and nodded a little, as though we had communicated on some level I hadn't sensed. I found myself nodding back, though, as I said, I couldn't tell you what we said.
"I must go," he said softly. "I wish there were more I could do for you, Cyrisa, but I would not burden you with my sorrow- and I am all sorrow now, it seems, more is the pity. Adarrhyr nandas rosémic," he added in mourning tones, and I know that that last is right, because I made him repeat it, and stand there, saying it again and again, until I had it at last. The sorrow in his voice only seemed to grow keener with each repetition, until at the last it rang like a trumpet blown at the end of the world and made tears appear in my eyes with the first word, and I could not stand to ask him to say it again.
"What does that mean?" I whispered.
"May you never find out," he replied, and seemed as if he would stride away. Then he paused, and looked back at me.
"Well, why not, after all?" he murmured. "I have no other gift to give, and I have no one else to give it to."
Kirrin reached out, and for a moment his hand lingered on my brow. I let him touch me without fear, though even now I'm not sure why. Keeping my eyes on his face, for a moment I thought his form glowed with light, and not the kind of radiance that is supposed to accompany Elwens, the kind of light that kills. This was a silvery glow; I thought for a moment that stars were shining in the middle of the day.
"There," Kirrin whispered, stepping back. He looked more exhausted than before. "I have done what I can. Sa arosoman, go in grace," he bade me, and then turned and walked to the east.
"Where are you going?" I called, not really certain why.
Kirrin looked at me. "To the end," he said softly, and then he was gone. I had been watching him a moment before, and then he faded as if he had never been, like a dream gone before morning.
************************
What did he give me?
I can see the question in your eyes, and the answer is- I am not sure. I do know that I found another village soon after that, and a family who cared for me, and soon a husband who did the same. I know that I have had children, and that I have farmed and hunted.
What else?
I know that all my children have been born healthy, and they have continued so, and they have been fair of face and swift in laughter. I know that I have had fruitful harvests, and slain game in the dead of winter when we were in direst need, and I know that I have sometimes felt a hand on the bow when I would have missed, aiming the arrow and guiding me perfectly.
But if I were to speak of stars shining in the middle of the day, or visions of a silver city far away, or of the cougar that was going to wound my son and at the last moment turned aside- would you believe me?
Will you believe in what I am going to say now, though I saw him as surely as I saw Kirrin?
***************************
I woke to song.
I dragged myself slowly to my feet, rubbing my eyes and for a moment thinking that I should wake my mother, who always liked to hear the night-singing birds. Then I remembered, and grief, that for some time had been restrained by the fog that Kirrin had laid over my memories, crashed over me. I let out a single sob.
Then the singing came again.
I rose, and crept forward to look out of the small wall of stones I had built as protection against the wind, which swept into the otherwise sheltered place I had chosen with a fierce vengeance.
There, near the spring where Kirrin had drunk, stood a tall figure, his hands spread and his head flung back. The stars were shining, and the golden moon was full, or I would not have been able to see him or the expression on his face. He carried no light.
He needed none, being Elwen.
Will you understand that I am speaking to you, again, from having looked back on it and pondered it for years, that I thought little of these things when I first saw him, that my mind was almost numbed by beauty and terror?
He had silver eyes; that I saw well enough. But they weren't Kirrin's almost human stormcloud gray. They were as silver as the stars, so that it took me a long time to be sure that they weren't just shining with reflected light. His hair, which flowed in curls almost to his shoulders, was as green as the grass beneath his feet. His skin, like Kirrin's, was browned from hard travel, but his clothes seemed less stained, and I did not know why.
And he was singing.
That is what I remember most about him, the sound of his voice, and if you know how I turn away from the harpists when they start- well, now you know why. I cannot bear to listen to them sing. All of them chime, in my mind, and fall flat next to that voice I still remember.
"Elwens sing to the stars," I remembered my mother telling me once. "They claim to worship no gods, but they worship, Cyrisa. They just don't show it."
This- this was not worship.
I don't know what it was, but it wasn't worship.
The song started off slowly, then rose, climbing a slope I thought it must start back down soon. Never did it descend, however. It did slow, so that at last I felt as if I had been suspended breathless for long years as the tones grew slowly stronger and more metallic, ringing and musical, the hooves of unicorns in the depths of night.
Then he burst into a full-throated crescendo, and I cried aloud, tears streaming from my eyes. The sound of the music hid me, though, and for that I was glad.
Wild, the tune swept and danced all about my ears, and it swept me along with it. I found my eyes closing, for all that I wanted to keep them open, mostly to make sure the Elwen didn't move towards my hiding place.
I saw a silver city, cupped in a dell like a child resting on his mother's breast. I saw white horses running fast over a green plain, and they were like living clouds in an earthbound sky. I saw a high lady, all clad in white, with white hair and silver eyes and a smile on her face as young as the morning, standing on a dais and holding out her hands to receive the adulation of a cheering throng.
I heard voices, speaking in the fair tongue that Kirrin had used, the language I did not know, and then I saw a young man blowing a horn and being covered with flocking birds.
Many things I saw, and no human voice can make me see things alike, even when accompanied by words that I understand.
Last and latest of all I saw a woman with shining gold hair, silver wrapped amongst the strands, staring at me. She did not smile, but she shone, and I thought I knew what she would look like smiling- sterner and fairer and wilder even than Kirrin.
The song ended.
I opened my eyes, and it may be that the blurring of the tears told against me here and I do not faithfully report what happened next. But it seemed to me that a horse, its hoofbeats soundless, came to the Elwen like a drifting silver cloud, and he mounted, and they stood there for a moment. He looked to the west, and I could read longing there as easily as if I could read emotions like his kinfolk.
Then the horse turned, and sprang to the east, along the track that Kirrin had used.
Following Kirrin.
And then tears came and overwhelmed me, and I fell in a faint, and when I woke it was morning, and though I searched for long and long, I found no tracks beside the spring.
**********************
That is all I know.
I have never seen another Elwen, and I have never heard another one sing. I have sometimes thought of going west, to find the silver city.
I think more often of going east, and finding Kirrin. He would be alive, I think. I am old now- though not so old that I cannot make the journey, my mind argues- but he would not have passed a century. He would look the same as he did when I last saw him.
So what keeps me here, sitting beside the fire, watching my grandchildren learn to walk and sometimes hunting when the village needs my sure hand on the bow?
Call it a premonition, that things would not be the same. An Elwen came to me that morning, and saved my life, and healed my broken leg, and drank water from the spring, and then gave me, as well I understand it, some kind of blessing.
And then another one came, and sang, and then followed him.
Is that not enough for one life?
