Egelric meets a real elf

Egelric knew it was not possible for a man to sneak where elves were concerned. If this Paul were an elf, then he had heard the door creak softly open again as surely as Egelric would have heard it slam. He had heard Egelric’s footsteps, and he could hear Egelric breathing behind the doorframe.

Nevertheless, Egelric had to stop a moment to collect himself. If he had been alone in the castle, he thought he might have been bolder. But he could not afford an error in judgement. His family was upstairs.

Wulf was probably still taking his nightly “baf”, and Gils would be profiting from the inattention of the nurse to get into some trouble. Lili might have been reading, or playing her harp, or, Egelric liked to think, though it only increased his anxiety, perhaps she was sewing another little dress for her baby.

Would the elves take from him a boy of four or a boy of nearly five? Boys old enough to speak, to remember their father, and to understand enough of what was happening to them to be utterly terrified?

Would the elves take from him his wife? Would they take his child even before it was born?

Would he know how to stop them this time?

Egelric poked his nose out beyond the corner and peered around into the entry.

The visitor stood with the candlelight behind him, and all the shadow of the room and the dark corridor beyond was upon his face. Egelric could only see that he was an enormous being, massive and unmoving like an iron statue.

Egelric stepped out into the entry, and upon his face fell all the light of the three candles.

“You are Paul?” he asked.

“Pol,” the visitor corrected. His voice was deep and echoing like caverns.

“Pol,” Egelric repeated, though the difference was subtle to his ears. “Please come with me.”

He would save his questions until he had seen that shadowed face in the light, but he was already certain he knew it: certain in his mind, certain in his heart, and certain in his gut.

Once in his study, there was the light of the fire and all the candles on the walls. Then he was certain with his eyes. The face was older, though Egelric supposed his was, too. He had been but thirty then!

This elf looked older than he: fifty perhaps, and weary. But he had not forgotten the face. For a few minutes of his life, he had stared into this face, believing it was the last thing he would ever see. He had believed that the last thing he would ever hear was his twenty-​​three-​​day-​​old son crying in terror at something he did not understand.

Egelric could not speak. He could not think: his thoughts were paralyzed. Only his rapid breathing belied the eerie calm of his body.

“Do you know me?” the elf asked.

“Aye,” Egelric said. His voice creaked like a rusting lock.

“I am Iylaina’s father.”

“No!” Those words had sufficed to break through the calm and the paralysis and the rust. “I am her father. You gave her up. You have lost all claim to her.” Egelric was trembling in a twelve years’ fury by the time he had finished speaking.

The elf winced and hung his head, but even then he still towered over Egelric.

“What do you want here?” Egelric asked him.

“I wish to see my granddaughter.”

“Your – !”

Egelric turned away in a desperate search for something to fling at the elf, or only something to fling at the wall. But his desk was clear; there was only the glass lamp, and he realized in time that if he smashed it, he would alert Ethelwyn, and he might need Ethelwyn later.

Therefore when he turned back to the elf to speak, all his unrelieved fury remained behind the words. “And I wish to see my son!”

“You shall see your son,” the elf said slowly, as if English were a labor to him, “when he is grown. When he is grown, he will go his own way.”

“Does he know where his own way lies? Does he know who he is? Does he know about me?”

“He does not yet know this.”

“The devil! What have you told him? Doesn’t he wonder who he is? Does he have pointed ears?”

“No.”

“Then what have you told him? Where does he believe he comes from?”

“I told him what you told Iylaina. I told him he was abandoned in the forest – ”

Egelric sobbed, “No!”

He had just enough time to take a ragged breath before he was utterly paralyzed, mind and body and breath and all. There was only pain raining over him, raking over him: in the few moments his air would last, he had to live those twelve years of separation over again, this time knowing that his son believed himself unwanted and unloved. All these years his love had burned inside of him, aching in him, consuming him, and yet it had provided no warmth to his son.

When at last he could breathe again, he only gasped, “No!”

“I do not – ” the elf began.

“No! No! I would you had killed me that day, rather, and told my son I loved him!”

“I have suffered too,” the elf said gravely.

“You suffer like gods,” Egelric sobbed, “pitying your playthings! We are only pawns to you, I and my daughter and my son, in some cruel game you are playing and won’t tell us why!”

“I too am this.”

“No. You are forced to play, perhaps, but you have always moved the pieces. You have always seen all the board.”

“I do not understand.”

“Like – like chess, or… you don’t know chess? A game? Never mind!”

“No.”

“You think yourself gods above us who may play games with our lives,” Egelric hissed. “Do you understand that?”

“We too are this. For us too it is gods above us who play with our lives.”

“Then may God damn you, and your gods above you, and all the gods above and above them! If my son has suffered even half as much as Iylaine has, from believing himself unwanted by his own father and mother, then hell is too cold a place for you by half! My wife died for the love of him! Do you hear me?”

“I…”

“And if I did not die, it was for Iylaine’s sake – and for a chance to get my revenge against you! If I don’t kill you now, it is only because I can’t decide which of the hundred painful means I have dreamt up over the years would be most fitting!”

The elf swayed a little, as if overcome by this speech, though Egelric thought he had not understood all of it.

“I am sorry for this,” the elf said slowly. “This must be. But it is not for Iylaina now a child to have. This was must not to be. It is not for me this new suffering to bear.”

“Do not speak to me of suffering,” Egelric growled.

“I love my daughter. It is not for me to come to you. If other elves know I come, it is danger for me. I ask you to have pity for me as gods whom gods compel.”

“Pity for you?” Egelric sneered.

“I only wish to see my granddaughter. Only once to see. Does she have my wife’s eyes or lips or small hands? Some part of her, my wife, whom I lost? Iylaina’s child is a child of a man, but I love her still.”

“You do not even have a granddaughter,” Egelric said coldly. “Iylaine and Malcolm had a son.”

The elf seemed confounded.

“I know, I know,” Egelric laughed bitterly. “It’s not possible, but it is so. I had a son with Sela, and Malcolm had a son with Iylaine. Do you need more proof than that? If all your ladies are as pretty as those two, I think we shall find some men willing to perform the experiment.”

“A son?”

“Aye, a son. And you needn’t doubt who the father is. He looks very much like Malcolm.”

“Is Malcolm an elf?”

“No: a Scot! A fine sort of man.”

“I wish to see my grandson,” the elf said, wondering.

“Ach, but I have wished to see my son every day for over twelve years, and you have never pitied me in my suffering.”

“You have seen him.”

Egelric shook his head grimly. “Even if he wishes to see me when he is grown, I shall never have seen him grow up. We shall meet as strangers. You stole my child from me, and you will never be able to return him. You stole my wife from me, and you will never be able to return her. You broke my daughter’s heart and made her feel like an outcast, no matter how much I and others loved her. There is no creature beneath the sun whom I hate more than you. If the devil himself stood beside you, I would embrace him before I lifted a hand to you. Do you understand me?”

“We are in a game, you and I are,” the elf said mournfully, “and the gods play. It is not for me to decide these things. I am sorry.”

“If you are sorry, then listen to me. Iylaine is happy and well cared-​​for and loved, and her baby is happy and well cared-​​for and loved. If you love them, you will leave them in peace – you, and all the rest of you pointed-​​eared devils.”

“But you will see your son soon, soon, and I…”

“Even if you promised me to return my son to me tomorrow, I could not allow you to see that baby. He is not my son.”

“Only to see once,” he pleaded.

“I cannot offer you anything. He is not my son. And do not ask Malcolm. If there is a man who loves you less than I do, it is Malcolm. ‘It is danger for you,’ as you say, if you try.”

The elf was silent.

“Perhaps when Iylaine’s son is a man and ‘goes his own way’ he will wish to meet you. Or perhaps we shall tell him lies about you, as you did to my son, and he will hate you. Think of that when next my son asks you who was his father.”

Still the elf was silent.

“You will not be permitted to enter this castle again unless you bring my son with you,” Egelric said stiffly. “I do not wish to see you again alone. I do not know how I managed this time. Follow me, please,” he said and went to the door.

The elf followed without a word, but as soon as they stepped into the dim corridor he gasped and cried aloud in his own language.

Egelric immediately heard a thumping and scuffling, low to the ground, coming from the narrow corridor that led to the kitchens and pantry. He knew well the sound of two pairs of four-​​year-​​old legs attempting to carry away two four-​​year-​​olds who were aware they were being naughty; and in their confusion they had forgotten how to sneak like elves and seemed to be stumbling over one another.

Egelric was not thinking of their naughtiness. There was only the thought-​​scattering, heart-​​stopping terror of standing with the massive elf behind him and his two little boys somewhere in the shadows before him, almost within grabbing distance of the giant’s long arms.

“Wyn!” he shouted desperately, thinking his steward might still be able to move and to react. “Wyn!”

The elf cried, “I do not want them! I do not want them!” and by the time Ethelwyn appeared, he was already running for the door in the entry.

“Lock him out!” Egelric commanded. He could not move or even think until he heard the heavy iron bar slam down into the brackets. Then he began to tremble all over.

“Da?” Wulf came creeping out, with his little brother hesitating behind him. “Was that a real elf?”

Egelric could not think. He felt his knees hit the cold stone of the floor and felt his warm son wriggling in his arms like a puppy.

He smelled the smoldering rush that Ethelwyn had carried into the corridor, and a moment later he saw the passage illuminated by the candles Ethelwyn had lit with it.

Gils came creeping forward. “Don’t cry, Da,” he said uneasily. “He’s gone.”

Egelric leaned a hand on the bench beside him and pushed himself up, but though he now knew he was crying, he could not stop his tears; and though he was now standing, he could not stand without leaning against the wall in shivering exhaustion.

Fortunately Ethelwyn could still move and react, as he had hoped.

“What are you two doing down here?” Ethelwyn asked the boys. “Isn’t it baftime?”

“We didn’t know it was bad,” Gils said hopefully.

“We only wanted to see a real elf!” Wulf added.

“But you see a real elf every time you see your sister!” Ethelwyn protested.

“I know,” Wulf said, “but we wanted to see a real boy elf.”

“And what’s that standing next to you?”

Wulf turned to his brother and giggled. “A boy elf.”

“And what’s that standing next to you, Gils?”

“A… a… troll! Green! Who wants to steal my treasure!” Gils laughed.

“He must look different from that angle,” Ethelwyn said dryly. “In that case, you will have to content yourself with looking in a mirror.”

Wulf lifted a delicate hand to his father and said reassuringly, “Don’t worry, Da. Even if some elf takes us, we will come home. Our castle is easy to find. And if we see Finn, we shall tell him the elves lied, and you love him, and he will come home with us. What do you think?”

Egelric could not yet think.