Iylaine embraces an elf

“Iylaine?”

The voice was timid and trembling, but it was a voice she knew. It was fortunate that she recognized it, for the elf she saw when she turned was more frightening than familiar. He was not dirty, but he appeared ragged nevertheless, with untrimmed hair, patchy clothes, and a beard.

Worse were his eyes—silver-white and shining as if dusted with snow like the earth and pines. Worst of all were his pale hands, groping blindly for hers.

“Kiv?” she whispered.

“Iylaine?” he repeated, his voice shaking with joy. “Have you come all this way for me?”

“I was looking for you…” She slipped past him, away from his hands.

“I heard you calling for me. But you mustn’t call me that any longer. Iylaine!”

“Call you what?”

“Iylaine!” he whispered reverently. “May I touch you?”

“I… of course…”

She turned to him and lifted her hand, but already his own had gone out and found her shoulders, and from there one of them found its way to her cheek.

“Oh, Iylaine,” he whispered. “It’s you! Such tiny ears you have!” He stroked his fingers over the arch of one of them.

“Aye…”

His face was lifted, and he seemed to be staring off into the sky above her head. She could see that there were tears forming at the corners of his blind eyes, and it was somehow grotesque to her to think that sightless eyes could cry.

He caressed her cheek and tapped his fingertips along one of her brows. “How beautiful you are!”

Iylaine ducked her head away from his groping hands, but she tried to laugh to make the gesture seem inoffensive.

“How Vash always loved to look at you,” he smiled. “Sometimes he would make me sit with him for hours when you went into the forest, and he would simply look at you. And I would stare up at the clouds and get so bored! I wish I had looked at you more now. I would remember your face better.”

He smiled up at nothing, and Iylaine was unnerved.

“How he loved you!” he sighed. “But I’m certain he still does. I’m certain he could never stop.” He smiled again, though it did not seem to be intended for her.

“How is he?” she asked.

His smile faded. “Don’t you know?”

“I haven’t seen him since I last saw you, except one time when he came to my house. And that was not to see me, but only because he wanted Malcolm to come home.”

The elf frowned.

“And he stopped leaving stones for me after Cat got hurt.”

“How is Cat?” he gasped. “Oh, Iylaine! Please tell her I love her! Your father won’t!”

“She’s fine. But haven’t you seen Vash?”

“No. Don’t you know, Iylaine?” he asked gently. “Vash will never speak to me again. No elf will. You’re the only elf who has spoken to me in over a year, and I should tell you that you mustn’t talk to me either.”

“But why not?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No! What happened?”

“Oh, Iylaine!” He grimaced, and his expression was so revealing of his pain that Iylaine thought his blindness had made him forget that others could read his face. “I committed a crime, and this is my punishment. That is all you need to know. But I am an outcast now. If Vash were here, he would pretend he could see right through me.”

“Why?”

“But you mustn’t think harshly of him,” he said quickly. “He is the most honorable elf I know. I broke a sacred law, and this is my punishment. I accept it.”

“What did you do?”

He turned his face towards hers, though his eyes were looking over the top of her head. “I hope you never learn, Iylaine.”

“Did you kill someone?”

“I tried.”

“Oh…” Iylaine shuffled back a step. The eeriness of his blind eyes did not seem to hint at a murderous soul beneath, but the combined effect of those eyes and that knowledge made Iylaine feel that she had taken a risk by coming.

“But I want to know about Vash,” she said. “He hasn’t left a stone for me in weeks. And I even left a pink stone so I could ask him if you were really you.”

“I don’t know about Vash, Iylaine. I’m sorry. Does he still leave stones for you?” He tipped his face back and smiled.

“He used to. But now he stopped.”

“You two were so bad. What a silly, romantic elf he was! But now I wish I had let him do more.”

In frustration and disappointment Iylaine squeezed her hands into fists. “How can I find out what happened to him?” she asked. “Can’t you tell me how to find him?”

“Nothing bad could have happened to him, Iylaine,” he said gently. “You would have known it. If you don’t know how he is, then he’s fine. Perhaps he is in trouble with his father again. Perhaps because he helped Cat…”

“But can’t you tell me how to find him?”

“If he wanted you to know that, I think he would have told you. But I can tell you whether he’s well. Give me your hand.”

“Why?”

“Let me touch you.”

She put her hand into his, and he stroked the back of it with his other hand. Iylaine knew that backs of her fingers were pressed against a scar that was the companion of the pink stripe across Cat’s palm, and her very skin seemed to shrink away from it.

“He’s well, Iylaine,” the elf said. “He’s alive and unhurt. Vash, Vash…” His face crumpled into another grimace of pain.

Iylaine pulled her hand out of his. “You can tell?”

He lifted his face to the sky, and for an instant Iylaine saw in him a wolf about to howl. But he merely said, “I can tell.”

“You don’t look as if you think he’s well…”

“That’s not it,” he sighed. “I miss him. I miss him, and I know how he feels now. Perhaps only a little, because Cat is not far, and I have not had to live without her for years as he has you. But it only makes me love him more than ever. And understand more. And understand less, too.”

He turned his face away and wiped tears from his cheeks with both hands.

Iylaine stepped away from him. She could not help feeling it had been a mistake to come here. She risked Malcolm’s ire if he learned of her excursion—and all to learn nothing about Vash: only to find Kiv changed, not himself, and a murderer.

“Please tell her I love her,” he whispered. “Tell her I had nothing to do with what happened to her. I don’t know who hurt her, but if I find them, I shall surely spill the blood of four elves.”

She took another step away from him, and he seemed to notice her retreat, for he followed a few steps behind her. He held his hands before him as if he feared he would run into her. It was in fact his hands that Iylaine wanted to avoid.

“I don’t know that I can tell her,” Iylaine said uneasily. “I’m not supposed to be here. My—Malcolm will be angry if he knows.”

“Tell Cat only. Please, Iylaine! I beg you. I don’t want you to be in trouble with your… Malcolm, but it’s so very important. Tell her I love her, and tell her I shall do anything she wants. If she wants me to wait, I shall wait. If she wants to come to me, or if she wants me to come to her… If she wants to send someone to bring me a message… or…”

“I shall tell her, I shall tell her!”

“And tell her—tell her I shall do anything she wants. I shall be anything she wants. Tell her!” He giggled strangely. “Tell her I shall live in a house, if she wants. And eat bread with butter! Every day! If she wants. Tell her! And have beautiful children…”

Iylaine shuddered. It was not at the thought of his children with Cat, she told herself, for was not Duncan the most adorable child ever born? She thought it was something about the distant look on his face as he smiled up into the watery winter sunlight, as if his sightless eyes could see things that were not—or were not yet.

Perhaps she had lived too long among men, or perhaps he had lived too long without anyone. He seemed a creature of a different race, and she feared him.

“I think I should hurry back,” she said.

He turned the attention of his blind face back to her. “Yes… And as an honorable elf, I should tell you that you mustn’t come again. Vash would not be happy if he knew you had spoken to me.”

“Aye, that’s probably true.”

“Oh, Iylaine,” he whispered and held his hands out before him. She knew he meant to hold them out to her, but he seemed to be reaching for the empty air. “Won’t you hug me one last time?”

Iylaine did not move. She wished time could stop while she considered the question, but he felt her hesitation. His arms dropped slightly, as though he had lost hope, but he asked again.

“Please, Iylaine? Perhaps I shall never embrace another elf again.”

Time stopped while she considered his words, and then she sobbed and fell against him. “Nor I!”

He cradled her head against his shoulder as she cried, and he stroked her hair with his thumb. She thought he was smiling when he spoke. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured against her tiny ear. “He loves you so.”