Wulf and Gils could hear a tap-tapping coming up from the cleft in the rocks in which they had built their fort. It could have been merely a loose board flapping in the wind, but the tapping was so regular that a natural origin seemed unlikely.
Sure enough, as they approached they saw a small girl sitting on one of the barrels they used as furniture, tapping her foot idly against the wood.
“Let me handle this,” Wulf said darkly. “It figures it’s a girl, so I can’t just hit her.”
Gils did not see why girls should be exempt from being hit, since they tended to enjoy biting and scratching, knowing themselves safe from retaliation. However, his Da and Wyn both agreed that they must not be.
Wulf ran on ahead as they descended the steep hill.
“Pardon me!” he called. “But this is our private fort, and no one is allowed to play here except for anyone we invite.”
The little girl had gone as rigid as the staves of the barrel on which she sat. There was no longer any sound of tapping, and the wind itself seemed loath to disturb her hair.
Gils trotted into the fort after him, and because he had not imitated his brother’s heedless charge, he did not miss the second motionless girl sitting on the hammock. Nor did he miss the most remarkable thing about her.
“Umm… Wulf?”
“Umm what?” his brother cried in annoyance.
“I think you should maybe look at their ears.”
Wulf spun around, irritated to be interrupted in his attempt to stare the fear of God into the first girl. “Their wha—? The devil! Elves!”
Gils did not know what to do until his brother started screaming. Then he knew the right thing was to scream too.
This seemed to startle the girls out of their trance, and they fled to one another, screaming as well.
Fortunately this only lasted a moment before Wulf recalled his continuing mission to speak to elves.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he called. “Wait just a moment! Are you elves?”
The girls huddled together.
“Because we are, too! Look!” Wulf pulled back his hair to show off the points of his ears. “Stop your whinnying and show ‘em your ears, stupid!” he added in an aside.
Gils yanked back his hair as eagerly as if his pointed ears had been flags of truce and the two little girls a ravening horde.
The hammock girl smacked the barrel girl’s arm and said something Gils could not understand.
However, it seemed to be something along the lines of “Stop your whinnying and show ‘em your ears, stupid!” for that is what the barrel girl immediately did.
“Elve!” the barrel girl said proudly and dropped her hair again.
Wulf and Gils grinned stupidly at each other.
“You, elve, elve, castle elve!” the barrel girl said. “Horse horse!”
Wulf and Gils looked at one another again, a little less gleefully this time.
“Uh… we like horses,” Gils said.
“Whisht! Let me do the talking!” Wulf scolded. “Aye,” he said to the girls, “we are Sir Egelric’s sons, and we live in the castle. Castle elves!”
The girls nodded slowly.
“My name is Wulf, and this is my brother Gils. Wulf!” He patted his chest.
The girls continued their slow nodding, which was beginning to seem less a sign of understanding than a proof that they understood nothing at all.
“Wulf!” Wulf repeated. “Lós!”
“Lós?” the crinkly-haired hammock-girl asked.
“Lós! Me!”
“Lós! Rrrrrawrrr!” hammock-girl growled.
Wulf laughed and growled back at her.
Gils looked down to study the ridge of dirt he was stubbing up with his toe. Vash had told his brother how to say “wolf” in the elven language, but no one knew what “Gils” meant at all. It was simply a name.
Nor could it serve as an elven name: their language did not even have a “g” sound, and the closest word Vash could find was “kílós”, which, through a tragic coincidence, meant “dog”.
Sure enough, Wulf smacked him on the back and announced, “Gils! Kílós!”
This brought more laughter from the girls. “Lós é kílós!” barrel-girl cried. “Rrruff-ruff!”
“Ruff-ruff!” Wulf barked back at her.
Gils rolled his eyes.
Hammock-girl held up her hand. “Kí…a! Me.”
“Kí? Kí?” Wulf asked eagerly. “Kí means ‘hand’, doesn’t it, Gils? ‘Dog’ means ‘hand-wolf’, doesn’t it?”
“I guess so,” Gils mumbled.
“Kí, hand,” Wulf said and patted his palm. “Lós, wolf.” He patted his chest. “Kílós, dog!” He gave Gils a shove.
The girls laughed.
“Quit calling me a dog,” Gils growled.
“Ní, kílós, ní,” hammock-girl said. “Kía, me, me.” She patted her own chest proudly.
“Your name is Kia?” Wulf asked. “That’s a pretty name!”
Gils groaned.
“Híla, me!” barrel-girl announced grandly and launched herself into a graceful pirouette.
“What is she supposed to be?” Gils asked no one in particular.
“Hilla, you,” Kia snickered.
This alternate name was apparently not much better than “dog”, for Hila finished her twirl with a smack to Kia’s cheek, leading to an unintelligible squabble.
After a moment Wulf clapped his hands together and barked, “Enough!” in a startlingly convincing imitation of Wyn.
Even the girls, who had probably never seen Wyn in their life, were fooled, and they fell silent.
“Young ladies do not bite, scratch, kick, or pull one another’s hair,” Wulf lectured them.
“I don’t think they understand, stupid,” Gils grumbled.
“They understand authority,” Wulf said ominously, this time in an excellent imitation of their Da when Lili scolded him for yelling at Jehanne.
Gils rolled his eyes and groaned, “Oh my God,” looking rather like Ethelwyn himself.
“Where do you girls live?” Wulf asked. “Can you come and play sometimes? You may play in our fort. We don’t mind.”
“Speak for yourself, beetlehead,” Gils muttered.
“Don’t you understand?” Wulf asked, ignoring him.
But everyone was ignoring him, even Kia herself, which seemed particularly unfair since he had seen her first.
“How old are you two?” Gils asked, suspecting this might be the reason for his invisibility.
“They don’t understand, stupid,” Wulf said.
“As if they understand ‘Ooh you may come play in my fort please thank you!’” Gils sneered.
Kia giggled, and Hila laughed outright. That was more like it.
“Me,” Gils said, patting his own rather puffed-out chest. “One, two, three, four, five,” he counted on his fingers.
“Me!” Kia squealed, “An, dí, tí, dó, kí!”
Wulf laughed with glee. “That’s how you count like an elf!”
“Shut up, stupid!” Gils cried. “She was talking to me! Are you five like me? One, two, three, four, five?”
“An, dí, tí, dó, kí, me!” Kia said eagerly.
“Kí!” Wulf cried. “Oh! Kí means ‘five’, and it means ‘hand’, too! That makes sense! Five fingers on a hand!”
“Shut up!” Gils wailed. “We’re talking!”
“Gils! Gils!” Wulf wriggled with delight and smacked his brother repeatedly on the arm. “Can you girls come back sometimes? Can you come play and talk? Gils! We’ll know how to talk like elves in no time!”
“We’ll give you apples if you come back,” Gils said to the girls.
“Don’t try to bribe them, you idiot!”
“It is not a bribe! I only mean to share my snack.”
“We don’t even have apples for a snack in the spring. We only have cake.”
“Kia, do you like cake?” Gils asked. “Cake is better than apples.”
“Gils!”
The girls looked at one another and giggled, as girls will do.
“Ap-ple?” Hila asked.
“Apple! Aye!” Wulf cried. “Apples, we have!”
Gils smacked his brother’s arm. “I thought you said don’t bribe them, you cheesehead!”
“Cheese?” Wulf was suddenly inspired. “Gils,” he giggled, “this will be the best summer for playing outside ever! Girls, do you like cheese?”
“Oh my God!” Gils groaned.
“Cheeeeeeese,” Hila said dreamily.
“That is so funny!” Wulf squealed and laughed. “The way you said: ‘Cheeeeeese!’ That is so funny!”
Gils shook his head. “Idiot!”
Kia leaned close to him and murmured slyly, “I-di-dot!”
Gils grinned at her. “At last, somebody agrees with me!”
.
Chapters
Here's one for Devin and all those who have been wondering what Egelric's elf boys are up to. Also a little something to lighten the mood, since it's about to get tense again.