Seven makes it up

Lar lifted his head and peered out between his knees. “What are you looking at so hard there, Six?”

“I think I saw a fish.”

“Again!” Lar groaned and dropped his head back onto his arm, though in fact he was relieved.

He was not worried about being seen by elves, for the ring of stones surrounding Elara’s house extended its protection as far as this shore. It was a lucky thing: a kisór dog such as he would have been executed for swimming in the sacred lake even if he had been a little girl.

Instead he had his constant worry that Dre would soon be making an appearance, somehow being aware that they had found the boy Vin.

He was already dreading the reaction when the demon learned the boy had been baptized. The last thing Lar needed was for Dre to come upon him when he was naked.

He sat up. “You know, Four,” he said with feigned nonchalance, “I think this is going to have to be the last time we come swimming.”

The boy stopped in mid-​stride. “How come?”

“Because it’s getting too cold! I’m freezing over here.”

“It’s warm in the sun,” Seven mumbled.

Lar had been dreading this. He had not known how to shake off the boy—he would not have been swimming so late in the season if he had. But it was becoming rather absurd: it was the last moon of the year; the sun was low even at noon, the wind was growing chilly, and the earth was still damp from yesterday’s rain.

“I don’t know about that old sun,” Lar said, “but the wind sure is doing his job these days.”

He braced himself for a tantrum. Though it was a matter he preferred to leave to mothers, like diapers and snotty noses and most everything else that pertained to small children, in this case he would have to bear it as best he could.

But the boy said nothing.

Lar should have known. Seven met all of life’s disappointments with the same chilling philosophy, whether it was the untimely death of one of his peep-​peeps, the dreadful, recurring cough that had kept him out of the water for a quarter moon, or the promises Lar hadn’t kept.

Seven simply did not expect good things to happen, or to last when they did. It was wisdom of a sort, but it was not meant for children of three. Lar thought it should take many years to accumulate such hopelessness. Thirty or so.

“Dry yet?” Lar asked him.

“My hair is still wet.”

“Your hair can dry any old time. I’m talking about putting on your clothes.”

“Is it time to go?”

“I can’t be lying around here all day watching a kid,” Lar said roughly. And then, in crude compensation, he said, “Come here,” and picked the boy up.

“Carry me!” Seven cried, though he was already being carried.

“Carry you where, Three?”

“Seven!” the boy corrected.

“Eight!”

“Carry me to my clothes,” Seven commanded.

“They’re right over there!” Lar laughed. “I could throw you from here. Say, why don’t I?”

He swung the boy out as if he were about to toss him, and Seven screamed and kicked his legs and giggled whenever he paused for breath.

“Don’t worry, Four. Boys bounce.”

“Seven!” he shrieked.

“Seventy!”

“Elar!” Seven cried, turning the game on Lar as he sometimes liked to do.

“Nineteen!”

“Deshlar!”

“Twenty-​three!”

“Kserrlar!”

“Kserrlarr,” Lar corrected. “If you’re impudent enough to call me impudent, boy, you better at least pronounce it right! Six hundred ninety-​nine!” he taunted.

“Lular!” When Seven ran out of words containing ‘lar’ he did not hesitate to make up his own.

“One thousand, two hundred and… twelve!” Lar sneered, as if it were a vicious insult.

“Larlar!” Seven laughed.

“A thousand thousand and a puny little one!”

“Larl!”

Lar gasped, as if it had not been the bare feet of a three-​year-​old pounding his stomach but the boots of a man—or of a demon elf.

“Larl!” Seven repeated. His laughter tittered off into nervous giggles now that he had seen the effect of the word. Then, out of embarrassment or out of fear, he tried to hide his face in Lar’s neck.

“Who told you that name?” Lar asked him.

“Nobody,” Seven mumbled. “I made it up all by myself.”

Planting the name in the boy’s mind was just the sort of thing Dre might do to hurt Lar—if Dre even knew he visited him.

On the other hand, it was just the sort of name a three-​year-​old might come up with when pronouncing Lar’s name. Three-​year-​old Lar had hit upon the same name himself.

“Is it a bad word?” Seven asked softly.

“Elara doesn’t let you say bad words?”

“No.”

Lar snorted. “She trying to make a girl out of you, or what? She must have to wash out your whole mouth every time after I leave.”

Seven laughed hesitantly.

“It’s not a bad word, Six. But nobody calls me that anymore.”

“How come?”

“Because I don’t let them. All the elves who used to call me that are dead.”

“Like my one peep-​peep.”

Lar sighed.

“I’m sorry,” Seven mumbled.

“You can, though,” Lar blurted. “Since you made it up all by yourself.”

“I can?” Seven asked with open-​mouthed awe. “Larl,” he whispered, to try it out.

Lar grimaced. What had he just done? Would he be kicked in the stomach every time he visited the boy now?

But of course, the summer was over, and he wouldn’t be visiting him any longer anyway.

Seven played quietly with Lar’s church-​magic medallion for a while, but at last he announced, “Larl, I think it’s going to be warm and sunny still tomorrow. Maybe even hot.”

“Boy,” Lar sighed in exasperation.

And then he looked down at the little face. The unexpected boon of permission to call him Larl seemed to have given Seven an extra measure of self-​assurance, and even—was it?—a hint of hopefulness.

“There is no way,” Lar snapped. He was still struggling to be free of the boy, but it was like trying to shake off cobwebs. “I’m completely dry and I’m still freezing here. And it’s just going to get colder and colder every day.”

Silence.

“Maybe next year,” Lar muttered, in crude compensation.

Seven nodded quietly and looked out at the lake. Lar saw again the watery, wide-​eyed gaze of an old man who has seen all he loved pass away, and who looks upon what remains with a chilling philosophy. “It is as I expected,” the eyes said.

But the boy was three years old. He had never had anything to love at all, aside from a few chickens and an old lady who understood neither his race nor his temperament.

“But that reminds me,” Lar said quickly. “I wanted to ask you something, Six.”

“What?”

“When the leaves fall, do you ever make big piles of them and jump and play in them and everything?”

“And hide in them and scare Elara!” Seven giggled.

“That’s what I mean. I used to do that when I was a kid, but I completely forgot how. Do you think you could teach me?”

“Yes! If you come!”

“I’ll come.”