Lar can not unsay

Even at this distance and even with such old ears, when Elara woke from her nap she would certainly hear Seven crashing about in the leaves.

Seven did not know it, however. Later Lar would have to warn him not to wander off alone, but for now they could both indulge in the delicious feeling that they were being naughty – Seven for sneaking away without permission, and Lar for taking him.

Some of Lar’s happiest memories of childhood were of various misdeeds sanctified by the complicity of an adult. Now that he was the adult, there was as much bitterness as sweetness in the moment, but all the old sweetness was there. His mouth ached from the uncustomary activity of smiling.

Seven abruptly went still, though a breathless moment passed while the last handfuls of leaves shivered down and settled around their bodies again.

“A spider!” he whispered reverently.

A broad ray of sunlight stabbed through a break in the trees and illuminated his hand. A bristly spider was crouching on his fingertip, lifting its forelegs and feelers high. It almost seemed to be shielding its many eyes from the sun as it stared up at the boy with equal reverence.

Lar had a vague idea that all small boys loved creeping, crawling, many-​​legged things, but in the last years he had become as squeamish of spiders as a girl in pigtails. One pallid Spider had blackened the name of all the others for him.

“What do you want with an old spider, anyway?” Lar grumbled. “Your name is Seven – not Eight.”

“I love spiders!” Seven protested. “I always did! Better than all the bugs. Spiders are the only ones who can do whatever they want.”

“Oh, really?”

“That’s what the man said. Like some animals they can do what they want – ”

“What man?” Lar interrupted.

“The man who came,” Seven shrugged. “With round ears!” he added in an excited whisper. “Like mine!”

Lar barked, “What man? When?”

Lar’s knee was on the ground before he knew he was about to rise. He had to deliberately calm himself, reminding himself that any danger to the boy had already come and already passed.

But by admitting that, he also admitted he had failed to protect him. In the end, he might have more sooner calmed himself by ceding to his instincts and scooping up the boy at once.

Seven sensed his alarm and mistook it for anger. “I didn’t know it was bad,” he whimpered.

“Who was it?” Lar’s attempt to soften his voice only made it shrill.

“Dre’s friend,” Seven said softly, trying to make himself tiny.

Above their heads the wind tossed the last leaves and rustled the streaks of sunlight that slipped through. The dancing rays made Lar seem to shiver, as if light and shadows could move him. In fact he was painfully still.

“He was nice, though,” Seven said. “He had real round ears like me. And he had stripes on his face like Dr – ”

This time Lar did not hold himself back. He was on his feet and Seven in his arms before the boy had concluded the breath that should have pronounced the hateful name.

Seven was startled stiff for a moment, but then his body crumpled, and his face fell against Lar’s neck, wetting it with a sudden wash of tears.

Lar patted his back awkwardly, finding an excuse for the unaccustomed gesture in brushing off the leaves that clung to his coarse-​​woven little shirt.

“What are you crying for all of a sudden?” he grumbled. “I didn’t even call you any rude names like Four or Three or Two or One.”

“I don’t know!” Seven blubbered.

Lar sighed. The first “I don’t know” in response to a reasonable question was ordinarily where he drew the line.

But Seven lifted his head and sniffled, “I didn’t go nowhere with him.” He waited for a moment, and when Lar did not reply, he said, “I didn’t like him as much as you, Larl.”

Still he stared hopefully up at Lar’s face, with his eyes that were blue and watery like the lake behind him and as sorrowing as an old man’s. At last Lar understood that Seven did not know why he was crying because he did not know what had upset Lar in the first place.

“I didn’t know it was bad,” he pleaded. He spoke the last word so sadly and slow that a bubble swelled up between his wet lips and popped only when he gasped in surprise. He stared at Lar with wide eyes, waiting to see whether he dared laugh.

“I bet you couldn’t do that again if you tried,” Lar smiled.

Seven giggled wickedly and launched into a fruitless but funny series of grimaces intended to reproduce his exploit.

Lar was relieved to have been granted a moment to think. He had not seen Dre in months – long enough that his present problems had sufficed to drive all thought of the demon from his mind. Why would he come to see the boy and not the elves? Why would he come as a man? And what did he want from Seven?

Every time Lar asked himself the question, he remembered what Dre seemed to want from him. And every time a desire to hold the boy seized his arms like a convulsion.

But this time he was already holding him. He held him tighter.

Seven immediately went as limp as a kitten dangling from its mother’s jaws. He seemed to be willing himself tiny again. Lar could almost feel him disappearing.

“I didn’t know it was bad,” Seven whimpered, quaking in an agony of confusion.

Lar was no less confused. He knew next to nothing about comforting small children. However, he knew how to lead. He knew that the leader must appear confident even when he was quaking inside. His elves drew from him a courage that he himself did not possess. Perhaps Seven would too.

He leaned back his head and said, “Listen up, Thirty. I never said you were bad. That man was bad for coming to see you without asking me. That’s what.”

“He wasn’t allowed?” Seven asked hopefully.

“That’s right. I never told him he could. Nobody gets to see you unless I say so.”

Seven smiled.

“You know what?” Lar blurted, heartened by the smile, and riding out his surge of bluffed confidence as far as it would take him. “I think you should come live with us where he couldn’t see you without going through me.”

“With you, Larl?” Seven breathed.

Lar the Leader popped like a bubble against this unforeseen idea, leaving only Lar, the confused elf with an eager-​​eyed child in his arms. He had not even truly thought “with us”, but “with them” – with the few dozen ladies and children whose safety and welfare he protected while little interesting himself in their day-​​to-​​day affairs. He did not know how to unsay what he had said. It was already too much.

“Not with me,” he laughed awkwardly. “Where would I put a boy in my little room? I mean with us–with the elves.”

“But I would see you sometimes?”

“Well – not very often. I’m a very busy elf.”

“But sometimes?”

“You see me sometimes now! And – anyway – I don’t know where we’d put you. I don’t know if we have enough room right now. I’ll have to think about it.”

Think about it! How he had hated those words as a young elf! An elf either would, or he would not, but Lar had no respect for those who would sneak out of promises by promising to “think about it”. Until now!

“I’m small,” Seven pointed out. “My bed goes under Elara’s in the day.”

“That’s not exactly the problem…”

“And I don’t eat too much,” he went on. “Elara always says. And could I bring my peep-​​peeps?”

“I don’t think peep-​​peeps would like to live there at all,” Lar said, relieved to have found an excuse. “I think it’s probably better if you just stay here, after all.”

Seven sighed regretfully, but he said, “I guess I just have to leave my peep-​​peeps then. They’re all grown-​​up now anyway. And, anyway, the man said peep-​​peeps are stupid birds. He said maybe he would bring me a baby raven in the spring when there’s babies. He said he – ”

Seven bit his lip and said no more.

Lar could scarcely have spoken himself; his mouth was dry and tasted of bile. His face, however, was damp and hot, and his body shook in an agony of apprehension. There was that thought again, striking him like the marsh fever.

He could find no good reason for anyone to have a baby kidnapped and raised in seclusion, to visit him just often enough to not be a stranger to him – to “be nice” to him, to offer him gifts…

He could find no good reason for anyone, and Dre was not merely “anyone”. All of his reasons were evil.

There was another craven phrase Lar despised, though even as a child he had known what it usually meant. Now he saw the utility of it, and repeated it gratefully.

“We’ll see.”