Vash thinks like a naughty child

“He’s here,” Tashnu said softly.

“I hear his fire,” his brother replied.

They continued down the twisting passage in silence. Soon they could hear Vash turning the pages of a book, but they both had known that if he had come to hide here, this was what he would be doing.

Vash clasped his book to his chest as they came in, but he said nothing.

“May the rain fall gently upon your face, Vash,” Shosudin said to him.

“May the earth hold you and may the wind lift you up, Shosudin and Tashnu,” Vash replied mournfully.

“May we join you?” Tashnu asked him.

Vash shrugged, and so they sat on the floor of the cave beside him, near to the fire. However, it seemed to Tashnu that they would never sit near enough to the fire again, and he would have preferred that it be cold, so as not to remind them.

“Reading men’s books on this day,” Shosudin scolded softly, shaking his head.

“I must!” Vash protested. “Only men’s stories speak to me. Our stories are so hollow – no longing ever unsatisfied, no joy once gained ever lost.”

“Vash…” Shosudin sighed. “They are not hollow. They are complete. They are as they should be.”

“‘Clouds they are without water,’” Vash read aloud from his men’s book, “‘carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withers, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.’ No elf has ever composed such a thing. No elf before ever could.”

“Druze does,” Tashnu pointed out.

“Druze does now, but what of it? Everyone still sings the songs he wrote a hundred winters ago. No one dares sing the new ones. It is easier to call him mad.”

“You too compose such things,” Shosudin said. Tashnu did not think it was wise to remind him.

“And I do,” Vash agreed, “and my father would if he dared. And Iylaina’s father – and you, too, Nush. You could.”

“I am no poet,” Tashnu muttered.

“It would help you if you were, I think. What good does singing do you now? In our songs, everything is beautiful, and no one ever cries.” He sobbed abruptly, “She is grown today! Grown!”

They both knew of whom he was speaking.

“She was to have been mine today! I should have met her today – hours, and hours, and hours – and the night, and all the next day, and the next and the next, and ever and ever after. And I shall never have her. Never and never and never.”

“We know, Vash,” Shosudin said. The Unnamed One used to tell them that it was the kindest thing they could say to Vash now.

“And my mother was supposed to be there to greet her,” Vash said. “And Iylaina’s mother. And your mother. And they are dead – they are not. And Perala should have been there,” he said to Tashnu. “Your children will not even remember their mother. Do we elves have a song for such children to sing?”

Tashnu and his brother were silent.

“We do not,” Vash said in answer to his own question. “The men might have such songs. They have songs for you, Nush, whose wife is dead. And they have songs for me, whose wife has gone to another. That is why I am here today, and not with you elves.”

“But, Vash…” Shosudin sighed.

“I shall rejoin you tomorrow. But I shall not come and sing songs of spring with you today, as if nothing at all was wrong. As if spring had come.”

“Nevertheless it has,” Shosudin said.

“Not for me. It has not come for me, and so it shall come without me. I shall remain here and read. You see, these men are wise to write their songs in books. These writing-​​men are dead now, and the people who sang their songs are dead, but we may come long after and know them. ‘O then how softly would my ashes rest, if of my love, one day, your flutes should tell!’” he quoted.

“We do not need to write our songs,” Tashnu said. “We teach them to our children, and they to theirs, forever and ever.”

“And when the mothers die before they may teach their songs?” Vash asked. “I know! It is not supposed to be, and yet it is. Do we have a song for that? My father blames the men, but the men are not the cause. I do not think so. I think we are wrong.”

“About what, Vash?” Shosudin asked gently. Tashnu gave him a warning tap with the back of his wrist, but his brother pretended not to feel it.

Vash said, “When the children of the men are small, they are told stories to make them behave: some monster will eat them if they are naughty, or some fairy will reward them if they are good.”

“But those are men again,” Tashnu sighed. It seemed to him that Vash was more interested in the men than in his fellow elves these days.

“Yes! And I think we are children. I think we have been told monster and fairy stories all these years to make us behave.”

“By whom?” Tashnu asked. “By your father?”

“By the Bright Lady.”

“Vash!” Tashnu gasped. Even Shosudin seemed unnerved.

“She pretends to know everything,” Vash said bitterly, “what will come and what has passed. But she ‘forgets’ to tell us things. Or she ‘does not notice’ certain ‘details’.”

“It is not for us to question – ” Tashnu began.

“I do!” Vash cried. “How can I not? She is supposed to guide us, but she is ‘guiding’ us into desolation. I think she only knows – or is only telling us – half of the truth. I want the other half.”

“Vash!” Tashnu whispered, horrified.

“Where do you suppose you will find it?” Shosudin asked.

Tashnu was doubly horrified. He was afraid he knew what Vash would answer, and he wished his brother had not encouraged him even to pronounce the words.

“The Dark Lady,” Vash said.

“Vash!” Tashnu cried aloud.

“What can she do to me? What can she take from me? I have lost my mother, my wife, my dearest friend, the son I should have had. What do I have left to lose?”

“Your soul,” Tashnu said.

“Stories, I think,” Vash growled. “If we are good, the Bright Lady will reward us, and if we are bad, the Dark Lady will punish us. But lately the ‘rewards’ of the Bright Lady are beginning to seem punishments. Perhaps the ‘punishment’ of the Dark Lady will come as a relief.”

“Perhaps we have been bad,” Tashnu suggested.

“We have done everything she asked! Always! Always! No matter how impossibly cruel it seemed! We sent Iylaina away because she commanded it, and – ” Vash choked and did not continue.

“We are only three now,” Shosudin said calmly after Vash had recovered.

“You don’t mean for us to help him!” Tashnu cried.

“It is our duty,” Shosudin reminded him.

“I shall go alone, anyway,” Vash said. “You both have your children, and Shus, you have Dara too.”

“But how will you find her?” Shosudin asked.

“I don’t know,” Vash mused. “I can’t help but think she will come if only one wishes to speak to her.”

“Does she have a dwelling place to which one might go?”

“She does not,” Vash said. “She is a wandering star, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. That is why I believe she will understand.”