Egelric learns the difference between dogs and wolves

Egelric left his horse in the clearing, untied and blown and still saddled, and ran up to the house. There was smoke in the chimney – light behind the window – she had come home! Of course, it might only be Alred, and he told himself he should not hope for too much after the week he had spent – but how could he help it? And the new moon only two days away?

“Sela!” he cried as he staggered into the kitchen.

He froze in the doorway as the tall elf at the other end of the room turned slowly and, out of the one eye that was not hidden behind his long hair, leveled on him a look of disdain. It was not Sela.

It had been over a year since they had last met, and the young elf had grown so tall and had so lost his look of boyish good humor that Egelric did not recognize him at first. “You have answered the first of my questions,” the elf said coldly.

“Ears?” Egelric gasped. “Where is she?”

“Come inside and close the door. The wind is cold.”

Egelric closed the door, but the flush of anger that rolled over him heated him so that he would not have noticed the wind in any case. “Where is she?” he growled.

“She is not here.”

“Where is she?” he roared and lunged at the elf, stumbling over one of the chairs on the way.

“If you touch me, you may be certain that you shall never see her again,” the elf said rapidly, but unflinching, and Egelric stopped just short of him. “I came to talk to you. You have no idea what you have done.”

“What have I done? What have you done? I want her back here! She is mine!”

The elf wrinkled his nose as if he had smelled something unpleasant.

“What have you done to her?” Egelric snarled.

“Nothing, yet. Please calm your – ”

“Yet?”

“She is refusing to speak,” the elf snapped. “I came to speak to you in the hope that we should thus not be obliged to force her.”

“What do want to hear from me?”

“Has Iylaine seen her?”

“No.”

“Has she seen Iylaine? Does she know Iylaine is your daughter?”

“I think not.”

The elf nodded and seemed to relax slightly. “That is very good for you. What do you want with her?”

“Want with her?” Egelric cried. “I want her! And our child!”

The elf wrinkled his long nose again. “You seem to like these half-​​breeds, don’t you?” he scowled. “Though you displayed finer taste in choosing your wife.”

Egelric swung at him, but the elf caught his fist and stopped it as suddenly as if his hand had been a wall.

“How could you?” the elf asked mournfully. “Her kind are little better than animals – savages.”

“And you?” Egelric growled. “Your kind? Devils!”

“You must forgive me, Egelric,” the elf sighed and released his fist. “I have tried to understand. But you must understand that such a thing is as appealing to me as lying with a goat would be to you – as seeing a goat bear one’s half-​​goat child…” He shuddered. “And when I feared that Iylaine had been exposed to such a creature…”

“Such a creature? She’s an elf!” Egelric cried, uncomprehending. “Like you – creature!”

“I know you don’t understand. I have told them that you can’t possibly understand. She’s the one to blame, and yet – ”

“She shall bear no blame! What has she done? She loved a man and not an elf.”

“She knows it is forbidden.”

“Oh, forbidden! It is don’t! And I suppose it is forbidden for her to ride a horse? And go to the lake?”

“The lake?”

“When I ask her to come with me to the lakeside, she says, ‘It is don’t, it is don’t…’”

“She says? What do you mean – she talks to you?”

“Of course she talks to me! She is learning my language very well, though I fear I am too stupid to learn hers.”

“She talks to you?” the elf repeated, seemingly stunned.

“Why not?”

“Because they’re – they’re – the only word you have for it is savages!”

“Who are they? Are they not elves?”

“Are your dogs wolves?”

“A sort of wolf. Wolf-​​like, some of them.”

“Well, then. A sort of elf-​​like creature, as you say. They are lower even than men.”

“She is not below me.”

The elf shook his head. “I shan’t convince you, and you certainly won’t convince me. I did not come here for this. I did not realize that she could talk to you. This is grave. What has she told you?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“What has she told you about us?”

“About you? About the elves? Nothing. Very little. I believe she tried to tell me that it was forbidden for her to be here, that she feared the elves would see her, but she did not speak of elves otherwise. Now, where is she? I beg you! You take my son from me, and now her! And our child!”

“How can we let her go back to you now? If she can speak?”

“What can it hurt?”

“You have no idea! You have no idea!” the elf said, and he turned his back to Egelric and paced over to the fire.

“Do you fear she will tell me the truth about some villainy of your kind?” Egelric asked.

“I suppose you could be allowed to have the child…” he mused.

Egelric lunged at him again, but the elf whirled around and caught his arms.

“I swear to you,” the elf snarled through clenched teeth, and his face was indeed as menacing as that of a wolf. “If any harm comes to me in this house, this Sela creature shall be dead before the first drop of my blood touches the earth – and that drop shall soon be washed away in a flood of the blood of men!”

Egelric stumbled back and crossed himself, but the evil passed from the elf’s face as quickly as if it had been a trick of the firelight.

“I try to help you, and you try to attack me. Very gentlemanly of you, Squire.”

“Help me?”

“Help you! Yes! I shouldn’t be here! If my father learns I have come – ! There is one punishment for her, and if she has not received it, it is because you have a powerful ally among the elves, though I doubt you value it.”

“You, boy?”

“We can perhaps deliver the child to you after it is born, if you want it, on the condition that Iylaine not be exposed to it. But I can do nothing for this Sela of yours.”

Egelric’s hands leapt out at the elf again, but he yanked them back and held them to the sides of his own head instead. He pressed them against his temples, squeezing his skull with all his strength in the hope that it would shatter, that his head would explode, that the world would end for him. Truly he felt himself cursed. 

“Shall I never, never,” he moaned, “never be allowed to keep anyone I love?”

“You have your daughter,” the elf said quietly.

“Until you take her from me!”

The elf sighed and looked down into the fire.

Egelric sat at the table and laid his face in his hands. He could hear the elf stirring uneasily behind him, but he did not intend to look up at him. He did not intend to look up ever again. Perhaps he would die here…

“Is she safe?” he asked suddenly, and he looked up after all, though he did not turn to look at the elf.

“Safe?”

“It is the new moon in two days.”

“She is safe. No harm will come to her while she is carrying that child. We aren’t savages.”

“But devils,” Egelric whispered to himself.

After a long and stifling silence the elf said imperiously, “That is all I wished to know. I am pleased that Iylaine has not seen her, and very troubled that she had learned to speak with you. Do you want the child?”

“I want them both,” Egelric growled.

“I shall endeavor to have the child brought to you in the spring, if it lives, and if you swear to me that Iylaine will not see it.”

“Both!”

“I can certainly promise you no more than that.”

Egelric closed his eyes. He would simply drift away into darkness. “Will you see her again?” he asked softly.

“Perhaps.”

“Will you tell her I love her? Explain to her in her language? I don’t – I didn’t know how to make her understand.”

The elf considered his request for a moment. “You want me to explain love to such a creature?”

Egelric too thought a moment before replying. “It was a foolish idea. Someone would have to explain it to you first.”

“I know what it is.”

“Clearly, you do not.”

He could hear the elf move uneasily again. “I shall do – and have done – all I can for you, you know.”

Egelric did not answer and only stared out into the darkness behind his eyelids. He could tell that it made the elf uncomfortable.

“I must go before they notice I am gone. I… your son is very well, and I swear that you shall see him again someday. Your beautiful son…”

Egelric heard him hesitate a moment longer before the fire and then move towards the door. “What is the blessing you use? The peace of God on you, Egelric.”

Egelric could feel him waiting for a reply, and he did not intend to give it.

Then he felt the cool air on his face for a moment, and he found it came as a relief. After the door closed again, he realized that this elf, too, liked his fires unbearably hot.