Elliot rolled his eyes as he was dragged off to the commander’s rooms, where Commander Rayburn walked in and said, “Oh, the elf’s little ginger boyfriend” in a despairing and, Elliot considered, unprofessional manner. “What have you been doing now?”
“Staged a pacifist protest,” said Elliot. “Also, Serene and I have not defined the parameters of our relationship yet, though I have high hopes.”
“He staged a pacifist protest by hurling knives all over everywhere,” reported Captain Woodsinger from her place at the door, throwing the commander a snappy salute.
“Unusual,” said Commander Rayburn. He sounded very, very tired.
Elliot shrugged. “I’ve been called worse.”
He got dishwashing duty for the next three weeks and was sent away, possibly so Commander Rayburn could have a soothing nap. Serene and Luke were waiting outside. Once they had established that Elliot was not expelled, they told him very firmly that he should have been expelled.
“Your behaviour was very rash,” Serene said. “And you called enormous amounts of attention to yourself, which is not the way my mother taught me gentlemen should behave.” She was wearing her tiny smile, designed to be missed, except that Elliot never missed it. He smiled at her, and she told him: “If the camp is attacked, I swear to protect you.”
“And if we’re both dead, the odds are pretty good you’ll annoy people until they chop off their own heads in sheer frustration,” said Luke.
Elliot was pleased by this tribute. Luke and Serene stopped leaning their overly tall leather-clad selves against one of the endless fences surrounding the endless fields, and they walked away from the commander’s tower back toward their cabins as Elliot told them about his actual punishment.
“Oh, what?” Luke said. “You’re going to miss my first Trigon game.”
“Is that the stupid game with the glass ball and the weird hills that some of the war-training guys keep playing?” Elliot asked. “Oh no, do you play that? The others have been playing it for ages.”
“It’s a good game,” said Luke. “But I didn’t really have time to play until we got into the swing of helping Serene. She’s more important.”
Serene shoved Luke’s shoulder with her own in a rough affectionate gesture. Elliot regarded Luke with deep dislike. Everything had gone downhill so fast.
“So, what, they just kept a place for you on the team?”
Luke blinked. “Sure. They were upset I couldn’t play, of course: they know they won’t win against the other years without me.”
“But with you they will?” Elliot inquired sweetly.
“Well,” Luke said. “Yeah.”
“He displays great prowess in every physical activity,” Serene said in her measured way, and Luke buffeted her in the shoulder in the same way she had just done to him.
“I have no idea why you would think I might want to go and watch your ridiculous game, loser,” Elliot said. “The truce doesn’t extend that far. I have no interest in the game or you, and I already see your face more often than I would prefer.”
“Suit yourself,” Luke snapped. “Have fun washing dishes while I’m winning and everybody else is cheering for me.”
Washing dishes, or literally anything else in the world, sounded better than that. But when the day came, Serene appeared and announced that she had got Elliot off early.
“That’s so great, Serene,” said Elliot. “Except I don’t want to go.”
“I want to go,” said Serene. “You have both made a sterling effort to support me, as my true and trusted comrades, and I wish to show support for you in my turn. And if I appear at an event without a gentleman by my side, people will assume that I couldn’t get one.”
Trigon was as stupid a game as Elliot had imagined it was. It involved a lot of jumping—someone was going to sprain an ankle, if not break a leg—and grabbing at a giant glass ball. Someone was going to get hit in the head and get glass shards embedded in their skull.
At least nobody was actively trying to hurt each other, and Luke was good at jumping, if you considered that something to brag about. For about five minutes, Elliot almost wanted him to win.
But then Luke looked over at Serene a few too many times and the crowd leaped up and cheered for him a lot too many times, and Elliot retreated to his book and sulked because Serene did not understand his jokes about Tigger.
Luke won. His team carried him around on their shoulders, his hair shining in the sun, their glad shouting rising up into the sky. Dale Wavechaser and Darius Winterchild gave Luke many back-pats and fist-bumps, so Elliot presumed Luke had at last found his sporty brethren. Luke still, rather to Elliot’s surprise, came over to them later.
“So?” he asked, grinning with what Elliot found to be offensive bashfulness. “What did you think?”
“I do not see the point of this game, but you were excellent,” said Serene.
Elliot looked up from his book. “Is it over?” he asked. “Who won?”
It wasn’t that Luke caused all the terrible things at the Border camp to happen. It was mostly just that he was the one who told Elliot about them, and so it seemed like they were all his fault.
Elliot chose to blame Luke anyway.
“What is the point of parents’ day?” he demanded at yet another Bad News Lunchtime.
“Men are naturally attached to their homes,” Serene said sympathetically. “I believe that parents are allowed to visit to ease their hearts and assure them of their familial affection. I have been going on hunting expeditions away from home since I was a squire, of course, so a visit from my parents will not be required. Are your parents not capable of crossing the Border?”
“Nope,” said Elliot, whose father believed he was at military school and whom he would never have dreamed of asking to come to his school anyway.
“My parents are coming,” said Luke.
“Okay.”
“So’s my sister, Louise.”
“Good for you,” said Elliot.
“Serene’s going to come with us,” Luke said. “We’re going to have a picnic.”
“This is a very boring story, loser,” said Elliot, instead of saying “Quit rubbing it in.” “Did it sound different in your head?”
“You can come if you like,” said Luke. “Since nobody else is going to ask you, and everyone should have something to do on parents’ day.”
“That’s all right,” said Elliot. “I actually can’t imagine anything worse than having to attend an all-Sunborns-all-the-time parade.”
On parents’ day he went to the library, because it was amazing in the library and he loved it there, and today he had promised himself a special treat: he was going to read a contemporary account of the great harpies battle over the Forest of the Suicides.
He had to put on special gloves and turn the pages carefully, under Bright-Eyes the librarian’s watchful gaze.
It was a really enjoyable half hour until Luke showed up.
“So sorry,” said Elliot politely to Bright-Eyes, and then to Luke: “Are you lost?”
Luke was giving the library a look of unhappy mistrust. In fact, now Elliot was paying attention, he looked more downcast than usual: it probably could not be attributed to the library. Possibly someone had made fun of his hair.
“You have to come to the picnic,” he said.
“Why?” Elliot snapped.
“My parents are expecting you,” Luke said reluctantly, as if each word were a tooth that had to be pulled.
“Why?” Elliot repeated inflexibly.
“I don’t know why, Elliot!” Luke snapped back. “I didn’t tell them you were coming. But they asked where you were, and I said you were in the library, and they said to go fetch you then.”
“How did you know I was in the library?”
“Oh, come on,” said Luke.
The whole thing seemed very mysterious to Elliot, but he trailed after Luke out to the fields—oh, lovely, Elliot could never get enough of fields.
Even if Luke had not known where he was going, it would have been easy to spot the Sunborns: every one of them was tall and the kind of person you looked at, with golden hair that shone as if a whole host of tiny suns had congregated on a picnic blanket. Serene sat among them looking very dark and pale and solemn indeed, but if you knew her you could tell she was happy to be there.
There was a man who had to be Luke’s father with shoulders basically the size of a mountain range, they should probably have a name, and a girl Serene was sitting beside who Elliot assumed was Louise. She was very grown-up looking—she was eighteen, Luke had said—and her hair was all done up in a coronet of braids, and she was about the most beautiful person Elliot had ever seen. Weird magic land might not have electricity, but he had to admit it was full of hotties.
The other woman stood up, her bright hair flying like a flag, as they approached.
“Well, here the boys are at last,” she said and gave Elliot a hug.
“Oh my God,” said Elliot, somewhat muffled, into Luke’s mother’s bosom. It was not entirely covered, and she was wearing a very large, very ornate golden necklace. Elliot was not sure if he should be worried about being suffocated or having his eyes put out by one of the jewels.
“I’m Rachel Sunborn,” said Luke’s mother. “You must be little Elliot.”
She released him, and Elliot reeled back, breathing in deep grateful lungfuls of air.
“I may be slightly below average height at present, but I am the same age as Luke,” said Elliot. “I’m very sorry for being late. I didn’t realize you were expecting me. I think Luke must have confused the issue somehow. His command of the English language is not what it could be. Well, you must have noticed that for yourself.”
“Nice command of the English language you have there, genius,” said Luke. “Very appropriate way to talk when you’re a guest.”
Elliot took a deep breath. Rachel Sunborn laughed.
“You are just like I thought you would be from Luke’s letters,” she said. “Come sit by me, Elliot, and tell me how you got Luke to actually learn facts about ancient history.”
“Mum!” said Luke.
“And he knows his way to the library and everything!” said Rachel Sunborn, rumpling Luke’s sunny hair as he went by her on a quest for consolation and sandwiches. “My little man. It’s a miracle.”
She patted the place beside her. Elliot cautiously went over to it and sat beside her. She ruffled his hair, too, and pulled him in occasionally for another suffocating hug. She asked him to tell her the story about the throwing knives in his own words and laughed when he did.
Elliot got the impression, due to the laughter, that she didn’t take him particularly seriously. But she was a very lovely lady, he decided after a while. He felt guilty, since she obviously assumed he was friends with her son, but he could not explain the truce to her. He sat with her and tried to make her laugh instead. It must be nice, to have a mother like that.
“And you don’t have to worry about your safety if the camp is attacked,” Louise Sunborn added, with a lazy stretch like a lioness. “We’ll protect you. None of us have ever missed a target with a knife. Except Luke.”
“I was six!” said Luke.
Louise laughed, and they had a casual wrestling match, there on the picnic blanket, which was only interrupted by Michael Sunborn asking about Luke’s Trigon games. Elliot bore nobly with this subject and was relieved when it turned to the fact that Luke and Serene were going to be sent on their first mission, accompanying a new captain and a band of the third and fourth years to witness the signing of peace treaties between a small village and the dryads who lived in a wood near them.
“You’re going into the forest?” Elliot asked. “To talk to dryads? I want to go!”
“Right, Elliot, but you can’t,” Luke explained. “Because only those in war training go on missions, since they are the ones who can protect themselves. Those in council training stay where it’s safe in camp, and go over the papers.”
“All we want is your safety,” Serene contributed.
“Do you hear what I’m saying, Elliot?” asked Luke. He sounded anxious. Elliot thought that was very wise.
“I do, Luke,” he said, so earnestly that it made Rachel Sunborn laugh again. “I do hear what you’re saying.”
He didn’t know why Serene and Luke had to act so surprised when they uncovered the supplies wagon on their mission and found that he had stowed away in it. He understood everyone else wandering around saying that they couldn’t believe his behaviour, but he’d hoped they were coming to know him better than that.
He forgot that disappointment, and stopped paying attention to the lecture Captain Whiteleaf—who seemed a dull and unimaginative man—was giving him, when he looked around at the woods.
This far from the Border, there were harpies, like lion-sized eagles, pinwheeling in the sky. He could hear water trickling somewhere, and if he followed the sound he might find mermaids. There was light brimming around and wind rushing through the leaves of the trees, and as the leaves rustled together Elliot heard a few words in the wind, and knew it was not his imagination. He knew it was dryads.
Elliot forgot about the wonder of the woods when they bullied him into helping with the tents, despite his protests that he’d turned and walked out of the Boy Scouts when they told him that he had to make his bed every day.
Elliot spent a good deal of his time on the mission explaining that these living conditions were too horrible to be borne, and speculating on who would die of a chill first because nobody had proper medical care available in the otherlands.
Eventually Captain Whiteleaf gave him the treaties between the dryads of the Aegle Wood and the nearby village to shut him up, with the air of someone offering a toy to a child. “See, council-course people like papers,” the captain might as well have said. “Lovely papers!”
“I wrote them myself,” the captain said proudly. He was about twenty, and apparently thought swagger was the perfect cover for inexperience.
“After listening to the wisdom of your appointed councilors?” Elliot asked.
“Ah,” said the captain, who Elliot heard had a very important father, a war hero in the fight against the evil saltwater mermaids. “Sure.”
Then Captain Whiteleaf nodded happily and went off to hunt rabbits with the rest of the mission. Serene always brought home more than the captain or any of the others did: the older boys, Elliot noted, had grown more and more polite the more they saw her use her bow.
Elliot was huddled by the fire reading the papers over and over when he saw them coming back. He tried to make a note on some parchment, but that was when his pencil was finally reduced to nothing but splinters and a smear.
That was the last straw. He had no pencil, and must scream.
“Something’s very wrong,” he announced as Serene and Luke sat down.
“You’re not going to die of a chill,” said Luke. “I will give you my cloak if you promise to shut up.”
“I may well die of a chill, I refuse to shut up, and I’ll take your cloak,” said Elliot. “But this isn’t about that. Look at these papers.”
Serene drew close to him and began to read them with some interest. Luke stared blankly.
“They’re the treaties for the dryads and villagers to sign,” he said. “There’s one treaty, and there’s the other. What’s your point?”
“Sometimes people like to do this cool thing with words called ‘reading them,’” Elliot explained. “These treaties say different things.”
He looked toward Serene, who he had faith would understand, and saw the pin-scratch line of a frown between her dark eyebrows. “Considerably different,” she observed.
“There are all sorts of restrictions in the dryads’ contracts,” said Elliot. “Conditions for this peace, ceding territory to the villagers, agreeing to stay off the villagers’ paths while the villagers can go into their woods and chop down their trees.”
?
??Well,” said Luke. “Naturally they’re going to be a bit different. The villagers are human, and the dryads aren’t. I mean—it’s not like the elves, who are practically human—”
“Speak for yourself,” muttered Serene.
“The dryads are our allies, of course,” Luke said hastily. “And they’re not like—like the beast kind, like mermaids and harpies, they’re good mostly, but they’re a bit . . . well, different, you know?”
“They’d better be really different,” said Elliot. “If someone gave me this treaty to sign, I wouldn’t do it. I’d be insulted.”
“You are insulted by people saying ‘good morning,’” Luke pointed out.
Elliot paid no attention to this slander, thought for a few more minutes, and climbed to his feet. “I’m going to talk to the captain.”
Serene got up silently to join him.
Luke said: “Oh no, no you are not.”
“I am simply going to reason with him,” said Elliot extremely reasonably.
“You chose to come on this mission, so you’re a soldier. You cannot disobey your commanding officer on a mission.”
“I’m not a soldier,” said Elliot. “Not ever.”
He looked around the woods, listened to the snap and crackle of the fire and the rustle of leaves that was dryads talking just beyond the cusp of human hearing. He let the magic calm him, and then he spoke again.
“I’m just going to talk to him and point out a few things that may have escaped his notice,” he said. “There’s no harm in that.”
“Fine,” said Luke. “Then I’m going with you two, to make sure that’s all you do. This is no time for your stupid games. I mean it.”
Elliot started to wonder whether they were brainwashing everyone in the war-training course to think alike when Captain Whiteleaf listened to Elliot’s description of what was wrong with the two treaties and said: “Why do you think this is a good time for your stupid games?”