THE LAST ELF
Penny Clover Petersen
Copyright © 2002 by Penny Clover Petersen
Cover Illustration © 2011 by C. Clover
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Visit Penny at www.pennypetersen.com for more information
For my parents
THE LAST ELF
Rosemary found it in the third drawer down in her Grandmother's dresser. The third drawer down! That fabulous cubby filled with the wealth of a lifetime --- blue ribbons and medals, broken earrings, strings of pop beads, locks of baby hair and tiny white teeth taken by the tooth fairy and deposited for safe keeping in this magical box.
Today, Rosemary was a little gypsy looking for the just the right ornaments for her Halloween costume. The dangling, gold earrings she found were ideal, but she needed something more. There they were - long strings of colorful beads and brightly colored scarves. Now she would be the perfect gypsy!
As she was closing the drawer a piece of lace caught on the edge and she noticed a small needle-pointed box hidden under it. She had never seen this box before and she had been in this drawer many times.
She didn’t know why, but she had a feeling that this was a very special box. She opened it carefully. Inside, wrapped in white tissue paper, was a flower. Not a dried flower or a plastic flower or a silken flower, but a real flower as fresh as if it had been picked that afternoon for the dinner table.
But it was no flower Rosemary had ever seen before. The colors were odd and the scent wasn't really flower-like. The stem and leaves were not so much green, as they were blue and the petals were translucent with milky white streaks running through them.
The scent wasn't sweet or spicy as most flowers seem to be, but it smelled at once of the open air and of a pine forest and of the ocean. It was as if all the beautiful smells of nature had joined together and as you sniffed the petals your mind visited all these places for a brief moment.
Rosemary carefully put the flower back in the box and hid it where it had been in the drawer. Somehow, she didn't like to ask her grandmother about it. It just seemed very secret, very private. Someday she would ask, but not now.
Rosemary had been staying with her grandparents for some months. She had visited in the summer and when the fall turned the trees to gold and fire, she had begged her parents to let her stay and go to school there. Things were lonely for Rosemary at home. She had no brothers or sisters and few friends. For as long as she could remember both her parents had worked. When they weren’t working, they were arguing or being very silent. Home was a tense, unhappy place.
But her grandparent's house was different. It was cozy and old-fashioned. And they always had time for her - time for playing and reading and teaching or just sitting and fooling around. At Grandma's Rosemary could forget her life at home, her anger and her sorrow; she could put it off for another day, maybe forever! And so she stayed. And now it was Halloween and she was a gypsy and she had found a flower.
Her grandparent’s house sat near a pine wood that was ages old. The house had remained almost unchanged for seventy-five years. Rosemary's great-grandfather had built it and farmed the land. Grandma had grown up there and returned to live there with her husband after her parents died. Grandma's name was Rosemary, too, and she was sixty-nine years old.
After school Rosemary often took her dog, Sandy, into the woods to think and play. On this particular afternoon she had something very special to do. She wanted to look for a flower like the one in Grandma's drawer. It was a little like an old-timey rose, but not quite. No, she was sure she hadn't seen one before, but she searched the wood all the same.
As she and Sandy looked, she thought over all the things that had happened to her in the past year. All at once, she plumped herself down on the ground and tears welled up in her eyes.
"Oh, Sandy, I'm glad you're here to be my friend. Sometimes, I get so lonely. I know Mom and Dad try to be my friends, but they’re so busy yelling at each other, they hardly notice me." The little dog put his head in her lap and looked up with sad eyes.
"All I want is a nice home with Mom and Dad to be there when I need them. A safe place. A happy place. But now Daddy's moving out and it's not home at all."
Then she smiled. “That’s why I like it here. Grandma and Grandpa always have time for me. Grandma is teaching me to crochet, you know, and Grandpa and I do jigsaw puzzles and read books. I'm never going to leave here, Sandy. Never.”
"Well, come on, girl, let's see if we can find this flower. I wonder where Grandma got it." And with the ease children seem to have of changing mood or direction, Rosemary bounced up off the ground and began her search again. She and Sandy had been at it for almost an hour when she stopped and stood still to enjoy the quiet of the woods.
"Rosemary, I'm back. I didn't think you'd wait for me.” A strong, clear voice like a distant bell ringing on a bright day seemed to come out of nowhere.
"Who is that? Where are you?" asked Rosemary.
"Up here, in the tree."
Rosemary looked up to see a young man sitting on the branch of a slender oak tree growing on the edge of the wood. The branch was small and did not look too sturdy.
"You had better come down from there before you fall. That tree is too young to climb."
"It's all right. I don't weigh much. But I'll come down and talk, if I may."
"Who are you," asked Rosemary, "and how do you know my name?"
"Don't you remember me? I'm Meriandor. We met years ago in your time. Let's see, it must be sixty years ago, now. I have been away traveling around the wide world waiting for the right time to come back. Don't you remember? I told you all about it the last time we met."
"I'm very sorry, sir, but I'm only nine years old and I don't believe we’ve ever met. Certainly not sixty years ago. I hadn't even been born.”
"Oh!" said Meriandor, "I thought you were a little girl I met a long time ago. Now that I look at you, I can see that you aren't my Rosemary at all, but you do look a lot like her. Your dog is different, too. Hers was black with a white forepaw. He didn't like me much."
"Well, my name is Rosemary! I live with my grandparents in that house over there. Meriandor? What kind of name is that? Do you live near here? Are you dressed for Halloween?"
The young man was very thin. He was only a little taller than Rosemary and had sandy hair that fell shaggily into his eyes and over his ears. He was dressed in a suit that wasn't so much green, as it was blue, and his skin had a translucent quality about it that made him look very delicate. I say suit, but it was more like the old-fashioned garments worn by troubadours in Old England. He was a very pleasant looking young man and Rosemary liked him right away.
"What a lot of questions! Well, I'm called Meriandor after my great-grandfather. It's an old Elvish name, common among our people. I live everywhere, but nowhere, for I have lost my home. This wood is the place I remember best and come back to most often. And I'm not sure what Halloween is really, so I don’t know if I’m dressed for it. These are my usual clothes and, as no one can see me, they are quite all right to wear."
"What do you mean, no one can see you? I can see you.”
"Yes, you can, can't you?" He sat down on a stump and looked thoughtful. "I wonder...”
Just then Grandma called Rosemary in for dinner.
"I have to go now. Will you be here tomorrow? I'll come back and talk to you again."
"Yes, I'll be here. I'll be here until the time is right. And I'm glad you'll come back. You've given me great hope and much to think about."
At dinner R
osemary was very quiet. She had a much think about, too. After a while she looked closely at her grandmother and asked, "Who do I look like?"
Grandpa replied, "Why yourself mostly, but if I had to name someone, it would be your grandmother here."
"Grandma, did you have a dog when you were little?"
"Oh, lots of them. When I was your age, let's see, I had a little black dog. We called him Roger. I remember he didn't like men at all. Used to bark at my Dad. Funny little dog, all black with one white paw."
"Did you ever walk in the wood when you were my age? Alone, I mean," asked Rosemary.
"Oh, yes. Most afternoons I'd go there to play and I'd take Roger with me. We had no near neighbors, so Roger was really my best friend."
After dinner, Rosemary watched TV and went to bed early. She slept soundly through the night almost forgetting all about the strange little man. But the next day after school, she ran to the wood and was quite disappointed to find it empty. She searched all over and, just as she was about to go home, she heard the voice again.
"Hello, I'm glad you've come. I've been thinking all night and all day and, if you will, I think you can help me." Meriandor said this as he was climbing down from the top of a very old, very prickly pine where he had been perched.
"I'll be glad to help if I can. What do you need? Shall I sneak some food to you or a blanket or something?"
"Oh, no. Not that kind of help