"Do you know what time it is?" she asked him.
He sighed. "Close to dawn. I couldn't sleep."
"If you don't sleep, you aren't rested. If you aren't rested, you can't perform adequately your duties as a Chosen. Have you thought of that? You are distracted all the time, Kirisin. Lack of sleep could explain the problem."
They looked very much the same, these two–slender and Elven–featured, with slanted eyes and brows, narrow faces, ears that were slightly pointed at their tips, and a way of walking that suggested they might take flight on a moment's notice. They had the look of cousins, though Kirisin thought that facial resemblance aside they were nothing alike.
"You're probably right, Erisha," he agreed, still smiling. "I will try to do better starting tonight. But I'm awake now, so I think I will just stay awake until dawn."
"Kirisin …"
But he was already down off the veranda and walking away. He gave her a short wave as he disappeared into the trees, just to let her know that there were no hard feelings. But he didn't slow.
The Elves were the old people of the world. Some believed they were the prototype of humans, although Kirisin had always thought that nonsense. Elves, he told himself, were nothing like humans.
Yet they coexisted in a world on which both species had made an impact, for better and worse. At the moment, the impact was mostly human–generated and all bad. The humans had lost control of their world. It had happened over time, and it had happened to a degree that no Elf could comprehend. They had systematically destroyed the resources, poisoning everything, at first locally and eventually globally. They had begun warring with each other with such ferocious determination that after a century of violence more were dead than alive. Nature had responded, of course. Plagues and storms and upheavals had finished off what humans had begun. At first, the Elves had told themselves that much of what was happening was a part of nature's cycle, that things would eventually be set right. They weren't telling themselves that anymore. In fact, it had gotten bad enough that some were advocating that the Elves come out of hiding to try to set things right.
Of course, much of the fault for what had happened lay squarely at their own doorstep, Kirisin thought darkly. It had been their decision to go into hiding centuries earlier when the human population had begun to proliferate and the Elven to decline. Coexistence seemed a better possibility if the former knew nothing of the latter. Elves had always known how to disappear in plain sight.
It was not so difficult for them to fade into the forests that had served as their homes since the beginning of time. It was the wiser choice, the elders of that time had believed.
So they settled for surviving in a human world and did so mostly by keeping hidden. The humans called the Cintra the Willamette, and the land surrounding was called Oregon. It was remote and sparsely settled, and the Elves had little trouble staying out of sight. When humans came too close, they were turned aside. A slight distraction was usually enough—a small noise here, a little movement there. When that failed, intruders often woke from an unexpected fall or unexplained bump on the head. It didn't happen often; there was nothing in the deep woods that appealed to most humans. The Elves warded their homelands against the encroachments fostered by human neglect and poor stewardship, but their efforts of late were proving insufficient. Soon, something would have to be done. The matter was already under discussion in the Elven High Council, but opinion was divided and solutions scarce.
As the Elves were beginning to find out, absenting yourself from the affairs of the world was an invitation for disaster.
Ahead, the crimson canopy of the Ellcrys appeared through the trees, bright and shining even in the pale moonlight, a beacon that never failed to make the boy smile. She was so beautiful, he thought. How could anything be too wrong in a world that had given her life?
He stepped into the clearing where the Ellcrys grew and stood staring at her. He came here almost every morning before the others woke, a private time in which he sat and talked with her alone. She never responded, of course, because she never responded to anyone. But that didn't matter to Kirisin. He was there because he understood somehow that this was where he belonged. His time as a Chosen didn't start at sunrise and end at sunset. For the year that he had given himself over to her service, he owed her whatever time he could give her. That meant he could do as he pleased, so long as he carried out his assigned duties.
It was this lack of recognizable structure that drove Erisha to regard him as undependable. She believed in doing things in settled ways, in an organized and carefully regulated schedule. She did not like what she viewed as his undisciplined habits. But then she was not him and he was not her, something she seemed to have trouble understanding.
He spent these early–morning hours working on small projects of his own devising. Sometimes he worked at smoothing out and cleaning the earth in which she was rooted. Sometimes he fed her organic supplements of his own creation, both of food and antitoxins; that one would really drive Erisha wild if she knew about it. Sometimes he just sat with her. Sometimes, although not too often, he touched her to let her know he was there. He couldn't say why he found this so pleasing, why he actually looked forward to rising early and in secret spending time with a creature that gave nothing back. It just did. His connection with her was visceral, and it felt wrong not to respond to it. He only had one year to do what he could for her, and then it would be someone else's turn. He didn't want to waste a minute.
It helped that he was particularly good at the nurturing and care of living things. He possessed a special gift for such work; he enjoyed making things grow and keeping them healthy. He could sense what was wrong with them and act on his instincts. His sister said it ran in the family. His mother possessed unusual healing skills, and Simralin was uncanny at deciphering the secrets of the wilderness and the behavior of the creatures that lived within it. Trained as a Tracker, she had opportunities to use her gift in her work as an Elven Hunter, just as he had his opportunities here.
Which he had better get busy and make use of, he thought. The other Chosen would be coming along soon. He could picture their faces as they ringed the tree, their hands joined. He could see the familiar mix of expressions–eager and bored, determined and distracted, bright and clouded–that mirrored the feelings of each. So predictable that he didn't have to think twice on it. He kept hoping one of them would surprise him. Shouldn't there be a measurable transformation in the character of each Chosen during the course of his or her service?
Shouldn't that be an integral part of the experience.
He thought so, but he hadn't seen any evidence of it as yet. Nor had he himself undergone much of a change. You couldn't very well start throwing stones if you lived in a glass house, although that hadn't stopped him before.
He walked around the Ellcrys for a time, studying the ground, looking for signs of invasive pests or damaging sicknesses in the smaller plants surrounding her. Such things manifested themselves in these indicators first; it was one of the reasons they were planted— to serve as a warning of possible threats to her.
Not that much of anything got that far, given the attention the Chosen gave to the tree and everything square inch of dirt and plant life surrounding her. Not that there was any real …
Something touched his shoulder lightly.
—Kirisin—
The voice came out of nowhere, sudden and compelling. Kirisin jumped a foot when he heard it. A slender branch was resting lightly on his shoulder. The branch did not grip or entwine, but held him bound as surely as with chains.