Close Kin (12 page)

For answer, the
priest reached into his pocket for his rosary beads
and
brandished the crucifix at the bewildered cat. Seylin stepped a little nearer
to study the tiny figure, hoping to appear polite.

"It's very nice," he said
respectfully, unsure how one should
compliment
a crucifix. "Not as detailed as the one up there, though,"
and
he waved a paw toward the altar. "I rather like that one better, don't
you?"

The priest sat
down on the last short bench and viewed the large
cat
disgustedly.

"You should be ashamed of
yourself," he declared. "You know you have no business in a
church."

"That's true," agreed
Seylin, somewhat abashed, "but I didn't think anyone would mind. I'm not
keeping a big crowd of humans out of this one."

"Well, that's a good
point," sighed the old priest. "I shouldn't complain. At least
someone wants to be here."

He fell into his own thoughts,
fingering his beads, while Seylin studied his windows in peace. They depicted
the life of the hermit and the spring, along with several miracles belonging to
both. The lonely cat plucked up courage to ask the human what the scenes
depicted, and the lonely priest actually told the devil cat what he knew. Each
enjoyed the other's company, although both reserved men were ashamed about it.
As a rule, Seylin didn't approve of humans, and the priest certainly didn't
approve of demonic beasts.

"It seems very sad," piped
the black cat at the end of the old priest's lecture. "It isn't fair that
humans are God's favorites. They
don't seem
to care one way or the other. I'm sure we would care if all
of that
magic was done for us."

The
priest's gray eyes flashed again.

"You
devils had your chance," he said sternly.

"I am not a devil!"
shrilled Seylin. "We know about the devils, but we don't have anything to
do with them."

"That's likely!" remarked
the priest severely. "And what are you if you don't have anything to do
with devils?"

"I'm an elf," replied
Seylin, rather boldly and incautiously. The priest merely laughed a dry,
contemptuous laugh.

"Now,
that's a lie, you goblin cat," he declared. Seylin felt deeply
hurt.
"I know what an elf looks like, and it doesn't look like you."

"You've seen an elf?" mewed
Seylin in excitement.

"Yes, I
have," asserted the priest with a grave nod. "I've seen two
elves,"
he added grandly.

"But -- where? And when?"
stammered the flustered cat. The priest's face took on a faraway look.

"When I was younger, newly back
from the continent and its
troubles, I was
traveling not far from the village of Nearing, by a little
lake in the
wooded hills. As I sat there in the shade of twilight, two
elves walked down to the lake. I'll never forget
them as long as I live.
They were so beautiful and graceful, so splendid
and regal. I knew right away they were elves." He came out of his happy
reverie and
glared accusingly at Seylin.
"And they didn't look a thing like you!"

The excited cat
stared at the priest, his eyes like lights and his fur all
on end. "Thanks!" he squeaked in a hysterical
tone, and disappeared
in
a streak through the door. The old priest felt a little disappointed.
There was a story behind the odd behavior of this
mysterious cat, and
he would have liked
very much to know what it was.

Seylin consulted his map. The lake
was only a couple of nights' journey from the goblin kingdom, near one border
of the elf King's
lands. The area was no
longer one large forest; instead, small groves
grew in the folds of the
hills. Seylin had been nearby before, but he
had
been discouraged by all the human encroachment. Now he hurr
ied back as
fast as he could, walking far into dawn and starting as early in the twilight
as his eyes would allow. He would have been
perfectly
happy to walk all day long, but his cat form couldn't shoul
der the pack.

He soon found the little lake and the
campsite, but it didn't contain quite the evidence of elves that he had
expected. The trees that grew there were stately and tall, and the traces of
tent sites were in
their deepest shade, but here also were the charred
remains of a log fire and piles of animal bones. These things certainly didn't
belong in a normal elf camp.

Then Seylin
found a small elf graveyard, without a single stick or
rock to act as a monument. This race never marked the
graves of their
dead, not even the
elf Kings. So elves had been here, and perhaps
were still coming, but this was a spring or summer camp, too exposed for
cold weather. By now they would be in their winter camp because
the
first snows had fallen. That meant caves if possible, so Seylin began to travel
the limits of the forest in search of them. He mean
dered back and forth for most of another long, snowy night and found
a
second little camp. Now he was very excited. One camp might
mean humans, but two camps had to mean elves.
Only elves moved
from place to place in a forest without cutting down
the trees.

Just a few more hours till dawn. He
paused in a clearing and located the uneven crest of a range of hills in the
distance. Perhaps
those hills sheltered a
modest cave or two. He would try that direction
next. Seylin turned to retrieve the pack he had dropped at his feet and
stopped, the pack forgotten. A
sizzling shock ran through his frame.

Standing in the
moonlight was an elf

For a long moment, the two stood and
looked each other over. The elf had thick black hair and green eyes, and his
form was lean and muscular. He was wearing brown. Seylin was wearing brown
clothes, too because elves always wore brown in
the winter. The elf wore a short, belted tunic, and his breeches were gartered
below the
knees, straps of thin leather crossing in X patterns to hold
the cloth close to the calves.

This was the style that elf men had
worn for millennia, but the outfit was not of properly made elf cloth. The
poorest human farmers had better homespun clothes than this, and Selling's own
garments were luxurious beside it.

"You've
been leaving tracks all over the forest," commented the
stranger
in English. "I've been following you for some time. You walked right by
two rabbits just now. What are you hunting for?"

"I'm
hunting for you," said Seylin in elvish, but the stranger just
looked
baffled. "I'm hunting for elves," he added in English. "I
thought I might be the last one left."

The other elf
considered this. "What happened to the rest of
your
band?"

Seylin
shrugged, uncertain how to respond. "I'm alone now," he
answered.
The elf looked at his nice clothes, his well made boots, and his sturdy and
capacious pack.

"Your
women are all dead, aren't they?" he remarked in a know
ing
tone. "Thorn will want to see you. Wait here. I'll come back. Don't try to
follow me because I'll know, and I don't leave tracks everywhere like you
do."

Seylin sat down by his pack and
waited, mulling over how to proceed. He had read about elves and daydreamed
about elves, but he had never really thought about what would happen if he
found
any. He supposed he had always
expected some wise, fatherly elf to
walk
up and say, "Seylin! Home at last! You're one of us now!" But
it
was beginning to look as if that wouldn't happen.

The stranger returned with two more
elf men, and they studied Seylin. One of them was still just an adolescent,
perhaps fourteen years old. The other didn't look terribly old, either, but
there was
such a hard, capable look on his
face that Seylin felt like an overfed
baby.
He was very handsome, with blond hair and gray eyes, but his
crudely
woven clothes were a mass of stains and patches.

"Rowan
tells me you're supposed to be the last elf of your band,"
he
said, and his face told Seylin that he didn't believe it. "Your
women are dead, aren't they? You'll find no luck
here. We only have
one girl ourselves. We don't intend to marry her to
an outsider, so you might as well keep looking."

Seylin felt his face
grow hot.

"I'm not looking for a
wife," he protested. "I'm just looking for elves, for a band to
join."

"Can you hunt?" the blond
man wanted to know, and Seylin nodded. "Then show us. Bring some game back
to this spot tonight and you can join our band."

Seylin walked away, trying not to
show the dismay that he felt. He hadn't exactly lied. He could hunt; he had
just never done very much of it, and what he had done was from horseback. The
goblin
King had learned from his mother,
Adele, a certain reckless enthusi
asm
for foxhunting, although he never actually let a fox be killed. He
put a magical blue stripe on the animal to show
that they had caught it, leaving some of the local foxes with five or six
stripes apiece. But
Seylin doubted very much whether these ragged elves
would be
impressed by a blue striped fox.
Hunting was literally their survival.

In the chronicles, the elves hunted
nothing but deer, and Seylin
knew very
little about how they did it. After searching fruitlessly for as
long as he dared, he decided to attempt a calling
spell. Making dinner
walk right up to him seemed disgusting, but the
mutton that he ate walked right up the lake valley to the slaughterhouse in the
palace town.

He paused in a clearing and said what
he thought were the right words. Time passed, and his heart sank. He must have
botched the
spell. Why had he charged out
of the kingdom without bothering to
learn
basic elvish spells? All the fancy magic he knew couldn't make
up for the ordinary elf spells he didn't know
Just as he was about to
give up,
moonlight reflected in large brown eyes. A small doe
stepped cautiously
out of the forest.

Now Seylin felt sick. He knew that
elves ate does, but he had
never killed or
eaten a female animal in his whole life. This doe was a
mother, a sacred thing, and a goblin would rather
starve than eat her.
He called her up
to him and stroked her thin flanks. A mother
carrying young. Seylin was
sure he couldn't possibly kill her.

With his arm around the doe's neck,
he said the spell again, and the two of them waited and waited. Just when he
was wondering if he really could bring himself to kill her, he saw movement in
the
trees again. Seylin reached quickly
toward the new deer, light blaz
ing from his fingertips. The startled doe
leapt away from him and bounded off into the forest.

Seylin examined his kill. A handsome
stag of some winters lay at his feet. He took a firm hold on the stag's ear and
whispered the
elvish Carrying Spell. He
guided the body off the ground to a
height of a couple of feet and towed
it behind him as he walked along, the stag slipping through the forest on a
cushion of air.

The blond haired elf and the
adolescent were waiting where he
had left
them. When Seylin walked up with nothing in his hands,
the youngster
grinned and pointed.

"See?"
he said triumphantly. The elf leader looked disgusted.
"Well? Where's
the food?" he demanded.

Seylin gestured
behind him.

"I
didn't have anyone to help carry it," he said, pulling on the ear
and bringing the
stag into view.

The pair gawked at the dark body
gliding above the snow. The leader recovered first.

"See?"
he retorted to the boy. "And he doesn't even know this for
est.
I don't want to hear any more of your excuses." He clapped the successful
hunter warmly on the shoulder. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Seylin," replied Seylin,
stiff with apprehension. He probably should have chosen an elvish name.

"Seylin?"
hooted the teenage elf. "What kind of name is that?" It
was
goblin, of course. Would he have to lie about it?