Close Kin (7 page)

"Then the goblin King said to the
piper, 'You have worked very
hard playing
your pipe for me, but now you won't have to work any longer. I give you the
gift of playing the wind itself.' And for the rest
of his life, whenever
the wind blew, it played all the notes that the piper wished to hear, and he
became the most famous musician in the elf kingdom. The goblin King's Wife
slept for days and days,
tired from all her
dancing, and when she finally woke up again, she
was sound and well. And
there was peace between the elves and goblins for the rest of that King's
life."

Jane sat for a
minute after Seylin had finished speaking, her thin
face
puzzled and anxious.

"But, Seylin," she
prompted, "that can't be the end of the story."

"Well, I
don't know," said the black cat doubtfully. "There
never really is an end, is there? I suppose I could say
that the elf girl
came to love the
goblin King very much and that their son, Marak Horsetooth, was one of the
greatest of the Kings."

"No, no, no!" said Jane
emphatically. "Seylin, that can't be how it ends. She can't love a goblin.
Stories just don't turn out like that.
Maybe
the piper had a magic box with servants in it, and they
popped out and killed the goblin King, and then he
kissed the elf
girl, and she woke up,
and they escaped together from the caves, and
as a reward for his bravery, the elf lord married her to the piper, and
they lived happily ever after."

"That's not possible,"
protested Seylin. "No elf could kill the goblin King, whether he had
servants in a box or not."

"But I want
the goblin dead and the poor girl rescued from
him!" insisted Jane. "No creature that
horrible should live through a
story. Change the
ending."

"Jane!"
cried the cat, his fur bristling. "I told you the truth!
Marak
Redeye was a good goblin King; he took care of his people,
and he loved his wife. It's not the goblins who
are dead at all, it's the
elves.
There's a goblin King alive right this minute, but I don't
know if any
elves are left."

"That's terrible!"
said Jane, folding her arms and refusing to
look at him. "The goblins shouldn't be alive
and the elves dead.
How could you
tell me a story like that?"

Seylin thought
about all of Jane's stories, in which brave, handsome princes battled witches
and trolls, and beautiful maidens lived
happily
ever after.

"Your stories aren't true, are
they?" he observed. "Someone just made them up."

Jane jumped to her feet and faced him
indignantly.

"They are,
too, true!" she shouted. "They're more true than yours.
People
really do defeat evil goblins, and they really do live happily
ever after!" "And she started to cry.
Before the surprised Seylin could
even speak, she ran into the house and
slammed the door.

Seylin spent that night searching the
nearby woods for evidence of elves, depressed about his conversation with Jane.
He hadn't thought of goblins as such an awful thing, but maybe they really
were. Maybe it was wrong that Marak Redeye had saved his wife from dying. Maybe
he should have let her die. He remembered his own King telling him, "You
are who you are, and I am who I am because elf brides came to harm."

The next morning, he went back to the
neglected house to see if
Jane would speak
to him again. He found her crying in the shed, her
messy hair covered
with cobwebs.

"You were
right, Seylin," she sobbed. "I asked my father, and he
told
me that the stories weren't true. He says there's no such thing as
goblins or elves or happy endings, and that magic
doesn't really hap
pen at all."

Seylin curled up next to the white-faced
little girl.

"Jane, that's
not right, either," he said. "Magic does happen. You're talking to a
cat. There are goblins, too, whether your father
believes that or not. And there's still one elf left as long as I'm
alive."

"But no happy
endings!" Jane said. "I just can't bear it." She
rubbed her hand across her eyes. They were dull, and her
whole manner was different. Seylin felt that it was his fault.

"I hope there are happy
endings," he mused. "I'm not sure, but I think I've seen one."
He hesitated. "Would you like to see me work some magic? You mustn't ever
tell, you know."

Her dirty face lit
up.

"I'd love
to," she breathed. "When? Now?"

"No," he said. "Elves
can't see in the daytime. I'll come back tonight in my normal shape, the way
you first saw me. Wait in the woods behind the shed, and I'll take you to see
real magic."

That night, the
air turned chilly. The cautious young man
watched
the area for an hour before he came out to greet her. Jane
was shivering, and her teeth were chattering, but
her eyes were bright
with excitement.

Seylin led her
to a clearing in the woods and worked all the pretty
elf
magic he knew for her. He surrounded her with bobbing cres
cent moons and grew the plant with glowing
flowers that had always
entranced Emily. He made each constellation over
her head glow brightly and then change into the object it was named for, and he
brought the rabbits out of their holes to dance.

Then he showed her goblin magic. He
made a fire of rainbow
flames. He made a wall
of glowing smoke that encircled the two
of them in a golden room, and he
wrote her name in fiery sparks at her feet.

Jane watched
everything in a delight beyond words, her
sparkling eyes huge in her pinched face. And when he
finally led her
back to her house
and said goodbye, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

"I'll never
forget real magic," she said. "Tonight was a happy ending all its
own."

∗ ∗ ∗

Seylin set off
into the woods again, glad to have made her happy, but
the
shy young man walked all night long, determined to put some distance between
himself and the human world that had placed a little claim on his affection.
When dawn came, he pitched his tent
deep in
the forest and slept soundly all day, far from human
dwellings.

While he ate his
meal in the early twilight that evening, he
thought
again about Jane. He began to feel anxious. Something
hadn't been right. The kiss! Those lips and thin arms had been so
hot when they had touched him! They shouldn't
have been like that. He remembered Jane's sparkling eyes, her chattering teeth.
The little
girl had been burning up with fever.

Seylin broke camp as quickly as he
could and began to retrace his steps. As he walked, he argued with himself What
did a human
mean to elves or goblins? If
this neglected girl were to die, that wasn't
his fault. She meant nothing to him, nothing at all, and he had given
her
a pleasant memory to think about while she was dying. What more should elves
and goblins do for a human? Humans never did anything for them.

But even as
Seylin argued, he walked faster, and he scanned the
ground for the herbs used in the Fever Spell. He had very
little experience
with human illness.
Emily had been sick several times, but
Marak
had cured her as soon as she began to feel bad. Jane's skinny
body had been sick now for at least two days. He
doubted she would
survive without help.

He arrived at the dilapidated house a
couple of hours before
dawn to find light
glimmering from an upstairs window. He
changed
into a cat and quickly scrambled up a nearby tree. A candle
flickered in
the little girl's bedroom, and she lay quite still beneath
the covers. Her wise and handsome father sat
sobbing beside her, her
hands clasped in his own.

Seylin lashed his
tail furiously. He was too late. This was poor little Jane's happy ending. But
just as he was about to climb down from his tree and set out again on his
journey, he saw her twitch beneath the covers. She wasn't dead yet.

The reserved
young man who had been raised never to interfere
with
humans didn't hesitate for a second. He was out of the tree in
two bounds. He changed into his own form, retrieved
his fever
herbs, and was in the house and up the stairs as fast as he
could
move. Jane's father reeled back at
the sight of him, but Seylin didn't
stop for introductions.

"Bring me a cup
of boiling water," he ordered.

A kettle was
already on the grate, so his hot water arrived
quickly. The young man set it carefully on the floor and
put the herbs
into it, whispering the spell over
the dirty cup.

"Jane,"
he said when it was ready, putting his hand on that blazing
forehead; but, just like the elf girl in his story, Jane didn't know he was
there. He turned to her father, who was watching him with hollow eyes.

"I need a spoon," he said.
"Help me get this into her." They managed to spoon the hot liquid
into the girl's mouth, and by the time it was half gone, she was able to drink
it from the cup.

So much for the
fever, thought the pleased Seylin, and he began
to
murmur the Locating Spell. He expected to find her lungs damaged, or her head,
or her stomach. Instead, he found damage over her entire body. There it was,
the disease that held her, a bright red rash at the moment. It was very common
in the human world, and
when it didn't
kill, it scarred for life. The goblins had no spell to treat
this disease; their human brides were safe from it
in the underground
kingdom. The nomadic elves had no such protected
climate for the elf King's human wife or the human slaves they sometimes used.
They had a spell for it, but what was it? Which
constellation? Seylin
closed his eyes, thinking hard.

That was it. He
had it now. It centered on the moon, with its
scars and circles. In his mind, he reached for the
crescent moon and
repeated
the words of the spell. The bright red rash faded away
before
his eyes, leaving the skin pale and smooth.

"Do you
know you're in danger?" stammered the unkempt man.
"My
daughter has smallpox."

"No, she doesn't," answered
Seylin in relief Jane was free of ill
ness. But
she was still underfed, neglected, dirty, lonely, unhealthy,
and
unhappy. He was already interfering in the human world. Why stop now?

"It's a
miracle!" the man breathed. "A miracle! I saw it!"

"No,"
answered Seylin. "It's not a real miracle, just a happy ending
caused by magic worked by an elf raised by goblins. You
didn't
tell your daughter the
truth. You filled her head with stories and then
took
them away from her. And she adores you; she thinks her wise
and handsome father knows everything. If I had a
daughter like this,
I'd give her
more to live on than lies. Regular meals would be a good
start."

The man sank down on
the foot of the bed.

"You don't
understand," he replied. "I grew up a gentleman.
I'm not prepared for this kind of life. My mother wanted
me to make
a name for myself in politics, but I
came home from college, and that's when I met Liza."

"Is that
the beautiful maiden your daughter talked about?" asked
Seylin.
"Why were you forbidden to speak to her?"

The man gave a rueful shrug. "Is
a gentleman ever supposed to
converse with
the housemaids? But she was right about Liza's
beauty. I was wild about
the girl. I won her trust, and I ruined her. When my mother found out she was
pregnant, she dismissed her from service. Nobody would give her any work.

"There was my
poor Liza, out in the street, and my child with her. I decided to marry her.
But my mother was so angry when she learned of the marriage that she threw me
out, too, and now Liza
and I were in the
street together. I had never learned how to make a
living, so Liza worked for us both. She died soon
after Jane's birth. I
make a little
money every now and then, when I can find something
to do. Really, I don't know how. It's just not
something I was
taught."