Call of the Wolf (The Kohrinju Tai Saga) Page 4

  Facial hair, now that’s rare. Elves don’t tend to be very hairy, and facial hair on a male is an almost certainty of human blood within two or three generations.

  Other than that, we have a high metabolism and the Abaishulek are the only elves I have ever heard of who can get overweight. In fact, other than momma and me, an Abaishulek Elf merchant was the only elf blood I ever saw until I was over thirty years old. He had been rude when he saw momma; looking at her as if she was vermin and I never forgot his face or his greasy smell and potbelly.

  I rarely became injured, but the day came when I was playing where I shouldn’t have been and fell. I don’t remember what I fell on, but it cut my leg deeply and I ran to our quarters where momma was washing some garments.

  The wound was severe, bleeding profusely, and you could see the bone. As you could guess I was very scared. Rather than panic as many mommas do, and yes, papas too, she became extremely calm, looked quickly around, grabbed me up and carried me into the house. Promptly she clamped her hand on the wound which would not stop bleeding, and then she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.

  In my heart I had always known my momma was special, but what happened next was beyond my wildest imagination. I was already sick from loss of blood and from between her fingers I watched with horror as my life fluid kept oozing out. But suddenly from deep inside my leg I felt something twitch, then a burning heat entered into the wound from her hand. The bleeding stopped and then she gave a little gasp as she closed her eyes and bit her lip. It looked as if she was pushing against something as her face become white and a feeling like hot water washed into my leg.

  When she let go blood still covered my leg, clothes and floor, but when I looked at my leg all I could find was a thin, white little scar. Suddenly, and with urgency in her voice that always reflected someone was coming, she said, “Hurry, Komain, go wash your legs, change your clothes and be gentle.” Gentle was our private word for being fast, quiet, but don’t over do it so as to look suspicious.

  It always fascinated me how my momma always knew when someone was coming, when as good as my hearing was I could never hear as much as a rustle on the pebbles. But she always knew.

  After my momma had healed my leg, I looked at the bloodstain on the woven carpet and felt dismay. But I did as I was told and ran to clean and change. A ladder gave me easy access to my loft, and while I was up there I heard the human hurriedly walk in the door.

  He didn’t knock, and I would have been confused if he had. No one knocked before coming into our quarters; we were slaves and had no rights. It was one of the things that tarnished what beauty my momma had cultivated.

  The human looked quickly about, and then focused his gaze up at the loft before addressing my momma in a harsh manner, “What’s wrong with the brat? There’s blood all the way from behind the smithy to here.”

  My momma was standing just inside the door, wearing her customary tunic and leggings of unbleached muslin, and I could see a breeze gently blow through her hair. Over a hundred years as a slave, but she still had her dignity and courage. This human pig may knock her down, or force his way into our privacy this very night, but she would not back down, for no one. At the same time she gave no insolence, she was simply Kelshinua, an elf of the wild who refused to be broken and of whom I was proud.

  Her words were calm and smooth, “I believe he encountered a small creature who was mortally wounded, and he was frightened.”

  The human was irritated and he scoffed, “Frightened? Why that … you’ve got a damn, sissy-fied crotch-sucker for a boy. They’re gonna geld him when he gets more size on him, you know that don’t you? Then they’ll put him in the field with me, and I’ll learn him a thing or two. Can’t make a stud out of no slink, stub-Johnny mule like you’re whelp.”

  My momma said not a word; she just stood there and let him feel tough. I looked over the edge of the loft and saw he was getting exasperated. ‘Humans,’ I thought to myself, ‘He wants her to cower, but she won’t.’ And then I thought with defiance, ‘And I’m not a stub-Johnny …’

  The human looked up at me, around the big room, then at the floor where momma had put me down and healed me. I was startled to see there was no sign of blood anywhere, not on her either.

  He paused and looked my momma up and down and with a sneer he asked, “You even know who his daddy is?”

  She looked to the floor and stepped back, “As you can see, there is no blood evident in here.”

  He looked her eye to eye and I saw his face get red and his right hand ball into a fist, “You slink bitch … I ought-ta …”

  “You,” my momma said with a passive smile on her face, “are not Fel’Caden.”

  That was all she said, and that human suddenly stopped and I saw his face turn white as a sudden realization came over him. What it was, I didn’t know, and I was curious myself. I had never seen this kind of exchange before.

  I couldn’t see my momma’s face, but he could and he was standing scared, I mean really scared.

  Still eye to eye, my momma calmly added, “Cordis, I think you should leave and … forget … that you were even for a moment distracted from the significance of your duties. You have so much to do … Cordis … we are not important enough for you to waste your time here.”

  The human creased his brow for a moment to think, as if momentarily confused, and then turned and walked away. I wanted to ask questions and hurried down the ladder, but she turned to me and said with an exhausted smile, “I’ll be right back.” Then she walked outside.

  Running to the door I watched her follow my blood trail with a hand calmly outstretched. Anyone seeing her would think she was using her hand as a focus object while looking for something she may have dropped on the ground. As she walked I saw the dark stains soak into the ground as if they had never been there.

  As I looked down where I had lain, sure enough, there was only a sweet aroma of fresh grasses and not a trace of blood to be seen.

  When she returned I was sitting in my chair, hands folded, waiting and thinking. As she stepped through the door she looked at me sitting there and a slight smile of amusement crossed her face. I was full of questions and she knew it. I couldn’t think where to start.

  “Momma, why did you say he wasn’t Fel’Caden?”

  She thought about it for a moment and I could see her trying to decide what to say, and then she answered with a slow wink, “Because, he isn’t.”

  I was perplexed and it showed

  She smiled at me and pulled up her chair. Patiently momma waited for me to formulate my next question.

  At first I wanted to know all about what happened to the human, and I wanted to know what happened to the blood, and, and, and, but what I really wanted to know was what she did to me. Looking down at my leg, I rubbed it and looked up at her, “How …”

  “It’s a Family Secret,” she said with a smile.

  I thought long and hard about her answer. “Can I have a Family Secret?” I asked.

  “You most probably will, Komain. It is within you. You carry the mark of your ancestors.”

  “How so momma?”

  “It is the way you see things, my son. You do not just observe. You look and feel what is there.” She brushed a tassel of hair out of my eyes and touched me gently on the forehead. “You see from within.” She laughed, “And because you have the blue of the sky contained in your beautiful eyes.”

  I laughed with her, but her answer was sort of vague and I was still confused. I asked, “But I don’t understand.”

  “You will, Komain, one day you will. I promise.”

  And with that I was satisfied, because my momma always kept her promises.

  After the day she healed my leg I became much more aware of things that happened from day to day, little things I had always taken for granted.

  We always made sure the gardens were beautiful and sometimes we would play around the apple trees. Sometimes we would dance and sometimes the squirrels and
rabbits would come out and play with us. I used to think it was the animals liking my momma’s music, but then I realized it was something much more than that. When my momma was around, the animals didn’t just notice, they acted differently. It wasn’t something you could easily describe, and unless you knew what you were looking for you probably wouldn’t notice, but I was watching and it was almost like they were waiting for her to tell them something to do.

  I began to notice that occasionally a bird would land on her shoulder and preen on her ear. She would smile and take the bird onto her finger and gently blow where its own ear might be, and it would fly away. Sometimes, though, I could see a tear through her smile and she would watch the bird fly away to the north and west. I never said anything because it was the same look she sometimes had at night when she sat and looked out from our doorstep; I figured she was remembering her home.

  Another time, I peeked over the ledge of my loft room late at night. When I say late, I mean, like, way past night’s middle. I was sure momma thought me sound asleep and usually I was a real sound sleeper. Pretending to be a caterpillar, I slowly squirmed out of my covers and onto the floor, there was no bed-frame so I didn’t have far to go, and made my way just far enough to the edge to look down.

  There was a hint of music playing, but no instruments were in use and all of the candles were blown out. Well, if there is a hint of light of any kind, we elf-types can see anyhow, so I just focused on what was going on. My momma was dancing real slow, moving her arms in extreme circular movements, and she was doing it with her eyes closed. I think she was humming, but I wasn’t sure. The thing is, as she was dancing, little swirls of what looked like dust was rising up from the floor, off of the table, and out of the artwork on the walls. I watched as that dust eventually swirled together, and then the door to the outside opened all of its own and the dust up and went out that way.

  When she finally came to a slow stop, she was facing the door. My momma held her hand to the door with the palm up, and then curled her fingers inward as if motioning someone or something to come to her … and the door shut. As quickly and soundlessly as I could I did the caterpillar back into my bed and lay there breathing hard. All kinds of thoughts were in my mind, but suddenly I felt so-o-o sleepy and drifted off to sweet slumber.

  It’s funny; I had forgotten all about that time until I was making way back to my cell after fighting Karthanook.

  I said my momma told me nothing of her adult life, but that is not entirely true.

  It was the year I had turned eleven and we were around the Haedanburg Apple trees, which produce an extremely sweet and crisp green and purple striped fruit. The apples were already beginning to fall and we were in our first day of collecting when I suddenly asked the question, “Momma, what makes the apple trees grow?”

  I could tell she was pleased with the question. Looking about to make sure we were alone, she reached down to a freshly fallen apple and took a bite out of it. She accidentally bit off too big of a bite, and we both giggled as she fought to keep it all in her mouth, but then she finally chewed enough of it so she could talk and pointing to the seeds inside, she begin to explain.

  “You see this seed? Well this is really a baby apple tree that’s looking for its momma.” She reached down and grabbed a big handful of dirt and continued, “When a seed is lucky enough to find itself inside some special dirt, it has found her.”

  She pushed a seed into the ball of dirt in her hand and said, “When the right amount of rain and sunshine loves the dirt, the baby seed begins to grow.” Cupping both hands around the ball of dirt she closed her eyes for a moment and then opened her eyes wide in surprise for me, “And when the time is right …” I watched in raptured amazement as a little stem started to rise out from between her hands, “… the baby tree comes out into the world.”

  “Wo-o-ow-w-w!” I exclaimed in fascination.

  Gingerly petting the little tree as one might pet a baby kitten, I asked in absolute innocence, “Momma, are you a Druid?”

  The question caught her by complete surprise. I saw her falter, and then a tear came to her eye. She composed herself quickly, but not before I knew I had asked something that hurt her.

  “N-No, sweetheart, I’m not … I’m not a D-Druid …” She was fighting hard not to cry; I didn’t understand and started to cry too.

  She hugged me quickly and with passion, then she quickly looked around as if to see if anyone was near, and then back at me with a pained and tear-stained face and said, “I love you, Komain, so-o-o much. You just don’t understand. You must promise me something, okay?”

  With tears covering my own little face I nodded yes.

  In a voice just above a whisper she said, “You must promise to not ever, ever ask me that question again, please? You must trust me.”

  Trying not to cry, but believing with all of my heart I had done something wrong, I promised. As if hearing my thoughts my momma looked at me and said in a soft voice, “It is a good question, and such a very smart one … it just isn’t safe … and I only want to protect you. I promise one day you will understand. Now let’s finish our work so we can go fix our supper, okay?” And she brushed my hair from my eyes.

  When we returned to our quarters she had made my most favorite food ever, her griddlecakes. Usually she fixed them in the morning, and there was nothing in the world like my momma’s griddlecakes. She could make them out of wheat flour, rice, corn and even potatoes. There was a hollow space between our ceiling and the actual roof of our building, and momma said she had talked honeybees into making a home up there. So we had all the honey you could imagine, and let me tell you, that honey on my momma’s griddlecakes was the best ever.

  In some ways we were rich. Honey was a high cost product when I was a child in Gevard, and come to think of it, it still is in lots of places, but the humans in Castle Fel’Caden never knew there was a honey making empire in our ceiling and the wall beside the rock room. It only makes sense, though. Mornings and evenings are when honeybees are most active outside of the hive, and as I’ve said, we lived off to ourselves and away from the main keep. Trees were all around us and there was no reason for anyone to see the bees. When the human dogs came to our quarters to abuse my momma, it was always in the dark of night.

  On this particular evening, my momma made extra special griddlecakes. She mixed some groundnuts and little slices of apple into corn meal, and when they were ready we slathered them with a mixture of hot honey and butter. It was so-o-o good.

  The butter was yet another of our secrets. Sure, anyone would know we churned our own butter. But there was a special jar in the rock room where we kept our butter and no one ever knew it. It looked like a regular clay jar, but the inside was always really cold. It was one of those things I took for granted, but looking back it had to have been my momma’s doing. That jar was always warm to the touch on the outside.

  After we had eaten and cleaned our plates, we sat and watched the stars come out and listened to the sounds of the night. The time past when an unwanted visitor might invade our quarters and as the moons made evident the apex of the night was upon us, my momma turned to me and I knew she had something important she needed to say.

  I had never seen the expression on her face as I saw then, and for the first time I sensed fear, fear radiating from my beloved momma who was my rock and fortress against all things dark and despairing. She took my hand, as she often did when she wanted to say something profound, and I saw a strained expression on her face as she seemed to try to find the right words to say.

  Several times I thought she was about to say something, but then she would hesitate. Was that pain I saw cross her features? I began to become afraid and then she grasped my hand, so hard it almost hurt.

  She looked around the room like she was looking to see if anyone was near, then her eyes went out of focus and momma seemed to lose her breath. One hand she put to her ear like she could hear something loud enough to hurt her head, but I couldn�
�t hear it … or did I? Was someone whispering, someone from really far away?

  A droplet fell from her nose, and then another. What was that? She managed to wipe whatever it was away, and then put a cloth to her nose as she looked at me. I thought her face grew pale and I began to feel frightened all over again.

  Momma put the back of her hand to her mouth, then to her forehead and took a deep breath, and then it looked like she suddenly knew what to say. Squeezing my hand in assurance, she sighed real big and managed a weak smile at me.

  Again she looked about carefully, and then up to the ceiling; I had no idea what that was about, in particular. Momma never looked up at the ceiling like that.

  In something just above a whisper she asked, “Komain, do you remember me talking about Puhtnam Jai?”

  Puhtnam Jai, I thought. At first the name wasn’t familiar, and then I remembered. Everything about our little quarters suddenly became very surreal; I slowly nodded my head as I became intently focused on my momma’s face.

  “Do you remember what he did?”

  Thinking long and hard, I answered in the same kind of whispering voice, “He lived a long, long time ago and wrote a lot of things on scrows.”

  My momma smiled and softly said, “Not scrows, sweetheart, scrolls. And yes, that is correct. I’m so proud of you.”

  I smiled.

  “Do you remember what he was called?”

  I remember the moment as if it were yesterday. Scrunching my forehead in deep thought, I replied slowly, “He was a Tell-l-l S-s-singer-r-r, momma.”

  “Yes-s-s!” She closed her eyes with a kind of relief and satisfaction. It was like I had done something really special, but what? “Do you remember what …” her eyes still closed, I noticed she seemed to be careful about what she said next, and her forehead wrinkled up like she was thinking really hard about something, “… what a … Tell …” the words came so slow, I thought she was expecting someone to hit her the way she winced, but it was just us in the room so I still didn’t understand, “… Sing-ger is?”