Hidden Deep (23 page)

After a moment’s hesitation, he kissed my forehead as if that had been his intention all along.

I wasn’t as morose the next morning. Things were what they were, and I was beginning to accept them. I was going home today—I might never see him again.

But… I was with him
now
, and that was a gift. He wasn’t eighteen yet. We had a little time left. And seeing him healthy and moving easily around his room made me happy. I’d accomplished that much. Lad had saved me. I’d saved him back. We were even. I’d think about the rest of it later.

The speed of Lad’s recovery was astounding. Any human would’ve been hospitalized for weeks, if not dead, after enduring what he’d gone through. It had been a few days, and his gunshot wound was almost healed.

“Is it because you’re, you know, an Elf?” I asked as we shared breakfast.

“Partly. As you’ve noticed, our hearts beat faster than yours. Our body temperatures are higher, and our metabolisms seem to be faster. I’ve never spent this much time close to a human, so I haven’t had the chance to make side-by-side comparisons before. But it does appear we heal faster as well.”

I considered it. “You said ‘partly.’ There’s more, isn’t there? I mean, my legs and arms were so torn up I looked like I’d wandered into a pit bull fight. Now, my skin is as clear as a baby’s. Is it the stuff Wickthorne rubbed on me?”

“Yes. The healing solution he used on both of us is derived from the same source as saol water. I don’t know how much of the physical difference between our races is due to that and how much we’re born with.”

It made me wonder. Since taking up temporary residence in Lad’s underground world, I’d been living like an Elf, eating their food, drinking saol water daily—still the best thing I’d ever tasted. Each time I had it, its glowing effect flowed through me. I felt better now than I ever had in my life. Maybe it was due to the saol water. Maybe it was being with Lad.

“Feel me,” I ordered him.

Lad gave me a funny look. “What?”

“I’m not trying to seduce you, silly. Feel my forehead—you know—to see if I’m warmer.”

Lad obligingly placed a palm across the top of my face. “I don’t know. You still feel like a cool little river pebble to me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, never mind. Anyone would feel cool next to you. What about my pulse?”

Slowly he lifted his hand and brought it to my neck, his long fingers reaching almost all the way around it as he searched for the rhythm beating there. I realized this wouldn’t be a very scientific experiment as my pulse skyrocketed in response to his touch. No matter that it was foolish and impractical to be so drawn to him—I was only human, after all.

“It is a bit faster,” Lad whispered, his green eyes glowing with enticing playfulness. “Not an Elf
quite
yet, though.”

I sighed in disappointment. It was true. I
wasn’t
one of his kind. I couldn’t help wondering who this Elven child-bride of his would be, what she’d look like. Was she one of the beautiful girls I’d already seen here?

No—stop.

I couldn’t go there yet. I’d have plenty of time to torture myself with those thoughts later in the privacy of my own room where I could mope as much as I wanted to.

Reluctantly, I pulled away from him and stood. “My mom said they’d be home this afternoon. I should go home and clean up. I have to be at the house when she gets there.”

“I know. I’m well enough now to take you, but would you do me a favor? Let’s put it off a little while longer. I want to show you some things first. I’ll get you back in time.”

I changed into my own clothes and met Lad in the hallway. I’d been hurriedly escorted through the public areas here many times now but never with any real opportunity to interact with its residents. Now I’d be by his side, clearly his guest, and I had no idea what to expect. Would the Elves fear me? Attack me for being different? Would their reactions change the way Lad saw me?

I followed him through the dimly lit hallways of his home, and he pointed out rooms, explaining their purposes. Lad said the great hall was frequently used for large formal gatherings.

“Like a ballroom?”

“Something like that.”

Whenever we talked about his family, I got the impression Lad was trying to
underwhelm
me. Judging from their huge and opulent home, they were people of considerable importance here, but he seemed reluctant to say much about them.

We emerged from the tunnel into the enormous common area, and Lad became much more talkative. He almost ran as he pulled me by the hand, pointing out things along the way. The ground floor of the cavern seemed to comprise a village. At the base of the cavern wall, people entered and exited warmly lit cave-like openings. It reminded me of the huge, bustling shopping mall we sometimes visited in Memphis, the nearest large city.

Punctuating the open area were small huts—walking paths weaved between them. The structures looked too small to be dwellings. I peeked in the open doorway of the closest one as we passed.

A startling thrill of alarm shot through me when I spotted the white crown of a spiral-curled head bent over a large loom. For one eerie moment, I thought I was looking at my grandma, that somehow she’d found out what I’d been up to and had come to find me down here. But the woman looked up from her work, and of course she was a stranger. I raised my fingers in a sheepish wave, and she stared after me in curiosity until we left her sight.

Lad dragged me past one noisy hut where hissing steam and glowing light filled the air. “This is a metal shop where our tools and dishware are made.”

“Where does the metal come from?”

“From the earth.” He looked at me as if I must have been slacking in geology. “We harvest large lumps of native copper and iron ore from the ground, and our metal workers fashion it into whatever is needed. Many of the vessels we use we make from clay, but other things are better made from the copper and iron.”

We walked in the direction of the underground river. The path was a busy thoroughfare, with people coming and going. I noticed a peculiar reaction from those we encountered, not just to me, but to Lad. Everyone—men, women, and children included—made a deferential nod to him when we crossed their paths. Some even stopped and looked down until Lad and I passed by. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Here we are,” he said with satisfaction as we arrived at the riverbank. “The source of our greatest treasure.”

I looked across the wide crystalline river toward the dark opening in the wall from where it flowed. “What treasure?”

“The water. It feeds us, heals us, gives us strength, energy, and health.” He kneeled and scooped some from the river’s edge, cupping it in his hands for me to taste. I obliged him, taking a sip as he tipped some into my mouth. It tasted cool and pure, but not like the sweet, simmering otherworldly drink I’d come to know as saol water.

“It tastes different.”

“I said this is the
source
, but it’s only the beginning of the process. Follow me.” Lad got to his feet again and offered his hand. We walked along the river, enduring some amazed stares and the respectful nods and bows of everyone we met on the way. The path under our feet was earth and stone, worn smooth by centuries of Elven foot traffic.

We neared the base of one of the long-reaching root columns. Its size was simply astonishing. From a distance, I’d imagined them as sinewy, twisted vines hanging from the soaring ceiling down to the earthen floor of the cavern. Now I realized they were colossal supports, as vast in size and strength as any column in a magnificent Greek ruin. These huge columns, spread throughout the grand space, and the complex web of intersecting roots answered my question about how the tremendous ceiling was supported.

Bustling activity surrounded the pillar. Young Elven men carried large containers back and forth to the root column. Elven women worked at its base, attending what looked like taps driven into the gnarled skin of the roots at various intervals. Clear liquid dripped from the taps into the large empty vessels placed below them.

Lad stopped a few yards away and pulled me close to his side, whispering a narration of their activities. “Do you know what they’re doing?”

“They’re taking something from the roots. Is this where the saol water actually comes from?”

“It’s almost saol water at this point. The roots draw water from the subterranean river and pull it upward. It will eventually reach the trunks of the trees above ground, and be drawn all the way to the ends of their smallest branches. The natural sugars produced inside the roots mix with the pure water from this underground source to provide nourishment for the trees. We tap it here at the lowest levels where the sugar is the least diluted.”

“Does it hurt the trees? Aren’t they… you know, hungry?”

Lad laughed and wrapped an arm around my back, settling one large hand at my waist. “No, there’s plenty to go around. They hardly notice the trifling amount of sap we take. There’s one more step in the process. Come and see.”

He steered me away from the river toward one of the wide caves in the foot of the cavern wall. Roaring fires glowed in each corner of the rectangular room, the smoke being drawn up into dark, sooty holes in its ceiling.

The delicious scent would have told me we were in the saol water processing room, even if I hadn’t seen the tall, muscle bound Elves laboring over steaming bowls of liquid. I counted twelve of the huge concave discs made of hammered copper. They contained glowing stones of various hues and different levels of clear liquid and were attended by large Elven males, each one as fit and perfectly formed as the next.

The men were all shirtless and barefoot, dressed only in short breeches. They looked like a Chippendales fantasy version of factory line workers, armed with heavy tongs, lifting and carrying blistering hot mineral rocks between the corner fire pits and their gleaming vaporous bowls. I wondered if their lack of clothing wasn’t dangerous, considering the obvious high temperatures of the substance they worked with.

There was something else unusual about their appearance as I observed them in the steamy, sweet heat of the room. Their skin and hair seemed to glisten and even sparkle in the light as they moved.
Some other subspecies of Elf, maybe?

Then it occurred to me—they were covered in sugar. In the process of distilling the root sap down to saol water, the workers placed heated mineral rocks into the bowls. The hot rocks caused steam to rise from the naturally sugared water, coating the men with a sheer mist of sugar crystals. I imagined after a full day of this work, they were quite sticky.

I was thinking about this, wondering about the practicalities of underground showers—I’d found a hot bath waiting for me in my room each night, and they obviously had created some sort of drainage system beneath the floors for bathrooms—but I hadn’t seen any showers here. I realized Lad was staring at me.

“Are you all right? You seem… thrown off by the workers. Do you find them attractive?”

“No… I mean… yes, of course. But not like
that
.” Lad broke into an amused grin as I continued fumbling through my explanation, my blush deepening. “It’s just
everyone
here is so attractive. It’s not normal.”

Lad’s smile as he looked down at me was meltingly warm and as sweet as the air we’d left behind in the sugar room. He placed a kiss on my forehead, making me feel like a treasured little girl.

“Mmmm, now
you
taste sweet.” He laughed, tugging at my hand, urging me to walk with him. “Well now,
I
think humans are rather attractive, actually, because their appearances are so varied, so interesting. You must have noticed we all look quite similar. Some would say when everyone is beautiful… no one is beautiful. Now you see what I meant when I told you I’m nothing special.”

I didn’t see that at all. Even among all the unnaturally perfect men of his own world, Lad stood out.

“You
are
special,” I said as I turned something over in my mind. “Speaking of ‘special’… do you even notice how everybody acts when you’re around? They’re almost—what’s the word—reverent, I guess. I mean… it’s strange… like you’re Prince William or something.”

Lad winced before straightening out his expression.

A sharp shock went through me, my mind scrambling, putting together the things I’d witnessed the past few days here in his mysterious home. I stopped walking.

“You are… aren’t you?”

He just looked at me, his lips forming a tight, grim line.

“Oh my God. I’m such an idiot. The nodding and bowing, the guards, the enormous house and servants—they
are
servants, aren’t they? Oh, man, you have servants!” I had to stop and breathe a minute. I was headed toward hyperventilation.

“You’re part of some kind of… royal family. And your father, with all of his
Lord of the Manor
attitude and his insistence that you do your duty and learn at his knee… that’s why, isn’t it? Is he a king? Yeah? And you’re… are you a…
prince
?”