Selfish Elf Wish (29 page)

“This will be yours soon,” I say to Willow.

She bites her lip. “I can’t imagine it yet.”

“But aren’t you excited?” I ask.

“Sort of, but I don’t know. It’s sad, too, because that means Ivy is going to pass.”

“Right,” I say quietly. “That part is weird.”

“And,” Willow says. “I feel too young for all this. It’s a lot of responsibility.”

“But it’s not like you’ll be the matriarch,” I point out. “Grandma Hortense will still be in charge. You’ll just have this amazing house!”

“But I’ll be so far away from Mom and Grandma Fawna . . .” Willow shakes her head. I’d never thought that she might be scared about her new life.

I squeeze her hand in mine. “You and Ash will be great together.”

When I mention Ash, she smiles. “It’s funny, when I’m with him I feel like I can do anything. Like he complements me, you know? What I’m bad at, he’s good at.”

I sigh, wondering if Timber and I will still be together when I get back to Brooklyn. If I get back to Brooklyn. Everything in my life feels uncertain right now, and I don’t dare ask my mom and dad when, or if, we’re going back.

“Come on,” Willow says. “Let’s go help unpack.”

 

That night, after we feast, the women gather in the center of a circle of torches in Mama Ivy’s clearing. In the center of our circle, on a stump, is the fox, looking more alert now, but still shivering from the fever. And sitting by the stump in a chair is Mama Ivy. She is shrunken down after nearly two hundred years of living, but her eyes still twinkle and her cheeks radiate a light that rivals the moon.

“It will take all of our magic,” Mama Ivy tells us, “to bring Iris back—if this is, in fact, Iris. But if we’re wrong . . .” She hangs her head. “I’m afraid this fine fox will perish under the power.”

“You mean she’ll die?” Briar asks, her hand pressed against her lips.

Mama Ivy nods. Everyone is quiet for a moment, but of course, we all know what we have to do. A fox is a fox, but if this fox is Aunt Iris, we have to bring her back.

“Gather,” Mama Ivy says.

Everyone moves forward and links hands. This is the first time Briar and I have been allowed to join a group spell, and despite the circumstances I’m kind of excited. I squeeze Briar’s hand and she squeezes mine back. Grandma Fawna brings over a small blue bottle of potion that’s been cooking down for the past two days. My mom turns the fox onto her back. As first she struggles, but Mom strokes her belly and whispers in its ear a language I don’t understand. The fox relaxes.

Fawna moves around the circle, dabbing potion into the center of each of our foreheads, where our totem animals reside. I don’t know yet what my totem will be. It’s a journey I have to take when my magic’s strong enough, but it’s inside of me waiting, just like Timber’s wolf is deep inside of him. Next Fawna takes the potion to my mother, who dabs it on Mama Ivy’s forehead, then her own, then she rubs it on the fox’s belly.

Mama Ivy begins the chant, “
Sham, sham quin quin. La dor mi vin. Sham, sham du forse di tee shu.
” She looks up to us and we all join in as we’re able.

I close my eyes and say the words, allowing my consciousness to be lost in the flow of the strange language. Each syllable travels up from our mouths into the night sky, carried away on the wings of owls to circle the moon. As we chant, a vision of Aunt Iris forms inside my mind. I see her standing before me, faint at first, and then more clearly. The chanting grows louder, more intense, and the image in my mind becomes more vibrant. I see Iris now, strong and healthy with dancing eyes and glowing skin.

I feel a deep tug in my heart for the love I have for each of my relatives. They are each a part of me and I a part of them. Without these bonds, who are we? I wonder. Nothing but a lone cougar. How did Hyacinth walk away from such love?

We chant and chant until I am lost, no longer here beneath the sky but only in the loving embrace of my family, and then we hear the yipping of the fox grow louder and morph into something deeper, fuller, more vocal. The voice of a human gasping and panting for air.

I come back into the world, to the circle, to Briar’s hand and Willow’s hand in my own. I open my eyes and see, lying on the stump in the center of the circle, Aunt Iris, naked, shivering, but alive.

Quickly, Mom and Grandma cover her with cloaks and blankets. The women scoop her up and carry her into the house, where they can minister her back to health.

A few hours later when the moon is in the center of the night sky, Hortense opens Mama Ivy’s door and ushers the women in. “We’re ready,” she says. “Come, come.”

The kitchen is packed with all the female relatives from several clans. Briar and I sit on the floor by the fire. At the front of the room is Mama Ivy, sitting in a rocker by the huge stone hearth. She is beautiful in the warm light of the fire, illuminating her long, white braids twisted around her head. “Come in, children. You are welcome.”

Next to Ivy is Iris, looking stronger now. I can only imagine that this house gives her strength with its open rafters hung with dried herbs, flowers, and pine boughs. The long table and soft chairs are worn from hundreds of feasts over the centuries. The ever-present smell of honey, lavender, wood smoke, and tea fills the air. This will be my sister’s soon, and now I understand what she means. It will be a lot of responsibility to keep it up so that the next generation of daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters can come here and find the same warmth by this fire someday.

The first-firsts gather behind Ivy and Iris. This includes Willow, my mother, and Fawna, plus all my great-grandmothers back to Ivy.

Ivy lifts a rough-hewn wood cup with mulled cider and says the invocation. “In the name of Aster, the first mother who settled Alverland after the great migration, and all the first daughters, we welcome you.” She sips from the cup and hands it to her oldest daughter, Hortense, who drinks, and passes it on to her oldest daughter, Apricot, then to Laurel and Jonquil, then to my great-grandmother Lily, who hands it to her daughter (my grandmother), Fawna. Mom takes it from Fawna, sips the cider, and hands it on to Willow, who takes the final drink and sets the cup back on the mantel, where it stays until the next gathering of women.

Grandma Fawna steps forward. “Grandmother Ivy’s asked me to preside since my clan has been most involved with these troubles.” She reaches out and puts her hand on Iris’s shoulder. Grandma takes a few moments to explain to everyone how we found Iris in fox form and what happened up at the bluff. Murmurs and small cries of surprise and anguish carry through the women because nothing in recent memory has happened like this. Then Fawna says, “And now Iris will tell us her story.”

Iris sits up straighter and draws in a deep breath. She begins, “For a long time I have felt a pull from my youngest daughter, Hyacinth.” She pauses to let everyone get over the shock of speaking a shunned elf’s name. “She has come to me in dreams. Her voice has visited me on the wind. I have seen her reflection in pools of rainwater and always she did not look well. Soon I came to realize that my daughter is . . .” She bows her head and tries to speak, but no words come out. Ivy reaches for her hand. My mother, Fawna, Willow, and the other great-grandmothers surround her and lay their hands on her shoulders. Iris slowly looks up at all of us. “She is dying.”

We all gasp, including Briar and me. This is unheard of. Elves live for nearly two hundred years, but Hyacinth is my mother’s age, not yet fifty.

“I know the rules of shunning and that Hyacinth made her choice when she married Orphys Corrigan and left. But I felt my daughter was calling to me and that she perhaps had regrets.” She holds her hands out and pleads. “How could I not go to her?”

I hear the whispers behind me.

“How could she not?”

“I would go.”

“Nothing could stop me.”

“And so I called to her and then I shifted so I could travel unnoticed,” Iris explains. “It took me weeks to find her. She is far away near the coast in a city with many buildings. At first I visited secretly, watching her daily life. I learned she has two children. My grandchildren. By watching them tend to their ailing mother, I grew to love them.” She bows her head again. “I didn’t realize they had called me there.”

Briar and I clasp hands. “Clay and Dawn,” I whisper to her, and she nods.

“The children have known for some time that Hyacinth was ill. An erdler disease that afflicts those who go dark. They had been waiting for the right moment. They drew me in and when the time was right, they pounced.”

Then Iris looks down at Briar and me. “I don’t know how they found you,” she explains. “I don’t know if it was a coincidence or if they knew where to look. But they came for you, too. There was nothing you could have done to stop it.”

“But Iris,” Mom says thoughtfully. “Why? What do they want with all of us?”

“It’s not us that they want.” Iris shakes her head and looks down at her hands. “It’s something here.” She looks all around the kitchen. “On this land handed down from first-firsts. Something that they believe will cure Hyacinth.”

“Ahhh,” says Mama Ivy from her rocking chair. “Now this is beginning to make some sense.” Then she laughs softly. “I should have guessed, but I’m getting too old and feeble, I suppose.”

“What is it, Grandmother Ivy?” Fawna asks.

Ivy shakes her head. “Not something I can reveal to everyone, I’m afraid,” she says. “Only first-firsts may know.”

All but the first-firsts leave Mama Ivy’s kitchen, including Briar and me. Though we protest and try to argue that we deserve to know what’s going on since we’re the ones who found the fox, Grandma Fawna tells us firmly to leave and we do. When we come back out to the clearing, the little ones have been sent to bed. I see my older cousins sitting around the slowly dying bonfire to play games. The uncles are gathered at the edge of the woods to strum their guitars, drink hot cider, and tell hunting stories.

Briar and I join our cousins by the fire, but we’re not much interested in their games and stories. We huddle together on a pallet with thick blankets over us. Since there are so many people here, most of us will sleep outside near the fires tonight. The snow has stopped for now, and for the first time lying here, I feel the exhaustion of the past two days settling into my body. “What do you think they’re talking about?” I ask Briar as we gaze at Mama Ivy’s house where the first-firsts’ walking sticks have been arranged in Xs across the door, barring any entry.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But if whatever Clay and Dawn want is in that house, it will be up to your sister to protect it soon.”

 

I wake to a faint purple sky with a few morning stars blinking down at me. The sun’s not yet up but the moon has gone to bed. Tomorrow a new year will start in Alverland, though in Brooklyn, there’s still ten days until New Year’s Eve. I stretch and sit up, pushing the blankets back. Briar and many of my other cousins snooze around me. I’m thirsty and I have to pee, so I slip out of the pallet and head toward Ivy’s house.

The walking sticks have been moved, and clearly the first-firsts have finished their meeting. I knock softly. When there’s no answer, I tiptoe into the big, empty kitchen. Only a few embers smolder in the cold hearth, but the room is still warm from all the activity into the wee hours of this morning. After I go to the bathroom, I help myself to water and find some leftover slices of bread and cold roasted chestnuts in the kitchen cupboard.

As I sit down at the long table to eat my snack, Willow comes to the kitchen door. Her hair is wild down around her shoulders. Her eyes are pink-rimmed and the delicate edges of her nostrils are raw. “Oh Zeph,” she says, and flings herself at me, tears streaming down her face.

I catch her in my arms. “What happened? What is it?” I ask, stroking her hair. “Is it Ivy?”

Willow looks up at me. “They want me to take over Mama Ivy’s house now.”

I smile, despite how upset she is. “But Willow, that’s great, isn’t it? Don’t you want to?”

She pulls back and wipes her sleeve across her nose as she settles into a chair next to me. “I don’t know if I’m ready. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to protect”—she stops and motions all around—“
this
from the dark elves.”

I lean forward and whisper. “What is it, Willow? What are they after?”

She shakes her head. “Can’t tell.”

I roll my eyes and slump back. “Yeah, yeah,” I say, annoyed. “First-firsts only.”

“Hey,” Willow says. “I’d gladly trade you. I don’t want all this responsibility. I didn’t ask for it. Sleet and hailstones, Zephyr, I don’t even know if I can handle it with Mom and Fawna off in Brooklyn taking care of all you guys. You always make fun of me for being traditional and sticking around Alverland, but what else am I supposed to do? I was born first. You weren’t!”

Now I feel like a big jerk. “Sorry, Willy,” I say. “Maybe if I knew what Clay and Dawn want, I could help you protect it so you wouldn’t feel so much pressure, because this is my fault.”