The Witches of Merribay (The Seaforth Chronicles) (17 page)

“What would she need a coffin for?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder, “Besides, you wouldn't have dug her up had you known she was alive
. Now let's get to work.”

Izadora wrapped the yellow ribbon around the rolling pin
. When it was perfectly aligned, the letters formed into words.

“Aha! First I must take
seven hairs from a real maiden's head—one with a pure soul. That would be you. Come closer.”

Stupified, I said, “Me
? Are you sure?”

“Of course I am sure
. It says so on the ribbon. Why do you think Izaill buried the ribbon with Mother? He knew I couldn't get to it. Then he placed the rolling pin in Magella's boat. He knew I couldn't go there to get it myself. You are the maiden the yellow ribbon speaks of.” She took me by the arm and drew me closer. “Bend your head down.”

I slowly bent my head down so she could pull out the seven hairs
. Each one that she pulled out stung my head.

“Ouch!”

“Only one more to go.” She pulled the last hair out, to my relief. My head smarted, I reached up and rubbed the spot she'd removed hairs from.

“Now I need”
—she read the yellow ribbon under her breath—“one fingernail clipping from a male elf.”

I stood there staring at the yellow ribbon
. “Did you say a male
elf?
”

“Of course I did. Where is the boy
? Where is Drumm?”

“He's outside with the dogs
. How would he know where to find a male elf?” I asked.

“Fetch him for me.”

Leaving the house, I jogged along the bridges until I saw the top of Drumm's head. He stood among the purple flowers, throwing sticks for the dogs.

I called for him
. He ran up the stairs, and when he reached me, he said in his weird accent,  “What would you like?”

“I think Izadora has lost her mind.”

“Ha-ha! That's nothing new. What does she want?”

“Izadora just said, or at least I think she said, she needed a fingernail clipping from a male elf
. And then she told me to get you.”

“Oh did she, now
? Well, let's get in there then.” He looked at me with his shining turquoise eyes. “My nails are getting kind of long.”

“What are you saying
? You…you…you—”

“Are an elf
. A light elf. You haven't figured that one out for yourself yet?”

He knew that I didn't know
. “How could I possibly know?” I said.

“The pointed ears
…the speeds that I can run—that didn't clue you in? The arrows I carry on my back? The silver bow? None of that made you wonder?”

“I thought
…I just thought you were weird. That's all.” I nervously twirled my hair in my fingers. “You mean to say elves are…real?”

“Of course
. And what do you mean ‘weird’? You are one to speak.” He laughed. “Just take a look at your own ears. What did they do to them?”

Both of my hands reached up to grab the tops of my ears
. The scarring was rough to the touch. “I fell from a tree. They were scuffed.”

“
Hmm. Scuffed, you say?”

Before I could reply, Izadora yelled out, “What is the holdup
? Get in here.”

He turned and walked away, his muscular back disappearing from sight
. After a few moments, I followed. How could elves possibly be real? And what did my ears have to do with anything? They had always been this way, from the time I was a child. I don't remember them being any different.

I walked in to see Izadora cutting the tip of Drumm's pointer fingernail with a gold knife
. “Hold still, so that I don't cut you.”

He glanced at me
. He surely was an exotic fellow, with those eyes and the full lips. I always assumed he was just different, but I didn't know just how different he was.

“Ivy here doesn't know about her ears
,” he informed Izadora.

She had finished slicing a nail off and threw it into a wooden bowl, along with my seven hairs.

“I know she doesn't. We shall fix them when I am done here,” Izadora said.

“Fix them?
” I grabbed my ears again, and held on. It never really made sense that I had fallen and scraped the tops of my ears off. I knew that. All of my life I had just assumed that when I was born, my father had plastic surgery done to correct some sort of deformity of my ears. I had accepted that I had deformed ears. So what? But what did that have to do with Drumm and elves and bows and arrows? And, oh my God, he was an elf? A real elf?

They both had their eyes on me for a moment
, and then Izadora poured flour from a canister into a wooden bowl. Then she poured in yeast, salt, and a red liquid from a vial. She walked into the living room, took three things from three different bottles, and returned to the kitchen, dropping them in the bowl.

“You must know the truth
. Do you not?” Izadora began to stir the contents of the bowl. “You must know what you are. You have no clue?”

My gut sank
. I wasn't stupid but more in denial of what they were trying to tell me. “You are trying to tell me…” I looked Izadora in the eyes, and then I turned to look Drumm in the eyes. “You're telling me that I am an…”

I couldn't finish my sentence
, and so Drumm and Izadora did it simultaneously. “An elf.”

I laughed then
; I laughed quite hard. When would I wake up from this dream? I began speaking my thoughts aloud. “I had come up to Maine to visit my grandmother, just wanting a pleasant visit while my father went on a hunting trip. He ends up lost or stolen, which is so unrealistic to begin with. I then meet Ian, who sends me out to meet Izadora, who sends me on a mission to steal a rolling pin from her crazy sister, who then threatens my very life. Then I am told that I must dig up the grave of Izadora's mother to retrieve a yellow ribbon. The old woman, Aggie, who is buried alive then tells me to find Montague to finish undoing the spell that she is under.” I found myself pacing the floor, but I continued to babble my thoughts aloud. “My sister is under some sort of obligation to Magella, and I don't even know if she can be helped. There is an even crazier old man on the loose who is called Izaill, brother to the other crazies.” I paused to scratch my head. “To top everything off, I get sprayed by a skunk tonight, and I find out that I'm an elf.”

Both Izadora and Drumm decide to laugh at this point of the conversation that I was having with myself, snapping me back to reality.
I thought that I was so far dispatched from reality, when what was real was right in front of me. I couldn't choose what was real and what wasn't. I just had to accept it. “What's so funny?”

“You are beside yourself with this news, I see.
” Izadora cackled.

“Well
, I am going to need some proof. Some real proof that I am an elf.” I stopped pacing and stood with my arms folded over my chest. I tapped my foot and waited impatiently. “It is easy for me to accept that you are some sort of magical person or witch, whichever you are, but it is not so easy to accept that I am what you call an elf.”

Izadora stopped stirring the mixture, handing Drumm the wooden spoon
. “Stir this.” She disappeared into the next room, returning with a jar of which the contents I couldn't tell. Taking the cover off, she dipped two fingers into the jar, pulling out a white salve. “Stand still.” She placed the salve on either side of my head, rubbing the contents into my ears. “Once you were whole. When they took your ears, they took a part of you. I now return to you what was taken, making you once again whole. By the name of the earth, the air, the water, and fire.”

I felt my ears start to burn and itch so
much so that I thought I'd go mad. I tried to reach up and rub them, but Izadora held my arms down. Moments later, as the room began to spin, I felt something pop out of the tops of my ears. The burning sensation stopped. I sank to the floor, trying to gain my bearings.

After I had caught my breath and the room stopped spinning, I reached up with shaking hands to touch the tops of my ears
. They felt different.
The tops were pointed. I l
ooked to Drumm, then at his ears. They were regular ears, tapering off to a point. I hated to admit it, but I liked his ears. It was a good thing, to like his ears, because I knew that mine were now the same.

***

“You two have to bathe, you're killing me. Go downstream, quickly, and come right back. We'll have a good talk about things. Now, hurry.” Izadora handed Drumm soap and tomato juice. “This lilac soap I made personally. It will work, trust me.”

We walked along the brook next
to Izadora's tree house, about a quarter of a mile downstream. We found a stone bridge and, on the opposite side where the water ran through, a pool of water to bathe in. The dogs came along, wanting to play chase the stick.

“Here
, take the tomato juice and soap. You bathe first. I'll wait up here. And don't worry, I won't look,” Drumm said, throwing a stick for the dogs, who barked loudly and ran off tackling one another.

I knew that if Drumm said he wouldn't look
, then he wouldn't look. He wasn't like anyone I'd ever met, and I deemed him trustworthy. I stripped down to my bra and underwear, splashed into the water, and washed my hair with the tomato juice; according to Izadora, it would take the smell out. Then I used the lilac soap she had made personally, and by the time I was done, I couldn't smell the skunk spray at all.

“I left cloth
es by the rocks,” he yelled over his shoulder.

I rinsed my cloth
es and laid them over a branch. Dripping, I got out to put on the clothes he'd left me. They were some of his clothes. I had to doubt they'd fit me, but my other clothes were soaking wet. I picked up a pair of green-gray colored shorts and put them on. Sure enough, they fit for the reason that they conformed right to my body. I put the brown tank top on, with the same result.

“How do they fit so good?
” I asked. “You can turn around.”

He turned and grinned
. “They are eleven hunting clothing. Whoever puts them on, they will shrink or expand to fit.”

“I thought you wore robes and stuff.”

“Ha! Only sometimes,” he said.

“We really are elves?
”

“We really are.”

“I have so many questions then.”

“Just get back to the house
, and we'll talk about it then,” he said.

I unpinned the silver rose broach and stuck it in my pocket
. My life seemed so different now. I didn't really know how to except all of this; in fact, I believed that I was still in some sort of shock.

“Go ahead and go back
. I'll only be a minute.”

I grabbed my wet clothing from the tree branches and dropped my shorts
. Both of us bent down to pick them up, and we bumped heads. “Ouch,” we both said. I had never seen him so close up before. His skin was smooth and beautiful; his big broad smile was so perfect; his eyes were so otherworldly. I swallowed hard, hoping that he didn't notice.

He stood first
. “I'll be only a minute.” He took off his shirt, showing his sinewy back muscles, and walked into the water.

I booked it back to Izadora's,
with one of the dogs in tow. I couldn't stand around there acting like a fool. I hoped that he hadn't noticed my reaction.

I could run fast now
—faster than any human ever should be able to. And yet as I sat on the steps waiting for Drumm, I knew that I wasn't only human, now was I?

Chapter
Eighteen

We sat at the outdoor table for tea and scones. “You said that when they took my ears, they took a part of me. Who were you referring to?” I asked Izadora.

“Your grandmother
. Your father. They didn't want you to know. They had them cut. But when you cut an elf’s ears, they never heal. They will scar, but they will never heal. You were not but a young child when they did this. They wanted it done before you went to school. You won't remember the surgery. They even gave you a tea to help you forget.”

“What tea did they give me?”

“A special tea. With special herbs to help you forget,” Izadora said.

“How do you know all of this?”

“It was I that made that tea for them.”

My mouth dropped
. “You?”

“They came to me for help
. I didn't agree with their choice to shelter you, but they convinced me that it was for the best. I knew you'd be back. And here you are. I've fixed you.”

I scrunched my face up in disapproval.

“Don't look at me that way. I've undone what I helped do.”

“Do you have a mirror?”

Drumm left the table, went inside, and returned with a silver hand mirror. Handing it to me, he said, “Your eyes may appear different as well.”

He wasn't kidding
. When I held up the mirror to look at my ears, my eyes popped out at me. They were a more vibrant green and almost unnatural, but clearly to me, they were natural. Also, it was almost as if I could see better, clearer. I was beautiful.

“Who would have thought having one
’s ears repaired could entail other changes to the body?” I asked them.

“Indeed
. You may run faster too,” Izadora said.

“I already know
,” I said, remembering the run back from the bath.

“We'll see who can run the fastest now
. I have been holding back—way back.” Drumm smiled and shook his head.

I stood up and walked over by the plants to look out at the other trees. The wind had picked up
, and a nice cool breeze ruffled my hair. The smell of lilacs and mint wafted in the air. For as far as I could see, there were other trees with more bridges. I had no idea where they all led to. Leaning on the railing, I said, “Is that why my legs feel so much energy if I don't run every evening?”

“Yes
,” they both said at once. They remained seated at the table.

“The need to run is an elven trait
. We run. We run with the wild horses…Well, we ride them too, but we have a need to run. Our history is filled with battles we have won for our speed,” Drumm said.

“Battles?
” I asked.

“Another time
. I will explain that another time. Right now, I think you may have a more pressing question,” Drumm said.

It was true
. The question I needed to ask was about to change my life forever. I didn't understand though, as I looked so much like my father. “My parents aren't my real parents, are they? Can you tell me who they are?” I turned to look at their expressions. I read nothing in their faces. Izadora spoke first.

“Your father is your real father, dear
. It's your mother. You and Zinnia have different mothers.”

I turned away from them so they couldn't see my reaction
.

After all I had heard today, this piece of news came as a real shock
. I contemplated Izadora's words for a few minutes. I had never known my mother; I was told that she died shortly after I was born. Zinnia told me that she hardly remembered anything about her. I had seen pictures, but I would be the first to admit that I'd never felt any connection to her. I'd held my parents’ wedding photo countless times, staring into the eyes of the woman that I thought was my mother. She had been beautiful with her dark hair and blue eyes, small, perfect nose, and high cheekbones. Zinnia resembled her more than I did. I had wondered why my hair could be so blonde and my jaw square, so unlike Zinnia. My eyes were bigger. But it had to be the blonde hair that threw me off. My father's hair is the same color brown as Zinnia's. The only other person in my entire family with blonde hair was Aunt Clover, and that came from a bottle. Feelings of being different had haunted me.

This wasn't the first time that I'd heard such a thing
. She had been right. Magella had been right. Memories flooded my mind to when Zinnia and I sat on Magella's houseboat. There we were again, sitting on the light blue love seat, with Magella before us and the rune stones laid across the table. She had said to my sister, “Give me your hand, and don't take lightly what I'm about to say. I don't cater to the faint of heart.”

Magella had leaned in to peer at the stones and paused to examine my sister's palm
. Her face sagged, and her mole eyes opened up wide. “You are not who you think you are,” she said to my sister.

Grabbing my hand, she pulled me forward so I leaned over the table
. “And you mystify me.” She released our hands. Looking at the rune stones, she said, “You have similar but different lineage lines, that I can tell you. You are not who you think you are.” She looked at us menacingly. “But you share a common tie…and that tie will be taken from you. Your father will go missing. Whether he returns will be up to you.”

“Ivy.
” Izadora hauled me back to the present.

I hadn't realized I was holding my breath
, and I let out a long sigh. “Yes?”

“What are you thinking about?
” she asked.

I took a moment to gather my thoughts
; I hadn't believed Magella. I believed what she said to be the ramblings of a senile old woman, but Zinnia had believed her. That is what had caused us to pull apart—more so on her end.

“Nothing
. Just that…that means my real mother is still alive then,” I stated and turned to see their faces.

“Indeed she is
,” Izadora said. Drumm nodded his head up and down.

I continued to stare at them for answers
. Finally Izadora cleared her throat and spoke. “After your mother died—let me correct myself—after
Zinnia's
mother died, your father was distraught. He came up to Maine for solace. Your grandmother would take care of Zinnia while he roamed the woods for hours upon hours. He loved the woods, and it became his only escape from the pain he felt.” She took a sip of tea and continued. “After about three months of traipsing the woods, he met a beautiful elf woman. They fell in love and he went away with her.” She stopped to bite into her scone.

“First of all, how do you know all of this?
” I asked. It was hard for me to believe what she was telling me.

She reached down beside her chair and hauled up a basket to the table
. Inside, something was covered in a cloth. She removed the cloth to show a blue bottle.

“This may seem cliché to you, but I have the sight sometimes
. With this bottle, I see the goings-on of the forest. Sometimes it's clear as day, other times it's as though I am looking through a fog. However, it's my blue bottle, and it's how I see things.”

“Ok
ay. So, then what happened to my father and this elf woman?”

“Your father did not return to your grandmother or Zinnia for quite some time
. Until he was forced to.” She stopped talking, drank her tea, and took another bite of scone.

I waited for her to continue
, and when she didn't I said, “And? What do you mean he was forced to return?” It was Drumm who spoke this time.

“The elven people frown upon their kind and human relationships
. When it came to King Alanir's attention of their romance, your father was banned. Your mother was taken to the castle and locked up. When word spread that she was with child, King Alanir told her she must bear the child and give the child to your father.” He paused for a moment, as though he didn't want to continue, but then he pressed on. “Anah-Lilli, your mother, reluctantly set out on a warm summer's evening during a full moon. She brought three other elven people, one who was her sister, to walk with her, and she carried you to the Seaforth wood line. There she stood while her sister brought you to the door. You were wrapped up in elven blankets made of leaves and spider-web thread, and placed in a basket made of twigs. She knocked and ran back to the wood line. It is said your mother watched as you were taken into the house. Afterward she could be heard for miles, wailing and weeping.” He stopped to let me register everything he'd said. He took a sip of his tea and waited. Izadora watched me, and I could feel the heat rising to my face.

“Why would King Alanir make her give away the child
? Um, I mean, me?”

Drumm and Izadora exchanged looks.

“His daughter had to set the example for the other elven people,” Izadora said.

Further stunned, I grabbed the railing for support
. “King Alanir…his daughter—my mother—is an elven princess?”

“She is
,” Drumm simply stated.

Suddenly it was all too much
information for me to handle at once. I don't know why I did it, but I turn and ran. I could hear Izadora yell out, “You must tell her the rest!” And I could hear Drumm running behind me. The board planks bounced each time a foot fell upon it. I flew over the bridges and down the stairs at a speed that exhilarated me. Once my feet hit the ground, I took off at a speed so great that I felt free, free from the weight of this new knowledge. How could any of this be true? And yet I knew in my heart that it was.

A vision of the past played out before my eyes
. I had dreamt several times of a woman in a silver and blue gown underneath a big yew tree, the full moon glowing in the sky. I hadn't seen her face, but I'd seen her long blonde hair. She had meant something to me. I never understood how or why, but she had meant something to me.

I could hear Drumm's feet pounding the earth as he followed me
. The sun shone through parts of the thick canopy of tree limbs, causing it to look like rays. I ran for a few miles before I abruptly stopped at a crossroad. He stopped and stood beside me. “Let's go to the field,” Drumm said. He took off running, and I followed.

We walked through the green tree branches into the open field
. He continued to walk to the white bridge that we'd been to when I'd seen Zinnia become united with a Fae. We walked through hundreds of wildflowers, and I stopped briefly to pick a white daisy. I continued walking on, as thoughts of the past flooded my mind. I remembered myself as a girl picking the petals off one by one. I proceeded to do so. We had reached the bridge.

“You remember when I told you that your grandmother and father thought it would be best for you to forget your childhood?”

“I remember you telling me that. I must have chosen to forget.” As I said that, I realized what had happened. Izadora had mentioned giving me a tea to forget my elven ears. A forgetting tea. That was the next thing out of Drumm's mouth.

“The tea
. They gave you the tea and told you not to remember.” He looked at me solemnly.

“But why would they do that?”

“They thought it best for you to forget.”

“Like what?
” I couldn't possibly imagine what I had forgotten now. I mean, what could he say that would possibly mean anything to me? I had already learned enough.

“Like your guardian.
” He looked me in the eyes. “King Alnir had a change of heart after he sent you away. He sent my family and I here to live for a time. Your father would bring you here to play with me. We grew close, you and I. After you moved to New Hampshire, my family went home but I stayed, knowing you'd return someday. I knew you'd be back. And I would guard you with my life. No harm will ever come to you. I…”

I stood dumbfounded
. What was he trying to tell me?

“We have a tie
, you and I. In the elven way of life, there is such a thing as soul matching. When your soul color, which shows in the color of your aura, matches one another, you are meant to be.”

“What
? Meant to be what?” I prodded him to answer.

“Together.
” He cleared his throat and turned to look at the sky.

“You're trying to tell me that
…you and me…we are soul mates?”

Turning he said, “That's what I said
. And when you left, even though you were young, it saddened me greatly.”

“What color aura do I have?
” This was interesting stuff. “Or what color do we have?”

He looked around my head as though he were searching out something. “White with green-blue waves
. I mean, lots of elves have similar colors, but ours is exactly the same. In elven tradition, they believe that means you are from the same soul, but who knows really?”

“So, you're saying we are supposed to be, what
? Together?” I couldn't help but laugh. This sounded ridiculous, and I could hardly fathom what he was telling me.