by Dorothy Winsor
in Issue 108, January 2021
Alitha leaned over to pick up the water bucket, then struggled erect, hand on her belly. The baby was kicking again. “Soon, sweetheart,” she murmured and stepped outside into the clearing Taemas had cut to build their cabin. Beyond it, the trees of the Wildlands loomed with the night already snared in their branches. Not that sunlight ever penetrated very far among them. They grew so thickly, she couldn’t go more than a few yards without tripping. Alitha shivered. Even gathering firewood, she always went a different, less hostile way.
She lumbered toward the spring, her head turned away from the woods and in the direction from which Taemas would come. She had no right to expect him for another day or two, but she couldn’t help wishing he’d emerge from between the trees, leading the mule with her mother on its back.
“Mistress?”
She whirled. A tall, hooded man stood close behind her, a bow clutched in one hand. In the shadow of his hood, she couldn’t see his face. Her heart thudded. “You startled me,” she said, then heard how faint her voice was and swallowed.
“Your man is near?” He examined the cabin, as if he might see through its walls.
She hesitated for the smallest instant before saying, “Of course. He’s hunting. I expect him any moment.”
He tilted his head, considering her. The glow of the setting sun seemed to seek his face inside his hood, showing elegant cheekbones but not much else. He tapped his bow against his thigh. “You shouldn’t be here, Mistress.”
The arrogance of his tone made her hackles rise. “Not be here?”
“You cut trees to clear this space. Surely you feel them trying to push you out again.”
Alitha opened her mouth to argue and instead sucked in her breath, clapped her free hand to her back, and bent forward.
“What is it? Are you ill?” The man grabbed the bucket. “You’re not…?”
The pain eased. “No. Not for another month. My back’s just protesting the extra weight.”
His breath hissed out. “Good. That would be…unfortunate,” he muttered, evidently to himself.
A robin’s song pierced the evening air. The man jerked as if he’d touched fire. He flung the bucket aside and had an arrow on the string before she had time to blink. “Inside!” He swept his arrow along the darkening line of trees. “Go!”
She ran for the door, with him backing rapidly in her wake. His bowstring twanged twice, and she heard the whistle of arrows. Inside, he lunged toward the window, banged one of the shutters to, and closed the other far enough to leave only a hand span to peer through.
By the dim light of the central hearth, she saw a red splotch spreading down his leg. “You’re hurt.” She started toward him.
“Stay back!”
An arrow thudded into the shutter. She stared at its quivering end, just visible through the space the stranger had left, then groped behind her for the three-legged stool, and sank down to put her head between her knees, straining over the bulk of her pregnancy.
Another thud. The repeated hum of a bowstring. Men’s voices shouting. The man leaned forward, eyes narrowed against the dark now crowding the window. “Open the door!” he flung over his shoulder.
She struggled to her feet and heaved at the bar on the door. It burst open, knocking her aside with a painful bang to her shoulder. Two figures whirled into the room. The taller of them shoved the door shut again and crashed the bar into its bracket. He ran toward the injured man at the window, bent to examine his bloody leg, and beckoned to the third person, who, she now saw, was only a boy of twelve or so. Unlike the other two, he was bare headed. She blinked. His hair was the color of pale spring grass. He darted toward the window, making that greenish hair swing aside and giving her a glimpse of a pointed ear.
A childhood rhyme flashed in her head:
Green in spring,
Summer gold,
Red in the autumn,
Dark in the cold.
Dizziness swept over her. I’m imagining this, she thought. I’m frightened and pregnant and I’m hallucinating.
The newcomer barked something incomprehensible at the man in the window, who shot one last arrow and pushed himself away from the wall. The other man jumped to take his place, bow at the ready. The wounded one stumbled and grabbed for the boy’s shoulder, sending him staggering under the weight.
“Here.” Alitha took the bow from the wounded man’s hand and helped steady him as he hopped the few yards across the room to the pallet. The still-green-haired boy slipped off the other’s pack and unbuckled his quiver. When he did, he knocked the wounded one’s hood askew, showing a shock of the same green hair.
Alitha swayed, then took a steadying breath. “What are you?”
Frowning, the boy opened his mouth, but the wounded one put up a hand to stop him. “What do you think we are?”
“Judging by the old stories, you’re…” She hesitated, the word tasting strange in her mouth. “You’re elves.”
“Is there something wrong with that?” the boy asked, chin thrust out. His face was bruised, she realized. Someone had slapped him around.
“There’s a lot wrong, starting with it can’t be true.”
“And yet, here we are,” the…elf in the window said.
“Can you stitch my leg, Mistress?” the wounded one asked. The bloodstain on his leggings was still growing. Elf or man, she decided, he needed help.
“I can try,” she said.
“If she can’t, I could take Loris’s place at the window,” the boy said. “Then he could do it.”
The elf in the window—Loris–snorted. “Come near this window, and I’ll tell Father how far away from home you were when Tanyl and his thugs caught you.”
“You said you wouldn’t!”
“Elves lie,” Loris said. “Did no one ever tell you that?” He smiled sardonically at Alitha as if he knew that someone had told her that for sure. Under his gaze, she flushed, remembering another childhood chant:
Elves steal children.
Elves are cruel.
Elves will lie
And play the fool.
She glanced again at the boy’s bruised face. Had the other two done that?
“Get the healing kit from Kellam’s pack,” Loris told the boy. So the wounded one was Kellam.
Scowling, the boy pawed through the pack and drew out a leather pouch. Alitha reached to take it, then stopped with a cry, grabbing her back.
All three pale green heads flicked in her direction.
“I’m all right.” She forced the words out. “Give me a moment.” Slowly, the pain receded. She dropped to her knees. The boy squatted beside her and opened the pouch.
“We have herbs to stop the bleeding and purify the wound.” He showed her the packet, wrapped in waxed cloth. “And we have a curved needle and thread and bandaging.”
She nodded, then asked Kellam, “May I borrow your knife?” He hesitated.
Annoyed, she said, “I have to cut your leggings away. You think I’d use it on you? Humans aren’t cruel like that.”
Kellam raised an eyebrow. “No? Ask him.” He nodded toward the boy but surrendered his knife.
She cut the leggings away carefully. The wound wasn’t deep, but it was long and ragged and would heal better for being stitched. She threaded the needle, hesitated with it hovering over Kellam’s thigh, and took the first stitch.
He immediately began speaking in clipped syllables, using what must be his own language and apparently addressing Loris. He sounded put out.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it must hurt.”
“He’s not talking about you,” the boy said. “He’s carrying on because he told Loris to take me home while he came here to tell you off for killing trees. But of course, we stayed to keep an eye on him. Tanyl is following us, and he’s terrible.”
“Tanyl grabbed you?” Alitha asked. “Is that right?”
“He hit me. He put me in a cage.”
Aware of Kellam waiting for her response, she took the last, neat stitch, then made the herb paste, spread it, and wrapped the wound in a strip of clean bandaging. “Why did he do that?”
“Why do you think?” Kellam asked. “What do people outside the woods want only and always?”
“He charged people money to look at me.” The boy flushed beneath his bruises, telling her plainly how humiliating he’d found the situation.
A wave of back pain forced a cry out of her. She braced her hands on the floor for a long moment before she felt able to sit back on her heels.
From the window, Loris said, “You hear that, brother?”
“Yes,” Kellam said, voice tense. “But she says not.”
“It would be poor return for sheltering here,” Loris said
“I promised my husband I wouldn’t overdo while he was away,” Alitha said. “He’s not going to be pleased with me. I’m sorry about Tanyl,” she added to the boy. “I was always told it was elves who stole human children.”
The boy frowned. “Steal them? Why would we do that? When they come, it’s because they want to live in the woods.”
She thought of the trees, huddled together, holding her out, and shuddered.
“Hush, Jolen.” Kellam turned to her. “You said your man was nearby. I take it that’s untrue.”
She struggled to remember why she’d lied to the elf. At the moment, he and Loris seemed like protectors, maybe because they were clearly rescuing the boy. “He’s in Harborton.”
Kellam rubbed his jaw, then looked at Loris. “Any sign of Tanyl?”
“No,” Loris said. “You wounded one of them. Maybe they thought better of it.” He tipped his head toward Alitha without looking at her. “If we don’t want to interfere here, we could take the chance to go.”
Interfere? Alitha wondered. What did that mean?
“They won’t leave without a prize.” Kellam’s face was grim. “If we get away, they’ll come after Mistress Alitha. Besides, I won’t leave scum like Tanyl loose near the Wildlands.” Kellam bit off each word. “I want them gone.”
A shiver ran down Alitha’s spine. She suspected that by “gone,” Kellam meant something less like moved elsewhere, and more like wiped off the face of the earth.
The boy—Jolen?–narrowed his eyes. “We see better than they do in the dark. We should slip out and sneak up on them and kill them.”
Alitha’s alarm deepened at the wild-animal way even Jolen talked about killing. Had she made a mistake to trust them? Elves are cruel, whispered a voice in her head.
Loris spoke slowly. “I could probably move past them in the dark and fetch help.”
Kellam’s brows drew down. “I suppose that’s our best alternative.” His eyes slid toward the boy, and Alitha could almost hear his thoughts. If Loris left, there would be only him, the boy, and her. Not a promising lot given that one was wounded, one was green as his hair, and the other was a very pregnant woman with a nagging backache. “Take Jolen with you,” Kellam said.
The boy whirled to face him. “I won’t leave you here, helpless like this. You can’t make me.”
“You’ll go if I tell you to. You’re still young, and you’ve been out of the woods for too long already. You feel the pull, right? If you don’t answer, that ache will destroy you.”
“I’m sorry to say it,” Loris said, “but I’ll be faster without him. And I’ll almost certainly be back with help before daylight, so he’s safer here.”
“All right,” Kellam said grudgingly. “The rest of the search party can’t be far away. See what the trees have to tell you.”
Alitha felt as if she were listening to crazy talk.
Kellam heaved himself up to sit carefully on his uninjured left hip. “Help me to the window.
“You don’t have to get up.” Jolen sounded indignant. “I want a chance to shoot Tanyl.”
Ignoring him, Kellam reached for Loris who helped him to settle one hip on a bench at the window, then handed him his bow and quiver. Armed, he seemed to change right in front of her, all need for help falling away, leaving him, Alitha thought, looking predatory. She laid her hands protectively over her belly.
With a final nod to her, Loris slid out the door and was gone. Jolen went to stand behind Kellam, echoing his watchful manner.
She paced the room. Through the shutters drifted the croaking of tree frogs and the hoot of an owl. Wind rustled the branches of the oak sheltering the hut, and Alitha could hear the burbling of the spring, the familiar sounds she and Taemas had made space for when they cut back the woods, sounds she’d pictured lulling their child to sleep. Had they been careless to come so close to the Wildlands? From the shadows, she studied the two elves. Their stillness unnerved her. Kellam clutched death in his bow hand. Even the boy never talked of mercy. They were hunters, waiting for their prey.
She rested her hand on her belly, where the muscles tightened again. The tension in them knotted into a cramp that made her grab at the table for support. Despite herself, she groaned. A trickle of warm fluid ran down the inside of her thigh. No, she thought. It’s not possible. It’s next month, not this one. She looked from one alien presence to the other. Her laugh sounded hysterical even to her own ears.
“I was mistaken,” she said. “The baby is coming.”
Jolen’s eyes rounded. “Now?”
She saw the lift of Kellam’s shoulders as he flinched from the news. For a long moment, none of them spoke. Eyes still on the window, Kellam asked, “How soon? Will it wait until your man comes?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “This is my first.”
Another long silence unfolded. “Kellam?” Jolen squeaked.
Kellam sighed. “It can’t be helped. Keep watch while I help them.”
Pain seized Alitha in its jaws. When it loosed her from its grip again, she found Kellam waiting.
“I’m sorry, Mistress. Truly I am. If you’re willing, we can learn how far things have gone.”
“You shouldn’t apologize for helping.” She moved toward the table, ready to heave herself up onto it, but Kellam raised a hand to stop her He laid his palm over her belly. He closed his eyes, his lips moving silently. The baby fell quiet, then fluttered like a bird winging home. Kellam took his hand away. “He’s not ready yet. Would you like to walk?”
“’He’?”She could only nod. What had the elf just done?
“Jolen, come here and support her as she walks.” He hunched his shoulders as he took the boy’s place at the window. He looked almost ashamed, though she couldn’t imagine why. She put her hand on Jolen’s shoulder, and the two of them paced the cabin.
Jolen gave her an anxious look. “Is the baby a boy or a girl?”
“Your brother seems to think it’s a boy.”
“Don’t you know?”
“No. Do elves know ahead of time?”
“When my friend Marin’s mother had his little brother, she knew and so did his father because they talked to the baby like Kellam did with yours. After the baby was born, he cried until they talked to him again. That or they put his cradle under the trees.”
“I gather you ran away,” she said. “That’s why you’re in trouble.”
“I didn’t run away really. I just wanted to see how things were outside the woods.”
Kellam spoke from the window. “Now you’ve seen. Are you satisfied?”
“I guess.” He brightened. “We met Mistress Alitha, and we’ll be able to see her baby.”
Kellam’s stony face set even harder.
The night wore on. Finally, the pains came so close together, she spent more time clinging to Jolen than walking. She stopped him and spoke to Kellam. “I think it’s time.”
“Jolen, put the stool near the end of the table,” Kellam said. “Also, get the clean tunic from my pack and spread it on the end of the table.” When Jolen had finished, Kellam rose. He scrubbed a hand through that green hair, looking almost helpless before the circumstances. Well, that made two of them. He handed his bow and quiver to the pleased looking boy. He sank onto the stool, and she heaved herself up on the table.
“The trees are waking up,” Jolen said from the window, sounding surprised. “It’s growing light. Do you think Loris will be back soon?”
“Any moment now.” Kellam spoke calmly enough, but Alitha had felt the slight pause before he answered.
“Someone’s coming,” Jolen said. “Kellam, men are creeping toward us from among the trees!” He put an arrow to Kellam’s bowstring and struggled to draw it.
Through a haze of pain and effort, Alitha took in a swirl of noise—men’s voices, the whine of an arrow, a yelp of pain. She heard Kellam’s deep voice alternating with Jolen’s boyish one, like singers at a fair.
“Close the shutters.”
That was Kellam.
“I want to shoot at least one of them!”
That was Jolen.
“Close them! Do it now! Elves are out there too.”
“But I can help!”
“Do what I say!”
The shutters banged, and she turned her head, panting, to see Jolen with his nose pressed to the crack between them. Something thudded into the shutter, making him jump.
“Get away from that window!” Kellam cried. “Get the rabbit skins Mistress Alitha showed us, and also a bowstring. Cut the string in half.” Kellam turned to her, still issuing orders. “One more push, Mistress.”
She pushed.
He grabbed, swiped quickly with the sleeve of the tunic beneath her hips, and then lifted a squirming, red bundle of tiny arms and legs. “Your son, Mistress.”
He lowered the baby into the wrapper of rabbit skins she had sown by lamplight in the dark winter when this had all seemed so far away, like a story that would never come true. Kellam tied the bowstring around both ends of the cord binding her and her son, and used the knife he had readied to cut the cord. She pulled the soft furs around her son and drew him toward her. Tears ran down her face. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
“I’m truly sorry,” Kellam said.
Before she could ask what he meant, someone banged on the door. “Kellam? Jolen?”
“Loris!” Jolen ran to unbar the door and Loris rushed in. “I thought Tanyl caught you too.”
“Tanyl is never going to catch an elf again,” Loris said grimly. His eyes went to Alitha. He raised an eyebrow. “What do you have there, Mistress?”
“She had her baby,” Jolen told him. “Kellam helped her.”
Loris spun to face Kellam. “He what?”
Pressing his mouth in a thin line, Kellam looked away. “Jolen, you’re talking too much.”
Loris eyed his brother. “It won’t matter if Jolen talks, will it?” he said. “It’s too late. That’s more fuel to keep the tale burning for another generation.”
“What would you have me do?” Kellam asked.
Loris flung up his hands. “That’s always the excuse.”
What did that mean? Alitha wondered. A sliver of fear slid into her heart. Elves are cruel. She pulled the blanket up over her son.
Another elf appeared in the doorway. “Loris finished off the one you wounded, Kellam. What do you want us to do with the others?”
Kellam glanced at Alitha, then held onto the other elf’s shoulder to go outside.
Loris leaned his hips against the table, blocking her view. Loris finished off one, echoed in Alitha’s head. And good for Loris, she thought fiercely.
Kellam limped back inside. “We need to leave. A man and woman are coming this way.”
Alitha’s heart leapt. “Taemas!”
“Move her to the pallet,” Kellam said. Loris scooped her and the baby up in one bundle and lowered them onto the bed.
Wincing, Kellam dropped to his good knee next to her. She caught his wrist. “Stay and let my husband thank you.”
“Loris is right. I’ve done enough damage already,” he whispered. He put a hand on her forehead, the same way he’d laid one on her laboring belly. His palm was warm. She felt herself relaxing. The sound of rustling leaves crept into her head.
“We should take him,” Jolen said. “You can see he wants to come.”
“We’re not kidnappers. We’re not Tanyl.”
The rustling drowned out their voices.
A hand shook her shoulder. “Alitha! Alitha! Wake up.”
She forced her eyes open to find Taemas bending over her. Behind him, her mother was jigging and cooing to the baby who was making fretful noises.
Taemas’s eyes were wide. “You had the baby all by yourself.”
She opened her mouth to say no but closed it, frowning. Had someone been there? The sound of leaves filled her head again. She couldn’t remember anyone. “I guess I did.”
“He’s beautiful,” her mother crowed, stating the obvious. “What’s his name?”
Before Taemas could give his dead father’s name, Alitha heard herself say, “Kellam.”
Her mother and Taemas both blinked at her. “What?” Taemas said.
“What kind of name is that?” Her mother’s mouth pinched.
Alitha reached out to claim her son. “A lovely one. It’s perfect for him.” She cradled the boy against her breast. “Perfect.”
“I don’t know why you want to live out here anyway.” Her mother gave an exaggerated shiver. “Those woods are dangerous.”
A thought came to Alitha as if a man spoke it in her ear. Take the baby and move away. Maybe he’ll be tame.
Just then the smell of green life flooded through the open window. Baby Kellam turned his head, blinked, and reached a tiny fist in the direction of the trees. Choking on unexplained panic, Alitha tucked the fist under the blanket. Baby Kellam opened his mouth and began to wail inconsolably.
©January 2021, Dorothy A. Winsor
Dorothy A. Winsor is a former tech writing professor who decided writing fantasy was much more fun, and possibly not all that different. She is the author of several YA fantasy novels, including The Trickster (Inspired Quill 2021), The Wysman (Inspired Quill 2020), and The Wind Reader (Inspired Quill 2018). Her work has appeared previously in Swords & Sorcery.