Close Kin (8 page)

Seylin surveyed the human with
growing disgust. "You'd have more money for food if you didn't drink away
what you get, and you'd earn more money if you weren't still drunk in the
mornings.
Jane loves magic. She'll be
thrilled to find out that her father is under
an enchantment." He concentrated for a minute and tapped the
human
on the shoulder. Then he picked up his herbs and walked to the door.

"Wait a
minute!" said the man, upset. "What did you just do?"

"That's an elf spell,"
Seylin told him, "to keep the human slaves out of the winter cider. Try
drinking anything but water now and
you'll
just throw it up. That should help you wake up in the morning."

He walked outside to retrieve his
dewy pack. The sky was
brightening in the
east, but he still had some time left. Seylin set out
at a steady pace. He would be miles away from
this depressing house
before the day broke in earnest.

"They're
eating me alive!" shrieked Emily, and she dropped the pack
to
scratch. She was standing on a hedge-lined road that ran between
flat
fields, water-logged and muddy with recent rainfall. Midges and
gnats whined past
her ears and danced before her eyes.

The scrawny gray squirrel on her
shoulder clung tightly to its perch and chattered with disapproval. "I
never heard such a fuss
over a few tiny
bugs!" it shrilled. "All this hysterical skipping about!
Your
sister would never do anything so undignified."

Kate and Ruby
had had only one unfriendly encounter, and that
had
happened before Kate became Marak's wife. Changed into a squirrel, Ruby had
taken a turn at guarding the King's Bride from
harm, and the furious Kate had chased her up a tree. But all was for
given
after the ceremony. Kate could do no wrong. After all, as
Ruby often remarked in reverent tones, the King's
Wife was an elf.

"Oh, I am
just so
sick
of hearing you talk about my sister!" cried
Emily.
"She had the same mother and father that I had! How can she be an elf and
be
perfect,
and I'm just a horrid human? Well? Answer me that!"

"It's a
dreadful misfortune," agreed the squirrel. "For all of us,"
it
added quietly.

"And how is it that you're supposed
to be protecting me and you're letting these things bite me by the dozen? I
can't wait to tell Marak how you've failed his trust."

"The King stressed that you were
to experience your world just
like a
regular human. Bugs belong to your world, and you're experiencing
them," Ruby replied with evident satisfaction.

"I'll tell Marak that you let me
be attacked by wild beasts," threatened Emily.

"A
midge is hardly a
wild beast."

"Then tame
one!"

The squirrel
chattered and grumbled for a few seconds. "All
right.
Goodness! Such a commotion over a few bites." And she worked the Insect
Spell. Silence reigned for a quarter of an hour as Emily squelched down the
muddy road.

"Now it's starting to rain
again! Ruby, why won't you work the Rain Spell? I'm already soaked to the
skin."

"I am not allowed to interfere
unless you are in danger. Comfort
,"
enunciated her former teacher, "does not belong to the human
world."

"Neither do
talking squirrels," said Emily viciously.

"I've had
enough," snapped the squirrel. "I'm going to find some
peace
and quiet. Scream if you really need my help, and I'll come save you." She
bounded from Emily's shoulder down to the road,
ran lightly across the top of the mud, and disappeared through a hole
in
the hedge.

Emily picked
her way along, studying the dark clouds overhead
and trying to keep up her spirits. They could hardly be
lower. Except
for his one
trading journey, she and Seylin had never been apart for
any
length of time. She remembered how miserable she had been while he was gone.
All the diversions of the goblin kingdom hadn't
been enough to replace him. He had come back stiff and formal, and
she had been angry about it, but she had still
seen his embarrassed face
at least once a day. She had assumed that she
always would.

Now
she hadn't seen him in weeks, and she missed him dreadfully,
more than she had ever missed anyone. She had to find him
again. She
couldn't imagine life without him. In
her mind, she practiced the
speech she
would say when they met. It had changed over the course of
the last few
weeks. "Get married? I don't really want to marry any,
body, but if I have to, I'll marry you."
"Get married? If you feel that
way,
it's all right with me." "Get married? I'd like to -- if it's with
you,
I mean." And now, "Where are you, for heaven's sake? Why
aren't you looking for me? Seylin, don't you want to get married?"

Loud barking interrupted her reverie.
The gray squirrel came
flying across the
road and charged up her, clambering onto the top of
the pack. A couple of mongrels, baying noisily,
burst through a gap
in the hedge. Two small boys followed them, waving
sticks and yelling.

"Hey, she's got
our squirrel!"

"Give it back,
then!"

Emily put a hand over the trembling
creature and kicked the nearest of the dogs. "It's mine now," she
announced firmly. "You can't have it."

The larger boy
pushed his cap from his forehead and studied the
squirrel
critically."Ah, come on, Archie," he said to his companion.
"It's ratty-looking, anyway."

In another minute, they were out of
sight, and Ruby was her accustomed form. Breathing heavily, the woman pulled
her hood low over her eyes and sat down upon the step of a nearby stile.

"Why did you let them chase
you?" demanded Emily in amusement. "You had all sorts of magic you
could work."I - I
don't know,"
panted Ruby. "They just looked so big,
and" -- she wiped her
brow -- "I think I just panicked."

Emily was moved to
grudging sympathy. "It could have happened to anybody, I suppose,"
she observed, taking out their water
flask and handing it over. "Why don't you
stay here and rest. There's
a village just down the road, in that clump of
trees. I'll go find some
shelter."

"You'll go ask
after Seylin."

The young woman
put down her pack and stared. She was com
pletely
thunderstruck. During the whole boring, difficult journey, she hadn't mentioned
Seylin once.

"What
did Marak tell you?" she demanded indignantly.

"What would the King need to
tell me?" Ruby took a drink.
"Before
breakfast, he told me that you were leaving on some ridiculous
quest. During
breakfast, he told us all that Seylin had just left on a serious one. You
always did keep that boy's heart on a string, and you're furious that he's
decided to find an elf."

Emily
was outraged.

"I
never kept his heart anywhere, and he didn't decide to find an
elf!
If you want to know the truth, he asked to marry me."

"
And why didn't
he?"

"There
was a misunderstanding."

Ruby glared at her from beneath the
hood. "I feel sure of that! Then you shot out of the kingdom like an arrow
from a bow, without even stopping to think. You walked right past Seylin's
tracks four different times and didn't even notice. You're dragging me all
over this dismal countryside without a hope of
finding him. Isn't
that just like a human!"

She climbed to
her feet and began walking down the road, shading her eyes on that dark, stormy
day from what little sunlight there was.

Emily opened her mouth to say
something scathing, but she didn't. Instead, she thought carefully for a minute
and arranged her features into a humble expression.

"If only I knew
what I was doing wrong," she mourned. "You're not thinking like an
elf," declared the teacher triumphantly. "You're asking every human
you meet about Seylin
when you think I'm not
nearby. Humans won't see Seylin. Humans never did see the elves. You won't
learn anything that way."

"You would know where to look
for him," Emily said softly, looking so humble that she thought her face
would crack. "You wouldn't make the mistakes I'm making. You'd know how to
think like an elf"

It worked. Ruby's
voice grew distant and thoughtful.

"Yes, I would," she
replied. "If I were looking for Seylin, I'd be in the elf King's
forest."

"The forest?" Emily was
disappointed. "We looked there, and I didn't find a thing."

"Oh, no, we didn't. You just
looked in the small strip of woodland that lies on goblin land. The elf King's
forest is huge. No one goes there now. Humans are afraid of it because the elf
spells still
linger. Goblins don't like it,
either, but I'd like to walk through it
just once."

"Really?" Emily was interested
in spite of herself "Why would you, if goblins don't like it?"

"Because I'm a strong elf
cross," replied Ruby smugly. "That's where I got my hair."

"Oh," remarked Emily. She
couldn't think of anything more complimentary to say. "Then we'll go there,
Ruby. I think you're right. We'll look for Seylin the elf way."

Ruby crossed her arms. "I'm not
helping you find him," she declared.

Emily grinned.
"I think you already have."

∗ ∗ ∗

In the goblin
kingdom, the little children had stopped asking when Emily would come back.
They walked sadly by their playmate's empty apartment and wondered where she
was. Catspaw and Til in particular were hard-hit by the loss. The human orphan
that Kate had saved from the sorcerer's lair and her foster brother, the goblin
prince, both adored their aunt Emily. She
was the only person in the kingdom who could distract the two children so well
that they forgot
to quarrel with each other.

The nurse
brought the children into the royal rooms for the walk
down
to the banquet hall. Kate and Marak heard them coming well before they saw
them.

"Father!"

"Papa!"

The pair
charged in, racing to be the first to reach Marak. Til was
older and larger and took the lead for an easy win, but
the young prince
stretched
out his lion's paw after her as she ran by. She began to slide
backward
with every step, running as hard as she could and going
nowhere. But as Catspaw trotted past the angry girl, she socked him
hard
in the stomach. Catspaw doubled over, and Til won the race.

"Papa,
Papa!" she cried, clambering onto his lap. The goblin King put one arm
around her and held the other out toward his angry son.

"No vengeful magic!" he
ordered sharply, intercepting the bolt,
and
whatever Catspaw had intended for Til didn't happen. He had
to fall back
instead on that childhood favorite, the verbal insult.

"You don't
have a Father!" He scowled, walking up to his father,
whose
lap was now full.

"You don't have a Papa,"
retorted the little girl, leering at him from her prized vantage point.

"Silence," commanded the
goblin King, catching his son's paw to prevent further outbursts. "Til,
you just struck Catspaw. You know that's wrong, and it's also very dangerous.
What do you have to say about it?"

Til's mobile young face crumpled at
once, and her black eyes filled with tears. "But he's so mean, Papa,"
she quavered. "I hate Catspaw! He's always doing things like that to
me."

"So he
is," commented Marak, patting her short black hair,
which
Catspaw had only recently singed off again. "Since you hate
Catspaw, you'll be glad to know that I have some
new playmates for
you. Tomorrow you
can come with your mother and me to the
pages' floor to see your room, and you and another little girl will
stay
in that room and be pages together."