Annie pulled herself away from Bloom, feeling instantly colder. She pointed to the young boy, still watching them, as he huddled up next to an oak tree. The boy pushed his blond hair out of his face, tucking the loose strand behind his ears.
They were pointy.
Bloom inhaled and dropped his bow to the ground. He rushed to the boy’s side.
“This is no boy,” he announced with the weight of a thousand pounds on his voice. “He’s an elf.”
Bloom moved his hair to reveal his own pointy tips. “I thought there were none of us left. They said all the elves had been killed. I was the last elf.”
The boy sighed, and his body seemed so weak and tired that Annie worried for a moment that he might die right there. The boy lifted his hands to her and to Bloom. He closed his eyes and spoke. His voice was low and full of melody, but dry as if he hadn’t tasted water for weeks.
“My name is Lichen. And you three, you three will help me?”
They grabbed his hands in their own and kneeled down to his level.
“Help you with what?” Annie whispered.
The boy closed his eyes. “Help me bring the others home.”
12
Megan’s Room
They huddled around the young elf. Jamie gave him his own parka, but Lichen still shivered.
“Others? Other elves?” Bloom’s whisper was intense. He grabbed Lichen by the shoulder. “You mean there are more of us? We’re not all dead?”
“We lost some during the battle and others over time, but most of us are very much alive,” Lichen explained. “After the Purge, the Raiff took us to the Badlands where he’s held us captive ever since.”
“My parents …” Bloom’s voice trailed off, and his hand dropped from Lichen’s shoulder.
“Miss Cornelia said something about elves!” Annie remembered aloud. “When she appeared in the fountain …”
As Lichen told them what he knew, he sighed a lot and scratched at his head, his eyes constantly searching the darkness beyond them. The first thing he made them promise was to not tell anyone who was a “mature person.”
“You must swear,” he said. His voice was adamant. “You must swear on your life.”
He stared each of them down, and all three of them promised not to repeat anything he said to “mature people.”
“Like grown-ups?” Annie asked, smiling but unsure.
“Yes, no grown-ups,” Lichen said, face twitching nervously.
A red squirrel chattered away in a tree, and Jamie jumped. Then he looked embarrassed. He made a mental note to his running list: elves don’t jump for squirrels; trolls are a different story.
Annie protested the elf’s request a bit because she knew that swearing to keep things away from adults always leads to trouble, and the last thing she wanted was trouble in Aurora.
“Are you okay? Why can’t we tell?” Annie had asked Lichen, peering into his face, which was pale and shadowed beneath his eyes.
He looked tired and scared, but serious. To Jamie, he looked so … weary … That was the word for it: weary.
Lichen nodded he was fine, even though it was obvious to all that he was lying and very not-okay.
“The Raiff can sense adults’ thoughts,” the elf whispered. “So if you tell them, he will know that I’ve escaped.”
“But, escaped from where exactly?” Annie asked.
The elf groaned, shifted a bit, didn’t answer, and listened to the sounds of the woods. He jumped as something boomed in the distance.
“Something comes,” Lichen said softly, shuffling backward toward his small cave. “Something large.”
“It was just a firecracker …,” Jamie began, hoping he was right.
But Bloom held up his hand to hush him as they all listened.
Annie imagined the horrible things that could be lurking out there, waiting. Trolls. Wiegles. Maybe even the Raiff. Maybe he had tortured Miss Cornelia enough to get her to open the portal; maybe he and his goons, his monsters, were marching through the woods to them this very second …
No.
She refused to believe they could have lost everything already. Not when … Not when there was another elf here, right here. Bloom wasn’t the last. They weren’t all dead, and that meant that there was hope. And even though she was terrified, Annie was going to hang onto that hope until it disappeared like a ghost.
All three were tense until Bloom whispered, “I hear them. It’s just SalGoud and Eva. I can tell from all the thumping and cursing noises.”
Lichen scooted back, obviously scared of Eva and SalGoud. Annie tried to ease his fears.
“Oh, no. They are very nice. Well, SalGoud is. Eva’s more grumpy, but that’s because she’s a dwarf and dwarfs are like that. But man, she is someone you want on your side. Really. She’s totally a toughie and terribly funny, really. Although, her table manners are super bad …”
Annie realized that she had probably said too much, and just as she realized that, Eva and SalGoud emerged into the small circle of trees where they sat in the silvery moonlight. Eva began talking immediately.
“I AM SO MAD AT YOU FOR SHRINKING ME, JAMIE WHATEVER ALEXANDER! SO MAD! AND YOU WILL PAY, but first, good job escaping. Gramma Doris thought you were dead, but SalGoud said they’d be carrying your body around town and celebrating if you had joined the congregation of the dead. But anyway, while she was moaning, we snuck out, which we aren’t supposed to do because of trolls and everything, but we had to come looking, you know? And we found blood and followed it. Where did you two go? Canin said you were somewhere sucking face, so that hag Megan ran off crying and I high-fived him, and then Helena gave me a ‘talking-to,’ which fortunately involved croissants, so it took us a bit to get here.”
The dwarf stopped grumbling to inhale deeply as she saw that Jamie and Annie and Bloom were not alone. She pointed her ax at the boy. “Why … he’s … he’s an elf. SalGoud, that’s a freakin’ elf!”
Lichen’s entire body shook.
Annie blurted, “Okay. It’s okay. Eva is a dwarf; she doesn’t care for adults and all their rules, their washing tips, their table manners, their firm resolve that chewing with your mouth open is a horrendous sin. She is fierce and always wears pigtails and reminds me of a puppy somehow, but she is totally not going to tell anyone about you if we ask her not to, right?” Annie glared at Eva. “Because it goes against a dwarf’s honor, right?”
“Duh,” Eva said. She spotted the pile of items Annie had pulled out of the cave and started stowing them in her bag.
“And SalGoud?” Annie asked.
“Stone giants are keepers of oaths.” SalGoud adjusted his glasses and slowly moved forward to inspect Lichen. “Annie, he’s hurt.”
The elf scuttled backward a bit more, but Annie caught the sleeve of his old potato-sack tunic and stopped him from retreating any farther. Bloom was immobile, obviously back in shock. It couldn’t be easy for him, Annie realized.
“They are our friends,” she whispered to Lichen. “Tell him, Bloom.”
“You are safe,” Bloom managed to say. “I trust them with my life, even the dwarf.”
Eva shook her fist at him.
It took a while to convince Lichen, but he finally calmed down enough to make them swear once more to not tell any adults anything, and then everybody was properly introduced.
As SalGoud tended to the elf’s wounds, Lichen finally, finally, began to tell his story again.
“A long time ago a wicked demon named the Raiff took all the elves from the Land of Lights.”
Bloom’s face hardened, and at the sound of Raiff’s name, Annie shivered. No one noticed.
“The Raiff was evil and horrible, a demon-man who lived for centuries, admiring himself, building an army even as he pretended to be good. He had trolls, disgusting things from the night, bind the elves. Some were eaten. Most were tortured. All were taken.”
“Except me,” Bloom whispered.
Lichen cringed as SalGoud presse
d some bark to his wound.
“I’m sorry this hurts, but I have to stop the bleeding. All this moving around has reopened your wound,” SalGoud said. “As they say …”
“No quotes!” Eva demanded. She explained to Lichen, “SalGoud is always showing off and quoting dead people. Do they have stone giants in the Badlands? Because if not, I may want to move there … because there will be no showing off with the quotes all the time.”
“It’s not showing off,” SalGoud protested, still holding the bark to Lichen. “Eva likes to embarrass me, but it’s only because she loves me so much. Please, go on with your story.”
Eva punched SalGoud in the arm. He didn’t even flinch.
Lichen blinked, likely confused, and continued, “The elves were taken to a place beyond this world and held prisoner there, chained and enslaved as the demon harnessed their power. Each month away from Aurora, our people’s power lessened. He shackled our feet and hands at night. By day, we were forced to help him build his machine. Those who protested were killed. Once dead, they were hung from the walls of the Tunnel of Despair.”
He paused, weak. It seemed as if the entire forest were listening. The night became thicker.
“What machine?” Annie whispered.
“It is in a pit lined with our cages. It is meant to control the power of the strings. To control the strings is to control the universe, for they are the basis of all.” Lichen closed his eyes and leaned a bit on Annie, looking terribly young all of a sudden.
“That blasted evil freaky demon!” Eva exploded, slamming her hand into her fist. “I tell you if I get within a mile of him, I’ll crush him till his Adam’s apple pops out and I’ll use it as a puppy chew toy. I’ll bash him until …”
Jamie tried to not throw up.
“Enough, Eva,” Bloom said, raising his hand.
Lichen continued, “We haven’t seen the Raiff for over a month, but then we heard he had the Stopper, so I decided to escape. I had never seen Aurora. I was born there, in the cage. I had heard enough stories to know how to get here. And I knew what I had to do. Once I escaped the pit, I had to find a dragon.”
His voice faltered a bit and he closed his eyes again.
“So, you escaped … And found Grady O’Grady … Did you see Miss Cornelia?” Annie asked, trying to get him to continue.
“Yes,” he said. “And no … I heard the trolls talking about it. The trolls … they talk so much because they think we are powerless … It is from them I learned the secret to our escape. It is our only hope for a rescue. His power grows and he is draining the Stopper … The old one. So, I escaped one night by pretending to be dead. It wasn’t hard. I was just still. The trolls and vamps took me to the Tunnel of Despair, which is where they place all the dead, and … I can’t explain that place … It is too horrible. They strap us to the rock and then … They were distracted by the others … I untied myself while they raced off to hear what was going on back at the machine … We all planned this … I was the strongest with the most life force left … And when the other elves created a commotion, I fled. My family, though, is still there, and so are the rest of the elves … those who still live.”
Bloom swallowed. “So there are many elves, still alive?”
Annie glanced at him. His eyes were full of hope.
“Yes,” Lichen said, “some are left, but we are weak. The Raiff takes our power. Our energy is sucked into the making of the machine. Our only hope is to pierce the machine with the Arrow of Gold after placing dwarf objects in points around the perimeter, and then it will break and the elves will be freed. That is what I came here to do, and now I’ve failed.”
SalGoud looked puzzled. “Where is the Arrow of Gold? And how have you failed?”
“I don’t know where it is, and I’m too weak to return. Just being in the pit brings the machine power. It taints you. The machine takes a part of you inside of it, the best part of you, and the longer I am away, the weaker I am. Soon, I will die.”
“No, you won’t,” Jamie insisted, looking to the others for confirmation. “We won’t let you die.”
Lichen shook his head. “The machine holds my core; it will not release it voluntarily, just as the Raiff won’t release the Stopper. The only way they will release us is if they are destroyed. And it isn’t just me. All the elves are dying. As he sucks away our magic, he sucks away our life force. We have not much time left. That’s why I had to risk it, had to chance an escape.”
SalGoud threw up his hands and accidentally hit a tree branch, sending acorns falling down on them. “But, you have to go back. You have to stop the machine.”
Lichen looked defeated, hopeless, and ashamed, but he shook his head. No words came out of his mouth. In the distance, an owl called out that it had finished a successful hunt.
Bloom reacted quickly. “No, he does not have to go back there. I will. I’ll go back for him.”
Annie’s shoulders tightened and her head lifted up to meet Bloom’s gaze. “What?”
“We will bring Lichen to Megan. She’s a hag. They’re great healers. We can bribe her silence,” he explained.
“Megan!” Annie rolled her eyes. She did not like Megan. Megan did not like her. The only people Megan liked were boys, more specifically, blond elf boys named Bloom.
“She is annoying, but in this, I think, she can be trusted,” Bloom said. “And she is not a grown-up, so nobody will be able to sense that Lichen escaped. And then I will go save the elves and Cornelia. My people are heroes, and I shall not let them down. I shall follow in their footsteps, Annie. That’s what it means to be an elf.” Bloom stood up and started pacing as he talked. “Lichen will tell me how to get to this place. I will find the Arrow of Gold, break the machine, and save everyone.”
“All by yourself?” Jamie asked. He lit a match to see by.
Bloom whirled on him, so quickly that it extinguished the match. “Yes. These are my people. Don’t you see? I am not the last elf now, but if I don’t do anything I could be again.”
“We will go together,” Eva said, handing SalGoud her flashlight. “It is only right.”
Jamie cleared his throat and turned to Lichen. “Do you actually know where the bow is? It’s a special bow and arrow, right?”
“Not exactly, but I can tell you how to get to the pit where the machine and elves are,” Lichen said. Using the flashlight and Bloom’s orbs to help him see, he drew a map on a piece of paper SalGoud had in his pocket. He explained it all to SalGoud and Bloom and Eva.
Annie said nothing the whole time until SalGoud picked up the little elf and prepared to carry him to Megan’s. She put her hand on Bloom’s shirtsleeve. Bloom had taught her to shoot a bow, and how to be a friend.
“Bloom,” she said, “we are not letting you do this alone. You know I’ve already decided to go to the Badlands to save Miss Cornelia. The elves don’t change that.”
He looked into her eyes. Behind him another owl called across the darkness, happy to have caught a mouse in the barrens. It, too, would eat tonight.
“It’ll be hard, Annie. I don’t know if we’ll make it back.” He swallowed. “The Raiff has been taking the elves’ magic. That makes him more powerful than we thought.”
“We go together or we don’t go at all,” she said. “We’re friends, Bloom. I won’t let you go alone. Not without me.”
“Nor without me,” said Eva, who had been eavesdropping.
SalGoud paused and looked at the three of them. “I’m coming, too. You might need someone to heal people. Stone giants are good at that. Plus, someone has to handle Eva.”
Eva glared at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“And me,” added Jamie. “Nobody even wants me here right now. Plus, we kind of have to find that arrow first. I think we should be a little more concerned about that. I mean, there’s no point in going to the Badlands and trying to save Miss Cornelia if we can’t also save the elves. And to do that, we have to be organized and get the Golden Arrow.
Or at least figure out where it is.”
There was something familiar about the sound of the arrow that was nagging at Jamie, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“This is freaking complicated,” Eva explained.
Bloom sighed and smiled a bit. “Fine, then. We all go to save the elves and Miss Cornelia.”
“To save them all,” Annie whispered and let go of his sleeve.
They trudged through the darkness of the woods, to bring Lichen to Megan’s, and to begin their journey into horrible danger. Not wanting to be noticed by trolls or townspeople, they tried to stay quiet as they moved through the snowdrifts, shadowing each other between tree trunks.
“If you go to the pit,” Lichen whispered, before slipping into unconsciousness, “and you fail, you may never return. Once the machine feels you, it taints you. It pulses into you. Do you know what you risk? I cannot ask it of you.”
Eva kissed the top of his head and grumped out, “We will not fail.”
“Eva, you just kissed an elf!” SalGoud said, shocked.
She shrugged. “Whatever. You have to kiss something before you trudge off to probable death. An elf’s head is as good as anything.”
Nobody had an answer for that.
“And nobody go telling nobody I did neither,” Eva demanded.
They all remained quiet.
“And we will not fail,” she repeated. “There is no failing when Beryl-Axes are involved. Not now. Not ever.”
Jamie and Eva volunteered to go back to Grady O’Grady and tell him what had happened while Annie, Bloom, and SalGoud carried Lichen to Megan’s house. They planned to meet back at Bloom’s house before embarking on the hunt for the Golden Arrow.
The hags’ house is kind of adorable, Annie thought when they got to Megan’s.
With its thatched roof and white stone walls, it was a bit like some sort of fairy cottage that you might find in the middle of a book or a forest. Flower boxes filled with snow were outside each window. Bloom brought them around to the back wall.
“Megan’s bedroom is back here,” he whispered and tapped on the window.