E.L.F. - White Leaves Page 5

  She had wanted to believe… That was her predisposition.

  Could it be that simple?

  Chapter 4

  “How could you let her live?!” One shadow spoke to another high in the Cascade Range foothills of Washington State. These hills were draped in old growth still virtually untouched by mankind and its ravages, so there was little cause for them to keep their voices to themselves. There wasn’t a soul for miles. Not that men could hear at any rate. Not through the Veil.

  “I cannot answer that, Milord Athaem.” The other bowed his head lightly in disgrace, concealing what little answer he could give, for he was terribly uncertain about the reasoning within himself. The girl had seen him. That was the reason for his firing, but his ceasefire.

  He’d missed.

  “She saw you?” Prince Athaem asked incredulously for clarification. “And you did nothing?!” He shouted. The other did nothing. He appeared a submissive, much smaller statue, and nothing more.

  “You know the law my father has held in place for ages, Deh Leccend! You know the rules.” His lord was livid, rambling swift as he paced back and forth, draped in a long cloak -all of blackness. He was a shadow despite his inner light. “Never mind the miraculous fact that she did see you, an impossible feat through the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge, Deh Lecce. You had a sacred duty to prevent any leak of our existence into the knowledge of human kind. You know what happens when they witness.” He said, and Deh Leccend knew it was true. He should have continued firing until every last human there was dead, and then buried it all in the Veil. To the rest of humanity, all would have simply disappeared without a trace.

  His own message, his own attack upon the defiler organization, should have been forgone in exchange for concealing his tracks. But he hadn’t fired a second time on the girl. It was his choice alone to fail to do so, just as the entire message to be delivered was his alone. They’d delivered many such messages throughout the years.

  “And never mind the fact that she’d been shot by their governmental officer. You know as well as any Elvine, human bullets cannot kill the spirit, only the shell. Nor are they as accurate as we.” Prince Athaem was quite furious.

  “I know, my prince.” He merely bowed his head to show he knew he was shamed, for he knew what was coming. But it did not trouble him. It was only protocol, etiquette -respect for the elvine prince.

  “And yet, you missed!” Athaem chided incredulously. “By the bow of Addl’laen, you missed!?” Deh Leccend’s lengthy ears lowered beneath his cloak’s hood. He’d never missed in his thousands of years of service to the covenant of the great tree. He’d never once missed in his countless millennia of existence. A Black Leaf of the Addl’laen never missed. And they never ever failed.

  “It was not my fault, milord Athaem.” He defended honestly, albeit dispassionately. “She saw it coming and moved. She saved the one who shot her, and the shot that should have killed all three only struck the last.” He hesitated, voice even and flattened, emotionless.

  “But you didn’t kill the rest of them.” Athaem reminded.

  “I couldn’t bring myself to do so, milord. She is a caring soul.” He revealed his personal judgment, a judgment that was ever truthful in its disconnectedly aloof origin. “She believes and tries to save the mother.” He defended his choice flatly.

  “No!” Athaem shot back as a stern master speaks to his dog. “She doesn’t know what she believes. She’s only human. She cannot possibly comprehend the works of the liar, Tolq Uen, even if she has read them. There have been none in decades who have ever understood his work. He was the only human to have ever seen Addl’laen! To have ever seen elvine folk at all since the dawn of the covenant of the Leaf’s Edge, the very sunset of the hiding of the great tree, and the birth of the seven black guard, sons of Dunesil Llaerth, captains of the Black Leaves of Addl’laen.” The prince was quite insistent, and boastful of his authority. But it never bothered Deh. Nothing ever did.

  “And now you’ve let knowledge of the Elvine back into the scope of the human world, D’lecce? Do you have any idea the repercussion of such failure?” The prince finally stopped.

  Deh Leccend was but a shred of his once skillful self, riddled with not shame but deep thought, though he didn’t look it. He was an indifferent little fellow, among the very best of High Lord Dunesil Llaerth, even over his seven prodigal sons, and next to the others spread to the continents. But now he thought of honorably killing himself to make up for this, his first and everlasting failure. Dunesil however, was like the great mother herself. He was kind and forgiving. Such was the only reason mankind had gotten away with all that they had beneath his people’s eternal existence.

  In this late millennia’s beginning, however, Dunesil had agreed to the mandate of the council. They were to give the humans one hundred years of admonitions, ever more devastating as time progressed. They would give the humans the chance to heed such hints and change their ways before it was time to break the covenant of the Leaf’s Edge and unleash the Black Leaves’ full furies in salvation of the great mother. Deh knew all of this. He knew it all too well.

  As one of the Black Leaves, he’d been performing his duties for decades now, but it had been thousands of years since he was last in action, unleashed against humanity. It was such that had fallen ancient civilizations, entire eras, and vast sprawling empires once before. He’d been there then and played his hand. Of course, the humans back in the ages before recorded histories held knowledge of magic and were once friends with the faerie kin and others.

  The Black Leaves of the great tree, wielders of the skills of the Leaf’s Edge, had not been enough. Mankind was foolish with their power, and during the war they opened earth to else-world monstrosities. Lord Dunesil had to turn to the bearers of the white charms, the White Leaves, keepers to the keys of the Powers man brought to earth with their stupidity. And so, the world had come to be as it is now, and at long last he was back to work at the mandate of the council.

  “Are you even listening to me, Delecce?!” Athaem demanded. Deh’Leccend nodded that he had been listening, but he hadn’t. He wasn’t the type of creature to listen unless it was to specific orders. He was a dreamer and a weapon of death. That was why he existed. There were only three of his kin upon any given continent anymore. That was how it was, and had been for many milennia now. There were of course the seven sons of Dunesil, who were trained to be like the Black Leaves, but they were not the same sort of creature.

  Elves like Athaem were Addl’laen Elvine. They were the commanders of the Black Leaves, who were Elvine of a different sort, from a different limb, because it was decreed ages beyond time ago that they should be so by the king of the Elvine. But this didn’t make his handler, Athaem, necessarily more powerful than himself, nor did it mean that Deh Leccend even cared about anything the prince had to say.

  Only the Addl’laen herself knew the why’s of the world, and she didn’t share her secrets. The Black Leaves were tools, created by the great tree, some thought. None really knew exactly why the tree had originally created them differently than the others, only that they had been created. For the tree did not explain itself, and communicated only with High Lord Dunesil for he was also its son. But even he was not told all that the tree knew. In fact, Deh Leccend believed Dunesil was actually given quite little of what the Addl’laen knew. He calculated the likelihood was that Lord Dunesil, crowned first leaf on the Elvine, was only given what he needed to know as the tree saw fit. Nothing, never anything, more.

  “I swear you Black Leaves are stupid, stupid fools.” Athaem chided the blank stare in those obsidian eyes. Deh could only look into his own opals gazing back at himself. He did not feel hurt by Athaem’s words. It was not in his kind to be hurt. Emotions were disconnected and limited if existing at all. It hadn’t always been that way, but he did know he should feel as stupid as Athaem claimed him to be. He had never missed, yet that night he’d missed two of three in a single shot.

  The
prince sighed. “Well, I suppose one good thing may come from this foul. Perhaps the humans will cease to confuse the messages with terrorists. Perhaps they may heed the realization of their errors and begin a change.” Athaem resolved, but not only did he sound doubtful to Deh’Leccend, he sounded diabolically hopeful that the humans didn’t begin to heed the messages of the Black Leaves. Deh Leccend could see it in him.

  Athaem was an Elvine of emotions, like the rest of them. He was furious with humanity’s wanton abuse of the mother. He’d been so ever since the dawn of their most recent industrious age. He wanted to do the mother justice and erase mankind’s foul creations, and maybe even mankind altogether. Deh Leccend could see it, for that was part of what he was as well. Adversely, Deh Leccend didn’t wish ill of humanity. It was not given to his kind to wish ill of anything. They only saw what was necessary, and did what was necessary to bring that necessity into being.

  But now there was a human who existed who had seen through the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge, and who had stayed his dutiful hand. Such was perplexing for one like Deh Leccend. He’d been thinking about it ever since it had happened, trying to decipher what he thought he knew. He’d stayed his hand despite the law, because the girl had a pure heart, a just understanding for the atrocities her own kind committed against the great mother, and would make herself a warrior for the defense of her beliefs in favor of the great mother even if it was all against her best interest and survival.

  But there was something more to it that he couldn’t quite define. Deh Leccend didn’t understand it, and he would never be able to decipher it. He could only see what was obvious. She was of the native bloodlines that once existed peacefully, harmoniously on this landform of once endless forestry and untainted plains. Maybe that had had something to do with it. He didn’t know.

  “Nevertheless, Deh Leccend, as your superior it is my duty to assist you in the reclamation of her soul. You are to prevent her from sharing anything with others of her kind about what she has seen.” Athaem informed. Deh already knew this. He had to track her down, and kill her according to law. It was a very simple task. He could smell her on the air, a patchouli bombed scent trickling away more than a hundred miles from where he stood down to the once clean shores of the Puget Sound and into the heart of the little city they called Seattle.

  “She will see me coming through the Veil.” Deh Leccend informed, ignoring Athaem’s claim to superiority. He addressed the most important topic first, as always, and it was true that she would somehow miraculously see through the Veil of glamour called the Leaf’s Edge.

  “She will try to defend herself.” He added, for it was true that she now had the power to do that too. The sheer coming into knowledge of the Faerie had opened her to it all, and once opened, that door could not be closed. That was indeed why humans had to be eliminated if ever given knowledge. If they weren’t killed promptly, they would dwell and believe and spread their beliefs like viruses. In the end, the individual in question would inevitably die trying to find the faerie. It would consume the girl’s life, and essentially kill her anyway. But it was better sooner than later.

  “But she is a novice. She is no match for your skill, Deh Leccend. You cannot possibly be afraid of a human girl.” Athaem chided him. “…and besides, at any rate, I’ll be there to ensure her silence.”

  “I do not think it will matter, Athaem.” Deh Leccend disagreed. “Something is in the wind.”

  “Leave my mother’s gift out of your presumptions, De’lecce. Move.” Athaem chided further, and pointed south by southwest, ordering the little Black Leaf around simply because he could.

  Careless, almost machine-like, Deh Leccend turned toward Shannon Hunter’s distant location, hesitated for a moment, then carelessly obeyed Athaem Llaerth’s command.

  Chapter 5

  The two descended from the high untouched woods of the Cascade Range as black ghosts. It was a very long trek by the standards of men, but for faerie kin traveling through the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge where time was stretched and space was diminished, the elves soon passed along streets ever-busy. They approached Seattle from the north through the various cities in their path, each named as individual though nothing really ever changed from one to the next.

  One thing the Veil didn’t distort was the scent of poisons leaked into the world by mankind’s creations. Deh Leccend could almost taste it. And it didn’t take his trained eyes to see the devastation it wrought within the trees. It was slowly choking the life out of them.

  Of course mankind was blind to the suffocating fumes of automobiles, air conditioning, refuse, and dozens of other pollutants. But the trees weren’t. They cried out actively with voices men could not hear to the sudden nearness of the powerful ones who could. Trees were more than they’d ever seemed to men. They could sense the presence of Elvine born, despite the fact that none of these trees, no matter their size, were old enough to hold memories of the Elvine kin. Deh’Leccend could feel them beg for his touch. They collectively ached for salvation, and beseeched him for it. But he could only afford them a momentary glimpse of peace -a second’s respite from the torture of their existence.

  Deh’Leccend was not one to feel their emotions much within himself, but he did pity their pleas. Athaem, however, lay his gracious touch upon every available plant that reached out to him, arousing within them the vibrancy of life returned. But he could not divert his course to tend them all. Athaem steadfastly followed the machine-like Deh Leccend.

  Into Seattle’s fairly prestigious university district they tread as night descended, unable to be seen or felt by the dulled wits of men. They watched voiceless and disgusted as the endless homes and buildings stood like a concrete jungle for foolish monkeys to play in. Many of these people would likely claim higher purposes and consider themselves intelligent, but to these two pairs of eyes and lengthy ears, man only looked the fools they truly were.

  “There are many in the world like this, Athaem. You know as well as I. There is nothing to be done by wasting your energy on whittling away at them, even if we were given to hosting lectures of our own. We must change the mind of the majority, not the few, as we have been working at forever.” He commented, cooling the prince’s ambitions as he felt his commander’s emotions rise.

  Athaem said nothing, and kept a sour pucker to his handsome features as they tread into the university grounds. The hustle and bustle was lessened, then died -though the poisons still lingered. Almost immediately they passed a place of theatrical arts, and from there into an open field. Both recognized it immediately for what it was. It was an archery range, or at least was used as such on occasion. The evidence of such practice was everywhere, but impossible for any lesser creatures to detect in its vacancy.

  Deh could have been proud to see anyone using such a range in this day and age, if he could feel such things. Although, admittedly, he would also be equally amused by the failures of accuracy even the best of the young men and women could muster.

  At length they passed through yards and quiet walks, purposefully making way to the ship canal that linked the lakes Union and Washington at the southern end of the campus, where there led away the Montlake Bridge. They passed upon it, and then over the streaming, noisy river of cars on highway 520.

  On the far side, their course veered and weaved and began to rise. They left behind the streets for a short time as they passed into a place of moderate beauty -an arboretum of Japanese fashioning. But they would not linger despite the cacophony of sylvan voices that abruptly called down to them, pleading their aide.

  Athaem looked doubly burdened by the arboretum, and he cast a glance back over his shoulder. Deh heard it in the prince’s hesitant footsteps. But there was no slowing down to wait. Their path had brought them to the straight run of Broadway. Deh pulled left without hesitation. It was now a straight shot to the girl. He could smell it, even amidst all that passed before them.

  He led his prince as he was sworn to do –voiceless and withou
t flaw. No one saw them, and no one ever would from beyond the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge, not for all the vehicles with all of their refractive glass, nor for all the eyes that strayed cleanly through them. They crossed freely anywhere they chose -even through busy streets without waiting for signage to permit them. And the duo feared not being struck by man’s automobiles. They passed amidst them from the safety of the Qual, doorstep to the Veil, and as such, from their vantage the vehicles only trickled by at fractions of their usual paces. If any human saw them, it would be a blur, just an imagined shadow so swift it may as well have never been.

  The Veil had that effect on things. The world beyond its laws passed slowly by comparison to all that transpired within.

  Roughly twenty city blocks later they’d come to a place rather confusingly named, Swedish Medical Center. The healers here were nothing more than butchers and hacks. Try as they might, human doctors could not hold a candle to the touch of the Elvine of Addl’laen, and Deh Leccend did find it amusing, albeit only in his usual muted fashion. He found it ironic to smell death on the air in a place where life was supposed to be preserved. He’d always found human hospitals paradoxical, and probably always would.