Tales of Eldelórne Page 7

  “My name is Fionna,” the voice said as if it had told him this already way too many times. Her words echoed inside his head, as in a dream.

  “Man i oduledh hí?” He heard his detached mouth say abruptly.

  “You are here with me now,” she said, ignoring his mumbling.

  Her unfamiliar words distorted oddly in his ears. She seemed to chatter gibberish at him. He kept his worried eyes affixed on the red hair, afraid to look around, for fear he would feel the blistering sensation of breaking apart in his gut again.

  “Do not try to speak. You just came back from the faded places,” Fionna repeated herself having gone through this routine with him before.

  “I am sure it is still confusing.”

  His arm swung involuntarily upward, almost slapping her awkwardly in the head.

  “Stop!” She commanded and then changed back to her more purposeful tone.

  “It takes time to acclimate once you’ve been gone for so long... be patient... you will be oh-kay,” she leaned into him pushing his arm back down and enunciating loudly.

  “Dhen iston?” He asked with a horrified expression on his face. He didn't understand why the girl ignored his questions.

  She gently let go of his hand, patting it down on his bare chest. He felt his eyes shuddering closed as she waved her fingers doing some kind of magic. Her voice echoed off in the distance as the dizzy weakness of normal sleep pressed in. Suddenly, panicked and nauseous, he thought he might retch.

  “You will be oooh-kaaay...” her voice whispered away, and he was gone into sleeping darkness.

  +++

  “I think he is going to spew on me when he wakes next time,” Fionna said to Master Farghal, while handing him a bowl of hot soup. She also placed some fresh bread on the table near him.

  “He was not pulled together very well this time either.”

  She set down a spoon and cloth for him.

  “It takes time,” the wizard said. “The poor boy was just torn from the song of his Lords. He is not going to feel human for quite a while. I mean, elven ... well, you know what I mean.”

  “Yes papa, I do,” she answered gently smiling at him and kissing him dutifully on the forehead before she sat down to eat her own dinner.

  Wizard-kind are thought to be merely elderly folk if ever discovered among men. They seem human enough but were in truth immortal beings created out of the pikka spirits. The gentle pikka, who were shaped initially like small furry animals with long ears, dwelt in the ethereal gardens of Ilmatar since the beginning of creation. When they were sent to the mortal realm, they were granted human form so they could blend into mortal society.

  Their initial purpose was to keep an eye on Ainghaille for signs of danger from the other realms.

  Master Farghal was one of several pikka spirits but he also had another task, fostering Fionna. He lived in the stone kingdom of man disguised as a simple healer. He kept himself busy making salves and healing potions. Moving across the room to his workbench, you would find musty books, drying herbs, and clinking bottles enough to make anything desired. This was a good life that kept Fionna safe as she grew.

  She was a good daughter and assistant to the wizard’s many odd experiments.

  “This last one,” Fionna pondered, “pulling a full-size Edhellen out of the bathing pool from another realm, now that was astonishing. What we are to do with said elf after that, is still a mystery!” Fionna scowled at Farghal thinking about it.

  “...Also, he is still babbling gibberish,” Fionna said out loud as she buttered some bread.

  “That is Elvish my girl. Have I neglected your education so much that you do not recognize the words of your own kind?” The wizard shook his head as he dipped a piece of crust in his soup and ate it.

  Fionna just stared at him thoughtfully as she finished her own dinner.

  “My kind?” Fionna was bewildered. She wandered away to tend to the evening fires. Fionna was, in fact, six-hundred-six years old, but she passed as an sixteen-year-old human when she went into the city for deliveries or to buy supplies for her papa. Her long dark red hair went out of control in the damp evening air and tangled around her face in wild curls. It was so thick it naturally hid her ears. She was raised with humankind, knew their ways, and she spoke like them.

  “How am I supposed to know, my kind,” she grumbled to herself.

  A fire spark left her hand and lit the first of many torches as she walked around the perimeter of their home property.

  Eijlam’s Anthem

  Chapter Nine

  When Eijlam woke his first thought was that he must have somehow fallen ill. He somehow knew he had never known sickness, so he worried that something horrific must have happened, maybe an accident. He looked at his hands and they seemed fine except that they were so oddly pale.

  He could smell foods cooking and saw the soft light of candles around a small table. His head hurt, and he felt thirsty, so he asked for water, “Dhron nên...” but his lips did not move.

  His head pounded with the pain of dehydration. He looked around warily and tried to focus on something solid. It didn’t come to him, and blistering fire filled his gut.

  “Bleuaaatch...” he retched and spewed all over the floor and his bed. The girl with the red hair came running from across the room, but it was too late. He blanched whitish-gray, and his eyes rolled shut as he fell backward onto the pillow in a cold shudder.

  “This is the sickness from coming back,” she said to him gently with genuine concern on her face. He looked at her, huge-eyed, in growing awareness. She suddenly realized he had no clue what she had just said.

  Eijlam felt his insides on fire again. In his panic, the thick dizzying weakness gripped his body, signaling another episode of painful retching. There was nothing left in Eijlam’s gut to spew up, but his body still convulsed violently. Fionna pulled him forward into her arms with his face gagging and drooling against her shoulder until the spasms passed. He felt comforted by her warmth, and her softness pressed up against him. Her voice sounded like a humming song speaking soft encouragements in his ear.

  Feeling calm made the dizziness subside. Eijlam wanted to be calm, so he took a breaths and let them out slowly. He didn’t have a sense of danger from this strange girl, so he just watched as her mouth jabbered nonsense. She half-carried him, stumbling and weak, to a chair next to the bed so she could change the bedclothes and soiled blanket. He hung there, unable to lift his head. She kept her eyes locked on him as if he was a bird that would fly out the window at any moment.

  “Do you know your name?” She didn’t expect an answer while pulling off his soiled bedclothes and helping him back into the clean sheets. She held a wet cloth to his sweating forehead as he lay helplessly exhausted, looking at her. Her face was not so distorted this time, and he could see she was elven like himself. He weakly reached for the tip of her ear, and then to his own ear with a puzzled look on his face. She could only nod reassuring him, as their eyes met.

  The poor guy was so ungodly thin, and weak, Fionna worried about him fully recovering without permanent damage. His eyes seemed unnaturally large on his bony face. Fionna gave him water to drink and left the cup on a table next to him. He fell asleep again — this time from natural exhaustion without the help of wizard magic.

  When Eijlam woke, he felt more in control of his senses. Fionna offered him some soup she had just made, and he gently pushed her hand away. “Dhen i allon, u mass,” he enunciated his words mimicking the way she always did as he tried to explain, eating solid food is bad, in his condition. This time Eijlam was relieved to find his words came out of his mouth as planned. He thirstily drank water from the cup she offered.

  “I do not know your language. It certainly does sound nice though, almost musical.” Fionna wistfully got up to put his untouched dish of food away. He anxiously wanted to hold on to her hand, but she had to pull away to tend to other duties. Turning on his side, he watched her working in the room until his e
yes grew heavy again. Sleep came fitfully to him, in this strange place.

  +++

  During the next days, the stringy elf got over the bulk of dread sickness. He still felt weak, but his pallor was starting to look a bit less fishy gray. He woke more often to drink water. With nothing else to do, he thoughtfully watched the girl who was always there. He was fascinated by everything she did around him. Fionna could see now that his eyes were two different colors. The right one was a pure sky blue, and the left was a golden brown.

  “I am el-ven...” she said, over-enunciating the words again while touching her ear. She always spoke a little too loud, as if he was deaf and not just speaking a different language.

  “Ni edhel,” he returned in a calm voice. His eyes watched her curiously.

  “Yes, that sounds like it could be right, edhel? ... elf, elven?”

  To his delight, she smiled, and so he smiled. He beamed with such radiance Fionna couldn’t breathe for a moment at the sight of him. He was hungry, so he dutifully ate a whole bowl of stew and then, feeling weak again, all he could do is go back to sleep.

  Fionna sat there stunned, still holding up the spoon from his last bite as she watched him close his eyes.

  +++

  “Who is he? What have you brought here!” Fionna half-whispered again, repeating herself. She was trying to keep her voice down with little success. She stared wide-eyed at Master Farghal expecting a fast short answer, but knowing wizard-kind, she knew this was going to be a bit of a wait.

  “He is Edhellen, just like you Fionna, but he has come to this place from the faded lands where spirits are believed to rest in Ilmatar’s void of peace. I brought him back here to free him from his curse.”

  “Curse! What curse could he possibly suffer,” Fionna demanded to know, still feeling the lingering effect of his radiant otherworldly smile.

  “It is more like a misunderstanding rather than a curse.” Farghal corrected himself, cringing at the thought of a curse. He took out his pipe and prepared it for an after-dinner smoke by the hearth fire.

  “Here Fionna,” he handed her the leaf pack trying to distract her, “have some of this. You relax, and I will tell you the whole story… as I know it.”

  Farghal sat down in his comfortable old chair. Fionna took her own long-handled pipe off the mantel and sat in her own seat. She started packing it expertly with her eyes on him.

  “His name is Eijlam. He is the son of Thendiel Kingsaver and was born in the third age.”

  Her eyes widened as the wizard’s calendar was now precisely one hundred years since the end of that time.

  “Go on,” she said, gently encouraging him.

  “Eijlam was born after his mother saved an ancient king known as Ellinduil from the threshold of death. For you see, the sovereign was dying of his heart bond to his queen, and she had perished. From what, nobody knows for sure.” His forehead wrinkled into a scowl for a moment as he thought about that again.

  “As I recall he had an older half brother. He disappeared in the third age sometime around the great war. Seems the whole family disappeared.” Farghal could see Fionna didn’t think that was funny. He cringed imperceptibly and started over.

  “Thendiel used old magics to enter the realm of Ilmatar to retrieve the king’s heart. Untuoni, the lord of that place does not allow the living to enter where the elven spirits are presumably sleeping in peace. So Thendiel was caught there and would never have been seen again,” he said, as he continued to puff slowly.

  “The song of her life reached the ears of Lord Lourien. He is a keeper of the realm of dreams in the beautiful gardens that flow there. He is the kindest and most compassionate of the lords. He even has a secret path to the mortal realm, a stairway of sorts, that he created so mortal kind could visit his peaceful gardens in their sleep and know of dreams, and creativity.” Farghal went off on a tangent but then after seeing Fionna scowling at him from her chair, he quickly got back to the story.

  “Lord Lourien reached out to Thendiel in her peril and in connecting to her with his own strength and harmony he gave her life. It was a seed of pure light meant to grow and flourish and keep her alive long enough to escape through his hidden pathway with the king’s heart of course, or so goes the legend.”

  He glanced at Fionna, “...And then, the unexpected, or maybe not so unexpected, happened,” he looked thoughtfully at the hearth flames.

  “A little one, Eijlam, was born into the life of elves. He was pure elven and purely divine all at the same time. The boy grew up as all elves do. Ilmatar surely resounded in joy with the song of his creation.” He smiled and continued the story, “His mother, having never completely returned from her ordeal with the king was not truly alive in a sense. It was her strong will, her love for her sons and young Eijlam’s grace that kept her alive all those many years afterward. Her spirit faded so thin she could no longer stand the realm of mortals and went back to Ilmatar. On the day she left, Eijlam disappeared with her. It was a mistake. Because he was born directly from Ilmatar he could, let us just say, easily step over the threshold.” The wizard paused to consider the pipe in his hand.

  “Eijlam found himself in his father’s gardens where he was not meant to be.” Farghal paused to reflect on that a moment until Fionna cleared her throat, urging him to go on.

  “I was asked to bring him back to this life by Lord Lourien, who is well known to me long years past from my time in his gardens.”

  He poked inside the pipe bowl to see if it was still lit.

  “Elves are sometimes reborn from the place of spirit, but they are usually given up from Ilmatar through ocean waves on soft warm sands. I think that is a much gentler way than the water in our small stone pool and wizards magics.”

  He could see Fionna was distressed in hearing that.

  “Nevertheless,” he took a long slow drag off the pipe and sat back, “he is here with us now.”

  He puffed out some smoke rings before he said, “...And he will not remember his time in the womb of Ilmatar ... or maybe he would, considering what he is.”

  “What is he?” Fionna asked again, fully back to her first question that was never really answered.

  “He is the son of ... well,” Farghal stopped to think a moment. “Humans would say he is the son of a god…” He could hear Fionna sputter. “…but the Edhellen call them lords,” he added. He glanced sideways over at Fionna to see her reaction and was not disappointed.

  Fionna jerked back in her chair and stared at him with her mouth gaping wide open.

  By the Gods

  Chapter Ten

  “You look like anyone. You could be anyone. Except for your weird eyes, I suppose ... and maybe your stupid paralyzing smile,” Fionna chattered on and on nervously to herself as her frail visitor watched quietly. He noticed the outside edge of Fionna’s right eye was flinching wildly as she spoke.

  She finally sat down at the edge of the bed and really looked at him. Taking both his hands in hers, she leaned forward and peered straight into his eyes.

  “Are you Edge-lam?” she asked, repeating the name as she thought the wizard had said it.

  He smiled and put his thumb to his chest. “Eijlam.”

  “I take that as a yes?” she sat up and narrowed her eyes in deep thought.

  “Ay… E J,” he added still pointing at himself with a sudden sober look on his face. He nodded slowly to see if she got it.

  “Ee-jay?” she asked, repeating his words.

  He slowly nodded his head again yes as she said it and then put his hand happily back in her firm grip and smiled sweetly.

  “That is a nice name, EJ it is then. I am Fionna,” she said a bit louder than she had to.

  She made the same gesture he did to see if he’d get it.

  “Fee-o-NA.” He pointed at her.

  “No!” She said abruptly, making him jump. “Fy-onna,” she repeated, leaning into him, folding his gangly wandering arms back over his chest. EJ grinned as she held him d
own by leaning into him with her bosom.

  She was staring intently into his eyes.

  He was staring back, trying to be serious and not giggle.

  He moved his mouth in concentration and said, “Fy-onna,” getting the accent on the correct syllable this time.

  “Yes. Ay,” she said, lifting her eyebrows at him.

  He obviously loved her thrilling little game and lifted his eyebrows back at her and smiled sweetly again. She was exhausted by the exchange.

  “En en nun nun, En en nun nun, En en nun nun,” Eijlam had been making sounds from across the room all day.

  “Yes,” Fionna had said, “with two N’s,” she had told him.

  He was babbling off in his mind like a baby that had just discovered his mouth.

  “So, you are who papa says you are,” Fionna said, while restocked something on a shelf.

  “I think your poor brain has been addled." She shook her head sadly, studying him.

  "Time to wash your face before bedtime,” she announced, bringing a wet cloth to wipe him off.

  He scrunched up his nose as she worked him over. He liked it when she cleaned around his ears because it tickled and felt good.

  When she finished, EJ pulled one of her hands up toward his mouth. He showed her a game he remembered. He gently rubbed her fingertips back and forth across his pursed lips blowing his breath over them. She watched with curiosity, smiling with him until the tickling was too much. She giggled, and much to his dismay pulled her hands away.

  “EN EN Fionna,” he said slowly in big lipped disappointment. His sad eyes pierced into her, and she felt a tiny shiver in her heart.

  +++

  Unlike the wizards that she had grown up around, EJ did not have any hair on his face. The hair on his head was hopelessly tangled. She had tried to tie it back to keep it out of the way while eating, but strands of it came loose and flipped in every direction.