“Your book had elves in it.” If she was careful, and just subtle enough, she could direct the conversation. Little nudges here and there, just to push him far enough that he would willingly let her past the tough guards she knew he kept in place. “The one you let me borrow.”
“I knew what book you were referring to. It is not as if I have seen you with any other printed words in your hands,” he remarked dryly, almost coldly. “And given that the book was written in elvish, by an elf, in the Age of Magic, I fail to see how that’s unique.”
Jo tensed, but pushed down the near-instant fireball of frustration she could’ve spat at him. She needed him—needed his knowledge—but she hated having to walk blindfolded through a maze of eggshells to try to get it.Okay, different approach. “Tell me a little about your time?”
“What do you want to know?” Eslar sighed heavily and snapped his book shut with a mighty thud.
“Anything.”
“Is this really why you are bothering me?” he asked skeptically. “Don’t you have something to be doing for the wish?”
“Talking helps clear my head. It’ll help me think of a new approach for this code that has me tripped up.” Fortunately, it wasn’t a complete lie. “You lived in the Age of Magic, right?”
“I did.”
“So, tell me about it.”
“Wh—”
“Please, I need a distraction.Anything.” Again, not a lie. Not the whole truth, but not a lie.
“I have already given you one, but last I saw it was looking sad and forlorn out by the pool.”
“Books can’t look like anything but books.”
“Then you are not looking at them in the right way.”
“Eslar—”
He sighed heavily. It was the sound of someone finally giving in. “If I tell you this, will you go?”
Jo pressed her lips into a hard, thin line. In her mind, she was telling him off in several different languages. Even if she had ulterior motives, he was turning away a member of his team who was in need, who was trying to reach out to the one elf-shaped lifeline they could come up with, and he didn’t even care.
But all that came out of her mouth was, “Yeah, I guess.”
He stared at her for a long moment, reaching for his book again with a sigh. Jo thought that maybe she’d have to wait while he read another chapter before she’d get an answer. But he simply held it, caressed it, spoke to it as if he was imparting his knowledge to the object rather than another person.
In that moment, in that way, he reminded Jo of Samson.
“Well, as I mentioned. . . the elves would head to the sea in springtime. We would bless ourselves with the foam of the ocean and wear crowns of flowers plucked from the dunes. Communing with nature replenished our energies and gave us new life.”
Jo looked out over the pool, trying to imagine it, and found the task surprisingly easy. She could see a whole group of Eslars, joining hands, chanting, radiating with ancient power. She could see their woven fabrics, spun of silks from bugs her mind could conjure by image but not by name.
She blinked rapidly and, like a mirage in the sunlight reflecting off the water, the images vanished.
“You had magic in your time, right?”
“I did say that’s what we were doing, magic,” he responded curtly.
Jo avoided pointing out that he had not,exactly, said so outright.
“We had power, so much power . . . and yet . . .”
“And yet . . . what?” Jo probed, surprised it got her anywhere.
“The elves were an ancient race—those of the high elf bloodline the oldest of all mortals. They said there was truth woven into the world, truths that could not be seen with eyes or hands but with hearts and magic.”
So elves were the hippies of the magical world. . .
