“No,” she finally replied. Then again, stronger, “No, I did not. The south has always been unstable. In the north we have our sovereignty, but the southerners do not. They cling to the old ways. They have their clans, which are divided into houses that rule together, but there is unrest. Houses fight each other for more power, smaller houses rise to take larger ones. It is constant.”
“You think this tent-city was overtaken by another house?”
“But it was not.” Ellina swept her hand around the clearing. “Nothing is burnt. There is no sign of a fight. The tents are gone, packed up and taken away. These elves moved.”
“But that’s not so strange, is it? Elves move.”
“This city was here for decades,” Ellina replied. “Why now?” She peered up into the trees. The wind rustled their leaves, the papery noise of them filling the silence. “Kenath, too, was unexpected. In the past, conflict has kept the south weak. The southerners are so busy fighting each other that they cannot rally and grow. For elves to organize, to take over that city as they did, anortherncity…”
Venick remembered the danger they had faced in Kenath. Ellina hadn’t expected it. Dourin hadn’t, either.The southerners do not have that kind of powerhe’d insisted as they stood in a dark alley debating whether the southerners had infiltrated the city. But he had been wrong.
“What does it mean?” Venick asked.
“For you?” She flashed a tight smile. “Nothing.”
“And for you?”
“For us…” She made a gesture that was elvish foruncertain. She blinked, realizing what she had done. “It is uncertain,” she said, then repeated the gesture. “That is what this means. The word istourdin. Say it back to me.”
Venick touched his necklace. “Back to that?”
“Yes.” And then, as if knowing his next question, “Raffan will notice if you are not learning.”
“Raffan never expected me to learn.” Never expected him tolive. Ellina understood what was not said.
“It is not safe for you to be on this side of the border without some knowledge of our language.”
“I should think it’s not safe regardless.”
“We made a bargain.”
Venick grinned, because they both knew that bargain was a farce, and now she was simply being stubborn. But he shrugged and said the word back to her, and felt no little pleasure as she smiled at his botched pronunciation.
It went on like this as they left the abandoned tent-city and continued south: Ellina teaching him a word, Venick pretending to fumble it, her correcting him. By midafternoon Venick had relearned a handful of useless words liketreeandmudandshell. He watched Ellina’s exaggerated pronunciations—It is said zai-am-in—as he feigned fascination. And he was, a little, but not at the words. He watched Ellina tutor him through phrase after phrase. He watched the way her edges seemed to soften, the way she would brighten when he got a word right. This was a different Ellina than the one he’d come to know.
“Stop using your hands so much,” she was saying as they came upon a creek. “It changes a word’s meaning. Keep them still by your side. There, yes. And stopsmilinglike that.”
“I’m not smiling.”
“You are.” But she was too.
They dipped their hands into the creek, rubbing the cool water over their faces and necks. Venick ran a finger along the bottom, feeling the silt and pebbles he could see clearly. It reminded him of doing this as a boy, kneeling by the water, hunting for minnows and frogs, skinning naked and splashing in. There were creeks and streams and rivers all around Irek. There were lakes as well, wide pools where runoff collected from the mountains. The lakes were safer than the ocean because they had no current. Warmer, too, especially in the summer.
An idea. The seed of it planted inside him.
Venick moved downstream. The creek grew steadily deeper, twisting back and forth like a snake cut from the land. Venick remembered doing this as a child, too.Follow the river. It will lead you home.His mother’s words. His mother’s face, then, vivid in his mind. He saw her round cheeks, the tuft of wild hair, the way she would try to hide her amusement when he misbehaved. Her love for him, full and deep.
Venick rounded a bend and the creek opened into a pond. He turned towards Ellina, who had followed without question, who was gazing at him, curious. His idea grew roots, sprouted. Venick felt a sudden moment of shyness. He offered a smile. “I was thinking,” he said, picking each word carefully. “It’s dangerous for you not to know how to swim. You could learn. Youshouldlearn. And I—” he rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I could teach you.”
Ellina blinked. Her gaze darted between him and the pond. “Elves do not swim,” she said.
“All the more reason to learn.”
“It is against our ways.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“I—this is not done.”
