Liv’s father was a short man whose black hair had recently assumed a gray shade. His first name was Gabriel and Liv often called him father, but everyone else greeted him by his surname, Shannon. He worked as Sommerfort’s first lawman, and spent his days discussing how various crimes ought to be judged. Shannon loved his work and lived a lawful and methodical life. It did not bother him that his days lacked excitement and adventure. Important people surrounded him, but no colleague at the Town Hall appreciated the beauty in interpreting the law, and it made him feel isolated.

He scraped the mud from his leather shoes before stepping inside his house. On his way home he had walked into a storm. The rain had drenched his cotton clothes, but he had continued by foot instead of taking a coach. As always, unresolved issues occupied his mind after a day’s hard work. During his hour-long hike, the troublesome thoughts dissolved and stayed behind in Sommerfort.

He was thus relaxed when he stepped into the vestibule of and peered into the living room. A bonfire blazed in the tiled stove. Liv sat on a stool in front of the fire, her head resting against her hands, not paying any attention to her father. Her gaze followed the dancing flames. Shannon put a hand on her shoulder and brought his daughter back from her deep thoughts.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’ve cooked dinner,” she said and smiled as if every muscle in her face ached. “Food is on the table.”

Without sharing a word, they ate a modest serving of thin soup each, then moved to two armchairs by the fading fire. Shannon poured himself a glass of strong wine and started browsing through a book. It told of Captain Matheussen, an explorer from Lyria captured by pirates on a voyage to the far north. He was now the captain onboard the ship Gibbsen, the most feared vessel in the Northern Sea.

“I always view the law from a perspective where it was less condemning against criminals than one would believe,” Shannon said to himself. “When it comes to Captain Matheussen, I reckon it’s the opposite.”

Liv clutched the soft armrest and twisted uneasily. She had experienced this evening countless times in the past. It was like rehearsing a boring play no audience would ever pay to watch.

“I visited the Dream Park today,” she said, interrupting Shannon from his thoughts.

Her father shut his book and looked at her puzzled. He was about to talk in his most serious tone when she continued. “It was important for me to see.”

“Liv, I believe I made myself clear. That is a dangerous place.” His voice was low and sharp, but he kept it under control. “They might realize what you are.”

“There is nothing they can do to me,” said Liv, sounding resolute. “I’m as much an elf as a human.” They fell silent while Shannon struggled to find the right words.

She had the hair and physique of an elf, but her ears were different. They were not elegant and leaf-shaped. Instead they looked shriveled, as if they had been crushed in a wrestling match. Unlike Beings born in captivity, she knew how humans functioned and could behave around people. That she would end up in a cage appeared less likely than her father being thrown into one of Sommerfort’s dungeons.

“I’m not afraid,” she said.

“I know, but I am.”

“You always are, and it makes life dull.” Liv could not tell if the insult offended her father. “They will never dare lay a hand on the first lawman’s daughter, even if they find out what I am,” she sniffed. “I spoke to their first officer today without getting hurt. His name was Wilder, and he said he knew you.”

Shannon uttered a shriek as he heard the name.

“Joseph Wilder? He and his men have no limits. You don’t know the people running the Dream Park, but I do, and they are evil. Promise me to never go back there. I lost your mother and I won’t lose you too. Promise me that.”

It hurt to reminisce over Dara and he was now becoming sad and upset. He rinsed his glass of strong wine and filled it up again.

“You’re thinking of mother,” Liv said as her father disappeared into memories. “I know that you mourn her. You’ve told me countless times how difficult it is to raise a daughter without a wife, but did you ever think about me? How I felt growing up with people so different from me? You want me to marry and have children, but that won’t happen. You’re the only family I’ll ever have, and you’re ashamed of me. Understand that the Dream Park, no matter how terrible, is the closest I come to my mother.”

A defiant tear ran down Liv’s cheek as she spoke. Even her father’s eyes watered. She stood up, walked into the vestibule and pushed the front door open. It was unlike her to say that many words in succession, but once she became furious, she could not restrain herself.

“I’m a half-blood. For me there are no laws. You have no idea how to deal with me. How did it turn out, bringing me up as a lady? What’s your next move, to find me a boring nobleman? Or maybe it’s easier to pretend I don’t exist?”

Shannon sat frozen in the armchair with his glass in one hand and the book about Captain Matheussen in the other. Men often insulted and threatened him in court. That was part of his work. He always stayed calm then, but Liv’s words shuttered his defenses and his usual self control fell aside.

“What should I do? People whisper behind my back about my strange daughter. I cannot protect you from the outside world for ever,” he hissed and stared wide-eyed at the blue flames dancing on top of the glowing charcoal. “You must adapt. It is unnatural if you don’t.”

He tended to examine every sentence before saying it and never spoke without performing a mental rehearsal beforehand. Now that his anger pushed the words right through him, he realized that they sounded cruel.

“So I’m unnatural!” Liv shouted, her body trembling with rage.

Before Shannon had the chance to apologize, she slammed the door shut and disappeared into the dark.

During her upbringing, Liv and her father rarely raised their voices against each other. The few times they quarreled it always ended the same way. Liv ran to an old maple in the garden’s part furthest away from the house and kicked off her shoes. As a child, she climbed as high as possible and stuck her head out from the crown. She used to watch as countless birds flew past her and take in the powerful scents the wind brought with it. One time she fell and crashed to the ground. Her governess behaved as if Liv’s head had fallen off and hurried to the doctor, who just noted that she was unharmed. He said that her resilient bones impressed him, but told her to be careful, nevertheless. After that the governess forbade her to climb, which only made Liv push herself higher up the trees whenever she had the chance.

As she grew older, her climbs to the top of the tree became rare. She preferred to sit on a big branch near the ground, which was a better place to play music. On her way out of the house she had grabbed her lute. Now her fingers worked in harmony with each other, forcing a melancholic melody to flow out of the instrument. At regular intervals she hummed, adding another dimension to the tunes, though she was unaware of doing so. Her musicality, her quick legs and her reluctance to socialize in groups had always distinguished her from other girls. She used to believe that they were no more remarkable traits than that some people could lift heavy weights and that others could earn the trust of strangers by smiling. Since her father told her about her mother, she had come to accept that she was more than different. The elf blood caused her strengths as well as her weaknesses.

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She allowed the melody to fade and concentrated on mastering her feelings. To reflect on her upbringing was nothing that suited her. Why devote her mind to something so dull and meaningless? It was like trying to retell a story for which you forget the plot the moment you close the book. It turned out her father found her unnatural, but he had no right to judge her. The pain that stung her when he said so reached to the most sensitive part of her soul. It seemed the only person meant to be on her side had abandoned her. She decided it didn’t matter. She was best off on her own.

The rain had stopped falling, and after a while she began to shiver. She slid down from her branch and went back into the house, up the stairs into her bedroom, without saying a word to Shannon who slumbered in his armchair.

*

When Liv returned to the world of her dreams, she stood looking out over the sea on a steep cliff at the far end of a peninsula. As always, she had changed location from the previous night. The wind was fierce, and the air filled with rain. Below, towering waves splashed against hard rocks. Wild currents met further out from land and formed a large vortex that would devour her for good if she stumbled. Sharp fins stuck out of the water, hungry dark silhouettes below the surface. She moved inland at a quick pace, not stopping for breaks and never dropping her guard.

After an hour of easy running the forest grew dense and high. Big raindrops fell from the sky and made the moss under her feet moist and slippery. Then everything became quiet. Too quiet. A terrible roar broke the stillness, branches cracked, and the ground shook. Out from the trees stormed a black bear. It opened its jaw, flashing its yellow fangs. Liv scanned her surroundings for places to hide, but found none, and she deemed the nearby firs too difficult to climb. She took a deep breath and darted away. Few people could match her skills for running in tough terrain, and she kept the beast behind her for a while. After a few minutes she heard it panting at her heels. Though she could push herself further than anyone, she had to admit that she could not keep the pace up much longer. Ahead of her appeared the brink of a precipice. She grabbed a nearby pine branch to prevent herself from falling. At least it’s a beautiful place to die, she told herself in pursuit of courage. She turned around, determined to give the animal a final battle. In an instant she switched from being a prey to the most dangerous thing in nature: a strong-willed human with the abilities of an elf, ready to kill.

But the bear had disappeared, and after a short while her fear transformed into curiosity. She sneaked back along the path. The beast lay on its stomach in a glade, as harmless and relaxed as a tame cat. In front of it stood the elf from the Dream Park. Every detail of his appearance, from his pointy ears to his sleek legs, was indistinguishable from what she had seen in reality. It had to be the same elf, not just an illusion of her dreams. He stretched out his arm and scratched the bear behind its ear. In response, it butted him with its nose and licked his hand. The animal rose and ambled into the forest. It had stopped raining, and the afternoon sun shone through the canopy. Liv stepped into the clearing and showed herself.

“We have met before. Who are you?” He sounded human, but with a slight spell in his voice.

“My name is Liv. And yours?”

“I’m Kaan and I live in the Elf Bosket. I saw you there today. Do you remember?”

She nodded, and he looked bewildered at her. He sat down on a fallen tree laying on the ground with its bare roots sticking into the air, like weeds ripped out of the earth by a giant. The elf gestured for her to take a seat beside him, but she remained standing.

“You are a human, but humans cannot enter our dreams,” he said and shook his head. It seemed he was talking to himself, that he was a person who only believed his thoughts by saying them out loud. “Do you often see other people in your dreams?”

“Dreams are just the mind playing tricks on you,” she said. “Though it doesn’t feel that way.”

“We are not inside your head, nor is this part of your waking life. Elfs’ dreams prepare them for the afterlife.”

Liv felt her conception of reality reshape into a strange form. In her heart she believed in the supernatural, like all people do, but not that she herself would suffer from it. Yet she stood there, opposite an astonished elf who talked to wild animals. She took a few steps back and sat down on a moss-covered stone.

“So, elves visit another world at night. Do you often meet each other there?” she asked.

“No, we never see each other, or at least it’s outside our control. We can learn to force our way into other Beings’ dreams, but I can’t do it and it has never happened to me. For us to share dreams is very unusual and when it happens we must part at once.” He sat silent for a while and groped for the right words. “I’m not sure I should tell you this. We don’t share our secrets with humans. But you are inside my dreams and deserve to know,” he said, and his indecisiveness turned into discomfort. “Elves only meet when it’s time to cross the Fields and die.”

Kaan spoke without interruptions, not looking her in the eyes. She sensed that he was havering about a matter too complicated for him. Instead of explaining elven legends to her, she wanted him to help her gain control of her dreams.

“So one of us will die soon,” she concluded.

“I don’t know. Things are different since you are not an elf. There are no dream readers in the park for me to ask.”

Liv looked away and bit her lip, uncertain if she dared tell the truth.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” said Kaan. “You’re no ordinary person. You enter my dreams, and you look at me unlike any other human.”

She pulled back her hair and displayed a pair of fair pointy ears, not the shriveled ones he had glimpsed in the Dream Park. He was not used to arriving at clever conclusions by himself. His brothers always helped with that, but something started nagging in a corner of his mind. He was silent for a long time and waited for his thoughts to take form.

“There must be elven blood in you.”

She signed, then mumbled what she had sworn never to tell anyone.

“My mother was an elf.” Her dark green eyes flashed. “It’s a secret,” she said, then got up and walked away.

“Wait!” he shouted and ran after her.

At the edge of the cliff where she had turned to face the bear, she stopped and watched the landscape. The elf snuck up beside her — a bit too close for her liking — and was about to speak when a roar echoed in the distance. It grew stronger and penetrated their bones and muscles. Both of them crouched and scanned around for danger. They heard gunshots and the helpless screams of people. The sound did not travel from a distant source, but emerged in the surrounding air. A fire flared up from a tree below the precipice and spread through the forest swifter than ripples on the surface of a silent pond. Kaan pressed Liv against him and protected her with his arms.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Danger is an important part of dreaming.”

She grasped for breath as he touched her, then pushed him away. “I’m not scared,” she said, and tried not to picture the monsters she so often hid from at night.

The cliff rocked, and they fell backwards. They struggled to their feet but were at once thrown back against the trembling ground, as if they were standing on top of a shaking giant. Black birds left their nests to find safety in the sky, trees tumbled over and the earth cracked around them. The cliff split in two, leaving Kaan on the larger half, where he attempted to keep his balance. Liv stood on a small pillar of stone, drifting away from the elf. Between them, a large abyss formed, which devoured everything that plunged into it. Kaan lost his footing. He rolled back and forth as the ground trembled, his head sticking out over the darkness. Then the moving rocks came to a sudden halt.

“The living are not meant to share dreams,” he cried, his words deafened by cracking trees and bursting stone.

Liv stepped away from the abyss, tripped and slid towards the burning forest. Something sharp hit her temple and the world around her flicked to black. A shade of silver white brightened in front of her. Someone moved inside the light and kneeled beside her. A pair of thin fingers stroked her forehead.

“Liv”, the voice of a woman whispered, her breath softer than a summer’s wind against Liv’s cheek. “Too long have I longed for you.”

Liv tried to sit up, but failed, then attempted to talk, but no words left her mouth. It felt like water submerged her, and she now levitated towards the surface. She recognized the feeling and understood that she was leaving her dreams.

“Help him,” the woman whispered, this time more distant. “He need not be unhappy. Bring him to me.”