It was an hour before sunrise when a flock of birds landed on the ground next to Kaan and chirped in his ear. He got up on his knees and started scraping away the soil where he had slept. After a minute of digging, he found what he was searching for, a dagger hidden by Leon.
His sleep had been too light for him to transcend into the world of his dreams, as often was the case when anxiety struck him. The gray-haired scientist had entered the cage late the night before in the company of the two most violent officers. They woke the elves up and made them stand in a row, facing the fence. One by one, the officers turned them around for inspection and held their hot lanterns close to their faces, until they found Kaan. The professor explained in a couple of incoherent sentences that he knew that he was Leon’s younger brother and that they would punish him because of it. He said that the only sensible thing was to neuter Kaan and the two officers showed their yellow teeth in sinister agreement. They threw him on the ground and gave him a round of kicks before the professor interrupted them. The scientist asked the officers not to be brutal, then the three men disappeared into the night. Kaan crawled away to hide amongst the trees where he reviewed his situation. The power of sacrifice or not, escape was his only option.
It was as quiet in the Elf Bosket as in a human grave. Kaan was careful not to make a sound as he sneaked towards the fence. Early morning was the best time to move around without being seen. Most Beings were still asleep and the officers on night duty returned to the Watch House for their replacement. He believed he still had a few hours to act before the professor woke up and came back to oversee his surgery. Kaan wondered why the man had warned him. The professor had smelled of spirits, that part was obvious, but he sensed that there was more to the man’s actions than mere drunken confusion. He would never grasp the hassle of human behavior and their complex way of thinking. The world was better off without humans. Leon often said so and Kaan agreed.
He walked onwards, stopping every few steps to make sure no one was watching him. The horizon was bleeding red when he arrived at the fence. Were it not for the occasional wheezing sound of Volt’s breaths, he would believe his brother to be dead already. His face was pale and his joints lifeless, and it seemed he was far beyond saving. Kaan held up the dagger and took a deep breath. He brought the blade close to his brother’s chest, ready to push, but his body did not obey his mind. Volt and Leon meant everything to him and he was not as strong as he wished he were. Nothing in the world could make him kill his brother.
Volt opened his eyes and gasped for air. At first he looked horrified, but then he put his arm around Kaan and pressed him closer. The blade found its way between the ribs and slit the blood vessels that kept him alive. A peaceful smile spread across the wounded elf’s face. He closed his eyes for the last time, ready to wander over the fields and meet those waiting for him there.
Kaan wanted to scream, but he managed to summon the last of his willpower and control himself. He had endured many beatings, seen friends die and suffered humiliation countless times. Once or twice, he had screamed for pain or sworn every obscenity there is to swear, but he had never shed a single tear. Now elven tears flowed down his cheek and landed on Volt’s ravaged body. The border between grief and anger is a subtle thing, and soon his sorrow turned into rage. He pulled the dagger out from his brother’s chest and stabbed the lifeless elf, again and again. The blood that splashed on his clothes would attract unnecessary attention, but he did not have heart enough to worry about it. His brother deserved a better ending than this.
Kaan disappeared into the forest unseen. Something grew inside him, and his mind sharpened. Weak links formed to the surrounding nature, but the power of sacrifice did not lift him to that higher state of mind Leon had described. To escape from the Dream Park, he needed to make the world tremble, yet there was little trace of such magic inside him. Perhaps his sacrifice was not big enough. Or maybe he was just too weak. As doubt rose inside him, the power faded.
He washed himself in the little creek which ran through the Elf Bosket, where the elves went to clean themselves and fetch their drinking water. He hid the dagger under a small stone at its bottom. Volt’s death was not part of Leon’s plan and Kaan wished their way to freedom had not required his brother’s life as a sacrifice. Amid his grief, anger and disappointment, he felt a slight sparkle of faith growing inside him. He was one step closer to escaping from the Dream Park.
*
Liv also woke up early that morning, filled with expectations and energy. She had spent the previous day in Sommerfort’s library and searched for information about Beings. Most books were written in a factual tone and were uninteresting to normal people. Having skimmed through a chapter on trolls’ internal organs she decided to ignore any scientific literature. The first real finding was a history book. It said that elves and the indigenous clans of Anland had fought together against the settlers from the south. She had learned about the war before, though the professors at her boarding school failed to mention the elves’ role in it.
After hours of searching, she found a dusty leather-bound book in the library’s basement which was not written by people like Professor Mendel. It was old, from a time when logic and facts were unimportant, back when fairy tales and metaphors formed the truth. The book told stories of every Being imaginable, most of them extinct for centuries, and dedicated full chapters to things which the other books discarded as myths. It said that elves could learn to predict a person’s point of death by interpreting their dreams and that their gaze as well as their tears contained magic. The authors recommended the reader to be cautious of angry elves, since the Beings could make you lose your mind. Although it was an entertaining read, more than half the pages were ripped out and the book revealed no useful insights.
That night she lay awake until the darkest hours of the day, trying to find the magic within herself. Once she fell asleep, her dreams were calmer than usual. She crossed green hills, moving towards a distant range of mountains. The snow-covered peaks called for her somehow. It was relieving to leave the sea behind, yet she continued to stumble upon the coast without drawing nearer to the mountains.
When morning came she stepped out of bed and hurried down the stairs to the dining room. Her father sat at the table sipping a cup of hot herbal tea from the flourishing plains south of Norma. They ate a piece of bread in silence before he got up to begin his walk into town.
“I’ll come with you today,” she said. “There is nothing for me to do here and I haven’t visited Lilian since her wedding.” Lilian was her cousin whom she grew up with. The two of them had shared a governess together with Lilian’s younger brother.
It was difficult to tell if Shannon enjoyed her company that morning. The air between them was like an open wound as they walked, but they had no desire to discuss it. Neither of them knew how to patch battered relationships. Liv was still furious with her father and had already won their argument inside her head, while Shannon was reluctant to even think about the conflict. At first he looked worried, but as they settled into a comfortable stroll, he disappeared into less stressful thoughts. The grim expression eased off his face as he started thinking about the working day that awaited him in the Town Hall.
People expected a man of his position to go by coach anywhere further than his garden, but moving his feet was an important ritual to him. His daily walks were one of the three things that kept him in balance, the other two being his daughter and his work. Liv felt the same way. She could travel long and fast on foot without getting tired, but inside a wagon the thin walls closed in on her.
As they approached the town, the spacing between the houses narrowed and the small villas transformed into brick facades. In some places lay old tumbledown wooden barns and abandoned factories with collapsed roofs. Every single building was home to dozens of people, many of them abandoned children who spent their days downtown begging or stealing. Shannon used to warn Liv about them and tell her to stay away from the area, but she ignored his warnings. After all, her father walked there himself every day. The poor knew who he was and allowed him to pass.
After two leagues they reached the walls of Sommerfort. The high iron gate had just been unbolted for the day and now visitors and citizens alike poured through it. Coaches and wagons loaded with crops on their way to the market, cattle, beggars and people from every corner of the country entered the protection of the town walls. Dizzy men on their way home from the innumerable taverns on the Main Street staggered out through the gate. Well-rested men who had spent the night in illegal brothels outside the walls sneaked in from the opposite direction. Both groups were filled with a mix of regret and satisfaction. Up on the wall stood the town guard with shiny helmets on their heads and heavy rifles swung over their shoulders. Their breastplates shone in the morning light.
Sommerfort’s first guardian, William Wilder, a distinguished soldier responsible for the town’s security, patrolled the wall and inspected his guards, a wine-red mantle swaying behind the mountainous man. The first lawman outranked him and the norm was that he should greet him accordingly. He took one long look at Shannon, then raised a giant hand and gave a slight nod. As they passed through the gate and came out on the other side, Liv saw William Wilder spitting over his shoulde in the corner of her eye. Her father did not notice it, or was at least not offended by the disrespectful gesture.
She spun around. The big man carried a grin on his lips, which faded as she stared him down. He stepped to the side and disappeared behind a keep. Liv leaned forward as if she prepared to charge after him like a bull. She took a few steps back towards the gate, but a disturbing hand on her shoulder stopped her.
“Come now, Liv, rudeness is not a crime,” her father said. “Getting angry makes no difference.”
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She did not move for another minute, then turned around and followed him into town.
A lively commotion of morning activities filled the narrow streets of Sommerfort. There were people everywhere, and in the background buzzed an endless mixture of noise. Smoke poured out of many chimneys even though it was summer. Fire did not only heat houses and boil water, but could also melt metal or spin the giant wheels in the ever-growing factories. As a child, the sooty smoke made Liv cough, but over time the air had become cleaner. Or maybe her lungs had adapted to the smog. It did not matter. She would never thrive in a city crowd, she belonged to nature and had always known that.
As a little girl she used to sulk every time their governess took her and Lilian on excursions into town. Not until they returned home and could play in the fields near their house did her enthusiasm take over. Then the governess tired of chasing after Liv as she ran off to explore new playgrounds far from home. To make their free time even more dull, her cousin feared both the open fields and the dark forest, but loved to look at small items in Sommerfort’s gift shops. One day, when Shannon was at a symposium in Frostport, Lilian’s parents had a serious discussion with the governess. After that they spent little time outdoors.
Several years passed before an old lady of letters replaced the governess. She made them waste their days gaining unnecessary knowledge from books and boring lectures, but at least they could spend their vacant periods as they liked. Liv enjoyed her new freedom, yet their study hours were long and their breaks short. Over time, the outdoors visit became rare and only occurred in the evening. She almost wished she was similar to Lilian, who was so keen on becoming a lady. Now her cousin danced in ballrooms on weekends, and dressed-up men admired her wherever she went. Liv hated festivities and loathed the gentlemen who approached her when she was near Lilian.
The only part of their upbringing they both appreciated were the weeks they lived in a boarding school north of Frostport. The school was an old castle transformed into an officer school for sons of affluent families. In recent years, young women could study history there during the summers. Everyone knew that the lessons in the boarding school were unimportant. The actual reason people spent a fortune to send their daughters there was to introduce them to other like-minded youths and, at best, find them a husband. When the other girls drank tea, gossiped about boys or took short strolls in the park, she disappeared into the deep forests surrounding the castle. Sometimes in the evenings after Lilian had fallen asleep, she sneaked out of her bed and climbed out through the window. Liv was not afraid of heights and could make her way up the stony walls with no risk of falling. She spent hours on the castle roof, watching the stars float across the sky.
That was where she met him. At the surface he was well-behaved and boring, older than her and acted as if his greater age made him attractive. Underneath he was wild and strong. With her sharp eyesight she could see more stars than him, but he still enjoyed their time together as he lay beside her, staring into infinity. They shared several nights on the roof, nights she would never forget. The day after she always slept in class and remembered nothing of the gray-haired professors’ gibber about broken dynasties and extinct families. They never spoke to each other during daytime, nor did they keep in touch after she left the boarding school.
Now they were too old to return and Lilian had married a tradesman fifteen years her age who had moved to Sommerfort from the northern coast two years before. Her younger brother had joined the boarding school last summer. Lilian told everyone she met that the other boys feared him and that the girls admired him.
Liv dreaded the future. For more than a year she had been alone, her youth passing her by. The only excitement she experienced was that of her horrible dreams. A girl her age was expected to marry soon, no matter her own desires. Her father had not dared to bring up the topic, but she knew he would not refuse a suitable man if one asked for her hand.
Her way out of any engagement was that she could not give birth to a child. A doctor had made that evident during a medical examination of her a month ago. Shannon had no choice but to tell her the secret about her mother then. The common offspring of elves and humans could not have children. Beings should not interbreed. Nature’s law was clear and could not be broken. It prevented half-bloods like her from becoming more than a lonely leaf in the tree of time. The doctor looked at her with unmasked disgust as he explained this to her, as if pure evil flowed through her veins and parasites covered her skin. He would not tell a living soul though, of that she was certain. For the first time in her life, Shannon took advantage of his position as first lawman and used it for his personal interest. He ordered the doctor to forget their secret and threatened with severe retaliation if he did not.
Shannon worked inside an old stone building in the center of the town, behind the colorful palace where the mayor lived. The two buildings formed the heart of Sommerfort and were both renown landmarks. They ruled everything within the walls and the surrounding rural areas. The Evergreen’s Square spread out in front of them, a marketplace filled with grocery stands every morning. At night it transformed into a dark and abandoned place. Pubs were forbidden in the central district and no night-time villains dared come near the Town Hall. In the middle of the square stood a tall statue depicting the founder of Sommerfort, a merry man clad in armor, holding a brass fish in each hand. Her father stopped in front of the statue and raised his palm in reverence. The founder had promoted Liv’s great grandfather to the role of first lawman, and Shannon showed his respect to the monument every time he passed it.
This was where they parted. Her father crossed the square and disappeared into the crowd. Liv waited for him to reach the Town Hall. Meanwhile, she examined the statue of Sommerfort’s founder. She worshipped nothing. That included a dead person who had transcended into a legend. Even so, the man fascinated her. The founder was one of few people worth reading about in the history books. He was self-dependent like nobody else and a true lunatic. Legend depicted him as both ruthless and considerate. He stood up against the aristocracy and summoned the bourgeoisie to form Anland’s first parliament. The common people sacrificed themselves for him as he rose to power, and in return he sacrificed himself for the people. The old king beheaded him in the Evergreen’s Square, at the same spot where the statue now stood.
The execution aroused furious anger amongst the commoners of Anland. It was said that the founder’s death united them and gave them the strength to triumph in the following civil war. Liv only believe that to be part of the truth. The man’s death did not by itself earn the people’s victory, nor did it lead to the foundation of a country. It was the choices the founder made while he was still alive that mattered. She came to think of her own life, how dull and pointless it was. Unless she acted soon, she would be no more than a villager hiding in the crowd as an important person lost his head.
Shannon was out of sight and she concluded that he had entered the Town Hall. Liv ran across the square and walked into an empty alley. She planned to do as she had told her father and visit Lilian in her white villa by the lake, but not until later.
*
A coach rushed through the gates of the Dream Park. Inside the wagon sat the veterinarian, feeling as uncomfortable as a priest on his way to rob a bank. An officer’s heavy knocks on his door had jerked him from sleep that morning. The elf whose leg he amputated had died last night. Now they wanted him to throw an eye on the corpse before they burned it. The officer also carried a muddled message from the professor regarding the castration of some elf.
No visitors were allowed near the Elf Bosket. Curious people therefore gathered at the Lookout Point where they had an unobstructed view of the scene. Most of them would otherwise have gone to the Troll Pit or the Aquarium, but now they changed their plans to glimpse the dead elf male.
The veterinarian needed only to throw an eye at Volt’s body to see that someone had stabbed the elf to death. Good for him, thought the veterinarian when he inspected the infected leg. The elf would die soon anyway. To him it was obvious what had happened. The Beings in the Dream Park carried no weapons, so a human must have entered the cage and stabbed the helpless elf to death. It was probably a punishment for his attempt to escape or just the result of a drunken officer taking out his aggressions on the most defenseless creature nearby. The veterinarian had no doubt that the Dream Park’s staff understood that. He concluded that he had arrived to show the spectators on the Lookout Point that the park treated their dead elves with respect.
Joseph Wilder stood a few steps away and watched the veterinarian.
“Well?” he asked.
“I suppose he died of natural causes,” answered the veterinarian. “Perhaps a knife fell from the sky.”
For a moment he thought the first officer was about to laugh, then the man’s face tightened.
“Don’t mock me,” said Joseph Wilder and walked up to the veterinarian, his looming figure casting a dark shadow over the smaller man. Anger rose within the veterinarian and he wanted to tell the first officer to behave civilized, then saw the shining knuckle dusters attached to the officer’s belt. He took a step back instead.
“Keep your jokes to yourself, but you understood one thing right,” Joseph Wilder continued. “What you said — that the elf died from an infected leg — you shall also tell others, including Charles Mendel and Arthur Greene.”
The words echoed in the veterinarian’s ears for the rest of the day. First, he had to wrap the dead elf in a body bag, then he assisted one of the Dream Park’s caretakers to drag the body into the forest. They dropped it next to a gate with bolts the size of an industrial machine, as if the bosket contained the toughest criminals in Anland. Officers sneaked through the gate when they needed to chasten an elf out of sight from the visitors, and caretakers used it to bring food into the Elf Bosket. Elves only passed through it when they were dead. A corpse could lie there for many hours before someone took it to the ovens.
Kaan had climbed into a nearby tree and saw how the men threw his brother’s body on the ground like a sack of trash. Having made sure that there was no one nearby, he jumped to the ground as softly as a falling shadow. He sneaked up to the sackcloth and unlaced it. To his surprise he saw that Volt’s body looked less battered than he had left it. The wounds around the knee stump had healed into light scratches. His leg had not even bled through the sack. No creases or scars covered the snow-white face. It was clean, with no sign of suffering. Kaan heaved the body over his shoulders and lugged it through the forest to the creek. He lowered Volt’s body into the water and watched as it sank to the bottom.
He sensed something moving nearby and swung around, ready for battle or flight, depending on who the intruder was. Hiding behind a rose bush were two elflings, a boy and a girl, staring at him with wide eyes. He recognized them both. The boy’s name was Mol, and the girl was named Mi. He washed his bloodstained hands in the creek, then waved them closer.
“Don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen,” he said and put his hands on their shoulders. “If you do, my brother Leon will punish you the day he returns. You know remember Leon, don’t you?” The children nodded. Every elf in the Dream Park knew who Leon was. They admired the big elf almost as much as they feared him.
Kaan shooed the kids off and then searched for the dagger at the bottom of the creek. Once found, he hurried back to the gate where he had left the body bag and crept into it. He laced it up with limited success. His brothers would have laughed if they had seen him, but he did not find the situation amusing. The air was muggy and smelled of death. He tried to breathe as little as possible and hoped that whoever took the sack away would overlook that it was tied from the inside.