You're wealthy. Why can't you just give each one of them a gold coin. That'll feed them for the rest of their lives."

Quaraun shook his head sadly. "No. I tried that way already. This ain't my first time trying to save this village."

"Because you're a time traveller?"

"Yes."

"How many times have you tried to save this village?"

"Several. I can't count. I told you. I don't know math. It's been many times though."

"And giving them gold after the storm, didn't work? Didn't they rebuild the village? Replant the crops?"

"No. They didn't. They did none of that. Giving them gold was the first ting I tried the first time I came back here."

"And it didn't work?"

"No. It SHOULD feed them for the rest of their lives, but it won't. I've tried that method before. But when I return to the village the next year, they are just as poor and destitute as they were before I gave them the gold. They wasted it."

"Wasted it how? On what? One of your gold coins is enough to feed a large city for hundred years. How did one tiny little village spend so much in so little time?"

"Spend it on beer and vodka, gambled it away on horse races and dog fights. Spent it on whores and cards in saloons and taverns. Squandered it of frivolities and luxuries, tobacco and drugs and wine, while their wives and children starved. Greedy, selfish bastards, lavished themselves at the expense of their families. Giving them gold did far more harm than good."

"So, you are saying they didn't have enough common sense or moral decency to take care of their own families and spent the gold on themselves, and spent so much money, so fast on drinking and gambling that in just one year they were back where they started?"

"Yes."

"Than why are you helping them at all? Why don't you just let them rot in their own filth?"

"Is that how you think of your fellow mankind?"

"Wait, aren't YOU the one who hates Humans?" Ghirardelli asked.

"Not. I don't hate Humans as a whole. I do bed with your women, after all. I couldn't do that if I hated you completely. What I hate is how deplorably, some groups, most groups, of Humans treat each other. You levels of racism and bigotry towards each other is rather astounding. I don't understand it. I fear it. Humans scare me. I've seen far too many Humans commit atrocities and I don't understand why you do it."

"Okay, yeah, a lot of men are shit, I'll give you that. But, why THIS village?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, if I were going to go back in time to save a village, I'd pick someplace big and important. Boston. London. Rome. Paris. This village doesn't even have a name. They call it the garden by the see or the old orchard by the beach, and it's nothing but opium growers and hash dealers. Look at the fields of poppies everywhere. Why pick this one? It's all thugs and criminals and crime lords."

"Yes. And in the 1920s it'll get worse. And than in the 2000s it'll get even more worse. Biddeford. Saco. Old Orchard Beach. The Tri-City Area. Nothing but gutter scum and filth. Welfare bums and slum lords. Honky tonks and race tracks. Topless bars and Speedo beaches. The things this valley will become a hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, would spin your head and turn your stomach. Immoral degenerates who run around guzzling beer and shaking their bare boobs out of their string bikinis, while waving Bibles over their heads and shooting black children and men like me. If there was nothing but Humans here to worry about, I'd let this place burn. It will in 1871 and it will again in 1963. I have to stop those events as well. A glacier will hit here in 1917, freeze every one to death for 30 miles around. I have to come back here for that too. Heaven and Hell are out to obliterate this regions, time and again, and if it was just Humans to worry about, I'd let it happen."

"So, why save it?"

"Because this is Pepper Valley."

"It's Saco Valley."

"Yes, and that big bring building there is Pepperell Mill. Thus Pepperell Mill Valley."

"It's still not called Pepper Valley."

"Yes. I know. But BoomFuzzy couldn't pronounce the word Pepperell, so he always called this place Pepper Valley instead."

"So, why not save one of the other places. Isn't this storm covering a lot of area?"

"You assume I desire to save it for grand reasons?"

"Don't you?"

"No."

"You aren't trying to save Humanity?"

"Trying to save Humanity?" Quaraun chuckled at the thought of saving Humanity. "Why would I, try to save Humanity?"

"Well, what are you saving than?"

"Hopefully as many of the local prostitutes as I can."

"What?"

"Jack the Ripper will kill a lot of women in London. And here in Saco Valley, Maine, one Dr. Bean is going to get the idea to be a copy cat killer. He's going to pretend to be a mill girl over at the shoe factory, and he's going to spend an entire summer killing mill girls who also work as whores. Dumps their bodies in the swamp. It'll be another hundred years before any one finds the bodies."

"You hate Humans, but you want to save prostitutes?"

"Yes."

"Why? Does one of those women go on to save the world or something?"

"No. I'm afraid I am a bit selfish. You see, it important to me personally."

"You. . . personally? How so?"

"In my very first life time, before I became immortal. I fell through a portal and was badly injured. I nearly died. A young woman saved my life. Took care of me. Nursed me back to health. A few days after I left, her jealous husband got drunk and beat her to death. It was my fault that she died. She wasn't supposed to die. So I went back in time and brought her out of her dimension into our dimension to save her life, only something went wrong."

"And what does that have to do with this storm?"

"Many years from now, right here on this spot, there will be a house. My grandson will live here. And he will one day, be important to others. He will become friends with a young boy and that young boy will accidentally discover time travel. If this village is destroyed now by this storm, time travel will never be discovered. Time machines will never be invented. And because of that, my lover and I will never meet. We are from different times, he and I. I didn't know that then."

"And the girl from the other dimension?"

"Her husband was right to be jealous. She was pregnant, with my child. Her child is the mother of my grandson."

"But you're castrated."

"Yes."

"You can't father children. Can you?"

"I can. The four children I murdered, they were born nearly a hundred years after I was castrated."

"How is that possible?"

"I'm partly intact. I'm badly mutilated. Sex is difficult but not impossible."

"I don't understand."

"I don't think you'd understand unless I showed you my injury. I rarly have sex with women, not because I do not like women, rather women are usually repulsed by my scars and won' have sex with me once they've seen how badly I am mutilated."

"So, saving this village has nothing to do with actually saving the people out of the kindness of your heart? You're just here to save some prostitutes and a girl you fathered a baby with?"

"Yes. Just like you Humans, we Elves and we Thullids, we Archangels or Demons as some prefer to call us, we are driven by our own purely selfish motivations. You Humans like to make up stories about how Angels come to and fro in your service, willing to please your every whim, but I assure you that pleasing your Human asses is never why we fulfill your requests. We always have a selfish motive for everything we do. We are no different than you Humans in that regard."

"Have you tried giving the women gold instead of the men?"

"Oh yes. I did. Men beat the women to death to ‘inherit' the gold. So I came back again and gave the gold to the children, so the men murdered their children to steal the gold from them. The men who grow these old orchards on the beach, they are evil men, full of lust and greed, care nothing for women and children and will stop at nothing to kill everyone around them for gold. No. This way is better. If I give them free money, they just squander it and are back where they started a few weeks later. But if I give them Lich trees, they have a source of food that grows apples all year long, so they can sell apples all year instead of just one week of the year."

"And you think my cursed sword will help you do that?"

"Perhaps. It depends on what exactly it is that your sword does."

"I just don't understand why you would want a cursed sword?"

"Why wouldn't I want your sword, would be a better question, I think."

"Oh. Well, why wouldn't you want it? Wait. . . does that mean you've had this conversation with me before? You knew I was coming?"

"No. This is different. Something has changed. This never happened before. It's why I didn't bother to put up a stronger barrier around my tent. I didn't think I needed one. I've done this so many times now. And perhaps that is why you are here now. Perhaps, each time before you were here but you passed me because of the barrier. You didn't see the tent."

"I don't understand. Why would you do any of this? Going back in time to change the past."

"Your farmers around here depend on apples for their income. With all the apple trees dead, they will have no harvest to sell, no money to buy supplies, no way to survive the winter. Their families will freeze to death or starve to death. They need the apple trees."

"And so, what does that have to do with you turning the trees into monsters?"

"Liches."

"What?"

"I'll turn them into Liches. Not monsters."

"How is a Lich different from a monster?"

"Monsters are generally just shambling beasts. Like Nzambies. Mindless. Controllable with no effort. Liches are intelligent beings. Sentient. With minds of their own. Capable of thinking rational thoughts."

"Okay. Whatever. That doesn't explain why it is you want to turn apple trees into Liches."

"I turn the trees into monsters.

"Liches. Because Liches are immortal. An immortal, undead, lich apple tree or monster as you call it, will provide the farmer with apples all year long, not just in fall harvest. Apple farmers will be able to feed their families all year long."

"So, let me get this straight," Ghirardelli said. "You're saying you use necromancy to help people?"

"Yes."

"I don't understand."

"What is there to understand?"

"Necromancy is evil. . ."

"No. Necromancy is neutral. It only becomes evil, when evil men use it for evil things."

"I'm confused."

"I'm an Elf."

"Yeah. I can see you're an Elf. What does that got to do with anything?"

"You don't know anything about Elves do you?"

"Uhm, hello! Elves are extinct. They've been extinct for like 400 or 500 years or more."

"I'm an Elf."

"I can see that."

"Elves are not extinct, so long as at least one of us is still alive."

"True. But even if there were females around somewhere, you are castrated, so what difference does it make? You're the last Elf and once you are dead, your species dies with you."

"No. I already told you. I am still capable of reproducing and in fact I have with several Humans. So there are still a few half-Elves around."

"Are half-Elves, considered Elves?"

"Not by most pure blooded Elves,no."

"Aren't you a pure blooded Elf?"

"Oh yes. The purest. I am an Ecrodon."

"A what?"

"We don't call ourselves Elves. Or we didn't. Elves is an Earth term, you Humans gave us after we arrived here."

"Arrived?"

"We are not native to your planet. Our planet suffered a super nova. Or rather our sun did. Precious few of us escaped. So, technically, I'm just the last Elf on planet Earth. In all likelihood there are still Elves alive on other planets. One only has to figure out how to get off your planet and go look for them."

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"I see."

"Do you?"

"No."

"Than why say you did?"

"Because I'd rather you explain to me what your being an Elf has to do with you turning apple trees into Liches."

"Ah! Yes. I forgot I was saying that. Well, you see, it's like this: Normally, Elves don't become necromancers."

"Elves don't do necromancy?"

"No."

"But you do."

"Yes."

"And you're an Elf."

"So, why don't Elves do necromancy?"

"Necromancy has to do with death and we Elves don't like death. We like life. We have a strong connection to the energies of the world. We feel the tears of the grass every time you cut it. We feel the pain from the tree, it's silent agony as your axes cut through it's flesh."

"You're saying plants are alive?"

"Yes."

"And they feel pain?"

"Yes," Quaraun answered. "I am surprised you do not know this."

"Why would I know that?"

"You are a mage."

"What's that got to do with it?"

Quaraun rolled his eyes.

"They feel pain. And joy. And sadness. And sorrow. When two trees grow together side by side and one falls down and dies, the other weeps tears and becomes depressed. Gives up the will to live, and soon too falls over and dies. Plants, like you Humans fee all the same emotions you feel. As do birds and animals and fish and insects. All life, gives off energy and I feel that. I see the auras around life and the emptiness around death."

"Auras?"

"Glow of colour. . ."

"I know what an aura is, but. . . you see them?"

"Yes. Everything has a colour it gives off."

"Does that have anything to do with why you wear pink?"

"It does."

"Can you see your own aura?"

"I can."

"Is it pink?"

"It is. Sometimes."

"Sometimes?"

"Often it turns black."

"Black?"

"When I think about killing myself. The colour leaves my aura."

"You think about killing yourself?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I am unloved and unwanted."

"That's not a nice thing to say."

"No. But it is the truth. And one must always speak the truth. I am unloved and unwanted. There is no way to say it and make it sound pretty or nice."

"But, there must be someone out there who loves you."

"Oh, there was. BoomFuzzy loved me dearly. But, he died, remember? Males bedding with other males is very evil and taboo, so we were punished for loving each other, remember?"

"Yes, you've said."

"And now he is dead and I am alone. Unloved and unwanted. Cast out. Unwelcome. Alone. I have no friends. No one to talk to. BoomFuzzy was my only friend and he is dead. He's been dead for centuries. It is hard to go on. I try to make friends, but everywhere I go, people have already heard of me. I am famous. As you know. People fear me. So they hurt me. They won't even try to get to know me. I'm a killer. A monster. That's how they see me. I always alone. They only way I can get any one to spend time with me is if I pay them to spend time with me. It is distressing. I want so much to belong. Somewhere. Anywhere. I have no one. I am alone."

"I'm sorry."

"No. You are not. So do not say you are."

"You don't know. . ."

"Yes. I do know. I am a Psion. I can see your thoughts. You are not sorry at all."

"Why is your aura usually pink?" Ghirardelli asked, ignoring what the Elf had said.

"Rape."

"What?"

"Rape."

"You know. Of all the things you could have said, I think that is the last one I would have expected. What does rape have to do with the colour pink?"

"People who suffer deep traumatic stress after having been raped, have a bright, fuchsia pink aura."

"Really?"

"Yes. I know immediately when a person has been raped, because they are the only people whose auras are brilliant shades of fuchsia pink."

"No one else has a pink aura?"

"No. No one else."

"Only rape victims?"

"Yes. Only rape victims have a pink aura."

"Why is that? Do you know?"

"I don't know. It has something to do with the Archangel Raphael. I do know that."

"You believe in Archangels?"

"I do."

"And this archangel. . ."

"Raphael."

"Yeah, what does he have to do with pink?"

"Pink is a colour of protection. The Archangel Raphael, puts a circle of pink energy around rape victims in order to help their minds heal. It is why I weave only pink silk. I sell very few of my items. I tend to give most of it away to girls who have pink auras. It helps them to heal, emotionally, if they surround themselves with bright pink."

"Helping people again?"

"Yes. It's what I do."

"You're actually good aren't you?"

"I try to be. I told you I am not evil and I'm not the monster that busy bodies and their gossiping rumours make me out to be. People make up horrible things about me all the time. I'm continually amazed the new things people come up with to accuses me of having done."

"And, the apple trees?"

"Apple trees?"

"Yeah. You were turning them into Liches, you said."

"Oh. Yes. That. Most Elves fear necromancy, same as you Humans do, because you fear death. And I started to wonder, why? Why fear death? Why can we not use death. Death is a plentiful energy force that exists all around us. Everything died, and the energy of the dead wanders, aimless and useless. We Elves, we seek to heal the world. Heal nature and Humans are part of nature, are they not?"

"I suppose."

"So many Humans are hurting and suffering. It's terrible. I feel their pain. I'm a Psion. I'm used to living in a Hive Mind with other like me, but now the others are dead and I am alone, and alone in my head, same as you Humans are. So I try to find connections elsewhere."

"And the apple trees?"

"Elves avoid necromancy. In fact, I believe I may be the only Elf to ever become a necromancer."

"Really? No other Elf before you ever became a necromancer?"

"No. None. Not one."

"Why not?"

"Necromancy is usually used by Humans who are greedy and seek for power and control."

"Are you saying Elves don't seek power and control?"

"Oh no. Nothing of that sort. It's just that Elves live very long lives so we have plenty of time to think and plot and plan and wait for just the right moment to gain the power and control. Whereas you Humans live such short lives, that you are driven more rampantly, less patently, to seek out power and control."

"So, because you live long lives, you don't need to become necromancers to become powerful?"

"Exactly. Plus we have different needs and desires than you Humans. Elves have a very low sex drive and we don't lust for gold, though we do lust for pretty gemstones. Humans seek different things. Gold. Sex. Lordship. Government control. That is what drives most Humans to necromancy. So they use it for evil intent, leading others to believe necromancy itself is evil, when in fact necromancy is neither good nor evil. It can be used for good or evil, but men have evil hearts so they choose to use it for evil, when they could use it for good."

"But why plants?"

"I'm an Elf," Quaraun said.

"So? You keep saying that, but I don't understand what you mean by that."

"We are guardians of nature."

"Meaning what exactly?"

"I am a Moon Elf, so my tribe, we guarded the life along the shore, life effected by the tide fluctuations caused by the phases of the moon. We restored life to areas decimated by blizzards and hurricanes, typhoons, and gales. We Moon Elves, travelled the coastline, following the storms, to right the damage the storms left behind. We tended to sick birds and wildlife, mended broken trees, replanted uprooted shrubbery. That is what we Elves did. Each tribe was assigned a different type of nature to look after. The Sun Elves, worked alongside us Moon Elves, they working in the heat of day, we working in the dark of night. Together we kept the coastline clean, the waters unpolluted, the plants and birds and insects and animals healthy. Wood Elves did the same, but inland in the forests. Meadow Elves tended the prairies of the West. Mountain Elves cared for the mountain regions. . ."

"I get the picture," Ghirardelli said impatiently.

"Do you?"

"You are very condescending, you know that?"

"Am I?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to be. I'm not used to communicating with Humans. I don't do it often. Do you understand what it means for us to be guardians of nature?"

"You each had things you were assigned to protect and take care of and named yourselves after them. But why necromancy? That's the part you didn't explain."

"Centuries ago, there were millions of nature guardians. Not just us Elves, but also Gnomes, Faeries, Dwarves, Dryads, Unicorns, Merrows, and others. . ."

"You know most of those are mythological creatures that don't exist."

"You mean like us Elves?"

"Yes. No. Wait. . ."

"I am aware that because you Humans are so short lived, you don't have memories of most of us, but I assure you, a thousand years ago, we were plentiful on the Earth."

"Are you that old?"

"I am. I am the Last Elf because I was one of the youngest Elves. One of the Last born. While you see me as old, I'm actually quite young."

"Unicorns were real?"

"Unicorns were real." Quaraun scoffed. "Do you know nothing? What are they teaching you young mages in school these days?"

"I never went to a wizardry school."

"Never went. . ." his voice trailed off.

The thought of a mage, not attending a wizarding school, caught Quaraun off guard. He didn't know how to respond to this and said nothing for several minutes while he mulled the concept of unschooled mages over in his squishy jelly brain.

"No," he finally said at last. "No. It's not possible for you to be anything close to competent at magic if you've never trained properly under wizards who actually know what they are doing."

"You could teach me," Ghirardelli suggested.

"Me?" Quaraun sounded utterly horrified by the very idea of teaching something as lowly as a Human, his level of magic skills. "Teach you?"

"Why not?"

"Why not? Why not? Do you even have to ask?"

"Uhm. . . I just did."

"Do you have any idea how absurd it would be for someone like me, to teach someone like you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm an Elf."

"So?"

"You are a Human."

"Again, so?"

"Do you know nothing of the kind of magic I practice?"

"No. Tell me."

"I'm a necromancer."

"Necromancer?"

"Yes. Necromancer."

"But necromancy is illegal."

"Yes. It is. But I'm not one to abide by Human laws. You see, I'm not a Human. I'm an Elf. So your laws don't apply to me."

"You're a necromancer."

"Yes. And necromancy is the most advanced magic possible to learn. It's why there are so few proficient necromancers in existence."

""So shouldn't one learn necromancy from the best necromancer there is?"

"Well, yes, but, I don't think you understand. I'm an Elf. And you're a Human."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"We Elves live for many hundreds of years. I am myself nearly a thousand years old. You Humans are lucky if you even live fifty years. A few may make it to sixty or seventy even. Once in a while a Human reaches a hundred years old, but that is very rare."

"And this makes a differance?"

"Well, of course it does."

"How?"

"I was over seventy years learning rudimentary magic skills. Basic level magic, that even the longest lived Human will never live long enough to master. I advanced those skills after that. And than after that it took me over a hundred years just to master the very basics of necromancy."

"So you are saying Human necromancers, even the most powerful ones, don't even know the minimal basics of necromancy, because they'll never live long enough to study it?"

"Exactly! The only reason I am the best necromancer in the world is because I'm the oldest necromancer in the world. Same for all my magic skills. I'm the world's most powerful wizard, simply because I am the world's oldest wizard. I've spent nearly a dozen centuries honing my skills and mastering my craft. It's pointless for me to even try to teach you anything."

"Would it be pointless to learn, even if one knew one could never master it?"

"Perhaps not. Learning is always good. But you don't even know the history of magical beings. You didn't know Unicorns were real!"

"Unicorns are taught to be things of fairy tales and Fantasy novels. No one believes they are real or that they ever were."

"And yet, they were real, so short a time ago, that I remember feeding herds of them in the Di'Jinn desert, along the river's edge." Quaraun sighed sadly. "I miss my little black Unicorn."

"Isn't that a perfect example of why mages like us, need someone like you to teach them?"

"How's that?"

"Because people today have forgotten so much and you are old enough to remember the stuff we forgot."

"It was but a few thousand years ago, you Humans started breeding in faster succession and you spread like a parasitic plague across the earth. That's why Unicorns are gone, you know. That and because the Di'Jinn killed most of them, which is why I killed the Di'Jinn."

"YOU killed the Di'Jinn?"

"Yes. They were going to kill my little black Unicorn. The one with the gleaming silver horn. I loved my little black Unicorn. He's dead now."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. He'll be back soon. I'm working on resurrecting him."

"I thought you were resurrecting the Elf Eater."

"I am."

"And you are resurrecting the Unicorn as well?"

"No."

"But you just said. . ."

"BoomFuzzy WAS the Unicorn."

"The Elf Eater was a Unicorn? But I thought. . ."

"The Elf Eater was a Phooka. Don't you know what a Phooka is?"

"Uhm. I'm not sure. It's a type of Faerie. Kind of like a Demon."

"No. Nothing like a Demon. Phookas are a type of Unicorn. Similar to a Kelpie. But where Unicorns are white and have gold horns and Kelpies are green and have copper horns, Phookas a black and have silver horns. Also Kelpies are huge, like Clydesdale, while Unicorns are more like Arabian racing stallions, and Phookas are like little Shetland ponies the size of a goat."

"I never knew that. Wait. . . are you saying the Elf Eater of Pepper Valley was a HORSE?"

"Yes. The Elf Eater was a Unicorn."

"I thought he was a man!"

"No." Quaraun shook his head. "BoomFuzzy was a horse. He could cast illusion spells to make you hallucinate and see a man instead of a horse, but he was always a horse."

"So, you are saying there were lots of different types of Unicorns, right?"

"Yes. Horses with horns on their heads, were once plentiful, but than you Humans showed up and ruined everything."

"Ruined? How did Humans ruin everything?"

"You destroyed nature."

"No we didn't."

"Yes. You did."

"How?"

"At first, we thought you would help care for nature too, so we did nothing to eradicate you while we had large enough numbers that we still could. But then armies of you attacked and killed entire nations of our tribes, and well, you can see the result. Gnomes and Dwarves were the first to go extinct. I am the last Elf, unless there are a few others, like myself, travelling alone, but we Elves have a hive mind and I would have picked up on any survivors by now if there were any others out there. What few Faeries survived, opened up portals and fled to other dimensions. Demons did the same. The world is now left unprotected, defenceless against the infestation of your Humans. And you are destroying her."

"Who?

"Nature. Earth. A lot of America is utterly destroyed."

"Is it?"

"Yes. And it's worse in the future. A lot worse. In the year 2525, the Earth will implode, and you Humans cause it. You fight amongst yourselves so much that you build weapons of mass destruction and kill most all life on the planet."