Garaghan made me relay the words the fire and stone had spoken to me verbatim. I thought he’d heard them along with me, but Two set me straight. “The Ancestors speak to each person in their own way. No two of the People see the same fires, hear the same voice.”

The three Ualno confirmed that Lord Elerren was often referred to as the Thorn of the Orchid. Garaghan sent all three of us out of his chambers when I explained the contents of my conversation with the stone and flame. He wasn’t rude, but he’d lost the air of joviality he’d carried with him for most of the day.

“Did I do something wrong back there?” At my question, Two patted my shoulder and Three turned to face me.

“No, but the Ancestors rarely give such specific warnings. Their messages are inscrutable to most.” One spoke for the three Ualno, unusual for the trio. “Garaghan and Yierie have been famously at odds over the years. Their feud had reached the status of legend. But I don’t think that means Garaghan does not love his daughter.”

I pitied One then. Her wistful tone and the way she dropped her eyes before she turned around told me she envied Yierie. After everything the three had told me about Lord Elerren, I imagined that One would have preferred a public tiff fringed by affection to the relationship she shared with her own father. In her place, I would have felt the same.

I tried to dismiss the three elves that night. But they refused to leave my side. We slept together in a large pile atop Yierie’s bed. I could not consider the arrangement a betrayal of my feelings for Yierie. Not only were my arms wrapped around Tia protectively, but I felt nothing but filial affection for the three elven women.

“Harriet! We have to find Yierie! And we have to find Malia too!” Tia woke me up shouting, her tone desperate as she shook me. I arose groggily, blinking and rubbing my eyes as my sister’s tone reached panicked heights. “We have to find them soon or something bad will happen! Please!”

At her words, I found myself awake and alert. “What do you mean?”

“Please just listen to me! Yierie and Malia are in danger.”

Two hovered over my shoulder, her arm wrapped around my chest in a way that would have brought a blush to my face if not for Tia’s words. “Who is Malia?”

“A friend.” It wasn’t a lie, but neither was it the truth. I looked back at Tia. “Do you know where they are?” The magic had touched my sister, possibly since the first day the portals began to open. If she knew they were in danger, maybe she knew how to find them.

“No! I just… please, we have to find them! Now!”

I needed no more prompting. Sliding out from under One and Three’s grasp, I put my feet on the floor and made a choice. “I know how I will serve the Orchid.” I looked back at the there women I’d been sharing a bed with. “Can any of you fight?”

They met my question with a trio of mirrored smirks.

I knocked on Garaghan’s door far earlier in the morning than usual. He answered almost at once. His black robes were gone now, replaced by a gleaming silver suit of plate mail. Fins lined his arms and flared rings of metal circled his joints. “You’re early.”

He turned and walked back into the room without any other word. Not only was his ever present staff hovering upright and coruscating with gold and blue fire, but he wore a curved sword at his side with a wide blade which tapered to the hilt.

When we followed him, Garaghan raised an eyebrow at the Ualno, looking over my shoulder at them. “Harriet does not know our laws and you do. The two of us shall depart this day in pursuit of danger. You need not follow, as she has delegated her authority to me, I release you from your service. Rejoin the roots of the Orchid at your pleasure.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Two stepped forward. “I refuse. I may be Ualno no more, but I will not stand by and return to the scribes if I can be of help to the two of you.”

My hand rose to cover my mouth as One and Three followed suit. Through the slits between my fingers I said, “you don’t have to do this…”

“We do not,” One stuck out her chest, “but there is no place here for us now and I am finished serving my father. You showed me more kindness in a moon than my own flesh and blood has in five centuries.” She turned to face Garaghan, “I know our skills are not up to your standards. But we are not without resources. Let us serve, please?” One lowered her eyes at her question, as if only then remembering the reputation of the elf she addressed.

“Hmm.” Garaghan’s fingers moved in a series of runes and thee suits of gilded armor appeared, floating in the air. Each of them hovered before the three elven maidens, green for One, pink for Two, and white for Three. All four of us met his gaze and Garaghan shrugged. “The runeforge owes me a great debt, one they still have yet to discharge.” He looked me over and ran through a new series of runes. A small suit of mail appeared before me, fitted for Tia. Next to it hung a plain silver tassel. “The armor is for your sister and the tassel is for your fetch.” He pointed to the doorway. “We should retrieve Alaric Silverhand before we depart.”

The elves moved swiftly then. Along our route, I whispered to Two. “What are your real names?”

She blushed and said, “we discussed it. Until all three of us have met our obligation to you, we have discarded our names.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Really?”

One turned to me. “Indeed. Our titles are sufficient for now, we owe you more than you can know, Harriet Yeshe.”

Their tone implied they would fight and die for me. The armor did too. “What about weapons? Don’t you three need wea…”

Two withdrew a scroll and quill from a pocket in her armor, and brandished the two as if to answer me. Rather than carved her magic in the air, her quill blazed a fiery trail across her page. The scroll vanished in a red and gold conflagration, leaving nothing but the scent of juniper upon the air. In its place, Two held a long curved bow with a quill-like arrow nocked and ready to draw. She nodded at me. “We have weapons of our own.”

I knocked on Alaric’s door and waited for him to answer. He was the last of our group and Garaghan insisted he accompany us. When my cousin finally managed to open the door, I was struck backwards by the reek of stale boy and sex. All three of my companions took steps backward as if the miasma from Alaric’s room were a palpable thing. Had this been a cartoon, a green cloud complete with dead flies would have billowed from his door.

“What’s up, Harriet?” A pair of arms wrapped themselves around his golden chest.

“Alaric, stay and play with us!” The speaker did not appear from behind him.

I eyed the three elven maidens behind me and the looks of disgust on their faces could have wilted roses. They’d been in the unseen elf’s place not a month before. “We need your help, Alaric, we’re going to find Malia and Yierie.”

He looked up at me as if he were stoned. “Okay, good luck. They didn’t care for me anyway.”

My mouth bobbed open and closed as Alaric began to shut the door. Tia stuck her mailed foot in the door and pushed back against Alaric with surprising strength. “Hey! You have to help us!”

Blinking in surprise, Alaric looked down at my sister as if he hadn’t seen her until then. “What on earth are you wearing?”

“Shut up! You’re a jerk and you should help us when we ask. Grandpa said we have to stay together and that’s what we should do!”

Alaric reeled back as though Tia had slapped him. In way, she had. “I…”

I rested my hand on the door. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to say to her, but you know she’s right.”

Alaric looked back behind the door and sighed. “Fine. Can this wait at least until lunch?”

Garaghan, who’d remained silent and unobtrusive the whole time nodded in the shadow of he vines of the hall. I said, “Fine, but if you’re not at my room by noon, we’re coming for you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Alaric waved meow with his right hand and shut the door.

“What’s he doing in there anyway and why does it stink so much?” Tia wrinkled her nose and all but shouted her question into the air. There was no chance Alaric and his companion would not hear it. The thought and my sister’s innocent tone sent the rest of us into gentle laughter.

“Is there something else we need to do before we go?”I asked Garaghan when we’d returned to Yierie’s room.

“No, I spoke with the Master of Servants. She confirmed where Yierie and her group were sent last. I’ve arranged for provisions and took the liberty of listing your temporary service terms as hunter.” He turned to the three maidens. “As for you, I will pen a missive to the council to explain what has happened, but I believe it is better for that missive to arrive after we have departed.” All three of the maidens nodded in unison as if they’d been thinking the exact same things. “Good, then while we wait for Harriet’s cousin, why don’t you attach the tassel I gave you?”

I’d been holding off on the same. The others received elaborate suits of armor. Not one cleavage hole or bare line of skin was visible on those suits. Each of the three hung helmets from their hips. If they needed this form of protection, why didn’t I? “Okay… what does it do?”

“It is the most powerful magical enchantment I could procure from Sedge and his smiths in this short notice. It should buttress your power and add and element of physical protection to your… scarf. It should make it longer and wider too, I believe.”

A simple tassel was supposed to do all of that. More nervous than I’d been approaching the stone of the Elven ancestors, I took the end of Roo in my hand and met Garaghan’s gaze. I knew then that I was entrusting a part of my soul to this elf. His eyes never blinked and his steady gaze never faltered. With a sigh I pinned the tassel on my shawl.

Nothing happened, not for three seconds. “Huh,” I managed the disappointed sound as Roo shimmered with inner light. She grew to five times her width and wrapped herself about me like mummy wrappings. Embalmed and ready for my eternal life, I found I could move just as easily with Roo much larger than I could before. In fact, despite the mass of cloth draped over my limbs, I found I could move even easier than before. “What is this thing?”

“As I said, the most potent magic the runeforge could construct in the time I’d given them.” Garaghan shrugged as if this were a small thing.

“There’s no way you had them whip this up between last night and today.”

He snorted at me. “Indeed.”

Before I could press him further, Alaric arrived, just minutes ahead of midday.

“What the hell is going on now?” When I answered the door, my cousin stood framed by the wood vines wearing a dull metal skirt and half a breastplate that appeared to latch onto the plates on his chest and cover his right arm. A sword hung bare from his wait. Unlike Garaghan’s blade, which resembled a scimitar more than anything, Alaric’s was long and thin, tapering to a point like a fencer’s weapon.

“I told you, we’re going looking for Malia and Yierie. Pretty much now.”

Alaric’s eyes wandered over the assembled elves and he shrugged. The gesture so closely resembled Garaghan’s that I gave a short jump at the sight. “Then where to?”

We followed Garaghan into the depths of the Orchid, further down into the metal hallways even than Sedge and his workshop lay. For a time, the air had warmed around us, but it soon turned to a near-frosty chill. I could feel the cold, but it didn’t bother me swaddled as I was in Roo.

“You look like a bedouin or something.” Alaric nudged me as we walked

“Yeah, I got a… thing that messed with my shawl.”

“Well, I don’t like it.” Alaric winked and grinned at me so I shoved him.

“You just like staring at my… parts. Jerk.”

He grinned, but didn’t deny it. “You sound like the munchkin.” He pointed to Tia and then back to the three elven maidens following us. “Who are these chicks?”

One growled at him, Two scoffed and Three raised her nose into the air disdainfully. Alaric skipped away from them before any of the three could swat him. I didn’t blame them, I wanted to swat him too. They’d been hanging off of him the first time I met them. My guess was he didn’t recognize them without their hair.

“Maybe ask better questions, dumbass.” I rolled my eyes and sped up to catch Garaghan. “Where are we going?”

The old elf smiled at me as we reached a massive pair of double doors large enough for a pair of semis to pass, stacked on top of each other or pressed side to side. Rather than answer right away, Garaghan wove a rune over the door and grinned. “Welcome to the Aerie, Harriet Yeshe.”