Yelora

A blinding blue oval burst to life, turning the Summoner’s brown eyes into balls of mercury. She took his elbow, and the two of them stepped inside, leaving the roaring waters of Creation Falls behind and emerging beside a different body of water, this one quiet and sun-kissed, flanked by tall grasses and twisted mangrove trees. She stumbled a little with the shock and the change of terrain, but her companion’s arm was steady. The river was wide enough that Yelora couldn’t make out the details on the far shore. The wind smelled of wildflowers, and the only sound was the gurgling of water and the squeaking of a nearby well cable as it twisted on its ancient pulley.

Kashur yanked Yelora down into the grass.

“How dare y—?” she sputtered.

“Look!” He pointed past the well to the upward sloping terrain that settled into a wide plateau housing the Wizard’s Lair. It was crawling with Imperials and Dwarves. “It’s been taken.”

Yelora studied the terrain, picking out the subtle tracks with keen Elven eyes—bent blades of grass, the crescent of a boot heel in the wet sand. She pointed downriver. “The survivors went this way.”

Ducking behind a wall of reeds, they made their way along the riverbank. Once they deemed they were out of sight of the Lair and its makeshift training camp, they were able to travel upright. The sun beat down, and they walked in silence for a long time. When they sat to take a break, the Summoner pulled the oatmeal bowl out of his cloak. He filled it from the river, then plucked some sweetweed tufts from the wild grasses and sprinkled them into it. Yelora recognized this trick. In five minutes, the water would taste as fresh as if they’d drawn it straight from the well.

Yelora unwrapped a seed bar from her pocket and broke it in half, handing the larger piece to the Summoner. “There’ve been complaints that I starve my prisoners,” she said, feeling the edge of her mouth quirk upward.

He took it with a grin, signing a quick thank you in Elf-sign.

“How do you know that sign?” she asked, more worried than ever that he’d witnessed her unqueenly tirade at the Falls.

“Some of my best Wizard friends are Elves.”

They ate their meager meal in silence and drank the filtered water. The sun had already begun its plunge into evening. The night insects were warming up their instruments as the pair rose to continue their trek beneath a gray and orange sky.

“I have a question,” Kashur said, falling into step beside her.

Yelora swallowed the last of her half of the seed bar. “Ask it then.”

“If I had pulled an Elf baby from the water, would that have made me, like, its father?”

She scoffed. “You are terribly ignorant for a Wizard.”

“That’s my nickname, actually... Terribly Ignorant for a Wizard. It’s just that... if we had, you know, pulled something out... I can’t help but think I’d feel responsible for it.”

Her stomach gave an odd twist. Hypothetically he would be responsible for it, as all Elf Queens who birthed Elf children were responsible for them.

“Why did you become a Wizard?” she asked.

“I’m the only Imperial in a century to exhibit magical powers naturally. Where else would I go?”

She didn’t think he meant it to sound rude, just somber. “How old were you when they manifested?”

He passed her, taking the lead along the sandy ridge. “About eight years old.”

“You’ve had to wear gloves since you were eight years old?”

He hummed in acknowledgment. “I don’t remember what a lot of things feel like, although I can still remember playing with my mother’s hair, the way it tangled between my bare fingers. And petting the horses. I miss that.”

Stolen novel; please report.

The images recalled her own childhood, very different from the nuclear families Imperials were raised in, but not so terribly different, as Yelora, too, could recall braiding the hair of the older Elves who cared for her in their communal society. She didn’t have a mother, per se; every child was everyone’s child. There were never more than a handful of children, as the ones that were born were shared amongst the different Elven glens. There was always plenty of love to go around.

“Tell me about your sister,” she said. “Was she older or younger?”

“Younger, I think.”

“You think?”

“I never knew,” he said in a monotone. “Nyla was an orphan. I found her drowning one day while I was fishing, after a huge freak storm. At first I thought she was an otter, or maybe a mermaid. When I brought her home, she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even tell us her name—I gave her that name. She stayed with us for a few years. Then she ran away. What the—?” He stopped suddenly, putting up a gloved hand. “Do you smell that? It smells like fire.”

Yelora lifted her face to the wind. “It’s coming from there.” She pointed to a deep gorge at the river’s edge. As they worked their way down the slope, an old barge turned on its side came into view. It looked like it had run aground a long time ago, then been nudged to this low area where it lodged itself into the terrain and became part of the problem. This slow area transformed into a dump for flotsam from upriver and smelled of lowlands, rot, and garbage—a place for scavengers and the desperate. A thin line of smoke rose up from the far side of the barge.

“We’ve found them.” Yelora started toward the gorge, but her foot wouldn’t move. It was stuck fast in the wet sand.

“What the—?” the Summoner said, trying to lift his boot.

“Quicksand,” Yelora said. It was now over her ankles.

“It’s magical.” Kashur was up to his knees. “And powerful enough to overcome my protection spell.”

The cold sand felt as if it were crawling up her legs. She pulled out her staff and activated it, shooting a blast at the closest mangrove. Its tangled canopy split and cracked, falling close by. She used the magic of her staff to pull it toward them. The tangled mass of branches scrabbled their way unnaturally, like an animated dead thing, but stopped short of Yelora, still attached as it was by the roots.

It was close enough for the Summoner to grab it, however. Now up to his chest, he flung out an arm and seized a branch with a gloved hand.

“Kashur!” Yelora cried, the sand up to her chest now. It had suctioned onto the staff in her hand and swallowed both. Only her left arm was free, reaching toward him. But he was too far away.

“I’ve got you, Your Highness.” With his teeth, he peeled the glove off his free hand and touched the branches. They exploded with growth, rippling across the surface of the sand. Yelora seized the closest branch and fought to pull herself up. The sand was up to her shoulders now, sucking her downward with a force she couldn’t combat with one arm. Kashur was fighting to pull himself out as well, to no avail.

“Mol Morin!” he shouted. “Mol Morin, it’s me! And the Elf Queen!”

“Kashur!” she whispered. She could barely speak with the pressure on her chest. The cold sand licked at her chin, the lobes of her ears. Her face was tilted toward the darkening sky, her fingernails digging into the smooth bark.

Kashur tried to shimmy his way through the sand to reach for her, but when he did, the sand sucked him down to his chin with terrifying force.

She tried to shout, but couldn’t, the pressure on her chest too great.

“Don’t worry!” he rasped. “I’ll summon something to save us.”

Foreign words issued from him, deep and powerful. Yelora felt herself shudder. In the night sky above, a winged and feathered creature materialized from wisps of cloud, great and terrifying.

“Don’t be afraid,” Kashur whispered. “Let... it take you.”

The deadly beak plummeted her way as it dove, and Yelora reminded herself that this was not a true phoenix, just a construct of the Summoner’s powers. It would save them. She closed her eyes and braced herself for the sensation of that beak gripping her somewhere. Where? Any second now she would find out as it ripped her free of the quicksand. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be torn in half.

A second passed, then two, but nothing happened. Yelora opened her eyes. The bird was gone. Only wisps of mist remained where it had been seconds ago.

She craned her neck to look for the Summoner. A small eddy of sand was all that remained where he’d been.

He’d been sucked under, and the giant bird he’d summoned had disappeared along with him.

Alone, Yelora clung to the mangrove branch, head tilted to the ambivalent sky. A wolf howled in the distance, mournful as a lost soul. The sand covered her mouth now, so she could not even utter a simple spell, if she could think of one that would counteract this celestial magic. Cold and paralyzed, she willed her fingers to hold on, hold on as the sand squeezed tighter and tighter across her chest, until she couldn’t take a full breath.

Her eyelids fluttered, blackness tugging at the edges of her vision. She could no longer think straight. Couldn’t remember where she was, or why she was here. Who she had come with. And who was that sinister cloaked figure creeping up from the shore? Was she imagining it? Hallucinating? The figure looked so familiar. It had a little animal with it on a leash.

Was that...?

She didn’t have time to sort it out before everything went black.