He wrote the last few lines of his entry, put his writing materials aside, and rose to stretch. The sun would be coming up in a little more than an hour, and the Chosen would walk down into the gardens to greet the Ellcrys and welcome her to a new day. It was a formality, really. They did it because Chosen had been doing it for as long as anyone could remember. It was a custom rooted in a need to maintain a connection with the tree.
Odd, really. The Ellcrys was beholden to them, yet for the most part she did not even seem aware of their presence. That didn’t seem right. He thought about it and then shook his head in self-admonishment. He was being unfair. She was a tree, and what tree had ever enjoyed a warm relationship with any twolegged creature who might on a whim decide to cut it down for firewood?
“What are you doing, Kirisin?” a familiar voice asked.
Erisha was standing right behind him. He hadn’t heard her approach, which irritated him. She was good at sneaking around. She stood with her hands on her hips, a challenging tone in her voice, She was the oldest by five months and the designated leader of the Chosen. She was also the daughter of the King.
Kirisin didn’t mind this, but he wished she were a little less impressed with herself.
“Just finishing up on my journal,” he answered, smiling cheerfully.
She didn’t smile back. That was the trouble with Erisha. She didn’t smile enough. She took everything so seriously, as if what they were doing transcended anything else they would ever do in their lives. It was a mistake to take anything so seriously. It aged you too quickly and drained you of energy and hope. He had seen it happen with his parents, who had fought so hard to persuade the King to establish a second enclave on the mountain slopes of Paradise, where there was cleaner air and water. But leaving the Cintra meant leaving the Ellcrys as well, a prospect few felt comfortable embracing. Most had never lived anywhere but close to her and couldn’t conceive of doing so now. It didn’t matter that only the Chosen were actually needed to care for her.
Life outside the Cintra was for other Elves; the Cintra Elves belonged where they were.
His parents had wasted themselves in a futile effort to persuade the King to their cause. The King, after all, was his father’s cousin and should have been willing to listen. But Arissen Belloruus had been unreceptive to the idea and instead had made it clear that while he was King and his family rulers of the Cintra Elves, no second enclave would ever be established.
Whatever problems the Elves might encounter, they would solve them here.
Not that the Elves were solving any of the problems confronting them, of course. They had made no progress toward stopping the poisoning of the earth’s resources. They had done nothing about the wars and plagues devastating the human population. Worst of all, they were ignoring the most dangerous threat of all—the new demons and their once-men soldiers. It hadn’t been enough that the Elves had shut away the demonkind of Faerie; a new demonkind, one born of the human race, had taken their place. By absenting themselves from the world’s affairs, the Elves had allowed this to happen. These new demons hadn’t bothered with the Elves yet; maybe they didn’t even realize Elves existed. But sooner or later they would find out, and when that happened the Elves would discover what burying your head in the sand got you.
It made him angry to think about it. It made him angrier still that Erisha wasted her serious attitude on small matters rather than on something that might make a real difference.
That was what daughters of Kings were supposed to do, wasn’t it?
Turn their attention to important matters?
But, then, cousins of Kings were supposed to be of a responsible disposition, too, so he could hardly complain.
“Do you know what time it is?” she asked him.
He sighed. “Close to dawn. I couldn’t sleep.”
“If you don’t sleep, you aren’t rested. If you aren’t rested, you can’t perform adequately your duties as a Chosen. Have you thought of that? You are distracted all the time, Kirisin. Lack of sleep could explain the problem.”
They looked very much the same, these two—slender and Elven-featured, with slanted eyes and brows, narrow faces, ears that were slightly pointed at their tips, and a way of walking that suggested they might take flight on a moment’s notice. They had the look of cousins, though Kirisin thought that facial resemblance aside they were nothing alike.
“You’re probably right, Erisha,” he agreed, still smiling. “I will try to do better starting tonight. But I’m awake now, so I think I will just stay awake until dawn.”
“Kirisin . . .”
But he was already down off the veranda and walking away. He gave her a short wave as he disappeared into the trees, just to let her know that there were no hard feelings. But he didn’t slow.
The Elves were the old people of the world. Some believed they were the prototype of humans, although Kirisin had always thought that nonsense.