Ailie’s voice was soft and singsong. “She says you have served her well, but you have saved all the children you can. She wants you to leave them here and go on alone. She wants you to be her Knight-errant and to go in search of a lost talisman. She believes you are the one who can find it. The people who need its magic are in danger of perishing. They are the ones to whom you must go.”
The tatterdemalion saw the confusion mirrored on Angel’s face and came forward wordlessly, took her hands in her own, and held them. Ailie’s fingers were like the wings of little birds, so soft and light they seemed weightless.
“Long ago, in the time of John Ross, there was a gypsy morph that took the form of a child and was born to Nest Freemark.” Ailie’s voice was soft and lilting. “The demons tried to find it and kill it, but they failed. They have not forgotten its existence because they know that the salvation of the human race depends on what it has been given to do. No one has seen the morph in years, not since before the death of Nest Freemark. No one knows where it is or what it looks like. It has gone into hiding, waiting for its time. That time is upon us, and the gypsy morph will reveal itself shortly. Another Knight of the Word goes to find it now, sent by O’olish Amaneh.”
Two Bears, Angel thought, remembering. It was Two Bears who had come to her in the beginning to make her a Knight of the Word.
It was Two Bears who acted as emissary to the Lady, the bearer of the black staff, the giver of the Word’s power as its champion. How long ago it seemed now.
“Am I to help this Knight of the Word?” she asked.
The tatterdemalion shook her head, her hair rippling like a length of diaphanous blue silk. “He goes another way from you; his is a different quest.
If he lives, you will see him when you are finished.”
If he lives. Sure. And if I live.
“So this talisman I’m being sent to find is not the gypsy morph?”
she pressed. She knew the story of the gypsy morph and Nest Freemark. Two Bears had told it to her. She wasn’t sure she believed it, Ailie’s tale notwithstanding.
“Then what sort of talisman is it?”
“It is an Elfstone.”
Now Angel was really lost. “An Elfstone?” she asked. “As in Elves?”
“Elves created it, long ago in the world of Faerie.”
Angel scowled, angry now. “Elves created it? You’re saying there are Elves out there? What does that mean? Look, I don’t know what any of this is about. I don’t know anything about Elves and their Stones. I’m a barrio girl, a street girl, never even been this far north before in my life, and this Elf stuff is just words that don’t mean anything. You want to tell me what you’re talking about?”
The tiny hands tightened on her own, surprisingly strong. “There are Elves in the world, Angel Perez. There have always been Elves in the world, even before there were humans. They were of the old people, in the time of Faerie, in the world as the Word conceived it before humans came into it. But the Faerie world faded, until only the Elves remained of the old people, and the Elves went into hiding. They have been in hiding ever since.”
Ailie pressed close. “But now they must come back into the world if they are to save themselves. They are threatened as humans are threatened, but their salvation lies in the recovery of an Elfstone called a Loden. The Loden is lost to them and must be found. It will give them a way to leave their hiding place and travel to where they will be safe. But the search for the Loden will be difficult and dangerous, and they lack the use of the magic that once would have protected them. They need a Knight of the Word to keep them safe, Angel.”
Angel was still coming to terms with the idea that there were Elves, beings she had always believed to be imaginary, creatures of storybooks and legends. What else was there in the world that she didn’t know about—what else that she wrongly assumed didn’t exist? Her world had always been one of concrete and steel, the ruins of cities and skyscrapers.
She looked off into the trees, then back at Ailie. Well, she thought, if you’d accepted that tatterdemalions were real, how big of a jump was it to believe in Elves?
“So? The Lady has asked that I do all this? She thinks I’m the right one to undertake this search? There is no one else better suited?”
Ailie smiled sadly. “There is no one else at all.”
Angel drew in a quick breath and exhaled sharply. “All of the Knights of the Word are gone?”
The tatterdemalion released her hands, folded her child’s arms across her chest, and hugged herself. “Will you go?”
Angel took a long moment to answer. She felt the world sliding away from her—the world of her childhood, the only world she had ever known—and it left her feeling bereft and hollowed-out. Everything she knew of life aside from what she did—the rescue of children, the defense of the compounds—had been gone a long time. Now even the little she had been left was about to be taken away, too. It was difficult to accept, and she didn’t know if she could.