“What of these people I lead?” she asked. “These children and their protectors? They depend on me.”
“You may see them again in another place and time.” Ailie’s smile was a flicker of brightness. “But they travel too slowly for you, and their road leads another way. You must tell them to travel north to the Columbia River in the Cascade Mountains. Someone will find them there when it is time.”
Angel did not miss the evasiveness in Ailie’s response. You may see them again. Someone will find them. But not necessarily her because maybe she wouldn’t be alive to do so. Whispers of terrible danger echoed in Ailie’s words— unvoiced promises of confrontations and struggles that would end in someone’s death. She would have believed it in any event because she was a Knight of the Word and it was the nature of her life. But the tatterdemalion’s responses left no doubt.
She sighed and nodded. “De acuerdo. How will I find these Elves?
Where do I go?”
“I will take you,” Ailie answered.
“You will go with me?”
“I will be your guide and your conscience.”
Angel blinked. “My conscience?”
The tatterdemalion took a long moment before responding. “It may be that you will misplace your own. It may be that you will need a fresh one. It may be that what you encounter on a journey such as this will require it.”
Angel didn’t like the sound of this. The tatterdemalion was making a point of telling her that her conscience might become an issue for her. She would not do that if the Lady had not told her to do so. Ailie was acting under orders to prepare Angel for what lay ahead, so that she could not say later that she had not been warned. The implications were not encouraging: it suggested strongly that in the face of future events she might consider turning back.
She shook her head. “What training have you had in the conscience department? Why should I listen to you?”
“Sometimes you cannot hear your own voice clearly and need another to enable it to be understood,” the other responded. “I am to be that second voice, there when you need it. But I am not to make your decisions for you. You must do that for yourself.”
Angel nodded slowly, understanding the wisdom of this answer. She was being sent out alone; perhaps she would be alone for much of the time. It was not a good thing to have no one to talk to. Given what she was being asked to do, it made sense that the Lady would send someone with her of whom she could ask questions and seek advice. A tatterdemalion, a creature of Faerie, was not the worst choice.
“Your guidance and counseling will be welcome, poco uno,” she said to Ailie. “You and I, we will do what we can for these Elves. We will travel to where they live and then take them to find their Elfstone. But,” she held up one finger, “when we are done, I will come back for these children and their protectors and take them to where they, too, will be safe. Agreed?”
“Once the Loden is found, the Lady says you are free to do whatever you wish,” the tatterdemalion said. “But nothing will change who you are. You will still be a Knight of the Word.”
Angel shook her head and brushed back her dark hair. “I don’t want to be anything else, Ailie.” Not since Johnny died. “What happens now?”
Ailie looked skyward, as if searching for something in the clouds and mist. “We leave. We go north.”
Angel sighed. “Not until I tell someone what’s happening. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
*
SHE WENT TO find Helen Rice because she couldn’t think of anyone else to talk to about what she intended. She was still struggling to accept that she had agreed to undertake a search for Elves—for Elves, dios mia!—and for a magic that would protect them from the world’s destruction. But what choice did she have?
The world’s misery was an unbearable weight, an accumulation of sorrows and horrors that would in a time fast approaching bury them all. If she could do something more than what she was doing to change things, she could hardly refuse the chance. Still, it didn’t make things any easier that what she was being asked to do was almost impossible for her to understand.
Elves and Elfstones. Faerie creatures and their magic.
She found Helen standing apart from the children, who were eating a hasty breakfast before the caravan set out. Already the trucks were lined up for boarding, supplies stacked for loading. The hoods of the trucks were raised as mechanics installed fresh solar-charged batteries. Apparently, someone had been thinking ahead after all.
“Angel, where have you been?” her friend asked, turning to greet her.
Helen’s face was dirt-smudged and her eyes tired. “Get something to eat while you can.”
Angel shook her head. “I’m not going with you. I have something else I must do. It will take me far away from you and the children. You’ll have to go on without me and protect yourselves as best you can until I come back.