The Elves of Cintra (Book 2 of The Genesis of Shannara)

off the trail into the trees and parked it. Together they climbed down and stood looking into the cool, shadowed depths of the forest. Angel could hear the rippling of a stream nearby. She could hear birdsong. The air she was breathing was fresh and clean. She could not help thinking that somehow they had driven into a different world entirely.

“What has happened here?” she asked softly. “It looks as if the poisons never touched this forest.”

“The Elves have happened, Angel,” her companion replied.

“The Elves have kept the forest clean and alive with their skills and experience.”

Angel shook her head in wonderment, tasting the air, breathing in the scents, wishing she could stay here forever. “Is this where we are supposed to go?”

“This is where we will find the Elves.”

“How do we do that?”

“We walk.”

They left the Mercury where it was, left the dirt road that had brought them in, and set out. Almost immediately, every sign of where they had been before had vanished, and they were deep in the trees, layered in a mix of sunshine and shadows, making their way through the underbrush and tall grasses that grew among the trunks. It looked to Angel as if no one had passed this way in decades. There was no sign of any disturbance of the forest floor, no indication of anything having come through. Ailie took the lead, picking her way through the trees, choosing a path that for all intents and purposes was invisible to Angel. The tatterdemalion seemed to glide through the grasses and scrub, barely causing movement in the foliage as she passed. Angel, on the other hand, found herself snagged and tripped and scraped at every turn. It didn’t help that her wounds from her battle with the demon throbbed relentlessly beneath the tattered remains of her clothing and her entire body ached. In truth, she could barely manage to keep up.

Nevertheless, they moved ahead steadily, the time slipping away, the forest vast and unchanging. Angel knew that if she were left alone at this point, she could never find her way back to the dirt road and probably not out of the forest at all. She experienced a sense of claustrophobia as the trees thickened, the shadows deepened, and the sunlight faded to a pale wash.

Angel, a city girl all of her young life, found the woods a creepy place. It had the feel of a warren filled with bolt-holes and hiding places where bad things could spring out at her at any moment.

They pressed on, working their way deeper in, and Angel could not tell in what direction they were moving. It was impossible to see much of the sun, let alone to try to orient it with anything. The mountains had disappeared entirely. The only reassurance Angel could find was in Ailie’s steady forward movement, an indication that the tatterdemalion, at least, knew where she was going. Angel followed dutifully and without asking the obvious, fighting against the insidious feeling that she was drowning.

The sun was no longer above them, but moved west and out of view entirely, leaving the forest darker, the shadows longer, and the chill of the air deeper. Then Ailie slowed as they entered a clearing, looked around as if she was testing the air for scent, and stopped altogether.

“We will wait for them here,” she advised.

Angel looked around doubtfully. As far as she could tell, they were standing right in the middle of nowhere. The forest looked exactly the same in all directions, and Ailie’s choice was indistinguishable from any other they might have made.

“The Elves?” she asked, wanting to be sure she understood.

Ailie nodded. Her face was calm, and her breathing even.

She did not look as if the hike in had cost her anything.

Angel shook her head. “How will they know we are here?”

“They will find us. I have put us in their path. They are already coming.”

She sat down, so small and insubstantial nestled in the tall grasses that she looked to Angel like a child peeking out from behind a screen of slender blades. Angel chose the remains of a fallen tree, finding a flat open space on its heavy trunk, settling herself wearily. She was thirsty and wished she had something to drink, but she didn’t want to go looking for fresh water by herself or disturb Ailie’s vigil. She glanced down at her garments and wrinkled her nose. She looked like one of LA’s homeless, and she imagined she smelled like one, too. She cradled the black staff of her order against one shoulder and worked idly with a torn strip of her shirt to rub off some of the dirt.

Time passed. Slowly.

The forest stayed quiet, the only sounds those of birdsong and the soft rustle of wind through the leafy branches of the trees. No Elves appeared. Angel wondered how long they were supposed to wait to be discovered.

She couldn’t decide whether Ailie was justified or not in her confidence about the chances of that happening. The Willamette was a big place. The odds of someone stumbling on them out here seemed extremely remote.

But Angel wasn’t going to question her about it. If the tatterdemalion was mistaken, there was nothing else to be done in any case. She was the one who knew how to find the Elves; Angel was just along for the ride.