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

“I know I helped you, and now you won’t help me.”


“You helped me because you were afraid of what I might do to you and your friends if I got loose on my own.”

“That’s not true!”

“Sure it is. I saw the way you looked at me. You were afraid.”

“I was afraid of what might happen to you. I was worried about what the others might decide to do when Owl wasn’t looking.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You set me free. That’s all that counts. It’s over and done with. You better learn to live with it.”

She tightened her lips against the urge to cry that kept trying to surface. She was ten years old, she told herself. That was too old to cry.

Her thoughts drifted. She had done what she believed was right in setting him free. She had seen the way Panther looked at him. The first chance he got, he would hurt the boy. He might even kill him. One of the others might do it if Panther didn’t. She couldn’t be sure. Owl couldn’t protect him forever, and Candle didn’t want to let anything happen to him.

Squirrel wouldn’t have wanted him hurt, and neither did she.

She had pretended to be asleep, then risen and walked over to the boy and watched him for a long time as he slept. When he had woken, alerted somehow to her presence, she had watched him some more, even after he had turned away from her. Finally, her mind made up, she had gone over to him, unlocked the chains with the key she had taken from Owl, and set him free.

“Run!” she had whispered to him. “Get as far away as you can!”

But instead of running, he had clapped his hand over her mouth, picked her up, and carried her away, taking her behind the shed and then off toward the highway, keeping to the deep shadows where Bear couldn’t see them. She would have struggled harder, but he had whispered to her that if she did he would hurt her really bad. Terrified and confused by what was happening, she had kept quiet until it was too late. By then, they had reached the highway, he had found some cord with which to collar her, and she was his prisoner. Even then, she had thought he would get tired of her and let her go or that he would see that what he was doing was wrong. Even then, she had believed he would come to his senses and do the right thing.

Now she didn’t know.

“No one tried to hurt you,” she said. “Even after you killed Squirrel and couldn’t fight back, no one did anything bad.”

“I didn’t mean to kill that kid,” he said defensively, his mouth twisting. “

It was an accident. They frightened me. The gun went off on its own.” He shook his head, his face troubled. “It was only a stun gun, anyway. It shouldn’t have hurt him that much.”

“But they could have hurt you back, and they didn’t. So why are you being so mean to me?”

He wheeled about and snatched at the front of her shirt, pulling her so close to his face that she could see the particulars of the scars of every wound he had suffered. “If I wanted to be really mean to you, I could. I could hurt you enough that you would look like me. So just shut up!”

He threw her away, knocking her off her feet, and then yanked hard on the cord until she scrambled up again.

His face darkened. “I could kill you if I wanted.”

He started walking again, forcing her to follow. She trudged after him, tears in her eyes, her mouth tight. She refused to cry. He was mean and she wouldn’t let him see her cry. She tried to think why he was like this. He was angry about what had been done to him, she guessed. About his face, especially. About his lost eye. She wanted to know more because maybe she could say something that would make him feel better, but she was afraid to ask him. He was too angry.

“I might just come back with my tribe and kill your whole family,” he said suddenly. “It would be their own fault for taking me away like they did.

They should have given me what I wanted. Freaks!”

His bitterness was a slap in the face, and she flinched and looked away from him quickly. She heard him make a sneering, dismissive sound, and then he was yanking on the cord again, dragging her forward at an even quicker pace.

“They had no right,” she heard him mutter, and she wasn’t sure if he was talking about the Ghosts or about someone else.

The night wore on. After a time, she quit thinking about what she was doing, concentrating on putting one foot ahead of the other, on simply moving forward. The moon shifted in the sky, the shadows lengthened once more, and the world was a silent, empty landscape. Now and then she recognized landmarks from when she had passed this way earlier. Mostly she kept her eyes on the roadway and tried to think what she could do.

Until suddenly the decision was made for her.

You have to get out of here! the voices said urgently, abruptly. You have to get out of here now!“Wait!” she called out to the boy.

Her urgency was sufficient that he turned back in surprise. “There’s something very bad coming.”