Elliot gave him a small smile before he walked away. “I’m glad.”
Elliot went home alone, by the river that fed into the lake where Dale had kissed him and Serene had caused a scandal by doing only what the boys did. He was thinking about Dale and about trolls and about peace, and most of all about Luke. He was so deep in thought he almost walked into the river, but then he heard a ring like a bell and felt his shoe knock against something hard. He looked down and saw a glass bottle, half embedded in the mud of the riverbank.
It was the same bottle he had sent down the river with a message for the mermaids, but it did not have the piece of parchment he had put inside. Instead, as Elliot pulled out the cork, he found a round flat stone, and inscribed on it were symbols he had never seen before, in a language he did not know.
He did not know if it could possibly be a message from the mermaid he had met, or whether it was a different mermaid, curious and reaching out. He did not know what the message said.
But he could learn what the words meant, learn to speak the language of strangers. He could find out, and reach out.
It was one of the first days of blue skies and sunlight, though the air still had a bite to it, reminding them all the year had not quite turned tame. Elliot was extremely pleased to welcome the spring, as for a few weeks there, especially those camping in the frosty woods with harpies, he had felt as if it would be always winter. Always winter, and never central heating.
Serene, Golden, Elliot, and Luke were all due to meet out in the fields where Serene, Elliot, and Luke had gathered years ago, after Serene had been banished from the lake. They wanted to discuss where to go next year, without teachers eavesdropping on them or Commander Woodsinger offering any more unsubtle hints.
Serene and Luke’s parents had all written four very different letters of very urgent advice. Rachel had even written to Elliot. The Sunborns had been collectively surprised and, reading between the lines, mystified when Luke let them know that he had a sweetheart whom they might have met before, someone who preferred books to athletics and whose conversational stylings Adam Sunborn had once described as “You know when a nest of hornets goes mad.” Elliot knew the Sunborns had been expecting something entirely different. He could not blame them if they were disappointed in their hopes for their much-loved Luke, or if they grew cold to Elliot, or if they found themselves unable to take the situation very seriously.
He had opened the letter from Luke’s mother with a certain amount of trepidation, but Rachel’s letter to Elliot had been sweet to him as she ever was, and finished with the hope that he would come and stay with them on the break before they began their posting, that he should think of the Sunborns’ place as home, that he was always welcome. Elliot believed her. He kept her letter, folded up carefully between the pages of one of his favorite books. He still thought Rachel Sunborn would be a very nice mother to have. Luke’s father had not sent a letter. He had sent Elliot a jumper he had knitted himself, the warmest thing in the Borderlands next to the shelter of Luke’s wings.
Much though Elliot appreciated Rachel’s writing, he would not do what Rachel wanted. They had all agreed not to let anybody else influence them.
They wanted to decide on their own.
Luke arrived first, because Elliot had told him to come early. Elliot saw him coming, a dark shape against the sun, but he came to Elliot swiftly and landed lightly, folding his wings back as they sat cross-legged and knee to knee in the green grass.
“I have something to tell you,” said Elliot. “I haven’t told Serene. I want to tell you.”
He was used to having Luke’s attention, but perhaps he would never be used to having focus like this, so absolute, as if for a little while Elliot could be all that mattered in the world.
Elliot drew in a deep breath and said, before he could lose his nerve: “My mother,” and then he was able to take a breath, knowing he had committed himself. “She left when I was a baby. My father never forgave me for it. She’s in the Border camp now. She’s one of the medics—the one with red hair like mine. She doesn’t want anything to do with me. You can’t do anything about it. I can’t do anything about it. I’m going to leave the Border camp at the end of our last year, and I don’t imagine I will see her again. I wanted you to know, because—I want you to know me. That’s all.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Luke said, soft.
They sat there for a little while. Elliot slumped backward, almost overcome with the relief of having told, having it no longer be the secret that he was unwanted and always would be, having it be a smaller secret because it was shared. He could tell Luke was trying to think of the right thing to say.
“Medics,” Luke said at last. “Who needs them?”
“Every stupid warrior in this camp, or else your wounds would become infected and all your limbs would become gangrenous and drop off.” Elliot rested his cheek against Luke’s shoulder. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”
They sat like that for a while longer, until they saw Serene and Golden coming in the distance. Serene was ruffled, as Luke was, from a long day of warrior training, though Luke was more ruffled, on account of the flying. Golden was not ruffled at all. He had apparently spent the day in the library, making pro and con lists for the fortresses they could ask to be assigned to. Elliot leaned his head against Golden’s elaborately coiffed one as he admired the lists.
There was peace in the Borderlands for a time, peace in the freshly turned blue skies where harpies flew, peace over the fields where humans and trolls dug, peace in the forest where dryads sang, and peace in the lakes and rivers where mermaids swam. There had been no sign of unrest and no sign of humans coming across the Border again. Not yet.
They had to take advantage of this opportunity. They could go wherever they wanted, if they could only decide where that was.
“I would suggest not the elves,” said Serene, always the most decisive of the group. “My mother is not pleased with me seducing an innocent and highly born young boy. I think Golden and I should be married several years before we venture back into elven realms.” She hesitated. Over the years her rare faint smile had grown, Elliot realized, far less rare. “Besides,” she added. “I would welcome a new challenge, so long as I have old comrades with me as I face them.”
That left the dwarves, the trolls, the human fortresses, the dryads, and the possibility that the mermaids might permit the stationing of Border guards near their waters for the first time.
“We could always flip a coin,” Elliot suggested.