Elliot did not miss the faint emphasis she laid on this. It seemed like Captain Whiteleaf did not miss it either.
“You’re still a pack of impossible brats,” said Captain Whiteleaf on the ride home. “But I suppose you meant it for the best. This once, I will not report your wild behaviour to the commander.”
He spurred his horse and rode to the front of the company.
“‘Oh, thank you for saving my first mission,’” said Elliot. “‘No, no, Captain Whiteleaf, it was my pleasure, please do not mention it, all this fulsome gratitude is so embarrassing!’”
“Shut up. That was really good of him,” said Luke. “And the mission would have been fine if you hadn’t destroyed the treaties like a maniac.”
“Oh, would it?”
“I’m not saying—” said Luke. “You did the best you know how. You did a good thing. But they’re just bits of paper, in the end. The Border guard enforcing peace is what will keep people safe. Either way, the mission would have been successful.”
Of course Luke didn’t agree with him: Luke wasn’t really his friend. It was all a bargain they had made.
Elliot looked to Serene for help, but her expression did not betray anything. Least of all whom she really agreed with, when it came right down to it.
“I’m glad we’re not expelled,” she said.
Neither of them seemed to realize how different it would have been if the spoiled son of an important man hadn’t wanted their mission to go smoothly, or if the treaty had affected the Border camp directly—if they’d had something to gain—rather than involving a village and a community of dryads. Neither of them seemed to realize that an idiot like Captain Whiteleaf should not have had the last word on the treaty.
They had both stood up for what was right, when it counted. Elliot just wished that one of them would share his dark misgivings once in a while. He sometimes felt like the kid in the magic book who was always whining along the lines of “Should we go to find that giant ruby of ultimate magic, though? Isn’t it dangerous?” Everyone knew that kid eventually turned evil.
Elliot did not have long to brood about how misunderstood and undervalued he was. As soon as they were back at the camp, everyone was panicking about exams, even Serene and Luke, who should really have known better. Elliot had to forcibly shepherd them to the library and make piles of what he’d decided was the assigned reading.
“Now, loser, let’s start with the basics,” Elliot added kindly once he was done telling them the list. “This is a book. You open it like this, see? Not along the spine. That’s very important.”
Luke made an impolite gesture behind his book.
They all did extremely well in their exams, and Elliot was happy until he heard Serene making plans to come stay at Luke’s over the summer holiday.
“You can come too, if you want,” said Luke. “My mum will probably be expecting you. I don’t know why.”
“I guess if Serene’s going to be there,” said Elliot. “And since the year’s not up yet, the truce isn’t quite over.”
“Fine,” Luke snapped.
“Great,” said Elliot.
First, though, he had to go home. Captain Woodsinger escorted Elliot and the very few other kids from the human world who had stayed back through the hole in the wall. She left them to walk down the steps on their own, down and down, until they reached the real world.
Elliot lifted his eyes to the horizon of the real world, a line of tall buildings standing against the sky, all metal and glass. He realized he had become rather used to the endless fields.
At home every day was the same, just as it had always been. His dad would come home late, when the day was already getting dark and cold, and put his briefcase down neatly on the table in the hall. They would sit at either ends of the polished rectangular table, and eat dinner. Conversations would stop and start, escaping from Elliot’s hands like a balloon in the wind. That was how conversations with his father made him feel: as if he were a little kid, surprised every time at the loss.
Elliot had become all kinds of dumb and unguarded at the Border camp, though, because one day when his father went and poured himself his first glass, Elliot did not go away to his room and read a book.
It wasn’t that his father ever got angry, or ever hit him. It was just that it was like sitting in a room where all the air was escaping, to stay in a room with a man who was grimly, methodically drinking: to know that he had once been happy and never would be again.
“What was Mum like?” asked Elliot, who had truly grown stupid at the camp if he was asking that.
His father looked out the window, where gray shadows were snatching away the very last of the light.
“She was the first thing I saw when I walked into a room,” he said at last. “And once I saw her, I never wanted to look anywhere else. She would speak, and whatever she said was brilliant and startling. She was like that, a constant bright surprise. She was always talking, always laughing, always dancing, and she was never what I expected. I was even surprised when she left.” He looked over at Elliot, who was sitting with his hands clenched tight around his knees. “You’re not like her,” he added. “You’re like me. Nobody will ever love you enough to stay.”
His father was very thin. Even his hair was thin, gray strands so fine that it seemed as if it had been worn away, as the grooves in his face seemed to have been worn in. Elliot wasn’t sure, sometimes, if he was like his father: the patient, desperate ghost who had waited until all hope was worn out. He couldn’t imagine his father going to school and antagonizing everyone in sight, being too short, too smart, too awkward, too unguarded, too wildly unused to company, until it was easier eventually to antagonize people on purpose.
His mother had stayed with his dad for ages. She’d left pretty soon after Elliot had arrived. Elliot could do the maths.
He supposed it didn’t matter if someone left because you weren’t good enough or left because you actually drove them away. The result was the same.
He left the room quietly, went and sat on the stairs, pressed his hot face against the cool banister. He could see through the staircase at this angle, could see the front door, flanked by windows that shone with gray light. He sat and looked at the door as if someone were coming home.
Nothing changed, not permanently. Elliot had known that even when the miracle happened, and he was taken away to somewhere fantastical. Every bit of reality in the fantasy reminded him that miracles were not for him.
Even if you found yourself in a magical story, there were no guarantees that you were the hero, or that you would get the things you dreamed of. Elliot knew no way, being who he was, to deserve that.