First Luke yawned and stretched and rolled away from Serene, then Serene’s eyes opened. Her eyes were clear and she was alert in an instant, whereas Luke had to spend a whole lot of time looking dopey and rubbing his eyes. Elliot nobly refrained from teasing him.
“Are we far enough away, do you think?” Serene asked Luke. Nobody asked Elliot’s opinion, Elliot noticed. Far enough away for what? What were they planning to do?
He found out when Serene rummaged in her bag and brought out a horn, made of bone and delicately carved. She blew on it gently, and the sound went rushing through the trees as if there were windchimes hanging from every bough.
In a few moments, sooner than Elliot would have dreamed possible, came the response. Through the trees in a shining cavalcade and a patter of hooves lighter than falling leaves, wheeling and turning in a perfect circle like birds whose flight patterns were guided by sheer instinct into absolute smoothness, came the elves. In the lead was a woman beautiful as the dawn and calm as a lake nobody had ever even breathed on. Her gray eyes widened as she recognized Serene.
“Hail, kinswoman, Swift-Arrows-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle!” called Serene.
“Hail, kinswoman, Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle,” Swift returned, and then a smile split her grave sweet face. “Out in the woods with a couple of boys?” she asked. “Why, you little rogue!”
“Ma’am, it is not at all what you assume,” said Serene. “They’re decent gentlemen, I assure you. Human ways are different, and besides, this is an emergency.”
“That’s what all the young girls say when it comes to dalliances in the woods with trollops,” said one of the other elves, and Elliot gave an indignant squawk.
“Two of them, as well,” said Swift, who had Serene’s fine bones and translucently pale skin, though her braided hair was chestnut, much lighter than Serene’s, and her expression was mischievous. “Certainly your mother’s daughter. Chip off the old wood block.”
“Ma’am, Luke Sunborn is my swordsister,” Serene said severely. “We swore the holy oath, over a tree trunk by moonlight.”
“What, a boy?” said yet another of the elves, the youngest by all appearances, with rippling gold hair, and she let out a rippling laugh to match it. “Who ever heard of such a thing?”
Elliot was even more indignant about this evidence that the ritual had been extremely complicated and meaningful than he was about being called a trollop.
Luke sidled closer to him and murmured in his ear: “Can you understand them? I do not like the way they are looking at us!”
“Of course I can understand them. What, you don’t even know elvish?” Elliot asked. “Fine swordsister you are.”
“What?” Luke asked, and Elliot snickered. After an exasperated pause, Luke said: “What are they saying?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Quite, quite sure?”
“Yes!”
“Well, if you’re really sure,” Elliot said blandly. “That one with the black braid just said you were a pretty, pretty thing and looked like you’d be a fun afternoon.”
Luke went a slow, horrified scarlet. Elliot beamed.
“But the undersized one,” said Swift. “I’m not sure of the appeal. With the wild garish hair—carrots, my dear—and the squinty look.”
The blond elf snickered and said a single word.
“Deh’rit,” Luke whispered, triumphantly. “She looked right at you and she said it! What does that mean?”
Elliot thought about lying and saying that it meant “totally awesome, very handsome, in a respectful way,” but he was hoping Luke would submit to elvish lessons very soon and lying was no way to begin teaching him.
“Uh . . . the closest translation would be that she called me a bluestocking.”
“What does that mean?”
“Um . . . like, a nerd,” said Elliot, and sighed. “Something along the lines of, someone who always has their nose buried in a book and who nobody wants to marry.”
“Oh,” said Luke, and grinned. “Well, they’re not wrong on all counts then.”
Elliot ignored him and concentrated on what the elves were saying. Tragically, Serene was still apparently involved in a conversation about whether Elliot and Luke were her wanton floozies.
Swift continued eyeing Elliot in a way he found upsetting and insulting. “He must have a really great personality,” she said at last.
“You know, I really don’t,” said Elliot, impatiently and in elvish.
Swift looked a little rueful about being caught out, but not as embarrassed as Elliot had expected. She was still looking at him as if, after all, Elliot should accept that of course he’d hear comments like that about himself.
The blond elf snickered and said: “Told you he was a bluestocking.” Luke perked up at the one elvish word he now knew. Elliot scowled at everybody.
“Smile, sweetheart,” called the elf with the black braid.
“Uh, I’m a total stranger and my whole family could’ve just died in a unicorn stampede,” said Elliot. “You don’t know. I don’t feel like smiling. What right do you have to tell me to?”
Black braid rolled her eyes and sent her horse turning in a playful little circle. “Might want to get your boy to loosen up, Serene, or how is he ever going to be any—”
At this point, Serene lost her temper and strung her bow. She held an arrow poised to fly at Swift’s face, her hands and her gaze steady.
“They are my comrades,” she said. “I hold their honor as my own. One word more said to defame it, and I will consider that word a challenge.”
The elvish troop stopped grinning and snickering. Elliot was briefly furious that it was Serene’s anger that got them to stop, but then he recalled how Luke could quell the boys at camp when it came to Serene in a way Serene herself could not. It was an uncomfortable thought and he did not like it, so he reached for the roll of parchment in his bag instead.
“We actually come on a question of honor,” he said. “Unless you’d rather sit around and laugh at young boys all day long.”
Swift’s face hardened. She jumped off her horse in one smooth motion and came striding through the grass toward them.
Serene did not put her bow down. “First you apologize to my friends.”
Elliot had the sudden crushing realization that the adults were not going to be adults about this. Human adults had already messed things up by being greedy liars, and now elvish adults were going to be stubborn, and Serene was too good a friend to back down, and Luke did not understand what was going on and would be too direly embarrassed to be helpful if he did.
Being obnoxious was not going to work.
Elliot got out the treaty and waved it until Swift’s eyes went to it and her attention was on him.
“I’m sorry if I was short with you,” he said, as if the elves hadn’t started it all. “It’s just that I’m so worried about this, and I thought that if we found you, you would know what to do!”
Swift visibly wavered, to Elliot’s secret amazement.
“I only want to do the right thing,” Elliot proceeded, and fixed Swift with a limpid gaze.