“Elliot is right,” said Myra, which Elliot enjoyed hearing, so Elliot made her his favorite again.
“I’ve just never heard him say anything positive about anyone before,” said Luke.
“That’s absurd. Serene is an avatar of elven perfection, and I praise her every day,” Elliot snapped. “Anyway, Dale Wavechaser has the disturbingly happy face of someone who doesn’t think very much.”
“That’s more like you,” said Luke. “Also, I don’t know this person.”
“He followed you around all through the first day of camp!”
“Oh,” Luke said, and frowned again, this time in concentration. As if people following him around worshipfully was such an ordinary state of affairs he barely noticed. “I think I remember. I don’t know him, though.”
“Well, good news!” Elliot declared. “He wants to be your friend!”
Luke did not look especially pleased by this revelation. Of course, he was probably used to people wanting to be his friend.
Elliot remembered his new friends, and also his manners.
“My new friends, meet,” Elliot said grandly, “some guy.”
“Luke,” said Luke.
“We know,” Peter and Myra chorused.
Elliot noticed that Luke did not ask Peter and Myra’s names, and Peter and Myra did not volunteer them. Everybody clearly had a strong opinion about who the important one in this social interaction was.
Elliot refused to accept other people’s version of reality. He debated asking Luke what he was doing hanging around, and whether it was actually Luke’s intent to sabotage Elliot’s life because of their rivalry for Serene’s heart.
It sounded a bit terrible in Elliot’s head when he thought it, though, and when things sounded terrible in Elliot’s head that was a bad sign. Elliot thought it was probably bad manners to actually tell people they shouldn’t be where you were. It was not something that had ever come up in Elliot’s life before. Usually people took extreme care not to be where Elliot was.
Elliot decided to accept the situation, with ill grace.
“Since you’re here, make yourself useful,” he commanded. “Hold all of these.”
He gave Luke his bag.
“Do you have rocks in here?” Luke asked.
“I have all my books with me, obviously, and several library books,” Elliot answered. “What if I wished to consult a book and did not have the relevant volume on hand? Think about it. Now if you are carrying my books, I can take the atlas back to my cabin with me and inspect it.”
The atlas of the otherlands was not a globe, but a square flat stone, smoothed into shape like a tile. The forests of the otherlands were drawn out, and villages, and the seas beyond.
“Elliot!” Peter said, his voice slightly high. “I’m not sure you’re supposed to take that.”
“Nobody ever said I wasn’t supposed to take the atlas home for private study,” Elliot told Peter. “Did they? By the way, do people think this world is flat? Is it flat? What happens if you try to cross the sea?”
“If you sail into the deepest ocean, you are killed by giant mermaids,” Peter said flatly.
“Fascinating,” Elliot sighed. “You’ve made me very happy.”
He contemplated the atlas in his hands, which also made him very happy. There was a place where the actual words HERE BE DRAGONS were written, and it was probably true.
“I don’t want to help you steal stuff,” said Luke.
“You are talking nonsense, Luke. Obviously I am going to give it back. Besides, is Mr Dustlaid going to punish me? Really? He can barely summon up the will to live. I don’t know how any of the councilors get any treaties written.”
“Well,” Luke said pityingly. “They don’t exactly write the treaties. They used to, but the Border guard is too large and too vital to the defence of the otherlands now. Councilors advise on the treaties, of course, and help put them into the proper language, but Commander Rayburn or—if the situation is important enough—General Lakelost decides what goes into the treaties.”
“Reeeeeally,” said Elliot. “Under those circumstances, I might lose the will to live myself.”
The system of war training and council training in the Border camp made more sense now. Once, perhaps, there had been no general, and no colonels beneath him, and only a few fortresses with commanders and their trusted councilors running them together. Now there were fortresses dotted across the otherlands, a general placed over them all, everyone thought they were too important and military to listen to councilors, and the commander who ran the Border camp was under orders to produce more warriors.
No wonder the council course had shrunk down to nothing, and all the councilors taught in a despair fugue. They had given up.
Giving up was not Elliot’s style.
He waved a cheerful good-bye to Peter and Myra. The atlas, held in only one hand, wobbled. Peter gulped. Myra, Elliot’s favorite, stayed cool.
Elliot went back to holding the atlas in both hands. Luke punched him in the arm.
“There you go,” he said. “Hang on to it.”
Elliot stumbled slightly and glared up at Luke, waiting for the next blow. It did not come. Luke stared down at him.
“Don’t hit me,” said Elliot.
“I didn’t!” Luke exclaimed. “I didn’t—hit you.”
“Oh, no?”
Luke flushed. “Other boys punch—people they know in the arms all the time,” he said. “I’ve seen them do it.”
“Yeah, I’ve actually been punched before,” said Elliot. “I don’t like it.”
“Who punched you?”
Elliot waved this off as irrelevant. “This is part of the truce,” he explained.
“The truce,” Luke said. “Oh.”
“No violence. No hitting, no kicking, no throwing my bag over my head, no shaking trees so I fall out, no shaking the jungle gym so I fall out, no shoving me out of windows so I fall out—”
“Elliot!” said Luke. “I’m not going to—”
“No interrupting!” said Elliot. “That is doing violence to my train of thought and verbal flow.”
“That is ridiculous,” said Luke.
“So you insist on perpetrating acts of wanton brutality on the helpless?”
“No!” Luke exclaimed. “Okay, fine. No violence. That’s fine. Since I didn’t hit you.”
He glared at Elliot. Elliot glared back. Elliot returned to studying his atlas.
“On one side is the ocean, and on one side is the wall,” said Elliot thoughtfully. “But were the otherlands part of my world once? Who built the wall that marks the Border?”
“Nobody built the wall,” said Luke. “It’s always been there.”
“Someone built the wall,” said Elliot. “Because it’s a wall, and not a rock. Rocks are always there. Walls are not. Someone has to make a wall. Nobody has to make a rock.”
“Says who?” asked Luke.
Elliot squinted. “Luke, are you being metaphysical?”
Luke looked alarmed. “I don’t think so.”
“Pity,” said Elliot. “I would have been very impressed.”
“I doubt that somehow,” said Luke.