Close Kin (20 page)

"Excuse me," said Emily.
"Have you seen a young man here in the last several months, very handsome,
with black hair and dark
eyes? Or wait -- maybe
you would have seen a very large, furry black
cat instead."

The girl stopped and stared in
surprise. Then she impulsively seized Emily's hand.

"You must
mean Seylin!" cried Jane in delight. "Tell me, can your
squirrel
talk?"

During the morning
meal, Sable kept trying to catch Irina's eye, but
the
blond girl wasn't paying attention. Irina was dwelling on the unhappy fact that
Thorn always gave her less food now than Sable had given her in the past. She
knew he'd always handed Sable her
food, but
she didn't see why he had to pick on her. Irina glanced up
to find the
black-haired woman once again looking at her significantly.

"What do
you want?" she burst out. Everyone shifted to stare at
her
and then at the dismayed Sable. "Oh!" Irina added in a tone of
discovery. "I remember now! Thorn, the ugly
woman wanted me to
remind you that the flour stores are running
low."

Sable certainly hadn't intended the
reminder to come out like
this. Thorn
turned, eyes narrowed, to study his dead wife, but Sable
had such a look of surprised alarm on her face
that he couldn't help
laughing at it.

"Well, now you can do something
for me, puppy," he said. "I want you to remind the ugly woman that I
don't need her help runni
ng this camp. You
tell her I already knew about the low stores. I've
been waiting till we
had enough food laid by to take the men out hauling flour." He turned to
Rowan. "If the weather's not too bad, tomorrow night should be a good
time. We'll go south this year. We
haven't
been that direction in a while. Last spring, I saw a place that
might
serve us well. It looked like they should have something."

The next night, the four men of the
band set out to haul flour.
Seylin wondered
just exactly what this would mean. Normally,
under the elf Kings, the
elves had bought their flour from a nearby mill. They didn't bring grain, not
having their own fields, but they
sent
representatives to place an order and then bring home the flour
in sacks. This was one of only a few situations
that required elves to
interact with humans, and it was also one of the
few that required
money. Seylin wondered
considerably about money as they walked
along. He'd never met anyone
less likely to have it.

They came to a
comfortable farmhouse at some distance from a
village.
Candlelight shone through one window, and Thorn and
Rowan crept up and squinted at the room that lay within. Then
Thorn
beckoned, and the company went to the low door. It wasn't locked. Thorn opened
it, and they walked right in.

A smoky, rustic
kitchen lay before them, with onions, herbs, and dried sausages hanging from
the rafters. A small fire crackled on the
grate, and an old farmer sat alone at the kitchen table,
drinking a mug
of beer. He rose at
their intrusion.

"Now
then," he said with wary dignity.

"Soft without but fierce within,
live in caves like goblin kin," chanted Thorn. Seylin looked at him in
amazement. He was speaking elvish, and his accent was terrible. Seylin glanced
back at the farmer. The old man was gone. Before he realized what had hap
pened, a white rabbit scurried across the table,
heading for the door.

"Oh, for pity's sake!"
exclaimed Seylin. "You didn't have to do
that!"
He looked through the door, trying to remember the counter-
charm, but
the rabbit was already gone.

"Yeah, I know," grunted
Thorn, walking to the fire. "We could
have
handled him easily, but why dirty our hands with human
trash?" He surveyed Seylin with a conceited
look on his face. "You
thought you were the only one who knew
magic," he gloated.

"Thorn
always changes humans into rabbits," explained Wil
low proudly, "and we can tell his when we hunt
because they're white,
not brown."
Rowan was busy opening doors and looking through them. Hauling flour, Seylin
realized, was nothing more than stealing from the neighbors.

"What about
the other people who live here and just aren't
home?"
he demanded. "If you take their flour away, how are they
supposed to live through the winter?" Thorn
shrugged without inter
est. Willow cut down a sausage and sniffed at it.

"Hey!" said Thorn sharply.
"Get rid of that thing. You know human food's not fit to eat." Willow
obediently threw the sausage into the fire.

"Three good sized bags,"
called Rowan from another room. "One's been opened, but not much is
missing."

"Great!"
said Thorn briskly, going to see. Willow stayed behind.
Now he was sniffing the beer. Seylin eyed the boy
gloomily. Willow
was
growing into a very handsome elf, with all the grace and dignity
of his ancestors, and here he was stalking around a
farmer's kitchen
sniffing foods like
a tame bear.

Rowan and Thorn struggled through the
narrow pantry door, way, dragging a large bag of flour between them. They
dropped it onto the neatly swept boards by the open door through which the
rabbit had recently left.

"Don't just stand there,"
demanded Thorn, beckoning to Seylin. "Grab a bag!"

Dark eyes flashing, Seylin walked
haughtily to the pantry and
levitated the
two remaining bags, floating them over to the door. He
turned back to
the fire, and the bags dropped with a thud. Rowan grinned at Thorn.

"Well,
aren't we fine," he said with a laugh, but Thorn didn't
look amused.

Willow appeared in a doorway, wearing
a thick coat. "Look at
this!" he
said in excitement, rubbing the lapels between his fingers to
feel how
soft the cloth was.

"No,
thanks," said Thorn. "Willow, get that thing off."

`Aw, Thorn, why?" demanded the
boy miserably. "It's really warm.

Rowan walked by him into the room.
"It's the wrong color," he explained. Willow glanced down. The coat
was black. His winter cloak was brown.

"I won't say it again,"
threatened Thorn. "Do you want to look like a human?" The elf boy
sighed and pulled off the coat, stroking its soft wool unhappily.

"Humans have
all the luck," he muttered.

Rowan walked back
into the room, holding a hand mirror.

"Irina might like this," he
suggested, handing it to Thorn. Willow came to gawk at it. He could barely
remember seeing a mirror. Thorn had thrown out their last fragment after Sable
had used it when she cut her face.

"That's just
what we need," growled Thorn, "Irina sitting
around
making faces at herself all night."

"Suit
yourself," said Rowan with a shrug. "She's going to be
your
wife."

"She
is?" whooped Willow. "You're joking! Wait'll I tell her!"
Thorn
looked up, his gray eyes stern. "It's my business, Willow,"
he said steadily,
"and you'll keep your nose out of it."

"Well,"
said the elf boy uncertainly, "don't you even want her to
know?"

"No," snapped Thorn.
"And I'll tell you why. The minute she knows, she'll start expecting
handouts, pats on the back, chucks
under
the chin. You go that way with a woman, and she thinks she's
the piper and you're the one to dance. You take it
from me, Willow,"
he concluded,
shaking the hand mirror at the boy. "Never be nice to
a woman.

Willow considered this piece of
advice. "I'm not nice to Irina," he pointed out. He followed the elf
leader toward the door.

Seylin hung back
while the other elves left the kitchen, consider
ing what to do. The loss of the family patriarch as well
as all the flour
was bound to be a
devastating blow. He took his remaining money from his pocket and put it all
down on the table. The next time he
needed
money, he'd just have to do what everyone else did: work for it.

He followed Thorn to the barnyard. A
big horse came stepping
out of the barn to
greet them, blowing softly, ears pricked with inter,
est. His winter coat was dull and shaggy. He was
a bit of a mongrel,
with legs that
were too short and fine for his deep barrel chest, but his
eyes were
lively and intelligent.

"Oh, good, a horse!"
exulted Thorn. So they were going to steal a valuable animal as well as vital
winter stores.

"We don't
need the horse," protested Seylin. "I can float the bags
home
with the Carrying Spell."

"Fine," said Thorn,
"and while you're at it, you can float home the horse, too. Look at the
meat on him!" he said admiringly.

Seylin's jaw dropped. "You don't
mean you're going to butcher this horse!" he exclaimed.

Rowan grinned at his shocked face.
"Uh-oh!" he teased. "Thorn, he's a picky eater!"

Thorn didn't answer. He vaulted over
the fence and headed into the barn.

"Horse is good," Willow
assured Seylin. "It tastes kind of like
deer."
He and Rowan climbed over the fence as well. Seylin opened
the gate and
walked in after them. The horse followed him, breathing on the back of his
neck.

"Wool,"
said Thorn. "Look up there." Rowan went up the
ladder into the loft,
and after a minute, a bundle came hurtling
down.

Seylin poked
around the barn in search of food for the horse. He
found
oats and began shoveling them into a small sack. He thought moodily about the
stables back in the goblin kingdom. Fine horses
lived there. Marak was fond of horses, and so was Emily. So was he,
for that matter. Living in the deep forest, elves
normally had no use
for horses and
distrusted them accordingly, but he'd never read about
any elves eating
one before.

A noise
distracted him. He came out of the barn to find his three
companions chasing the horse around the barnyard, trying
in vain to
hoist a sack of flour onto his back.

"Stop
it!" shouted Seylin. "Don't you people know anything
about
horses?"

"Of course
we do," said Rowan with a laugh. "We know how
to
cook them."

They were home shortly before the
morning meal. Sable and Irina had taken advantage of the men's absence to bathe
and wash
their clothes. Properly washed,
Irina's blond hair was a mass of soft curls, and she was very happy and bubbly,
chattering away and ask
ing Willow
about where they had gone. Willow was explaining
about the sausage and the coat, forgetting for the moment his moral
obligation
not to be nice to women.

Even Sable's
blue eyes were shining. She was clean, and she had had the luxury of combing
out her black hair in peace. It looked like
a crow's wing or a piece of black satin. Thorn noticed it,
and his
face took on a dangerous expression.

"Didn't you bring home anything
besides horse and wool and flour?" demanded Irina. "Didn't you bring
home anything fun?"

"No,"
said Willow with arrogant superiority. "Human trash
isn't for
elves."

"Oh, yes, we
did," corrected Thorn, warming his hands before the fire. "We brought
something else home."

"Did
you? Thorn! What is it?" asked Irina, terribly excited.
"It's something
just for elf women," said Thorn.

"Something for elf women?"
echoed Irina, thrilled. But Thorn
didn't
look at her eager face. Instead, he looked down at his dead wife
and her
beautiful black hair.

"It's
something Sable's been especially interested in," he continu
ed.
"Sable, with her sable hair." The scarred woman stood up to face him,
thoroughly alarmed. He never used her real name anymore.