Tayla, Elf of the Mountains

Tayla the elf stood on the dirt pathway and gazed out over the mountains. She had walked this path thousands of times and knew the terrain as well as the back of her hand. But nothing had prepared her for the sight in front of her.

In front of her, the world opened up.

The sky was a blue so bright it almost hurt to look at it. It stretched on forever. And then, she looked down, and there were the mountains again, just as she always knew they would be, but she could see them differently now. There were no dark places in the world, only light, and if she could have seen the land from above, there would have been no dark places in it at all.

Tayla stood in the center of a white dome, and as far as she could see there was nothing but snow-covered mountains, endless fields of white, and a blinding blue sky.

She felt like crying. She felt like laughing. She felt like falling to her knees and weeping for the beauty of it. She wanted to run down the mountainside and fling herself into the air and let the wind carry her off.

But she couldn’t. She’d promised to take this walk with the rest of the elves.

And so, Tayla did as she’d promised.

The first to join her on the path were the two other elves from her tribe, their faces alight with awe and wonder.

“We must make this happen for everyone,” Tayla said to them as they walked together. “This is what I know is possible for all of us.”

“But how?” one of the elves asked her. “How can we make it happen?”

“We need to gather all of us together,” Tayla told them. “And then we need to find the other tribes that are here, the ones who live among humans, and we need to bring them to this place.”

The two other elves looked at each other in surprise.

“That’s impossible,” one of them said. “There are too many elves who hate humans, too many who won’t come to this place.”

“Then we’ll just have to convince them,” Tayla said. “We’ll just have to show them that they’re wrong.”

She led the elves up the mountain and along the path she always walked, but they kept looking at her in surprise, as if they could not believe what she was saying, as if they didn’t understand what she was talking about.

When they reached the summit, they could see all of the other elves on their way to join them, hundreds of them, coming together like birds flocking from across the world.

Tayla was glad to see all of them there, but as they reached the summit and came face to face with all the others, they grew quiet. They could see what was happening to them and how beautiful it was.

The elves began to weep.

The next day Tayla gathered all of the elves together at the top of the mountain again. This time they did not have to stand on the ground, because the ground had vanished.

They were standing at the center of a vast space where they could see themselves surrounded by other elves. Some of them had never been to this place before. The others were seeing it for the very first time. All of them had tears in their eyes.

Tayla led them in a dance that she’d learned when she was very young, the steps so graceful it was as if they were made of moonlight and lightness.

But the elves were still sad, even as they danced, even as they saw themselves standing at the center of their tribe and surrounding themselves with others of their kind.

And then Tayla realized why they were still sad. They weren’t sad that they were together now. They were sad that they were separated from the others who had not come to join them. They were sad that some elves refused to believe in what she was telling them, refused to see what she had seen for herself.

“We’re going to change all that,” Tayla told them. “We’re going to show those who are holding back that we can be happy without them.”

Tayla began to sing the song of hope.

“You’ll see your dreams will come true,” she sang, “and you’ll know there is joy to be found.”

She looked out over their tribe and saw that her words were working, that her song was filling the hearts of those who listened to her and lifting their spirits. She saw elves looking at others with hope and joy in their eyes, and others doing the same for them, and she knew that it was only a matter of time before they’d all be together in a place where there was nothing but joy.

It was a promise that she could see now with every step she took. It was a promise that she would keep.

Tayla woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed with a hand clutching at her throat. It was only a dream, she told herself, and tried to force herself to breathe again. The pain in her throat subsided. But the fear did not.

Her dreams were filled with dread.

In the dream she’d been back at the top of the mountain. It was nighttime, but instead of being surrounded by hundreds of other elves, she saw only herself standing at the center of a vast emptiness. There was nothing else there but the sky and herself and the cold wind that swept through her hair.

And then she heard footsteps. She looked around to see who it was, but she saw only the empty space. She could not see where the footsteps were coming from, and yet they sounded right next to her.

And then someone grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to face him, and he was an elf, and he was smiling. And he was so angry, his face twisted in rage.

“You promised,” he said to her.

He shook her so violently that she fell to her knees, but he only shook her harder, screaming in her ear that she would never leave him, that he would never let her go.

When he finally stopped shaking her and released his hold on her, Tayla sat up and pressed her hands against her face. She needed to wake up. She needed to stop thinking about this.

But how could she? Her dream had been so real. She had been so terrified.

Tayla did not know how long she had been sleeping before she heard the footsteps again, the footsteps of someone coming up the path from the village, the path she knew so well and had walked a thousand times before.

But she had not heard those steps for a long time. She’d been certain no one else had ever used this path but her and her alone. But now someone else was walking up it. Someone was coming for her, for Tayla the elf.

And it was him. She knew it was him because of the sound of his steps on the dirt, because of the sound of his voice when he called out to her. “Tayla?” he called. “Tayla!”

“Who’s there?” she called out. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me,” he called back. “It’s your brother.”

And she knew it was him, because her brother’s name was Garef. And Garef’s name meant something like “sadness” or “grief.” And Garef’s name fit his face just right. His face was sad and mournful, even though he was standing outside her door and calling to her with joy in his voice.

Garef stepped into the room, his footsteps making a hollow echoing sound against the wooden walls. “I have news,” he said to her. “I have terrible news.”

And she knew what it must be then:

The boy had fallen off a cliff and died.

Tayla threw back the covers and rushed out of bed and across the room toward him. She threw her arms around her brother and wept, holding him tight to her chest while she cried out for the loss of the boy she loved so much.

Garef held her tight as she wept against him. He did not cry, but only stroked her hair gently and let her weep into his shoulder while he waited for her to get it out of her system, waited for her to feel better.

She pulled herself together then and pulled away from him and took his hands in hers. “Tell me what happened,” she said to him. “What happened to the boy?”

“He fell off a cliff,” Garef said. “A stone fell down on him. And then he slipped.”

“Oh,” Tayla said. “Oh my goodness.” She began to cry again, but this time it was different tears than the ones she’d cried earlier. They were tears of joy that this tragedy had happened and that she would soon see him again. She would see him and touch his cheek and kiss him on the cheek. She would run her fingers through his soft, dark hair and whisper to him that everything would be okay. He would smile at her then, his smile as beautiful as always. She could see it all now in her mind’s eye: him smiling at her, loving her, running toward her with his arms stretched out wide for a hug and his eyes sparkling with excitement as if he were going to tell her something wonderful had happened. And she would hear his voice then too—his voice soft and kind, telling her how much he loved her and how excited he was for them to be together again. She would hear him say those things again and again, and she knew they would never be wrong because he was so good with words. They would be right every time, no matter what happened next in their lives.

Tayla took a deep breath then and wiped away her tears with a gentle flick of her fingers. “He will be all right,” she told Garef. “He will be all right because we will be together forever now.”

Garef looked at her and smiled, but his smile did not reach his eyes, not even close, and Tayla realized that something was very wrong with this boy, something more than a boy who had lost a friend and then found his body at the bottom of a cliff. It was more than grief or sadness or loss of someone dear to him, but more than that too because Garef had always been sad when they’d been together, and grief and sadness and loss were not what had changed in him now.

It was something else, something more. Something that was not good at all. It was a thing like sadness, but it was worse. It was deeper and darker and uglier.