The Boy IN My Phone

A Darker Shade of Elf

It starts:

'I passed a furtive Elf after sun's peak, travelling seaward.'

'What of it?'

'He had not the garb of a Wood Elf, nor the bearing of a High Elf. I have not seen his like before.'

'Did you hail him?'

'Not I; he was certain engrossed in some fell errand.'

'This Elf was neither High nor Wood you say; that only leaves Elves of an altogether Darker shade.'

'You cannot think..?!'

'You said he was on a fell errand...'

'There is only one of that breed who would dare stray to the Ravines.'

'You cannot mean Black Maw – '

'No! Don't speak it.'

'The Dark is come again!'

* * * * *

Pela

'Ghasts!' gasped Pela as she flew into the clearing and flopped dramatically onto a branch between the others.

Her gossamer wings rippled with phosphorescent blue pulses, an outward manifestation of her inner fears. In her most feverish nightfrits wind-ghasts pursued her, matching her turn-for-turn, their talons grasping and snatching and – just before she woke – closing around her tiny form.

She had ended her vigil as two of the creatures had swooped into the cavern entrance at the first hint of dusk, and she raced back to report this threat to the elf. 'They have ghasts!'

'I heard,' the elf did not raise his eyes from the maps of the nearby caverns that Pela and the piskie had stolen to his orders. 'What else?'

What else was of little matter thought Pela, but she listed her other sightings, 'Spriggans and sprowlers as you expected, but wind-ghasts as you most truly did not!'

'Were there sprigs?' His head was still roaming the caves and passages laid out on the papers before him.

'No. Of this I am sure; none ventured out and I would have noted their yaps and howls had they been inside.' This was welcome news; sprigs would quickly pick up any trail after the raid. 'There was another, though, in the cavern, taller and leaner than the spriggans. It was a long-snouted creature with horns stretching up high.'

The elf's head jerked up, flint eyes gripping her gaze from under his stormy tumble of jet-black hair. 'Was it a pooka?'

She shook her head uncertainly; she had never seen a pooka and thought them long gone from the world. 'I know not, but this creature had one broken horn.'

The elf nodded slowly and grimly while Pela tore her eyes away to appeal to the piskie, who had been listening to their discussion. She knew both their names but they had been Piskie, Elf and Nymph since they had joined together for this raid.

'We cannot now continue.' She flitted down onto the chart, which the elf had spread out upon a flat rock, determined to stress her case. 'You have no weapons and I cannot out-fly wind-ghasts.'

The piskie's eyes flicked to her but it was the elf who spoke, 'No, you cannot.' He tapped at the chart beneath her tiny feet, 'but the ghasts are here, at the entrance, the Elling lies here, and we will make a back way in here, using the caster.'

* * * * *

A little later the raiders stood in a stony passage at the spot his finger had indicated. They were now four. The stone-caster had been awaiting them in the first cave. It was a kind of small golem Pela supposed. The elf had dismissed her question about it with a disinterested, 'some Fire Rune weirdling.'