Paul Thompson - Firstborn

“If you can’t pull yourself out, I cannot do it for you,” his rescuer remarked. He looped the belt around the tree limb a few times and secured it with a knot. Then he lay on the branch, his head propped on one hand, awaiting the outcome.

Kith-Kanan grimaced and started to haul himself out by the strap. With much gasping and cursing, Kith-Kanan climbed out of the deadly mire and pulled himself up to the tree branch. He threw a leg over the branch and lay panting.

“Thank you,” he finally said, a little sarcastically.

The young fellow had moved several feet back toward the oak tree and sat with his knees drawn up. “You’re welcome,” he replied. Behind the barbarous face paint, his eyes were brilliant green. He pushed back his hood, revealing himself to be a boy with a shock of bone-white hair. His high cheekbones and tapered ears bespoke his heritage. Kith-Kanan sat up slowly, astride the branch.

“You are Silvanesti,” he said, startled.

“No, I am Mackeli.”

Kith-Kanan shook his head. “You are of the race of the Silvanesti, as am I.”

The elf boy stood on the branch. “I don’t know what you mean. I am Mackeli.”

The branch was too narrow for Kith-Kanan to stand on, so he inched his way forward to the tree trunk. The deadly mud below was hidden once more under its covering of water. He shuddered as he looked down upon it. “You see we are alike, don’t you?”

Mackeli, hopping nimbly along the branch, glanced back at Kith-Kanan and said, “No. I don’t see that we are alike.”

Exasperated and too tired to continue, Kith-Kanan gave up that line of conversation.

They climbed down to solid ground. Kith-Kanan followed the scampering boy slowly. Even so, he lost his grip on the trunk and fell the last few feet. He landed on his rear with a thud and groaned.

“You are clumsy,” Mackeli observed.

“And you are rude. Do you know who I am?” the prince said haughtily.

“A clumsy outlander.” The elf boy reached around his back and brought back a gourd bottle, laced tightly with deerskin. He poured a trickle of clear water into his open mouth. Kith-Kanan watched intently, his throat moving with imaginary swallows.

“May I—may I have some water?” he pleaded.

Mackeli shrugged and handed him the bottle. Kith-Kanan took the gourd in his muddy hands and drank greedily. He drained the bottle in three gulps.

“May the gods bless you,” he said, handing the empty container to the boy.

Mackeli upended the bottle, saw that it was indeed completely dry, and gave Kith-Kanan a disgusted look.

“I haven’t had any water in two days,” Kith-Kanan explained. “Nor have I eaten. Do you have any food?”

“Not with me. There is some at home.”

“Would you take me there?”

Mackeli raised his hood again, hiding his startlingly white hair. With it covered, he was superbly camouflaged, blending into the forest. “Won’t know if that would be right. Ny might not like it.”

“I appeal to you, friend. I am desperate. I have lost my steed and my way, and I cannot seem to find any game in this accursed forest. If you don’t help me, I shall starve in this wilderness.”

The elf boy laughed, a pleasant sound in the still air. “Yes, I heard there was an outlander blundering about in these parts. The corvae told me about you.”

“Corvae?”

Mackeli pointed to the crows, still watching from the nearby hillside. “They know everything that happens in the forest. Sometimes, when something strange occurs, they tell me and Ny about it.”

Kith-Kanan remembered the unnerving attention the crows had paid him. “Do you truly speak with birds?”

“Not only birds.” Mackeli held up a hand and made a shrill cawing sound. One of the black birds flew over and alighted on his arm, like a falcon returning to its master.

“What do you think?” the boy asked the bird. “Can I trust him?” The crow cocked its head and uttered a single sharp screech. Mackeli frowned. The whorls above his eyes contracted as he knitted his brow together.

“He says you carry an object of power. He says you cut the trees with it.”

Kith-Kanan looked down at his mud-caked scabbard. “My sword is not magical,” he said. “It’s just an ordinary blade. Here, you can hold it.” He reversed his grip and held the pommel out to Mackeli. The elf boy reached out tentatively. The crows chorused as if in warning, but Mackeli ignored them. His small hand closed over the diamond-shaped pommel.

“There is power here,” he said, snatching his hand back. “It smells like death!”

“Take it in your hands,” Kith-Kanan urged. “It won’t hurt you.”

Mackeli grasped the handle in both hands and lifted it out of the prince’s hand. “So heavy! What is it made of?” he grunted.

“Iron and brass.” Mackeli’s face showed that he did not know iron or brass, gold or silver. “Do you know what metals are, Mackeli?”

“No.” He tried to swing Kith-Kanan’s sword, but it was too heavy for him to control. The point dropped to the ground.

“I thought as much.” Gently the prince took the sword back and slid it into its sheath. “Are you satisfied I’m not dangerous?”

Mackeli sniffed his hands and made a face. “I never said you were dangerous,” he said airily. “Except maybe to yourself.”

He set off and kept up a brisk pace, slipping in and out of the big trees. Mackeli never walked straight more than a few yards. He pushed off from the massive trunks, hopped over fallen limbs, and scampered like a squirrel. Kith-Kanan trudged along, weighed down by hunger and several pounds of stinking mud. Several times Mackeli had to double back to find the prince and guide him along. Kith-Kanan watched the boy’s progress through the forest and felt like a tired old man. He’d thought he was such a fine ranger. This boy, who could be no more than sixty years old, made the foresters of Silvanost look like blundering drunkards.

The trek lasted hours and followed no discernible path. Kith-Kanan got the strong impression Mackeli didn’t want him to know where they were going.

There were elves who dwelt entirely in the wilderness, the Kagonesti. They were given to the practice of painting their skin with strange patterns, as Mackeli did. But they were dark-skinned and dark-haired; this boy’s features were pure Silvanesti. Kith-Kanan asked himself why a boy of the pure blood should be out here in the deep forest. Runaway? Member of a lost tribe? He finally imagined a secret forest hideaway, inhabited by outlaws driven from Silvanesti by his grandfather Silvanos’s wars of unification. Not everyone had followed the great leader to peace and unity.

Suddenly Kith-Kanan realized that he no longer heard Mackeli’s light tread in the carpet of fallen leaves. Halting, he looked ahead, then spied the boy a score of yards away, on his right. Mackeli was kneeling, his head bowed low. A hush had fallen over the already quiet forest.

As he observed the boy, wonderingly, a feeling of utter peace flowed over Kith-Kanan, a peace he’d never known before. All the troubles of recent days were washed away. Then Kith-Kanan turned and saw what had brought this tranquility, what had brought Mackeli to his knees.

Framed by ferns and tree trunks wrapped in flowering vines was a magnificent animal with a single white horn spiraling from its head. A unicorn, rarest of the rare, more scarce than the gods themselves. The unicorn was snowy white from her small, cloven hooves to the tips of her foaming mane. She radiated a soft light that seemed the essence of peace. Standing on a slight rise of ground, fifteen yards away, her eyes met Kith-Kanan’s and touched his soul.

The elf prince sank to his knees. He knew he was being granted a rare privilege, a glimpse of a creature thought by many to be only legend.