Terry Brooks - The Elves of Cintra

Around her, the other Ghosts had frozen in their tracks, no one wanting to do anything that would cause the kid with the weapon to hurt her. But they wouldn't stay still forever.

She took a deep breath and said, "What's your name?"

He scowled. "What does it matter?"

"Just tell me, I want to know."

"You don't need to know my name." He looked uncomfortable, his ruined face tightening further. "Are you going to give us the cart or not?"

"My name is Owl," she said, ignoring him. "I am mother to the Ghosts. It is my job to protect them. Like it is your job to protect those who travel with you. Sometimes people make that very hard. Some–times they make us feel foolish and weak and even helpless. They do this by threatening to hurt us because they don't like us. That's hap–pened to you, hasn't it? That's what you were talking about when you said everyone always tells you to go away."

She waited for him to say something, but he just stared at her, the gun steady in his hand.

"Tell him to quit pointing that at you," Chalk said at her elbow.

"The thing is," she continued, keeping her eyes fixed on the boy's face, "you are doing to us what others have done to you. You are acting just like them, telling us we have to do something we don't want to. You are stealing from us and telling us to just turn around and leave. Why are you doing that?"

Again, no answer, but she could see the confusion and anger mir–rored in the boy's one good eye.

"Don't you see that you are no better than those people you don't like if you do this?"

"Stop talking!" he shouted suddenly.

Everyone tensed. Bear came forward a few steps until he had moved between the cart with their goods and the street kids who wanted it. He didn't say anything, but she could see the determination in his eyes. A few of the street kids glanced his way uneasily.

"What do you expect us to do?" she asked the boy with the gun. "Do you expect us to just stand here and let you take everything we have?"

"Everyone takes everything we have," he snapped angrily. "Everyone calls us Freaks? We're not Freaks?"

"Then don't act — "

"Don't tell me what to do!"

There was sudden movement to her left, and he shifted his weapon in response. Owl raised her hand to stay his, saying, "No!" The boy flinched, turning back to her as quickly as he had turned away. Seeing her raised arm and mistaking her intent, alarm flooded his face.

Then he shot her.

IT WAS THE WAY that everything changed so suddenly that shocked Hawk the most.

One moment he was falling from the compound walls, the hands of his captors releasing him for the long drop, his stomach lurch–ing as he struggled in vain to find something to hold on to, his fate a dark rush of gut–wrenching certainty flooding through him. He glimpsed the rubble waiting below, the sharp outline of the bricks and cement chunks clearly visible even in the fading light of the sunset. He caught sight of Tessa tumbling away next to him, her arms windmilling and her legs kicking, her slender body just out of his reach. He wanted to close his eyes to shut the images away, to escape what was happen–ing, but he could not make himself do so.

A moment later he was surrounded by the light, gathered up by its white brilliance as if cradled in a soft blanket. He was neither standing nor sitting but sprawled out, his muscles becoming lethargic and leaden, his mind drifting to faraway places that had no identity. He was no longer falling, no longer doing anything. Tessa had disappeared. The compound and his captors, the city and the sunset, the entire world had vanished.

He didn't know how long this cocooning lasted because he lost all sense of time. His thoughts were as soft and image–free as the light that bound him, and he could not seem to make himself think. All he could do was revel in the feeling of the light and the welcome hope that some–how he had escaped dying. He waited for something to happen, for the light to clear and reveal his fate, for the world to return–for anything–but finally gave in to his lethargy and closed his eyes and slept.

When he woke, the light was gone.

He was lying on a patch of grass so bright with color that it hurt his eyes to look at it. Sunshine flooded down out of clear skies that seemed to stretch away forever. Gardens surrounded him with a profusion of colors and forms and scents. He blinked in disbelief and pushed himself up on one elbow to look around. Wherever he was, he clearly wasn't anywhere in Seattle or even anywhere he had ever been in his life. He had seen pictures of gardens in Owl's books and listened to her read descriptions of them to the Ghosts. He had imagined them in his mind, spreading away from the edges of the pages that framed them in the picture books.

But he had never imagined anything like this.

And yet …

He stared off into the distance, off to where the gardens disap–peared from view, going on and on in a rough carpet of plants and bushes, of petals and stalks, their colors so vibrant that they shimmered against the horizon in a soft haze.

Yet it was all somehow very familiar.

He frowned in confusion, sitting up for a better look, trying to un–derstand what he was feeling. His mind was clear now, his limbs and body fresh and rested. The lethargy was gone, dissipated with the light. He felt that he might have slept a long time, but could not account for how that might be. Everything had changed so completely that there was no way he could make sense of it. It was magic, he thought sud–denly, but he had no way of knowing where such magic might have come from.

Not from himself, he knew.

Not from Logan Tom, the Knight of the Word.

His confusion exploded into questions. Why am I alive? What saved me from the fall off the compound wall? How did I get here?

Then he remembered Tessa, and he looked around for her in a wel–ter of sudden fear and desperation.

"She is sleeping still," a voice said from right behind him.

The speaker was so close and had come up on him so quietly that Hawk jumped despite himself, wheeling into a defensive crouch with–out even thinking about what he was doing. Breathing hard, arms cocked protectively in front of him, he stared up into the face of the old man who stood there.

The old man never moved. "You needn't be afraid of me," he said.

He was ancient by any standards, rail–thin and bent by time, his body swathed in white robes that hid everything but the outline of his nearly fleshless bones. His beard was full and white, but his hair was thinning to the point of wispiness, and his scalp showed through in mottled patches. His features were gaunt, his cheeks sunken, and his brow lined. But all of this was of no importance to Hawk when he looked into the old man's eyes, which were clear and blue and filled with kindness and compassion. Looking into those eyes made the boy want to weep. It was like seeing a reflection of everything that was good and right in the world, all gathered in a perfect vision, bright and true.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Someone who knows you from before you were born," the other answered, smiling as if having Hawk standing before him was the most welcome of sights. "Someone who remembers how important that event was." His eyes never left Hawk's face. "What matters is not who I am, but who you are. Here and now, in this time and place, in the world of the present. Do you know the answer?"

Hawk nodded slowly. "I think so. The Knight of the Word told me when I was locked away in the compound. He said I was a gypsy morph and that I had magic. I saw something of what he was talking about in a vision when I touched my … my mother's finger bones." He hesi–tated. "But I still don't know if I believe it."