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She had never thought she would live to see any elf, never mind a drowned one. But here he was on her Oyster Beach, lying sprawled on his back across the pebbles with the waves lapping at his bare feet. She stared at him for a minute, just getting used to the surprise. Then she shrugged, set down her big basket and her oyster rake on a handy stone, and went to drag him far enough up the beach that he wouldn’t be carried off again come high tide. Later she’d figure out how to get him up the hill, and find a fit place to lay him down, and a word or two to say – but she wasn’t doing any of that before she had got her oysters. He could just wait patiently for her until then.
Her plans were thrown into slight disarray when, just as she was bending creakily down to get a solid grip on him beneath the armpits, his eyes fluttered open.
She jerked back her hands with a startled yelp. She stared down at him, and he stared up at her with his bloodshot gray eyes, and for a little while they kept on like that. Then, shrugging again, she eased herself carefully down to sit on the pebbles and set about looking him over.
It was no wonder she’d taken him for a corpse. His injuries were thorough enough – and what kind of fool was he, she wondered, to burn his hand half off like that and then immediately go and get himself drowned in the ocean? – but his injuries were not the half of it. His skin was a mottled shade of gray she’d never have thought could belong to a living creature, and he was all puffed up about the midsection, not to mention the swelling around several of his wounds. His breathing was labored and shallow; she could barely see the rise and fall of his chest.
The fingers of one hand fluttered, and he made a sound like he was trying to speak. She shushed him absentmindedly, thinking things over. He’d been more than half-drowned, that was clear enough. Probably he had a lot of water in his lungs, but there wasn’t much to do for that but let him cough it up. She felt gently all about his neck, searching for injuries; she found nothing worse than scrapes, but for caution’s sake she still held his head steady as she rolled him onto his side. He groaned.
“Cough,” she instructed him. He coughed.
She waited, supporting his movements when he tried to position himself to cough more effectively. It took quite a long time – the tide would be in again before she could gather any oysters, she thought sadly – but at last the elf’s coughs grew less violent, and she could hear that his breathing, though still labored, had deepened and steadied.
“Right,” she said, easing him back down to lie in a position that did not require her support. “I’m going to find something to drag you up the hill on. Mind you don’t die while I’m gone – there’s no need for it, after all that coughing. And hold still.”
He tried to say something, but coughed instead. He drew in another rasping breath, and this time managed a hoarse, “I can walk.”
She snorted. “Young fool, your leg’s broken. You hold still.” And she marched off across the beach toward the hill before he could muster the breath to make any more senseless remarks.
It took her some time to think of anything that could serve as an adequate sledge. At last she resorted to taking the goat-pen gate off its hinges, first tying the goat securely to one of the fenceposts. She bound a length of rope to the gate, and coiled another over her shoulder, and then she picked her way gingerly back down the hill with the gate bumping incessantly at her heels.
“Right,” she said, coming down the beach toward the elf. He hadn’t moved, but whether that was a reason to suspect him of having common sense, or whether his injuries were simply severe enough to prevent him, she did not presume to know. She drew the makeshift sledge to the elf’s side. “Right,” she said again. “This’ll make your hurts worse, I don’t doubt, but you need a roof and a fire if you’re to live, and I’m not building you a house down here. So you’ll just have to bear it.”
Simply getting him onto the gate and tied securely in place was one ordeal. Getting him up the hill was another and a half. All told, she thought she had gone through at least five ordeals before she maneuvered him at last through her narrow doorway and laid him, as gently as her weariness allowed – which was not very gently – atop her own lumpy straw mattress.
Even then she could not rest. She fetched the shears from her mending-basket, and her spare winter smock from the little chest in the corner. As the elf blinked muzzily at her, she cut the sea-soaked rags from his body and eased her smock over his head, lifting him a little to pull it down beneath his back. For good measure she draped her winter blanket over him, and the shawl from her shoulders over that, and then she stood back with her hands on her hips, assessing her work.
“That’ll do,” she declared. “Now for the broken bones.”
“You needn’t – take so – much trouble,” the elf said faintly.
She snorted. “If you wanted to save me trouble you could’ve said so earlier! Think I’m going to sit back and let you heal all crooked now, after I came halfway to dying just getting you up the hill? Have a little sense.”
That silenced him effectively enough, so she set about finding the things she needed to make splints.
The elf said nothing more for a long time as she tended him, the darting about of his bloodshot gray eyes the only sign that he was still conscious. Only when evening had settled deep and blue around the little house, and she with much grumbling had padded her big chair with rags to make it a trifle fitter to sleep in, did he speak again. “Thank you.” He sounded faintly disbelieving.
She glared at him. “That took you long enough.”
*
The elf healed in a truly unreasonable hurry. Within two days of his rescue the rasp was gone from his voice; within three days every one of his open wounds had knitted itself closed; within a week his leg had healed enough to bear some weight, though she sternly forbade him to walk about on it without her there to supervise him. Even his first night’s sleep in her home had returned an absurd proportion of his strength and wits, so that when he had woken in the morning and found she had bandaged his burnt hand while he slept, he had actually had the gall to try to pull the bandage off.
“No!” she had snapped, dropping her mending in her lap to push his hands hastily apart. “You don’t do that!”
He looked faintly amused. “I –” He coughed. Cleared his throat. “I don’t need it.”
“Nonsense,” she said flatly. “I never saw such a burn in all my days, and you are not to go poking and prodding at it if you want it to heal.”
“It won’t.”
She peered sharply at him. “What?”
“It won’t heal,” he said. “It’s a very old wound.”
She tutted. “Nonsense, it’s fresh as a daisy. Don’t tell lies.”
He actually laughed at that, a quiet rasping sound. She harrumphed. “Oh, very grateful, I’m sure! Very mannerly! Didn’t anyone ever teach you to respect your elders?”
He had an immediate coughing fit. “I apologize,” he said when it was over, his voice strained.
“Well.” She sniffed. “You had better.”
After that he left the bandage on his hand alone. She changed it daily; irritatingly, the wound beneath showed no signs of healing, just as he had said it would not.
When his voice was healed he became aggravatingly inquisitive. Where were they, he wanted to know, and did she have any news of this or that place she’d never heard of, and did she really live all alone out here, and what was her name? At that last question she laughed aloud. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “You’re not snaring me that way. I know all about your elven tricks.”
He blinked at her, his brow wrinkling. After a few moments’ hesitation, he said tentatively, “Will it help if I tell you mine first?”
“No,” she snapped. And that was the end of that.
He did manage to get her talking about her grandsons one evening, when she came into the cottage exhausted and damp with a basket of oysters only a quarter of the way full. He had watched her in silence for a while as she stumped about the room, muttering to herself about boneheaded louts, and then he had said, “Forgive me – I thought you had no neighbors here. Who are you talking about?”
“None of your business,” she snapped, but followed it up with, “My grandsons.” And then, because really she might as well complain while she had someone here to complain to, she lowered herself with a thump into her big chair and went on talking.
“They went off – matter of a year ago, I think it was. They’d said they were going to stay, but the young people these days have worse memories than the old. Sighted a ship of the sea-kings and off they went, without so much as an apology for going back on their word – and they didn’t try too hard to convince me to come with them, either, I can tell you.”
The elf frowned. “Sea-kings?”
“Huh!” She snorted in disbelief. “Where’ve you been all your life – underground? The sea-kings – the wicked men who make their way north knocking down all the forests and telling everyone to bow and scrape, and taking people away to eat, or whatever it is they do with them. Folk do say there’s elf-blood in them, mind you – that’s what makes them so coldhearted. They’ve only been raiding us since before I was born.”
He made an apologetic expression. “I’ve… been on my own for a very long time.”
She scoffed. “So have I, and it hasn’t made me forget everything I know about the world! Now, my grandsons would like to think they aren't cowards – and they did stay here when everyone else got spooked and ran off inland, I’ll say that much for them – but one ship on the horizon and they changed their minds like that! Said they didn’t want me to be eaten. I said they’d best stop pretending it was me they were worried about, when anyone could see I was far too old to be any good to eat. Then they stammered and apologized about it for a while, and when they’d finished doing that they went off to load their things onto the donkey. Which is another thing!” She glowered, freshly outraged. “If they hadn’t taken the donkey, she could’ve hauled you up the hill, and I wouldn’t have had to torture myself doing it. But of course they didn’t think of that, the young, inconsiderate wretches.”
The elf had an odd expression on his face. “They left you so willingly?”
“Oh, they wheedled at me a bit to come along, but it didn’t break their hearts to go without me. And I know what you’re going to say,” she added swiftly. “You’re going to say they might’ve thought twice about leaving if I were pleasanter. Well, I don’t care. They can do just as they please, but they’ll never see their granny cozying up to them and begging favors. So now!”
She scowled ferociously at the elf. He blinked. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
She sniffed. “Of course not.”
The next evening, she came through the door to find him sitting sideways on her bed, singing quietly to himself in a foreign tongue. His voice was so sweet it rooted her to the spot, and she stood just past the threshold, staring at him with wide eyes, until he glanced up and saw her there.
He stopped singing at once. “I am so sorry,” he said. “I should have heard you coming – I would have, but I was lost in thought. I’m sorry.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Were you laying an enchantment?”
“What? No.”
“Then don’t apologize. What nonsense, apologizing for a song!” She tutted emphatically. “Only cause to do that is if you’re a bad singer, which you’re not. What was it about, anyway?”
He hesitated as she went over to stoke the hearthfire. “It’s only a lullaby,” he said at last. “I used to sing it – well. I was thinking about our conversation last night, and that reminded me of it.”
“Why, because my grandsons are as skittish as young children?”
He gave a startled laugh. “No – no. I suppose it doesn’t have much to do with what we talked about after all.”
“Then why’d you say it did? What does it have to do with, if not that?”
He looked down. “I – used to sing it to my sons, that’s all.”
“Your sons!” She whistled through her teeth. “But you said you’ve been living on your own. What – did you walk out on them and their mother? Serves you right getting drowned, if you did.”
“No! I – no – they’re grown. They’ve been grown for a long time.” He bit his lip. “And I shouldn’t have said sons. They’re not my sons. I raised them, that’s all.”
She shrugged. “Foster-sons, then. But they can’t be grown already. You’re too young.”
He smiled awkwardly. “I’m – older than I look.”
“Not old enough to have sons who’ve been grown for a long time.” She scrutinized him suspiciously from her seat by the fire. “Is this some sort of elven nonsense?”
“I –” He gave a little laugh. “I suppose so.”
“Hm,” she said dubiously. “How old are you, then?”
He hesitated. “I don’t really know. I haven’t been keeping count.”
“Complete nonsense,” she declared, and went back to stoking the hearthfire.
*
The next morning he claimed he was well enough to help a little with her chores – “in return for all you’ve done,” he said earnestly.
She gave him a long, mistrustful look. “Fine,” she said at last. “You do some mending.” And she sat him in her big chair by the hearthfire, beside which sat her mending-basket. Now he was patching her old cloak while she stood close by him, stirring the pottage that was cooking over the hearthfire and watching him like a hawk.
“Where are your foster-sons now?” she said suddenly. “Don’t jump like that, you’ll prick your finger.”
“Ah –” He hesitated. “Well. One of them is dead.” She grimaced wordlessly, and he went on. “The other – I don’t know where he is.”
“Hmph. Left like my grandsons, I don’t doubt. Young people are all the same.”
“No!” he said fervently. “No, no, not at all. I – it was me who left.”
She stopped stirring the pottage. Setting down her stirring-spoon carefully and deliberately across the pot, she turned to face him fully. “You what?”
He winced. “They – they didn’t want me there. It was better that I go.”
“Oh, very nice. Very reasonable.” She scoffed. “You’re as bad as my grandsons – no, worse! Running off because nobody likes you! Nobody ever liked me either, but I went on mending their clothes!”
The elf’s cheeks flushed. “That’s not –”
“Making excuses for yourself because they were grown when you left! And they with their parents dead, and no one there to tell them off for being young fools, or teach them how to rake for oysters when they realize they’ve somehow missed learning. You were trusted with them, and –”
“You know nothing about it!”
His shout filled the cottage. She fell silent in shock.
“You make up a story,” he plunged on, “and you decide it’s the truth! You want to know what happened? I drove off their mother! I could have killed her! I thought I had! And it’s because of that, because of me, that she couldn’t come back to raise them! I was the last person who should have fostered them but I had to do it because I’d killed everyone else who could!” His voice broke, and he shut his eyes, no longer shouting but speaking without pause in a low tone that was half a snarl. “Nobody wanted me to have them. They only loved me themselves because they didn’t know any better. It would have been an insult to stay when they didn’t need me any longer – an insult to them and to their parents. It would have been obscene.”
She stared at him for a minute with her mouth hanging open. Then: “Nonsense,” she said firmly.
“You can’t just call everything nonsense!”
“It is nonsense, so just you sit and listen! I don’t pretend to know about all this killing of each other you elves get up to, but if I know one thing it’s that young people need their elders about them to set them straight! If you felt so badly about leaving those boys orphaned the first time then why’d you do it again? You say it’d be an insult to stick by them? As well say it was an insult to take them in at all!” She shook her finger in his face. “You’re making excuses for yourself, young man, that’s all you’re doing. I was right – you did walk out on your family, and it did serve you right getting drowned! And just as soon as you’re recovered you are heading out that door and going to find your son. It’s only a shame it’s too late to make good with the one that died. But you track down the one you’ve still got, and you set about making up for all the time he’s had to muddle along without you! And –” She sputtered, struggling for words to express her fury. “And – and – and if he should walk out on you one day I wouldn’t blame him – for he’d only be doing what he was taught!” She folded her arms and glowered at him. “So now!”
Now it was the elf’s turn to stare open-mouthed in silent shock. His brow furrowed; she could see him working through her accusations. His eyes darted back and forth. “I –” He shook his head. “I thought –”
She cut him off. “No. You didn’t.”
He pressed his lips together and stared at the floor. After a minute he looked up at her again. “And if he turns me away?”
“I wouldn’t blame him for that either,” she snapped. “But you’ve got no right to do it for him.”
She saw him swallow hard. “What if it only hurts him to see me?”
She snorted. “It’s a bit late to be talking of not hurting him! Besides, what if it only hurts him not to see you? Didn’t you say he loved you?”
“But he must have stopped by now.”
“Oh, he must have, must he! Yes, and the sea-kings must be coming to eat us tomorrow. You’re as cowardly as my grandsons, bandying about must-haves and surelys when you know perfectly well you’re only thinking of yourself. Must have stopped, indeed. Go and ask him if he’s stopped, and then you’ll know!”
He opened his mouth, hesitated, then shut it again, blinking hard. He took a long, shaky breath. “I didn’t – have I really –?” He bit his lip. “I thought it would be wrong. To believe he could want me back.” He looked sidelong up at her, his eyes very bright.
“Oh, what utter nonsense!” she cried impatiently. “What’s what you believe got to do with anything? You’re all the parent he has.”
*
He really did heal in a ridiculous hurry. Hardly any time had passed at all before he was well enough to leave. She woke him up early one morning and told him curtly that it was good weather for traveling and he’d better not waste the daylight.
He nodded meekly. Ever since their argument he had been quiet and subdued – downright mouselike, really, she thought irritably, but if that was what came of his heeding her reproaches then she supposed it would be foolish to complain. He set about preparing to leave, which didn’t take nearly as long as it ought to have done, seeing as he had no possessions to carry with him. She stumped about for a while finding things she could afford to give him, dried mint for luck and charcloth for lighting fires and a bit of string for tying back his hair, but at last there was nothing left to be done but to see him off.
“Are you sure you can spare all these things?” he said, lingering in the doorway.
“Wouldn’t have given them to you if I couldn’t, would I?” she retorted.
“Even these?” He gestured at the clothes he wore, a smock and a pair of wrinkled leggings both hanging several inches too short on his lanky frame.
She snorted. “What d’you want me to do – send you off stark naked? Have some sense.”
He bit his lip. “I haven’t done nearly enough to repay you for everything.”
She scowled at nothing in particular. “You’ve mended a lot of my stockings.”
“But that’s so little.” He cast a glance about the cottage. “Shall I – oh, I don’t know – I could sing your muscles less stiff, or –“ he gestured outside “– or your goat less contrary, or –”
“Oh, no you don’t,” she snapped. “I’ll have none of your uncanny elven tricks around here! Singing to people’s goats – what nonsense! You ought to have known I wouldn’t allow it.”
He smiled crookedly. “You’re right, of course. I really ought to have known.”
Still he hesitated in the doorway. She flapped her hands at him. “Go on! Stop dawdling! At this rate you’ll still be here when the sun goes down. Be off with you! Go and find your son!”
He nodded, beginning to turn away. But he paused again, one hand on the doorframe. “I’ll come back and visit you,” he said.
She snorted. “Nonsense. I’ll be dead before you think of it.”
He looked back at her over his shoulder. His eyes were very bright. “Then I’ll come back and bury you,” he said. “But I will come.”
She couldn’t think of an answer to that, so she harrumphed loudly and turned away. But she turned back again when she heard his footsteps starting down the beaten-dirt path outside, and stood watching him through the doorway until he had passed beyond her sight.
Then she shook herself, and scoffed at nothing, and went out to feed the goat.
*
A long time later, and a very long way away from the little house that stood on a hill beside the Sea, the Lord of Rivendell stopped dead in the middle of pruning a potted rose-bush. He tilted his head as if listening to something. Then he flung his shears to the flagstones with a clatter and dashed headlong for the western border of the valley.