Spirit of the Smoke

Author’s note: inspired by ElfQuest, the creation of Wendy and Richard Pini.

     At the center of the village, Speaker-of-Tales settled himself into his chair of leather and bone, and looked
around at the sea of eager, expectant, and mostly grubby faces.
     In times such as these, his tales were the only respite the villagers had. The drought was striking hard this
year, turning the grasslands into a brittle, dry expanse of withered stalks. The crops struggled weakly up from
the parched earth, sampled the scathing glare of the summer sun, and died without a fight.
     Their stores wouldn’t carry them through until spring, and it was far too late to supplement them with much
game. The herds that roamed the plains had long since moved off in search of water. Tristan, a poor farmer
but a good hunter, couldn’t sustain the entire village with his sling.
     But these were not things the work-hardened youngsters gathered around him wanted to hear. They knew
full well their bleak situation, and wanted to forget about it, for a little while at least. So, as the sky sank into
blackness pocked with the keen white spirit-eyes of the stars, they came to him and pleaded for a story. As
their parents, and grandparents before them, had done.
     “Please, Speaker-of-Tales,” begged Gevain. “Tell us of the days when our ancestors first came to the
grasslands!”
     “No,” Marya cut in, digging an elbow into his side. “Tell us of how Brel Wolfkiller died in the black-leafed
woods! That is what I want to hear!”
     “We don’t know he died!” Gevain argued. “He might still come back.”
     “The spirits got Uncle Brel,” serious Edmarn said, huddling closer to his big sister for comfort. “That’s what
I think, what Papa thinks too. He trapped a spirit in the shape of a wolf and the rest came to save it. No good
can come of going to the black-leaf woods.”
     “I want to hear it anyway!” Marya insisted.
     “I want to hear about our ancestors!” Gevain said stubbornly.
     “It doesn’t matter what you want!”
     Tristan chuckled. He lounged a bit apart from the rest, on the hide of a stripe-pelt he’d felled with a stone to
the temple. “May as well give in to her, Gevain. You’ll learn the knack of that once you’ve wed, anyway.”
     “As if you’d know,” Gevain retorted tartly. “I’ve yet to see you close to taking a wife!”
     At that, more than one of the unwed girls cast wishful gazes Tristan’s way. But he only threw back his blond
head and laughed merrily to the two moons.
     “Tell us of spirits!” Tulah suggested, leaning forward eagerly.
     “Could they really change their shapes?” little Reysha demanded. “Could they make the very plants bend to
their will, and the very stones of the earth flow like soft clay?”
     “Hush, let him talk,” Gevain said.
     “The spirits ...” the Speaker began thoughtfully. “Many and ancient are the tales of the spirits. Some say they
came from the clouds in a dwelling woven from sunset and mist. They have as many forms as the year has
days, more beautiful and strange than we can possibly imagine. Most shun the daylight, preferring the cool
shadows of the night or the forest, or crystal caverns deep underground, or even the blue depths of the lakes
and sea.
     “The ones I will tell you of tonight are spirits of the grassland, which my own father once saw with his own
two eyes.
     “It was in a time of drought worse than this one, when our people lived as nomads and followed the herds in
hide-covered wagons. But when the rains did not come, and the winter was dry, the plains turned to dust. Their
animals starved and died, and it seemed likely the people would soon follow.
     “My father was a stripling of a boy then, and ranged far from the wagons with the other youths and maidens,
searching for food and water. They were about to turn back when one of them spied a patch of green in the
distance.
     “As they drew closer, they saw that it was indeed a place of green. Grass and berry-bushes grew lush and tall
around a pool that seemed to have sprung up from the bare stone. Many animals grazed and drank in this haven
of life.
     “At first, some of them disbelieved their eyes and thought it was a madness brought on by desperation and
hunger. But the rest plunged forward, thinking only of their thirst and their aching bellies. They threw themselves
flat at the water’s edge and dunked their heads to drink, and stuffed their mouths with berries until their lips were
stained. Only then did they think of hunting, and gathered up the weapons they’d dropped in their eagerness.
     “But before they could strike a single blow with their spears, before they could launch a single stone with their
slings, they saw a sight that made their arms fall nerveless to their sides. It was a herd of dirk-horns, racing and
bounding through the grass ... except that each dirk-horn bore upon its back a wild spirit!
     “In that moment, they forgot about hunting. They could only watch as if spellbound, as the spirits and their
mounts flashed past them and then veered around to circle them. The spirits were no larger than striplings
themselves, seemingly fragile, but at the same time wrapped in a sense of unknowable age and power. It came
shining from their radiant eyes like the rays of the sun. Feathers and beads adorned their long, windblown hair.
     “The dirk-horns stopped, prancing in place, as the spirits and the youngsters looked at each other. Fear and
wonder warred for space in my father’s heart as he stepped forward and made a gesture of truce to the one he
deemed the leader.
     “Do us no harm, good spirits! my father called. We seek only food, and water, for our people are starving!
     “And to his astonishment, the spirit answered, speaking with the words of men! Ours starve as well, the spirit
said, and so we are leaving for a time. This magical spring is our last gift to our old home. You and your people
may take of it, and of these plants, as well. But in this sacred circle, you must swear to do no harm to the animals
that come here! Let it be a place of peace among all our kinds!
     “My father and his friends readily agreed, humbled by the strange beauty and power of the spirits. They brought
the wagons there, and their tribe and herds grew healthy and strong again. They remained until the drought had
ended, and the spring never failed to well forth with pure, cold water.
     “But the temptation of so much game proved too much for one of the men, and when he was found butchering
a shaggy-back, the people went pale with fear that the spirits might return and be angered by the breaking of the
pact. They buried the slain beast, and to show that not all stood by what one had done, left that one man bound
to a stake just outside the place of peace, for the wild animals to devour.
     “The rest, with their wagons and herds, moved on until they came here. And here they settled, turning to a life
of farming instead of wandering. They built their homes, raised their children, and so it has been ever since.”
     Speaker-of-Tales finished, and motioned to Tristan to pass him a skin of tepid water. It was gritty, but served
to ease his throat from the telling.
     “But what about the spirits?” Marya said.
     “Has no one ever gone to that place?” asked Veral avidly.
     “Yes, once,” the Speaker admitted. “Some of your grandparents, adventuresome and full of life’s spark, went
to seek out this magic spot. And I, too, for even I was young then.”
     “Did you see the spirits?” Gevain’s eyes went wide and round.
     “As it happens ... we did,” said the Speaker. He waved to quiet their excited murmurings. “But that is a story
best kept for another night. Go now, and sleep.”
     With overdone grumblings of disappointment, they began the business of getting up, slapping dust from their
clothes and the hides on which they’d been sitting, and milling about before returning to their homes.
     “Why have you never told us that one before?” Tristan, the last to leave, asked.
     “It wasn’t time. Now, I think it is.”
     “Time? For what?”
     “For some of us to be thinking about these things. I’m old, Tristan. Who will look after these younglings when
I’ve gone? Their parents care only for the fields and the livestock, and the trade-carters that come each fall.
They’ve forgotten things their own mothers and fathers accepted as truth. They think I am eternal, and that I
will always be here to keep the old stories for them. But I won’t.”
     “Don’t say such things!” His green eyes went dark and worried. “You have always been Speaker-of-Tales!”
     “Not always, my boy, and not forever. No one lives forever.”
     “Excepting the spirits.”
     “On, no. Even the spirits can die,” Speaker-of-Tales said softly. He shook his head to clear the memory from it,
and found a smile for the lad. “But I will not tell of such sad things tonight. You’ll have to hear that tale soon
enough. Go, Tristan, and rest well.”
 
**

     Dawn came leaden and heavy, the sky tinged grey-green and a peculiar flatness hanging in the air. Tristan
emerged from his small house and turned his attention toward the horizon.
     Last night, he had detected the hint of impending rain. Now he had the proof of it in the masses of clouds piling
in the west. His skin felt prickly and uncomfortable from the pressure in the air.
     “We’ll have more than rain,” he said to Gevain as his younger friend approached. “That is a storm if ever I’ve
seen one.”
     “My father agrees, and worries the creek might flood,” Gevain said. “He’s sent me to take the pony-cart and
go scouring for branches and stones to shore up the creekdam. Do you want to come with me?”
     “Yes, it’s a good idea.” Tristan whistled for Luka, grinning as the brown and black dog loped to meet him. He
bent and vigorously scratched her behind the ears and in the manelike, almost wolflike, ruff around her neck
and chest.
     “She’s gotten so big!” Gevain said in awe. “You could nearly ride her!”
     “Wouldn’t that be something!” Tristan laughed. “Like the spirits the Speaker told us of, rushing through the
tall grass astride my great girl here! But no, I’ll walk, and you’ll drive the cart, and between us we should be
back with enough to build a wall around the village!”
     They set off, teasing and joking. When Luka flushed a brace of quail from the underbrush, Tristan’s sling
brought them down with two quick-hurled missiles.
     The clouds towered far ahead of them, dark and foreboding. Sudden stitches of blue-white jabbed from their
heavy underbellies, the low rumble of thunder taking several heartbeats to reach them. The wind was capricious,
snapping and flapping the hems of their tunics and making it impossible to keep their hoods upon their heads.
     “Let’s stop and eat,” said Gevain when the cart was nearly filled. “Marya packed me some bread and cheese.”
     “How wifely of her!” Tristan sat with his back to the side of the cart, cutting the worst of the wind. “She’ll have
you oath-sworn before the first snowfall, see if she doesn’t!”
     “Well, what of you? From what I’ve heard, Tulah means to snare you well, despite her mother’s wish for her
to marry Joram.”
     Tristan rolled his eyes. “Tulah, Wyneve, Dhian ... it’s as if they’ve all conspired to decide that I must choose
one of them! How can I? It is like a noose in which I’m caught and strangling! What have I done to deserve this?
Have I encouraged any of them in the slightest?”
     “And all this time I’d been thinking that girls sought to catch a prosperous husband. You have no farm, no
livestock, just that house that’s scarcely more than a hut ... how they’d expect you to support a family on what
you can trade your game and pelts for is beyond me!”
     “Is that envy I hear? Do you wish for the freedom of being a hunter, instead of tilling and toiling in the fields?
Your lovely Marya wouldn’t want you wandering off all the time.”
     “Pff ... from how she talks, she’d like that idea. Always going on about how brave Brel Wolfkiller was, how
not even you are bold enough to hunt where he did.”
     “I was there once, in the canyon of the black-leafed trees,” Tristan confessed. “I had to see it, though I hunted
no game there.”
     Gevain gaped in admiration. “You were? What was it like?”
     “It was ... strange. The leaves aren’t really black, but so dark a green they may as well be. The trees are taller
than you would believe, and their trunks are dark and knotted. There’s a river too, you know. I could hear it.”
     “A river! You mean to tell me that we’re suffering this drought needlessly, when there’s a river so close? We
should have been going there, with barrels, and bringing water back to the village!”
     “No!” Tristan said sharply. “Gevain, that forest is strange! I could feel it. As if there were ... things there.
Presences. Just beyond my sight, but watching me. Luring me, trying to make me feel at peace, the way the
swaying of a yellowspot snake will mesmerize a mouse.”
     Luka, who had been resting between them with her head on her folded forepaws and eyes seeming to follow
their conversation, abruptly jumped to her feet and looked keenly to the west.
     “What is it, Luka?” Tristan rose, and as his head came above the side of the cart, his jaw dropped. “Gevain?”
     “What? Is it a spirit?” He scrambled up, but when he saw what Tristan was looking at, his face went ashen
beneath his tan.
     The clouds were closer, rushed along by the wind that had finally chosen one direction. They boiled across
the sky, and now the two of them realized that the steady marching of the thunder had grown louder.
     But it was the orange glow, and the sheeting billow of black smoke preceding the clouds, that stunned them.
     A distant veil of rain was visible, but the wind-spurred fire was speeding well in advance of it. A flock of birds
wheeled panic-struck in the sky.
     “Grassfire,” Gevain said in a low voice. “The lightning touched it off!”
     “We have to get back to the village!”
     “It’s coming too fast ... it’ll overtake us before we can get there!”
     The pony smelled the smoke and sensed their alarm, and began whinnying and tugging at its harness. Luka
barked imperiously, as if to ask what they were doing just standing there.
     “Come on!” Tristan said, boosting Gevain into the seat of the cart and swinging up after him. “Hurry! If we
can reach the plowed fields, it might not be able to cross.”
     “First time to be glad that nothing’s growing this season!”
     The cart jounced over the dry, hard-packed earth while Luka loped ahead. But the fire was coming too quickly,
crossing the plains in vast leaps and strides as the vicious wind whirled sparks to ignite the tinder-dry grass.
     Tristan, crouched in the back of the cart, began throwing out the heavy stones and branches that were weighing
them down. He found his gaze drawn again to the encroaching flames, fascinated despite himself by the deadly
beauty of the ravenous red-orange beast.
     The smoke churned and roiled, making intricate and hypnotic patterns of its own substance. Tristan’s efforts
slackened as he fancied he saw shapes ... like watching the clouds on a lazy spring day, except these shapes took
form right before his eyes.
     Yes, there was a tree ... an odd tree that had grown into boles and bulging knotholes and branches that braided
together almost like stairs. And there was a wolf, sleek and black with holes for eyes through which the fire’s
glow gleamed. And figures ... dancing figures ... a shapely girl spinning gracefully in veils of smoke ...
     “Hang on!” Gevain yelled, belatedly as the cart’s wheels slammed into a ditch and then out again.
     Tristan, caught unprepared, was thrown out of the back of the cart by the force of the jolt. His body tumbled in
the air, and he twisted to land on his shoulder and back. He lay there dazed in a splintery bed of dried and wheel-
bent grass.
     “Tristan!” came Gevain’s despairing, trailing shout.
     He gasped in a breath that was more dust than air, and expelled it in a hoarse shout. “Go, Gevain! Go!”
     A shadow jumped over him and he cried out, then began coughing. It was Luka, prodding at him with her nose,
whining and snapping her jaws at the thickening, falling flakes of soot.
     Seeing him struggle to his feet and manage an urgent, go-on! wave, Gevain grimly set his face forward again
and held tight. By now, the pony was frenzied, and would not have stopped or turned back for anything.
     “Good girl,” said Tristan, scrambling onto Luka’s back. He’d only been jesting before, but it seemed she was
large enough to bear him, for a short distance at least.
     But Luka paused, sneezing and sniffing at the air.
     “Come on, Luka!”
     Embers were swirling down along with the soot-flakes now, the spiraling columns of smoke blocking out the sun.
Tristan yanked his hoot over his head to keep his hair from catching. He could hear the hungry crackle of the
approaching flames, feel the lethal heat baking across the grasslands until it seemed that the stalks would simply
combust from it.
     Smoke ... the wind exhaled a puff of it to surround him, and he and Luka were plunged into a choking darkness.
He clung to her fur as the valiant dog charged ahead.
     And then it miraculously cleared. The grey and black currents parted around and over them, and opened a
passageway of clean air ahead.
     This was no natural thing! On the verge of terror, Tristan looked wildly around ... and saw her.
     A girl, but like no girl he’d ever seen before. She was small, much smaller than any of the village girls, and
graceful as a wand ... compared to her, every other woman he’d ever seen was a drab, hulking she-ox.
     Her skin was the color of cream-seen-by-moonlight, her hair a fluffy cap of silver-black curls around long and
elaborately-pointed ears. A gown of rich blue hugged her delicate curves.
     But the eyes ... her eyes, large and inhuman, grey as cinders but with a silvery sheen like mist floating on water
... faintly luminous in the eerie light ... piercing him to the core.
     Then she was gone as if she had never been there, vanishing like a wraith into the smoke that had birthed her.
But the sensation of her presence was burned into him as surely as if he’d been struck with a blazing brand.
     A word ... a sound/concept/essence, a name ... roared in his mind. Helpless not to, as Luka raced onward, he
called it out.
     “Shan!”

**

     Smokesinger jerked to a halt at the sound of her soul name. She whirled frantically, but the smoke had blown
between them again, blocking her sight of him.
     It couldn’t be!
     How could he ... a human ... know her soul name? Yes, their eyes had met for that fleeting instant, and she
had felt a sudden, powerful connection to him ... but this was impossible!
     She dashed after him, but his near-wolf was too fast and had already carried him away from her. The flames
were closer, and on their heels the hissing downpour of the rain ... if she lingered here, she’d be first seared and
then drenched.
     But ... her soul name!
     And he was gone!
     “Lhir!” she cried, astounding herself as the name leaped from her lips. She hastily slapped her hands over her
mouth, but it was too late. She knew what it was, what it meant ... and horror nearly crushed her to the earth.
     Recognition?
     With ... with a human?
     She could no longer spare a thought for the fire or the rain. Her entire being was awash in the shock of what
had happened.
     “Smokesinger!” A violet and grey blur appeared, and resolved itself into Arrowthorn.
     He grabbed her arm and she recoiled from his touch, because it sent a flash of need through her that she knew
he, only her occasional lovemate, wouldn’t be able to satisfy. Then she threw herself into his arms, wailing, her
need for comfort even greater.
     “Arrowthorn! Something ... something terrible ...”
     “We must leave here! Lucky for you I saw you sneaking from the holt!” He guided her through the now-smoldering
grass. “Couldn’t pass up an opportunity to shape so much smoke, could you? But if your brother finds out, not
to mention Featherwind, you’ll be in deep brambles for sure!”
     Smokesinger stumbled along, robbed of her grace by the lightning-strike of Recognition. She barely noticed when
they emerged from the fire’s path, or when they reached the winding cleft that led from the grasslands down into
the canyon.
     Only when the trees had closed protectively around them, did Arrowthorn stop and look at her. “Smokesinger?
What’s the matter?”
     “At first, seeing him, I laughed!” she said, hearing by her own voice how close she was to tears. “Astride his near-
wolf, just like you said your tribe used to do, just like you plan to teach Moonbelly to carry you when he’s grown.”
     “What? Who? What are you talking about?”
     “A human! I didn’t know they came so far from their village. I should have run, but the danger was so close to
him, and I didn’t want to see death today if I could help it! So I cleared the smoke away from him.”
     “Did he see you?”
     Her eyes brimmed. “Yes.”
     “Did he hurt you?” Arrowthorn clutched her by the upper arms, peering urgently into her eyes, and all she saw
in the midnight depths of his was just what she’d always seen, just Arrowthorn, no soul name, not Recognition.
     “No ...”
     “Thank the high ones! But he’ll tell the others! We’ll have to warn Featherwind.”
     “No!” She tore away from him. “We can’t!”
     “She’s our chief! She has to know!”
     “He won’t tell anyone. He won’t lead them against us,” Smokesinger said fervently. “I know he won’t!”
     “How? He saw you use your magic!”
     “But I saved him!”
     “Even so, the others will still want to destroy us! Humans are dangerous. They let their near-wolves infect the
animals, our wolves, my tribe! That’s why we had to leave our holt and come here in the first place, because
of the humans! You and Fleet never dealt with them!”
     “Our tribe did, before we were born. These ones can be trusted, I’m sure of it! At least this one! But ...” she
lost her tenuous hold on control, and folded weeping into a small wretched ball. “But what am I going to do,
Arrowthorn? How could this have happened?”
     “It was only a mistake, lovemate. Featherwind will yell, and your brother will have plenty to say as well, but in
the end they’ll see --”
     “I Recognized him!” she shrieked, clawing at her own hair.
     Arrowthorn rocked back. “Who? Fleet? But you can’t, he’s already --”
     “The human! I met his eyes! I know his soul name, and he knows mine! I heard him speak it!”
     “Smokesinger ... that’s impossible!”
     “I know!”
     “Humans don’t have soul names ... do they?”
     “Then how is it that I know his?”
     “I don’t know ... we have to tell the others! Maybe Whittle will have some idea. High ones, Smokesinger ...
why a human?”
     She nearly lashed out at him with both hands. “I didn’t choose for this to happen! How can you think that I
would?”
     Arrowthorn grimaced. “I know ... I’m sorry ... but a human! It’s ... wrong!”
     Smokesinger burst into tears again. He held her awkwardly to console her, and she felt the uneasy tension in his
body. She understood that they were never to be lovemates again ... not after she'd done the unspeakable thing
of Recognizing a human.

**

     “We have to do something,” Fleet said. “We can’t sit about and let my sister die.”
     Featherwind raked her mahogany hair out of her face with a quick, brutal gesture, nearly dislodging the band
that held her chief’s lock in place. “Do what? What can we do?”
     Around them, the rest of their small tribe pretended to go about their usual evening habits, while really listening
in on the argument.
     Whittle sat on a stump, shavings piling up around his feet as he coaxed the image of a fox from a length of wood.
Spark played nearby on a carpet of moss with other toys carved by the elder. Doesoft cradled tiny Owlet to her
breast, as Lifter efficiently peeled and sliced fruit. Chance was stretched out along a sturdy tree limb, tossing
berries high and trying to catch them in her mouth. Arrowthorn tore meat into smaller chunks for Moonbelly to
manage.
     Only of Smokesinger was there no sign, and that was hardly surprising. Featherwind wondered how long it would
take for her to show her face outside her holt-den again. She’d barely come out at all in the past three nights, not
since Arrowthorn had brought her back with the devastating news.
     Recognition. To a human.
     As if Recognition wasn’t a pain in the tail enough even with another elf! As she and Fleet well knew! They’d
had no trouble with the physical end of things, nearly leaping on each other and shredding their clothes in their
urge to join despite the fact that they’d never set eyes on each other until that very moment.
     She doubted she’d ever forget that night. The plague-deaths of the entire wolf pack and most of the tribe had
hit them hard, Featherwind most of all. She’d lost both chief-father and elder brother, and been unprepared for
the few survivors to look to her for leadership. Not only did she have her grief to deal with, but the sudden
assumption of a responsibility she’d never thought to have.
     Her first decision had been a wrenching one -- to leave Riverhome. They couldn’t risk the plague resurfacing,
couldn’t stand to stay where they’d seen their loved ones and wolf-friends die. So they’d bid farewell to their
holt, with its two large trees joined by entwined river-spanning branches, to journey far downstream.
     There had been eight of them, eight sorrow-laden elves. Hawkwing had been killed by a wildcat, leaving only
seven by the time the valley had narrowed into a densely-forested canyon. There, amid the unfamiliar dark trees,
they’d started to notice intangible traces of what felt like elf-magic, started feeling that they weren’t entirely alone.
     Featherwind, seeking an escape from the pressures of chieftainship, had gone off alone one night to hunt bear.
But she’d soon gotten the strong sense that something was hunting her, and readied her bow. It hadn’t been
game to emerge from the brush, but an elf. A tall, tanned, athletic male with hair like a foxbrush and eyes like
spring leaves.
     He’d been just as surprised to see her as she was to see him, and their surprise hit new heights when Recognition
swept them up in its demanding clamor.
     That had been her meeting with Fleet, a turbulently passionate encounter there on the forest floor. It had brought
the remnants of their two tribes together. Not that Fleet had a tribe, as the only ones left were himself and his
sister, Smokesinger.
     As brother and sister, they were physically as unlike as summer and winter. Fleet had been born on the plains,
raised to run down swift prey, and could wrestle a springtail and break its neck with his bare hands. Smokesinger,
born after their tribe had abandoned the grasslands to shelter in the woods they named Shadowglen, was moon-
pale and quiet as any wolf-rider.
     The holt had been made by their plant-shaper mother, the only one of their tribe to fully embrace the forest. One
by one, the others had died off in accidents and hunting mishaps, until only the three of them had been left. Then
Greengrow had fallen to the enraged claws of a she-bear, and until Featherwind’s tribe arrived, Fleet and
Smokesinger had been resigned to their life alone.
     Now Shadowglen was home to them all. That initial Recognition had produced little Spark, though his petulant
and complaining nature made Featherwind despair of him being chief after her.
     They’d lost curious young Highclimb to a fall -- his skill did not fail him, but a big rock broke loose from the
cliffside as he was scaling it, and he’d broken his neck in the landing. The boulder had bounced into the midst
of a food-gathering party, trapping gentle Doesoft’s legs.
     That had been when Lifter, who had been known as Planner for his meticulous nature, discovered the power
he was still struggling to master. The rock had floated off of the pinned girl, and Featherwind had awarded him
his new name. No one had been particularly surprised when, shortly thereafter, Lifter and Doesoft Recognized
and conceived Owlet.
     The last addition to the tribe had been Arrowthorn’s doing. Most of the time, his careless daydreaming and
wanderlust infuriated Featherwind no end. Although they were distantly cousins, related through their great-
grandsire Whittle, they had little in common. But this once, when his restless feet had taken him far from the
holt, some good had come of it. He’d discovered wolf-tracks.
     Arrowthorn’s investigation had brought him to a site of tragedy. A she-wolf had been caught in a human-set trap,
her young cub whimpering and nuzzling at her body. Arrowthorn had brought the orphan home, naming him
Moonbelly for the white fur on his underside and how round he gorged himself.
     Worried that the nearness of humans might lead to another outbreak of the disease that had spread from near-
wolf to wolf and from wolf to elf, nearly eradicating their tribe, Featherwind had taken Fleet and Arrowthorn and
gone searching. They’d found the corpse of a human male, locked in dead embrace with another wolf. The wolf’s
fangs were clamped on his throat, his knife was buried in the wolf’s heart.
     Featherwind had tracked his backtrail, and finally saw the village, far away across the plains. Although unhappy
about it, she agreed with the others that they didn’t want to abandon their new home, and that if they kept to the
forested canyon, they could easily avoid discovery.
     And now, disobedient Smokesinger had ruined everything.
     Which was ironically funny in a way ... if Featherwind had been asked, she would have said that Chance of all
the tribe would have been the one to do something so foolish. Violet-eyed Chance, Lifter’s cousin, thought nothing
of risk. She would do -- and had done! -- anything on a dare, on a whim. But for it to be Smokesinger of all people,
that was utterly unexpected.
     “She must be mistaken,” Featherwind said now. “It can’t happen!”
     “I think my sister knows her own mind,” Fleet said, in that exasperating way that he sometimes had, as if he and
his were better than the rest of them. “If she says it is Recognition, then Recognition it must be! She’s sickening --”
     “I’ll agree with that!” snapped Featherwind. “What next? Recognition with trolls, toads, bristlepigs?”
     “We have to do something!” Fleet insisted, back to his original argument. “If we don’t, she’ll die.”
     “And what are we supposed to do? Go explain it to the humans? Do you want your own sister to take a human as
a lifemate, bear a half-human cub?”
     The others gave up all pretense of not listening, looking over with stark horror.
     “Could that happen?” asked Doesoft, holding Owlet protectively close and even drawing part of her curtain of
ankle-length fawn-colored hair around as if to shield her son from such an unthinkable thought.
     Whittle blew wood-dust from his knife and sheathed it, handing the finished toy to Spark. “The first chief of our
tribe was born of elf and wolf, you know that.”
     “But magic was involved that time, the self-shaping magic of one of the high ones!” protested Chance, hooking
her legs over the branch and swinging upside-down with her tunic bunched to expose her lean midriff.
     “Recognition is magic,” Lifter murmured, turning love-besotted eyes on his lifemate.
     Fleet squared his jaw resolutely. “It isn’t what I’d choose for her, but if that’s what has to be, then it has to be!”
     “The humans must be concerned as well,” said Arrowthorn. “If he’s getting sick too --”
     “They’ll think it’s an evil spirit-spell!” Featherwind cut in. “And even if they accepted it, what then? Send
Smokesinger to live among them? Bring her human lifemate here? Either way, it’s madness!”
     “Maybe we should ask Smokesinger,” said Chance cheekily. “See what she prefers. Her human, or a slow
death.”
     Fleet scowled. “It isn’t funny. You wouldn’t think so if it had happened to you. Maybe if we had a healer --”
     Whittle shook his head. “Not even my Light-touch could undo Recognition. Make it happen, yes, there was a
time or two she managed that, but not undo it. Remember the mess it caused, Arrowthorn, when your brother
Swiftwater Recognized Moonmist, Broadblade’s lifemate? All three of them wanted it undone, but it just wasn’t
to be.”
     “How did they solve it?” Fleet asked.
     “Swiftwater and Moonmist did what they had to do,” Featherwind said. “But even once it was done, and the
cub was born, Broadblade’s jealousy wouldn’t relent. He taunted Swiftwater, was cruel to his lifemate, and finally
drove her away from him.”
     “But that’s not the same as Smokesinger’s problem.” Fleet glanced up, at the opening to her holt-den. “She can’t
... she can’t do that. Not with a human. There has to be another way.”
     “There is no other way.” Whittle sighed heavily. “Can’t deny Recognition, can’t break it. Once two souls touch
and are bound, not even death ends it. Light-touch is still with me. Even though her body died, the life exhausted
by trying to fight the plague, I can still feel her spirit.”
     “So even killing the human wouldn’t help?”
     “Chance!” barked Featherwind.
     “I was only asking,” she pouted.
     “No,” Smokesinger’s voice drifted down from above. She emerged from her holt-den, her face wan, her eyes
shadowed. As she climbed down to them, she moved with a cautious care better suited to a frail elder than a
young maiden. “There’s only one thing to do. I have to go to him. I have to ... Fleet, please, brother, don’t look
at me that way! Don’t think that I want this! If there was any other way, believe me, I’d take it! But it’s him or
death!”
     “It may be death anyway!” Featherwind said harshly. “If you go to their village, they’ll kill you for an evil spirit!
And you could be putting all of us at risk!”
     “What would you have me do, chieftess? Wait and die?” Smokesinger closed her eyes and tilted back her head,
baring her throat. “If that’s it, then do it now ... take your dagger and do it, spare me the suffering as you would
any other wounded beast!”
     Featherwind growled, nearly as savage as the wolves in her long-ago ancestry, but did not draw her dagger. “You
know I can’t do that! You are my lifemate’s sister, and we are too few! I can’t bear to see another life lost!”
     “And I can’t live, unless I go to him.”
     “We’ll come with you,” Arrowthorn offered, and Chance jumped down to stand beside him, face alight with
excitement at the prospect of a new adventure. “And ... and the human’s cub ... we’ll raise it as one of our own.
Won’t we?”
     “We could never turn you out, sister,” Fleet said, dragging each word painfully out of his mouth as if they were
made of splinters. “Or your child, whoever the sire is.”
     “Thank you ... but I have to do this alone.” She looked to Featherwind. “Chief?”
     “High ones watch over you, Smokesinger. Good luck.”

**

     He could hear them outside his hut, although they spoke in nearly whispers.
     All of his senses had grown preternaturally sharp during this strange, terrible illness. Scents were stronger,
sometimes overpowering. The lingering tang in the air, from the fire that had been stopped by the cleared fields
and then doused by rainfall ... the musty smell of the damp soil ... these things would have once been mild and
pleasant to him, but in his current state they nearly stole his breath.
     Light brighter than a candleflame stung his eyes and made them water. His skin chafed at anything but the softest
linens and leathers. The flavors of food were too intense, and his stomach had taken to intolerance of all but the
rarest-cooked meat, or raw fruits, vegetables, and grains.
     “My medicines aren’t helping,” Fasha, Tulah’s mother, said.
     “What’s the matter with him?” pleaded Gevain.
     “It’s no ailment like I’ve ever seen,” Fasha went on. “He has no fever, yet he’s kitten-weak. He claims to be in
no pain, but moves as if each step is unendurable agony.”
     “Tell me again,” said Speaker-of-Tales, “about the day of the grassfire.”
     Gevain did, telling how they’d become separated, how he’d lost sight of Tristan in the smoke, and how when
Tristan and Luka had finally caught up with him, his friend claimed to have seen something.
     “He said it was a girl, a smoke-spirit, that he felt her in his mind like fingers running over cloth,” Gevain said. “I
thought he’d breathed too much bad air, so I brought him home. He was better for a while, but now this!”
     Now this ... Tristan rolled onto his side, wincing as the movement made the woolen blanket scrape over him. Luka
rested her muzzle on the bed and whined softly.
     Sick ... dying. He was dying. An emptiness that he’d never known was inside of him had been, for that briefest of
instants, filled. Seeing her, knowing her, had made him feel whole and complete for the first time in his life, when
he’d never even felt incomplete before. And he’d heard, or imagined he’d heard, a voice like silver light speaking a
name -- Lhir -- that he somehow knew was his ... more than his ... was him.
     And then, the emptiness he’d never known had become a deep tooth-lined maw, eating away at him until there
would be nothing left.
     Shan, he thought desolately, as if somehow she could hear him.
     From faint and far came an answer. *Lhir ... yes, I hear you.*
     Tristan sat up, his breath a ragged rasp. “What? Where are you?”
     Unbearable light flooded the room as Fasha came in. “Speaker, he’s sick-mad ...”
     “Where are you?” he moaned.
     *Lhir! I must come to you! Guide me ...*
     He saw the village through the eyes of another, that perception turning it into a fearfully alien collection of straights
and edges, unnatural and abhorrent, filthy and dismal.
     Although he was aware of Fasha, Gevain, and the Speaker hovering over him, calling to him, Tristan ignored them
and concentrated on her, on showing her which of those ugly constructions was his home.
     Something twinged deep in his mind, and he replied by thought alone. *Shan ... I need ... I need to be with you ...
I don’t even know what you are! Are you spirit? What is this? Please ... I’m dying ... I must understand!*
     *We need each other. How ... why ... I can’t explain, but we don’t have any other choice. Is it safe?*
     *There are people here ... if they see you ...*
     *Tonight ... I’ll come to you tonight ... don’t let go, Lhir!*
     The tenuous contact was broken, and Tristan recoiled in alarm. The faces, the familiar and well-loved faces in
front of him, had for a moment looked like the visages of monsters, slow and clumsy, ill-featured and thick-witted
brutes.
     “Tristan!” Gevain cried anxiously.
     Stammering and shaken, he nonetheless did his best to reassure them. When they finally, and reluctantly, left him
in peace, he knelt and hugged Luka close.
     “Something’s wrong with me, girl,” he mumbled into her fur. “I don’t know what to do!”

**

     She waited beyond the reach of their fires, wondering how her tribe had ever loved the openness of the plains over
the concealing shadows of the forests. With nothing around but the turned earth of their fields, the struggling plants
growing in abnormally even rows, Smokesinger felt very much an intruder.
     How could she ever be a part of this world? She couldn’t imagine living in a dead-wood dwelling, turning wild and
beautiful fire into a tame plaything for cooking, grubbing in the dirt to eke out a meager survival. She was born to flit
silently through the dew-cooled green, to hunt and fish and live and love and be free!
     But she could not fight the force that pulled at her. The urgent compulsion of Recognition drove her onward. The
village, with all its terrors, was nothing more than an obstacle between her and Lhir, robbed of its menace by the
impulse in her blood.
     They slept by night, closing themselves away from the darkness that shielded her as she crept ever closer. She knew
which ‘hut’ was his, had seen it in his sendings. His near-wolf was outside, dozing lightly and ready to wake at the
smallest sound.
     Smokesinger made no sound. She moved softly as a breeze to an opening in the side of the dead-wood.
     Yes, near, he was near now. She could sense him, resting uneasily, unsure if he had dreamed her or she was a
figment of sick-madness.
     *Lhir? I am here.*
     She heard the rustle as he sat up, glimpsed his shadow in the corner.
     “Shan,” he whispered.
     She shivered almost reluctantly at the sound of the name. *I cannot speak your speech ... I must send. How is it
you can send? I never --*
     As he stepped forward, as helplessly drawn to her as she was to him, he came into a patch of moonlight. Smokesinger
broke off with a mental exclamation.
     “What is it?” He corrected himself. *What? What’s wrong?*
     *Lhir!* Her feet barely seemed to touch the split woods beneath them as she moved toward him. She reached up,
wonderingly. *You ... you’re ...*
     Slowly, Tristan brought up his own hands and studied them. His were callused and work-hardened, but four-fingered.
He did not tower over her like a Tall One should, but was small, lightly-built, like her. And his ears, tapering to points
... the size and shape of his eyes ... their color of deep luminous green ... his lush soft hair like honey glowing with
inner light ...
     *Your hands ... like mine,* he sent, stunned. *I’ve never known anyone with hands like mine before! And ... your
ears, your eyes ... we’re the same! But that can’t be! I’m no spirit!*
     *Elves, Lhir, we are elves!* Sparkling tears of joy ran down her face. *You’re no human at all! How could I have
ever mistaken you for one? I should have known! But in the smoke, dressed as them, wearing that hood ... I thought
you were one of them!*
     Their outstretched hands brushed gingerly, then pressed firmly together, palms to palms and fingers to fingers. A
galvanic shudder ran through them both.
     *What’s happened to us? What is this? I feel ... as if I’ve found part of myself that I never knew was missing!*
     *Recognition,* she sent again, this time with a wave of relief that surpassed description. *We are linked, soul to soul.*
     Their mental communion enhanced by the contact of their flesh, Smokesinger felt the confusion whirling through him.
His emotions were a roil of rapture and grief, for the revelation had stripped away a life he’d never thought to question.
     She drew him into her arms, sending a wordless assurance that whatever else had been, this was the now and they
were together ... would never be apart. He returned the embrace first with trepidation, as if he feared that she might
melt away like morning mist, and then with a desperate intensity.
     *Shan ... I don’t even know who I am!* he sent in anguish. *How could I not have known? How could I not have
seen? I’m different from them, profoundly and utterly different, and I never even suspected!*
     *You are Lhir. That is the all of you, the all that you are. My soul’s companion ... my lifemate! You are one of us.
Be with us. Be with me, Lhir.*
     She sensed his surprise, his instinctive drawing-away as he realized what she meant. A jumbled incoherency of
memories flashed past. Offers from village girls, always refused because something was lacking ... and then the
awareness that it was this that had been lacking!
     He clung to her as if she was a dream made flesh, unsure and awestruck as Smokesinger gently began showing
him the way of joining, and brought their bodies together as completely as their minds and souls had already merged.

 **

     “I wondered if they’d ever come for you,” Speaker-of-Tales said, once he’d rubbed the sleep from his eyes and
gotten a close look at the ethereal female holding so protectively and lovingly tight to Tristan’s hand. “You’ve finally
learned the truth ... learned what you are.”
     Tristan gaped at him. “You knew? All this time, you knew? But why didn’t I? Why did no one ever tell me?”
     “Why didn’t you think to ask?” the Speaker countered. “We waited for the day you would, but it never came.”
     “I’ll ask now. Where did I come from? Why am I here?”
     “That is the tale I did not tell the other night, the tale of how my friends and I went back to the sacred spring. We
found it and camped there, in that place of peace, but that night the peace was broken by violent sounds. We heard
howling, and screaming, and a ferocious roaring the likes of which I hope never to hear again.
     “As we gathered with our spears, staring into the darkness beyond our fire, a wolf raced among us. We struck out
of fright, and only when it was dead did we see that it bore in its jaws a wailing, thrashing bundle. It was a child,
an infant wrapped in leather as soft as the clouds, and we knew as soon as we saw it that it was no human babe.
     “The noises continued and then ended in one final dying shriek. None of us dared go and look, and Parrin cuddled
the babe in hopes of quieting it, that its cries did not bring danger down on us. But you were inconsolable, young
Tristan.”
     “A wolf brought me to you?”
     The Speaker nodded, eyes downcast. “We thought it had stolen you from your family. But then another wolf
appeared, limping and bloody, and clinging to its back was a male spirit. Although he was an adult, he seemed only
a child to us, being no taller than you are now. Like his mount, he was wounded and dying, and had forced himself
on beyond all endurance ... seeking his son.
     “He only knew a few words of our speech, but told us of an attack by long-toothed cats. As he held them off, his
wife bade her wolf carry their child to safety. It was her last act before dying, and his last act was to beg us to care
for you.
     “We could not refuse the request of a spirit, nor could we leave an innocent child to the scavengers. So we brought
you home, named you and raised you and taught you our ways. The adults knew you were different, but to the
children, you were just another child like themselves. As they grew old and you stayed the same, to their children
you were just another adult, and no one ever questioned why you did not look, or age, the same as those around you.
     “Except when it came to the daughters of the village. That, Tristan, is why their parents discouraged them from
pursuing you. And that, I suspect, is why  you never returned such interest. Though in many ways you were one
of us, your heart remained spirit-born ... and must have been waiting, as I have been, for your own kind to find you.”
     “So many questions answered,” Tristan said, while the she-spirit at his side regarded Speaker-of-Tales with solemn,
deep eyes. “But what now, Speaker? This is my home ... but Smokesinger ... she is my soul!”
     “I think it is time for you to return to your people,” the Speaker said, not without regret. “That is where the fullness
of your life must lie. With your own kind, at long last. With your family.”
     “You all have been my family!” He looked from the Speaker to the she-spirit with distress. “I know nothing of the
life I was born to!”
     “You’ll find your way, Tristan. She will help you.” Speaker-of-Tales smiled. “Though you will be missed, my boy,
so will you always be welcome.”

**

     He stood at the edge of the village as the day deepened toward twilight, Luka at his side.
     The people that he had known all his life gathered behind him, and in their eyes was a hint of the amazement that
echoed his own, amazement from learning that a spirit had passed among them unnoticed for so long.
     They came to say him farewell, as he prepared to begin the journey that would take him to the black-leafed forest.
The forest where she would be waiting for him, ready to lead him to meet others of her kind. Of their kind.
     “Don’t forget us, Tristan,” Gevain said.
     “Never, my friend,” he promised.
     “It would honor the circle of our fire to have spirits there,” said the village headman, and others murmured their
agreement.
     Tristan inclined his head. “Thank you, Athar ... but I am elf, not spirit. That is how my people are called. Elves.”
     “Will we see you again?” Gevain asked imploringly.
     “I hope I may still come to barter pelts and meat ... who knows, in time there may be trade-carters between the
forest and the village!”
     With that, he raised a hand in farewell to them. At the same time, he cast out with his mind in a single longing call.
     *Shan ...*
     Very faintly, he felt her reply, their sendings of soulnames meeting in an intimate caress even across the distance.
    His heart light with hope, Tristan set off across the burn-scarred fields.

**

The End