Still, the victory had not been without cost; seven crew members were dead, eleven wounded. The elves had none of the healers, with their prayers and mystical cures, whom Teldin had seen during the war, but they did all they could with herbs and common sense. Awnings erected on the deck sheltered the dying from the sun, and there they lay, groaning in the midday heat.
Already, though, the attack seemed distant to Teldin. The memorial, repairs, and constant fear of more minotaurs were enough to keep his mind occupied. Still, even though the crew was short-handed, Cwelanas no longer sent him into the masts. She claimed that his cut would reopen with such hard work. The tasks she did assign him were light. Teldin figured her sudden solicitousness had nothing to do with his wounds, but he certainly was not about to complain about her treatment now.
Ever since the battle, the elf maid’s mood had changed with the suddenness of a wind shifting off the bow-an expression Teldin had learned since coming aboard. Cwelanas even addressed the human by name now, no longer using the pejorative “human’ or even the slighting “Bare Tree” every time she spoke. When their glances met, the elf maiden neither glared nor tore her gaze away. Without her smoldering hate, the hard edges of Cwelanas’s face softened and Teldin found her even more seductive than before. The farmer doubted that the elf mate had abandoned her general dislike of humans, but at least in his case she seemed to make an exception.
Teldin could only assume her feelings paralleled his own, which were confused and a little disturbing. He did not know exactly how to feel. Before the battle, Teldjn was still stung by Vandoorm‘s treachery and dared to trust the elves no more than they had trusted him. The possibility that they might betray him had always lurked at hand. Now he was not so sure. They had fought together, and that had provided a bond greater than any he had ever felt with Vandoorm or other humans. Elves, at least those of the Silver Spray, seemed to deserve his trust.
Teldin’s feelings toward Cwelanas were particularly unsettled. Her conversion from animosity to warmth was too abrupt for him, too flighty by his standards. He could not decide whether it was because she was female or because she was elven. Whichever it was, her moods left him pleased but confused.
Teldin sat in reflection, watching the rocky, brown mountains of Sancrist Isle slide slowly past, until Cwelanas, awkward and self-conscious, strode up and stood beside him. Her cutlass tapped against the top of the elf maiden’s boot, scraping in rhythm with the ocean swells. “The captain says tomorrow you will be set ashore in Thalan Bay. That is as close as we can come to Mount Nevermind. Tonight, dinner will be served in the captain’s cabin at evening tide,” she said in blunt, graceless tones, though there was no trace of anger in her voice.
Teldin, drowsy in the afternoon sun, languidly turned his head. “I’m invited?” he asked in bemusement at her manners, though in truth he felt a thrill at the summons. Cwelanas’s pale cheeks flushed pink so slightly that it seemed no more than the coloring of a wild rose. She was painfully conscious of her brash tone.
“I am sorry, Teldin Moore,” the flustered elf apologized. “Life at sea has left me unpracticed in these things.” The rough-edged elf maiden composed herself, then began again by taking a pose of excessive modesty, her almond eyes downcast, her hands folded demurely in front of her. In a blouse and sturdy trousers, even with a sword at her hip, she was a child awaiting a reprimand, not a confident ship’s officer. Cwelanas took a deep breath and spoke again in almost a whisper. “You and your large friend are requested by the captain-my father-and me to dine with us this evening, in honor of our voyage and the sorrow we will feel at your leave-taking.” She looked up with a pleasantly self-mocking gleam in her eye. “Was that better?”
“Quite well spoken," Teldin complimented, somewhat embarrassed himself. “Gomja and I will be pleased to come.” The farmer made an equally unpolished bow, the type he once used to woo the girls at the social dances back home. “It is an honor for Gomja and I-I, uh…" His own lack of polish suddenly showed through.
Cwelanas gave him a smile, barely more than a curve to her lips. “I will tell Father that you accept," she interjected, saving him from further mortification. A little of her old fire reasserted itself, the firm and knowing glint in her eyes silencing any more Teldin had to say. With that, the elf maiden turned and left, almost but not quite rushing away.
Teldin slowly straightened back up as he watched her go. “Well, not quite at ease, I’d say,” the farmer remarked to no one as he scratched at his beard. With a shake of his head, he ambled toward the bow and found the giff collapsed blissfully on the deck. “Rise, Gomja,” Teldin hailed, prodding the drowsy lump with his toe, “we’ve got to wash and get into our best!”
After moving the giff and overriding his protests, Teldin spent the afternoon diligently grooming himself while the helmsman and officer on deck, a tall elf with muscles to match, watched in amusement from the afterdeck. With a knife, soap, and bucket of water for a mirror, the human painfully scraped his ragged beard away, determined to make a good impression at the meal. Meanwhile, the giff, who grew neither beard nor hair-at least not more than a few bristly strands-raided the sail locker for needle, thread and sailcloth. Gomja sat on the anchor winch, cut patches from the coarse fabric, and sewed up the holes in his uniform. They both scrubbed and groomed until they were as respectable as two ex-stowaways could ever hope to be.
The sun, gold-orange and sweltering, touched just at the top of the western waves, marking the hour of evening tide. Running before an easy northeasterly wind, the Silver Spray charged through the waves in rhythmic beats. With the weather calm, most of the crew had been given orders to stand down, leaving only a few hands to stand watch during the night. On such a small ship, it was already known to all that the outsiders had been asked to dine with the captain, and the crewmen watched with interest as the pair made their way aft. Teldin was an almost beggarly sight. His trousers, ragged and worn, were trimmed back to just below the knee and he likewise had been forced to cut off the sleeves of his shirt, leaving his muscular, tanned arms exposed to the evening’s heat. Nonetheless, the farmer wore the alien cloak long so that it flowed majestically behind him, sparing him the image of utter poverty.
Gomja, having assiduously worked all day to restore his tattered uniform, lumbered aft in a pair of deep blue trousers fixed with patches scrounged from the crew. Closer inspection showed the thick stitches of sail-cord that held each square in place. The giff's orange sash was carefully pleated to hide the smudges he could not wash out. Peeking through the folds of his brilliant cummerbund were the butts of his two pistols and five knives that somehow just seemed to end up in Gomja’s possession. A cutlass was tucked completely through the sash, and a rapier swung in the hanger at his side. To add the final touch, the giff's smooth, blue-gray skin was lightly oiled, so that it glistened in the evening light.
The captain’s cabin was at the bottom of the narrow stair to the aft companionway and, for a moment, Teldin was not sure the broad-shouldered giff would fit into the tight passage. Finally, stooped and hunched, Gomja squeezed down the little staircase, though the risers creaked ominously with every shift of his substantial weight.
Thus, with their arrival well-announced ahead of them, Cwelanas was on hand to open the door to her father’s cabin before Teldin had any chance to knock. The farmer barely remembered his manners upon seeing her, stopping a surprised gasp half-completed and hoping his eyes were not too wide. The elf maiden once again had forgone her manly attire and wore a gown made of material like none Teldin had ever seen, an ice-blue gauze that floated on the slightest breeze. It swirled over her arms in the delicate breeze of the opening door. The cloth was sheer, no heavier than the dust-coated cobwebs Teldin used to find in his chicken coop. Cwelanas’s gown was fashioned from layers of the material, cunningly laid on to look like haphazard piecework or the trembling leaves of a frost-kissed tree. The pale skin of her legs, arms, and bosom were barely covered by the thinnest layers. Ends and edges trailed and flowed off her shoulders and hips. Her silvery hair was tied up in careful braids and from somewhere the elf maid had gotten a circlet of small daisies for her brow. Cwelanas’s eyes sparkled and glowed, filled with a mischievous light.