Brot'an. Brot'an'duive acaraj Leavanalhpa En wire gan'Daraglas.
Like all elvish names, it marked identity, lineage, and place in the world.
Dog in the Dark… born of Bending Elm (and) Joining Waters… from the clan of the Gray Oak.
Chap barely remembered the man who had accompanied Eillean when she had taken up a young majay-hi pup as a gift for her half-elf grandson.
As a pup, Chap had almost forgotten himself in his new existence among the brothers and sisters of his litter. Until his kin came to him, and then he relearned sorrow for the life in the forest he would set aside. His kin whispered into him through a dragonfly's buzzing wings as he chewed on the heads of wild grass beside a rippling stream.
It is time… the moment for your beginning… to go to the one caught between two peoples, two worlds. You will be with him… guide him… to one day steal the heart of the sister of the dead.
Chap let go of the grass, though some of its seeds stuck to his nose. He tried to "remember" what more there was behind the words of his kin.
This task was part of why he had taken flesh-to steal the sister of the dead from the Enemy-but other memories were hazy and faded. His new flesh, mind as well as body, did not hold all the awareness he had shared as a Fay. Flesh had severed much of the knowing that they shared as one. He had to trust in his kin for what he no longer remembered.
Bur he understood that they now reminded him of why he had freely chosen to be born.
Chap scampered back to the glen where his "mother" and siblings roamed the village.
Few of the elves were about. Most would be busy with the day's labors or out gathering sustenance from the deep forest. In nearly three moons of "life," Chap had learned much of their language. Their strange sounds-words-brought flickering memories with each utterance. It was how he learned their speech, though language seemed such a limited way to share meaning.
Their domiciles were a mixture of shaped living things. Hollows were nurtured in the growth of massive trees until spaces within their wide trunks formed warm and dry places to sleep. Ivy and briar bushes tangled in low tree branches to create walls for exterior spaces where family and friends rested midday or gathered to share meals. Yellow-green moss covered the grounds within the village, where Chap often lounged or tussled with his siblings.
He curled up before an arch made of twining primroses that formed an entryway to a cedar with a cultivated hollow. The tree was wide enough that the outstretched arms of a dozen men could not encompass it. The place provided a home for one family. There Chap waited, ignoring the taunts of his siblings wanting him to come play.
An elder woman came at dusk.
Her cowl, cloak, vestment, and breeches of soft wool were a deep green that sometimes seemed the charcoal gray of shadow. Her expression was flat and hard. Faint lines around her large eyes and small mouth suggested she was old for her kind, though still shy of a hundred years. Chap looked in her eyes and sensed worry, determination within regret, and scarred-over pain.
A young elven girl and boy, their hair tucked behind narrow peaked ears, peered out from the cedar tree's hollow.
"Eillean!" the girl whispered with adoration and awe.
The woman glanced over at the two children with a soft smile. Chap saw it was only a polite response that hid an inner emptiness.
A memory surfaced in the young girl, and Chap saw her playing make-believe alone in the forest, mimicking Eillean's imagined exploits. The girl had picked an old oak to pretend at presenting herself to Aoishenis-Ahare, Most Aged Father. She would take up service to her people like the great Eillean.
It puzzled Chap why anyone would want to be someone other than who they were, which was impossible. He looked at the elder female elf through the girl's surging memories-which told him more than words could. Not just who the woman was, but what she was.
anmaglahk.
Stealthy warriors, guardians, and agents of Most Aged Father, they sacrificed hearth and home, leaving behind the elven sanctuary in order to keep it safe. A caste unto themselves, separate from the clan structure, they worked in secret within the human lands to ensure nothing there could ever send harm toward their people.
Before Eillean stopped in the village's open space, the soft sound of her steps upon the moss carried another message from Chap's kin, the Fay.
This one will take you to the boy.
Eillean, whose name meant "Sandpiper," watched Chap's siblings tumble about the moss carpet. When her gaze fixed on Chap, a memory from Eillean washed over him.
He saw a half-elven youth with white-blond hair crouched behind a lakeshore house. Eillean's grandson, Leshil, whose name meant "Colored with Rain" or "Tint of the World's Tears," had never met his grandmother. When passing through the land where he lived, she stopped to watch for him from across the lake. A stone fortification sprouted from the water, and the boy looked up, quick and furtive, before slipping inside the house.
Eillean glanced once more at Chap's siblings, then crouched down before him.
Chap sat up, staring into her large amber eyes.
His presence brought a childhood memory of her own, watching a yearling majay-hi run through the forest. Chap took that memory and repeated it to her, over and over, alongside the one of the lone half-elven boy. The two memories linked.
No elf would take a majay-hi from the forest, as they were free-willed creatures of the land. Chap knew he could force her, dominate her will, but he did not.
Eillean scowled, her eyes narrowing at the small pup before her. The more she stared, the more what she saw began to form a memory.
Chap saw his own image surface in Eillean's thoughts. He took it and repeated it alongside the one of the boy named Leshil.
Eillean frowned, looking troubled, as if what she contemplated were immoral.
Chap rocked up on his haunches, putting his paws on her knee where she crouched before him. He stuck his nose up at her brown, triangular face and barked once.
One of Eillean's delicate and slanted eyebrows raised. Chap rolled the memories through her awareness once more with a bark. She lifted him in her slender dark hands.
Her touch felt cold and betrayed no love or affection. But Chap's memory-play would have worked only if some compassion and warmth were buried deep within her. She pulled up the loose fabric wrap around her neck until it covered her lower face. Chap felt a stab of loss, longing for the touch of his mother's tongue or the press of his siblings at night, as Eillean carried him away from the village.
She did not go alone. She stopped in the forest and waited. Another came to join her.
Brot'an'duive.
"Dog in the Dark" dressed the same as Eillean, and only his large eyes and the bridge of his long nose were visible above his face wrap. Chap saw more of him through Eillean's memory, and his thin-lipped mouth was nearly always held in a stern line. Silvery hair marked him as old, though younger than she was. Standing half a head above Eillean, he was tall even for an elf, and more solidly built than most of his people.
Chap sensed inner turmoil in the elder male elf, as if he too had grown weary and disillusioned with his place in the world. It made him feel alone among the anmaglahk, except perhaps for Eillean.
Their journey was long, passing through the elven forest and into desolate and cold mountains. Chap's companions spoke little at all along the way. It seemed there was nothing to say, or whatever lay in their thoughts was so akin in guardedness that words were unnecessary. Chap lost count of the days and nights, shivering in Eillean's arms, as at times the snow was too deep for his short legs. On the mountain range's far side they entered wooded foothills, staying clear of roads that appeared now and then. When they finally reached their destination late one night, Chap recognized it immediately.