Ellida (7 page)

JACK PHONED every night around midnight, and
that was always the happiest part of my day. His voice filled me
with joy and lightness. It would stay in my mind and linger in my
dreams.

Liv and Tristan called often. It seemed that
the Blakes and Ingmar had been rapidly developing a friendship. Liv
and Tristan decided to move back to Seattle by the end of the
month. Now Ingmar was spending a part of his vacation with them in
Rosenthal.

“We miss you so much that we decided to adopt
another wizard,” Liv said, laughing, when she’d phoned a few nights
ago. “I’m currently working on Ingmar’s sense of humor.”

“Oh, come on, Liv, nothing’s wrong with
Ingmar’s sense of humor. There might not be barrels of it, but at
least it’s authentic.”

“You’re walking on very thin ice, Astrid,” I
heard Ingmar from the background.

“You should see my teacher, Liv. Compared to
him, Ingmar’s a stand-up comedian.”

Liv giggled. ”How’s it going with Young
Master Nakamura?”

“Well, nobody’s going to offer me a role in
next Jackie Chan’s movie, but I’m doing my best, which is far from
making Takeshi happy.”

“And how’s Red Cliffs treating you?” Tristan
said.

“I bumped into Jack’s ex-girlfriend, my
cousin wants me to sing in a local pub and my uncle thinks it’s a
great idea. A six-year old local genius caught me with my eyes
brown. My wolf wants to join the party. Never a dull moment here!
Tristan, I’ll need a job soon.”

“Aren’t you too busy now to work?”

“That won’t be a problem. Maybe in the ER, a
couple of nights a week. The thing is, Tristan, I studied human
medicine. I don’t know anything about werewolf physiology and
pathology.”

“They’ll give you some training, but their
physiology is almost identical to humans’ and wizards’. As for
pathology, well, they are immortal. They don’t suffer from physical
illnesses. They can have the same mental issues as humans. You’re
not a psychiatrist, so don’t worry about it. Adults usually don’t
need much medical care. They can get injured, break a bone, cut a
finger with a knife, things like that. You’ll see small injuries as
well as serious injuries, but not often. Their appendix can get
inflamed, for example, even though it can’t kill them if it bursts.
But it’s painful, nonetheless, and has to be removed. Werewolf
children are very similar to human children, and prone to the same
illnesses, although they’re tougher. I wouldn’t worry about it too
much, Princess.”

EAMON HAD his own agenda with me. He’d
stopped openly pressing me to start singing with the band, choosing
rather a more subtle approach.

In the evening we would go to his studio in
the basement, a good-sized room with formidable soundproofing and
solid equipment. It was divided into two parts: a studio and a
smaller control room.

“Jack helped me to buy this,” he said to me
one day, proudly waving toward the smaller glass space with a
mixing console, multitrack recorder, microphones, monitors and
keyboards.

“You are the frontman of Rawhide, right? And
you compose songs?” I asked, looking around the studio.

“Most of them. We play and record our demos
here. We don’t have big ambitions, we simply like playing some very
noisy and raw rock’n’roll,” he said, unconcerned about his band’s
lack of fame. He looked straight into my eyes. “But trust me,
nobody wants to listen to that on Friday nights at Goblin’s
Hollow.”

Ah, there we were.

I’d expected him to pursue that line of
conversation, but my cunning young cousin knew better than that.
He’d asked me if I wanted to listen to some instrumental music he’d
composed and towed me towards the stereo-equipment.

“I’m fascinated with ethnic music,” he’d
said. “Recently I experimented with different ethno-sounds. I tried
to combine them into something universal. Wanna hear?”

It was a completely unexpected yet harmonious
mixture with the heavy, complex 7/8 and 9/16 rhythms of South
Balkan drums and wind instruments, combined with lighter Celtic
threads.

I was truly impressed. “Wow! That’s
fantastic!”

Eamon’s passion for composing was similar to
mine for singing, and after a few evenings in his studio, I started
giving his offer some serious thought.

BETWEEN MORNINGS with Takeshi, never happy
with my progress, and evenings in Eamon’s little music kingdom, I
was looking forward to spending some time in women’s company, with
Morgaine and Betty, in our favorite place—the kitchen.

The Mohegans didn’t have domestic help, so
Betty, Morgaine and I would prepare dinner. Takeshi and Eamon would
often join us. We didn’t bother with setting the table in the
dining room, preferring to eat in the kitchen. Meals were an
informal, relaxing time. After a few days, even Takeshi wasn’t in a
hurry to go back to the library anymore. He’d loosened up
noticeably, taking part in our little conversations and showing a
healthy measure of dry humor.

I wasn’t surprised then when he accepted
Eamon’s next offer to join us in his studio.

UNFORTUNATELY, TAKESHI’S sudden thawing
wasn’t reflected in his teaching attitude. He continued talking
very little and most of the time looked displeased with my
progress.

“This isn’t going to work, Astrid. This is
not aikido, and that’s why it’s not working,” he said one morning.
“I’ll simply teach you to fight, without any philosophy behind
it.”

“You’ll teach me how to fight dirty, in other
words.”

“Well, yes. One day, if you really want to
study martial arts, we can do that properly.”

To our mutual relief, this approach proved to
be more successful. I started developing some potentially useful
skills, and Takeshi stopped wrestling with his guilty
conscience.

He’d also admitted that I was not totally
hopeless with a sword. “You seem to have a connection with it. The
primary goal is victory over your opponent, and you have the spirit
of a warrior, so let’s take advantage of that.”

“You said I was a defender. You’re teaching
me how to fight dirty. Doesn’t sound like a noble warrior.”

“I was talking about the spiritual level. I
said you were not an
attacker
, I didn’t say you’re not a
warrior. Besides, defenders, Astrid, they are the greatest warriors
of all, no matter their fighting technique.”

I’d glanced at my teacher to see if he was
joking with me, but he looked dead-serious.

“LET’S GO outside, Astrid” Morgaine said one
afternoon after lunch. “I want you to show me your skills.”

We stopped outside of town, at the small
semicircular clearing at the beginning of an ancient forest, which
thickened toward the Great Orme.

“That’ll do,” Morgaine said, and then cast a
spell to make us invisible to accidental passersby.

For the next few hours, I spontaneously
combusted several times, turned into different animals, threw
energy bolts and levitated fallen branches. I made a tiny blizzard
using the snow that lay around in abundance and moved the tops of
the trees producing a howling, stormy wind. And I didn’t break a
sweat.

Morgaine just nodded after each of my
actions.

“Now, let’s see how you fight,” she said and
started casting spells. She would fire blue-green light balls, and
I would bring them down. She would make the wind, and I would stop
it. She raised the snow from the ground and shaped it into a
ferocious mini-twister, and I bent it into a sparkling rainbow.

As the rainbow disappeared into a pot of gold
that I created at its end, Ellida Morgaine’s soft laugh filled the
air. “Oh, I liked that very much, Astrid. I like the way you
perceive things. Wonderful!”

I let out a deep sigh.

“I’m a bit confused, though,” she added.
“Everybody insists your skills are undeveloped. From what I see,
there isn’t too much to improve. I heard that you could easily cast
even the Fire Spell. And I know you didn’t have much chance to
practice.”

“I rarely used any of my skills, although it
looks like they’ve been spontaneously improving since I started
with the changes.”

“That makes sense. That’s another proof you
are an Ellida. Now try this.” She pulled out a three-inch nail from
her pocket.

“What would you like me to do with it?”

“Whatever you can.”

I took it and bent it with my fingers. I tied
it in a bow. It snapped in the middle and then I forged the two
broken pieces together, making a mental note to fix little Graeme’s
truck at the earliest opportunity.

She took the nail from my hands and threw it
on the snow. “Pick it up, but don’t levitate it. Use your energy to
draw it, like a magnet.”

I couldn’t do it. I could make it float, hop
and dance toward my hand, but I couldn’t drag it to my hand.

“Okay, you should work on that. Your grandpa
will teach you. And Takeshi. He told me you’re quite good with
wooden swords. We’ll see how you’d do with a katana. In any case,
there isn’t a lot you can learn from me. We can polish some of your
skills, but that’s it.”

“Morgaine, I need to know more about being an
Ellida,” I said as we walked back. “I’m afraid I won’t know what to
do.”

“I know. You didn’t have any time to prepare.
It’s simple, actually. You already have what is necessary,”
Morgaine said and started counting on her fingers, “your energy,
your compassion, your profession—you’re a doctor, a healer—and your
parentage.”

“About parentage… Seth had my mother turned
into a werewolf although he hoped to have an Ellida child with her.
Didn’t she need to be a pure wizard for that?”

“Seth Withali did his research. It does
happen from time to time that an Ellida child is born from one
parent who is half-wizard, half-werewolf, and the other one pure
werewolf or wizard. Even turned, Rowena’s still a wizard, although
she lost some of her skills. Theoretically, there was no reason for
her not to have another Ellida child with a werewolf. But it didn’t
happen. It couldn’t happen, in fact.”

She let the last sentence hang in the air. I
waited for her to explain.

“Seth is sterile, and there is a reason for
that,” she said.

“But he has a son, Darius. James and Jack
went to see him.”

Morgaine smiled, shaking her head. “Darius
isn’t his son, although neither of them knows.”

“He is not?!” I exclaimed, feeling a deep
relief. Jack had said Darius was a good man. And he was not going
to become sick like Seth because he wasn’t his biological son!

“His father was a human,” Morgaine continued.
“His name was Raymond Arenvald. He and Aida, Darius’ mother, were
very much in love. And then one day he just disappeared. Seth
probably had him killed, so that he could take Darius’ mother for
himself. Aida was already pregnant. She had to hide it from Seth;
otherwise he would’ve killed her. She married him to save her
child. She died later, nobody was sure why. From a broken heart, I
suppose.”

“But how was she able to hide the fact that
the child wasn’t Seth’s? Wouldn’t he have known?”

“Well, to a certain point, Seth’s mind is
easy to manipulate. Besides, Aida was barely pregnant a few weeks,
the baby was half-human and human scents are more difficult to
detect. In any case, Seth’s never doubted Darius was his. Darius
was supposedly born a couple of weeks early, and that was it.”

“But it’s unfair that Darius doesn’t know
that.”

“That’s been keeping him alive, Astrid. He’ll
know when the time comes.”

“Do James and Jack know?”

Morgaine nodded. “I told them before they
left.” She paused and smiled. “Back to your role. See, Astrid,
people come to us with their problems, big and small. And you’ll
help them with your inner sense of wisdom and justice, and your
understanding of human nature. They’ll share their happy moments
with you. You’ll have a whole bunch of godchildren, and you’ll be
an honorable member of many local clubs and charities.”

“Oh, I see. A confidant, a marriage
counselor, a confessor, a psychologist, all in one person.”

“That would sum up your duties, yes. But
don’t forget, you have a few privileges as well. You are outside
the pack hierarchy. You have the power of veto, and you’re the
clan’s highest authority. It’s a lot of power, Astrid, and that’s
why it’s never given randomly.” Morgane paused and then carried on
in the same light voice, “You’re also the clan’s military leader.
We lead our people in time of war—”

“What!?”

“But that’s natural. We are the strongest,
and usually the smartest members of our clans, and being women, not
so bloodthirsty.”

Now I needed some time to process that
information. Astrid the Commander-in-Chief? From all the concepts
thrown at me recently, this one was the weirdest.

“Whoa, whoa, hold on for a second!” I said in
a high-pitched voice. “I’m a pacifist. I don’t believe in fighting.
We’re supposed to bring harmony and prosperity. We are
make-love
not-war
sort of people, aren’t we?”

“Now, I know it sounds a bit contradictory,
but imagine, for example, that Seth’s clan decides to take over
your land and destroy your people. What would you do?”

“Fight them,” I said quietly.

“Precisely.”

“But what if Copper Ridge had an Ellida?”

“The clans that have Ellidas never fight
among themselves. Knowing that, you can probably better understand
why Ellidas are so precious. They’re an embodiment of a higher,
spiritual concept of goodness and love, and as long as Seth’s in
power, no Ellida will be conceived in Copper Ridge. Once he’s gone,
they may get their chance. Red Cliffs waited for three
centuries.”

WE WALKED back to town. I wanted to go home,
but I also understood I had to give my fellow Red Cliffers every
chance to get to know me better.