Laura stopped, panting from exertion. She had been going through the forest for a while, and was dead tired. So far, the only good thing about Hallow Hill was the woods. Here it seemed like the world was timeless, a place where technology and the people who invented it had never existed and would never exist. She sat down against the rough bark of an oak tree, taking off her backpack and fishing out her sketchbook. Without thinking she began sketching the thin, arching lines of the trees, the way the dappled shadows hit the forest floor.
Suddenly she started. The light was grayer now, and as she stretched the painful tingling in her arms and legs let her guess how long she been sitting there. This happened to her often, when she was drawing. She lost all sense of time or place and didn't even know what she'd drawn until she looked at it after. Her picture today, however, looked pretty straightforward. Except . . .
In one of the patches of shadow, there was a pair of eyes. They were perfectly symmetrical, wary and feral but somehow timid and innocent from all to be found in the outside world. Looking at them, Laura had absolutely no idea where she'd gotten the eyes from. She shivered, suddenly a little apprehensive about all the secrets this ancient forest might contain.
Laura shoved her sketchpad back in her bag and stood, starting to walk and wincing at the stiffness in her legs. She cast the ever-darkening shadows anxious glances, and had never been so glad to see the manor. There were a few strands of ivy, so dark they were almost black in the fading light, that had begun to climb the walls again. She'd heard that there had been whole walls covered with it before her Great-Aunt Til's time, but she had ordered them cleaned. Laura personally liked the ivy, thought it made it look like someplace long forgotten by the rest of the poking and prodding and spoiling world.
She slipped in the door to her room, one of the extravagant glass ones from the new wing. It was handy for getting in unnoticed, especially by Uncle John's nasty brat of a son, Gerald. Aunt Sally was nice, though, and she hardly ever spent any time at the manor anyway. The forest was better, no one besides her ever went in there except for Uncle John.
Laura crossed over and looked at herself in the mirror, hair tangled and a leaf sliver poking out of one strand. She sighed. It would be better to brush after a shower, surely …
"Laura! Time for dinner!" Aunt Sally called from somewhere deep in the manor. "Make sure to wash up!"
Laura groaned, plucked the bit of leaf out of her hair, and slipped into the adjacent bathroom to wash her hands. She took a last look at her room, the light turned off, and shut the door. The dining room was in another part of the house, so she had a while to go.
Sela watched the girl through the bushes, puzzled. She looked human, like Sika had been, but what was she doing here? Humans never came into the forest. Du Ramr said that most humans were stupid, polluting beasts, but this one didn't look like it. She was pretty, with pale skin and dark hair, and looked almost like an elf if Sela hadn't known better. Her clothes were typical human, though, looked like torture devices in those blue things … elves weren't even allowed to wear blue. But the way she looked over her paper, how her hand stroked the lines … it was a type of magic all its own. Sela wanted to know more about this strange human.
But for now her fear kept her back in the bushes, peering out. Du Ramr said that humans must not know they exist at all costs, that they destroyed everything they couldn't understand. And now that Du Ramr—now Aganir Du Ramr, she reminded herself—was king, his word was law. The playmate she grown up with had turned into a stranger overnight.
The human girl stirred, seemed to be coming out of her reverie. Sela slipped back into the shadows, gathering her berry basket along the way. She fled back to the singing and laughter of the elf camp, unable to get that quiet form out of her mind.
Marak Eaglewing, the son of Marak Catspaw, now recently deceased, flexed his wings and sighed. Things were at a delicate stage with both his father and the king of the elves having died, the truce was officially over. But the elves and goblins had formed many friendships, and he doubted that his men would be very happy about going to war with their friends.
If not for the age old problem, Marak would have been perfectly content to let the truce stand, but he must do what was best for the goblin people … and that meant an elf bride. And he somehow doubted that the new, hot-blooded elven king would stand for that. He sighed. Everything had been going so well …