CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Quel vecchio maledivami... O uomini! O natura!
Vil scellerato mi faceste voi
O rabbia! Esser difforme, esser buffone!
(translation)
The old man cursed me...O men! O nature!
You turned me into a contemptible and evil being
O Hell! To be misshapen, to be a clown!
— Pari Siamo
From the opera "Rigoletto" by Giuseppe Verdi
Carefully hanging Lillà's frocks up in a wall-panel wardrobe, Robbie made sure that the precious raiments were properly covered in protective plastic. It was so sad that such ravishing outfits were doomed to never be worn again. Perhaps he would make a gift of them to Stephanie once she had grown up. If the girl was lucky, she might develop the same elegant, curvaceous figure as his Mamma.
There were a few piles of things to sort through yet. Some flower vases had survived, and a dusty collection of books from the parlour needed a space on Robbie's crowded bookshelves.
"Hey! What are you doing? Get out of that!"
Sportacus had opened the lid of the grand piano, and had stuck his head inside. Earlier in the afternoon, they (or more correctly, Sportacus) had carried it down a wide tunnel hidden out in the dairy pastures, to a doorway that only Robbie, and a few observant cows, had known about before. He'd sworn the elf to secrecy.
"Sorry… I heard something rattling about inside while I was carrying it," Sportacus explained, holding up his hands in repentance.
Robbie shoved him out of the way (no mean feat, even when he was all compliant like this) and swept the lid out, securing it on its ebony brace. The light in the lair didn't reach inside its great cavity very well— all the pair could see was the piano's regiment of blotchy old steel strings. As Robbie strained his eyes to make out what he could, Sportacus reached down and, without warning, lifted one of the piano's legs off the floor.
"Sporta—!"
Something fell upon the strings, creating a dissonant metallic crash. It rolled out of the darkest, farthest corner of the instrument's belly, into the elf's waiting grasp.
There were two objects: a heavy sack, and a large, thick glass jar filled with dark, murky liquid.
Wordlessly, the pair gazed at them. Robbie shivered. He felt that he was on the brink of an exciting, terrifying discovery. A secret stash as bizarre as this could not bode well in any way.
"You should probably open this first," Sportacus advised him warily, handing him the cloth sack.
After undoing the sash, he reached a white hand inside, expecting some horrid object to meet his skin.
Instead he pulled out what looked like a precious stone. Uncut, perfectly rounded, it glimmered softly. He reached inside again. There were more. A whole pile, from the looks of it.
"What do you suppose these are?" Robbie pondered. He looked back to Sportacus, who was completely stunned.
"Are you okay?"
The elf snatched one of the gems from his companion's hand, staring at it hard.
"Hvað…" he breathed.
Puzzled at the reaction, Robbie opened the sack further. There was something bulkier at the bottom. Reaching his hand in, he pulled out a book.
"This is another one of dad's diaries…" He flicked through the yellowed pages and recognised the handwriting instantly.
"We need to tell my father about this, Robbie," Sportacus said urgently.
"In a minute." Robbie was absorbed in trying to read the faded script.
"I'm going to fetch him," the elf insisted, and the next moment was darting up the stairs.
Shaking his head after the retreating figure, Robbie sat in his recliner and stared down at the diary pages. He had found the last entry, the densest of the text, and braced himself. What other irreligious monsters had his father tried to create?
"This damned elven magick is truly maddening. Every time I come close to understanding its essence, it eludes me further. It does not do for a mind of reason and sequence to follow this gibberish. I am still mystified on how such disparate components can come together to create these miracles of nature.
"Even so, I have no doubt that not only will this witchcraft be required, it will be the very catalyst. Genetic mutations can only go so far— they govern the flesh, not the soul. Despite what those superstitious naysayers claim, biochemistry is powerless against the overwhelming force of the living spirit, the true life essence. If it wasn't, I would have easily accomplished my goal by now.
"These difficulties have been such that I am quite tempted to attempt contact with the Svartálfar. (The Ljósálfar, such as that flipping imbeciele Níu, would string me up for attempting these experiments.) They would be able to advise me on the correct path to take, but I am not sure I could wholly trust their counsel.
"I have used but ten fibres of flesh thus far, and have created ten crystals. Each of them have been perfectly lifeless. However, this does not deter me— the moment of truth will be when I finally manage to implant the elusive Anastasia gene into my Lillà's exquisite heart. My own experiments in isolating this mutation in plantlife have failed (my maudlin, foolish sentiments actually felt it would be found in lilacs themselves!), but I have caught wind of another's research in this. Either through my own exertions or the exploitation of another's, I feel finding Anastasia will only be a matter of time.
"My own heart still creeps with doubt, however. Elven flesh is, as far as I know, far more unpredictable than human flesh. God only knows what will happen when I generate the pentultimate crystal. It may change nothing: My elf-bride may remain cold and dead in the hard Icelandic earth I returned her to upon extracting her heart. Or, heaven forbid, the poor sweet fairy may be reanimated as a rotten, unthinking zombie— this black possibility plagues my rare hours of sleep.
"I know I play the role of Judas, flirting with evil knowledge to bring about the resurrection of one of the holiest beings to ever light upon this wretched sphere. But she is my religion, my messiah, my goddess, and as I freely live and breathe I can do no less.
"Her ghost haunts me still. Only a Lillà of warm, firm flesh and blood can remove me from this hell. With the elf-crystal, both her heart and her LIFE will be entirely mine, and she will no longer refuse the ring I had crafted to fit her beautiful finger. She will pledge under both her Pagan Gods and my Christian dogma to love, honour and obey. Her soft, gentle hand will lead our half-breed child back into respectability, and I will hear him praise his father for her return from the dead. My elf-bride will sing only for me. She will submit, and I will be her slave from that day hence."
An eternity passed.
The dull echo of footfalls could be heard upon the hatchway ladder.
"Kristallur!?"
"Já!"
"…Hve??"
The two elves hopped down from the pipe, and stopped in their tracks at the sight that was Robbie.
**
Robbie's heavy eyes finally fell upon Níu.
"You knew, didn't you?"
He returned the gaze silently.
"You saw my mother, you saw me. You knew."
Níu heaved a long sigh.
"Yes," he answered. "I did consider telling you, but I was confident that you would never believe me."
It had been very hard to witness the drawn-out suffering of a boy who was not only a fellow countryman, but also one of his own kind.
Robbie stared into space again. He opened his mouth, closed it, and rallied the bravery to toy with the phrase.
"I'm an elf."
"You're half-human, Robbie," Níu stated, "but you boast enough elven blood to qualify as a member of our species, yes."
"Wh… why didn't she tell me?"
Níu crossed his arms. He summoned faded, decades-old memories: An unruly little songbird of an elf-girl, one who he had teased and played with in his youth.
"Lillà's time amongst other elves was difficult. She was always a restless soul, one who longed to see the world and learn of other folk. Her parents strongly opposed. Her father was part Svartálfur, and extremely suspicious of humans. When she ran off to Sweden, a rift was formed. She was still loved, and missed, but there was a bitterness to that love. I think she feared that once her family knew of your existence, they'd claim you, and take you away from her. It was a deception borne of protective love. It's a good thing your poor grandfather is dead and gone already. He'd be horrified to learn that he had a half-human grandson."
"Dead…" Robbie repeated.
Sportacus rushed to his side. "Maybe that's enough for now," he soothed, "perhaps I can—"
"No," Robbie pressed on. "I…"
His attention drifted over to the long-forgotten glass jar, still sitting by the piano.
He looked hard, and made out the gruesome shape of a heart floating in the murk.
"Mamma!..."
Tears that had long threatened to fall began flowing freely down his cheeks.
Sportacus went to console him, but the hero was hotly pushed away.
"No!" He exclaimed. "I'm sick of this town! I'm sick of it poisoning everything!"
"Getting angry won't solve anything," Níu declared.
"I'm sick of being alone and rotten and feeling like an enormous chunk is missing from me! All of you, ALL of you are just suffocating and patronising!"
He had stormed across the floor, bashed open a wall panel and was now throwing objects into a pile on the floor.
"Robbie…!"
"Don't act rashly, Robbie."
The half-elf stopped in his tracks, giving Níu a look of sincere disgust.
"Fine words!! Fine words coming from the hero who just stood by and watched as one of his own was abused and hated and turned into a bitter outcast!" He dragged out a heavy violet trunk from behind his flank of glass tubes, and started casting the pile of objects into it.
Sportacus' pulse began to race. "What are you doing?"
"Going home, finally," he spat. "Going to find the remains of my family, going to create some semblance of a life. But first…" He picked up the glass jar from off the floor and prowled up to Sportacus.
"…I'm going to re-inter the heart which was RIPPED FROM MY MOTHER'S DEAD BODY by her merciless devil of a lover!!"
Robbie's monstrously enraged expression stopped Sportacus' own heart. The half-elf shook the jar in his face violently with each word, and Sportacus sickened when he saw sections of the greyed organ pressing against the edge of the glass.
"Good riddance to you and your little human friends," he finalled, stashing the jar inside the trunk and dragging it across the floor. "Don't bother closing off this dump on your way out."
He disappered behind the row of tubes, and the two remaining men heard a hidden steel door fly open and slam shut.
They saw no more of him.
**