August 2024 Volume 14 No 8

Elves in Illinois

by

Sarah J. Wu

1972

The Woodthorn elves are famous around these parts: anything living or once alive grows at their touch. Plants do the best: wild flowers, trees, crops and grass—even wood that has been turned into tools or furniture will come back to life, given enough time. Animals take a little longer, and it's not so sure of a thing: in the summer, stags canter through the meadows that were foals only a month ago, but in the winter, an elf can spend the entire week stroking the head of a newborn calf and it'll only come up half an inch taller by Sunday.

Pa doesn't like them and makes no effort at hiding it. He gives them the stink eye whenever we come across them in town, even though he won't admit to making any faces when Gus or I tease him about it. "I just think they're kinda rude, that's all," he'll sniff, safe in the privacy of the truck as we drive back from the store. "Dropping leaves and twigs and whatnot wherever they go, expecting everyone else to clean up after ‘em. Just ‘cause their clothes'll grow flowers if they wear ‘em too long doesn't mean they always gotta wear cotton. It's 1972, for god's sake. It wouldn't kill ‘em to try polyester."

Clearwater is a small town, and most of the folk who live here are farmers or craftsmen of some sort, so the annual Growers and Makers Fair is just about the biggest deal something can be in a place with a population of nine hundred. Pa is self-proclaimed Lord of the Vegetables and enters the Biggest Vegetable competition every year with his eye on the blue ribbon. "This is it, kids," he says, watching like a hawk as Gus and I struggle to haul the giant marrow squash he spent all season tenderly nurturing out of the back of the truck. "This is my year. The year I finally take home first place."

Later, he sits at the kitchen table and fumes while we all go about our usual evening activities: Gus shucking corn he brought in from the field, Ma preparing dinner at the stove, and me with my feet kicked up on the back of the sofa, reading Ursula K. LeGuin. "There's no sportsmanship in it!" he seethes, glaring at the second place ribbon on the table. "Everyone knows they got magic that makes plants grow. Why do they even enter?"

Ma smiles indulgently as she takes a cleaver to the hull of the silver medal squash. "There's no room for discrimination at the Clearwater Fair, Dane," she tells him, serene as Mother Mary as she slaughters the squash into bite-sized chunks. "This is going to make such a delicious soup."

Gus sniggers as Pa groans, head in his hands. I pin the ribbon up above the mantle, next to the half-dozen others just like it. All the sights and sounds of the fair replay in my mind like precious little movies, secreted-away excitement to last me the rest of the year. The elves arrived in town in capes of flowers that would put the Macy's spring collection to shame, the trains woven from salvia stems and the edges studded with daylilies and hibiscus. As they drifted through the fair, the crowds parted for them without needing to be asked, as if everyone understood without saying that the elves were the real vision of the day. They hadn't seemed quite real passing by the dry goods' store and the tailor's shop, as if they were instead characters from the pages of my books that had materialized for just one day to walk among us as dreams in the waking world.

1973

The elves have had a symbiotic relationship with the farmers for as long as there have been settlers in Clearwater. The farmers who do well enough to afford the extra help pay the elves to wander through their fields and tend to their livestock, so that every year they can be assured a profitable harvest; as payment, the elves accept new steel kitchenware, high-end clothes made from synthetic fabrics, even uncut gems and raw gold ore, if the rumors about the industrial farms are to believed. A cassette player and a set of Beatles tapes, once, according to Clancy Duggerman, the youngest child of the family with the third-biggest potato crop in the county. "I swear to god," Clancy tells me, solemn as a tombstone, in the last half-hour of English class one balmy spring afternoon. "One of ‘em pointed right at it when payday came around. She was a pretty groovy-looking chick, so I honestly wasn't too surprised—at least, I think she was a chick. Anyway, she looked like the type who would listen to the Beatles. You should've seen the look on my dad's face, though. Like he knew he was being had, but couldn't do nothing about it." Clancy chortles to himself, ignoring the dirty look Mrs. Moore sends our way. "It was my sister's cassette player, anyway. She's gonna pitch a fit when she comes back from college."

 After school, Clancy invites me over to study for our pre-algebra quiz at the end of the week. We sit at the kitchen table and puzzle over the quadratic formula together while Mrs. Duggerman puts together an afternoon snack and tells me all about Melody Duggerman's first month in college. "She hasn't decided on a major yet, but she's quite a fan of art history," she informs me, cheerful as a bug as she smears mayonnaise on a piece of Wonder Bread. "I think that's a lovely choice, don't you?"

Clancy leans over and faux-whispers, "Don't be fooled: Mom doesn't really care what Melody majors in, as long as she finds a husband."

"Clancy." Mrs. Duggerman's tone is admonishing, but she doesn't deny it. She sets the platter of cheese and tomato sandwiches in front of us and wipes her hands on her apron, then gives me a coy smile, as if I'm in on the joke. "Well, what would be so wrong with that? Melody is a pretty thing, but she won't be young forever. A girl's got to think of her future, you know."

My only experience with romance is watching Gus and his girlfriend make out on the couch from behind the bannister, a vaguely nauseating experience that I'm in no hurry to replicate. I do my best to give Mrs. Duggerman a polite smile and stuff a sandwich into my mouth so she won't expect a reply. Luckily, I'm saved by the entry of Mr. Duggerman, coming in through the back door with his boots still muddy from the field.

"Hey, pops," Clancy says around his own mouthful of bread, waving his pencil in greeting. "How're the taters lookin'?"

Mr. Duggerman is a serious-looking man with a square jaw and a square haircut, but he spares Clancy a smile and a tousle of his sandy curls before he bends down to begin working off his boots. "The soil is good," he says, his satisfaction clear. "We'll have a strong harvest come fall."   

"You still gonna call the elves to help out this year?"

Mr. Duggerman slants his son a sharp look. "You're too obsessed with them elves, boy."

Clancy rolls his eyes, and I get the sense that this is far from the first time they've talked about this. "Yes, dad, because they've got magic. I'd have to be dumb in the head not to be fascinated by ‘em." Now he turns to me, eyes glittering. "Once, I was down in the fields and Jimmy, our farmhand, was being a real ass to one of the elves—"

"Watch your language please, young man."

"—y'know, calling him freak and elephant ears and all that. So the elf kicked his legs out from under him and had him on the ground ‘fore I could blink. And then, swear to god, the elf reaches down into the dirt, and a whole buncha roots and vines came shooting up and wrap all around Jimmy until he can't move at all. He's lying there, thrashing and hollering, but the elf just stands over him and tells Jimmy the roots won't stop growing until he says sorry. Cold as ice." Clancy laughs, delighted by his own story. "So what could Jimmy do? He says sorry, of course. The roots were damn near over his head by the time he was done."

Mrs. Duggerman sighs, clearly unimpressed by this tale, but Mr. Duggerman looks troubled. He pulls out the other chair at the table and drops heavily into it, rubbing a hand across his stubble. "Those elves…they're a real asset, I'll admit. A damn near gold mine if you can afford ‘em. But…I don't trust ‘em. No, I don't trust ‘em at all."

Mrs. Duggerman shuffles over to her husband and drops a kiss on his cheek. "Don't fret, dear," she says, patting his shoulders soothingly. "It all worked out the last few years, didn't it? Look how well the crop is doing. Just think of the elves as an investment. Like sending the kids to college. It's expensive now, but it'll pay off."

Clancy and I study for another hour before I pack up to head home. As I take the shortcut through the Duggermans' field, I see four slender figures trailing along the horizon, walking through the freshly turned rows. The hems of their long green robes trail in the mud behind them, but they don't seem the least bit bothered. Even from this distance, I can see that the edges of their sleeves have begun to sprout delicate pink and white blooms from constantly brushing up against their fingers.

One of them—the smallest one, with hair the color of leaves in October—turns toward me. I stop in my trek. For a moment we stare at each other across the field, the sun turning the humid air glittering and hazy between us. She lifts a hand in a wave.

I think of Clancy's story, of the elf who nearly buried a farmhand alive as retribution for insulting him. I raise my hand and wave back. Then I hurry on, towards home.

1975

Gus parks the truck under the overgrown sycamore tree at the edge of the farm, one of the only spots on the property that's out of the sightline of the house, and rolls down the driver's side window. "Damn," he mutters, peering out from under the rim of his beat-up old baseball cap. "Never thought I'd see the day Dane Halston willingly brought elves on to work at his family farm."

1973 was a dry year, and 1974 even worse. The orchard survived, although the apples were few and mealy, but the cornfield withered under the hot sun. Some days it felt like the checkbooks saw more of Pa than we did with the hours he spent pouring over them, trying to make the numbers work. Even then, it took Ma laying a hand on his shoulder one night, pleading, "Please, Dane, just come have dinner with us," before he put down his receipts and his calculator and relinquished his death grip on "the way things have always been done in this family." The next day, he told us over breakfast that we would finally be following the example of the only farms in Clearwater that survived the two-year drought and hiring elves to work the fields. It was the only time in my entire life that I can remember Pa speaking without looking us in the eyes.

That day we drove to the meadows at the edge of Woodthorn Forest, the greenest land in all of Clearwater. Gus and I looked at each other in awe as we stepped out of the truck. The hills were like rolls of satin, undulating in gentle waves in either direction, and the wildflowers like clusters of gems. Streams of glass-bright water wove through the grass, culminating in a blue-green marsh thick with lily pads and cattails. Where the meadow ended, the forest rose up in a wall of ancient trees, each trunk as thick as two men's torsos, clustered together so densely that all light seemed to vanish in its depths.

We made our way through the knee-high grass to the treeline, where Pa took his offering out of his pocket: a smooth gray stone the size of his palm riveted by lines of gold ore, that his brother had found in a stream when they were boys. He pulled a switchblade out from his other pocket and, quick as a flash, sliced a thin, neat line into the meat of his finger. As Gus and I watched, he smeared the blood that welled to the surface onto the stone. Then he cocked his arm back and threw it, hard as he could, into the trees. The three of us stood there for a while, waiting for the noise of the stone crashing down; but whether the wind in the meadow drowned it out, or the forest was so dense not even sound could escape, it never came. Gus handed Pa his handkerchief, and I helped him tie it ‘round his finger; then we got back in the car and drove off, not a word between us.

The elves arrived this morning, simply appearing on the road that runs outside the farm as if through teleportation. Ma strictly forbade us from spying while Pa went out to meet with them, but as soon as she went into the garden to pull vegetables for lunch, Gus and I were in the truck and heading out to our favorite peeping spot. Now, Gus lies back against the driver's seat so I can lean over him to get a better look. "Whaddya think?" he asks, while I squint and stare. "You think those skinny things are gonna save the farm?"

Two elves stand under the shade of the apple trees, listening to Pa talk. One of them is tall and sturdy, hair as silver as cornsilk dropping down to his waist. The other is almost a whole head shorter, with red locks plaited into a long braid down her back. She looks familiar, but it isn't until she turns to take in the farm and the sunlight catches her face that I recognize her: it's the same elf I saw on Clancy's farm the first time I went to his house, right before the drought.

The Duggermans were one of the few families to stay in the black during the drought, the benefit of having elves working for them long before the rains dried up. I remember Mrs. Duggerman's words in the kitchen that day, her faith that the elves would see them through. "Yeah," I tell Gus, settling back into the passenger seat. "I mean, we can only go up from here, right?"

Gus snorts. "Y'know, you always use such big words from those books of yours, I forget sometimes you're still just a kid. Don't you know Pa sunk everything he and Ma have into hiring those elves?"

I stare at him. "What?"

"Mortgaged the house to buy enough goods to pay them what they're asking." Gus sighs and starts the engine. "So either they pull through for us, or we lose everything."

Gus' words haunt me that night, and for many nights after, lying sleepless in the dark wondering about where we would live if Ma and Pa lose the house. From then on, I can't tear my eyes off the elves. By virtue of spending my every spare moment watching them, I become the member of the family who knows the most about them, even more than Pa. I know that they only seem to eat fruit, vegetables and bread because they always return the picnic baskets Ma sends out with the cheese and meat left untouched; I know the silver-haired one is probably older, because the redhead always does whatever he asks; I know they speak to the other farmhands in English but to each other in their own language made up of whispery syllables and half-sung notes that sound like trees rustling in the breeze. I know the red-haired one can walk through a row of corn plants and brush her long, slender fingers against the stalks, and the next day thick yellow fruit will hang from buds that had barely sprouted; and when she spends the afternoons in the barn with the new foal's head in her lap, rubbing her knuckles between its ears and humming her strange song, the foal will be fat and brown and brawny in a month's time, ready to be weaned.

The elves slip away at sunset, vanishing into the falling dusk, and are always in the fields again by the time we wake up. Pa pays them every twelfth day, at their request, with items from the back pantry that has become like a storehouse of treasures in our home. In the first few months, he gives them: a dozen stainless steel knives; a cast-iron skillet promised to last a decade; fifty yards of neoprene fabric shipped from Chicago; an antique copper chest so heavy it takes the combined efforts of me, Pa, and Gus to wrestle it out of the house; six silver candlesticks; and a set of gold bracelets, studded with tiny rubies. Gus jokes that if the farm goes under, we can start another family business: the first locally owned department store in Illinois. He makes sure Pa is out of earshot when he says it.

Even with most of the spare cash going toward goods to keep the elves, and the rest saved away to pay the other farmhands in case the harvest doesn't turn a profit despite all our efforts, Ma and Pa insist, above everything else we've sacrificed, that I keep up with my violin lessons. I think it's their pride, a last-ditch attempt to shield me from the harsh realities of our poor luck, even though I've spent the last two years learning that lesson. But I don't protest, or say that I'd rather spend the extra money on additions to my collection of novels. Maybe I'm just flattering myself, but I really do think my amateur renditions of Symphony No. 7 bring a smile to Ma's face, on the days when she's so tired she can barely put her feet up on the lounge chair before she's falling asleep.

Spring turns to summer and, just like the last two years, the rain never comes—but this year, very much unlike the last two years, everything keeps growing. The cornfield becomes lustrous with yellow fruit under the blazing sky, the stalks plush and green in their beds of arid soil; the air in the orchard is sweet with the aroma of ripening fruit, dropping fat crimson cherries and fragrant pink peaches into the farmhands' baskets with barely a shake of their branches. When August rolls around, Pa and Gus spend fourteen hours in the fields for the first summer harvest. That night, sitting at the kitchen table tallying up the day's yield, Pa cries tears of joy that glimmer down the crags of his dear, exhausted face.

While Gus is busy helping in the fields, I diligently practice the violin, the windows boosted open to let the fragrance of the orchard fill my bedroom. The song for today is Claude Debussy's Violin Sonata. The warm, sweet air makes me sleepy, so that my hand lists on the bow and roughens the edges of the piece.

"What's the name of that song?"

I startle, immediately dropping the bow. A slight face peers in at me through the window. It takes me only a second to recognize it as one of the elves, the red-haired one. She has a curious expression as she looks in at me, like a smile but not quite. I lean down to pick up the bow.

"It's called Violin Sonata," I tell her. "By Claude Debussy. Do you know who that is?"

She shakes her head.

"He was a famous composer from France. Back in the eighteen hundreds." I pause. "Do you know where France is?"

The elf laughs, clear and bright as windchimes. "Of course. Europe, yes?"

"Yes, exactly."

"Many of my people are from Europe."

I blink at her. "Really?"

The elf seems amused. "You thought we were native to this land?"

I think of what I know of the Indians with their rich brown skin and dark, shiny hair. "It seems silly now."

"We traded gifts for this land with the Illiniwek, long ago. But we are transplants. Like you."

"Me?"

"You are not native to this land, either, are you?"

I've never thought of it that way. "No," I say. "I guess not."

The elf gives me one last, lingering smile before drawing away from the window. "Wait!" I call after her, without thinking. When she turns, I hold up my violin. "Do you want to play?"

The elf's smile grows a little, but it is touched with sadness. "I cannot. I'll only break it."

I laugh. "That's what I thought the first time I picked it up, too." I stand and cross the room to boost the window open a little wider. "Come on. I think you can fit."

The elf hesitates. Her eyes, green as the grasses of the Woodthorn Meadow, look at me as if she can read my thoughts on my face. Then, in the blink of an eye, she ducks her head and slips through the open window, as fluid as water.

I watch as the elf straightens, taking in the room. I feel faintly embarrassed at the posters of Farrah Fawcett and David Bowie and my old teddy bear bedspread and cover it up by holding out the violin. "Go on, then."

The elf takes the violin from me like it'll shatter in her fingers. Now she's the one who looks embarrassed. "I'm not sure…I mean, I've never…"

"Oh, right." Duh, I think. I walk around so that I'm standing behind her and reach around to place my hands on her arms. The fabric of her tunic brushes against my neck, unusually warm, as if it's been sitting out in the sun. As lightly as I can, I show her how to rest the violin against her clavicle, then position her elbows so that she's holding the bow at the right angle. I've never been so close to an elf; all I can think, as I show her where to place her fingers on the strings, is that she smells sweet, but not like perfume—more like the woody scent of wet reeds and fresh earth after a long, hard rain.

"There." I pull away and move around to stand in front of her. "Now all you have to do is pull the bow against the strings and move your fingers to make the notes." I raise my own arms in the air and mime playing to show her the proper wrist form.

The elf draws the bow in a mimicry of my movements. A sweet, high F sharp sings out of the violin, clear and crisp. Her face blooms in delight. Automatically, without any input from me, her fingers shift to play the next note, a perfect G.

Her delight is infectious: I feel myself smiling, too, as the elf moves up and down the scale as if she's known it her entire life. The hours seem to slide away from us as I teach her how to read a few notes, and then play a simple melody. It seems like no time has passed at all when I look up to find the sky darkening outside, the stifling heat of the afternoon yielding to the soft, cool night.

With regret on her face, the elf stands. "I should go; it'll be dark soon." Her fingertips brush against mine as she hands my violin back to me. She moves toward the still-open window, hitching her tunic up to climb through.

"Wait!" I tuck the violin away in its case and hurry to the window. The elf looks back at me, one leg already through. "You've been working for us all year, but I don't even know your name."

She tilts her head at me, considering. "My people do not give our names out so easily as yours. Only to those we trust."

"Oh." I guess that makes sense. Ma always did like to warn me and Gus about stranger danger.

But then the elf smiles at me with a sparkle in her green eyes. I feel my stomach grow warm. "I am Ellender. It has been a pleasure to meet you."

I grin back at her. "Linnet," I say. "But you can call me Linny."

That night, I sleep deeply and dream of grand orchestras in the halls of Europe. Gus squints at me suspiciously over toast with fresh cheese and peach jam at the breakfast table. "What's got you in such a good mood?"

I stuff a crust of bread into my mouth and shrug. "I had a good night's sleep."

After Pa and Gus head out to the fields, I go upstairs to my room and pull my violin out from under my bed. My eyes widen in surprise when I open the case: the smooth, polished wood of the instrument's neck has splintered and sprouted twigs overnight, already sporting tiny pink blossoms. The bow, where the elf—Ellender's—hand rested is wreathed in emerald green vines, the leaves shaped like dewdrops and satiny-soft to the touch.

I sit back on the floor, stunned. Then I do the only thing I can think of and laugh. It seems particularly fitting, maybe even inevitable, that the elves would leave their impression on every part of our lives: indelible, undeniable, growing even in their absence.

1976

The records show that, in the early years of the 1900s, Woodthorn only covered a hundred square acres, more a grove of saplings than anything significant. In the spring of 1976, the surveyors who come out from Springfield inform Mayor Wilkins that the forest spans a grand total of nine thousand acres, up by nearly fifty from last year's measurement. The murmur that ripples through the folk gathered at the town meeting when the mayor passes on this development is partly surprised but mostly upset.

"So?" John Hadrey's voice rings out over the ruckus. As the owner of the only grain mill in Clearwater, he's used to people listening when he talks. Sure enough, the crowd quiets when he stands. "We're just going to let these—forest freaks expand until they take over our property? Our town?"

At the podium, Mayor Wilkins sighs and rubs a hand over his forehead, but more than a few of the townspeople are nodding in agreement. Gus and I roll our eyes at each other. "Mr. Hadrey, please—"

"This year it was fifty acres; what'll it be next year? A hundred? Two?" Hadrey casts his gaze around the room, making eye contact with anyone who will look at him. "How long until they overtake the land we make our livin' on? How long until they wipe us out entirely?"

"Have you forgotten that the elves help us make the very living you're going on about?" Mr. Duggerman interrupts, severe, from where he sits in the back with Clancy and his mother. "Or did you forget where the grain in your mill comes from?"

Hadrey sneers at him. "What good will your deal with the elves do you when your farm is nothing but trees, Mike?"

Ma and Pa exchange a troubled look. Once, Pa might've been sympathetic to Hadrey's tirade; might've even agreed with him, if only in the privacy of our own home. But that was before the elves caught our family on its downward plummet and saved us from going under.

At the end of the fall, as the earth cooled and hardened and the leaves grew brittle in their cradles, Ellender and her silver-haired partner accepted Pa's last payment and Ma's profuse thanks with little more than a smile, as if they had barely been troubled at all. I watched them slip away into the night from my bedroom window, there one moment and gone the next. In the days that followed, the farm went on in their absence: the chickens fed, the cows milked, the fields tilled and readied for the next year. The only marks they left behind were the peace on Pa's face at the dinner table and a harvest cycle's worth of scattered memories following me into sleep as dreams.

On my other side, Gus groans and slumps down in his folding chair. "It's the same argument every year," he mutters. "I can't wait to go to Champaign and get away from this shit."

I sigh, melancholy at the reminder. "And what am I supposed to do when you go off to college?"

Gus gives me a significant look. "Start looking for your own way out."

The meeting ends without any real resolution, as always. I hear my name being called over the chatter as everyone files out of town hall. "Linnet! Linny!"

Clancy shoulders his way through the crowd and grabs my hand. "Come with me."

I let him guide me down the front steps to the sandy lot behind the building, where the only car is a red Dodge pickup. A boy with tousled brown hair in a tight white t-shirt pops open the driver's side door and smirks at me. "Linnet Halston," Jacob Hadrey greets me. "When'd you get so good-lookin'?"

I flash Clancy an unimpressed look. "Really, Clance?"

Clancy grins at me and starts toward the truck. "C'mon, Linny. What else were you gonna do today? Spend this beautiful weather holed up inside reading? Live a little." 

"Yeah, Linny," Jacob echoes, smirking. I glare at him. "Live a little."

I sigh and trail reluctantly after him. Two familiar faces greet us from the passenger and back seats. "Oh. Hi, Albert. Hi, Tom."

Albert turns to peer back at me. "Hi, Linnet."

Tom shifts over on the backseat. "Here, you can sit next to me."

Clancy and I file into the truck beside Tom and we're off, cruising past Main Street toward the edge of town. The windows of the truck are rolled down, making it easy for me to ignore Jacob in favor of enjoying the breeze on my neck. It was a long winter for Clearwater, but the snow melted eventually, and now it's finally warm enough to go outside without a coat. The oaks that line the roads outside town have just begun to bloom, their crowns of pale green leaves lit gold by the sunshine. I lean my chin in my hand and watch the land passing by, letting the boys' idle chatter fade into the wind.

A few turns off Main, and we're rumbling down one of the many less-pristine roads that spider out from the center of town to the farms on the periphery. The homestead we pass through sits on a bed of sloping hills, dotted with animal pens, hay barns, and clusters of white birch trees: the Mayhews' farm. Purveyors of the best homemade mayonnaise this side of Chicago, if you ask Ma. Though Pa will claim, when my mother isn't listening, that nothing beats Duke's.

The things I notice next, in succession: a woman's voice, raised in horror. A flash of red and brown in the grazing ground. A long stream of black silk, fluttering through the air like a banner.

The truck slows as we all look out. On a distant hill in the Mayhews' farm, Annabelle Mayhew, craftswoman of the famed mayonnaise herself, hollers outside of a chicken coop; the door swings wide-open on its hinges behind her. Next to her, Holden Mayhew holds his rifle, but it is limp in his grip as he gapes at something in the distance: two elves darting through the grass, so fast and light that for a split-second I take them for the horses. What I mistook for silk is one of the elves' hair, streaming long and loose behind him; the other has no hair at all, just blond corn-fuzz cropped close to her skull. They run side by side in utter silence, faces hard, eyes focused, chasing. No—hunting.

It is only by following their gazes that I see the fox scrambling through the grass, jaw bloodied with bits of chicken feathers. He is ahead of the elves, but only by a few yards, the distance closing fast. Tom leans around me, craning his neck. "No way," he says. "No way they—"

The fox veers left, toward the tree line. Nearly simultaneously, the short-haired elf splits off at a slightly wider angle. They close in on their prey in the time it takes me to suck in a breath and hold it. The fox leaps away from the black-haired elf, right into the grip of his partner, who scoops it up by the scruff of its neck with the effortless swing of a child picking a flower.

The truck has come to a complete stop. I glance over at the driver's seat to see that Jacob Hadrey's attention is focused completely on the scene playing out by the side of the road. Annabelle Mayhew hastens down the hill to where the elves hold the squirming fox between them. "Those damn creatures!" She huffs and puffs, red-faced with the effort. "That's the third flock of hens I've lost to them in so many years. I'd shoot every one of them in their burrows if I could. Well, go on, then. At least I'll be able to make back some change from its hide."

When the short-haired elf speaks, she does not boom quite so loudly as Annabelle Mayhew. I don't catch what she says, only how it makes Annabelle react: her expression contorts first in surprise, then indignation.

"Listen here," she starts, and it is still Ms. Mayhew, still the friendly, boisterous matron I've known since I was a kid—but there is an edge to her voice, a hostility I've never heard before. "I pay you to work this farm and watch those animals, and that includes keeping them safe from vermin. When you fail to do so, as you have today, the least I expect is that you'll get rid of them, permanently, when I damn well ask you to!"

The elves gaze back with placid indifference; this only seems to make Annabelle angrier. I don't know why I do what I do next—Ma always said I liked to stick my nose recklessly into other people's business.

I roll down the window, pop my head through, and call out, in the cheeriest tone I can muster, "Afternoon, Ms. Mayhew! Is there anything we can help you with?"

Annabelle looks over at me, startled, while Clancy blinks back at me like I've grown a second head. But it works: the hard look ebbs from her face, as if she is a little embarrassed to be caught so out-of-sorts by a girl she used to chaperone on school field trips.

"Oh—hello, Linnet." She shoots the elves one last, unfriendly glance, but I can see her reign herself in. "No, everything's alright here. You go on, now, and tell your Ma and Pa I say hello."

I don't look at the elves; I don't dare. Mr. Mayhew has arrived at his wife's side. I've never known him to hurt a fly, but there is still a gun in his hand. "You're sure? It's no trouble. We have the afternoon off from school."

"No, no." Annabelle waves me on. "You enjoy your day off. And tell your Ma to bring her cornbread to the potluck on Sunday; I can't get enough of it."

A tug on my sleeve: Clancy, contorting himself around his seat in an attempt to yank me back into mine. I flash Annabelle one last, big smile I don't feel. "Yes, ma'am. You have a good rest of your day."

The truck pulls away. I watch the Mayhews' farm recede in the rearview mirror and find the elves watching us go.

Jacob's eyes meet mine in the mirror. "That's the problem with those elves," he says, speaking only to me. "You couldn't control ‘em even if you wanted to."

1978

There is a human who lives with the elves. None of the adults in town ever talk about him, as if to say his name would be to invoke his terrible fate onto themselves, but the kids talk. The kids always talk.

"They call him Old Man Sinclair," Jenna Kennedy informs me seriously, conspicuously failing to identify who "they" are. She picks at an orange with lacquered blue fingernails, breaking off little chunks at a time. "My cousin told me he was born here, raised on a farm like the rest of us. Then, one day when he was seventeen, he up and left home and didn't tell anybody where he went. His folks only found out years later that he went to live with the elves when they saw them together at the town fair. Can you imagine? Just leaving everything and everyone you know like that?" She leans in, dropping her voice to a whisper. "My cousin says it's ‘cause one of the elves put a spell on him to make him fall in love with her. She says he's still out there somewhere, in those woods. Wandering around, out of his mind, for the past fifty years."

I look skeptically at the butchered fruit in Jenna's hands and wonder what a girl who doesn't even know how to peel an orange would know about love or being in the right mind. "And how does she know all that?"

Jenna's face lights up, as if she was just waiting for me to ask. "My cousin saw him with her own two eyes down by the river last summer. Said he was wearing clothes from a hundred years ago and pulling up cattail sprouts for his dinner." She shudders, as if this is too horrible to imagine. "God. I don't know what I'd do if I could never have a burger again."

The legend of Old Man Sinclair picks up fervor as the school year rolls into October, until it's all anybody seems to want to talk about. Maybe it's the junior prom looming at the end of November, our first dress-up event as a class, and the tale's lurid romantic undertone matches everyone's nervous, hormonally charged energy. Maybe it's the tension that's been growing throughout town between the people who want to continue living peaceably with the elves and those who think it's high time the forest's expansion is curbed. Whatever the fuel, I do my best to stay out of the fire. Gus is gone now, off to the big city for his first year of college, but I've taken his words to heart and set my focus on carving my own path out. Clearwater is home, but life here follows the seasons, cycling back on itself every year.

November arrives with clear skies and a crisp frost that dusts the hyacinth blossoms in Ma's garden. Since the bountiful harvest that came from our year with the elves, things have been a little easier at home: enough money to cover equipment and pay the farmhands, with a little left over for nice things at the end of the year. On the first Saturday of the month, Ma sets breakfast down in front of me with an excited expression. "Your brother called," she informs me. "He's bringing his girlfriend home for dinner."

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Gus was notorious at Clearwater High for leaving a trail of broken hearts behind him, and I see that he hasn't dropped the habit at college. "Another one?"

"Her name is Polly. She's from Chicago." Ma is practically bouncing. We don't get many visitors on the farm, and certainly even fewer from the city. "Run into town and pick up some good chocolate for me, won't you? I want to try the recipe for profiteroles I saw in Good Housekeeping."

After breakfast, I pick up three pounds of Swiss chocolate from the specialty goods store downtown and take the long way back, tempted by the delicious coolness of the day. The trail beside the riverbank is serenely empty, most people deterred by the dropping temperatures. On one side, the Clearwater River, for which the town was named, slides lazily through the earth in a long coil of glassy blue, glittering and glimmering under the sun. On the other, a field of wild wheat slopes gently toward the horizon, mostly dried and brown from the cold.

I've just made it over a particularly steep crest in the path when movement in the field catches my eye. A figure is stooped in the long grass, its back to me. It's only when it straightens and turns that I realize it is a man with a cheerful but weathered face and dreaded hair that is starting to gray. He's wearing a loose tunic made from thick, clay-colored fabric, but underneath I glimpse a pair of denim overalls, the indigo dye faded from sun-bleaching.

I slow to a stop. Even from a distance, I can tell that the man's ears are round and soft, but the elven clothes he wears are undeniable. Jenna Kennedy's conspiratorial gossiping floods into my mind.

The man lifts a hand. "Mornin'." His voice is rough, but warm.

I wave back before I can think better of it. "Good morning." I notice the covered basket over his arm for the first time. "What've you got there?"

The man takes a few steps toward me and lifts the basket's lid. I peer inside to see a handful of round, woody pods scattered on the cheesecloth lining. "Groundnut seeds," he explains, smiling at my curiosity. "Good to eat and grow well, even in the winter." He nods to the canvas bag over my shoulder. "And you?"

"Oh—chocolate." I pull out a foil-wrapped bar to show him. "My ma is making profiteroles." Now it's my turn to smile when the man looks at me quizzically. "Just a dessert she saw in a magazine. Not as exciting as groundnuts."

The man laughs. It's a deep, rich sound, warm as whiskey. "I can see why she likes you."

"Who?"

"Ellender."

I stare at him. No one besides her has ever spoken that name to me before. I open my mouth, then close it again. At last, all I can think to say is: "You're Old Man Sinclair."

The man grins. "Is that what they call me?" He chuckles and walks past me, toward the water. I just stand there, gaping at him, until he glances back and gestures for me to follow. "Come on, then, Linnet Halston," he says, voice smooth around the syllables of my name. "Sit with me."

We sit together on the hard-packed sand at the river's edge. I'm too nervous to say much of anything, but it doesn't matter: he seems to know already what I want to ask. So he talks, and I listen: about how he was born in Des Moines and moved out to Clearwater when he was four years old; how it was just him and his three siblings, the only black kids for miles around, spending every day at their ma and pa's general store; the loneliness of growing up in a town that didn't outright reject you, but never quite accepted you, either. Then he tells me things Jenna Kennedy would kill to know, if only because it's the one part of her story that is adjacent to the truth: that one day, walking through the woods when he was nineteen, he was jumped by a bunch of white brothers who were pissed his pa's store was doing better than theirs. That he was only saved from being beaten to death by the elf who appeared on the path and whacked his attackers so hard they ran home wailing, and were too ashamed to admit they got their asses handed to them by an elf that they never bothered him again.

"And after that day," he tells me, a fond curl to his mouth, "It was over for me. I was in love. We saw each other maybe once, twice a week, every week, for years: walks in the moonlight, swims in the river. Those meetings—those dates, though I was too afraid to call it that back then—were the only times I ever felt like somebody understood me. Like I wasn't alone. When I was twenty-three, Mom and Pop told me they were selling the shop and moving back to the city, but I told them I wasn't going with them. The day they left, I packed my things and walked into the forest. And I haven't looked back since."

I sit in awe of his story and the peace on his face. "And you've been living in the woods ever since? For decades?"

"Decades?" Sinclair's face is the picture of amusement. "It's been seventeen years."

I stare at him, the numbers spinning in my head—"You're forty?"

His eyes twinkle at me. "Why? How old do I look?"

Ancient, I want to say—then bite down on the words before they can burst out, lest Ma somehow senses I've spoken them and comes to beat me for my rudeness. At least sixty is the honest answer, but I don't say that either. Instead, I just cough and splutter for a few seconds while Sinclair laughs at my expense. Eventually, he puts me out of my misery.

"I age faster because of living with them. They warned me it would happen before I joined them, but I don't think I knew what it really meant until I came back to town for the first time after leaving and nobody recognized me." He gazes pensively out over the water. "I'll be lucky to make it to sixty, I think. The oldest human who's ever lived with them died at sixty-three. But, hell." He shrugs. "A black man living out in rural Illinois? I don't reckon I'd have made it much further past sixty anyhow. And, oh, Linnet. What a life I would've missed."

His words sink into me and make a space for themselves somewhere deep inside. I've never witnessed a man speak of his own death with such clarity before, even contentedness. "Why are you telling me all this?"

Sinclair glances over at me and shrugs. "Maybe it's just been too long since the last time I spoke to another human. The elves are my family now, but they've barely aged a day since I came to live with them." He rubs his knees with a grimace. "Meanwhile, I think I'm starting to get arthritis."

We laugh together, and for a moment it is as if I'm sitting with an old friend, just catching up. A surge of gratitude fills my chest: it feels as if Sinclair has trusted me with a precious gift. I pull my bag off my shoulder and dig out one of the chocolate bars. "Here," I say, pressing it into his hands. "It might not last you as long as groundnut seeds, but I bet you won't find this in a field."

Sinclair looks at me in surprise. "What about your ma's profiteroles?"

I flush. "I've got two more. That one was just for me."

Sinclair grins and slips the chocolate into his basket. "You really are sweet." Something catches his eye from the other side of the trail. He gets to his feet. "Looks like I'm being called home."

I get up, too, and follow Sinclair's gaze. Another figure has appeared at the far edge of the field. My eyes widen with surprise: it's the silver-haired elf, Ellender's friend. I never did learn his name.

"Don't be a stranger, Linnet Halston," Sinclair tells me. "I don't think I'm the only one who would like to see you again."

I watch him go, forging his way through the waist-deep grass until he reaches the elf's side. The elf glances at me, suspicious, but Sinclair says something to him that smooths the lines out on his brow. Sinclair moves the basket to his other arm and takes the elf's hand. Then the two of them turn and slip away, over the horizon and out of sight.

Oh, I think, standing alone on the riverbank.

Oh.

1979

The last year of the decade winds down with the autumnal bookend to the spring Growers and Makers Fair: the Fall Fest, a weekend-long event that consumes the entire town in festival games, small business promotion, and a hunting competition that awards the team with the biggest catch a five hundred dollar prize and bragging rights until the next year. The only rule of the competition is that no rifles are allowed, only whatever the hunters can bring down with as close to their bare hands as they can get.

The Sunday of the hunt is cool and clear, the air cider-sweet, all of Clearwater glowing and orange. In the burnished copper glow of the morning, I meet up with Clancy in the high school parking lot, where our team has agreed to gather. "I thought we were going with Louise and Jeremy," I mutter, casting a skeptical glance over his shoulder: Jacob Hadrey stands at the bed of his pickup truck, showing a crossbow off to Tom and Albert.

Clancy doesn't even attempt to hide his eye roll. "Linnet. Louise Fitzgerald wouldn't be able to find her own two feet if they weren't attached to her."

"It's just…" I shift uneasily, the words beyond my grasp. "When did you become such good friends with Jacob Hadrey?"

Clancy gives me a strange look. "Why does it matter?"

This time, Clancy sits in the front while Tom, Albert and I squeeze into the back. Jacob pulls the truck out of the parking lot. To my surprise, we turn west, onto a road that leads in the opposite direction of the prairie, where most of the town is headed. "My dad got me a new bow for my seventeenth birthday," Jacob informs me over his shoulder as we drive. I watch the fire-bouquet crowns of the oaks by the roadside march past in the window. "I thought, what better way to break it in than shootin' some birds with the boys?

Clearwater falls away behind us in the time it takes Tom and Clancy to settle their argument on the radio station. I only realize where it is we're headed when we're already almost there. I straighten, catching Jacob's eye in the rearview mirror. "This isn't the direction of the hunting grounds."

Jacob smirks. "That's ‘cause we're not going to the hunting grounds." The truck rolls to a halt. I look around at where we've stopped with mounting horror. "I thought we'd try something new today."

Jacob, Albert, and Tom jump out of the truck and move around to the trunk. "Clancy," I hiss. He looks back at me from the passenger seat. I can tell by the way his brow is furrowed that he wasn't expecting this, either. "Are you serious right now?"

Clancy hesitates. Then he sighs. "Come on, Linny, just go with it." He gets out of the truck before I can say anything else.

By the time I scramble down, Jacob already has the crossbow assembled. He hefts it against his hip and gives me a smug look. Then he sets out across the long grass of Woodthorn Meadow, toward the forest in the distance.

Albert and Tom trek after him. I catch Clancy's arm. "Clancy. We can't."

Clancy groans. "You've never had a problem with trespassing before, have you?"

I wince. I knew those late-night capers scaling fences to climb up the water tower would come back to bite me. "Well, no, but—this is different."

"Why? What's got you so freaked?"

I rack my brain. I can't exactly articulate why the idea of Jacob Hadrey hunting game with his foul little crossbow in the depths of Woodthorn fills me with such unease, but it does. "What would your dad say?" I blurt out. "Won't he be upset if he finds out you've been trespassing on the land of the people who work for him?"

Clancy rolls his eyes. "How's he gonna know?" He turns. "Come on. They're gonna leave us behind."

Clancy sets off; reluctantly, I follow. We catch up with the other boys right as they reach the edge of the forest. The moment I step over the treeline, the blaze of the sun fades from my neck. It is as if a blanket has been dropped over the world, cool and soft, muffling all heat and sound. The soles of my department store boots crunch against a thick layer of dead leaves underfoot, not built for the dirt and damp. I look up: the trees are growing together so densely that their crowns cluster together, forming a single, uninterrupted canopy that filters the sunlight into dappled shadows on the forest floor.

Jacob reappears a few yards ahead, waving us toward him. "Come on! I think I saw some hawks."

We follow Jacob as he forges ahead, clearing ferns and branches out of his way with wide swings of his bow. Tom and Albert banter back and forth about school and work, but even though I keep pace only a few feet behind them, their words are difficult to make out, as if their voices are being swallowed by the trees. There are other sounds, too: birds calling out to each other, the rapid patter of rodent feet scurrying about. But it all seems distant, removed somehow. The loudest thing I hear is the wind, rustling through the branches, like the slow, unhurried breaths of a sleeping giant.

It only seems to get colder the further we go, until I find myself shivering in my thin sweatshirt. I wrap my arms around my torso, cursing Clancy for dragging me along on this rank misadventure. We've been walking for at least half an hour, and all Jacob has done is shoot wildly at some squirrels, missing by a mile each time. Albert looks even more disaffected than when we started out, and even Tom is starting to become antsy, if the way he keeps giving Jacob's back impatient looks is any indication.

Suddenly, Jacob halts in his tracks, putting out an arm to gesture at us to stop, too. "Shh." His eyes search the canopy. "Listen."

I frown, looking around. All I see are trees and ferns, pollen and dust mites floating in rays of pale sunlight. And then I hear it: the growing sound of something fast and heavy, crashing its way toward us.

"Whoa," Albert says, at the same time that Tom proclaims, eyes wide, "Whatever that is, it's big."

"Sounds like a buck." Jacob lifts his bow. "Whaddya say, boys? Bringing back a stag is a lot better than some measly game fowl, huh?"

Albert looks skeptical. "You think you can take down a stag?"

"How would we even carry it back?" Tom wonders.

"That's what I brought you idiots along for, isn't it?" Jacob gestures at us all to hide. "Go on, get behind the trees. I'll shoot it when it runs by."

Clancy sighs and picks out an oak to crouch behind. I join him, really not in the mood to see Jacob Hadrey kill a deer. The din grows louder: the gunfire crackle of branches ripping apart, the ground beneath us shuddering from impact. I stop sulking and instead start getting worried. "Um—Jacob," I call out, as what sounds like an earthquake bears down on us. "I don't think that's just one animal—"

But then the source of the din comes into our view, and I see that I am wrong. It is just one animal: one colossal, mountainous animal that shakes the earth as it canters to a halt. It is so big that my brain short-circuits in the face of it. All I can do is look up, and up, and up, to where the head towers above us, like a mammoth pulled from the pages of prehistoric history.

Albert and Tom's mouths gape wide open. Jacob's crossbow hangs limp at his side, his eyes as round as dinner plates. "Holy shit," Clancy gasps next to me. "What the fuck is that?"

Coherent thought comes flickering back as I take the creature in. It is a stag, I realize: a thirty-foot-tall stag that has stopped in the middle of the forest to chew at the leaves of a mulberry tree. Its velvet-brown hide shimmers alternately red and gold as its flank heaves with each breath, and its legs are as thick as the trunks around us. Atop its head sits a sprawling crown of antlers, coated in fine blond fuzz and draped with moss.

"Jake," Tom says, voice quavering as he takes in the stag. "I think we should get out of here. Like, now."

But Jacob's expression has changed, gone from awed fear to something much meaner. Slowly, the smirk slides its way back across his face. "I thought a plain old buck was gonna be good," he says, glee in his voice. "Wait ‘til I bring back this."

I'm on my feet before I can think. "Jacob! Stop it!"

"Don't be such a spoilsport, Halston." Jacob lifts his crossbow and puts his eye to the viewfinder. The stag finally seems to notice our presence. It tilts its giant head, blinking down at us with luminescent brown eyes. "I'll share the glory."

I ignore Clancy's attempts to hold me back and start forward—but someone else beats me to it. In a flash, a figure materializes out of the trees. It grabs the end of the crossbow, forcing it towards the ground. Jacob lets out a yelp as his shoulder is yanked downwards, but he doesn't lose his grip. I blink in shock at the familiar face and auburn hair. Ellender.

"Der Königshirsch is a sacred being," a voice thunders out. Ellender's partner, the older elf with the silver hair, stands on a ridge that rises above us. His handsome features are contorted in fury. "And humans are forbidden from hunting in Woodthorn."

Albert and Tom go pale, but Jacob just scowls. He tries to wrench the crossbow loose, but Ellender's hold doesn't falter. "I don't see your name on this land's deed," he spits. "So I can hunt where I damn well please."      

The elf looks at Jacob like he's a bratty kid throwing a tantrum in the checkout line at the supermarket. "Land cannot be owned, boy, only tamed," he snaps. "And only by those who respect it. You have no respect for this forest, or anything else. You should leave. While you still can."

"Jake." Albert's eyes pinball from Ellender to her partner to the giant deer. "Let's get out of here, man."

"Like hell." Jacob intensifies his struggle for the crossbow. Ellender watches him, impassive save for the thin veneer of disdain curling her lip. "These pointy-eared freaks have been walkin' ‘round like they own this town for too long and it's about damn time someone shows them that they're not better than us—" 

A sharp rat-tat-crack rends the air. The wood of the crossbow bursts into a sudden tangle of splinters and thorns. Jacob screams and stumbles back as Ellender finally releases her grip. I stare in horror at the branches piercing his palms, nailing his hands to the bow. 

"Oh, fuck." Clancy grabs my arm. "Linnet. We gotta go."

I shake off his hand and run toward Jacob. Albert and I catch him at the same time. He sinks against us, shuddering and sobbing as viscous scarlet drips from his hands. Bizarrely, I think of Jesus, nailed to the cross; only Jacob is no savior, and his is a much stupider cause to die for. I look up to find Ellender gazing back. She's not looking at Jacob, but at me. In the moment I meet her eyes, images flash through my mind like a film reel: the reverence on her face when I handed her my violin; the brush of her hand as she snuck me the sweetest peaches from the orchard, cool despite spending all day in the summer heat; the distinctive pattern of her knuckles, rapping against my window at dusk. Then the memories are gone, drowned out by the sound of Jacob's cries.

I turn to Albert. "We need to get him out of here."

Together, we haul Jacob to his feet. We can't get his arms around our shoulders, on account of both his hands being speared to the crossbow, so instead Albert and I awkwardly sandwich him between us. Clancy looks up at the silver-haired elf, hands raised in the universal gesture of surrender. "We're going, okay? We're going."

Overheard, the giant deer lets out a quizzical snort, the humidity of his breath misting in the air, before turning and wandering off. As we stumble back the way we came, I look back one final time to see Ellender watching us go, eyes inscrutable in the dappled light.

Everything that happens after we break free from the cool, damp bubble of Woodthorn is a blur: Jacob's moans as he lies splayed across the back seat, the cuffs of his jacket sleeves soaked dark; Tom's frantic rambling, and Albert's equally frantic shouting; Clancy's pale, terrified face as he looks back at me from the driver's seat. It is only after we stumble through the front doors of the St. Mary's Memorial Health emergency room, almost an hour's drive away, that the world shifts back into startling sharpness. I watch the staff wheel Jacob behind the doors of the operating room and come to the cold and unfunny realization that nothing after this will be the same.

The drive back into town is steeped in silence. We split up again in the school parking lot; Albert volunteers to drop Jacob's truck off at his parents' house. By the time I make it home, it is nearly completely dark out. I find my parents in the kitchen: Ma at the table, Pa pacing back and forth with the phone glued to his ear. Ma jumps to her feet the moment she sees me. "There you are! We've been worried sick!"

Pa halts, but doesn't speak; I can hear shouting on the other end of the line. I open my mouth to try to explain myself, but nothing comes out. The three of us stand there, Ma staring at me, me and Pa staring at each other.

At last, Pa hangs up the phone. He takes a deep breath and sits down at the table. "That was John Hadrey."

I swallow past the sudden lump in my throat. "He knows what happened?"

"Albert told him." Pa's face in the soft glow of the kitchen lights is drawn and troubled. I've never thought of him as an old man, but in that moment, he looks tired. "They're gathering a group of folks from town to go down to Woodthorn."

My body flushes cold. "What? But—"

"Linnet," Pa says. "Tell me the truth. Did the elves attack Jacob?"

"I—I don't—" The ground seems suddenly very far away. In a moment of stunning clarity, I see everything that is about to happen playing out before me as clearly as if it is already a memory. "It wasn't like that. Pa—it wasn't like that. We went into the forest first—we were the ones who—"

"Dane, that's enough." Ma takes my arm. "Go upstairs and take a hot bath, dear. Your father will be back soon."

I look to my father in a panic. "'Back'? Where are you going?"

Ma herds me to the stairs and stands firm until I take the first step. "It's nothing you have to worry about, Linnet. You go on to bed now. It'll all be over in the morning."

Upstairs, I pace in the darkness of my room long after Pa's truck has disappeared down the road. Ma's words play on repeat in my head, a foreboding omen: it'll all be over in the morning. I wait what feels like an eternity for the light in her room down the hall to go out. Then I boost open my window, scramble through into the garden, and begin to run for the Duggermans' farm.

It is night now, the sky a vista of purple clouds. Clancy's face, after the fourth rock I throw at his window finally gets his attention, is stark with disbelief as he peers down at me. "Have you lost your mind, Linnet Halston?"

"We have to do something," I hiss up at him. "This is all our fault!"

Clancy looks torn. "Linnet…"

"If you stand by and do nothing, you're going to regret it." I fix him with a hard, fierce stare. "And if you don't, I'll make you regret it."

Ten minutes later, Clancy is pulling his sister's second-hand Ford Pinto out of his parents' driveway, and we are speeding as fast as it can take us out of Clearwater. I feel the thump of my heart in my chest like a wild animal, every second that slides past prickling at the back of my neck.

Five miles outside of the town border, we turn onto the road that leads to Woodthorn. My heart sinks.

"Holy shit." Clancy slows the Ford to a crawl and peers through the windshield at the train of cars in front of us. "This must be half the damn town out here—Linnet, where are you going?"

I don't bother to close the door behind me: I just run. Out of the corner of my eye, I see familiar faces, faces I've known my entire life, turn to me in surprise, but I don't slow until I pass the last car in the chain and plunge off the road into the meadow. The air is cold enough to bite; the long grass sends up bursts of fireflies in my wake. The world sways dizzyingly around me as I sprint and stumble my way toward the tree line.

I hear someone shouting my name, but I don't look back. "Ellender!" I call out. "Ellender!"

Strong arms wrap around me and swing me off my feet. I flail wildly until a familiar voice breaks through. "Linnet!" Pa: he must have been one of the trucks in the parade; he must have seen me running past and come chasing after. "Linnet, calm down!"

"Pa, you have to let me go." The remainder of the cars reach the end of the road; the meadow floods with their harsh light. "You have to stop this—"

But Pa isn't looking at me anymore. I follow his gaze, toward the forest.

A dozen pairs of glowing shapes have appeared on the tree line, hovering seemingly in mid-air. At first I think it is deer, or maybe owls. Then a familiar figure steps forward into the light, and I realize it is not the eyes of animals, but the eyes of elves.

Ellender's face is dappled in shadow, her expression inscrutable. I push forward, against Pa's hold. "Ellender," I call out desperately. "They're coming. John Hadrey—he won't stop. You have to get away. You have to run."

Ellender's gaze flicks between me and Pa, but she does not speak. Her eyes catch the light the same as a wolf's, as a predator in the dark. She does not look afraid. In fact, I can read barely anything on her face at all.

I turn and see John Hadrey and the rest of the men of Clearwater standing there, every one of them armed—and their faces, I can read all too well.

Pa tightens his grip around me. "Let's go, Linnet."

When I look back at the forest, the glowing eyes have disappeared. The mob surges forward into the trees, and Pa drags me back home.

1980

It's strange, coming back to a place to find it nearly exactly how you left it. The bus driver, who steered our Greyhound through downtown Champaign without so much as a peep, grumbles incessantly under his breath as he navigates the potholes dotting the snow-pitted roads of Macon County. By the time Gus and I disembark at the bus stop on the outskirts of Clearwater, a fine, wet flurry fills the air, the kind that melts instantly upon hitting the ground. Pa waits for us by the truck, stomping his boots to keep warm.

The diner on Main Street, where Gus and I ate burgers after school every Thursday; the specialty goods store, where I once bought three pounds of Swiss chocolate; Clearwater High in the center of town, with its brown brick exterior and the same Christmas nativity scene laid on the lawn every year—all of it the same, as if frozen in time. I spent Thanksgiving in the dorms, so it's been three and a half months since I've been back. When I told him I wasn't going home with him in November, Gus rolled his eyes at me like he thought I was throwing a fit. I didn't have the heart to tell him that the idea of being in town again during the hunting season after what happened the year before made me sick.

Not that there was a Fall Fest this year; not that there may ever be another Fall Fest again. I suppose that's one thing that has changed: there are no more elves in Clearwater.

Pa glances back at me in the rearview mirror. I can tell he's nervous. "Freshman year going well, Linny?"

Urbana-Champaign is everything Gus told me it would be, everything I once dreamed about. That's what makes it so hard to lie. "Just peachy, Pa."

The farm is quiet under a layer of freshly fallen snow, still and pristine in the dark. We trundle through the door to a warm kitchen filled with the smell of pot roast and starchy vegetables. Ma hugs Gus first, but she squeezes me extra tight. "Did you do something with the wallpaper?" I ask, when I'm finally released.

Ma glances around, puzzled. "No, dear. Why do you ask?"

"Oh." I conjure up a smile. "Never mind. The house just feels different, that's all."

While Pa heads out back to get wood for the fire and Ma puts the finishing touches on dinner, I pick up the copy of the Clearwater Crier lying on the table. I feel my stomach sink as I read the headline. "So John Hadrey won that seat on the town council after all, didn't he?"

The morning after the raid on Woodthorn, the smoke from the fires that spread throughout the meadow made the entire town smell like a bonfire. The rumors about what truly happened that night linger, even now. There are whisperings, mostly among the kids, that the elves prowled through the branches like jungle animals, inhumanly fast, picking Clearwater's men off one by one while their screams echoed in the dark. But the official story, touted by Hadrey and his followers, is that the elves were no match for their rifles; that the reason why no elves have been seen in Clearwater since is because there are none left.

Yet when the hunters, battered and crazed after stumbling out of the trees in the early hours of the morning, tried to set the forest aflame, only a few acres burned before the fire seemed to put itself out.

"Yes. Well." Ma studiously stirs the mashed potatoes. "Four men disappeared that night, Linnet. People were scared. And John Hadrey told them what they wanted to hear."

Four men, and every elf who once worked the farms of central Illinois. I put the newspaper down and look around. The same house, and, despite what Ma says, nearly the same town—just a little smaller.

Too small for me, these days. Or maybe it's me, more than anything, that's different.

"Anyway, enough politics. How has the semester been going? Gus told me you left Alpha Chi? I don't know why you would—Lydia Greenwood's girl got a job as a secretary at one of the best law firms in Chicago through a sister she met at a sorority dinner…"

Movement in the window over the sink catches my eye. My heart leaps into my throat.

"I know a lot of girls your age are thinking about marriage instead of working, so if that's what's on your mind, just come out and say it. It's no secret that the Duggermans' boy has been heads over heels for you since you were children, and it's a respectable family, even if—"

I'm not imaging it: Ellender stands in the shadows of the sycamores lining the road, looking up at me. She wears a thick, hooded cloak that nearly disappears into the velvet of the night. As improbable as it is—as impossible as it should be—her eyes meet mine across the distance.

Once, her expression was impenetrable to me—but not tonight. Tonight, I see everything on her face as clearly as I see the leaves in the sunlight on a new spring day; the blue of the river, crystal-sharp in the crisp winter sun.

I take a step back, then another. It comes, the feeling I've been chasing all year but have never gotten hold of until now. I grab my jacket off the hook.

Ma turns from the stove with the serving plate in her hands. She stops mid-sentence and looks at me, startled. "Where are you going?"

"I'll be right back." I throw on my jacket and begin pulling on my boots. "And I'll explain everything. It might not make much sense to you at first—who am I kidding. It won't make any sense to you at all. But I know what I want, Ma. For the first time in my life, I know what I want."

Ma's eyes are round and wide. "Gus," she calls out, slow and wary; then louder, urgent: "Gus!"

"Right back," I promise, just as Gus appears around the corner. Before either of them can stop me, I'm bursting out of the back door, flying the fastest I've ever run across the field.

The snow crunches under my feet and the pure, clean cold stings my cheeks. The cloudless sky and barren trees all seem to glow in the touch of the moon. Where she waits for me by the side of the road, Ellender begins to smile.

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Copyright 2024 Sarah J. Wu

Since she first learned English through Junie B. Jones books, Sarah has been in love with stories. She is fascinated by wide-open spaces, insular communities, crossroads, and juxtapositions. She is currently an internal medical resident in Massachusetts, where she works with stories of a different nature.
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GigaNotoSaurus is published monthly and is edited by LaShawn M. Wanak.

http://giganotosaurus.org