But the feeling of strangeness grew. It became harder to breathe, and we began to feel dizzy and disoriented. Again I imagined eyes watching us, and I wondered if we might be walking into some sort of dark magic.
“I shall have to sit down soon,” Karina said to me, gasping. I feared to stop, so I took one of her hands and Kai the other. We stumbled on.
At last, not far ahead of us, we could see a gap in the trees. We halted, breathing heavily. Kai pulled us behind a thick trunk, and I took firm hold of Ove. As our breath returned, a sudden shaft of light illuminated the clearing, and we stared in astonishment at what we saw. In the center of the glade was a great rectangular table, made of silver or a silvery wood, with ornate carved legs. The table was set with golden plates and golden forks and knives, and a ruby-colored goblet graced each place. Enormous silver candelabra were placed at intervals down the table. The chairs too were carved silver, and at the far end of the table there was a throne of gold.
“Oh my,” Karina said faintly.
We watched in silence as figures with pointed ears and green-tinged skin emerged from the surrounding forest.
“Elves,” I whispered.
Dressed in fur and velvet, silk and satin, they noiselessly took their places at the table, standing behind their chairs. The candles all lighted in unison, and then the Elf-King came into the clearing.
W
e knew him at once, from the song and the story, and by his magnificent golden crown and fur-trimmed robe. He was tall and slender, and his face was very beautiful; but even from a distance I could see that the slash of his mouth was cruel. I peered around the tree to see more clearly, though I knew without being told that it was dangerous to spy upon the Elf-King. If we were discovered, he would surely not be forgiving.
At the Elf-King’s right side was his daughter. It almost hurt to look at her perfection: her silvery hair that fell to her knees in waves, her exquisite face, her lithe figure. She moved with the sway of a willow, and she wore a dress of willow green, made of a material silkier and more flowing than any I knew. Like her father she was crowned with gold, and she too had a mouth that hinted at heartlessness.
I turned to Kai, suddenly afraid, recalling something Sir Erlend had told us—that he who looks upon the Elf-King’s daughter risks enchantment, or even death. What I saw in Kai’s face made my heart sink. He was gazing at her with such delight and pleasure, I felt that I might weep. I took his hand and squeezed it, but he showed no sign that he felt my touch. He had seen the Elf-King’s daughter, and as we had been warned, he was lost to us.
Then Kai moved out from behind the tree that sheltered us and headed straight to the banquet table. Alarmed, I grabbed for him, but he shrugged me off and continued forward. Karina and I followed, not knowing what else to do, and Ove trotted behind.
The elves betrayed no surprise, and in a flash each elvish courtier held a bow with an arrow at the ready, pointed at us. Had they known we were there all along? Karina and I stopped, but Kai walked on, seemingly oblivious of the danger. He reached the Elf-King’s daughter and went down on one knee, bowing his head and offering her the sword that the blue lord had given him. All was as silent and still as a painting.
Then the Elf-King’s daughter laughed, a sound as delicate as wind chimes but somehow mocking. I felt a laugh rising in my own throat and forced it down, staring at the elvish princess. How could she make me want to laugh?
“Look, Father,” the Elf-King’s daughter said. “It is a human, come to me for Midsummer’s Eve!” She clapped her hands in delight, and the other elf ladies at the table clapped too as one of the courtiers stepped forward and took Kai’s sword from his unresisting hands.
Midsummer’s Eve,
I thought. Of course it was! I had lost track of the time, but I had known the longest day of the year was near. It explained the feeling of magic thick in the forest, the elves’ banquet and celebration. Every town and village in the land celebrated this wildest of nights, most with a bonfire and dancing. Midsummer was a magical time, an occasion for fun and feasting, for healing spells and love charms. Many illnesses were cured, and many maidens found their husbands, on Midsummer’s Eve.
The Elf-King looked at Kai. Then his glance slipped over Karina and landed, most fearfully, on me. I could not bear his gaze and stared at the ground. But a moment later the pointed, embroidered shoes of the Elf-King appeared in my field of vision, and I knew he was standing directly in front of me. I dipped low in a curtsy, and he raised me with a hand under my chin.
“Who are you, girl?” he asked me, fixing his green eyes on me.
“Lilia, Your Majesty,” I said, trembling.
“Hmmm,” he murmured. “I think not. I think I know you. I think you once were mine.”
“Yours?” I whispered.
“A day ago, a year ago, a decade ago, I took a baby girl with eyes like spring violets. Were you that child?” He searched my face, looking for clues. While he looked on me, I could not lie.
“I do not know,” I said.
“I took that babe—but she was taken from me. The only one I have ever lost! Was that you?”
“I do not know,” I said again.
Finally he glanced away from me, and I breathed in deeply. “It is too late now,” he said dismissively. “The young ones can be controlled, but you are far too old to be biddable. Yet you have interrupted us and seen what you should not have seen. You must stay and be our captives.”
With that careless command, the elf archers were on us, and in an instant Karina and I had our arms bound and were tied to a tree. We pulled hard against the ropes that held us, but we could not loosen them. Ove lay beside us limply, as if enchanted, his head on his paws.
Kai was given a place at the table, for the Elf-King’s daughter clearly thought he was a fine plaything. She sat beside him and fed him tidbits from each of the countless courses that the elves’ servants began to bring to them.
Dish after dish of the most marvelous and exotic fare came to the table. There was peacock, roasted whole and displayed with its feathers fanned. There was an enormous savory pie that, when the Elf-King’s daughter cut into it, released a flock of warbling yellow birds. I thought again of Hansel and Gretel, and the memory of what happened to them when they ate the enchanted gingerbread house kept me from yearning too much for the feast I saw.
As the courses moved past us, I tried to undo the cords that held us to the tree. “Karina,” I whispered, “can you reach the knot on my rope?” She struggled, but the ropes were too expertly tied, and again we sagged against the trunk.
Then I began to observe the servers. Many of them were nisses, their faces sour and scowling beneath their red caps. I recalled then how the nisses in our area disappeared each year at Midsummer, and I realized that they all must be summoned—unwillingly, it seemed—to serve at this yearly banquet. Karina too must have noticed, for she whispered, “Look!” I followed her gaze and saw our own nisse, carrying a crystal decanter of ruby wine, his frown as pronounced as if it were bitter vinegar. I caught his eye, and to my surprise he looked directly at me and gave a tiny nod and a wink. My heart lightened, just a little. He was our own nisse, after all, pledged to protect us. Perhaps he could help. But did that pledge hold so far from the farm? And if it did, was there anything a nisse could do against the immense power of the Elf-King?
I was distracted from my thoughts then as I saw a different kind of server come into view, staggering beneath his platter. The silver oval held an enormous fish roasted whole, with a smaller roasted fish emerging from its mouth, and a still smaller fish spilling from that one’s mouth, and so on and on until the last fish, a roasted minnow so small that it could barely be seen. The dish was extraordinary, and the servant who carried it was a child, a human boy, barely bigger than the largest fish on his serving dish. I nudged Karina, and she nodded. She had seen him too.
It is a changeling!
I thought. Was the Elf-King telling the truth? Had I once been a changeling too?
More children came into the clearing now. Some carried delicacies: a spun-sugar cake in the shape of a palace, with sugar turrets flying ribbon-candy flags, and mounds of candied fruit in colors so vivid that it pained the eyes to look on them. Some stood on tiptoe to remove dirty cutlery and replace it with clean forks and knives and spoons. Some, the very youngest, washed the elves’ hands with soft cloths.
“Look at their clothing,” I told Karina urgently. “Many are wearing garments that have not been seen for decades, or even longer.” There were toddlers in long, rough-made woolen shirts and young children wearing wooden shoes. Girls wore dresses with bodices or skirt lengths that had gone out of fashion before Ylva was born, and boys were in knee breeches from days long past.
“I can’t make sense of it,” Karina replied, watching the children and their strange garb.
The elves ate and drank and made merry. Elvish minstrels played on harps and lutes, and tumblers pranced across the soft grass that grew in the clearing. Even as hungry, tired, and frightened as we were, we found it a marvelous show; and I realized I had stopped straining to get away.
At last the elves were satisfied. The nisses and children removed the empty platters and dishes, leaving only the goblets. The Elf-King rose from his golden throne, holding his glass high.
“A toast,” he cried in a voice like music. “On this Midsummer’s Eve, we drink to the sun!”
The elves cried, “To the sun!” raised their goblets, and drank. Then the nisses carried away the long, heavy table and chairs and brought wood for a bonfire. With a word from the Elf-King, the fire lit itself, and its flame roared up through the gap in the trees that marked the clearing. Karina and I could feel the blaze’s heat, and we shrank back against the tree.
The Elf-King and his courtiers disappeared with Kai into the woods; and the ladies, led by the Elf-King’s daughter, began to dance about the bonfire. Like their leader, all were tall and silver haired and dressed in shades of green, but none matched the beauty of the Elf-King’s daughter. Around and around they went, casting herbs into the flames with each circle they made. Together they chanted the names of the herbs they threw: “Orris and herb of grace; dog rose and verbena. Plumeria and elder flowers; savory and avena.” Each herb caused the flames to roar upward and turned them a different color: orange, cobalt, deep purple, scarlet.
Karina and I exchanged glances. This dance was familiar to us, something we had seen many times. Karina had even been a part of it once or twice. I wondered if the purpose of the dance was the same here as it was in our village. For us, it was intended to show us our future husbands. The first male a girl saw after the dance was supposed to be her truelove. Of course, the boys and young men of the village knew to hide away from those girls they did not like, or to try to place themselves in the path of the ones they fancied, when the dance was ended. It was all a game, a part of the wild, joyous celebration of Midsummer, and no one took it seriously.
Here and now, though, the dance seemed very serious indeed. The elf women did not laugh or even smile as they circled the bonfire, and the face of the Elf-King’s daughter was set with purpose.
At the height of the dance, I felt a tug on my arms and was shocked to see our nisse. His face was grimly determined as he struggled with our bindings. Our wrists were rubbed raw where we had pulled vainly against the ropes, but the nisse had some small elvish magic to work with, it seemed. In a rasping voice he muttered strange words as he toiled, the first I had ever heard him speak. In a few minutes we were free, and we crept backward with the nisse, our eyes still fixed on the wild dance.
“Run,” the nisse commanded. “Run, and do not look back. Never tell what you have seen.”
Oh, how I longed to obey! But I remembered the changelings, the poor babies and children who must be missing their families. How could I leave them there? And I ached to think of Kai, his merry blue eyes and blond curls and the smile he saved only for me. I thought of the way he had looked when he’d said he did not want to herd sheep without me, and I knew all at once that I did not want to do anything—anything at all—without him. No, we would not abandon him to the Elf-King’s daughter.
“We must get Kai,” I said, and Karina nodded in agreement.
“He is lost to you,” the nisse said matter-of-factly. “There is nothing you can do for him. You can only save yourselves, you foolish girls.”
“He is not lost,” I said with a decisiveness I did not feel. “We’ll not go without him.”
The nisse rolled his eyes. “Humans!” he said, with both scorn and pity in his tone. “I cannot help you, then. I wish you luck, for you will need it!” With that he disappeared into the woods, and at that moment the music and wild movement of the dance ended.
The Elf-King’s daughter looked to the trees opposite us. Kai appeared, his face expressionless, and walked over to her as if pulled by an invisible chain. When he reached her, she placed a delicate hand atop Kai’s blond curls and spoke one word:
“Mine.”
Karina and I both cried out “No!” in a single breath. Ove barked furiously. But at a glance from the Elf-King’s daughter, he subsided and lay on the ground, whimpering. The ladies looked at us in great surprise.
“No?” the Elf-King’s daughter repeated gently. She laughed, a sound so lovely and contagious that again I had the urge to laugh as well and suppressed it only with the greatest effort.
“He—he is my brother,” Karina stammered.
“Then you shall be my dearest sister,” the Elf-King’s daughter said fondly to Karina. She laughed again, and despite myself I smiled. A look of tremendous confusion passed over Karina’s face. I thought that in her place I might give in, for the notion of being sister to the Elf-King’s daughter seemed at that moment something greatly to be desired. But I struggled against the idea; I would not give in to the elvish magic. Resolutely, I stepped forward.
“He is human, a mortal,” I said. “He is not one of you. You cannot have him.”
“I cannot?” the Elf-King’s daughter repeated. “I cannot? I
cannot
?” Her face twisted and changed in her fury, and all at once I could glimpse on her lovely features shadows of the terrible things she had seen and done in her endless lifetime. She seemed to grow larger and larger as her rage increased, and she towered above us as we shrank away from her. She raised her arm, and I was sure that whatever magic she summoned would be the end of us.
“Daughter, enough,” a voice commanded, and she froze, her arm still raised. Behind her stood her father, the Elf-King, in all his terrible magnificence. I could see now that his countenance was young and old at the same time, with all the beauty of youth and all the weariness and dissipation of age. His eyes were fathomless, pools of deepest green that had seen the passing of eons. When I looked at him, I knew with all my heart that I was looking at a great danger, and yet I could sense that even such a creature loved his daughter. He gazed at me as he had before, and this time I held his eyes with mine.