The song somehow made me feel ... oh, I don't know ... like a worthwhile person: brave and self-sufficient and naturally gracious—all the things I wanted to be and admired in others but had always suspected I could only pretend to be. The kind of person whose father would not ditch her and move to Hong Kong, no matter how he felt about her mother. All I needed to do was listen to that song, and I would be that complete person....
I came to my senses when I fell.
My hands smacked into the hard-packed sand, and that was the first I was aware I'd stood up from our hiding place behind the dune and had begun walking toward the shore. What had happened was that Brave Heart had grabbed the cuff of my jeans in his teeth and set his woolly butt down in the sand to hold me there.
Larry was flapping his wings in Eleni's face, which didn't seem to be doing much good about getting her attention as
she
started walking, wearing a dazed but happy expression on her face.
So Larry bit her nose.
"Ow!" Eleni finally stopped walking and rubbed her nose.
"Stick your fingers in your ears," Larry said. "You silly human girls seem susceptible to even Tiffanie's pathetic faux-mermaid warbling."
Wow. If that was fake, what would the real thing feel like?
Fingers in ears, we watched.
Down on the beach, one of the elves had come to the entryway of the cave. I waited for the other elves to join him, but none did. So maybe Larry was right, and we humans are easier to fool.
We had accounted for that in our plan: If all the elves came out, Tiffanie would lead them away while the rest of us went into the cave and released Julian and the dragon. But Tiffanie had warned that probably wouldn't happen, that she could imitate a siren song, but that it wouldn't be as potent as the real thing.
She kept on singing, and the lone elf kept on listening. Then, slowly, Tiffanie started swimming, parallel to the shore but toward where the beach curved away, out of sight of the cave. She'd told us that a real mermaid would be able to make the elves walk out into the water until they drowned, though a real mermaid wouldn't as they're friendly with elves. In any case, Tiffanie's song wouldn't be that powerful: Any elves who followed it would come to their senses—if not at the feel of the cold sea, at least when they started choking on the water.
"Good," Eleni had said. "We don't need to be killing anyone."
I wasn't quite sure how I felt about the idea of drowning—or of not being able to drown—our enemies. Which was not how that good, perceptive, self-confident person I wanted to be would feel. I realized the person I wanted to be was Eleni.
Now, though it meant leaving our ears unplugged, she and I grabbed up a stone each and took off running. I was mentally singing Christmas carols—the songs whose lyrics came most readily to mind—to block out the siren song. Brave Heart and Larry came with us, but Eleni and I were the ones who were going to have to act. My chest and stomach and head hurt from anticipation. It was one thing to think it would be easier for us if this guy drowned, it was another to bash him over the head.
We came up the beach behind the elf, still held captive by Tiffanie's singing and totally oblivious to us. We knew that we were supposed to knock him out.
How hard is hard enough?
I wondered.
In the movies, people are always bonking other people on the head. Sometimes, like in murder mysteries, what looks like a minor tap results in accidental death. Other times, like in horror films, you have to keep bashing away, and then the person still gets up and comes after you.
I waited for Eleni to strike him first.
But she was holding back, waiting for me.
I'd never hit anyone before—not intentionally, not stronger than an elbow in my friend Shelley's ribs once in a while to get her attention when she was being particularly obnoxious about something. I'd once accidentally hit Nancy Jean in the back of the head with a copy of Strunk and White's
Elements of Style
that I was trying to toss to Anna behind her in study hall, but it's a paperback, and even then it's only about a hundred pages. Nancy Jean carried on about needing a paramedic to check her out, but she gave herself away because she specified she needed a handsome,
young
paramedic.
In the water, Tiffanie was making come-on-what's-the-delay? gestures at us with her hands because the elf was too far away for her to use her stop-action spell. Luckily, he still didn't turn around to see us.
I looked at the stone in my hand. I wanted to just throw the thing at the guy, but I know what my aim is like: If I let go of the stone, I would have been more likely to hit Eleni than the elf.
I drew my arm back.
Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Eleni draw her arm back, too.
I swung.
Eleni swung.
I missed entirely, somehow or other not being close enough to him.
Eleni closed her eyes at the last second, and lost track of where she was aiming. She gave his ear a good, hard clip.
The elf staggered, but at the same time whirled around. He went for his sword, which—we lucked out—he didn't have with him, as he must have taken it off to sit down for his meal.
But he did have a knife, which he now whipped out, and—equally dangerous—I saw him open his mouth to call out a warning to the others back at the cave.
A bundle of snarling wool leaped past me and hit the elf in the chest, knocking him backward, flat on his back on the ground. Brave Heart stood on the elf's chest, looking much more menacing than a fuzzy ball of high-grade sweater should.
The elf had not only had the breath knocked out of him, he had dropped the knife, and Eleni dashed in to swoop it up from the ground, which I thought was incredibly brave of her.
"Twitch, and I'll slit your throat," she said, and he had no way of knowing what an empty threat that was.
I knelt on the ground on the other side of him, holding a big rock over his head as though seriously considering knocking his brains out, which I thought was incredibly brave of
me.
"Good Fluffy," I told Brave Heart. All the while what I wanted to do was shout out:
My grandma kicks butt!
Tiffanie waded back to shore. Despite the fact that it was only us and an enemy elf present, she had made herself look like the gorgeous elf shepherdess again. Like the gorgeous
dry
elf shepherdess, though the perfectly arranged hair was obviously an illusion since
something
was dripping seawater onto me. Tiffanie held her hand up in traffic cop fashion, and the elf froze.
Larry took the opportunity to land on the guy's forehead, where he did a happy dance along the lines of a football player who's scored the winning touchdown, and taunted the elf, calling him, "Sissy girl."
"Get those vines," Tiffanie ordered us, and Eleni and I scrambled to get enough to tie him up with. "And seaweed for his mouth."
Yuck.
I could tell when she let go of the spell, for he struggled against his bindings, though we had him so tightly wrapped he obviously wasn't going anywhere. Larry finally flew off his face and onto Eleni's shoulder, and Fluffy the attack sheep finally uncurled his snarl and stepped off the elf's chest.
"Don't make me regret not killing you," Tiffanie told the elf, and that settled him a bit.
She gave a tired
huff
and I was reminded, yet again, that no matter what she looked like and no matter what her magic powers were, she was an old, wet, tired lady.
And we still had five more elves to get out of the way.
To say nothing of the dragon.
Part two of our plan started with Tiffanie changing Brave Heart's appearance from Fluffy the sheep to the kind of wolf who would eat Little Red Riding Hood, her grandmother,
and
the woodcutter.
"Run fast," Tiffanie reminded him for about the fifth time, "because elves are legendary in their skill with the bow. But don't run
too
fast, because we don't want them giving up the chase and coming back here. Besides, I've got to be able to keep up, too, just in case you get in trouble."
Brave Heart, who seemed besotted with her, licked her hand, and Tiffanie crouched down to hug him.
Then she turned to me.
Obviously
to talk, not to hug. "Your turn," she said, but if that was supposed to give me enough time to brace myself, it only gave me enough time for my stomach to tighten. The spell crept over me, like a hundred cats giving me a tongue-bath.
I looked down at myself and saw that I'd turned as black as ... well, as black as a shadow, which is what I was supposed to be. It was disconcerting because I was still three-dimensional, the spell being only a glamour, but Tiffanie assured me that in the cave, lit only by witchlight, I would melt into the ... uhm, shadows.
Eleni hugged me. "Be careful," she whispered.
Since Larry was still perched on her shoulder, he overheard the concern in her voice, and he chimed in with advice of his own: "Don't do anything stupid." He seemed to decide that was too much to ask of me and added, "If you can help it."
Tiffanie, showing more warmth for me than usual, asked, "You still here?" and wiggled her fingers for me to go.
I crept across the sand dunes. Literally. That way, if any of the remaining elves happened to glance out of the cave—like, for example, to say,
Hey, I wonder whatever happened to old what's-his-name who left to follow the mermaid song?
—they wouldn't spot a big,
standing-up-in-the-air, girl-shaped shadow striding toward them. If I was on the ground, we hoped they wouldn't notice me at all; and if they did see me, horizontal rather than vertical, the idea was that they would take my shape for the shadow of one of the scrubby beach bushes, which I was supposed to try to stay near—even though that just about doubled the time I was spending out in the open—or of one of the clouds scudding overhead.
Larry was my lookout. Still in the form of a wren, he flew nearby so that he could keep an eye on the cave entrance while I kept my head down and concentrated on crawling. If he spotted any of the elves, he was supposed to call out a warning, and I would stop moving and flatten myself into the sand.
I was grateful that, when they'd come up with this plan, Eleni had told Tiffanie about how I'd hurt my knee when I'd fallen off the curb in 1953. Tiffanie had done a spell—which felt sort of like rubbing a banana peel on my knee—and my knee had been healed. In about five seconds. With only the faintest scar. The sand was gritty enough on my skin. Even the thought of it grinding into an open wound hurt.
Larry chirped like a wren and I flattened.
Then I heard, close by, a long, loud wolf howl.
Even expecting it, I got goose bumps. Brave Heart made a much more convincing wolf than a sheep.
I finally raised my eyes and saw that Larry hadn't been warning that the elves were watching, but had been letting me know I had reached the side of the cliff wall whose front had the huge crack that formed the cave entrance. Basically, Larry had been saying good-bye. Thanks for the heart attack, Larry. And he'd flown back to tell the others I was in position. We'd already spotted a scrubby little tree coming out of the rock right by the opening and decided that would make a good hiding place. I stood bent at an angle in its shadow, pressing myself against the cliff wall, hoping no one would notice what a fat shadow that little tree cast.
Brave Heart howled again.
I couldn't help myself: I tipped my head slightly to see him sitting on the crest of the sand dune we'd hid behind earlier, his head thrown back, howling at the sun rather than at the moon. Very impressive.
I heard the elves falling all over themselves to get to the cave opening, to learn what was going on. It was a wide opening, with more than enough room for the three who clustered there. Berrech wasn't among them, nor did any of them look old enough to be Berrech's father, Vediss.
Come on, you slugs,
I thought.
Investigate. Step away from the cave.
From inside, someone—Vediss, I guessed, because I thought I'd recognize Berrech's voice—asked, incredulous, "A wolf? Here?"
Tiffanie had explained that dragons and wolves do not get along well enough to share territory, and that there shouldn't be wolves anywhere near Dragons' Cove. Apparently the elves knew this, too.
"Yeah," one of the others said. "Staggering about like it's sick."
That had been part of Brave Heart's instructions. Healthy wolves don't normally prey on humans or elves, but there was no telling what a diseased wolf might do.
One of the three elves went back into the cave and came back out with a bow and arrows; but, anticipating this, Brave Heart had slipped back below the crest of the dune. He howled again.
"It's gone," one of the three complained.
"Might come back," said the one with the bow. "Might sneak up on us unawares."
They had a minor discussion. Now I did hear Berrech, though from where I was hiding I couldn't see him. He asked about someone and was told he'd "gone off chasing a mermaid." This did not amuse
Berrech who, it sounded like, didn't approve of much, including mermaids.
"Frivolous nonsense," he muttered. Then he said, "All right," and named one of them, "you go and track that wolf."
We'd been hoping at least two would go, and fortunately one of the elves must have been getting the cave equivalent of cabin fever, for he pointed out that it's always wise for two to hunt together "in case of eventualities."
"All right, all right," Berrech grumbled, in bad humor. "Though that leaves few of us here—'in case of eventualities.'"
The voice that had to be Vediss's tried to calm him. "No one knows about this place," he soothed his son. "No one will be coming here. Come, let us finish."
The elf with the bow and the elf who wanted to accompany him took off across the dunes.
In theory, Larry should have been somewhere in the vicinity of the dune but watching the cave, to warn Brave Heart that the elves were on the move. Unfortunately, Larry was too small for me to see from this distance—even with my new, improved Kazaran Dahaani eyesight—so I could only hope he hadn't wandered off looking for spreenie amusements elsewhere.