Once, Long Ago
After a hundred prayers Saeldian had whispered at the wishing rock, an elf finally appeared in the wood. The elf—a man with long pale hair snagged by twigs, the hem of his fluttering dark robes tattered around muddy boots—walked inside the clearing where Saeldian sat as if he had known about it, but he paused when he saw that he was not alone.
The elf watched Saeldian as Saeldian watched the elf: as if neither of them could quite believe their luck. Could it be? Couldhebe?
His hair was too light, but Saeldian had their mother’s dark frizzy curls. His skin was too pale too, but Saeldian spent every moment outside. He didn’t look like he fed geese or pulled weeds. He looked fancy, and rich—richer than anyone Saeldian had ever seen before.
Saeldian had pressed their fingers into the newest bruise Mr. Wheeler had left and wished as hard as they’d ever wished. And then this elf had come to Saeldian’s wishing rock: a little clearing where the aspens stood in a ring and gazed at the flat sandstone slab in the center. Perhaps it had not been a deer that hadflattened the grass and the bluebells after all, but their wish come true.
“Good morning,” the elf said.
“Are you my father?” Saeldian asked.
The elf backed up half a step.
All those wishes for nothing, then. All those bruises pressed to carry the wish away on something, all those times Saeldian imagined their father coming back, how he would take their hand and lead them away from the mean little house where their mother lived and the mean little man who hated them. But all their wishes had never worked, never.
“Oh, my dear,” the elf said, and his voice was soft and beautiful. “How alone you are.”
He dropped to his knees in the bluebells beside Saeldian then, his careful hand on their shoulder. “You are young. Cry. It’s all right. You’ve had quite a day.”
His handkerchief was soft and clean, and he patted their tears patiently. He lifted their arm and traced his finger over the purple-over-green bruises and said, “Who did this to you?”
“Mr. Wheeler,” Saeldian said. “My mother’s husband.”
The elf tilted his head. “Ah. I understand. Your father was an elf.”
“But you’re not him.”
The elf smoothed Saeldian’s hair away from their gently pointed ear. “No, little elf-human. I’ve never been this way before. But you were hoping, were you not, for someone to come?”
Saeldian looked up. “How did you know?”
“Because I’m here.” The elf lifted one arm to catch the sunlight in his hand. His fingers curled and spread, and the sunlight became fluttering wings. A yellow butterfly came near the sunlit double, curious.
“Magic!”
He smiled at Saeldian’s amazement. “Indeed. Have you seen magic before?”
“I saw a storyteller once. She made things disappear and reappear. But real things, not made of light.”
“That sounds like clever tricks.” He turned his hand palm downso delicately, and the sunlight became a leaf, shivering so much that Saeldian thought they could hear it whisper too.
“Not real magic, like yours.”
He winked and flourished his fingers. A coin rested on his palm. “Sometimes the trick to make something look like it vanished is even better than a spell.”
He turned his hand over. The coin never fell. He showed them his empty palm, then showed them the coin in his other hand. “See? A trick. But a trick can do things that magic cannot.”
“How did you do that?”
He winked. “It’s a secret. But as I was saying. I’m hopelessly lost. I had nothing to guide me here but a feeling. I liked this place. It felt secret. Your secret, I see.”
“I don’t mind,” Saeldian rushed to assure him. “Maybe it’s a fey place.”
“I believe you’re right,” the elf said after surveying the wishing rock and the whispering aspens. “I could step back into the Feywild from here. That rock would do for a way in or out.”
“Are you from the Feywild, Mister?”
