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Sitting back on my haunches, I watched Sal gently arrange my cloak and traveling dress across the saddle before securing them with a leather strap.
She swiftly mounted and clicked to the horse, taking off at a gallop.
Her mount neither spooked nor startled as I loped alongside, further narrowing my ruminations about her identity. Faster and faster, she galloped through the trees as I gave chase. Every pattern she set, I mimicked, no matter how complex.
We were no longer running but playing.
Dodging and weaving through the trees, setting in possible paces and challenges in the course until, at last, we reached a clearing and slowed near a massive oak with roots as thick as giants’ fingers. I stared open-mawed as an owl hooted somewhere in the darkness, calling to its mate from further in the ominous-looking forest.
Sal dismounted and looped the reins over one of the low-hanging branches. “Might want to lose the fur,” she said. “Elves aren’t very keen on your kind.”
I waited until she held out my dress to release the wolf back into the wild of my mind.
“I’ll just have the cloak,” I said, the idea of being strapped back into a corset sounding like a unique form of hell after my exhilarating run. “Presentable enough?” I asked.
The corner of her mouth curled upward as she tugged a twig from my hair and flicked it to our feet. “It’s been stuck in your fur since the rock pass,” she said, stepping around me. “I’d have pulled it out earlier but couldn’t reach you from the saddle.”
Had she been looking at me that closely all that time?
Such a strange sensation this was after barely drawing my brother’s notice for longer than I could remember.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“This is where we’re staying tonight.”
I glanced around at the dozens of glowing yellow eyes peering at us through the trees.
“Ye’re oot yer mind if you think I’m sleeping out here.” While I didn’t fancy myself a princess, I had acquired a taste for certain creature comforts.
Like a roof.
“Not out here. In there.” Approaching the tree’s gigantic trunk, Sal considered the gnarly mass of knots climbing its base and pressed her finger firmly into the center of the largest.
“Secret door?” I asked.
Sal raised a dark eyebrow at me. “The doorbell.”
Sure enough, a small section of the tree bark creaked inward. The creature who stared out in no way resembled the elegant beings I had always pictured when elves were mentioned. Instead, with bulbous features, a lumpy red nose, and pointed ears sporting impressive white tufts of hair, the creature looked more like a storybook ogre in miniature than anything I’d envisioned as an elf.
“Password?” he rasped in a voice that suggested he might gargle glass.
Sal’s lips flattened in annoyance. “Don’t pull that shit with me, Brian. I know damn well there is no password.”
“Is now,” he said.
“If no one ever gave me the password, how am I supposed to give it to you?” Sal asked.
“If no one gave it to you, I’m guessing Ernie doesn’t want you here.” The door slammed shut with a crack that resounded across the meadow.
Sal glanced beyond her to where I stood, shivering beneath my cloak.
“He’s such a cockbiscuit,” she grumbled, jamming her finger into the bell again.
The door creaked open to reveal another elf with remarkably similar features and a pointy red hat atop his shiny skull.
“Password?” he croaked.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Sal said. “I’ve been here no less than seventy-eight times, David. You know who I am and why I’m here. Now let us in before I pull your nostrils over your head and hurl you like a bocce ball.”
