8 Chapter 8

During the following weeks, Deborah found herself without a place to live. Business had gone from bad to worse at Murphy's, and with little or no income, she was unable to pay for her room above the strip bar.

It was an unseasonable warm, wet stormy January. The temperature hovered around the freezing mark, and rain mixed with snow fell steadily. The roof of Ralph's dilapidated house began to leak so badly that in places the ceiling was in danger of collapsing. The damp, drafty, musty-smelling dwelling was soon full of various incessant, irritably irrythmic plunks, plops and plinks of water dripping into assorted pots, pans, pails, and other miscellaneous containers.

At Doc Wallace's suggestion, the three of them, Deborah, Ralph, and Malina, moved into his home. He certainly had room enough, and to do so was hardly a major undertaking as there was little besides clothing to transport. Deborah herself lived out of a suitcase, and Ralph did not want to bring anything out of the house that had belonged to his parents, with the exception of a few boxes of irreplaceable family photos.

Ralph too had heard that his job was in jeopardy. The company he worked for was considering selling out to a conglomerate with its own operation. The loss of his family farm now appeared inevitable, and his removal to Doc's house only served to reinforce the impression that everything he owned was slipping through his fingers.

Doc was understandably concerned over their plight, having witnessed the demise of far too many small towns and the types of small businesses that were their life's blood. In Deborah's case, however, he thought it just as well; though she was able to eke out a living as a dancer, the money was sporadic, and hardly worth the sordid lifestyle that went along with it. Ralph, on the other hand, was now faced with selling his parents' property, which at present was next to worthless. It would no doubt languish on the open market, only to be snapped up by some heartless, predatory real-estate type after the place had been foreclosed upon.

It was not long after Malina came to live under his roof that Doc found himself considering that he might be forced to reassess his ideas concerning her a full one-hundred-eighty degrees. A friend at the police station had run Malina's fingerprints, and was told that as far as the local, national and international databases were concerned, the owner of the prints simply didn't exist. Besides, they were the strangest set of prints his friend had ever laid eyes on. Doc's friend had asked him if he was pulling her leg.

As to Malina's language, Doc was told that if the words she spoke were truly a language, then it must have been one she'd made up herself, because no such language existed, or had ever existed.

Then there was her strange physiology. He received a worried call from the radiology clinic concerning several "abnormalities". The radiologist had assumed from the patient's "condition" that she must be at death's door.

For several days, Doc found himself unable to make sense of the pieces of this puzzle. They only fit together if he took Malina at her word; something he was not prepared to do.

Eventually, he decided to try a different tack. It seemed to him that Malina's language somehow lay at the heart of the matter. If her language was one that she'd made up, then it would fall apart under careful scrutiny, as would the rest of her story. The result of this line of thinking was that he immediately went to work figuring out Malina's language. He set about the complex task (most would have said daunting) of organising her speech into sounds and letters first, then into words and phrases. Malina claimed to know several languages, but it soon turned out that there were two main languages that she used most often; what she claimed to be her Pixie tongue, and that which she claimed to be the Elven dialect spoken where she lived, having indicated to Doc that Humans and Dwarves who travelled to the Elf Kingdom usually spoke that same dialect, as it was widely known. He set aside the other languages for the time being.

When Doc had compiled a good part of both the Elven and Pixie languages, he sent them to a certain well-known linguist and old university chum. The reply he received was disquieting.

Dear James:

Good to hear from you, as always. I have sent along a list of corrections; your translation is not altogether accurate, though surprisingly good for an amateur. My previous appraisal of these languages (and I apologize for my abruptness in claiming otherwise) was also not altogether accurate.

Although neither language is known, it has become obvious to me that they are directly related to a number of ancient European languages which predate written history.

Having said that, I must ask you for news concerning the source of your discovery. The entire languages department has found this information invaluable, in that we are now able to infer a clearer picture of the movements, interactions and migrations of several groups of pre-historic Europeans . . .

Speechless, Doc set the letter down and considered Malina for several long moments. She lay on her chest in the middle of the living-room floor watching television. Smoky lay beside her, dozing. They had spent the better part of the morning playing "chase-the-pom-pom".

He was beginning to share, however reluctantly, something of Ralph and Deborah's concern for her. Despite appearances, she was not simply some lost little waif. She was neither sheltered nor naïve. She met the hard truths of life and death philosophically, and didn't flinch from the facts. Like everyone, she was the product of whatever culture she had come from, and was dealing with her new life the best way she knew how.

'Well, my dear,' he said to himself, 'it seems that it's time we began taking you more seriously.'

Under Doc's direction, Ralph and Deborah began helping Malina with her English vocabulary, and Doc showed Malina much that she was having difficulty with, like the "l" in Ralph, and the "th" in months. Doc owned an ancient roll-top desk made of oak which stood in a corner of his living room. He had fond memories from his childhood of that ancient over-carved leviathan, for it had been his great-grandmother's, back in the days when penmanship meant something. For many years now it had been sitting off to one corner collecting dust. But with Malina's presence it had once more become a vital part of the household.

Doc learned a great deal about Malina simply by watching her work. There was a reverence in her attitude, even in her movements, towards books and the written word. Her initial efforts were so much awkwardly childish scrawl; she had not the slightest trace of a writing callous, nor so much as a rudimentary understanding of how to apply pen to paper. But she learned quickly, with surprising diligence, as though making up for lost time.

There was a poignant moment when Malina discovered one of Doc's long-forgotten attempts at writing what he called "bum poetry", which in truth was really a form of prose. What touched him deeply was not so much the fact that she read it over and over many times, but that it meant so much to her that she committed it to memory.

Chiaroscuro

by James Irving Wallace

White silence has fallen, becoming the landscape all in itself.

Haloed by ice-crystals, the full moon hangs suspended in darkness above a frozen lake, its opaque reflection at once dreamlike; timeless.

Disturbed solely by the cracking of the land's arthritic bones, the gelid night becomes a lens of ice, magnifying cold and bitter solitude. Through this invisible boundary of curved planes passes the light of stars; an unsteady flickering light, pale and hard, a light which illuminates nothing, except, perhaps, its own enigmatic purpose.

There is, on the horizon, the grey silhouette of a country church and its attendant graveyard. The church is a small, fragile wooden box with darkened windows, with doors locked and walls whitewashed against the stain of human need. It at once appears spectral, devoid of substance, as though its promise of eternal life were an empty one; yet the standing stones of the graveyard appear permanent, the smaller cousins of some ancient forgotten civilization

Dawn. A blush of colour, and a false promise of warmth.

Yellow stubble juts through its thin crust of snow; the open prairie is as tired, rough, and unshaven as its inhabitants.

From inside farmhouses with unpainted exteriors and sagging roofs come the muffled sounds of pots and pans, and dry kindling being split. Soon, grey-white smoke billows from chimneys, stoked by eternally tired and long-suffering women in print dresses and aprons. Within each house and without, eyes open. Movement begins. Before breakfast, old men, remembering days when their labour was useful, are outside shovelling a path through last night's snow. In the barns and under shelters, livestock, huddled together for warmth, shake off quiet and sleep, and remember as they do every morning, that they are hungry.

Dawn passes. The illusion of warmth fades, revealing an ash-coloured sky. Fire crackles. Burning wood shifts in the belly of the stove. The kettle hisses like a tired old cat until lifted; shortly, hot water steams from its upraised elephantine snout into a bowl of dry cereal. Stumbling sleepy-eyed, woolly-socked, sweatered and denim-clad, issuing forth from the darkened tunnel that is the hallway, we gather in the grey light of the small kitchen, greeted by the smells of wood-smoke, bacon, coffee, and ancient worn linoleum. Half-noticed sounds punctuate the business at hand; the floor creaks; a chair shifts; a newspaper rustles; the percolator gurgles; the toaster springs; utensils occasionally clank or scrape against plates. A cup of coffee, stirred vigorously, rings like a porcelain bell before being carefully lifted towards cautious lips. Events of yesterday, half-forgotten, lay thick about, while in the living moment, anticipation and routine are one and the same.

Day has begun. As though concealing some hidden profound truth, all across the firmament, grey tattered clouds like the ragged sails of a shipwreck, part to reveal the presence of a pale blue sky, as smooth and round as a robin's egg. Beneath our feet, like a hard reminder of the difference between truth and the sort of illusion that all-too-many call hope, the earth's uneven black crust is hard and barren. Though the sun appears briefly, echoing through the storm-strewn heavens like a fanfare of trumpets, the only sounds that reach our ears are those of the prairie wind and the dull clanging of the church bell, which together, instead of instilling hope, serve as a reminder that each peal brings us a heartbeat closer to death and silent oblivion. We gather and listen to the words of the minister; words about damnation and redemption; about eternal life and reward for human suffering; about a just, magical, and powerful God; and though we would like to believe, to our ears, his words sound like those of a man falling into the abyss, as he promises to those above that he will catch them even as they fall. But he is a good and kind man, all the same, and when his sermon is over, we thank him, more for trying than anything else, I think.

Inevitably and all too soon, another brief day comes to a poignant end. As though trying to remember the imagined lost glory of youth, or simply because it is faced with impending death, the day expends its last moments in haunting, ephemeral images of heartbreaking beauty and innocence; cold ash-grey clouds stoke themselves into life once more, blazing like some would-be creator's brand-new forge, for a time making the world look as it must have done when it was new; like a Baroque painting on a cathedral ceiling that has somehow, impossibly, come to life; only to burn itself out once more, this time forever; to fade by unmeasurable degrees until it merges with the growing and inexorable darkness.

The mercury plummets. Breath comes in frozen gasps. Cold bites. Brings tears. A cup of hot cocoa passes from hand to hand. Night falls once more. Above the church, darkness and the moon contemplate one other, two worlds forever separate. Alongside, however, the indivisible world of the little graveyard has somehow been carved from that same moonglow and darkness.

The world grows silent. Eyes close.

And all is dreaming. And all is dreaming.

Malina's Pixie language was far more basic than the Elven tongue, and Doc soon suspected that Malina's knowledge of the Elven tongue was far from complete. As his linguist friend had indicated, the "Pixie" tongue (Doc had wisely refrained from naming it in his correspondence) was undoubtedly the root language that the "Elven" tongue was derived from. Many Elven words had a Pixie word as their root, but split into many other forms and derivatives from there. For example, in Pixie, there was only one word for "love", which was mio. There was no single Elven word for "love". A love of life was miolis, and the love for a mate was mioli, and so on. Malina knew perhaps ten of these very general examples, so Doc knew there must be more.

Doc Wallace began to realize, as soon as he began tackling Malina's language, that no one could fake the difficulties she had with English so consistently, and he soon discovered from examining her language why she had trouble with certain words. Neither Pixie nor Elvish used as many hard or closed consonants as appeared in English, and certainly neither language used consonants that were not separated by vowels. On the other hand, Malina's "l" was very difficult and unnatural for the others to pronounce, having no English equivalent.

His doubt began to turn to misgiving. All attempts to identify Malina's languages ended in utter failure, yet there was no possibility that they were clever fabrications. As well, in dealing with what he half-expected to be some sort of psychiatric problem, when applying his usual method of detection, which was to take whatever the patient told him at face value, all the while taking note of any obvious abnormalities in the form of dissociative behaviour or discrepancies in judgement as they made themselves apparent, there, too, he came up empty-handed.

Other than a little shyness, Malina's mental health was apparently sound beyond question. And either she was a brilliant closet linguist or the languages she spoke were real. Doc was forced, albeit reluctantly, to dismiss the former possibility altogether. Linguists, he well knew, were, without exception, literate to an extreme.

'Well, Sir Doyle,' he muttered to himself in frustration, 'you're Holmsian axiom is really beginning to get under my skin.'

For a time, Malina became very reticent when she was in Ralph's presence, her mien appearing almost sullen, though the truth was that she was trying to conceal her mortification, chagrin, and disbelief, after Deborah explained to her in full gory detail how babies were made. Still, Deborah often caught her glancing at Ralph covertly, her look timidly speculative.

Thinking that Ralph was oblivious to Malina's feelings, Deborah one day decided to broach the subject. She caught up with him when he was outside shovelling the first good fall of dry snow from the walks. To her surprise, he hardly skipped a beat. His only reaction was a slight but unmistakeable hesitation in the rhythm of his work.

'So, you finally noticed.'

'Yes, well . . . aren't you going to do something about it?'

'Nope.'

'Just like that? Nope?'

'Nope.'

Annoyed, Deborah said, 'Why not?'

'She's just a kid, for one thing-'

'She is not She's about the same age I am '

'For another thing, she has a lot of personal problems. In my book, relationships are something you work on after sorting out your personal problems.'

Stung, she replied, 'That never seemed to stop you where I was concerned.'

'That was different, and you know it,' he replied firmly. 'In your case, we both know what your problems are, and we tried to work together to fix them, or at least work through them. But Malina . . . she's like a little kid; she doesn't know anything beyond the fact that "she wants something," or "she needs something".

'For another thing, how can you be sure that you and I aren't going to get back together? You keep breaking it off, saying "This is it," then you turn around one day and it's as though nothing's changed between us. I know you, don't forget. You can't stand there and tell me that you can guarantee which way your feelings are going to go from one month or one week or even one day to the next. And don't give me that hurt look I'm not saying this stuff to be mean; I'm saying it because you and I both know that it's true.'

'Yeah, well, there's one big difference this time,' she said. 'Stop, damn you Just stand still for a minute and listen to me.'

He did so, leaning on the shovel, his breath steaming in the cold afternoon sun.

'The difference,' she told him, 'is that she needs you. Don't forget, I know you well too. Whether you realise it or not, you need her in your life.

'Me, that's another story. I can't have a real relationship because I can't get past my own problems. They're the sort of problems that make me into a selfish person, because I'm always having to spend so much time trying to fix what's wrong with me inside. When your life's like that, things like relationships get pushed aside.

'But Malina's different from me that way. Her . . . focus, or whatever you want to call it, is not on what's going on inside her; it's on what's going on outside.

'The difference between us is that I need answers; she needs stability. She needs you.'

Ralph began shovelling once more, but said, 'It's never that simple. Look, you forget; I've got my hangups too. It's hard for me to be around her. She makes me feel like a creep all the time. It's like she's too good to be true, and if I got involved, I'd only take something sweet and innocent and end up wrecking it without trying to. Look, if I've learned anything, it's that there are more subtle and unintentional forms of doing harm than what that Rory character did to her. I'm afraid of hurting her without meaning to, which means I wouldn't know I'd done it until it was too late.'

She looked away from him in hurt frustration as he said this. When he spoke this way, she felt acutely out of her emotional depth, recognising his maturity for what it was, but being utterly unable to comprehend or relate to it. She had missed entirely the note of self-reproach in his voice, which, if she had known it, was there on her behalf.

'Besides,' he added, his expression strained with conflicting emotions, 'you know that I can't stand instability. I can take it from you . . . well . . . because we've known each other for so long; I know where it comes from. But with Malina . . .' he paused a moment to rest his back.

'She doesn't seem to know where to draw the line with people. How could you even think of encouraging me to have a relationship with someone who can't trust herself not to jump in the sack with any guy who wants her?'

'I don't think it's quite like that,' Deborah muttered. 'What happened last month . . . I think it happened because she didn't know what was going on-' Ralph's pitying look almost caused her to burst into angry tears. It was the same look he had given her many times over the years, when confronted with the disastrous results of her own misguided feelings. 'I'm serious ' Deborah told him, not because she was, but rather because she couldn't help responding to his certainty by making a lame, defensive effort to attempt to make him think that he "just didn't get it". 'Look, she didn't even know where babies came from until I told her. Now I wish I'd just kept my mouth shut. She was so freaked when I told her that she's hardly said two words since.'

Ralph watched her speculatively as she spoke, then went back to shovelling.

'If that's true, then she needs someone to look after her,' he replied quietly. 'But that "someone" isn't me. Hell, I can hardly look after myself ' He stopped once more, gesturing. 'I mean, look at us Take a good look. This town, everything in it, and our lives, are falling apart, and here we are, living off Doc's good graces in the bargain. If I'm going to have someone in my life, I need someone who can help me out, tow the line, hold her own, without me having to worry about how she's making out all the time. That's part of the reason that you and I were together. As screwed up as things got, I could always depend on you, at least to take care of yourself. Hell, I can't even bloody go to work unless I know that someone's around to look after her-' He became silent. Deborah stood stiffly, arms folded, face averted, tears welling in her eyes. 'C'mere, you,' he muttered thickly, dropped the shovel, and took her in his arms. She pressed herself to him, clinging tightly, began weeping in earnest. 'I know,' he said softly. 'Who the hell am I kidding? It used to be the same with you. The truth is, if things had worked out differently, if only I'd been able to afford it, you would have been able to stay at home, and I could have looked after you properly. I'm sorry . . . things just didn't work out like they should have.'

As close as they were at that moment, they both knew that life's experiences had created an abyss between them, an unbroachable gulf of lines crossed and compromises made. That there was no possible way of going back.

When Deborah had finally composed herself, she began making her way towards the house. 'Well, Malina,' she thought to herself, feeling unspeakably empty and old beyond her years, 'I hope you end up being luckier than I am.'

During the following week, a neighbour called by in the middle of the night, explaining to Doc that the phones were out because of the weather, and that there was a young woman living out of town who was about to give birth.

It had been many years since Doc helped deliver a brand new life into the world. It brought to mind a good many forgotten feelings and memories, and with them came a very painful sense of loss. He was inadvertently forced to remember people that he had once cared very much about, who had either died, grown up and moved away, or who had simply moved on. Tied to this somehow was the feeling that he and his young friends were refugees from God alone knew what.

Thinking his young charges had far too much time on their hands, Doc made a project of drilling Ralph and Deborah in both languages until they thought they could recite Pixie or Elf in their sleep. Doc was surprisingly adept when it came to memorising all the vocabulary Malina could think of, and he was soon as fluent in the Elven tongue as she; more so, perhaps, because he was ready to probe into much that Malina did not know, that he knew must be there.

Ralph worked harder than he ever had in his life at learning her two languages. It was only fair, he reasoned. Besides, he had little enough to do, and this was the nearest thing available to him which made him feel as though he was earning his keep under Doc's roof.

Deborah wasn't sure why she was doing this. It wasn't just out of friendship, and it certainly wasn't because she believed that either language was real. She wasn't even sure what she thought of Malina's story, despite what she'd seen. Yet in a way, she felt caught up in something much larger than herself, something indefinable that she had to see her way through.

Deborah had been a dancer since she ran away from home at fourteen. Like many girls in her situation, she had managed to obtain fake I.D., and if the clubs she and her friends worked in knew her true age, they were silent about it. She was eighteen now, though she felt twice that age sometimes.

The girls her age seldom, if ever, spoke of their past. Perhaps equally significant was the unspoken jealous camaraderie which existed between them, often in spite of their reckless lifestyle, and the ugly social conflicts which were commonly experienced in their trade, whether it was a brush with a law that was not designed to serve and protect them, or an encounter with the predacious types who stalked such young women.

Deborah knew much about such predators, as did her sisters, as they often referred to each other. It was in avoiding and dealing with such people that girls like herself inadvertently came into contact with each other, banding together for their own protection. As often as not, these very men were the club owners the girls had to work for. Or they might be friends of the owner, who were often drug-dealers, pimps, and bikers.

In Deborah's case, it was through her own parents that she had learned to be wary of such people. Her mother was a politician, her father a well-to-do businessman, and in their home they subjected Deborah to perverse ritualized parodies of that which they practiced on the general public during the course of their professional lives.

Their abuse had begun when she was ten; she could remember all of it in every minute detail, right down to smells, the weather, the temperature outside and the date. It was as immediate to her as though it had occurred only moments ago, and the pain of it was like a raw nerve which underlay everything she was, undermining her life in every imaginable way and at every turn, and dogging her feelings with the constant promise of irremediable pain, should ever she allow her thoughts to stray there, the way one's tongue might inadvertently explore a sore tooth.

This was the true reason that she could never form a lasting relationship with Ralph. When they were first together, being with him had lulled her into feeling safe, comfortable, and secure. But the unresolved struggle taking place within her would then assert itself, opportunistically taking advantage the moment her guard was down, assaulting her senses with horrible memories and feelings that tainted and dogged every corner of her life at every turn. The price of her experiences was that she could not help but feel that her sense of safety and comfort automatically became a setup for betrayal, to lure her into letting her guard down. In this way, security became a subtle trap, where she would make a commitment to someone, only to find herself smothering from the lack of freedom that came with making commitments; not personal freedom, but rather freedom from the consequences of her own mangled feelings.

No, it was best to leave such things alone altogether. To not think about them. Better to party and dance and drink all night, before falling into an exhausted and dreamless slumber . . . a state of being where her personal demons, too, were rendered insensate.

This much she and her friends had in common. And though she and her friends never spoke directly about the things that had affected their lives, still they had a saying: Even cannibals don't eat their own young.

Before Ralph, she had had two relationships; one with a truck driver nearly twenty years her senior, who, when they moved in together, had beat her senseless and terrorized her for half a year. The other had lasted only a couple of weeks. He was a smooth-talking type that tried getting her hooked on drugs, intending, she later found out, to turn her into a prostitute.

She had known Ralph since she was eight; her eldest brother and Ralph were in the same grade in school. They were not friends. Eddie used to beat up on Deborah, until he tried it in front of Ralph.

Ralph had not beat up on Eddie. He simply took Eddie aside, and said about three words to him. Eddie had turned very pale, and glared at Deborah as though he would have liked to kill her. But he never laid a hand on her again.

Life was full of strange little twists of fate. When Eddie quit high-school in grade ten he got married and went to work as a bouncer in a sleazy bar in a big city. He was killed three months later, trying to stop a fight between two patrons, one of them armed with a knife. His wife never attended his funeral, telling Deborah's family that he had beat her, and that she was terrified of him.

Besides her sisters, it wasn't until Deborah met Malina that she had any real friends besides Ralph. In truth, she loved Ralph, and had since she was a child. It was a lasting source of puzzlement and disappointment to her that, as good as things were between them, she could never seem to keep it together enough to stay with him. And yet . . . and yet, somewhere deep inside, that warm spot she had for him remained unchanged. It was funny in a way, because he had always complained that his life had never gone anywhere; "Stuck right here in the same old place," he was often heard to say, resignedly. She, however, was glad of this, for the simple fact that he was always there. And she was terrified of losing him, for he had been her only anchor, her only source of comfort, like a single mote of clarity set in the middle of the otherwise confusing and distorted chaos of her life.

She had been so very lucky when Malina came into their life, for in Malina she had found someone who looked up to her, who needed her, who made her reach deep down inside for qualities she hadn't dared hope would ever develop, given the emotionally stunted condition of her maimed spirit. There was even a hardness, an unwillingness to Malina's trust where outsiders were concerned, which had somehow deepened the bond between them.

All of this had happened in spite of the fact that Deborah's initial reaction to Malina's presence, when she had first met her at Murphy's, was to feel threatened, fearful, jealous, and bitter. This impression softened the instant she saw Malina's wounded condition; for an instant their eyes had locked, and in that frozen moment of time, Deborah had a sudden insight, a sort of empathic look into Malina's being. Malina, too, had suffered. Had endured. Had been tested beyond her limits. Had broken, yet somehow managed to survive, limping along through life like a bird with an irreparably broken wing; left to ponder her survival, unable to decide whether it was a curse that she must live as she did, or a miracle that she had survived at all. Deborah well knew that Malina, like her, found the distinction a fine one, and that she, too, in her way, was often left wondering if there was really any difference at all.

Deborah found that she loved Malina, all the more so because Malina had somehow brought her closer to Ralph, instead of coming between them. Maybe Malina couldn't really do magic, but she had certainly brought a little magic into all their lives, Ralph's, Doc, and Deborah's, by bringing them all together, providing them with a sense of belonging, and dispelled the emptiness which had been dragging them down by unmeasurably slow but cumulative increments, each into their own private and barren solitude. To Deborah's mind, it felt as though some evil force were sucking the life out of them, and she often wished that it could be made to manifest itself, so that she could fight back, or at the least evade its cloying presence.

It was August . . . one month before Malina expected Pran to come for her. She was sitting on a blanket in the back yard, watching a kaleidoscope of butterflies, hummingbirds and insects flit and dart about Doc's flower-garden. She had just finished doing the laundry, which now billowed from the clothesline like sails in a steady breeze. The air smelled of bright summer sunshine, and clean white linen.

She was much changed from the mischievous little Pixie who lived in an obscure corner of the Elven Kingdom. Her heart was no longer wild nor free. She found that she dreaded Pran's return more with each passing day. She felt it in her soul that the Elf Kingdom was no longer her home, and she wanted no connection with her past to interfere with her new life.

Yet she was deeply torn in this desire. Magic had been such a large part of her life . . . before coming to this world, she would have said that it was all of her life.

"One does not need magic to live," Pran had told her.

At the time, she could not have imagined the truth in those words. But her present circumstances, and her torn feelings towards a Man she hardly knew told her otherwise.

As she sat there, an unbidden memory came to her; that of an old Elf-merchant named Finli, a Pixie-friend who passed by Malina's home often, driving his brightly painted wagon drawn by its team of enormous dray horses. If she pulled some small prank on him (which he fully expected, knowing full-well where she lived), he would laugh and say, 'All right, Malina, I know you're there Come and show yourself, or you'll get nothing from me today.' He always had a little wine and a few sweetmeats for her. They would sit together on the wagon's bench and talk and laugh.

Oddly enough, she remembered one conversation in particular. It was shortly before her expulsion from the Elf Kingdom. She was sitting with Finli, being unusually quiet and thoughtful.

Finli had said, 'What, something the matter miss?'

She had shrugged. 'I'm not sure. It's so beautiful here, with the sight and the sound and the smell of the forest all around us . . . but it feels so . . . so distant sometimes . . . or maybe it's me, like I don't really belong here.

'I mean, I try to think about the Dance of Life, and having a Pixie daughter of my own some day . . . raising her here in the forest as my mother did me . . . but I find myself unable to imagine such things.'

At the time, she had blamed the Elves for these moods, thinking that their Lore had somehow damaged the Balance, or that they had caused the Earth Mother some mortal harm, putting and end to the Dance of Life, and all the other rites of Nature.

She had good reason to harbour such beliefs, as when she overheard the evil Prince Cir speaking with one of his captains as they rode at the head of a column of soldiers through the forest near her home. The Prince was suspicious of the captain, because this same captain had been known to consort with Pixies from time to time, and openly opposed any attempt to interfere with their lives.

'. . . I think you had better rethink the matter, captain Birin. That is a serious admission.'

Smiling, to show he didn't take the Prince seriously, the Captain replied, 'As you well know, Pixies are not considered subjects of the Crown, and as such cannot be considered to be enlisted, nor can their conduct be seen as being representative of members of the Elf Kingdom. They cannot, therefore, be subject to punishment where duty is concerned, because they have none.

'They care nothing for affairs of State, nor of the doings of Elves in general. To the best of my knowledge, they have always occupied these lands which we now call our own. I don't see that they owe us any allegiance, nor do I think that we have the right to interfere with their lives to a greater extent than we do already.'

'Circumstances have changed,' the Prince replied. 'The lands that are now Elf Kingdom are not as they once were, for we have changed them, shaped them to suit our wants, stopped the very Seasons in Their course, banishing winter and storm, and drought and famine. We have wrested from this place a world of our own making, suitable to our needs and our desires. Not theirs Why do you not face the truth, captain Birin? Their world and their time upon this Earth is gone forever, at least where the Elf Kingdom is concerned. If they wish to remain on our land, then they must abide by our laws, or face the consequences.'

Birin, who was becoming angry, clenched his teeth and sighed. 'You well know that they will not. They cannot be made to understand the need.'

'Then they must die ' the Prince said with quiet vehemence. 'If they have no place in this world, then they should leave it, willingly or no.'

'In other words, hunt them down and murder them,' Birin muttered, unable to conceal his disgust. 'It would seem, then, that there is some truth to the rumour of such atrocities.'

'Only a traitor would think to thwart the will of the King in this matter,' Cir told him. 'It is His will that our lands be rid of these vermin.'

A dangerous silence came over Birin and his soldiers then.

'Have a care whom you call a traitor ' said Captain Birin. 'I have served the King well and faithfully for over fifteen years. Many soldiers in this company could say as much. But even before my Sovereign, my allegiance is to Justice and to Reason, and as you well know, we have all sworn an oath to that effect. No mortal, not even if he be a King, is above justice, my Prince. We are all of us sworn to protect the innocent. Is this not so?'

'The innocent ' The Prince said, creasing his face in disgust. 'Do not equate those vermin with-'

'I can and I do,' said Birin quietly. 'I speak from certain knowledge and from experience. And I uphold the Law, to the letter.'

'The Law, as you conceive it, will soon change,' the Prince told him. 'Soon you will serve the King only. And me.'

'If you are suggesting,' Birin replied, 'that I be forced to choose between Justice and the King-'

'You fail to understand me,' the Prince told him with a condescending smirk which he must have fancied to be a smile. 'You will be given no choice in the matter, except to serve your Sovereign, or accept the consequences.'

Birin went very pale. But not from fear. 'If such a law is passed,' he told the Prince, 'both low and high alike will greatly rue the day.'

'Those are empty words,' said the Prince.

'We shall see,' Birin had replied.

Her reverie was broken by approaching heavy footsteps, and a large form that sat down near to her, causing her heart to quicken. Swallowing, she kept her gaze averted, though all of her attention was keenly attuned to that which she pretended to ignore.

At last, clearing his throat uncomfortably, he broke the silence.

'Isn't that Pran character supposed to be coming soon?'

She nodded, her face pale, prompting him to ask, 'Is something the matter?'

Though the air was warm enough, she began trembling slightly. Trying to keep her voice steady, she said, 'I afraid . . . of have to go back.'

'I know. You've told us already.'

Thinking of how she felt about him, she sighed impatiently. 'Rowf hear words . . . but not know. And back in my home, things getting . . . bad.'

He had to think about this a moment. 'You mean, things back where you tell us you came from?'

She nodded. 'Eff king. He getting bad things.'

Ralph mulled this over. 'You mean doing bad things?'

She nodded again. 'He making die Pixie. Making bad Eff.'

She felt him stiffen. 'What do you mean, "killing pixies"? And what do you mean, "making bad elf"?' For some reason, her words conveyed vague visions of some out-of-control regime in Eastern Europe and the atrocities of "ethnic cleansing" came unbidden to his mind.

Steeling herself, she replied, 'Eff King not liking Pixie. Eff King not liking Eff who . . . Pixie friend. Eff King not liking . . . nice Eff.'

Mulling this over, trying to ask her questions without contradicting her story, he said, 'Is Pran a bad elf or a nice elf?'

'Pran nice,' she said without hesitation.

'But the King makes him do bad things?'

She shook her head. 'Pran not do bad.'

'But Pran may try to take you back.'

She shrugged. 'Pran may take back, but . . . I do not think he make Pixie to die.'

'Well, what if the Elf King told Pran to take you back and he didn't?'

She wasn't exactly sure if she understood him correctly. 'Rowf mean if Pran . . . not do what King say?'

'Yes.'

There was a note of fear in her voice as she replied, 'Eff King make Pran to die, maybe?'

'Maybe,' said Ralph in a low voice, 'Mr. Elf King should be made to die.'

Malina was shocked. 'Rowf not making bad joke '

Surprised at her reaction, he said, 'Why not?'

Nearly in tears, she replied, 'Malina not want Eff King to make Rowf to die. Rowf not understand. You one Rowf. Eff King have it big army.'

Though he had merely been attempting to humour her, something of the import of her words finally sank into his mind. Of course, for a King to be a King he had to have a Kingdom, and that meant . . . that the place Malina believed she was from would be like going to a strange country, with lots of strange people and strange customs. He had not pictured this clearly before. He had pictured Pran and the Elf King as individuals with whom he could deal.

He had a sinking feeling that maybe he and the others were out of their depth. Ralph didn't share Doc's certainty that Malina was suffering from some sort of delusion, or that she was simply a runaway from another country. He knew Malina too well to discount her story. And as far as "magic" was concerned . . . Ralph had seen magicians before. They used slight of hand, deceptions that were fairly obvious, and tricks that anyone could figure out and master if they put their mind to it. But what Malina had done could only be called real magic. Nothing was hidden from view, or cleverly substituted. Ralph found that, until proven otherwise, he was willing, at the least, to accept the possibility of truth in Malina's story, whatever Doc's reservations.

As they sat in the sun, he took note of what Deborah had told him many times, that Malina was very much attracted to him, and having a hard time dealing with her feelings. Most of the time he avoided the girl, hoping that her infatuation would pass. Instead, he could tell that, if anything, it was getting worse, was visibly wearing her down. Not liking the feeling that he was the cause, however unwittingly, of her emotional pain, he decided to try to come to some sort of understanding with her, which was why he was here with her now.

'Malina, there's something I feel we should discuss. Something that I've been putting off for some time.' She didn't react, except to become very still, staring ahead unseeingly, waiting for him to continue. 'Deborah tells me that . . . well . . . she thinks you're in love with me.'

Malina swallowed and went very pale. He could see that she trembled slightly, and suddenly realized it was not from their discussion of conditions in her homeland.

'Deborah talk too much sometimes,' she said with uncharacteristic sharpness, her voice shaking.

'I just want to know if its true. If it is, you should tell me, instead of keeping your feelings bottled up. To be honest, I'm getting tired of seeing you hurt yourself this way.'

'Is my hurt,' she told him, defensively. Then, something in her seemed to wither, and she looked down and muttered, 'What Deborah say is true. I want . . . but it is something I cannot help. I not sure if love is right word for what I to feel. But I hurt inside, all the time. I feel like . . . is big ache, where instead-' She reddened at making this admission- 'is empty inside, and though I not to understand, what I want is for you to be . . . inside and outside my . . . my being? And . . . I want you to feel for me . . . as I do for you.'

As he listened, he felt stung by guilt, pity and remorse. But when she finished, he said, 'You know that Deborah and I . . . we have, or used to have, a relationship.'

'She say is no more ' Malina blurted, belying more raw emotion than reason.

Ralph sighed, frustrated. 'Malina, Deborah doesn't know that for sure She has problems with her own feelings. Can you understand that? She likes to think that she's in control, or that she's made certain decisions that she's going to live by, but it . . . well . . . in the end, it just never seems to work that way.

'Look, it probably is over between Deborah and me. I think it has been for some time now. It could be that something will develop between you and me. All I'm saying is, give it time. Who knows?' he added with a smile, 'Maybe one day, something will happen to bring the two of us together, and we'll live happily ever after.'

A matter of days ago, after Deborah had spoken to Ralph on Malina's behalf, Malina had pressed her until she told the girl everything, including a criticism by Ralph that Malina had much growing to do. At present, on the surface as she listening to Ralph's words, Malina didn't react. He had given her much to think about where Deborah was concerned. But within, hope rekindled within her like joy. Now that she knew what to do She would learn She would give up everything that she was, do everything in her power to prepare herself for becoming . . . what?

This was always the point in her musings where things became hopelessly confusing. She wanted Rowf to accept her into his life. But what was she to be to him? At present, she was little more than a burden. Deborah had told her that Rowf was the sort of person who needed a mate and children and stability.

Deborah had told her that here, in this world, there were no Outcast babies and their ostracized parents. Mixed marriages were not uncommon. At the mall, more than once Deborah had pointed out such people and their children as evidence.

But the way that beings without magic made babies The mere though sent an unpleasant tingle of fear and apprehension down her spine. All that touching, and when the time came, all that pain

She shuddered.

The pain, at least, she could understand. But the touching Pixies were sensitive to the touch of another in a way that went far beyond mere physical sensation. When the Man named Rory had taken her by the waist, from that instant she was unable to do anything but go where her feelings took her, feelings which at that moment were entirely in his hands. Refusal was neither an option nor a choice to be aware of or made under such circumstances.

If Deborah had known it, or had wished it, when the two girls lay together in bed, Deborah herself could pretty much have done anything she wanted to Malina.

With a sinking feeling, Malina realized that somehow this would have to change, that she would have to gain some measure of control over the way she reacted when coming close to people.

But when in Rowf's presence, control was the furthest thing from her mind.

Doc Wallace had a well-earned reputation for being cautious and sceptical. He had also displayed an uncanny ability to diagnose, while still a young resident. His gut instinct, coupled with a tenacious drive to seek out the truth, had nearly landed him a career as a pathologist.

But the young James Irving Wallace had little use for city people and city life. As a child in a small farm town, born just before the Great Depression, he had experienced the shift from rural to city life. This experience convinced him that it was unnatural and destructive, to the point of becoming wholesale incest, meaning that people living in a city were concerned with city life to the exclusion of all else. And he felt himself being caught up in something he found unspeakably ugly . . . a place where the slow turning of the seasons had all but died, being hidden from view for no good reason. The land which should have been fertile and green was buried under concrete, the air choked with filth.

When he had completed his internship, he had returned to the small town where he was born, and went to work as a family practitioner instead.

To his lasting dismay, especially after the war, he began to feel the presence of the life he had left, stalking the rural life he pursued like an evil juggernaut. Small towns sickened and died, withering from the sickness that had spread from major metropolitan centers like a cancer. Small farms vanished, along with their familiar homes, and the faces of people he knew.

You could drive for miles now without ever seeing a farmhouse. The owners often lived hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away. Instead of weather-beaten pickup trucks full of friendly familiar faces and dusty work clothes, one saw souped-up impractical vehicles driven by rude louts, pseudo-mafioso sunglasses, suits and car-phones, and phony-baloney "cowboy boots" made of exotic and expensive materials, with shiny steel-capped toes, that would never step in a cowpie, or become worn by a stirrup . . . boots that the pants were pulled over as a "fashion statement", as useless and foolishly decorative as a necktie.

When Doc Wallace met Malina, and as he got to know her, his trust in his own instincts was taxed to the limit. He couldn't explain why, but he knew that she was tied in to these same feelings somehow. But his ideas on the subject, and his suspicions, he kept to himself.

That evening at supper, when Ralph told Doc Wallace what Malina had said about the state of affairs in the Elf Kingdom, the doctor was silent for a long time. While he mulled things over, Deborah said, 'I thought elves were supposed to be . . . like noble or something.'

'According to Malina, that's just in fairy tales,' said Ralph with an ambiguous smile. 'These are real elves we're talking about.'

'So why would they be killing pixies?' she asked. 'Malina, why didn't you tell us this before?'

'You did not ask,' she replied, trying to unscrew the lid off the mint jelly the wrong way. 'Just about things.' Ralph was about to help her when she remembered, and twisted the top off with a triumphant smirk, making the others chuckle.

Doc had recently hit upon the theory that Malina was probably from a poor, isolated member of the East Bloc. That might very well account for both her physiology and her languages. Pran was probably a real person from whom she had escaped. She might very well have been a mail-order bride who had been abused. She might also have been brought over with other young women like herself as slave-labour. Until Pran showed up, however, he decided to humour her.

'So the elves are killing people without reason?' Doc said suddenly to Malina.

'Oh, they make reason,' she replied, chasing a cherry tomato around her plate with her fork, finally using the fingers of her other hand to trap the wayward fruit so that she could spear it. 'But they not to make sense. Just to take everything. Like locusts.' Though she still had difficulty pronouncing the letter "l", she had gotten around this by using a sound that was somewhere between an "l" and a "y".

Doc smiled. 'It doesn't sound like a very good place.'

Malina's sudden guarded and noncommittal shrug, though quiet and subtle, got their attention more than if she had shouted at them. Growing uncomfortable under their scrutiny, avoiding eye-contact, she almost decided not to respond.

In the silence which followed, she had been about to start on her lemon-pudding dessert along with the others, but in the same moment deciding to break her silence.

'It . . . good wrong word. But . . . is alive place. They all things have voice; maybe we not to understand, but to . . . to hear is enough to know things.' She gestured in frustration. 'This place, I hear no voices. Perhaps for other ears, maybe. But in my home, moon and stars, wind and sky, brook and pond and forest . . . all things . . . to be alive.'

Doc was lost in thought for a moment, then remarked on the similarity to local native beliefs.

Malina was intrigued by this. 'They . . . they make magic?'

'Not that I've ever seen,' Doc told her. 'For them, like us, it's just the stuff of myth and legend. You know . . . very old stories.'

Malina looked disappointed, but said, 'Maybe was not always so. Maybe they lose magic?'

'I guess I'm just a born sceptic,' Doc told her, 'but I think that there never was any magic. Only stories.'

'But what about the moth and the wasp?' Deborah asked. 'I mean, we watched her do it.'

'Yes, well, if she managed it with an inanimate object, then I'd be more inclined to believe her,' Doc said quietly.

At Doc's remark, Malina looked up in alarm. Seeing that the others had noticed, she said, 'Can make . . . not alive thing to alive. Elves sometimes to do this . . . but . . . is very bad thing to do.'

Deborah was fascinated by this line of talk. 'Why is it a bad thing to do?'

Malina actually looked afraid as she replied, 'Earth Mother make all things . . . to be what they are. But . . . no one understanding . . . for Her to make Eff, for they not listen to Her. Make trouble. Make big power. They to . . . look where eyes not meant to see.' In a quiet, fearful voice, she added, 'They sometimes to . . . to change themselves.'

There was something ominous which underlay what she was telling them.

'How do you mean?' Doc asked her.

For a long moment she was at a loss for words. Eventually, she decided to plunge ahead.

'All things made to be . . . as they are. But some Eff not satisfied. Eff King want Big Power, but he is not wise like Earth Mother. Earth Mother do for everyone. But Eff King do only for . . . for himself and other Eff.' Even as she said this, it was obvious that she doubted her own words. After a moment, she said slowly, 'I think Eff King maybe do only for himself. Some say he . . . to find way to live forever.' She shrugged. 'Some Eff to say to little ones . . . of Eff who no believe. I think is of Eff King they say.'

Doc smiled. Ignoring these last words which seemed to make little or no sense, referring to the elf King's quest for immortality, he said, 'I see nothing wrong with that. People have always wanted eternal life.'

Malina frowned as if Doc had missed the point.

'Life already eternal. But change is . . . part of to be alive. Eff King not liking change. Change mean that one day Big Power be gone. But Big Power is big problem. Big Power should not be. Earth Mother is Big Power too, but she to . . . to share with all living things. Eff King does not share. Malina knows this. Eff King is big thief who take everything. Even life.'

To Doc's mind, what she said only reinforced his belief that she was from an impoverished country, probably a dictatorship with some form of caste society. Even Pran's name reinforced this suspicion, because of the proximity of the East Bloc to the Orient, where Pran was a common name.

'What story were you talking about?' Deborah asked her, prompting Doc to do a double take, realising that he'd missed something.

Malina's smile was that of an older child who is no longer taken in by magician's tricks, who looks somewhat smugly at her more credulous companions, and tries subsequently to show adults that she is now fully grown up, oblivious to their rueful smiles.

'They to say that, once was Eff who did not believe in things. He to not believe . . . made them to not be . . . to fade away.'

As was often the case, Deborah, finding herself having to work at figuring out what Malina was trying to say as she spoke, said, 'You mean that, in the story, if he didn't believe in something, then it would cease to exist?'

Malina, having her own difficulties with language, mulled over "exist" until she remembered its meaning, then nodded.

'So? What happened?' Deborah prompted.

'Is long story,' Malina replied diffidently, not enthused with the prospective task of making a prolonged speech. 'And I am not good at telling.' But this in such a way as to make it clear that she would continue, regardless. After a moment's consideration, she said, 'In . . . time? In time long past, was Eff who stop to believe in things, so they to disappear. But story is . . . is complicated. Is about ne- negect-'

'Neglect?' Deborah tried. After a moment's consideration, Malina nodded.

'Neglect,' she said, with some difficulty. 'Is also about . . . to betray, but not on purpose. Is also about . . . not one's fault . . . to not believe. Sometimes cannot be help.' She shrugged, frustrated with the language barrier, her inability to communicate ideas, or both. With a wry smile, she said, 'My to explain, is to make your . . . to understand . . . more bad, each time I to say more.'

Doc mentioned reflectively that such themes were common in old fairy tales; even in a few old science-fiction stories he had once read. He gave a quick synopsis of one such tale, and when he finished, Malina was prompted to say, 'So you have heard this tale before '

To her incomprehension, Doc and the others were prompted to laughter by this.

They then discussed various matters that concerned them, coming last of all to Malina, who told them that, according to her, at least, Pran would be coming soon, within a few days. She assured Doc that Pran would be coming alone, but that he might be armed.

Doc advised Ralph and Deborah that he meant to be prepared for Pran's arrival. The day was coming, he assured them, when they could finally put this matter to rest.