A Taste of Elven Hospitality

I awoke with a familiar ache and an unfamiliar warmth pressed against my arm. I opened my eyes.

Nimiwa was asleep beside me.

We were inside a small, round lodge. She sat next to me with her back resting against one of the wooden support poles. A small fire gave just enough light to reach the walls, smoke escaping through an opening above.

Her head had fallen onto one shoulder. Her staff rested on her lap, and two fingers remained pressed against the vein in my wrist. It was as if she had fallen asleep making certain her promise would remain true.

She looked much younger with the certainty in her eyes gone. Small, exhausted, and entirely too comfortable for someone involved in abduction.

I pulled my arm away. Her eyes snapped open. Blue and orange light flashed as she jerked the staff up between us. Then she recognized me.

“You wake.”

“A surprise to me too.”

She lowered the staff.

I tried to sit up. An animal-hide blanket slipped from my chest and the cool night air hit me fast. I was topless.

I looked beneath the blanket.

Bottomless too.

The prison rags I had been wearing were replaced with painted symbols that spiraled across my chest, stomach, arms and thighs. I would have preferred something that protected me from the elements, but the spirits were apparently the greater threat.

The shapes of the symbols looked much more ominous than the ones on Nimiwa. To a cynical man like myself, they looked less like protection than instructions on where to cut.

It was strange. For the past forty years I had been told the gods rejected me and now it seemed like I was difficult to keep off the altar.

I looked at Nimiwa. She went pale. Then red. Her eyes shot toward the ceiling.

“Nimiwa,” I said. She froze. “Why am I naked?” I asked.

Her feathers were trembling. “The marks protect you.”

I lifted the edge of the blanket. Nimiwa spun around so quickly that she jostled the support pole. She caught it before the makeshift hut collapsed.

“I perform sacred duty,” she said. “I look only where symbols belonged.”

I glanced beneath the blanket again.

“You did a very thorough job.”

The tips of her ears were burning red.

The sound of my stomach growling was a good enough distraction to change the topic.

Her embarrassment immediately changed to concern.

“You need food,” she said as she scurried out of the hut.

A few moments later she returned carrying a bowl covered with a leaf.

Inside were strips of dark meat, roasted until the edges had charred. A three-pronged bone fork was included.

Barbarism was civilized if it came with utensils.

I stabbed one strip and examined it. The meat was dry and fibrous, with pale strings of sinew running through it. After several days of nothing but meager portions of prison slop, hunger beat my better judgment.

I took a bite. It was so leathery it fought my teeth. Smoke and salt buried most of the flavor, but not the strange, unfamiliar taste beneath it. Not pleasant, but unpleasant was an improvement.

Nimiwa squatted and watched me chew.

She was far too interested in something this menial. I didn't want to ask how elves consumed food.

“Is there something wrong?”

“You eat.”

“That is generally what living things do.”

She tilted her head as if she was considering that.

I took another bite.

The meat was unnaturally lean, without the marbling or gamey richness I expected from any animal I knew.

“What exactly is this?”

Nimiwa reached into the bowl and picked up a piece of meat. She carefully held it between her fingers, turned it over, and examined it intensely.

“Cleric.”

I stopped chewing.

“Cleric?”

She nodded.

“The one with yellow hair.”

I slowly removed the meat from my mouth.

“You fed me the dead man from the convoy?”

She nodded again. “We received good gift.”

My stomach immediately clenched with pain.

I emptied the contents of my stomach back into the bowl without warning.

She placed one hand between my shoulders and spoke in a soft voice with a tone of awe.

“You reject enemy’s strength,” she said. “You return flesh to earth. Don’t carry his violence inside you.”

“I am vomiting uncontrollably.”

She rubbed my back while I spat the last of the taste from my mouth.

“A purification.”

“Do you eat anything you kill?” I asked.

Nimiwa frowned.

“No.”

I gave a weak smile.

“Some are too old.”

The smile vanished and I gave her a dead stare. She seemed to realize that had not helped.

“We waste nothing given to us by Tawa and Hanwi,” she explained. “Bone becomes tools. Hide becomes binding. Flesh becomes strength. What remains returns to soil.”

“Your gods didn’t give you anything. You butchered a corpse and called it supper.”

“They enter our forest to kill us.”

“And now they are in my stomach.”

“No longer.”

I looked down at the bowl.

That was difficult to dispute.

Nimiwa mistook my silence for consideration.

“It is honorable,” she continued. “Their deaths feed who they try to destroy. We make sure end serves greater purpose.”

“The Church calls you all monsters.”

Her expression tightened.

“Feed me another man and I may start thinking their crusade is more than justified.”

Anger forced the words out of my mouth before my judgment could catch up.

Nimiwa’s hand slipped from my back.

Her color drained, and for the first time since meeting her, there was no confusion on her face. She had either understood every word or at least the contempt was enough to get the message across.

She looked away and stared into the fire.

“I will bring other food,” she said with a slight tremble in her voice.

She stood, took the bowl, and left through the hide flap.

I sat alone as the fire cracked quietly in the center of the lodge.

“Well done,” I muttered.

I had survived Paladins, prisons and a Life Mage, then used my sharpest weapon on the one person trying to keep me alive. Hopefully the mistake didn't put me on the menu next.

Outside, voices got louder.

One was Nimiwa’s. Another sounded like it was the tall warrior who had punched me. Their words came too quickly to separate, but his tone carried the same message as before.

This is your mistake and you need to fix it. Nimiwa may also be on the menu.

A deeper voice cut them off and the conversation died.

The hide flap opened.

Nimiwa entered first, carrying another bowl, this time filled with green leafy vegetables, berries and something resembling flatbread. She handed it to me without making eye contact.

The tall warrior followed.

His ax remained outside, though the knife at his hip suggested this was a courtesy that could end if needed.

The parade continued. Two older elves entered behind him.

One was a woman with silver woven through her braids and piercings of bone through her ears, nose and eyebrows. The other was a thin man wrapped in a mantle of black feathers. Neither wore Nimiwa’s sun and moon markings but both had an equal amount of painted symbols.

None of them seemed to have brought me pants.

The final visitor was shorter than all of them.

Significantly shorter.

He stood scarcely higher than my knee.

A wooden mask covered his face, smooth and dark except for narrow eyes carved into it. Brilliant feathers of different colors surrounded the mask like the rays of a sun. Long hair streamed behind him in red, orange and gold, moving like flame despite giving off no smoke or heat.

Tribal garments covered every part of his body beneath layered beads, painted wood and tiny bones.

Nimiwa immediately knelt as he entered.

The others bowed their heads.

I remained seated because standing would have required abandoning the blanket.

What I assumed was a god looked at me.

I looked back.

“This is Tawa?” I asked.

Nimiwa’s shoulders tightened.

“Yes.”

“I expected more sun.”

The next instant, the fire bent toward him and heat rushed through the lodge. The feathers around his mask began to wave and the carved eyes started to glow.

Nimiwa spoke quickly in Elvish, gesturing toward me.

“He does not know our ways,” she added in the human tongue. “His words hurt when he is afraid.”

Tawa raised one hand and silenced her.

His voice came from behind the wooden mask, deep enough that it seemed impossible for his body to contain it.

“Uriel Aethel.”

Gods seemed to not respect privacy.

“You know my name? Then maybe you can explain what she keeps calling me.”

“A Redborn carries no divine mark. He may cross boundaries closed to those already claimed.”

“So I’m some kind of blank check to be used as a bargaining chip?”

“You may be a Redborn,” Tawa said. “That does not make you worthy. I know all about you. I know about the bribes. The thefts. The lies. The illicit deals in poisons.”

“You forgot tax evasion. I think that was my greatest win.”

Nimiwa stared at me. The older elves did not appear amused.

Tawa stepped closer.

“You carry no courage.”

“I carry whatever keeps me alive.”

“You flee when others stand.”

“Standing still is how arrows find you and you wake up in a savage elf’s dinner bowl.”

“You repay kindness with cruelty.”

“The vision did not say he would be gentle,” Nimiwa said quickly.

Tawa’s mask turned toward her.

She continued despite the warning.

“He warns us of danger. He refused the enemy's flesh. He—”

“Nimiwa,” the pierced elf warned.

“He say hurtful things, but—”

“Enough,” Tawa said.

The fire dropped low as Tawa spoke

Nimiwa bowed until her feathers nearly touched the floor.

The woman with piercings spoke in Elvish. Nimiwa translated without lifting her gaze.

“Elder Aponi says I misunderstood vision. I brought danger to camp. Warriors die because I demand attack.”

“She misunderstood several things,” I said. “Most of them were about me.”

Nimiwa flinched.

The tall warrior added something to the explanation.

“And Keme says I delay retreat and was not capable of fulfilling my role.”

Keme was probably the one responsible for the safety of this clan. Giving the bastard a name did not improve him.

Protecting her did not require lying for her.

“He’s right about that. You kept an entire war party standing on the road while you argued with a prisoner.”

Her fingers tightened around the edge of her loincloth.

The feathered elder spoke next. His voice was softer, yet Nimiwa shrank further.

I waited but Nimiwa provided no translation.

“What was that about?” I asked.

She hesitated, searching the ground for an answer.

“If you are not the one Hanwi seeks, I cannot remain oracle.”

“Then they remove the feathers?”

Nimiwa shook her head.

“I traded lives of our tribe for you. If I was wrong, I stay in Hanwi’s outer shrine. Before inner door.”

“For how long?”

“Until she answers.”

“And if she never does?”

Nimiwa stared at the floor.

“I will stay. No one else comes.”

The last of my irritation with her disappeared.

I had been willing to see her stripped of her title. I had not agreed to watch them seal her inside a tomb.

I looked toward the others in the hut.

“You will imprison her for being wrong?”

Aponi answered with decent fluency.

“An oracle who speaks falsely cannot continue speaking for the gods,” she said. “She returns to the shrine she claims to understand. There she remains until Hanwi answers her, or until her life is returned in apology.”

Keme said something and pointed toward me.

“He say your words prove I was deceived,” Nimiwa said in almost a whisper.

My anger remained but now it was no longer directed at the meat.

I stared at the masked fiend who had far too much confidence. “They prove your gods aren't good teachers.”

The elders exchanged glances. Keme looked between them. Tawa’s mask remained fixed upon me.

“You don’t doubt that I’m Redborn. You doubt that a Redborn can be this disappointing. You attacked an Imperial convoy and lost people because she said you needed me.”

Keme stood and took a step forward. I raised one hand. The gesture would not have stopped him, but the small god beside him was still listening.

“If your shrine requires a man with no blessings, then she succeeded. If I am personally unsuitable, that is a dispute between me and whatever is waiting inside.”

I pointed toward Nimiwa.

“I’m apparently someone who can enter your shrine when all of you cannot. Threaten me, or push all the blame onto her because you dislike what she found, and I walk.”

Keme’s hand moved toward his knife.

“You can kill me,” I added. “And you can explain to your silent goddess why the short god allows such a failure.”

His eyes shifted toward Tawa but he said nothing.

I pointed toward the exit flap.

“I will go to this Hanwi shrine.”

Nimiwa’s head rose.

“Not because I give a damn about any of you. Because your people kept the Church from draining me into a knife, so I owe you an attempt.”

Tawa’s burning hair moved faster, as if the words I spoke fed a hidden fire.

“But there are conditions. No more eating humans.”

“Humans waste what the earth provides,” said the feathered elder.

I gave him a stern look.

“No humans. No dwarves. No beastkin. No demi-humans of any kind. Anything capable of asking you not to eat it is no longer food.”

The elders began arguing.

Tawa remained silent.

I looked at Nimiwa, who just sat there listening.

“You want me to believe your people are different from what the Church thinks? Then prove it.”

The fire snapped as Tawa spoke a single word.

Every elf fell silent.

He continued, his deep voice filling the lodge.

“Until Hanwi's silence is ended, no flesh of the speaking peoples will be taken beneath my light.”

The elves all bowed their heads.

“The Redborn asks a price for his aid. We will pay it.”

Tawa turned next toward Nimiwa.

“Your vision stands. You will prepare the Redborn and lead him to Hanwi.”

Nimiwa stared at him. Her hands were trembling, but she looked relieved.

She turned toward me with renewed certainty, her blue and orange eyes shining more intensely.

“A Redborn speaks with power.”

Before she could find a holier meaning, the hide flap tore open.

An elven warrior dropped to one knee, breathing hard. He spoke rapidly.

Keme was on his feet before Nimiwa finished translating.

“A Church convoy,” she said. “Near the river.”

“How near?”

A horn sounded through the forest.

“Near.”

I looked down at the blanket still covering my lap.

“Before we fight another holy war,” I said, “someone is finding me trousers.”