“By the credos, it’s an elf. I’m so fucked that I’m seeing elves. How much of this blue piss are you giving me?”

  “It’s not the drops,” Jareen said flatly. “I am Vien.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m an elf,” she said. She didn’t like the human word for her people. Words did not end in the f sound in the Vienwé language, often called simply Vien, like the people themselves. F was a starting sound, and the word elf felt both backwards and crudely short. Jareen had become fluent in Noshian, though, and the sound of the human language felt more and more normal, if not natural.

  “By the credos,” the man said again. She hadn’t checked what rite the man practiced before attending to him, but from the use of that phrase, he was certainly of the Erthrusian persuasion. She would have to mark that down if it wasn’t already.

  “It is time for drops, though,” Jareen said, holding the dropper up to his mouth. He acquiesced and took the drops without another word, laying his head back on the pillow. No doubt, he was already feeling pain return in between doses. She glanced down at the man’s wrapped leg. The dressing had been on for only three hours, and already it was weeping through: wet gangrene. They’d have to re-dress it again before their watch ended. The smell was vile. Silesh was putting eucalyptus oil onto swabs and setting them on the little table beside the bed, trying to mask the smell. Eucalyptus always used to remind Jareen of home—it came from Findeluvié—but now she thought of gangrene no matter where she smelled it. It was a horrible way to ruin a smell she used to like.

  Jareen was in the Third Ward of the House of the Departing in Nosh, a once grand edifice on the coast, where great windows let in the sea smell to help diffuse the smells of rot and urine, and the ceilings were covered in the fading frescoes of Noshian mythology. Her next stop was a little girl of nine or ten years. She lay on the bed, her arms wrapped around her stomach to brace the pain. Silesh had pulled Jareen out of order across the aisle to the opposite row of beds, because the girl’s regular dose of drops did not control her pain. Jareen counted the girl’s breaths. They came much too fast. The girl’s mousy-brown hair was freshly washed and brushed, laid out on a double layer of pillows behind her. Had a family member finally come to see her? Jareen glanced at Silesh, who stared down at the girl with slack jaw. Jareen wasn’t sure which of them was more distressed.

  No. It was not the girl’s family.

  “Three more drops now,” Jareen said quietly. Silesh hurried off in a swish of muslin to go draw up the tincture.

  “Are you really an elf?” the girl asked through a wince that barely moved, as if the expression was embossed on her flesh. She must have overheard the loudmouth.

  “I am.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  Jareen faltered, and answered truthfully, though not with the entire truth:

  “To help.”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  “The Departing?”

  “You.”

  “If I was in Elfland, I’d never leave.”

  Jareen squinted. It was always strange, how the humans spoke of it as if it was something not entirely real. It wasn’t so much what they said; it was a certain distant glaze to their eyes and a wispiness to their tone, as if they were speaking about something they were trying not to forget or struggling to fully remember.

  “Why is that?”

  “Is it true there is no hunger in Elfland?”

  “Hunger?” Jareen looked around. Silesh was hurrying back across the ward with the dropper, the hardened leather of the soles of her shoes rapping on the polished stone.

  “Here you go, sweetling,” Silesh said, slipping the tip of the dropper between the girl’s lips.

  “My mother told me you Sisters never talk,” the girl said after Silesh removed the dropper. The grimace still had not left, and her stomach rose and fell with her rapid breaths. There was the faint glisten of sweat on her skin.

  Silesh smiled at her.

  “We do in the Wards,” she said. “Now let those drops help and try to sleep.”

  The girl nodded. Someone across the ward was crying out. Jareen nodded to Silesh to see to it, but Jareen hesitated when the novice moved away, she couldn’t have said why.

  “Well?” the girl asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Is there hunger in Elfland?”

  “It’s called Findeluvié,” Jareen answered. The girl tried to form the words, but the Nosh could not make the V sound, and instead it sounded like Findeluwié with a W when she said it.

  “It means Findel’s Embrace ,” Jareen said, her lips pressing together in a forced smile.

  “What’s an embrace?”

  “Like a. . . a hug.”

  “Oh, that’s a nice name.”

  Jareen nodded, simply for some way to respond.

  “And it’s true?”

  “Hmm?”

  “There is no hunger there?”

  Jareen looked around the Ward again, then down at the bed. The blankets looked fairly clean. Over the years, Jareen had become extremely distrustful of the blankets and beds, knowing what had been on them and what might be on them at any time. The once-magnificent Wards were a constant assault on the senses, no matter how well the Sisters kept them mopped and scrubbed and laundered. There were simply too many Departing, and too few Sisters.

  Against her habit of restraint, she sat down on the edge of the bed, smoothing her own muslin across her legs.

  “There is no reason to be hungry there. There are herbs and vegetables and fruits from floor to canopy. No plants grow there unless they are useful or beautiful. The Vien have gardened the forests for thousands of years, and there is no winter. Food is not our worry. If you are hungry, you pick or pluck as you need.”

  “And there is enough for everyone?”

  “More. Sometimes we have to clean up the fallen, unused fruit, to compost it back to good soil. Our ships come to Nosh to trade, and they sometimes purchase grain, but that is not because the people are hungry.”

  “Are there no poor there? If everyone has enough to eat? And doesn’t it take a lot of work, all that gardening. My mother had a garden, but the beetles always ate her vegetables.” The girls eyelids were starting to droop, though she fought to keep them open as the tincture did its work.

  Jareen smiled, this time with some truth in it.

  “The Vien love their forests, and the forests provide.”

  “It is like the stories. Are there really unicorns there?”

  Jareen sighed.

  “Not like you mean,” she said.

  She saw the girl’s lips flicker into a frown.

  “Then like what?” she asked in a sleepy voice.

  Jareen didn’t respond. The girl’s eyes were closed, now. Her breathing had steadied. Jareen rose to go, but the girl’s hands fluttered over her stomach at the movement, the grimace returning. Without opening her eyes, she asked:

  “Do the elves truly live forever?”

  “Forever hasn’t happened yet.”

  “But will they?”

  “If nothing happens.”

  “Will you remember me forever, then?”

  Jareen frowned. She was glad the girl’s eyes were closed.

  “I will remember you,” she said, knowing that she would likely forget, just as she had forgotten most of the hundreds or thousands she had guided to Departure before. It wasn’t quite a lie. She hated lies. She simply didn’t say how long she would remember. Besides, unlike other Vien, Jareen would not live forever, but there could be no explaining that to this little girl, an infant by Vien standards.

  The girl spoke once more, barely above a whisper:

  “I would have stayed.”

  The Dwarves of Ice-Cloak series and , but it is not necessary to have read those to enjoy this story. Maps are available at the bottom of the first chapter.

  https://discord.gg/JtJYdhmsVp