In Kuroinu

I woke up being watched.

Three elf women were crouched on a branch above our platform, peering down through the woven canopy. When I sat up, two of them ducked behind the branch. The third kept staring.

"Good morning," I said.

She fell off the branch.

Her companions caught her. There was a whispered argument in Old Elvish, rapid and hushed, and then all three were gone, swinging through the upper canopy with the ease of people who'd been climbing their whole lives.

Mila was already awake. She was sitting cross-legged on her bedroll, watching the spot where the elves had been, her ears flat and her tail wrapped around her own ankle.

"That's the fourth group," she said. "Since dawn. They come, they stare, they run."

"How long has it been going on?"

"Since the sun came up. The first group brought binoculars."

"Elves have binoculars?"

"They have a glass tube that does the same thing. One of them was sketching."

I looked down at myself. I'd slept in my trousers and nothing else because the platform was warm and the moss bedrolls ran hot. Which meant the elf sketching had been sketching my bare chest.

"How detailed was the sketch?"

"Very." Mila's tail unwrapped from her ankle and tucked. "I don't like this place."

"They're curious. They've never seen a man."

"I know. That's what I don't like."

The others were stirring. Filia was already up and armored, standing at the platform edge with her hand on her hilt, watching the settlement. Leonora was doing stretches that looked like a military warm-up routine. Tianne was sitting with her legs folded and her glowing hands pressed to the platform, doing the thing she did every morning now where she communed with the living wood and mapped the local magic.

Llusse was still in her bedroll with the moss pulled over her ears.

"Llusse."

"No."

"Sun's up."

"Tell it to go away."

She didn't emerge for another ten minutes. When she did, her ears were already moving. Scanning. She looked at the canopy above us.

"They're up there."

"They have been since dawn."

"Wonderful." She started restringing her bow. "Nothing like performing your morning routine for an audience of ninety-three women who've never seen a man put on a shirt."

I put on a shirt. From three platforms away, a collective sigh carried on the breeze. Mila's ears went flat.

Nol sent word through Lucie that the corruption clearing was acceptable and the party could remain in the settlement while "further assessment was conducted." Which meant she was thinking about it and we should stay put and be polite.

The settlement went about its business around us. Elf women tended gardens that grew from the trunks. Others wove baskets on the platforms, or braided rope for the bridges, or tended the fungi lanterns. Life in Alfheim was quiet and routine and measured by seasons that had been passing the same way for thousands of years.

Except now there was a man in it, and everything kept stopping.

I couldn't walk ten feet without an audience. Going to the communal spring for water involved being escorted by Lucie (who held my hand, which she'd been doing since the cave and which Llusse was tracking with predatory attention) and passing through a gauntlet of elves who stopped what they were doing to watch me walk. One woman holding a basket of fruit dropped it. Another walked into a railing. A pair of young elves hiding behind a trunk pushed each other into the open when I got close and then ran.

"Does this happen to every visitor?" I asked Lucie.

"We don't have visitors."

"Ever?"

"You're the first outsiders to enter Alfheim in..." She thought about it. "Nol would know the exact number. Centuries, at least."

"And the first male."

"The first male any of them have seen in person. Yes." She glanced up at me. Her flower had grown back overnight, pink and full in her blonde-green hair. "Is it uncomfortable? Being looked at?"

"I've had worse."

"It'll ease once they've seen you enough. Elves acclimate." She squeezed my hand. "Though some of us acclimate faster than others."

From behind us, Llusse's voice, sharp: "You can let go of his hand NOW."

"I could," Lucie said. "But the path is-"

"There IS no path. We're on a PLATFORM."

Lucie looked at the flat wooden surface we were walking across. Looked at her hand in mine. Looked at Llusse.

"It's a very uneven platform," she said.

Llusse's ears went red. Before she could respond, a voice came from above. High, clear, and twelve hundred years of condescension in every syllable.

"THAT is the male?"

I looked up.

A woman was descending a spiral staircase from one of the highest treehouses. The staircase was carved from a tree so tall the upper branches were lost in the canopy, and she was coming down it with the measured pace of someone who expected the world to wait.

Silver hair past her hips, catching the filtered light. Red eyes. Pointed ears. High cheekbones and a narrow jaw and a mouth that looked like it had never smiled unless it was at someone else's expense. She was wearing a dress of pale blue with embroidery so fine it caught the light like thread made of glass. She was beautiful and sharp, all edges.

Firis Hagerhelm. High elf aristocrat. One thousand two hundred and one years old and every year of it showed in how she carried herself, which was like she was granting the floor the privilege of being walked on.

I knew her from the source material. The prideful high elf who'd never seen a man and couldn't stop being fascinated by the concept. In canon she'd been haughty and curious and deeply embarrassed by her own curiosity, covering the embarrassment with more haughtiness until the cycle fed itself.

She reached the bottom of the staircase and crossed the platform toward us. Elves moved out of her way. Lucie's grip on my hand tightened.

"Lady Firis," Lucie said. Her voice had a note in it I hadn't heard before. Careful. "The elder has approved their stay."

"I'm aware of what the elder approved." Firis stopped in front of me. Her red eyes moved from my feet to my face, slow, cataloging. She circled me. One full revolution, her eyes running over my shoulders, my arms, my back, my legs, with the focused assessment of someone evaluating breeding stock.

She stopped in front of me again. Reached out and poked my arm with one finger. Pressed the muscle.

"Muscular," she said. "Peculiar."

She leaned forward and sniffed. Her nose wrinkled. Then her eyes widened a fraction and the wrinkle smoothed and she sniffed again, slower.

"Potent," she said.

"He's not an EXHIBIT," Llusse said. She'd moved to my other side, arms crossed, ears flat.

Firis's red eyes moved to Llusse. She looked at her the way you'd look at a piece of furniture that had spoken.

"Everything in this forest is for my inspection," she said. She turned back to me. "Flex your arm."

"What?"

"Your arm. The muscular one. Flex it."

I looked at Llusse, whose face was doing its best impression of a thundercloud. Looked at Filia, who was watching from across the platform with one eyebrow raised. Looked at Firis, whose red eyes were fixed on my bicep with an intensity that bordered on academic.

I flexed.

Firis's mouth opened. Closed. Her red eyes went wide. Her cheeks, pale as paper, went pink at the edges.

"Again," she said. Her voice had gone slightly higher.

I flexed again. Behind me, Llusse made a sound like a teakettle.

Firis reached out and touched the muscle. Her fingers were cool. Clinical grip. But her eyes were wide and her lips had parted and she wasn't blinking. She pressed. Squeezed. Her breath caught.

She snatched her hand back. Straightened her posture. Lifted her chin. The pink in her cheeks deepened but her expression went glacial.

"Adequate," she said. "For a human."

She turned and walked away. Her stride was measured and her back was straight and her silver hair swayed with each step and she didn't look back. Halfway across the platform she stopped, turned her head just enough to see me over her shoulder, and her eyes dropped to my arms one more time before she kept walking.

"Did that just happen?" I said.

"That's Lady Firis," Lucie said. "She's the highest-born elf in Alfheim. She considers herself above, well, everything."

"She was TOUCHING him," Llusse said.

"She was inspecting."

"She was SQUEEZING his ARM."

"High elves are very thorough inspectors."

"I'm going to INSPECT HER off a PLATFORM."

Filia walked over. She looked at me. At Llusse, who was vibrating. At Lucie, who was smiling.

"New admirer?" Filia said.

"She called me adequate."

"High praise from Firis, I'm told." Filia looked in the direction the silver-haired elf had gone. "She'll be back."

"How do you know?"

"She forgot to ask you to flex the other arm."

Lucie came for me in the afternoon.

The others were scattered across the settlement. Filia and Leonora were meeting with Nol about the corruption report. Tianne had found a grove of medicinal plants and was cataloging them with the reverence she reserved for healing magic. Mila was helping elves in the kitchen because Mila always found the kitchen. Llusse was on a high platform practicing archery with three elf women who were trying to learn human bow technique and failing gracefully.

Lucie appeared at the edge of our platform with the sun behind her and her flower in full bloom and her hands clasped in front of her.

"I want to show you the tree," she said.

We walked. Down from the settlement platforms, through the undergrowth, across root ridges and mossy paths. The canopy above was thick enough that the light came through green and gold and the air was warm and damp and smelled like growing things. Lucie held my hand again and this time nobody was behind us to object.

"How are you feeling?" I asked. "After yesterday."

"Better. The forest replenished me overnight. The connection goes both ways." She looked at me. "How's your side?"

"Healed. Not even a scar."

"I know. I healed it." She said it factual, like it was obvious and also private.

We walked for fifteen minutes. The trees got bigger. The roots got wider. The fungi lanterns were replaced by the natural glow of the bark itself, gold-white light pulsing from the wood in slow waves.

And then we were there.

The Holy Tree.

I'd seen it from above. I'd been at its base for the cave entrance. But standing in front of it now, looking up, the scale was different.

Wider than a castle. The trunk rose until the eye gave up trying to follow it. The bark was grey-white and luminous, glowing gold from within, and the glow pulsed. Slowly. A rhythm like breathing, if the breaths were minutes apart. The roots spread from the base in every direction, rising above the ground in archways and ridges, some as tall as houses. The branches above were lost in the canopy and the leaves filtered the sunlight into colors, reds and golds and greens, like stained glass in a cathedral that went on forever.

It was quiet here. The settlement sounds were gone. The birds were silent. The only sound was the pulse, a low hum that vibrated in my chest, and the distant movement of leaves in a wind I couldn't feel at ground level.

Lucie let go of my hand.

"Go ahead," she said.

I walked to the trunk. Put my palm flat against the bark.

Warmth. Immediate, spreading from the contact point up my arm. The Blessing stirred in my chest, a hum matching the tree's pulse. The bark was smooth under my fingers, almost skin-warm, and through the contact I could feel the tree.

It was alive. Obviously alive, every cell of it alive, but alive the way a person is alive, with a presence behind the biology. I was touching a sleeping giant.

And the giant was tired.

The pulse was steady but thin. The warmth was there but it flickered. The roots I'd walked through were healthy, cleaned by Lucie's purification, but underneath the health was a weariness that went deep. The tree was old in a way that dwarfed everything else I'd encountered. Older than Nol. Older than the forest. And it was running down.

I pulled my hand back. The warmth faded.

Lucie was standing behind me. Close. Her eyes on the tree, her hands at her sides.

"You felt it," she said.

"Tired."

"Dying." The word came out flat. "Nol won't say it. The other elves won't say it. But the tree is dying. Fewer elves born each decade. The fertility rites produce less every generation. The corruption in the roots is new, but the decline isn't. The tree has been weakening for centuries."

She was looking at me now. Her blue eyes were steady and the afternoon light through the canopy caught the green tips of her hair and the pink flower in full bloom.

"Your power could help," she said. And then stopped. Her cheeks went pink. "I mean- the Blessing. The fertility aspect. If the tree responds to life energy, and your power generates-" She stopped again. The pink deepened. "I'm not saying- I don't mean it as a-"

"Lucie."

She closed her mouth. Her hands were clasped in front of her, white-knuckled.

I took her hand. Unclasped it from the other one. Held it. Her fingers were warm and her palm was damp and she was looking at our joined hands with her bottom lip between her teeth.

"When you're ready," I said.

Her eyes came up. Met mine. Blue and wide and the flower in her hair was glowing faintly, a soft pink light that pulsed in time with her heartbeat.

"And if I'm not ready for a long time?"

"Then I'll be here for a long time."

She didn't let go.

We stood at the base of the Holy Tree with our hands joined and the pulse of the tree in the ground under our feet and the light through the leaves making colors on the bark. Neither of us moved. Neither of us let go.

Behind us, in the canopy, the sound of branches moving. Watchers. Elves who'd followed us, watching from above. I didn't look up. Lucie didn't either.

The tree pulsed. Warm and slow and tired and alive.

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