Lionel has tackled Tara to the ground before he’s even really thought to himself what he’s doing. There’s the scream from a raptor above them, and he feels the beat of wings. The beast lands just beyond them. Flapping, claws scraping in the sod, it turns around, and then its shadow is above them. It lurches, and then its weight is crushing down on Lionel and Tara below him. Hot liquid spills over Lionel’s neck and back. It takes a moment to realize that it’s not his blood. Pushing the beast off, he sees arrows protruding from its body and the bodies of other members of its flock.

Tara sits up, her eyes are only on him. “Thanks for saving me.”

He finds himself flushing in irritation. “Don’t say ‘thank you’ to an elf. You’ll put yourself in my debt.”

She looks at him with doe-like innocent eyes. “Can’t we just stop keeping score?”

He sighs. He hears footsteps in the distance, but he’s not sure if they are friend or foe. “No, we’re about to be surrounded by elves, and you must keep score.” Not quite believing what he is about to do, he inclines his head and says, “Thank you for coming back to rescue me in prison.”

She blinks. “Oh, so we’re even?”

“Yes,” says Lionel.

Rolling her eyes, she shakes her head. He puts his hand on her shoulder, and her eyes go to his fingers. It is as though her gaze has physical weight. He finds himself licking his lips, but recovers his wits. “Listen, Tara, you must not give your full name to whoever is approaching.”

“Why?” she asks, meeting his gaze, and again her eyes are so wide and innocent.

“Because it gives us power to know your name. We can use it for compulsion,” he says, and the thought of anyone else using it on her makes him burn.

“You know my full name,” she exclaims. Her voice gets accusatory. “And you used it on me in the cell.”

“So you’d go home!” Lionel protests. “And be safe.”

Narrowing her eyes, she says, “Don’t worry, I won’t thank you for that.”

“Good,” he says, flustered more than he should be. He’d protected her, or tried to. She has no sense whatsoever, probably because she’s human and a baby by elf standards. She probably isn’t even fifty years old … he catches himself, remembering how little sense he’d had when it came to climbing the tree and using his eyes to scan for the Golden Road, or how he hadn’t thought of using fire to frighten away predators.

She huffs.

He looks into the surrounding trees and directly into the eyes of an elf he recognizes. The elf has an arrow leveled at his head.

“Rolleim,” Lionel whispers. “It’s me, Lionel.”

“Stand slowly,” Rolleim says, not lowering his bow. “And raise your hands.”

Lionel rises and his heart falls, seeing no glimmer of recognition in his once friend’s eyes. Rolleim follows Lionel’s movement, raising the bow to keep it aimed at Lionel’s heart. About two decades older than Lionel, Rolleim had always been the taller one. Now Lionel is taller by a full two hands. He’s dimly aware of Tara rising beside him. He hears familiar whispers in the trees. “A human … but the other one …”

His mother’s voice rises from the forest. “Lionel!”

Before he knows it, his mother has rushed past Rolleim directly into what would be the path of his arrow, her arms outstretched. Catching her, Lionel enfolds her in his arms and pulls her tight, feeling a rush of gratitude and relief so great he thinks his legs might give out from under him. She feels so tiny in his arms. His mother had been smaller than him before, but now she seems impossibly so.

Someone coughs. He hears the sound of shifting feet, and the patter of rain on leaves above them. He lets his mother go at last, but she keeps an arm around his waist. When he looks down at her, he sees she is crying.

“You made it back,” she sniffs. She’s wearing farmer’s attire: a pale cream-colored tunic with a high collar and long sleeves beneath a dress of wool in goldenrod yellow with no unnecessary embellishments. The dress is tied up to her knees, revealing worn leather boots. A rust colored cape hangs from her shoulders, and also a leather knapsack. Her hair is in a braid that isn’t as severe as the palace norm. He smiles, holding back tears. It’s good to be home.

Lionel looks up and finds that nearly twelve members of his village seem to have come out for this adventure. He glances up and sees the ravens. Did Huginn and Muninn summon them? How would they have gotten here so fast?

Looking past Lionel, his mother says, “You have a human companion?”

“Oh, yes,” Lionel says, turning to find Tara has backed away a few steps. She is as wet as he is—but it looks better on her, he suspects. The shirt she wears clings to her, sharply demarcating her strong shoulders and dramatic curves. There seems to be some sort of undergarment that is beneath the shirt, either for decoration or support, that sadly hides her breasts. He notices the other men, and some of the women, eyeing her with more than curious interest and finds his jaw getting hard and his cheeks heating at embarrassment of his own jealousy for a woman he isn’t even romantically engaged with.

Forcing his features to neutral, he says, “Mother, this is Tara of Chicago. She was abducted from her home by the Dark Elves along with me.”

At the word “mother,” Lionel notices Tara relaxing slightly.

“How do you do, ma’am?” Tara says in Lionel’s tongue.

Jaben, one of the men from his village, a farmer even older than his mother, says, “She speaks Elvish!”

“It is good to meet you, Tara of Chicago,” his mother says, smiling ear to ear, her eyes sparkling with tears.

Tara looks between them, raises a finger to her cheek, and smiles at Lionel and his mother both. “I see the resemblance!”

There are some harsh whispers from the elves around them, and a huff that sounds like a bitter laugh. Lionel feels his shoulders fall. He doesn’t look like his mother … not anymore.

Smile fading, Tara’s gaze goes to the crowd.

“You must be frozen through!” says his mother, looking between the two of them, beginning to take off her knapsack.

“Don’t cover them up, Tavende,” Jaben says to her. “They’ll need to let the Dark Waters wash off of them.” As he speaks, Lionel hears the rain beating on the leaves above them increase, and feels droplets on his head and shoulders.

“Come on,” says Jaben, with a wave of his hand. “We shouldn’t be tarrying here much longer. There are worse things than velociraptors.” His eyes go to Huginn and Muninn in the treetops. The two birds rawk and bob.

Rolleim takes up the lead, bow upraised. Lionel looks back, and sees Kalee, Jaben’s wife, sidling up to Tara.

Lionel hesitates, but Jaben says, “Come on, get a move on. Kalee won’t bite her.” Jaben sounds gruffer than Lionel has ever heard him, and he’s not meeting Lionel’s eyes. None of the elves are meeting his eyes.

“How did you find me?” he asks, falling into step with his mother.

“We were out hunting mushrooms when we heard Huginn and Muninn’s cries,” his mother says with a sunny smile.

The rain begins to fall more heavily. His mother doesn’t go to look for mushrooms in the Delta of Sorrows, although he’s heard of Jaben and Kalee doing so occasionally. He’s also heard other rumors about the couple; dangerous rumors that he’s never tried to substantiate because if he knew the truth, he might be forced to report them.

The rain increases in intensity, running down Lionel’s face, forcing him to wipe it from his eyes. High above them, the ravens rawk and take off, circling into the mists and out of view. Lionel’s eyes shift back to earth and catch on Lorelei, a woman not much older than he. She quickly looks away, and Lionel feels his heart beating too fast in his chest. He remembers a line from the book he’d drawn the Invocation of the Destroyer from. To summon the Destroyer is to end your life. Only use as a last resort. He’d thought that made no sense … now he’s beginning to realize that his old life may be gone.

Tara hears one of the elves say to Lionel, “We shouldn’t be tarrying here much longer. There are worse things than velociraptors.”

Wrapping her arms around herself, Tara prepares to follow the line of elves. She would really like some Gore-Tex hiking gear right now. She’s cold and wet, but she gets that there is something in the black water they’d taken a dip in that they want washed off by the rain.

Shaking her head, Tara steps behind a pair of elves who’ve moved between her and Lionel and his mother. Lionel’s mother does look like him. Lionel’s mom has the same white-blonde hair, their eyes have the same shape, she has a narrow chin that Lionel has kept though the frame of his face has broadened, and they have the same dimple in their left cheeks. Tara hadn’t liked the laugh that she’d heard when she’d mentioned it.

Shivering, she tries to push back a long, wet tangle of hair and a bit breaks off in her hand. She has a moment of panic as it drops into the mud—a disease from the water? And then she remembers it catching on fire the night before and the blackened ends of Lionel’s bangs, too. “Just fire damage,” Tara says in English and winces. She’d never thought she’d use that expression to describe her hair.

“You speak English?” The whispered words in her own language make Tara draw to a stop. A foot away from her stands a tiny Elvish woman. She’s gorgeous, with almond-shaped green eyes. They’re intensified by being red-rimmed, as though she’d been crying. Honey-colored hair peeks out from beneath a sage-green hood.

“Yes,” says Tara. She looks down at the shallow water she’s walking in. Did she misunderstand its effect on Lionel’s magic or does it not inhibit everyone’s magic?

“The waters of the delta twist my magic,” says the woman in an accent that Tara would peg as maybe Scottish. “But after knowing your kind for over a thousand years, I don’t need magic anymore.”

It’s pouring rain, and cold. “Oh,” says Tara.

The woman swings a knapsack around and takes out a cloak. “You’re no longer contaminated. Wear this.” She holds it out in Tara’s direction. It’s woolen, and will be soaked in minutes, but when Tara puts it on, she is warmer. She decides to savor the warmth for however long it lasts.

The woman says, “My husband and I, we kept the plague away, you know.”

“The plague?” says Tara.

“From our MacGregor clan,” says the woman, “in Scotland.”

Tara imagines there are probably a lot of MacGregors in Scotland, but she nods as though she knows what the woman is talking about.

The woman’s voice cracks. “The gate we use was flooded by the Dark Waters. We’ll never be able to go back. Fiona is going to have a baby; I was going to be the godmother.” Tears spill from her eyes. “I’m not allowed to have a baby. I have no one to pay the child price. The MacGregors have been my children for over a thousand years and now I can’t see them!”

Tara stammers, “I’m … I’m … sorry.”

The elf woman sniffs. “Of course you are. You are human.” She tilts her head and wipes her face with her sleeve. “From Chicago … I hear the Dark Elves are emigrating there.” She takes a step closer. “Taking their families, escaping this swamp and the queen.”

New goosebumps rise on Tara’s skin. She remembers the child who’d been beaten. “Emigrating?”

The woman nods.

She hears splashing behind her and turns. The other elves are far ahead of them, except for a single man running toward them through the rain and muck. “Kalee, don’t talk to her. She’ll tell Lionel, and he’ll tell the queen!”

“Let him tell the queen!” the woman who must be Kalee responds. “We’ll be long gone! The queen can’t control us anymore.”

The man stops beside his wife. “Chicago is far away from Scotland.”

“Fiona told us about the aeroplanes.” Kalee protests. “We’ll use human magic to go back to Scotland and rejoin the MacGregors.”

The man looks at Tara. He shuffles a bit. “Are there such things as aeroplanes, truly?”

Tara nods.

He licks his lips. “And they can take us from Chicago to Scotland.”

“Yes,” says Tara.

“We used to live in Scotland,” he says. “Before Odin made all of us leave Midgard.”

Kalee makes a derisive sound. “And the queen agreed, probably so she could have her talons in us all.”

Tara’s shoulders hunch under the onslaught of the rain. She isn’t sure where this is all going, but she has a feeling she might not like Lionel’s employer. “Odin …” she murmurs. Her eyes go to the path the ravens had flown in. Were they his birds?

“Why don’t you ask Lionel about him,” says Kalee, her chin dipping. “I suspect he knows rather a lot about Odin.”

At that moment, she hears Lionel’s voice. “Tara!” She turns to find him stepping out of the rain. He has a dark blue cloak on that’s too small. His mother is beside him, jogging to keep up. A moment later, he’s beside her, glaring down at Kalee and the man. “They didn’t try to entrap you, did they?” he says, his voice nearly a hiss.

“What? No!” says Tara. “We were just talking.” Lionel’s head whips toward her. She remembers the man’s fear that Lionel would report them. “About Earth.” She gives him a tight smile. “They’ve never been.”

She sees the man and woman relax. Lionel raises an eyebrow but doesn’t comment. His mother is looking wildly between the elf couple, Tara, and her son.

The couple nod at Lionel, split apart, and run around him, heads bowed as though they are afraid to look at him.

He frowns as they dart past.

“They don’t know how to treat you, Lionel,” his mother says. “They don’t know who you are.”

“And who am I?” he asks.

His mother bows her head.

“Forgive me, Mother, I shouldn’t have asked,” he whispers.

Tara swallows. She thinks of Emmett Till getting brutally murdered for not knowing the unspoken rules of the Deep South.

She’s stumbled into the politics of a world she barely understands. She has a feeling she’d better figure it out quick. … her life might depend on it.

Lionel is cold and wet. The knowledge that he’d invoked the Destroyer gnaws at him, his body is alien to him, and his neighbors’ glances are hostile. He’s heard whispers of “half-breed,” “abomination,” and “now we know who his father is.”

Despite all that, Lionel’s heart lifts when he sees the trees of the delta clearing and the Golden Road. Beyond the road, he can imagine the rolling fields of green interspersed with well-tended forests and tidy villages. The clouds end at the road, and he can see the white-blue glow of Alfheim’s sun. He puts his hand on Tara’s lower back to urge her on … and because his hand wants to be there.

“What exactly is the child price?” Tara asks.

His hand drops. She’d evidently spoken about more than Midgard with Kalee and Jaben.

Lionel’s mother draws to a halt and he can feel her unspoken, Should I tell her?

Stepping onto the road, Lionel pauses. The child price is something all the other magical races find abhorrent. He doubts that a human, with her seven and a half billion kindred, will think better of it, but he shrugs as if to say, Why not? Better she learns from his mother than some other elf.

Walking next to Tara, his mother says, “For a baby to be born, someone must die, or there would be too many to feed.”

Lionel frowns. Though there are less than a billion Light Elves on Alfheim, and the land mass is comparable to Earth’s—surely they could sustain a few more?

His mother continues. “Elves are immortal.”

The words make his chest constrict. Is he immortal? He’d always assumed so, but now …

“That’s … interesting,” says Tara. “Exactly how is the person who is going to die chosen?”

There is fear in her voice. Lionel says quickly, “It’s not some sort of blood sacrifice like your Aztecs. Someone volunteers, and then they will themselves to die.”

“Oh,” says Tara, carefully looking at the ground. “What if no one volunteers?”

His mother answers. “If the mother decides to see her pregnancy through, the baby may stay, but the couple has broken the queen’s law. They will be tried, may be found guilty, and if so, will be sent to the Dark Lands.”

Had his mother been tried? Had her soulmate’s accidental death not twenty months before Lionel was born—just a few weeks longer than normal elf gestation—been considered payment of the price? Or had someone interceded? The same someone who interceded to see he was allowed to study magic after his accidental trip to Midgard as a child?

As they make their way to the gathered villagers, the enchantment woven into his cloak activates. All the water slides from the fibers and they warm to the perfect degree.

“Oh,” says Tara. “My cloak …”

“Is magical,” says Rolleim, coming forward with a smile. He stops not a pace away from Tara, reaches out, and drags a hand down the garment’s front, as though testing the fabric, fingertips grazing her breasts. “It’s warm now that you’re out of the Delta of Sorrows, isn’t it?”

Tara’s lips form a small ‘o’ of shock.

Technically, Rolleim has done nothing outside of normal Elven etiquette, but Lionel’s jaw tightens, and a charge of magic rushes to his fingertips.

Rolleim’s eyes go to Lionel’s hands. Everyone else takes a step back. Lionel catches a whispered, “half-breed” and “savage.” A muscle in his jaw jumps, but he doesn’t look at the whisperer, afraid he might turn them to ice with the sudden jolt of power.

He glances at Tara, and sees her eyes have settled upon the speakers and narrowed. A heartbeat later, she’s schooled her features to neutral. Her fingers flutter on the top of his hand. They’re cool and it is the most innocuous of brushes, but his anger and magic turn to something else completely different.

His neighbors press closer to Tara, carefully avoiding Lionel. Martier, one of the oldest matriarchs of the village, says, “Our village hasn’t seen a human in over two thousand years.”

Jaylee says, “You must stay for the night!”

The village’s only two children say, “Will there be a feast and a dance?”

“Yes, yes!” says someone else. “The queen will fetch her tomorrow to return her to Midgard … we must celebrate tonight!”

Tara’s eyebrows hike. Seeing an unasked question, Lionel bends near, and she whispers in Elvish, “Does time work like normal—I mean, like Earth—here? If I stay for the night, am I going to wake up fifty years older and half my life gone?”

Kalee bristles. “That happened one time, and it wasn’t even in our village. Still, it’s all anyone talks about!”

Tara’s eyes go wide.

Lionel gives her hand a gentle squeeze, and then doesn’t let go. “Time is the same,” he assures her. “But that particular mortal wished to stay.”

“The queen, in all her great wisdom, made those villagers send him back,” says Martier grumpily.

“Ah,” says Tara.

“I will make sure you get home,” Lionel’s mother says. “You brought my son back to me. I am in your debt.”

A hush goes through the gathering at the statement, and Lionel feels the breath rush from his lungs. Around him, jaws fall open.

In his hand, Tara’s fingers go slack. “Oh, no, you can’t say that. You can’t be—”

“But I am,” says Lionel’s mother. “And it is settled.”

In the village a hadrosaur lows.

Martier nervously clears her throat. “I’m sure that Tara and …” She ducks her head.

“You may call my son Lionel,” his mother says.

“Come this way,” Martier says. “You must be hungry.” Lionel can’t help but notice that she hasn’t used his name.