Close Kin

Sable sat beside
the dead body of her best friend, too miserable to
cry.
Only seventeen years old, she had already seen three elf women die in
childbirth. She and Laurel had grown up together, and she couldn't comprehend
yet that Laurel had left her to face life alone. Instead, another thought held
her attention with cold finality. Sable was now the oldest girl in the camp.
She would be the next to die.

As the weeks passed, Sable struggled
with her grief Laurel's death had left a gap that was almost like a visible
thing: a blur where she should have sat with her weaving, or a blank where she
always swam
and splashed in the lake. Life
was fragile. Sable had always known
this. But did it have to be so
predictable? She felt the pain of her loss turn into a new determination.
Little by little, she made her plans.

The full moon came
again, magnificent in its pale perfection.
Sable
sat on a hill above the camp, watching it rise over the lake. An elf man came
to sit beside her.

"I looked
everywhere for you," he said. She didn't reply. He
looked
at that flawless face, those dark blue eyes, that long hair that
was blacker than the night. She was the most
beautiful thing he knew.

"It's your
marriage moon," he said softly, thinking about how
long he had waited to see it. She was a woman now. She
was eighteen.

"It's not my
marriage moon," she answered. "It's just the moon.
I
told you I won't marry you, Thorn."

The
man gave a grimace of annoyance. He had hoped that, once
she wasn't a child any
longer, she'd stop this childish talk, but he had
already been expecting
trouble. Sable should have been at the
evening meal to renew the vows they had made years ago at
their
engagement. Then he would have given
Sable her food, as he always
did, and that simple ceremony would have
made her his wife. But when he had woken up in the twilight, she was already
gone. The band had eaten its meal without her.

"I've hunted your food since you
were twelve," he pointed out. "I've sheltered and fed you since
before your father died. I've been good to you, Sable. You know that I love
you."

Sable looked at
the man then, at his bright blond hair and gray eyes,
his broad cheekbones, firm mouth, and strong chin. She
had always
idolized him, just as Laurel had
idolized Rowan. "I'm not going to die like that, Thorn," she said.
"If you loved me, you wouldn't want me to.

Thorn studied her, puzzled and
impatient. She'd been so moody these last few weeks.

"Of course I don't want you to
die," he protested. "But I don't make the rules. It's just life. If
women don't die, there won't be any children."

"Laurel
died, and there wasn't a child anyway," whispered
Sable.

"That
happens sometimes," said Thorn with a shrug, "and we
all
miss her, but she and Rowan were happy for a whole year and a half And she
wasn't sorry, either. She knew that's a woman's life." He put an arm
around Sable, stroking that glossy black hair. "We'll have a happy year,
too. I promise." He bent his head to kiss her. Sable had waited years for
that kiss, but she pulled away.

"No," she said steadily.
"I won't marry you."

Thorn was angry now. Nature hadn't
blessed him with a very large store of patience, and it was rapidly running
out.

"We're getting
married," he said. "I don't care how silly you're
going to be about it.
Your father would have beaten you for this kind
of talk; you know how much he wanted you to have a
child."

"My father killed two wives to
have me, just so his own name could pass on!" cried Sable. "I'm not
going to die like that, Thorn! I'm not!"

"Sable," growled Thorn, taking her face between
his hands,
"who gave
you every single meal you've eaten for the last six years?"

"You
did," she whispered unhappily.

"And
whose tent did you wake up in this evening?"

"Yours,"
she said again.

"Are you going
to hunt your own food from now on?"

No answer. Sable
wouldn't look at him. He looked at her
instead, at that beautiful face, that perfect white skin,
and he rememb
ered again how much he loved her.

"No, you're not," he
concluded. "Because you're going to be my wife, and I'll be your husband,
and I hunt for you. And it's our marriage moon at last, and that's how it's
going to be."

Sable glanced up, her blue eyes
grave, to study the man who loved her. The man who wanted to kill her. She
stared at him for a long moment, calm with despair.

"Then I
need some time to get ready," she murmured and hurried
back
to the tents to gather the things she would need. Four cloths
should be enough, and she retrieved the treasured
triangle of broken
glass that once,
long before her birth, had been part of a hand mirror.

Sable propped the fragment of mirror
carefully in the corner of the tent and took her father's hunting knife from
under her sleeping pallet. She looked at the bone-white color of the true elf
blade that
never lost its edge, the way
their metal knives did. She started to cry,
thinking about what she must
do, staring at her face in the shard of glass as if she were trying to memorize
it. It was the last time, she decided. She would never look at it again.

Watching in the
glass, she made the first cut, and the good elf-
blade hardly hurt her, it was so sharp. She made that whole cut
before
the smarting came. The blood covered up her cheek so that
she couldn't see what she was doing, but she
finished the two parallel
cuts and
then paused, a little dizzy. Should she go on to the other side before she did
the really hard part? What if she fainted before she was
done?

"Sable?"
Irina was at the tent opening. "Thorn says you're going
to
repeat your vows soon. Are you getting ready? Can I help?"

Sable quickly
put down the knife and turned her uninjured
cheek
toward the child.

"No,"
she gasped, Irina's face dim before her eyes, and the cloth
in
her hand warm and wet. "Wait.... Yes, you can, dear. Go and gather me some
flowers."

"What kinds? What colors?"
asked Irina happily, pleased to be of use.

"Oh, anything," Sable
roused herself to answer. "Something pretty." And the child was gone.

Hands shaking, she made the twin cuts
across the other cheek,
watching in the
glass to make them even. That's stupid, she told her,
self Why would it matter? But it gave her
something to think about besides the sting of the blade. Blood was running down
her neck. It
made her hands sticky
and slippery, and it was hard to hold the
knife.

Now for the hard part, and then I'll
be done. She paused for a second and blinked until the mirror swam back into
focus. Like
butchering deer, she told
herself firmly. Like flaying hide. And she
sawed the sharp knife between the two cuts on her right cheek, peel
ing
away the skin.

Blood was everywhere. She couldn't
remember what she was doing. She couldn't quite understand why all this had to
happen. "Butchering deer," she whispered, and gave a sob as the
skinned
cheek
blazed with pain. Automatically, she turned the knife to the stretch of skin on
the other cheek. Almost finished now.

"Do you want
more of these?" It was Irina again.

Sable dropped
the knife and stared at the blood running onto her
dress,
at her red hands holding the pieces of bloody skin. The red
knife, the red hands began to turn gray before her
eyes. I need air, she
thought. I can't breathe. She crawled toward the
tent opening.

Irina screamed
and dropped the flowers as she scrambled away.
Crawling from the tent, Sable heard shouts and running
feet. Some
thing must be wrong, she thought. I
wonder what it is. She saw
Rowan run up and
then stop, pale and staring. She heard Thorn call
her name and felt him
grab her by the arms.

"Sable, what did you do?"
he yelled frantically. As the world
spun,
she saw his handsome face for a second, twisted in horror and
disgust.
"Oh, Sable, no! You've -- you've made yourself
ugly!"

Ugly, thought the bloody girl. Yes,
that was what was wrong.
She was ugly, and
she would never be beautiful again. But she was
safe. She wouldn't die.
He wouldn't marry her now. She slumped unconscious in the arms of the man who
had loved her and wanted to kill her.

Seylin hurried through the maze of
hallways in the great under, ground goblin palace and knocked on Emily's door.
They had been
dose friends since childhood,
but Seylin wasn't a child anymore. He
was one of the King's Guard now,
and his black uniform matched
his black
hair and eyes. The girl he had played with had grown into a young woman. By
human standards, Emily looked quite average,
and the elvish Seylin
looked quite remarkable, but Seylin was the
one
who found himself daydreaming about Emily's brown eyes and
warm smile.
He couldn't even tell if she cared about him.

There was a scramble, and Emily's
door popped open to reveal his friend Brindle's little daughter, her snake eyes
gleaming up at
him. In her arms she
clutched Talah, Emily's monkey, rolled up in a
blanket like a doll.

"Where's Em?" he asked, and
the little girl pointed wordlessly behind her. He found Emily seated on the
terrace, teaching a very
small goblin boy to
fasten a buckle. Emily was always surrounded by
children. They appealed
to her high spirits and love of excitement. Goblin babies were more fun than
human babies, she said, because human babies never bit large chunks out of the
furniture or tried to take off on awkward wings and crashed into the wall.

The handsome Seylin was an
embarrassing anomaly in an ugly
goblin
world. His parents had almost died of shame over their son's
striking features. Having grown up with teasing,
inaudible whispers,
and sympathetic
glances, the sensitive young man had always enjoyed
the
company of Emily's many visiting children because he never felt
that
they were mocking him or gossiping over his looks. But, lately, he
had found all the
bustle and confusion a little hard to take.

"Can't I ever see you
alone?" he asked crossly, sitting down be, side her.

"Goodness, I am alone,"
responded the young woman. "Just
Brindle's
two before class this morning. This afternoon I'm expect
ing a dozen.
We're going to the kitchens to bake cakes."

Seylin
sighed. She was right. This was as alone as she ever was.

"Em. I've been thinking,"
he began. "We're older now, and I wanted to talk to you. After all, we're
not little pages anymore." He paused. "We need to talk."