The Sterkarm Handshake (16 page)

“How long have I been here?” He hated the pipes in his arms, but they must have been there when he woke, and didn't seem to have done him any harm—and the beeping of the box did keep time with his heart.

“Only a day, Per. Well, getting on for two. But—”

“Why do they count my heartbeats?”

Andrea wasn't exactly sure herself. She kept her hands on his shoulders, stroking, soothing. “It's just so they know thy heart's still beating. It be Elf-Work It be—”

“How. How long's passed? In Man's-Home?” A year True Thomas had spent in Elf-Land, but when he reached home, he'd been seven years away.

“Per, Per.” She put her arms around him, hugged him carefully. “I promise, I promise thee, time is passing the same there as here. Thou shalt no turn to dust when tha goes back, I promise. How canst think I'd do owt to hurt my own prick, my only prick?”

He pushed her a little away and looked into her face, studying her, searching her face and finding nothing there but honesty. He returned her hug, drawing her close again.

She felt him relax. “Lie down again, Per, lie down.” He did, and she stroked his hair back from his face so that it spread out about his head on the pillow. “Listen now; beeping be slowing down. It be counting thy heartbeats.”

His eyes grew vague as he listened. It was true: The beeping was slower. But how did the box count? It must have a spirit inside it. The beeping grew faster again as the eeriness of the thought, the idea of being so close to such Elf-Work, made his heart race, but he deliberately calmed himself, drawing in long, deep breaths. The beeping slowed again. Everything was going to be strange here, he told himself. Elf-Work on every side. He would be a fool to flutter and squawk like a chicken at every new thing.

The fine little pipe felt warm where it touched his arm. “What blood is it?”

Andrea saw the sparkle of fear in his eyes. “Not Elf-Blood, Per. It will no turn thee into an Elf, I promise.”

“Pig's blood?”

“It be blood like thine, a man's blood. It'll make thee well, it shan't do thee any harm.”

“How do Elves get men's blood?”

That was the trouble with simple people, Andrea thought. They understood things simply, and asked devastatingly simple questions. “Never worry about it, Per. It be Elf-Work.”

“But whose blood was it?” He looked up at the bag of blood, as if he might be able to recognize it.

“Thy blood, Per.” That might shut him up, she thought. “It be blood tha lost, being put back into thee.”

He blinked, remembering his blood, black in the moonlight, dripping from him to earth below and soaking in. He opened his mouth to ask the obvious question.

“By Elf-Work,” Andrea said. “Art hungry?”

He was, but there had been so many other claims on his attention that he'd hardly noticed it. Now his hunger seemed to increase moment by moment. He opened his mouth to say yes, and then remembered …

Oh no, no, no, True Thomas, she says,

Our food must never be touched by thee:

If ever a crumb goes in thy mouth,

Tha'll never win back to thine own country.

Oh no, no, no, True Thomas, says she,

Our drink must never be touched by thee:

If ever a drop goes down thy throat,

Tha'll never again see thine own country.

Andrea saw his eyes take on that scared glitter again. “I promise thee, Per, the food I give thee'll do thee no harm.”

But, Per wondered, did she want him to see his own world again? “I'm no hungry.”

“Per—”

“Be I here alone?”

“Tha'rt with me,” she said, sounding hurt.

“But Daddy?” he said. “Sweet Milk?”

“We could bring only thee through Gate, Per. They wanted to come, but they had to stay behind.”

He stiffened his muscles against the new fear that went through him, but the Elf-Working box gave him away, beeping faster. Again he made himself calm, and the beeping slowed. A whole world away from home and too weak to fight for himself—if he raised a cry of “Sterkarm!” here, who would answer him?

He couldn't afford to be afraid. And he needed to know the worst.

He threw back the bedcovers—and was astonished to see nothing but a small strip of cloth around his leg. He had expected much stained padding and wrapping. This gauzy little strip seemed stuck to his leg. It didn't even wrap all the way around it.

“Now, Per—” Andrea said.

He caught the corner of the gauzy strip and ripped it off.

“Per!”

There was no wound on his leg. Though it was sore, and hurt when he moved it, the flesh was whole. He looked up, startled, at Andrea. She had lied to him. And yet … He remembered something of being hurt, of the ride home, his uncle cursing because the bandage kept soaking through with blood, the endlessness of it …

But he had seen the wounds of others, and there had been red, inflamed flesh, weeping pus, and the puckered edges of the wound had been clumsily held together by big stitches of black twine, which had themselves inflamed the flesh around them.

Andrea, without actually touching the wound, pointed with her finger to a thin, bright-red line that ran across the side of his thigh. If a wound that had nearly killed him had healed to no more than that … “Tha said I'd been here but tyan days!”

“Tha's been here no—”

“My leg's whole!”

“Nay, Per—”

“It's no gone bad-ways!” He stared at her.

He meant it hadn't become infected. In his world almost every cut, however slight, became infected. The infection, rather than the wound itself, was often what killed. “It was cleaned,” she said. He looked blank. There was no connection in his mind between dirt and disease. “Elf-Work. We have Elf-Work to stop it going bad-ways.” He moved, and she saw that he was going to get up. “Per, no!”

He ignored her, of course—it was his biddability that made him so lovable. By holding on to the chrome stand beside the bed, he managed to get to his feet but then looked around, confused, as he felt the line from the other drip tug at his arm. The line stretched taut across the bed, and he didn't know what to do about it.

“Per.” Going close, Andrea put her arms around him. “Thy leg's no as healed as it looks. Lie down again. Rest it—and tha must eat something.”

Per had no choice but to drop back onto the bed. The Elf-Box was beeping fast because just the effort of getting to his feet had made his heart beat hard. His muscles had felt like dough. They would hardly hold him up. He didn't think they would have lifted his knees to let him take a step.

Andrea sat on the bed beside him. “I know thy leg looks healed, Per, but that be because of Elf-Work—”

Startled, Per looked at the smooth, closed flesh of his leg again. Was it all a glamor, made by Elf-Work, as the Elves could make dead leaves look like gold coin? Was his leg really stitched up with black twine, swollen and bad-ways?

Andrea put her hand on his knee. “It was a very deep gash, so they—Elven—have put some stitches deep inside to hold it together. Elf-Work stitches,” she added, as he looked up in alarm. “They won't go bad-ways. They'll melt away as if they'd never been there.”

“Inside my leg?” He whispered. She felt him shiver. “What be they made of? Where do they gan?”

“They …” She fluttered her hands, not knowing how to explain to him that the stitches would be absorbed by his body. “They'll do thee no harm, Per. It be Elf-Work.” What a useful phrase that was, explaining everything while explaining nothing. Per accepted that “Elf-Work” could achieve almost anything but didn't expect to understand it. “And rest they glued together!” she said. “They stuck edges of wound together, really neatly.”

“Glue?” Per said. He had laid himself down and seemed almost to be making himself small in the bed.

Andrea threw the covers over him. “A sort of glue. It holds edges of the wound together really strongly, it be better than stitches, but tha should no try to stand on it or walk about yet. Soon tha'll be able to, soon. In a couple of days.” She saw his eyes widen, and stroked his hair. “Only a couple of days. That be no long.”

But two days in Elf-Land could be two, or twenty, or two hundred years in Man's-Home.

Andrea got up from the bed and crossed the room to the shelves and cupboards along one wall. She brought a tray back to the bed and set it on the mattress beside him. “Tha'd get better quicker if thou et something.”

There was a smell of food from the tray, a milky, yeasty smell, and he pushed himself away from it. The sides of his stomach seemed to rub emptily together, and the ache reached up his gullet into his throat. It brought tears into his eyes because he dared not eat.

Andrea was moving plates on the tray, clattering them. Per reached out and touched the tray with the tip of one finger. It was of a hard, smooth, dazzlingly white material that he had never seen before. It didn't feel like anything he knew, it was whiter than anything he knew and, when he scratched and tapped it, the sound was strange. Not wood, not metal, not horn.

The plates weren't made of turned wood or earthenware or metal either, but of some other smooth, hard, white substance, even smoother and glassier to the touch than the tray. And there was a tall, straight-sided glass filled with … something Elvish. The glass itself was a wonder. So straight, so unflawed, so clear. Worth a fortune but, if he tried to carry it away, he would most likely break it—and how could he get even himself out of Elf-Land?

On the white surface of the tray lay … a thing. It was long, thick, curved and as yellow as a coltsfoot flower. He leaned to the left and right as he peered at it. He had no idea at all what it could be. It didn't seem to have any use.

From a small white plate, Andrea had picked up something brownish and flaking. It looked like a large, fat grub with a ridged body, half curled up. Andrea broke it in half, releasing more of the yeasty smell, though it didn't smell quite like anything he'd smelled before. Flakes fell from the thing onto the plate and tray.

“This be a croissant,” she said. He couldn't have repeated the word. “It be like bread.” She put most of it back on the plate and broke off a smaller piece, which she put in her mouth. Another piece she held out to him. He snatched his head back before any crumb of it could get onto his face and so into his mouth. But his belly wanted it, and his mouth watered.

Andrea dusted her hands, sending flakes of croissant flying, and then picked up a cloth so white that Isobel would have been envious, and wiped her hands with it before picking up a little block from beside the plate and unwrapping it. Inside was something greasy and yellow. “Butter.”

Per kept his distance at the edge of the bed. The yellow stuff looked nothing like butter. Butter was white and hard, and came to table in big lumps inside a crock.

Andrea picked up a tiny round pot and peeled a covering from the top of it. She held it so that he could see the smooth, glassy red substance it held. It was pretty. He leaned forward and she held the pot so he could sniff at it. The smell was sweet but sickly. It mystified him.

He drew back, and Andrea sighed and picked up a blunt, clumsy, useless knife that was made all of metal, even its hilt. She stuck it into the little pot, and what had seemed smooth, glassy and hard seemed to melt before the knife and turned into a soft goo. He saw the glass of the little pot flex in her hand and drew back further. Was the knife hot?

She daubed the red goo that had been hard on the flaky, yeasty thing, and bit off a little piece herself. “Jam,” she said. It was an Elvish word he didn't know. She held the stuff out to him. “It be sweet. Nice. Tha'd like it.”

Careful not to touch the food, he pushed her hand away. Hungry as he was, though his head was beginning to ache with hunger, he would never, never eat anything that had been touched by that hard red stuff that turned to goo. And that strange, greasy, flaky bread … Some folk said that Elvish bread was made by grinding men's bones to flour. What was that red goo then? He said; “Where be my pouch?”

“Never mind thy pouch. Eat something, be so good. It will no hurt thee, Per. Look.”

She pushed a small bowl to the edge of the tray. It was heaped full of small, whitish, rounded things, like a heap of large insect's eggs. He didn't know what they were, and they didn't look edible.

“And this be milk to go on them.” She touched a small jug.

“Milk?” He leaned forward. The jug was full of a white liquid that looked very like milk. He put his nose down close to it, and for a moment Andrea thought she was going to get him to drink some milk at least.

Then he reared back, wrinkling his nose and saying,
“Milk?”

“Cow's milk, Per.”

He had drunk cow's milk very rarely. Goat's milk, and sheep's milk, often straight from the tit, were what he'd been raised on. He watched her pour the cow's milk over the insect's eggs. They bobbed and shifted, making popping, snapping noises, as if hatching. Per pulled a face and drew further back. Did the Elves really eat such scrapings?

He looked about the room, with all its brightness, the silver-­framed bed, its glass boxes and cloth on the floor. Was it all a glamor, fooling his eyes, while all the time he was lying on a heap of rags in a muddy cave? Some accounts of Elf-Land said that all the riches were nothing but glamor, and their feasts nothing but dry leaves and dung—and insect's eggs floating in cow's milk.

Andrea pushed the tall glass of orange juice toward him. “Try it. It be sweet. Tha'll like it.”

Per shook his head. The filled glass was beautiful. There was an old story about a beautiful woman whose tears were liquid gold, and it was as if she'd caught her tears in a glass. Never had he seen any liquid that color before. In the bright light that came in through the hole in the wall, it glowed. He wasn't sure that he'd ever seen anything of such a bright and glaring color.