Chapter 2 : Twice Dead

"Everything moves; not everything has life."

(Ambient music: it’s better without headphones.)

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Places mentioned:

Sanlostier:

The forbidden forest that seems to be ruled by a certain subspecies of Elves.

Featherlead River:

A river that runs through Sanlostier, where even feathers sink like needles.

Castle Katella:

The royal castle on the outskirts of Spring, the capital city of Tyrannoson.

Dowin River Valley:

Mertie, a small village and Ivan’s hometown, falls within the scope of this valley.

Tyrannoson:

One of the three kingdoms on the Central Continent, ruled by the Valrino family.

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Creatures (that can speak and have names) mentioned:

Philemon

The son of the Lord of Sanlostier

Phisens

One of the seven gods, who seems to be the god of Elves

Mere

A She-Elf

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2

Twice Dead

“He wasn’t an intruder,” Philemon said.

Philemon's three fellows were exactly what I'd imagined Elves to be—spirits of Nature residing in bodies that resembled Man's. All of them had long, silvery hair in various hues and light eye colors—amber, purple, or pink—that were somewhat fluorescent. In the shadows, from some angles, these eyes appeared glassy with a green gloss like nocturnal animals—except Philemon. He was the least “Elfish,” yet the most surreal against the forest. Each time my eyes fell on him, I felt like revisiting a dream; but as soon as I looked away to his companions, I was reminded of the reality—I was in real trouble.

“He was led into the forest by a white deer, or he would be a dead leaf by now,” Philemon said.

“We can’t let him go. He sees and remembers.”

Philemon looked at me, hesitating. “I’ll send him out.”

“At least let the Lord judge him first.” one of the males suggested.

“He doesn’t have to judge everything.”

“Phile…”

“That’s it,” Philemon said sternly, glancing around. “Mere, release him.”

“Yes, My Lord.” Mere articulated and took her knife away from my neck.

Philemon said to me, coldly, “What are you?”

“I’m a physician.” I just realized he was speaking my language to me—the common tongue of the Central Continent.

“What’s that?”

“I heal diseases.”

Philemon cocked his head, confused and intrigued. “You mean you heal wounds?”

“Yes.”

“Any wounds?”

“I wish.”

He contemplated while glancing over me. I doubted that he got it.

“What are you?” I asked.

He laughed, which distracted me. He had two slightly pointed teeth at the corners of his mouth, and as he threw his head back, his golden hair waved as if woven with glimmers of sunlight floating on water.

“Have you seen anyone like me before?”

I shook my head rigidly.

“What did you tell him?” one of his male companions chimed in.

“He can heal wounds,” Philemon said. “Maybe I could take him to my father.”

“Your father will throw him in the dungeon, if not kill him at once,” the other male said.

“That’s perfect,” Mere, the only female, said. “Then he won’t go telling every Man outside. They just never learned.”

“My father will remove his memory,” Philemon glanced at her.

“He can’t heal what the Lord can’t,” one of the males said.

I felt like defending myself when they judged me in my face, but I swallowed, as my gut told me not to let them know that I understood their language, especially when I didn’t know the reason myself.

At last, Philemon held the end of the rope around my wrists, leading from the front, while his three companions followed behind, dragging the two bundled creatures. The one that had attacked me seemed dead, and the deer-murderer kept hissing.

This rope had a texture remarkably similar to my father’s. It wasn’t rough on the skin, but it learned you; the more you struggled, the tighter it circled. I relaxed for about a mile of walking, and the rope loosened up as if I wasn’t bound at all.

The woods grew brighter, and our view broadened as we marched. Animals were everywhere along the way: squirrels scampered parallel to us in the trees; wolves bared their teeth while cubs hid underneath; peacocks spread their tails; and five white deer walked up the hill, looking down upon us.

We came to another area where the trees were dotted with pink, fluorescent blossoms. A few creatures with mini-sized human figures, as small as rabbits, kneeled by the roots of these trees, fluttering their transparent wings. These little beings had two eyes, two ears, one mouth, and seemingly one nose—only their eyes were much larger, covering almost half of their tiny faces.

I peeked at Philemon; he looked serene and keen.

“Why did the wolves bare their teeth at us while these little creatures were so respectful?” I asked him.

He glanced at me but didn’t respond.

“Excuse me?”

“Hey!”

“Philemon! That’s your name, right?”

“Lord Philemon?”

“If every man is this noisy, my father should never worry about me.”

The other Elves behind me heard him and laughed.

“Are we going—” I swallowed the rest, to see your father, as I realized he was speaking their language which I wasn’t supposed to understand.           

“We’re going to see my father,” he responded to me.

“Will he kill me?”

“If you keep talking.”

We came to a river. Philemon started murmuring something, and before I could eavesdrop, two canoes appeared, floating toward us. As I got into the boat, I staggered, almost tipping over into the river. Mere tried to catch me but only managed to grab my scarf. Philemon caught my collar in time and pulled me back into the canoe. The three of us sat in one canoe, while the other two males and the two bundled creatures were in the other.

Mere looked at my scarf in her hands and said to Philemon in their language, “This Man almost drowned!”

She giggled and let go of the scarf. 

“No!” I reached out to grab it from the water’s surface, but it sank immediately like a rock. My mother had spun the scarf for me. It was made of light linen; even if you threw it into the air, it took a dance to land. I couldn’t believe what I saw.

“What’s he looking for?” Mere said. “Can you tell him to sit still? The canoe is shaking!”

Philemon whistled, and a yellow bird flew to us and perched on his forefinger.

“Can I have a feather?” Philemon spoke to the bird in the Elvish tongue.

The bird flew away, leaving an arc of yellow feathers in Philemon’s palm. He handed me the feather. I hesitated for a moment, feeling exposed; then I reached my hand out of the canoe and released the feather. It floated gracefully in the air, but the moment it touched the water, it went in like a needle.

I swallowed.

Philemon said, “This is the Featherlead River; nothing can float on its surface.”

I looked at the river's to-and-fro motion. “Does it run out of the forest?”

“It does,” Philemon said. “But I don’t know where it ends or where it comes from.”

“You’ve never traced the river to see its origin and end?”

I waited, but he didn’t answer.

“What if it goes out to the human realm? Does the riverbank rise over time since everything sinks to the bottom?”

He turned a bit of his face, glanced at me, and lowered his eyes, pondering.

“And this boat—the canoe—can float!” I knocked on the canoe’s body. “What is this made of?”

He looked up at me with a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Why don’t you take a guess?”

The creature started squirming in the other canoe. Philemon’s companion kicked it and said, “Shut up, or I’m going to kick you out of the boat!” That worked; the creature immediately fell silent.

“They dread the river,” I murmured. Who doesn’t.

Philemon glanced at me and then at the other canoe. “It is the water that they fear.”

“What about fire?”

“That too.”

“They sound weak.”

“They fear water for its torment but fire for its destruction.”

“Do you behead them before burning them?”

Philemon frowned.

To keep him engaged, which I believed to be the way to survive Sanlostier, I quickly asked, “What are they?”

“They were once Blood Elves,” Philemon said. “Now, what they are, I’m not sure. They grew vociferous after they tasted the blood of Man who accidentally broke into the forest. They started killing ceaselessly, no longer in awe of life.”

“The blood of men?”

Philemon glanced at me with fatigue.

“Intruders like you break the balance of Sanlostier,” he spoke up after taking a break from me. “The Blood Elves are only one example. Now they are sneaking out into Man’s world.”

If what Philemon said was true, then Mertie and all villages in the Dowin River Valley would suffer first.   

“Aren’t you going to do something about it?” I questioned.

“Man brought this upon themselves by crossing the line.”

“We don’t know there’s a line. Never heard of such a thing. It’s unfair.”

Philemon frowned, looking concerned, but before he could respond, Mere, sitting behind me, chimed in, “Why do you talk with this Man?”

“You’d be talking too if only you had learned the human tongue, as I told you to,” Philemon said.

“And for what? It is written, nothing comes in, nothing goes out.”

“So you want to go out?” Philemon turned.

“Come on.”

“You know nothing goes out. As long as you cross the border, my father won’t chase you.”  

“First of all, that border is not even crossable; second, he will for sure kill me if I come back,” she said.

I wished they would continue talking as if I weren’t there, but they stayed silent for the rest of the journey across the broad Featherlead River—wide as six trees laid end to end. Elves were way too quiet. Men would have brought food and drinks to the boat and talked all the way to the other side.

We jumped onto the land as the other two Elves threw the creatures onto the grass from the canoe as if they were two bags of bones. The "less dead" creature moaned, and Mere stabbed it with her dagger.

“Why do you take those things with us?” I asked Philemon. “Especially since one of them is already dead.”

Philemon looked confused and said, "They are both dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“Life is in the blood. They do not have it.”

I was astonished. “But they—”

“Move?” he squinted.

I stared at him.

“Everything moves; not everything has life.”

Immediately, I suppressed the argument brewing in my head—“Plants don’t have blood. Trees don’t move—well, at least their trunks don’t.

“Then what are you gonna do with them?” I asked instead, “Burn them? So they are twice dead?”

He frowned, translating my words in his head.

“Annihilate,” he uttered as he walked ahead of me. “Fire annihilates them. That’s how to end everything.”

“Everything here,” I caught up with him. “You can’t annihilate dragons with fire.”

Philemon was quiet. I wanted to tease him.

“You’ve never seen a dragon, have you?”

He refused to entertain me.

“You know what a dragon is, don’t you?”

He glanced at me sideways and continued to ignore me. He could have easily argued that “you’ve never seen a dragon either; there are no dragons in the human realm.”

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A hymn wafted through the breeze. As we marched, the singing appeared clearer.

            His flesh is the earth,

            Hair is the sun,

            Eyes are ponds,

            He breathes and the trees grow,

            He weeps and time stills.

            In him I reside,

            Lord of the immortals

“He dies so his creations stand…” Philemon chimed in. His singing stood out from the background hymn like a creek joyfully streaming down through the mountains—

Oh,

why he passed that burden to his child,

the endless nights of watching

over the aged and perished,

the gone and remembered

Had he tired of his godly being,

of his godly love,

his power above all

but powerless in loving her…”

“Philemon, your father wouldn’t want to hear that,” Mere reminded him.

“He can’t hear me.”

Mere didn’t just remind Philemon. The moment Philemon snapped off his singing, I was jolted back to the fact that I was a captive of the Elves.

“We’re close enough,” she said gently.

Philemon stopped talking and singing, and Mere, realizing she had gone a bit far, fell silent as well.

Finally, we arrived at an open field, like a well in the woods and a hole in the sky, through which, milky light poured in, visualizing the air as waving veils. I raised my face to the sky and took a deep breath, expecting to finally see the moon through the “hole,” but only saw a patch of clear night sky. Where did the light come from then?

The two male Elves joined the singing, and then Mere, but Philemon remained silent.

“What’s the song about?” I asked, following at his heels. “Were you singing about the same—” I swallowed "man" before he suspected that I understood their lyrics.

Philemon paused, and I nearly bumped into him. Then he continued walking.

“Hey! Talk to me! You’re the only one I can talk to!”

He sighed and said they were hymning about god Phisens.

“I thought they were singing about your father.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “We sing about kings and knights, and, you know, heroes and beauties.”

He looked confused and innocent. “But those are Men.”

“That doesn’t mean we don’t sing about gods,” I explained.

“Who’s your god?”

My mind went blank. Philemon turned to me as he heard no response for the first time.

Who was our god? There were seven of them. Yes, I’d heard the name of Phisens (though I hadn’t known he was the god of Elves until now), Aura, and Garwallos, and—one of the seven—whose name was blurred from folktales and children knew him as “the evil god”—this god didn’t participate in the Creation but instead, he spoke a curse that could not be broken, that stood as surely as the creations of the other six gods—

“Men are all going to die.” Philemon looked away.

“That’s why we sing about them, so our offspring will remember the great men who used to live.”

“But your offspring are going to die too.”

“That’s why we sing about the dead, great men. Memories will be kept and passed on to the next generation through hymns!” I said with indignation.

He held his peace, showing little interest in the debate.

After walking across the open field, we were once again submerged by trees. This new area was covered with vines—vines all around the trunks and above our heads like a web. Mellow beams, yet brighter than before, slanted through the gaps. The vines slithered away, clearing the way for us. Two vines extended in front of us and became the arms of a staircase; then thicker vines grew between the two arms, forming the steps. Philemon walked up the vine stairs. I followed but fell to the ground immediately. The vines were slippery.

“He’s too heavy,” one of the male Elves said.

No, they are slippery.

“So are these.” The other male kicked the two bundled creatures.

Philemon looked at Mere. She stepped forward, touched the two vine arms, and stroked them with her hands while murmuring something that sounded like the Elvish tongue, yet I ceased to understand it.

“Ah!”

I screamed as a vine that had crawled up from the ground suddenly entangled my legs. Another vine reached down from above, circling my upper body.

The Elves ascended the vine stairs gracefully while I and the two creatures were lifted by the vines, dangling in midair. As we went up, I saw just how tall these trees were. My father had told me that Castle Katella was as high as Raven’s Tower. Raven’s Tower was rare in Tyrannoson, as it only grew in the Northeastern mountains. Comparing a Raven’s Tower to an apple tree was like comparing an elephant to a chicken. These trees, I imagined, were at least one and a half times the height of the castle.

Soon, the leaves, vines, or branches cleared above my head, exposing the sky—starry and moonless. Just then, the vine threw me to the ground and disentangled itself.

The plush, moist lawn smelled so alive, as if green blood were running through the grass. Life is in the blood. I struggled up and staggered a few steps after Philemon and was instantly soothed by the refreshing, floral breeze. The view overwhelmed me. This was at the height of the treetops, the edge of a lake gemmed with gleaming, blue lotus flowers. On the other side of the lake, trees with silvery branches and blurry leaves merged into the mist. These trees glowed—I guessed I’d come to the source of light in Sanlostier.

The four Elves jumped into the lake, each landing on the golden lotus root inside a lotus flower. They leaped from one to the next as if the flowers were large stones rising out of the water.

“Hey!” I yelled at them as they leaped farther and farther away, leaving me with the two perverted Blood Elves squirming in the calf-high grass.

Philemon turned and shouted, “Raise your hands over your shoulders!”

“Why?” I yelled back at him.

“Do as I say!”

I raised my tied hands and saw a white, long-tailed bird, surrounded by a soft, golden halo, resembling a peacock, flying toward me. It lifted me with its claws, gripping the rope around my wrists. Two other birds followed, lifting the two creatures. Just like that, I caught up with the elves above the lake, my feet almost touching the blue lotus flowers. The bird set me down in front of the glowing trees and then flew off, disappearing as curves of light into the depths of the woods. The elves jumped from the lake to the grass, and together, we headed into the breathtakingly divine woods.

Upon closer inspection, all these trees were translucent like jade stones. I stretched my bundled hands to touch the trunk; it was cold, hard, yet silkily smooth, giving it a sense of life that distinguished it from stone. At first, the trees were green—the bark and leaves—but as we progressed, they grew paler yet the blossoms thickened, sliding through shades of green until they became opalescent. The leaves and blossoms jingled in the breeze like water dripping from the fingertips of a bathing nymph. A crystalline petal drifted away from the tree, fell to the ground, and shattered like a flake of glass. The deeper we went, the thicker the trees became. All the branches interlaced above our heads, pressing down on the path. As the surroundings grew brighter but not more glaring, it was as if we were walking into the moon.

At last, beams of light slanted through the gaps in the branches that ended our path.

I just noticed that the other three Elves had disappeared with the two creatures, leaving only Philemon standing in front of me. Something invisible attacked the back of my knees, causing me to kneel on the ground.

“Father, we captured two more of them,” Philemon said to the branches.

There was no response, or at least, I didn’t hear anything.

Philemon spoke up again, “One of them attacked a man, the other a white deer.” Slowly, the trees slid apart, and the interwoven branches separated, opening the path. Philemon walked through, and I couldn’t help but gape.

Beyond the branches was a colossal tree with a trunk so thick it seemed to be the axis of the world. Perhaps twenty adults holding hands could encircle the trunk. Its roots didn’t grow into the earth but into an unfathomable well, like fresh flowers in a vase, as if it were rootless. The “well,” broader than the trunk, supported the entire tree. The water—or the liquid—glistened with a silvery-white sheen, but it wasn’t glaring at all, as if the moon were at the bottom, casting its luster to the surface.

The branches closed again as soon as Philemon entered. I was left outside alone, with the end of the rope around my wrists still gripped in Philemon’s hands. I tried to get up but was attacked even harder from the back and fell on my knees again.

“The deer has died,” I heard Philemon’s half-muffled voice.

“I’ve seen,” a solid, magnetic male voice echoed around like deep water, much clearer than Philemon’s. The glassy leaves and blossoms around me clinked in the ripples of his voice.

“Their numbers are growing. They are escaping from the forest. We can’t just execute those who lurk here; we must hunt after them.”

“How?” his father asked gracefully. Ah, that “how” sounded a thousand years old.

“Reinforce the border, increase the patrol, supervise the Blood Elves—”

“We rule the Blood Elves,” he interrupted Philemon, “not supervise them. We cannot keep each Blood Elf from potential corruption or ban them from hunting. They hunt; that’s how they were made. Only when they are corrupted can we wield power. Until then, we don’t interfere with them.”

“But you rule this forest.”

“I rule so that every creature in Sanlostier lives the way they are designed to.”

“I thought we all lived the way we are designed to.”

“No, Philemon. We didn’t design the way, so how can we live the way without the law? I didn’t make the law; I execute it so creations live as designed, so they can prosper.”

There was no response from Philemon. My heart started pounding in the silence as the waves of the Lord’s voice died down.

“The Man is here,” Philemon said after a while.

“I smelled it before he crossed the lake.”

“He said he could heal wounds,” Philemon added, trying to justify my usefulness. “I was thinking maybe he could help—Father?”

“Philemon, there’s nothing to be curious about. Men are the most treacherous yet pathetic beings, desiring eternity but living in the shadow of death.”

“How did you know?” Philemon challenged. “You’ve never been outside Sanlostier.”

There was a pause, and then the Lord said sternly, “I have, when your mother died.”

“You said she was killed by the Dark Elves.”

“It was originally because of Man,” the Lord said, sounding slightly edgy.

The silence grew heavier than I had expected.

Finally, Philemon said, “You never told me that. I don’t understand how a Man came to associate with the Dark Elves to kill her.”

I heard not a sigh but an inhale from the Lord, and then, a holding of breath, a sense of control.

“How?” Philemon sounded increasingly urgent. “How did this Man—”

“Your mother didn’t want you to live eternally with hatred,” his father cut him off in a low, suppressed roar that sounded more like an attempt to calm himself. “And I didn’t want you to seek revenge by breaking into the human world, and—”

He paused for a while, yet what he ended up saying did not need a second thought:

“The Man responsible for your mother’s death has died.”