Chapter 28 - Queen of the Elves

Where did the elves take Celia? More importantly, why did the elves takes Celia? All became clear shortly after she was so rudely carried off.

The elves weaved effortlessly through the thick forest. The trees seemed to politely step aside to let them past. They ran fast; the trees blurred before Celia’s eyes. The elf that carried her seemed not to notice her weight as she hung like a sack over his shoulder. She could see the forest though his body. It was highly disturbing. But he ran smoothly, and she was barely jarred at all.

After an hour or so of running, the elves began to slow. The forest was beginning to look familiar, even upside down and through the translucent body of a moving elf. This part of the forest could never be forgotten. There was the tree from which Barney had hung helplessly, and had to be rescued. There was the thorn bush that Sammy had hacked to pieces with his sword.

If you have ever been carried off by elves, you will know that it is not a particularly pleasant experience. Elves are fascinating and noble creatures. They are also utterly convinced of their own superiority, and treat all other species with either a condescending tolerance or a scornful abhorrence. Usually if you are unfortunate enough to be carried off, you fall into the latter category, and only extreme good luck can save you. Contrary to popular belief, elves do not spend their time singing and dancing in joyful harmony – singing is something they only inflict on prisoners as a form of torture. One note at sufficient volume can rupture an eardrum.

Humans had always fallen into the first category, never being considered enough of a threat to be taken seriously. However, this was changing. People were destroying the forest, moving further in by the day. They were encroaching on the elves’ territory in the depths of the forest, and awakening the souls of the trees, which had long lain dormant. And the trees were angry, disturbing the pleasant lives of the elves and making them furious. And so the elves had come up with a plan.

Celia fell into neither category. Unbeknownst to her, her mother, who had died giving birth to her, had been an elf. An exiled elf to be sure, banished from the forest for loving a human, but an elf all the same. And not just any elf. She had been the last remaining descendent of Femmur, Elf-King of the East. He had been magnificent, leading the 501 year rebellion of ancient times, which had gained them the peace of the forests. When the elves had discovered the identity of the beautiful young female they had banished, they spent years searching for her, but it was too late. Now they had found her daughter.

As they reached the path Sammy had created with his Godly power, when he was looking for her, Celia realised what was happening. Those elves didn’t give up easily. When the trees had taken her, she had been carried by the vines above the brambles. They had dropped her suddenly, and everything had gone black: she had either fainted or been knocked out. And when she had awoken, she was dressed in a silver-green shimmering shift and a crown of leaves, and was being propelled toward a tree that had grown into the shape of a throne. She had not even thought of elves. They had been very quiet and were almost invisible, after all. She realised now that they must have been there, waiting to officially crown her, when Sammy had come to rescue her. She shuddered to think how close she had come to being their queen – if Sammy had been less God-like in his rescue attempt, if he had been a few minutes later....
They reached the coronation clearing. It was dark, but for green-tinged light that split the air in rays. Dark green mosses draped over branches and coated gnarled trunks. Leaf litter lay knee deep over the forest floor, blue-spiked brambles trailing over it. And everywhere, everywhere were the vines. The looped and twisted, snaked around trunks, criss-crossed, net-like, in the canopy. Celia could feel their tension. They were ready to spring into action at any sign of trouble.
And so they did.

Celia was not one to go down easily in a fight. She may have been supremely sensible, but even the most sensible of us sometimes take on more than we can handle, if the sensible decision in unpalatable. So instead of making the sensible decision, bowing to the demands of the elves, becoming their queen, and then slowly destroying them from the inside as revenge for kidnapping her and possibly killing her friends, she fought. She didn’t really have a plan. Or any weaponry. She had no magical power. She was not a god. She was alone. But sometimes a little determination can be all you need.

She took the only course of action available. She waited until the elf holding her had placed her on the ground, then grabbed him by the ankle, and bit it. Hard. Until then, the elves had been completely silent. With that single bite, she made two discoveries. Firstly, and most importantly, elves have a very low pain threshold (seriously, how much can it hurt to be bitten on the ankle by an average sized teenage girl). Secondly, there is a reason elves don’t talk. The noise it made could have shattered bone.

All the other elves stopped in their coronation preparation and turned to look. The chief of the clan, who was polishing the crown of silver leaves jumped, and dropped it. It fell into the leaf litter, and had to be polished all over again. The two female elves who were preparing the throne, draping soft blankets of moss over the twisted branches jumped and tore the sheet, and another covering had to be found. The elf-guard, who surrounded Celia, trained their arrows into the nearby forest, believing that any noise that horrible had to be a warning of intruders. The bitten elf did not correct them, being too embarrassed at shrieking because their queen had bitten him.

And so Celia had time to make her escape. There was great confusion and consternation over the assumed intruders, because it had always been believed that nothing and nobody could pass the sentries undetected, and certainly not pass by the entire guard to invisibly attack the primary treasure guard. They must be using magic, the elves thought. Somebody has put a hex on our head huntsman and guard. They disliked magic; they felt it was cheating and unsportsmanlike. This made them angry, and they began to hunt the filthy cheaters who dared enter their territory. There was much more shrieking.

In all the noise and confusion, Celia slipped out of reach of the embarrassed head huntsman, who was now rolling on the ground, groaning in imagined pain, because he had convinced himself that some evil magic was being worked upon him. She slithered through the leaf litter until she was entirely coated in filth, and well camouflaged against the forest floor. Slowly, carefully, she crept beneath the brambles, holding her breath so she wasn’t accidently caught on a thorn.

When she reached the edge of the clearing, she looked back. Fifty elves were running about confusedly, shouting angrily at the magicians who were making themselves magically invisible in the surrounding forest. One elf was calmly polishing the crown. The two females were frantically weaving another moss sheet. Three more were being magically tortured. She slipped out beneath the vines.

Here she ran into trouble. The brambles were thicker outside the clearing. She could see the iridescent blue poison dripping from the thorns. She had no idea where she was. The path Sammy had forged on his rescue mission had either disappeared, or entered the other side of the clearing, because it was nowhere in sight. She pushed on regardless, because at that moment she thought dying painfully, and alone, strangled by poison brambles in an evil forest across the sea from home, was preferable to spending another moment in the company of creatures that made noises like that.

There was no path through, so she made one, pulling the brambles aside, grabbing them in the bare spaces between the thorns and yanking. This worked well for about half a metre. Then she miscalculated the distance between two thorns, and a drop of poison touched her hand. She stumbled, shaking it off, and fell full length into the thorn bush.

It hurt. Everywhere. There was sharp, biting pain, where the thorns cut her, and she could feel warm blood trickling down her legs. There was dull, thumping pain, where she had hit the ground, and bruises where forming. But above all, there was searing, burning pain of the poison, where it ran over her skin and seeped into her wounds. She screamed and screamed, tears washing her face.

The elves began to sing. It was a horrendous noise, designed to distract a magician to the point where he cannot use his magic because he is curled up in the foetal position with his hands over his ears. “We will come for you... we will come for you... with trees and vines and poisoned arrows... knives and spears and clubs... we will come for you...”

The forest sprang to attention and began to move. The brambles that had caught Celia twisted up to form a cage. Trees formed a circle around it, vines twisting around. She was well and truly trapped, but did not notice because she was too busy screaming in pain.

Why did I run? She wondered. I could have been a queen. I could have worn a crown and bossed the elves around. I could have controlled the forest. And then the pain overcame her, and she fainted.

Unsurprisingly, the elves did not find the magician. When they found Celia in the cage, they were very angry. They took her roughly back to the coronation clearing. They gave her the antidote, forced her into a silver green dress, and sat her on the throne. The coronation was beginning.

Celia was still a bit groggy. She remembered it had taken Sammy days to recover from the poison, and he still wasn’t back to normal. Obviously the elf antidote was more effective than the one Sammy had been given. She did not feel any pain from the moment the antidote was given. She was, however, slightly dizzy. It felt like the world was going in fast forward around her, and she could not move to get out of the way. So she sat on the throne and watched as the elves formed two almost invisible lines on either side of a long carpet of most. She watched as the leader advanced slowly up the aisle, circle of silver leaves in outstretched hands. She sat still and silent, as the crown was placed upon her head, and bound there. And as she felt the crown of leaves bind itself to her, weaving through her hair, she felt something else. Power.

Celia had never had power. Her father had ruled the farm with an iron fist, and had never listened to her. Even on this journey she had felt powerless. The boys were willing to follow her lead when she had a sensible plan, but they all knew she wasn’t really in charge. Nobody in the world could stop Sammy when he decided to do something, and Barney, in his own way, was just as stubborn. Now, before her, lay a sea of faces who watched her expectantly, waiting for her command as coerced queen of the elves. They didn’t seem particularly bright either, which she took as a plus. They would do anything she told them, as long as she didn’t try to escape, suggest cutting down the forest, or use any magic. She didn’t think she would have any trouble following those self-imposed guidelines, because experience had taught her that escape was impossible, the trees, when angered, were terrifying, and that she was entirely lacking in any form of magical ability. But she knew what she wanted to do as queen.

And so, Celia, Queen of Elves, began to plan.