26.
PRESENT DAY

"Lotte," Maloru cried, leaping onto the roof of the engine from the adjacent car. "Lotte!"

He fell to his knees by her side. The wind whistled in her ears, whipping her hair around her face. Everything was bathed in silver light, and when she looked up, the moon seemed close enough to touch.

Below, the world was black and red, the flowing lava from the volcano pulsing orange like a beating heart. The fumes winding up in pointy swabs looked like a cottony mountain. She could smell their sharp odour, but they were too high to be dangerous.

Maloru wrapped an arm around Lotte to steady her. "It broke," he said, voice trembling. "The enchantment broke."

"They all had to break," Lotte said weakly. "So I could make this one."

"Lotte..." His eyes were sparkling with unshed tears, rays of sunlight in the night.

"I'm not dead yet."

"But you're dying. I can feel it. I'm doing everything I can but you know there's no cure for chaos—"

She hugged him. She'd always wanted to be able to love, and there was so much love she could give right now. She loved Maloru. It wasn't hard to figure out. They easily belonged at each other's sides. And she loved Blue. And even Rowan, whom she barely knew.
And she loved Poe, even if that love hurt.

She even loved Mr. Henri, Mrs. Herbert and her neighbour Emmi.
Even if she'd die now, at least she got to love.

She didn't want to be thinking those thoughts. She didn't want to start crying. She didn't want to die.
She desperately wanted to live.
But a strong will couldn't change what she was.

"I won't die yet," Lotte said. "We need to reach Serades, remember? There needs to be a reason for things."

"Lotte? Is that you?" said Rowan, head peeking out of the open window of the engine. "You got your voice back!"

Maloru helped Rowan onto the roof of the engine. She shivered in the cold, despite wearing a thick down coat, and crawled wobbly towards Lotte who stretched out an arm to steady her from her other side.

Rowan settled in beside Lotte with Maloru on her other side and Fintan on his shoulder. The four of them watched the land below in silence.

"Isn't it weird how beautiful it is?" Rowan said.

Lotte nodded. "Poe once told me that Leilan elves are like volcanos," she said. "They're the beauty of destruction, devastation and power."

"But they can't be just that," Rowan said. "Who's Poe?"

"Rowan's right. If Leilan elves were just destruction, your Poe wouldn't have been able to teach you so much. I'm Yomi and also, you know, want to destroy things..."

"And I bet your mother or father, whichever of them was the elf, fell in love with a human. That's—"

"Self destruction," Lotte said. "My mother was Leilan, and she knew that having me would kill her. But she did it anyway."

At least, that was what Poe had told her. But how could she trust him when he promised her he couldn't lie?

And that turned out to be a lie.

"We'll be landing soon," Lotte said. "We have to run as soon as this thing touches down."

"I'm ready," Maloru said.

"I'll never be ready," Rowan whimpered.

But the ground was always ready for flying things to land.

They were on a rise that overlooked Mount Kelt. The devastation was too far away to be of any consequence here. The train slid onto the ground at a neck breaking speed, sparks flying from its wheels.

Each spark was as large as a finger, and shattered into more sparks as it twisted through the air until the air was alight with golden motes that floated like flower pollen in the wind.

"Pretty," Rowan whispered.

"Try not to touch them," Lotte said. "Ready?"

She got up. Her legs weren't steady. They wouldn't be. She felt drained, as if this enchantment had taken out more from her than what she really had to offer.

Maloru leapt off the train engine in one go, then reached over to help Rowan awkwardly climb down.

Lotte tried to imitate Maloru, but she was back to being just a Lotte, and crashed to the floor painfully.

"Are you out of your mind?" Maloru cried, rushing towards her as Fintan scolded her with chirps.

"I'm fine," Lotte croaked, standing gingerly. "Let's go."

She could hear the murmurs of the people inside the train. Then someone cried, "We're saved!" And the voices rose in tempo, from despair to hope.

Lotte ran after Maloru alongside Rowan until the train was out of view and they reached a lonely road that indicated that Port Kelt was thirty miles away.

That was when her legs gave way and everything around her became wispy and dream-like.

"Lotte!" Rowan cried, trying to hold her up.

Lotte was down on her knees, her stomach heaved and the dinner she had that evening was suddenly on the ground.

She wiped away the bile. She'd seen people throw up before, but of course it never happened to her.

"We have to find somewhere to hide," Maloru said.

"Over there," Rowan cried, pointing towards a solitary building on the side of the road. It must have been one of those petrol stations she mentioned earlier. Behind the building, out of sight from its windows. there were two cars parked, probably belonging to the workers in the station.

There was a lot of whispering and sneaking then. Maloru had to help Lotte walk. He kept slapping her cheeks to keep her conscious. She couldn't remember what happened next, but she noticed she was lying in the backseat of a car that was rushing down a dark road as dawn paled the sky.

She could still smell the erupting volcano as if it now lived inside her.
From somewhere far away, she could hear Rowan and Maloru talking.

"I've been wondering..." Maloru was saying.

"Yes?"

"Now that there's no more Port Kelt..."

"Ah. Yes, that's a good question."
There was a rustling of paper. "It really looked like the only other way into Serades is through—"

"The wastes," Lotte whispered.

"That's where the Rugar lives," Maloru said. "I remember when it happened after the Serades war..."

"Oh, right, you were alive back then," Rowan said.

"It was amazing. The humans had been had so bad. It's going to happen again with the elves now. They keep getting cocky with all these wars and now instead of being neighbours with Serades, they've got a Rugar on their border and..." Maloru trailed off with a sigh.
"We're going to become Rugar food, aren't we?" he said.

"Let's hope a future me finds out in time," Rowan said.

***

9 YEARS BEFORE THE WAR

"Hello?"

Someone answered Mr. Henri's call immediately. Lotte was leaning near the receiver to hear the voice on the other end of the line.

"Good afternoon, this is Mr. Henri Treebald calling."

"Ah...How unfortunate. I hoped you would not need me." The man on the phone had a deep voice and an unusual accent with rolling r's and long s's. "I will be there soon."

The call went silent and Mr. Henri put down the phone, looking rather numb. "Well, he said he will be here soon. But he didn't say who he was."
Lotte had her theories, but she didn't want to alarm Mr. Henri.

"Are you still there?"

In reply, Lotte moved around the tears on the table, creating a pattern of swirls that matched Mr. Henri's cravat. Before she was done, though, a knock was heard on the front door.

"That's him," Mr. Henri said, running out of the study to greet the stranger.

"Right this way Mr. er..." Mr. Henri was purposefully waiting for the stranger to give him a name, but the man came into the study without offering one.

He was taller than any man Lotte had seen. This time he didn't wear a suit to match the people around him. He wore black boots up to his knees and a black coat with the collar raised and the hood covering his head, leaving his face in shadow.
He looked like the human depiction of a grim reaper.

He surveyed the room. Lotte was hopeful for just a moment and then she sighed.

The stranger couldn't see her either.

Mr. Henri closed the door while staring warily at the stranger.
The man lowered his hood, shaking out his long auburn hair that rolled down his back like strands of shimmering silk.

Lotte wanted to draw him. He was so strange. Strange yet familiar.
She drank in the sight of the first real elf she had ever met.

His pale, pale skin with its golden hues. His long pointed ears, the girly angles of his face. His pale eyes were more red than brown. There were a lot of similarities between her and him, but everything she recognised in herself to be elvish and not human was magnified in him.

And he looked childish. His face was as smooth as a youth's, without a blemish to his skin or a single spike of whisker. But he also looked old, older than Mr. Henri even.

With impossible grace and long steady strides, he carried himself to the desk and picked up one of her tears, lifting it to the light as he exclaimed something in elvish.

The tear looked like a crumb in his long fingers, each of which had a curling black claw-like nail at the end.

He squeezed the tear and crushed it.
"And where...is the...ah...sylvarnan?" he asked.

"I beg your pardon?" Mr. Henri said.

"I apologise," said the man. "I forget the human word of a person... who is not yet...ah... tall?" He gestured with his hand to his own height.

"You mean, a child?"

"Yes, yes. It is the same word for a girl child, a boy child and a non-gendered one?"

Mr. Henri looked very stiff even when he blinked in confusion. "It is."

"And where is she? Our child?"

"That's why I called you, Mr. er..." Mr. Henri tried to get the elf's name again, but to no avail. "She's here, but we cannot see her, hear her, or feel her."

Lotte moved around the tears to write, WHO ARE YOU?

The elf's eyes widened as he looked at the words. He narrowed his eyes, turning his head from one side to the other and Lotte could feel something push her gently. "There she is!" he exclaimed with a smile as sharp as a tiger's.

Mr. Henri clenched his fists.

The elf put his hands to his hips. "I will try something," he said. "I am caival...ah, what is it you call it? Echat...Ercharten?"

"Enchanter?" Mr. Henri moved toward the door. "You're an enchanter?"

Lotte couldn't understand why Mr. Henri looked so frightened.

"No need to be alarmed, Mr. Treebald," the elf said. "I am here in peace and kindness. Never a thought of violence. We Leilan caival are not like other Leilan alesi. I am here only to help our sylvarnan."

"And how do you intend to do that?" Mr. Henri asked.

"I will make a caivis... an enchant...ment."

"In my home?"

The elf looked at the walls of the study. "Where else?"

"This is quite dangerous, I hear."

"Sylvarnan is in danger," said the elf. "There is some kind of caivis, an enchantment, already happening. I did not know who did this to her, but I must do an enchant—ment to find what was done. Do you see?"

"I am, in all honesty, quite alarmed, sir," Mr. Henri said through stiff lips. "And puzzled. I did not know your people approved of...of Lotte."

At that, the elf smirked, his eyebrow rising in a show of some kind of emotion. Irritation, perhaps? His expressions were so different that Lotte didn't know how to read them. "Do your people approve of Lotte?"

Mr. Henri hesitated, but finally said, "No."

The elf nodded. "No. But you do not approve of...of this dis—approval? You...ah... appreciate the Lotte in your home?"

"She is like a daughter to me," Mr. Henri said, drawing himself up. "I have promised to be her guardian and champion."

"I, too, do not approve of the dis—approval," the elf said. "I too, on the day she was born, made her a promise..."

The elf stopped speaking, looking round the room until Lotte felt another gentle push.

"A promise?"

"Yes. A promise I try to honour, but...not always possible...to keep." The elf stepped towards Lotte, reaching blindly until his long, sharp fingers touched the top of her head.

She knew he couldn't see her, but when he spoke next, it looked like he was staring directly into her face.
"I, too, have promised to be poe to this sylvarnan."