“We do not know.”

“What?”

People from the other campfires looked over. They might have seen Noel’s angry silhouette, highlighted by the orange flame and silver moonlight. The elders held their breath. Priest Mal’s lips quivered. I took a steadying breath.

“We do not know the answers to your questions,” said the elderly priest Oxi, as he dropped, once again, to his knees. The other priests followed him. “We do not know how our ancestors communicated with the ancient elves. We do not know how we learned our magic. We do not know how we got our name. If our legends were passed down by anything but word of mouth, we do not know. Why our magic has not progressed to your satisfaction, we do not know. Please, great one.” He was practically groveling at this point. A wrinkly old man groveling on the ground in front of us. I felt a pit forming in my stomach.

“You don’t know?” said Noel, slowly.

“Please, great one,” said Priest Oxi, “let your intelligence be surpassed only by your mercy. We are not as capable as you are, we do not know as much as you do, we are not elves. We are only human!”

Noel grit her teeth. Before she could speak, I put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at me with the same enraged glare, an expression I had never seen on her before today. “Noel, look at them. They aren’t a part of some grand conspiracy. They’re being played around with by forces much more powerful than any of us. You know who’s really to blame here.” I gestured to the sky.

Noel’s expression faltered. She could have glared at the sky, where the moon and red star still shone arrogantly brightly, but she didn’t. After our experiences with the immortals, especially with the Immortal of Madness, we knew we couldn’t do anything to them. At least, not yet.

“We should continue this in the morning,” I said, patting Noel on the shoulder again. She tried to say that we should continue interrogating the human Jora tribesmen, but it was late, and most people were only up because they were excited to meet real elves. The priests had already said they didn’t have the answers to our questions, but we could try to gather all of their stories later. Perhaps they might give us some clues.

The priests went back to their camps, still apologizing to Noel, and thanking me for “taking pity” on them. Noel made some frustrated noises, before heading off towards the peak of the hill. I had a feeling she wanted to be alone, but I cast some motion detection magic on the other side of the hill, just in case.

The elders of the other human tribes didn’t move. They’d sort of faded into the background after we’d revealed ourselves, with even the boisterous elder Sunki rarely making a sound.

“So, uh,” I said, scratching my chin. “How are you all doing?”

It felt like they’d all held their breath at the same time. I gave elder Kezler a weird look. Why was he acting like them? He’d been hanging out with us for several days!

I told the elders that I was tired, and that they could ask me some questions in the morning. I’d noticed quite a few of them stealing glances at elder Kezler’s copper knife, and I was sure they wanted to know more about the magic Noel had used to disarm priest Mal.

The elders excused themselves, silently, until I told Kezler to stop following them! He apologized and led me back to my tent. The Roja had built Noel and me separate tents, which was a real privilege when most other tents were shared. I thanked Kezler for his help, told him to not be so afraid tomorrow morning and to speak his mind, before waving to young Kelser, who was looking at me from a distance. He smiled before going to his own tent.

Before I went to bed, I looked toward the top of the hill, hoping to make out Noel’s figure somewhere out there. But she was either on the other side, or completely covered by a nighttime blanket of darkness. It was only now that I noticed the moon and the red star had faded. I went to sleep, thinking about what to say to Noel in the morning, what to ask the human Jora tribe, and how to make sense of everything that was happening.

I listened to my own breathing and drifted off to sleep.

---

An accordion sounds like the taste of a tangerine. A sharp twang on the tip of your tongue stretching smoothly into a sweet solution for you to swallow. Pianos sound like a chocolate bar. Velvety smooth surface, quite hard on the whole, and sometimes bitter, sometimes sugary. And then the violin flows in like a dash of olive oil on a fresh salad waiting to be tossed together to bring the whole dish together.

The tippity-tippity, tap, tap, of shoes dancing on a marble floor. The clickity-clickity, clack, clack, of hand-crafted wooden castanets. The ting-ting, tingaling, of a tiny bell. The deep, dull, booming, the flat, short, thumping, of the awful drums. A million synced up voices, humming to a song. The chorus all forgotten, the music carries on. The notes once begotten, abandoned in the end.

The music, given sentience, barreled towards my eyes. The smell of sour cherries, smashed roughly against my tongue. I cried out in laughter, as I caught a whiff of anger. I couldn’t sense my senses, sensing a loss of sense. A sorrowful swallow swooped in for a kiss, but seeing my awful senseless circumstance, she settled for a swish.

The swallow’s wings catapulted me out of the orchestra of perplexity. I let out an empty scream of relief, as the music missed its beat.

---

I stole a baby’s pacifier, and gave it to a kid. I took the kid’s lollipop, and stuck it in her hair. When the parents came, I ran away, as their children began to cry. As I ran away, I kicked a kitten on the way before spraying water at a puppy near the slide.

I crushed an ant’s nest, tilted over a bin, and trapped a raccoon inside. Laughing aloud, I pointed at a car crash, and ran into the library to hide. Inside the library I played music, so loudly it broke the librarian’s hearing aid. When I was chased out, I made a point to take notes, on a new storybook lying neatly on the side.

At school, I tripped the new kid, and made fun of his gray corduroys. I told the teacher she forgot to collect all our homework, and stole the nerdy girl’s lame pair of shoes, before exchanging them for her perfect project, and acing the class for the first time.

In college I told my girlfriend she meant the world to me, but made out with her best friend at a party. I insulted my professor, and stole the school flag, which wound up in a corn field somewhere in Iowa.

By the time I graduated, I drove a truck guzzling gas, spewing black smoke and leaving tire marks on every road in town. I downed a beer behind the wheel, shouted live laugh free-me and crashed into a postbox full of children’s letters, on the night before Christmas eve.

I somehow had kids, but they weren’t my problem. I ran away for some cigarettes, but came back for a beer. I stole some cash from the jar on her table, and flipped off little junior’s hopes for a college degree.

Laughing on the freeway, drunk out of my mind, I laughed at the stupid sparrow settled impossibly still on the windowsill. I tried to brush it away, but it jumped, and stabbed me with its beak, like a needle piercing muscle, and injected me with a dash of something serene.

---

I woke up in the morning, drenched in sweat, and breathing heavily. The vestiges of something floated in my vision, the ghosts of a high-pitched fever dream.