Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Invisible as Turtlefoot had always been amidst the doings of pure-ling wizardry, she’d known so many closely guarded shames and secrets. No one bothered to hide themselves from an elf, any more than they’d hide from a crup that happened to be in the room. Yoked to the traditions and rituals of a blighted sense of honor, nearly every great house bore its own stains of decay. All it took was the squint of an eye, the tilt of a head or the brush of a hand… and there… just there… like watermarks on satin…

No matter which family they tended, elves always shared whispers—stories of dark and dreadful deeds that were swiftly covered over by their masters’ intrigues—and their own labors. The guise of those abuses might vary, but never the outcome. The markers of Young Sir’s brutal undoing could certainly have passed for something else, what with the war going on right at their feet. There was no comfort in knowing she’d been right—in the shape of this particular horror if not in its hideous details.

It would be so easy to give in to a carefully muted sorrow, and not just for the boy. Who would blame her? Far too much had been forever lost, and she was so very old—had already served her masters long enough and well enough. Still, the magic of elves is a practical and seasoned art, and Turtlefoot had refined hers long ago. Without question she was still sorely needed here, so perhaps it would be best to find her solace in the patterns of her work and save her regrets for later.

The soft slap of her bare feet marking time, she began to hum softly under her breath, moving from place to place within the kitchen, filling the kettle, stirring her pots, opening and closing various drawers and cupboards, gathering the things she wanted. With sound and scent, she gradually layered the room with small hints of what could be held onto, what was sheltering and real.

More than once, she paused to assure herself that Draco was still near the fire, but other than her humming, she kept her silence. An unwanted touch, a misplaced word, offered too soon, could send the boy bolting in search of solutions that might well mean an end to him. Whether he’d ever again have the desperate courage to face this moment was unlikely if she could not keep him safely there with her a bit longer. His path after that, she wouldn’t presume to know. She could only hope that it might be a better one.

When all was as she fancied it, the old elf waved a high-legged stool close beside the motionless young wizard and, with a small grunt of age, clambered up so that she could read his face.

“Dragonwing, you be listening to me?”

She spoke with the calm familiarity of an elfanny very used to soothing a willful, pure-ling child, coaxing his grudging attention.

Draco did not answer.

No matter. From his first indignant wail of life, she’d watched over this boy—had seen him defined in his beauty and ugliness, devotion and spitefulness, tenderness and cruelty. She would be patient.

Keeping her crooning low in her throat, Turtlefoot slowly leaned in to let her hands hover over Draco’s. There was not even a twitch of muscle in response to the feather-light brush of her fingers. The old elf was very careful to touch only his hands, avoiding his rigid body, particularly the arm he kept pulled so tightly against his side. Time passed, pooling into shadow, and words began to surface from her humming into a creaking, sing-song murmur—a sigh of spring through winter-struck branches.

“Here sits old Turtle, waiting, waiting,

Aiele’he, aiele’he.”

Over and over, her little song repeated, braiding the speech of wizard-kind and elfin-kind together. She would wait. When the boy heard her, he would answer.

Ever so slowly, like roots easing their way between the threading cracks in stone, her gnarled fingers became gradually more insistent, steadily working their way into Draco’s fists until their fierce clenching abruptly shattered and they lay open and helpless in his lap. And ever so quietly, as he began to tremble, her long arms branched around his narrowed shoulders and held on tightly, for he would surely fall if she were to let him go.

“Dragonwing, you be listening to me.”

~~//~~

Draco’s surrender to Turtlefoot’s quiet persistence came in a great heaving gasp as he clung to her like a drowning man pulled from a storm-frenzied sea.

His pleas for whatever comfort she could offer came as strangled whispers against her shoulder, his sobs speaking to her in muffled shudders. He’d trained himself very well not to be heard…. A Death Eater would never openly weep….

When he dropped his head between his knees and retched, she vanished the whiskey-soured sick for both their sakes. To have the boy further shamed by his body’s instincts was pointless.

The stinging tears of piercing grief and raging shame that tracked his face and hands with their salt, she left alone. Those were necessary. Those, he must remember.

In the way of all the elfanny, she kept a deep and steady rhythm, slowly rocking, softly chanting, as much for herself as for Draco.

Just as he’d accused, she had seen… had indeed heard… knew far too many things. The Marking, she’d sensed as soon as she’d seen Young Sir approaching the manor gates—clearly, not every torture that the Death Lord and His wolfriche had laid on the boy, but enough to anger and repulse her. The cold and bitter wraith of foul magic and dark blood had walked with Draco from his summoning. She knew its unseen face. Far too many of the great houses had welcomed it in and never seen it leave.

Young Sir had stayed closely warded in his rooms for three days after, answering his mother’s entreaties only once.

“Mother, there’s nothing you can do for me. If you cannot let me be, at least keep still… please….”

His chamber elves’ anxious inquiries were met with menacing silence. Food, sent in as temptation, remained untouched. Whiskey, demanded by the smashing of each emptied decanter, did not.

The only constant to affirm his presence had been the recurring rush of water in the pipes to his bath. Trapped in the harsh watchlight of her sister’s leering smile, Mistress had haunted the gallery outside her son’s chambers, coveting and dreading the brief spans of quiet from behind the door, only to be stricken over and again by the sound of the torrent that Draco had let run and run and run….

At least one elf had whispered that the draining water had been tinged with crimson….

When Young Sir finally left his isolation, every trace of color, the palest flush of youth, had been leeched away. All that remained of Draco Ebenus Malfoy was a palette of gray and black—no trace of the proudly verdant hues of his House. Even the argent glory of his hair had faded. Turtlefoot had needed no ancient wisdom to realize that the boy saw himself as already dead.

But because she was only an elf… because she was too old to bear much punishment… because it was not her place or right to speak… she’d kept her distance and her silence.

Looking now at the ruin of promise slumped in exhaustion and despair against her shoulder, Turtlefoot thought perhaps she’d had quite enough of keeping both.