In the Coils of the Snake by Clare B. Dunkle

Author:Clare B. Dunkle
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 2005-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Miranda awoke suddenly as the enchantment released its hold. She felt damp and sweaty. With a sigh, she rolled over to find the elf lord already awake. Sitting cross-legged on his pallet, head bent beneath the sloping cloth, he was cutting his arm with his own knife and then healing the cuts. She watched him sleepily for a minute, not particularly surprised. The goblin pages had done it, too. It was the only way to practice healing spells.

The elf lord gave her a wary glance, trying to assess how she might be feeling. She had been so upset that morning, and she was so unpredictable, ready to argue over the most ordinary things. This was something Nir wasn’t used to. None of his elves argued with him at all.

He cut himself again and carefully healed the cut. Miranda picked up the knife that he had set down and examined it curiously. The handle appeared to her ignorant eye to be some sort of antler or bone. It had a pebbly texture and varied in color from gray to white. The blade was quite remarkable. Single-edged and about seven inches long, it was of no metal she had ever seen. It was white and shone like satin.

She fingered the blade thoughtfully, but when she wanted to test the edge, she found that she couldn’t, and the stars at her wrists lit briefly. Nir glanced up in time to see them and took the knife away.

“If you want to know whether it’s sharp or not, just watch me,” he said, cutting himself again. “It’s an elf knife,” he continued as he stopped the bleeding. “This one was my father’s. We still don’t know how to make them. I hope we can learn from those books the goblins are bringing us.”

Miranda picked up the knife again. It was very pretty as knives went. Nir paused to watch.

“It’s said that the last elf King’s Wife killed herself with a knife just like that one,” he told her. “No one knows how she could have done it.”

“What is it made of?” she asked, not particularly interested in elvish history. “It doesn’t even feel like metal.”

“That’s because it’s not,” he answered. “We never use metal if we can help it. No metal, and no fire; they belong inside the earth, like the goblins. I don’t know entirely what the blade is made of, but deer bone makes it white. I can guess that because the Slaughtering Spell powders most of the bones, ready for making knives like this.”

Miranda watched him as he studied his arm with a frown, preparing to make another cut, and she thought about all the times she had done the same. As long as the stars lasted, she wouldn’t be cutting herself again, and she felt a little relieved that this man would never know what she had done. He would be horrified by it, she was sure; he would doubtless identify it as yet another sign of her childishness.

And Miranda decided that he would be right.

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