Elves and Deer by Hollis Shiloh

Author:Hollis Shiloh [Shiloh, Hollis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spare Words Press
Published: 2014-10-28T04:00:00+00:00

"No, Jens. You can stay. I promised."

He took a jagged breath against my shoulder. "I'm sorry. I'm letting go now. I am."

He wasn't.

But he did eventually.

#

Despite a few hiccups, the new elves worked out well. They worked hard, and there were so many of them—a swarm of them—they got a lot done even though they weren't individually strong. They were, however, fast, and they chattered around, swarming here and there, talking to three and four of each other at a time, making me feel downright dizzy.

They took over a lot of the cooking duties pretty quickly, most of the filing, and all the cleaning. Wonderful little elves. They didn't need magic to make things shiny and neat and clean. They reveled in it, proud and cocky because of how good they were.

And they soon learned to mask their distrust and irritation with Jens and Jacob, if they didn't want to earn the wrath of me and the other deer.

We set up rooms for them to stay in, those who wanted to stay here, and others made the trek home every day. Some brought their families in, sneaking them in, pretending they were only there to visit when they were clearly, blatantly living there: snotty-nosed little urchins, bathed hurriedly when no one was around, two and three at a time in bathrooms the elves were supposed to be just washing. There was always something being washed at odd times and odd places, or a quick meal being shoveled down a youngster's face. One way or another, they were fitting their families into life around the edges of the stables, squeezing them in, as if we wouldn't notice, and then looking at me half fearfully, half hopefully when I stumbled across such a scene.

The only way to handle it was to give in whole hog or else plead ignorance. I just pretended not to notice.

Christmas rush was less of a mess than usual, despite and because of the extra help.

When a female deer had to stop for a night, she remarked on what a beautifully clean place we ran. "I'll tell all my friends," she said, her smile gleaming at me. I turned slightly to jelly. She was a beautiful flier, the pinnacle of deerness—until the next one, of course.

We cherished each such visitor with a hopeless longing. Why should they mean so much? Well, we saw so few female deer. And you could ask the generations of deer for whom strong-flying females meant life instead of death. Now, it meant prestige and strong magic for Santa: but once upon a time it had meant food and freedom from predators, and so many other things that were truly the only reason we'd survived so long.

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