Short Story: The Candlelight Gifts Signed Paperback

• A little grass elf.
• Her adopted dwarven uncle.
• Two Candlelight Gifts that cost them nearly everything.

Rass lay in her small clearing, her back nestled down into the crunchy brown grass. The only cloud above her in the blue sky was from her own breath, hovering for a moment before fading into the chilly afternoon.

Even now, at the lowest point in the year when the grass had run out of the power to stay green, when it had hollowed out and dried out until any step or strong wind would break it, the roots were still alive.

But those were fading too. It was a fortnight until midwinter, and soon lying in the grass wouldn’t be enough to keep her warm.

Rass shifted, pulling her skinny knees up, the crunch of the grass mirroring her own brittleness. She held up one hand, her fingers bony and thin against the sky. Fragile looking.

Delicate, little snip, Douglon would correct her, but his brow would crease with that fatherly worry he was never able to hide at this time of year.

She lowered her hand. It wasn’t that winter was hard—it was just another season, part of the cycle. The grass grew in the spring, thrived in the summer, faded in the autumn, and waited through the winter.

And so Rass, and all the other grass elves who lived far away across the mountains, would fade and wait with it.

Rass would wait here in the Lumen Greenwood with her new family.

An unusual family to be sure: forty-six two-year-old tree elves, the wild little siblings Rass had never known she needed, and Uncle Douglon, the dwarf who managed to take care of them all. He’d be returning from a trip to the human capital today, coming back to the home that was as odd for a dwarf as it was for a grass elf. She listened for his heavy footsteps but heard nothing.

She sighed. The forest always felt a little unmoored without Douglon’s steadiness.

The sky above Rass was framed by vibrant trees. Some were pines bristling with soft needles; some flaunted leaves still shimmering with their autumn colors, even though it was months past when the trees outside the Greenwood would have lost their grip on such finery.

It would be nice if the Greenwood would protect the grass in the same way, but the tree elves—and the forest itself—were primarily obsessed with trees. They were nice trees, but still trees, and the weak point about trees, like so many other things, was that they weren’t grass.

Rass’s own personal grassland was rather small. It stretched merely a half-dozen paces in every direction before it was strangled out by the shadows of the woods. Grass continued throughout the forest floor, of course, but in the entire Greenwood, it was only lush here.

This was nothing like the Roven Sweep, where the grass spread endless and infinite across the hills, green or golden under the vast sky, taller than her head in the deep summer. A sea of grass she could slip through, burrow into, lose herself in.

Here, the grasses were short, never reaching more than halfway to her knees. She didn’t need this clearing. There was always grass somewhere, even if only in little tufts here and there. But the extravagance of an entire glade was luxurious, and she loved nothing more than lying here, taking a short break from the maelstrom of the baby tree elves.

She let her mind wander along the roots, finding worms and grubs digging in the earth or insects scurrying over it. Farther out into the forest, she felt tiny tree elf feet dropping into the grass occasionally before jumping back up on a tree.

A slight commotion rustled from somewhere down the nearest path, and she reached out through the grass to see who it was.

She needn’t have bothered. The grass told her of the heavy tread of Douglon’s dwarvish boots at the same time as a small voice squealed from a treetop.

“Uncle Doug Doug!” Avina shrieked.

Rass sat up in time to see a bright metallic streak leap out of a tree and slam into the dwarf. Douglon grunted and staggered slightly but reached up to hug the tree elf. She was barely half his size, her delicate skin glittering with coppery sparkles, her long hair richer and brighter, glowing like the burnished copper jewelry Rass had seen among the dwarves.

A smile peeked out from behind Douglon’s beard. His dark red hair looked almost brown by comparison to her brightness. “Hello, Avina. I missed you too. You’ll be happy to know I brought gifts.”

Rass pushed herself to her feet, the motion taking a bit of effort, and started toward him. “Welcome home, Uncle.”

His smile faltered just for a heartbeat when his eyes caught on the sharp angle of her shoulders under her tunic, and then he forced it wider again. “Hullo, snip. Are you keeping warm enough?”

She nodded as he strode into her clearing, and she threw her arms around his waist. She’d never understood the way humans and dwarves seemed to love leather until Douglon had carried her through those long, dark dwarven tunnels years ago, also carrying a strip of earth with grass on his back for days just so she’d have somewhere to sleep at night. She’d burrowed against his leather vest, his arms carrying her through it all, strong enough to hold back the entire mountain above her. And now, leather was one of her favorite smells. Not as good as a wide rustling grassland, but close.

He stepped back and squatted down, setting one hand gently on her shoulder, the worry she had been prepared for creeping into his eyes.

“I’m not going to break,” she said.

He grunted in an unconvinced way. “Thin as a snip of grass. I can’t wait for spring.”

“Gifts?” Avina asked, tugging on the bag tossed over his back. Over the past two years, she’d established herself firmly as the leader of all the little tree elves.

“Yes, gifts.” He slung the pack down to the ground and knelt next to it. “The humans exchange presents on Midwinter Day. They call them Candlelight Gifts and claim that giving gifts brightens the longest night of the year. Like the light of a candle flame in the darkness.” He brought out a pouch of bright orange fabric and handed it to Avina. “That’s from Sini.”

She gave a squeal of delight and plopped down next to Douglon.

Rass nestled down into the grass too, leaning forward to peer into his bag as a second gift appeared, a large green bundle of woven fabric, bigger than her head. It looked like a wrapped blanket, held closed by a metal pin.

“For Rass,” he said, “from Will.”

Her fingers sank into the soft wool, her skin pale against the rich green. The pin was delicate and silver, shaped like a sheaf of grass.

Finally, Douglon pulled out a skinny package a bit longer than his hand. “And Alaric gave me something, which I saved to open with you two.”

Avina’s fingers were clenched around her package, and she stared at the two of them with wide eyes, barely containing herself.

“Go ahead,” Douglon said.

Avina tore her pouch open and turned it upside down. A single acorn fell into her palm. “New tree!”

“New?” Rass asked.

Avina closed her eyes and wrapped her hand around it. “Different tree. Different leaves.” Her eyes flew open. “Avina plant this!” She leapt up and raced to the nearest tree, scurrying up the trunk and leaping from branch to branch until she disappeared.

“I guess she likes it.” Douglon looked after her fondly. “Open yours.”

Rass unhooked the pin, and the bundle of wool tumbled apart in her lap.

Not a blanket. A cloak.

Rass ran her fingers over the woven wool. “It’s soft as a cloud!”

“Will’s not totally useless,” Douglon said with an approving nod. “That should keep even you warm for the winter.”

Rass stood and spread the cloak around her shoulders, clasping it at her neck with the pin. It wrapped around her, warm and heavy, and she drew it closer and beamed at him. “I love it. Tell Will to come visit so I can tell him.”

“It fits you well.” He turned to his own package and unwrapped a rectangular stone sitting on a wooden base. “Oooooh,” he breathed. “A water stone!”

Rass leaned forward to see it better. It was an unremarkable piece of rock. Flat on all sides, not quite smooth, not quite bumpy. Too big for her to hold easily, but perfectly fit for Douglon’s hands. “A what?”

“A kind of whetstone. A good one. Dwarven, I think. I wonder where he found this?” Douglon grabbed his axe off the outside of his pack where it hung when he traveled. He set it across his lap, his fingers trailing almost absently along the red flames that wrapped around the handle. They were carved into the wood, or maybe frozen around it—it was hard to tell—a gift to him from Ayda, the first elf he’d ever met. The color was stunning. A shimmering, rich, deep red that somehow embodied actual fire.

The axe head was something called stonesteel, a fact Douglon was quite proud of, even if Rass thought it looked like all the other metal things in the world.

Douglon took the whetstone and began to slide it along his axe blade, nodding slowly in approval. “This is fantastic.”

“Do dwarves give gifts at Midwinter?”

He nodded, and a slight smile touched his cheek. “Just among their closest family and friends. Humans tend to lavish gifts on anyone they know, but dwarves focus on their closest loved ones.” His hands held the axe head with gentle familiarity, his brow creased in concentration.

“Do you miss them?” she asked quietly. “The dwarves?”

The whetstone moved smoothly along the blade as he glanced up at her. “There are things I miss, yes. But none of it as much as I miss my little elves when I’m away from the Greenwood.”

Beside him, his pack still sat, full of his traveling gear. Her brow crinkled at the sight. “You didn’t drop your pack off at the cottage?”

His hand paused, and he looked up to face her fully. “I need to run to Duncave for a bit. Shouldn’t take long. I’ll be back by Midwinter.”

Her shoulders sank, and he grimaced.

“After that,” he added quickly, “I should be here until spring. Can you make it another fortnight without me?”

She let out a snort. “I did survive winters before I met you.”

“I know. But who will make you a fire if you need it?”

Rass shushed him and glanced into the trees. “Don’t let Avina hear you! She lit the line of bushes near the stream yesterday. Don’t give her any more ideas about fire.”

He chuckled. “It’s astonishing the Greenwood—the whole world—has survived the last two years.” He looked at Rass, the fondness still in his eyes. “I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

Rass silenced the sigh that tried to sneak out of her and worked a smile onto her face. “We’ll have a good dinner tonight before you go.”

Douglon reached out and set his thick hand on her shoulder again. “I promise I’ll hurry back. This is my favorite place in the world, you know.”

She glanced around at the grass. “My clearing?”

He squeezed her gently and didn’t quite hide the cloud in his expression at how thin her shoulder was. “With you and all my elves, little snip.”

• 48 pages