Kalin’s Height – 1301 – Spring – Morning
(Three days later.)
This morning I sent my letter to Tanios. It went with Gavin, south to Eshnunna, where he has gone at the king’s command.
I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to sending word to people this way. In the Forest it was a simple matter, mind to mind across leagues and the thing was done. Tanios has not my training, but she could have managed that. Though I suspect she will like communicating by letter, for all that it takes longer. She has a fondness for things written down that is not like our people at all.
I cannot remember if she was always thus, or if it happened after she went to Anaitis to live. She went young, I remember that. When I first came there, she had already been for several years, working in the king’s library. The archivist then was a human, and an old man. Tanios has said that he loved having her work for him, because she remembered things so well. That, of course, is part of our birthright.
And now I am making a library here, in Gavin’s manor. My letter goes with him to Eshnunna, and from there he will find someone riding east to take it to Anaitis. It may be weeks before it is delivered, and longer before I see him again, depending on why it is his liege wants him.
So I am here, with Enaid the housekeeper and a man who is Gavin’s clerk. His name is Owen, and thus far I have seen little of him, though Gavin instructed him to teach me what was needful in the minding of an estate while he was away. He does this at my request, because I must have some purpose here.
There is, to be sure, my daughter. Before he left, during one of our awkward conversations, Gavin asked me her age, and was distressed when I said that I did not know. I asked how many years had passed since he came with his lord to our Forest, for that was the time of our previous meeting, and he did not remember the exact number either. I thought that that should distress him even more. Humans set great store by the count of years, perhaps because they have so few of them.
He does not doubt that she is his daughter, though. She looks too much like him, except for her eyes, which are silver like mine. That, too, distresses him.
I said to him that perhaps Talana and I should not have come, if we discomfit him so much, but he insisted that he was glad of us, and I think he spoke the truth. Then he called Owen in, and Owen said that it was ten years since his visit to the Silverwood, as they call it. So Talana is nine, perhaps a little older.
She grows like a human child, not like one of my kind. It is for that reason that my elders first suggested bringing her here. But I am so unsure of anything. We do not belong here.
I wish that Tanios writes soon, or better yet, comes herself. I wish that I had spoken to her directly, rather than use this slow, human method. But I must understand how these people live, or I shall never be able to stay here.
Perhaps I shall not.