The Elf And Shoemaker Read online

  "Logan--"

  "No. Just...just shut up and listen to me. This is the only way. You told me that afternoon in the dream that your mother sent you the texts and the mirror and told you she was offering you a window. She also told you to keep your secret because it could be dangerous if anyone found out. Don't you see? She knew, Hallan. She knew this would happen with the king and she sent you the mirror as a way for you to escape."

  The words were choked now, but they kept coming.

  "We have a saying in this world, a...a quote by a famous inventor. He said that when one door closes, another one opens...but sometimes we look so long with so much regret at the one that's closing that we don't see the one that opened."

  "Lo--"

  "Stop it! Listen! That's what's happened here. Your mother sent you the mirror...the window...the door that opened. It's your way out, Hallan. It's your only way out. But all we've done is bemoan the fact you can't stay there and you can't stay here either because of me, because I can't see you or it all goes wonky. We've been so fixated on that we haven't seen the obvious. All you have to do is stay here, and I...I don't need...to see you. You just walk away and never come back and...and I won't ever see you again...and then you won't ever get pulled back to your world."

  Logan had backed himself against the wall. There was nowhere else to go. The tears fell freely now, and his chest hurt like hell.

  Hallan's arms curved around him and pulled him close.

  "No...please. Please go," he cried. He tried to push him away, but the elf was like a granite pillar that wouldn't budge. "Please!"

  When he realized Hallan wasn't going to give, he slid down the wall to the floor and drew his knees up against his chest. Hallan sank with him and pulled him into the space between his legs, rocking Logan against him.

  "Please...do this," Logan begged. "For me."

  "No. I won't," Hallan's voice was low, edged with rough emotion. "I love you, Logan Shoemaker, and I will not walk away from you."

  "I love you, too, damn it," Logan rasped, his throat aching. "Don't you understand? I love you so much it's fucking killing me. That's why you have to do this. Because I can't bear the thought of you lying dead. I'd rather...God!...I'd rather have you alive and safe, even if means I can never see you again, than let you go back there and die."

  "I'll find another way."

  Hallan's hands massaged his back, rubbing over his spine in a soothing motion that only made everything harder.

  "There is no other way. And we both know it."

  "I won't believe that. I'm not letting you push me away and I'm not losing you. Even though I've had guards on me night and day, I've had plenty of time to read. I've been reading the texts that came with the mirror. I'll find something in them."

  "When?" Logan's voice was nearly spent now, and sobs continue to shudder through him. "You've had them for over two years. The king's just looking for an excuse. He's going to find one. And then...then..."

  "Shhh, love...shhh."

  "Please, Hallan... As long as you never see me again, then you'll be safe. Go! GO!" He shoved at Hallan's chest, hit it. "Quit trying to be such a fucking hero and just do this!"

  Hallan didn't stop him, didn't move away. "I'm not going." His tone was quiet, but filled with steely determination.

  Logan sagged into his arms. "I can't bear it. You're breaking my heart," he whispered, shattered, losing the battle to the sobs that wracked through him.

  * * * *

  Hallan held him, murmuring softly, squeezing his eyes closed and letting his own tears fall.

  In all his dreams, he'd never seen this coming. He knew, on some level, that Logan was right. That it might work and might very well have been what his mother had intended when she sent him the elf glass. He might have even thought it at some point early on. But then he'd fallen in love with Logan, and from there on out, there was only a need to see him and be with him. The mirror and Logan had become synonymous with love, hope, and the one small ray of sunlight in his otherwise dark existence. The two were no longer mutually exclusive and hadn't been for months. They were part and parcel of the same package. If he were ever to come through the mirror and stay, it would only be if he could stay with Logan.

  What had rattled him to the core tonight was just how damned selfless Logan's actions had been. Contrary to what Logan seemed to think, he was far more heroic than Hallan could ever hope to be.

  Logan's sobs began to taper off, but Hallan wasn't ready to let go. He was pretty sure he'd never be ready to let go.

  He kissed Logan's head and settled him more comfortably against his chest.

  The events of tonight had made his already urgent need to come up with a plan even more urgent. Logan was right about something else...it was just a matter of time. The king was coming dangerously close to putting an end to this farce. He didn't need proof that Hallan was Aestorian's son...all he needed was some trumped up charge against Hallan, a charge no one in the high court would argue against because then they'd face the same fate. In truth, Hallan couldn't fathom why the king hadn't done away with him already. All he could figure was that the king truly believed Hallan was participating in the rebellion and he was hoping to catch Hallan in the act and perhaps catch his nephew at the same time.

  Hallan wasn't sure how many more opportunities he'd have to come here. Time was up. He had to come up with a plan and do it fast.

  "Come on." He scooped an arm under Logan's knees and stood.

  He refused to break Logan's heart, but the quiet sniffles Logan was still making might very well break his.

  He placed Logan in the bed and slid into it with him, holding him close under the covers.

  "Hallan...please," Logan whispered.

  "Shhh. Close your eyes."

  "You have to go."

  "I'm not going anywhere right now. I'm not leaving you like this. Sleep, Logan. I'll be here until you're asleep."

  "You're too stubborn for your own good," came the whisper from the vicinity of his neck.

  "Well, you officially have my permission to kick my ass for it the next time I see you, okay?"

  A soft tortured sigh was his response.

  He held Logan closer, wanting to make it better, and knowing there was only one way to do it.

  "I love you," he whispered, brushing a kiss across Logan's temple. "You are everything that's right and good, Logan. I won't break your heart."

  "Promise?"

  "I promise."

  He stayed until Logan was heavy in his arms and his breathing was even and only broken by an occasional stuttering sigh.

  As he dressed and left the room, he made another promise, a silent one, that the next time he was in this room, it would be to stay.

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  When Logan woke up his head hurt, his throat hurt, and it felt like someone had jabbed a hot poker in his heart, then stirred it around for good measure to make sure he attained maximum misery.

  He lay in bed, eyes squeezed closed, trying to breathe past the aches, and then finally realizing it wasn't going to happen. Especially the one in his chest. He was afraid that one might be there until the end of his days.

  Hallan.

  Oh, God... He'd done everything he could to convince Hallan, but he'd never relented. Logan was torn in two between sick agony that Hallan had chosen to go back through the mirror where his life hung by a thread instead of walking away like Logan had begged him to, and sick relief that he hadn't walked away.

  "You can't have it both ways," he said, disgusted with himself.

  I should have been stronger. If I hadn't fallen apart, maybe he would have gone?

  But he knew as soon as he had the thought that it never would have happened. Hallan wouldn't have budged.

  And so he was left to face the reality that Hallan had stubbornly refused the escape Logan had offered, and now all he could do was pray that he'd see Hallan again.

  Although the magick store continued to do well, a
s each day passed, Logan found himself barely present, as if his mind, his heart, and all his senses were forever on standby, waiting. He went through the motions, unlocked and locked the door each day, helped the customers, but he couldn't seem to dredge up a smile, or a even a flutter of joy on the day he broke his best sales record for the year. It was just a job now. He couldn't seem to find joy in even the little things he had in the past. Even Zeus' antics and odd burrows and the way he stuffed his cheeks full couldn't bring him out of his doldrums.

  He kept telling himself to snap out of it, have a positive attitude, that everything was going to be okay. But his heart wasn't in it. He began to wonder if this was how Hallan's mother had felt when Aestorian was killed.

  He's not dead. He's not dead, he told himself a dozen times a day. But he couldn't shake the sense that everything wasn't right either.

  A week came and went.

  Sally, the first PASSION oil customer, came in one afternoon, threw her arms around Logan, and thanked him for saving her marriage.

  Her friend Jane came in two days later and bought a bottle of the brew.

  The strange no-smile, no-talk lady came in and bought another bottle of the PASSION oil with just as much enthusiasm as she'd purchased the first, along with a tiny bottle of glitter labeled as "fairy dust," and a gnarly piece of broken quartz he'd been meaning to throw away.

  Logan had a bit of shock register one morning when Mrs. Khovansky came into the store--to his knowledge, in all the years he'd lived next to her, she'd never been in his store. She wanted a bottle of that "woo-hoo" oil her friend Wanda had told her about. Wanda had, apparently, gotten a bottle as a gift from another lady friend and had said that every time she put it on it made her husband say, "woo-hoo!" It seemed Mrs. Khovanksy had met a nice Russian man at bingo and wanted to "woo-hoo" him. Way more information than Logan ever wanted to know when it came to his neighbor lady, but he sent her off with a bottle of the PASSION oil and wondered what her dead husband Ivan thought about this new turn of events during his and Mrs. K's nightly talks.

  Robert came in one evening just before closing, and Logan pretended fascinated interested in another customer's discourse on insects stuck in amber so he wouldn't have to talk to the man.

  That's what he felt like...like an insect in amber...unable to move, trapped in a shiny bit of resin, frozen in time.

  On the ninth day after Hallan's last visit, Logan closed the store that evening, locked up and turned off the lights.

  When he entered the kitchen, his heart shot up into his throat.

  Lying on the table was a piece of thin, yellow-tinted parchment. And scrolled across it in Hallan's beautiful, swirling script that this time looked like it had been written in a hurry was a message:

  I think there's a way. Tonight. Don't go to bed. Stay by the mirror.

  "Oh, God..."

  Logan sank onto one of the stools, afraid if he didn't his legs weren't going to hold him up. He didn't know what shocked him more...the contents of the note or the fact that Hallan had obviously been here, in the kitchen, in broad daylight while he was just in the next room.

  He picked up the parchment with shaking hands and brushed his fingers over the words.

  Don't go to bed. Stay by mirror.

  Logan would be lying if he said the idea didn't terrify him. What was Hallan thinking? If he was here by the mirror, how could Hallan come through?

  But he didn't leave the kitchen.

  Tonight. Don't go to bed.

  He didn't know what time "tonight" meant and really wished he did because after the first hour, the waiting was agonizing. He was too wound up to eat dinner, so he made a pot of coffee. By the time he'd finished it, several hours later, he was really wound up. He paced the floor, looking at the mirror every few seconds.

  Zeus came out of his bungalow to watch him. Logan's stomach was in such a knot, though, that he couldn't do more than just glance at the little guy.

  What had Hallan meant when he said he thought there was a way? What kind of way? And why was he making him wait in the kitchen? Logan was afraid that if Hallan did something crazy like try to come through the mirror while he was in here, everything would be lost. And it would be all his fault...his, Logan's because Hallan couldn't let Logan see him.

  The wall clock ticked away the minutes, then the hours. Midnight rolled past. 1:00 A.M. Then 2:00 A.M. Logan found himself standing in front of the mirror simply staring at it, as if watching it might make Hallan appear.

  A watched pot never boils.

  One of Aunt Lil's favorite old sayings.

  And yet he continued to watch anyway.

  3:00 A.M. came and went, and then 4:00.

  At 6:00 the first faint twinges of dawn began to lighten the sky. Logan's heart was back to feeling like the poker had been gouging around in it again.

  The caffeine buzz from the coffee had worn off long ago, but he didn't feel like closing his eyes. They felt like they were permanently stuck open anyway, burning. A low throbbing built in his head around them.

  By 7:00 A.M. it had turned to an all-out pounding . It took all his energy to drag himself over to the counter over the sink and dig out some aspirin.

  At 10:00 A.M., for the first time in the five years he'd run the store, the lights stayed off, the door stayed locked, and the Closed sign still hung from the dark window.

  At 10:30 Logan lay his head down on the table and closed his eyes. Not to sleep. He didn't think he could sleep no matter how tired he was. He closed his eyes because if he looked at the mirror another minute he knew he'd lose it.

  Hallan... God, where are you?

  "Please... please... please... please..." he chanted. "Please come back."

  "I won't break your heart."

  "Promise?"

  "I promise."

  "Don't break my heart, Hallan." A shaky sob rattled through him, but he was damned and determined he wasn't going to lose it again. Not again. He'd cried enough the last time Hallan was here to fill his quota for a few years.

  By evening, Logan knew he was a wreck. He still hadn't slept. He'd only left the table to bolt upstairs to the bathroom a couple of times, and other than that he'd been there in what he was beginning to feel like was a torture chamber. Every time he closed his eyes he pictured Hallan lying dead somewhere, his skin pale and translucent, his eyes forever closed, his long blond hair spread out around him.

  "Stop!" His eyes flew open and he swore to himself yet again that he wouldn't close them anymore.

  He stood and shuffled to stand in front of the mirror again. "Hallan, if you can hear me, I can't take this. Please...I have to know if you're okay." He sank to a crouch right there on the old linoleum floor, and buried his face in his hands.

  He should get out of here. Go up to bed. If he had some sleep he might be able to deal with this better.

  But he couldn't do it.

  Why had Hallan wanted him to wait by the mirror? Why? Why? Why? He'd asked himself that question over and over. And found no answer.

  Around midnight he knew it was useless. Sorrow ached at every inch of his skin, at every muscle. Hallan was true to his word. Every time he'd ever told Logan he'd do something, he'd done it. If he wasn't here...something bad had happened.

  He wasn't coming.

  And there wasn't a damned thing Logan could do about it. Helplessness consumed him.

  This time when his head dropped to the table, the tears came.

  * * * *

  A screeching sound startled Logan awake. It took him a few seconds to shake his head clear and realize he was sitting at the table and had fallen asleep with his head on his arms. The screeching grew louder, and he winced. When he lifted his head, pain shot through his neck from lying in such an awkward position.

  He blinked. The kitchen was dark except for a nightlight burning next to the sink that sent a yellowy glow into the dimness. His head was throbbing again. The fingers on his left hand were asleep.

  And what was that god-
awful noise? It sound liked metal scraping on metal.

  He sat up, holding his head as the sound built.

  Logan looked around the kitchen, trying to sort it out, but his mind was still fuzzy. He had no idea what time it was except that it wasn't dawn yet.

  The kitchen began to rattle. Literally rattle, like an... earthquake!

  Logan bolted to his feet, then stood frozen, trying to think what to do for an earthquake. Jesus! They didn't ever have earthquakes here big enough to feel. How was he supposed to know what the hell to do?

  Zeus squealed in his cage.

  In a moment of clarity, Logan grabbed up Zeus' cage, then clambered under the heavy butcher block table. It was probably the heaviest thing in the house.

  The screeching grew louder still until Logan felt like he was inside a giant tin can that was being ground open with a dull blade.

  A flash lit the room, almost like lightning. Logan looked up to see what it might have been...

  He froze, unable to move, barely able to breathe.

  The mirror glowed with a strange, fiery light, and as he watched, the frame seemed to stretch, then contract back to its usual shape, stretch, contract. Each time it did, the house would shake.

  "Oh my God... Hallan."

  Logan had no idea what was going on, but Hallan's name filled his mind, over and over, like a chant. Hallan... Hallan... Hallan... Hallan.

  Please let him be alive.

  The mirror continued to warp and twist. A new noise was coming from it now, along with the screeching...a strange moaning sound. The fiery light within it grew brighter. The mirror looked alive, writhing on the wall. Logan swallowed hard, his heart running a marathon.

  And then the light inside the mirror exploded like a mortar round in a burst of red and orange and white. Logan buried his head under his arms and plugged his ears as the blast rocked through him.

  He heard a loud thud that jarred through the floorboards, followed by the crash and clatter of glass breaking.

  And then everything was silent.