The trouble with elves 2/10

Jennifer Jane was packing up ready to go home after the summer school had finished. There seemed to be a lot more than she’d brought when she’d arrived a fortnight ago.

‘I wonder if the witches would let me fly home to save carrying all this stuff,’ she thought, ‘and then there’s the news about Angharad Jane. ‘If I flew to Timber Creek, I could tell any one there who’s interested and go through the wishing fog to tell Wilfred. Then I could leave my things just inside the woods at the end of the garden and go back to the Witches’ Home without out any one knowing that I’d been flying in my own world.’

She felt quite pleased with herself when she’d worked all that out, so she finished packing her broom and signed herself out for a trip to Timber Creek. All went well until she got nearly as far as Lurgin’s bridge. She wasn’t flying very high, so she could see the bridge, the village beyond and just the beginnings of the wood yard round the corner of the little hill by the river; when suddenly all the buildings faded from view.

She came to a halt in absolute amazement and hovered while she tried to think what ever could have happened. Even the bridge had disappeared, the countryside looked just as if no one had ever been there, only the river and the trees looked familiar.

She turned on her saddle and looked back over her shoulder towards the Witches’ Home. That had disappeared as well, even the track leading to the bridge had gone, so had the road beside the river that normally went round the hill.

She flew a little way back towards the Home, but none of the buildings reappeared. She went back to the spot where everything had vanished and landed just by the river, so that she could try and think of a reason for the changes.

She must have made this trip hundreds of times before without any trouble. Surely the fact that she intended to fly through the fog to her own world, couldn't have anything to do with the disappearance of all the buildings. At least her protective spell hadn’t worked, so she was in no danger.

She looked round, to see if she could find any sort of sign that people lived nearby, so that she could ask them if they might know what had happened, when she saw a face watching her from the trees.

At first she thought her eyes were deceiving her, it almost seemed that one of the trees had eyes. However, it was the first sign of life she’d seen since the scenery had changed, so she walked towards the trees holding firmly on to her broom. If it turned out to be anything dangerous, at least she could fly away. As she got nearer, the eyes moved away from the tree and came towards her.

She could see now that they belonged to a man dressed in dark green clothes that had blended so well with the trees that she hadn’t seen him at first.

She looked at him carefully as he came nearer. There was something strange about his appearance. He was nearly as tall as her father but was a lot more handsome. His eyes, which were the first thing she’d noticed, were slightly turned up at the corners, but something else didn’t seem quite right about his appearance.

He had long blond hair coming down to his shoulders, tucked neatly behind his ears. Then she saw what had been worrying her, his ears were slightly pointed at the tips. Although she’d never met one before, she was certain he was an elf.

“Are you Jennifer Jane?” he asked.

She nodded, “You must be an elf,” she said, rather more bravely than she felt. She was just beginning to remember her friend Maddy’s warning about elves.

“Not just any old elf,” was the reply, “I’m Eroin’s father.”