The Unforgivables

Ellewyn awoke with moonshine on her face. The houses of the Elven land are always quiet. It is just the nature of the Elves. They are lithe and stealthy – the perfect hunters.

The village was not quiet.

If a human sat up and listened, it would hardly hear a thing. Elves, like Ellewyn, heard a thin, warbling cry.

Ellewyn pushed the thin cotton sheet to the ground and crept to the door. Her tangled ginger hair stuck out of the door ten times further than her head did.

The warbling cry crescendoed. Ellewyn covered her ears. What the Devil could that be? She made her way down the mahogany stairs.

The sight she saw next made her terrified of the living room for years to come.

Eithne, her normally beautiful mother, was pressed up against the green walls of the living room, contorted into an unnatural position. She clawed at the plaster, her fingernails breaking and bleeding. Her jaw was open, limp, and swinging back and forth. Her eyes opened wider than Ellewyn had ever seen them, and the scream was growing so loud that Ellewyn had to cover her ears.

“Mother!” she cried, shrinking away. Ellewyn’s mother began shrieking, babbling away nonsense. It could easily have sounded funny, not given the situation.

Her mother threw herself against Ellewyn. The adolescent Elf burst into terrified tears. There is nothing worse in life than fearing your own family. Eithne grabbed at the white robe on Ellewyn’s chest and stared at Ellewyn. Ellewyn could see herself reflected in her mother’s crazed green eyes. Ellewyn could not move; she wanted badly to push her mother off of her, but Eithne looked so very desperate and troubled that Ellewyn could not bear to push her away.

Her mother began to sob with the slack-jawed expression on her face. “Ellewyn, please,” she begged, “save him!”

Poor Ellewyn was just as confused as you probably are now. Her brain was foggy with sleep, and she was shocked. Nothing ever caused a sane Elf to act like this, and, as far as Ellewyn knew, her mother was perfectly sane. A bit of a misguided ghost, yes, but sane.

Eithne was a bit of an oddball in her younger years. She was part of an Elven convent for years, seeking divine approval and security. She broke her vow of celibacy, producing Ellewyn. Ellewyn was proven to be nothing special like her parents. She had the typical chiseled Elven looks – high cheekbones, delicate bone structure, and white, white skin – but she lacked the gracefulness. Eithne was skilled with a bow, able to perform traditional Elven dances when she had free time after her journey out of the convent. Her father, Eidyn, led the guard of the village, and the village respected him as a leader.

Ellewyn was not graceful, nor was she brave. And so, when her mother begged her for help on that frightening night, poor Ellewyn knew naught of what to do, except to start crying herself. At last, she came to her senses and pushed her mother onto the dusty floor, screaming, “I don’t know what to do! I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what‘s wrong!”

Eithne clutched the nearest object with bloody, aquiline fingers. “It’s going out, Ellewyn!” she screamed, her voice ripping out of her chest. The scream itself sounded painful and forced. “The flame is going out! It’s not natural; it shouldn’t be going out, it cannot go out, God’s children cannot go out, they cannot die…” Eithne began blubbering again, though this time it was intelligible babble.

A terrible feeling sunk into Ellewyn's chest as she listened to her crazed mother. You know, that feeling that pulls your brain down your esophagus and sticks to your lungs, pulling them all down until they hit your stomach acid, and that’s when you start to feel sick to your stomach. You feel sick to your stomach because you know all of it is there, but you don’t want to know it’s there, and you don’t want to understand. You feel like life would be better if you were naive and did not understand.

Ellewyn had that exact feeling. She listened to her mother talk about the flames and God’s children, and suddenly it was like she hit the bull’s-eye for the first time in archery again. Everything made sense. Eithne was talking about the candles in the cathedral on the other side of the world. The candles that nobody touched, let alone saw.

The Vorn Candles that burned, guarded by the two massive stone grotesques had been touched. Someone deceived the protectors that the Demons commanded. Ellewyn knew it was possible, but nobody living that she knew of could have done that.

Another stroke of “genius” hit Ellewyn. Women connected to the convent had had fits of hysteria lately, much like Eithne at that moment. Convulsions, self-injury, fits of agony, screaming… not a single woman was consolable. A candle had been touched… so… was a Child’s candle touched, or put out?

Surely not put out. The person – if they could be called that in the first place – could not possibly be alive and well after the first mortal sin. The God of their planet was merciful, but, as with any society, there are acts considered unforgivable, and putting out a candle is one of them.

Vorn’s candles are no laughing matter.

Putting out a Light candle is a wholly different matter. From what Ellewyn could understand, a Child’s candle was put out, and the law of Eastern Tecrest (and legend) said that committing such an act made you into a true Unforgivable.

Becoming an Unforgivable is irreversible. Your candle’s flame flickers out for just a second, and flares back up, smoking and producing a filthy black flame. The wax melts away, and out of thin air, chunky wax bubbles up and encases your wick. Your candle is no longer a regular candle; you are no longer from your race, be you Elf, Human, Animal, Demon, or Witch or Wizard. You are an Unforgivable, and you roam the Pole as a disfigured creature, destined to be hated and hunted, wherever you go.

Eithne screamed and screamed, until her lungs gave out and she sat there like a breathing work of art. An ugly, tortured work of art. Ellewyn shook her and shouted at her, slapping Eithne’s twisted face until it was an angry red. Eidyn was nowhere in sight, and Ellewyn could not stop her mother from screaming obscenities at this stranger across the world.

White, waiflike hands grabbed Ellewyn’s face and brought it close. Ellewyn could smell the blood on Eithne’s fingertips. The strength Eithne’s hands still had was remarkable, given her condition. “You must go. I cannot live with the image of God’s Child writhing in agony in my head.” The fingernails bit into Ellewyn’s skin. “I can hear his voice calling the women of the convent,” she told Ellewyn in an agonized whisper. Each shaky breath shook Eithne’s thin form. “His flame is dying. It has to be lit again; he cannot die. He leads the Elves.”

“Mother,” Ellewyn grasped Eithne’s wrists lightly, “I am just an average Elf… you’ve told me yourself many times. I will not amount to anything more than you, ever. I don’t have the ability.” Ellewyn could have sworn that every other time she repeated these words to her mother, she was speaking to a brick wall, but now, now that Eithne was vulnerable and weak, she seemed to have absorbed it.

Her mother lapsed into a fit once more, taking up the thin warbling cry that originally woke Ellweyn up. The Elven village, Ellewyn could hear them pushing off their sheets and complaining, had begun to wake. Eithne had began the Elven village’s day early.