“What? What is it?” asked Eibhlin.

“It’s a new moon!” said the kithara. “Bathing glass naturally has weaker barriers than other windows, due to its purpose, and during a new moon they be-come even weaker. At the same time, the dark elves are stronger tonight than any other time.”

“Why? What’s going on?” repeated Eibhlin.

Shira spoke. “They turned from all that is good and are now of darkness. They shun light of all kinds, can stand neither sun nor moon, and they cannot stand their brothers and sisters who would not follow in their corruption.”

“And so they want to kill you?” asked Eibhlin, caught between disbelief and horror. Wickedness like that simply didn’t make sense to her. It was like something out of her church’s Holy Book, like the stories the priest might read on Holy Day from which he drew lessons but which had always seemed so divorced from Eibhlin's everyday life as to be almost fiction. But now those stories felt too close to her to be anything but real. Elkir tightened his grip. Eibhlin had forgotten about him and now regretted speaking.

Still holding the kithara, Shira bent down to take her brother’s other hand. “Yes. They wish to kill us. Under a new moon, they have only distant starlight to fear, and now they have entered this house.”

“What can we do?” said Eibhlin.

Just then, the door shook, and a snarl slid through the cracks. Curses sounded from beyond the dense wood, and Elkir released Eibhlin to hide in his sister’s protective embrace. Once more, and with a stronger force, the door slammed against its hinges. Again and again the door shook, but the barrier held. But the invader beyond had heard its prey. A loud screech pieced the defenders’ ears, followed by a sharp snap and more curses. Moments later, the screech came again, but this time the snap took longer to follow. The sound came again.

Screech.

Snap.

Screech. Screech.

Snap.

Screech. Screech. Screech.

Snap.

Screech. Screech. Scree-

Suddenly, the wood cracked in its center, the tip of a blade poking through. Elated cries from the other side chilled Eibhlin’s lungs. The door wouldn’t hold.

The blade retracted and came again, breaking farther through the wood with a sound like metal striking and scraping against stone. Barely thinking, Eibhlin reached into her satchel and pulled out her knife. She had just unsheathed it when the door split in two, at last sounding like no more than wood. The invader entered the room.

When trying to describe that moment later, Eibhlin would always struggle with the words. The stench of mud and grease, the large eyes glowing as they reflected any small trace of light, the bristling hair on its head and arms littered with dirt, the skin white as the chalk of her own sea cliffs, these she could describe. However, all this paled to the atmosphere spreading out from the creature, infecting the air. All she could say of it was, “Before then, I had never really understood what evil is.”

The fallen elf snarled as its clawed hand gripped a sword patterned with blood and rust. Chittering laughter came from its thick throat. Its gaunt chest heaved out raspy breaths between laughs.

Eibhlin couldn’t move. She felt distant, as if she were just a spectator. She saw the knife in her hand, heard her own fear-shallowed breaths, but they didn’t seem to be hers. She was back home, dreaming before another normal day. Just like always, she would get up, tend to the chickens, make breakfast, go to town in the morning, come home in the afternoon, make dinner, eat, clean, and go to bed. Just like al-ways. Just the same. No monsters, no elves, no quests, no keys, no arguments with her father, no dealing with fairies except for stories and glimpses between trees. It would not be “over”. It would never have begun. None of it.

The dark elf tensed like a wolf toward a sheep, an image Eibhlin knew well, and she broke from her daze just as the hunter lunged at her. She stumbled back, and its sword cut her arm rather than her throat. She swallowed a cry. Some years ago, she had been mauled by a wolf, giving her scars on her back, but though there had been more blood at that time, this small wound stung far worse, like being attacked by bees while running through nettles. Pain, shock, and fear almost blacked out her vision, but a collision with a bedside table brought her back to her senses.

The sword struck again, and this time, her body remembered the wolves and moved faster. She dodged to the side and stabbed with her knife, putting all her weight into it. A howl struck her ears, as did Elkir’s shuddering whimper. When she turned to the sound, the dark elf pushed her away and ripped the knife from its side. It grunted, threw the blade away as if it were hot, and charged Eibhlin again. She barely dodged the sword and scrambled across the bed, landing on her wounded arm as she tumbled to the floor on the far side. Renewed pain stabbed up her arm to her head and down to her feet. No forced bravado could hold in her cry this time. Eibhlin rolled over, but she couldn’t move her legs. Pain paralyzed her. The dreadful laughter filled her hearing again, and she looked up to see the dark elf crouching on the bed over her, sword raised.

Then a firm, clear word echoed in the small room. How it echoed, Eibhlin didn’t know. She also didn’t know how she could have ever thought she knew speech. That one word felt almost physical, as though it were solid sunlight flittering through the air. She had only been too insubstantial to see it before. All this entered and passed from Eibhlin’s mind in less than a second, but even as she processed it, the moment was gone, replaced by a scream so sharp that she flinched.

From the dark elf’s chest protruded her knife, and behind the creature was a trembling, tear-faced Shira. The creature tried to face its attacker, but before it got halfway, cracks of light shot across its body like lightening, covering the fallen elf in golden lines with the knife blade at their center. Instantly, the dark elf dropped its sword and began clawing at the marks. It gave one more scream before crumpling over, never to rise. At the creature’s death, the dim room appeared to brighten a bit, and the air, though still polluted, grew lighter.

Eibhlin let out her held breath, and had it not been for the pain in her body, she would have re-laxed. Her mind, at least, released its tension, and she fainted.