Bast

some men."
Bast leaned forward and stared into Rachel's eyes. "She had a bad time with them?"
"Yes," Rachel replied, thankful that she didn't have to say the words.
"Where?" Bast asked.
"On a trail. South of the Via Appalia."
"Hai. Take me to the place. They will not make same mistake twice. I'll use hot irons, they'll even be able to walk after a few days. If they survive the shock."
"It's a long way from here . . ." Rachel said.
"Not so far, I'd make it in one day," Bast replied.
"And they'd be gone from there . . ."
"Am I not Bast? The greatest tracker in all of Norau, perhaps all of Elfdom?" Bast said.
"I don't know, are you?" Rachel replied with a slight chuckle. "Bast, the point is, we also know who they are. It was Dionys McCanoc and his merry men."
"Ach! That one! Him I'd kill just for the fun of it!"
"But the point is that going back to where it happened wouldn't help."
"No, you're right," Bast said, frowning. "He would not linger. So I must find him further afield."
"What? Why?" Rachel said.
"He hurt your mother," Bast said as if that settled it. "You are my friend. And he hurt the lover of my best human friend, Edmund Talbot. For that, I shall mount his balls on my trophy wall!" She paused and frowned. "If I can ever get back to my apartment in Elfheim."
"Apartment?"
"Close enough for human words," Bast said. "More of a closet, really, but with a very fine view of the next tree and if you lean way over," she added, suiting actions to words, "you can see a stream. A small one. More of a run-off creek, really. Intermittent anyway. Elfheim is . . . rather crowded. We're immortal. Even with not having babies very often, hardly at all, really, it's gotten . . . crowded."
"I'm surprised more of you don't live in the World," Rachel said, wide-eyed. Her image of the elves had never included them living shoulder to shoulder.
"Me too," Bast admitted. "But in Elfheim, most of them live in the Dream of the Woods, rather than in the real woods. In some ways, the Dream is better, more intense, than the reality. But I like to touch the woods, to see the trees grow, to watch the petal open in reality, even if it is less . . . beautiful than Dream."
"And so you're caught out here," Rachel said.
"Yes, severed from the Dream," Bast sighed. "Some day the Lady will relent and we exiles will return. Until the Dream