He only hoped that Tengitir had included work clothes in his new wardrobe—and that he'd be able to recognize them if she had. The new clothes she was promising him didn't look very much different to Kellen than the old ones—except in color—though it did seem that they would have more decoration, but then again, he really didn't care. He had more important things to think about.
If there wasn't anything really suitable for working in, his Wildwood buckskins would do just as well. He might not be able to hold his own in any discussion of Elven art, history, or fashion, but he could pump water and carry buckets as well as anyone. And it wasn't as if he could disguise the fact that he was human, so there wasn't really a lot of point in trying.
But in fact, as far as he could tell, his humanity really didn't seem to bother the Elves overmuch—or if it did, the Elves were far more polite about it than a bunch of humans would have been if the situation had been reversed, Kellen thought gloomily.
He didn't expect to see the new clothing anytime soon, but in fact, the first of the replacement items for his everyday wardrobe was waiting at his lodging when he arrived back there again that same evening. All that really mattered to Kellen was that the pieces were not (to his great relief) the skintight clothing he saw the Elves wearing, though he guessed they were pretty enough. He did wonder how Tengitir had gotten them done so fast, though.
The next morning, Kellen—who, with Idalia's help, had found something suitable among the clothes Tengitir had sent after all—joined a work party, and was assigned to a work detail in the Rim Forest to the west.
AT the canyon rim, a system of wind-driven pumps forced the water from Sentarshadeen's five springs up above the canyon wall into reservoirs and holding tanks. The tanks had not been built for this emergency, Kellen discovered, though the method of filling them had. Normally they were filled naturally by the rains, and kept as an emergency reserve against fires.
From there, the water was pumped by hand into smaller barrels and taken out into the forest… when the pump system worked.
Kellen gathered that it had been built in a hurry, on a much larger scale than the Elves' usual projects. What he did know was that it was breaking down more and more frequently as parts wore out. And if it stopped working altogether, there would be no way to get enough water from the five springs of the canyon floor to the rim.
Watering a forest by hand. It's insane. It's impossible.
But they had to try.
Kellen spent most of his time in the days that followed with the various watering parties, working to save the forest around Sentarshadeen. It was important, necessary work, and since he couldn't help Idalia with what she was doing, he might as well do what he could. His labor was appreciated, too, and if Elves weren't as fulsome in their verbal thanks as some humans might be, he found tokens of their appreciation whenever he got back to the house, in the form of blister salves, liniments, and bath salts to ease the aches of one who had hauled more than his share of heavy buckets.
Today—it was now the fourth day after his arrival in Sentarshadeen— he was working with Canderil and Llylance in Coral Section. By now, every tree in the forest was marked with a small patch of color on the trunk, so that no one watered a tree twice in any given term. Yesterday Kellen had gone around his circuit alone, refilling the watering troughs for the few forest animals that remained in the area. The Elves had tried keeping the forest pools full, but by now the drought had gone on so long that the water simply sank away into the parched ground, so now there were wooden troughs scattered through the forest for the animals to drink from.
It wasn't enough. Nothing was. The wild animals were so parched that they were drinking at the troughs in full daylight, ignoring the presence of Elves and human about them, predator even drinking side by side with prey.
'THIS one,' Canderil said, stopping the cart.
Kellen stopped—it was his turn to pull the cart—and sighed in dismay. Even to his untutored eyes, the tree didn't look all that healthy, and by now he supposed the Elves knew every tree in the forest personally. He straightened, easing his shoulders as Llylance knelt and carefully scraped away the sheltering cover of fallen leaves from the roots of the tree, then dipped a bucket of water from the cart and poured it out, conscientiously working his way all around the tree's roots. Kellen could see the Elven-born's lips moving, and supposed Llylance was saying a prayer for the forest. The earth beneath the leaves was so dry it was almost white; the water pooled on the surface for a moment, then sank away as fast as if it had been poured into sand.
When he was done, Llylance carefully replaced the covering of leaves again, and they went on.
Kellen didn't know how many colors the Elves could distinguish, but he knew that none of the trees was being watered very often. The Flower Forest in the canyon below was being irrigated with a series of trenches and canals, the water to fill them being pumped directly from whichever spring was nearest, but you couldn't do that with thousands of acres of wild forest. They weren't even really keeping the outer forest alive, Kellen knew—if anything, all the best efforts of the Elves could manage was to help it die more slowly.
But just because that was all they could do was no reason to stop doing it. After all, Idalia might find out how to bring the rains back. Or something else might happen. They had to keep trying.
It usually took several barrels of water to irrigate a section. They'd emptied the first one, and were returning to the Rim for more water when Kellen spotted a familiar figure running toward him.
