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full-blooded Tal’mar. What came to them by nature and by living amongst each other was an effort for me. It may not have been so if I’d chosen to live with them when I was younger. Unfortunately, the Tal’mar do not have a great affinity for machinery. The touch of steel and iron draws energy from them, causing some sort of sickness. This does not happen to me, apparently due to my human ancestry, but had I chosen to live among the Tal’mar and abandon the human world, I could never have retained my freedom or my position as a pilot. That was too much of a sacrifice for me to make. It was better to live as what I was than try to be something I was not.
    The elf waved for me to follow as he vanished into the branches, so I leapt up and rushed after him. He went slowly at first, gauging whether or not I could keep up. When he saw that I could, he built up speed until we were literally running through the treetops. My emotional burden lifted a little as I flew through the branches. I felt them reaching out for me, placing themselves under my path, helping me along the way. I didn’t have to think about my course or worry about where I would place my feet. The trees took care of that for me. I had but to run, and release my spirit to the wind.
    All too soon, it was over. We came to a giant tree on the northeastern side of the isle with branches like logs and a trunk the size of a house. Here, a number of Tal’mar had gathered. They were scattered about the limbs of the massive tree, standing or sitting on branches, talking quietly amongst themselves as we arrived. To my surprise, there were more than thirty of them. And my grandmother was there.
    I abandoned all etiquette as I leapt forward and threw my arms around her. She smiled weakly, brushing my hair from my face. I looked into her eyes and saw tears. Then I pulled away. I turned, scanning the crowd for my mother’s face. She was not there.
    “I’m sorry,” the queen said, reading my thoughts. “I only survived by sheer happenstance. I was walking in the gardens when the invaders attacked. Had I been sleeping in my chambers they would have killed me, as they did your mother.”
    Grief wrenched at my heart. For the short time I’d known my mother, we’d been bound by etiquette and politics. We had never had the time to grow close. Even holding my grandmother in my arms the way I was, was something I had never done in public before. I’d always been too worried about offending someone, about spoiling tradition. I had always worried about the fact that I wasn’t entirely Tal’mar; that I wasn’t really one of them and they might not wholly accept me.
    “It’s not fair,” I said angrily.
    “I know, child. Life is never fair. But it is what we make of it.”
    I looked into her eyes and saw the tragedy written across her face. Thousands of Tal’mar had been taken captive already, and many were dead. Her people were scattered and broken. She was beyond hope.
    “I don’t understand this,” I said. “Who are these invaders? What do they want from us?”
    “They call themselves Vangars. Some of them speak our tongue. My spies have gathered that they came here for our resources. They want our weapons and our machines, but mostly they want steel.”
    My eyes widened. “Blackrock steel,” I murmured. “How did they know about it?”
    “This, I believe, is my fault,” she said sadly. “Last year, I sent two scout ships into the Frigid Sea hoping to find useable land beyond. The Tal’mar population is thriving, and we have need -not only of new land- but also of resources. Soon it will be impossible for this isle to support us all. We tried to barter with King Ryshan for the wilderness in the Borderlands he did not believe we had anything of value to trade.
    “So I sent out ships with instructions to search the western seas and return in six months. The first ship never returned and we assumed it had been lost at sea, perhaps in a storm. The second ship