Elfitis

A "Crowd Hoot" Story

By Thelma Mary Caroline

"So what is it?" Kyle asked.

"Whoa!  We hardly got home!"

"What's the big deal?  What's wrong with Jeri Holt?"

"Well ..." Otto sat down.  "You have to promise you won't repete this."

She did, and he told her.

A long time ago, fifty or one hundred years ago, humans being raised by elves was quite common.  Babies who were rejected by their family for one reason or another, or children who got lost in the forest.  Children who ran away from home.

Almost every tribe was raising a human or two at any given time.

Jeriziah Holthunter was one of those children.  Unfortaintly, a strange illness affected the elves the year she was twenty -- or two eights and four turns of the seasons as the elves would say.  They counted like that because they only had eight fingers.

The Healer of the tribe worked day and night healing the elves.  When the young human got sick, the Healer had done the same for her.

But the consequences were great.

No one in the tribe suspected anything.  The girl learned how to talk telepathically, but this was not uncommon for humans that spent a lot of time around elves.

Many, many years passed, and they began to notice something strange.  She didn't look as though she'd grown any older.  She still looked as though she was two eights and four turns of the season.

She was immortal.

The elves didn't know it, but the disease that had affected them was Elfitis, a disease that killed virtually every elf it infected that was healed by a Healer.  But it was much different when humans got it -- similar to the flu.

That was why no one ever saw Jeri Holt.  She was that girl, and she still looked very young though she was not.