This was ridiculous. (Patreon)

The vague wording of the note made me wish it could be interpreted some other way, but really it was pretty obvious that the reference was to shoes.  I was quite familiar with the old tale of the Cobbler's Elves, who started out making shoes as a prank but then got trapped in a geas-contract.  They were forced to work for no compensation beyond a meager dish of milk and a half-dozen cookies every night - and they weren't even good cookies!  The moral of the story, as with most of these cautionary tales from the Long Ago, had been that one should take extreme care when dealing with lowfolk.

It irritated me to know that these doltish beings thought of me as nothing more than a magickal odd-job servant.  I was a prince, confound it!  Only one mischance away from being the crowned King of Faerie!  I was not a shoemaker!

Unfortunately though, at present I had to rely on the goodwill of these idiots so they would keep bringing me food.  I considered my options:

I could go searching around for a few pairs of shoes to steal, to fill the lowfolk's order .. but there were two problems I could see immediately with that plan.  First, very few elves actually wore shoes, so they would probably be quite hard to find.  Second, I would have to return to the scrying tower in order to conduct such a search, and I didn't feel like running the gauntlet with those crows again right now.

Additionally, how would I know that any shoes I found would be the right size?

I could perhaps find someone to do the work for me, but that raised a whole crop of additional questions.  Presumably I would have to use the scry tower to locate them, and then would I be able to speak to them, or was the tower strictly for observation only?  My mother's brief contact with me suggested it might be two-way, but I had no idea how to make that work.  Furthermore, what kind of deal would I have to make with the cobbler?  No way was I going to share my food with him.  It was barely enough just for me!

I could perhaps use gramarye to shape this leather into shoes, but I wasn't completely familiar with how shoes were constructed - and therefore uncertain how they would turn out.  And anyway, such work was far beneath my dignity!

I briefly toyed with the idea of making some stew.  After they tasted it, the lowfolk would surely be in my thrall .. but then again, I would have to find a cauldron, and start a fire, and use most of my lunch as ingredients.  NO!  These miserable lowfolk didn't deserve to taste my wondrous stew!  It was completely presumptuous of them to come here, demanding specific rewards far out of proportion to the value of their picnic lunch!  If they couldn't appreciate elf-gold, that was their problem, not mine.

I ate the food, then gathered an armload of pine cones to fill the basket.  I used the charred end of a stick to write "JUST WHO DO YOU THINK I AM??" on the note, and stuck it in amidst the cones.

Then I made myself as comfortable as I could under the dolmen, and waited for morning.

Not long after first light, I heard the trees whispering amongst themselves that the lowfolk were coming, so I scurried to the top of the dolmen and concealed myself in a spot where I could see the picnic basket.

"What the?" the male exclaimed.  "All the food is gone, but the leather is still here.  And he filled the basket with pine cones!  What a jerk!"

"What's that written on the back of our note?" the femme inquired.

"It says 'Just who do you think I am,'" he replied, slowly sounding out the words.  "OH, I get it!  He wants us to guess his name.  We can't make him do anything unless we can command him by name."

"Well, judging by the description in the Chanson, he has to be Adler Young, the rebellious traitor whom the Queen of Elves trapped here for his crimes."

"ADLER YOUNG!" the two lowfolk called out.  "ADLER YOUNG, COME FORTH!!  SHOW YOURSELF!"

They repeated this formula several times before stopping and looking at each other in confusion.

"They have to obey when you use their name," the male lowfolk insisted.

"Yes, but he's not appearing," the femme observed.  "So I guess this isn't Adler Young we're dealing with."

I observed these antics with a mixture of outrage and disbelief.  The NERVE of these creatures, to think they could boss an elf around just because they happened to know his name!  Where did they even get that idea, anyway??

On the other hand, I needed to keep these lowfolk sweet so they would continue bringing me food.  How would Estvan have handled this?  He (according to him, at least) had enjoyed many profitable dealings with lowfolk over the centuries.  I wished that I'd had a chance to learn more from him..

It was also clear that I needed to do something about the existence of this so-called "Chanson du Percy" or it was going to cause me no end of trouble.

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