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Art by Nicole Tadgell |
Leading Ladies: Nightfall
Loyal archer and fierce huntress, Nightfall has stood by her chief’s side, whether that chief is Cutter or Ember. Nightfall is portrayed, for the most part, as the perfect elf maiden. She’s pretty, skilled, respected, and has a fair temperament. She is the most mature and calculated (except maybe for Moonshade). But she is not without her faults and hardships.
She was born and raised in the Father Tree Holt with Skywise and Cutter as close friends. Redlance and Nightfall began their courtship when still quite young and have been together ever since, becoming the first pair in the comics to have a forced Recognition.
Loving Redlance is part of what makes Nightfall so unique. They are opposites and have had their fair share of struggles. When the Children of Gotara burn the forest to the ground, and the trolls cast them into the merciless desert, Redlance’s wounds threaten his life. It’s at this time, when Nightfall has given up all hope, that she meets her lovemate’s savior and her own best friend.
Leetah and Nightfall, though different in many ways, are the first of the Wolfriders and Sun Villagers to form a real friendship. Nightfall is forever grateful to the healer and Leetah sees in Nightfall a courage that she wants to posses. When Cutter and Leetah are Recognized, Nightfall does not scorn Leetah for rejecting the inevitable, but wants to help her accept it. The archer has always been one to look for the best way to solve a problem, either quietly rational or with fierce opposition.
When the Wolfriders leave Sorrow’s End to search for their wayward chief, they are attacked and carried off by giant birds as they near Blue Mountain. Only Leetah and her children, Nightfall and Redlance evade capture. They wander together, confused and disoriented, until they find Cutter, Skywise, Leetah, Ember, and Sun-Top in the woods. The joy of the reunion is short, however; the rest of the tribe is still missing.
Despite Sun-Top’s warnings, Cutter decides to enter Blue Mountain and save the tribe. Nightfall remains in the background during most of the Wolfriders’ time in the mountain, but she makes her opinions clear. She doesn’t trust Winnowill any more than the others do, but she stands by her chief, even when he may be wrong. This can be seen as one of her faults. Then again, all she knows is the Way, so she follows Cutter through dealings with the Black Snake and Lord Voll, out of Blue Mountain, into an ambush by mountain trolls, and to an unexpected haven provided by the Go-Backs. These snow elves tell tales of the lost Palace of the High Ones and claim they know how to reach it. Nightfall is ready and willing to learn new ways of battle in order to help defeat the trolls, but whether this is due to the loss of her wolf in the ambush, the call of the Palace, or need for Cutter’s acceptance is unknown.
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Whatever her willingness came from, it was enough to make her leave Redlance and go into battle, knowing that she may never see him again. In their parting, she gives him the most precious thing she can—her soul name—and doesn’t even ask for his. This selfless act of love is proof of the bond between the still un-Recognized pair. She receives his soul name in return when she emerges victorious from the bloody fray with the mountain trolls to find the lodge attacked and her beloved half-dead. Last time Leetah’s healing pulled him from the darkness. This time, Nightfall’s love is enough.
After the tribe reunites inside the troll caves, they go on together, to finally uncover the object of their struggle—the Palace of the High Ones. Nightfall is as awestruck as everyone else by its call and its magnificence, but she is the one who sees clearly that the Wolfriders, at least, could not call it their home. “We’ve come to the Palace. We know what we are now. No matter where we go, the truth will go with us,” she says to Cutter. “We can be proud of it, or we can fear it, but it doesn’t have to break us! ‘The Way’ is a small truth, inside a bigger one. For me, day to day, the smaller is enough.” [Book 4: Quest’s End]
With their long quest behind them, the Wolfriders found a home in the Forbidden Grove, and remain there for a time. It is then that Nightfall realizes that even exchanging soulnames with her lifemate can’t give them everything Recognition could. The need for motherhood draws her to Leetah to ask for another miracle. Leetah promises to try but before anything can be done, another battle with Blue Mountain begins.
After the mountain’s fall, the Wolfriders are blessed with a peaceful time in their forest home, and Nightfall is again thinking of the child that she wants to bear. So when Rayek learns to make the Palace fly and takes them all to the Sun Village, she knows that it’s time. With the help of her best friend Leetah, Nightfall at last conceives. She ends up giving birth to her daughter much later when many things have changed.
When Rayek takes the Palace on a flight through time, stealing Cutter’s family with him, Nightfall consoles her chief and makes sure he survives in the “Now.” For five thousand years she stands by him, giving him, as she always has, everything she can: her family, her loyalty, and her love. Finally the entire tribe follows Cutter into a Preserver sleep to wait for the Palace’s return.
Nightfall does not sleep this entire time. Her cocoon is stolen and cut open by Kahvi, who sought Cutter for her own reasons and got Nightfall by mistake. Nightfall learns that the snow-chieftess is indeed a Wolfrider, the daughter of Two-Spear, but refuses their kinship. Nightfall has never had any respect for Kahvi, who knew nothing of herself and so dragged her tribe on endless and vain quests. She battles Kahvi and wins, telling her that she must be a Go-Back before she can be a Wolfrider. With that they part, and Nightfall returns to cocooned sleep.
The Palace is finally found and, again, the Holt has some peace until the humans nearby learn of the Palace’s existence and take it for themselves. Cutter splits the tribe, sending half of them away with his daughter Ember in case the others, left behind to fight for the Palace, don’t survive. Nightfall goes with her and passes on to the unsure chieftess a little of her own self-confidence. She helps Ember to know how much her father loves her and believes in her, and helps shape her to be a great leader.
When the Palace is restored and the Wolfriders reunited, Nightfall goes with Cutter to see if their beloved Father Tree Holt has grown back over the centuries. She leaves her daughter, who has become an adult herself, and finds hope in the thought of things being as they were before the fire so long ago. But perhaps what sets Nightfall apart from the other elves is that she has always borne that hope.
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