Angry Lead Skies

53

Dean never gave the bitching a minute's rest but he did cook up breakfast enough for the whole wretched crowd.

The elf women joined in timidly. Dean tried them on everything in his arsenal. Tea they found acceptable. Honey seemed to be all right, in tea or straight from the pot. One nibbled a biscuit, also with honey aboard. Bacon revolted the two of them. The more obviously feminine member of the pair—the one who looked like she'd actually made it a few weeks into puberty—attacked the mustard once she discovered it. Dean scowled and muttered to himself. A lot of work goes into grinding seed and preparing the condiment. There's always a pot on the table, mainly because I don't much like mustard.

The other elf woman, the elder and senior woman—judging by wrinkles—seemed terrified, though no one even spoke to her. I got the feeling she'd never seen the inner workings of a Karentine household.

Fear or no, she did appear to me immensely curious about everything.

Kip was a shuddering zombie, controlled by an increasingly exasperated Dead Man. Kip never stopped fighting him. Something was missing in that boy's makeup. I couldn't understand how he'd managed to stay alive this long.

Singe and I removed to the Dead Man's room as soon as I'd had enough to eat. She brought a platter along with her, loaded with seconds or thirds. Having no better idea what to do with herself, the slimmer elf woman tagged along. She wouldn't sit when I offered her my chair because that would leave me standing between her and the door. The other one stayed with Dean, exploring the wonders of the kitchen.

"So where do we stand, Old Bones? Have we learned anything?"

Perhaps. At the first instance, probably that we should not have allowed emotion to sweep us away and get us involved in this. As I see it now, we have stormed into the middle of something that was none of our business. We have done nothing but trail chaos and dismay wherever we have gone.

"What do you mean, ‘we,' Big Daddy Homely? You can't really talk about someone else in the royal plural, can you?"

Do not become tedious. I am struggling to translate what little recognizable material I find in the thin creature's mind. This is truly an alien intelligence, Garrett. I have encountered nothing like it in all my years. Nor have I ever heard of such creatures... Unless... There may have been similar folk here when I was a child. Visitors, they were called then. They were all murdered for their secrets. Inasmuch as they did not reveal anything they were soon forgotten.

I am having difficulty communicating not just because of what you would call a language barrier but also because of her fear. She is awash in fear, not just of us, here, whom she finds terrifying enough, but of being cut off from her own people. She is completely unmanned by the possibility that she may never be able to return home. And least of all, but still there in the mix, is a fear of the consequences of the failure of her mission.

"And that would be?"

I do not know. That is in a sealed part of her mind.

"What about the other one?"

She is frightened, too. And her mind is more closed. But behind her fear there is a hint of her seeing this personal disaster as a potential opportunity for... I do not know what. Something compulsive. Possibly obsessive. Possibly something wicked. Worms of temptation have begun to awaken way down in the black, mucky deeps...

I hate it when he meanders off on a free association, poetic ramble. I guess because I can't ever figure out what the hell he's babbling about. "What about Kip? Did you get anything new out of him?"

Yes. Once I became aware that there was something that should be there. But it is not much. And I do not know if we can justify hunting down Lastyr and Noodiss.

"Of course we can." But I couldn't think of any reasonable argument in favor of that. "Is there any chance some of those elves might've put a compulsion into my head somewhere along the way? Like one of those times when I was knocked out?"

At the moment I am unable to investigate. All of my mental capacity is occupied by the boy and these foreign women.

"They definitely are both women, then."

By birth. You unclothed them. You saw.

"I didn't see much." But what I had seen had been curiously interesting. "The one in the kitchen at least raised a crop of lemons."

Many human women are not as voluptuous as those in the range you usually find interesting. This one's primary sexual characteristics are somewhat atrophied. I would expect that to be true of the others, as well.

"I did notice that." In the women it all added up to a sort of virginal innocence that was attractive in its own fashion.

Singe hissed at me. I think it was supposed to be laughter.

I suspect that this is not an individual aberration. I suspect that we would find the males even more atrophied.

"Weird." I shuddered. "The ones I stripped down out there definitely weren't built to boogie. Maybe I ought to introduce this old gal to Morley."

The pixies out front launched one of their racket shows, which wakened the Goddamned Parrot.

She may be beyond seduction, Garrett. They may have tried to breed the sexual impulse out of themselves. The same madness has been tried by countless cults in our part of the world in a shortsighted effort to shove all those distractions aside.

"How the hell do they get little elves, then?"

Exactly. No such cult lasts more than a generation. Per haps the silver elves have found a way around that limitation. Possibly they have a separate breeder caste. I do not know. I do know that no living creature I have ever encountered, save the rare mutant, has lacked desire, however distorted the core impulse might have become because of stresses upon the individual. I would suspect them to be present in these elves. But buried deep.

"So have you gotten anything out of the kid concerning his two weird pals?"

Truly, he does not know how or where to find them. He does not have a reliable means of attracting their attention. His method worked only two times in five tries. The rest of the time they just turned up at their own discretion, almost always when he was alone. It has not occurred to Kip to wonder but they almost certainly knew that he was alone before they visited.

Dean stuck his head in. "That racket out front is because the wee folk have spotted Bic Gonlit."

Dean was talking to the pixies now? Times change. I gave him the fish-eye, on general principles. He wouldn't be feeding them, too, would he?

"Now why would Bic... ?"

I have him. Go bring him in, Garrett. He flashed me a pixie's-eye view of the spot from which Bic was watching the house. I noted that it was farther away than the Dead Man had shown he could reach before when trying to manipulate a human being. After that, take Kip home to his mother. He is nothing but a distraction here.

"This is the real Bic Gonlit?"

The genuine article. Evidently determined to be foolish. Help me find out why. He will not run this time. He will not see you leave the house.