Elfhome

7: LULLABY OF STONE

Oilcan heard the wailing first. It was a thin, horrible sound. He followed it back through the hospice to where a Wyvern stood staring at a small quivering heap of filthy rags on the floor. It took him a minute to realize that the thing was an elf crying hysterically.

“Why isn’t he being taken care of?” Oilcan asked the Wyvern.

“The hospice staff is busy with the others,” the royal sekasha said. “This male is not badly hurt.”

The Wyvern used the male gender that indicated a child. Was this Rustle of Leaves? Or was it another child, and the musician was one of the ones that died? Either way, the child would stay hysterical until cleaned, fed, and comforted. The Wyvern stood looking at the child, dismayed but seemingly helpless.

“There’s a bathing room in the other wing,” Oilcan said.

The Wyvern gave him the closest thing to a “deer in the headlights” look he’d ever seen on a sekasha. Apparently childcare was not part of the warrior’s training.

“Can you take responsibility for him?” the sekasha asked.

Saying “yes” might mean something beyond just bathing the child. Oilcan glanced to Merry, who was clinging to the doorframe as if it were the only thing that kept her from bolting. This is what could have happened to her — or worse — if Oilcan hadn’t spotted her at the train station and taken her into his protection.

What was one more kid? He did have another spare bedroom in his condo.

“Yes,” Oilcan said. “I can.”

The sekasha bowed slightly but then asked doubtfully, “Will you be able to carry him?”

Oilcan checked an automatic “Yes” to consider. He’d have to get the double halfway across the hospice, through several sets of doors. The double was smaller than him, but not by much. “Could you please carry him to the bathing room?”

The child started to keen louder the moment the sekasha lifted him up. The sekasha stoically ignored the wailing and followed Oilcan down the hall.

At the start of the summer, the hospice had been a strange, unknown place. Oilcan had barely known where it even lay beyond the enclaves. Since delivering a wounded Windwolf to the hospice just before Mid-Summer’s Eve, Oilcan had been back many times, visiting Tinker as she recovered from one mishap after another. By now, he knew the hospice well. The bathing room was huge, tiled in soothing shades of blue. There were hand showers to scrub off dirt before climbing — already clean — into a soaking tub large enough to fit a football team.

The sekasha settled the double onto the floor and backed off.

“Hush, hush.” Oilcan carefully stripped the remains of clothes ripped into shreds and soaked with dirt, blood, urine, and feces. Under the filthy rags were massive bruises and dirt-crusted wounds. The oni had cropped the double’s hair so short there were nicks from the knife they’d used. Excrement had been ground into the stubble as added insult. The boy’s nose been broken, and both his eyes were swollen shut. Blood leaked from his nose as he cried.

“You’re safe now. You’re safe.” Oilcan felt so helpless. What could he possibly do to make things right? The poor thing had merely walked out of the train station and into a nightmare.

. . his mother lay so still on the kitchen floor, his father slowly crumbled down, arms outstretched, wailing in denial of what he’d done. .

There were things that nothing could make right. They stayed hidden as black holes inside of you. You went on the best you could, pretending everything was fine.

“Gold is the light that scythes the hay, dusk softens the edge of day.” Oilcan crooned softly the Elvish song his mother used to sing to him. “Lavender and lilly sweeten the sky, nightingale warbles a lullaby.”

The little male leaned against him and went silent. Singing softly, Oilcan worked at washing away the filth. A river of muddy water ran from the child to the drain. It was difficult to keep singing and scrub. He was aware that the Wyvern had left and felt weirdly abandoned.

Merry came to sit beside him and sing. “Quicksilver shadows pierce the dark, starflash fireflies blaze and spark. Moonbeams soothe the fractured night. Sleep and dream, close your eyes.”

So they sang and washed the double. When the water finally ran clean, Oilcan lifted the male into the soaking tub. Merry surprised him by suddenly stripping down and climbing into the tub, too. He supposed that the point of a swimming pool — sized tub was joint bathing, but he hadn’t totally considered the implication.

Once in, Merry turned pleading eyes on him. “Sama?”

Oilcan sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. Since much of the double’s filth had rubbed off on him, he could use a bath. He stripped down, sluiced the dirt off, and climbed in.