Elfhome

37: DAYS OF PAST NOT FORGOTTEN

Oilcan spent the next few days finding tables and chairs, buying paint, tracking down yards and yards of fabric and a sewing machine, raiding his various stashes of paintings for artwork emotionally safe enough to hang, and making countless trips to Wollerton’s for the massive bathing-room renovation. He also tracked down yet another cell phone for Tinker and programed it for her. All of this meant he spent a lot of time away from Sacred Heart. Since Thorne always came with him (and usually a rotating foursome of Forge’s sekasha in the name of learning the city), it left the children alone. With the oni doing raids all over the city, he was glad that Forge was at the enclave, overseeing construction of outer walls and defensive spells.

When Oilcan found time to spare, he would check in on Forge. The male was more than willing to patiently explain how he was building the spells into the wall’s foundations to create the enclave’s powerful barrier protection. Again and again, Oilcan found echoes of his grandfather in the elf. From the way Forge handled his project management to the way he pulled at his hair in frustration, it was obvious that more than just genetics had been handed down through the family.

It delighted Forge to see the habits in Oilcan. “Amaranth always had paint on her hands and in her hair and on her face, usually right on the end of her nose. I think it was because she would do this.” Forge pressed the back of his hand to his nose to demonstrate.

Oilcan laughed and checked. He had a swipe of soldering paste across his nose from welding the bathing room’s water pipes. “Yeah, that’s how it got there. Tinker is worse than me. Five minutes into anything and she’s got a smudged nose.”

Forge was showing Oilcan how to vary the shield spell when a slight tension went through Forge’s Hand.

Iron Mace drifted onto the worksite. “Ah, I wondered who was tapping the stones.”

“I’m just teaching him how to protect himself,” Forge said.

“You weren’t taught our esva as a child?” Iron Mace motioned with his hand as if conceding a point. “Well, more of a child.”

Oilcan sighed. Insisting he was an adult made him feel like a four-year-old shouting “I’m a big boy now!” Forge had studied architecture during the days of the pharaohs and Iron Mace had been using four numbers to record his age when Amaranth had been born. It was no wonder that the two couldn’t see him as anything but hopelessly young. “My mother knew Elvish, both Low and High, and a handful of songs, but not much more.”

Mace pressed, apparently not believing that Oilcan was untrained. “Unbounded Brilliance made no permanent record to school his children in their inheritance? He left them ignorant of his clan and his family and all the vast store of knowledge we had when humans were still squatting in caves?”

If his ancestor had left anything, it was in the codex with a warning built into the spell-lock: trust no one. Still, Oilcan had to keep to the truth. “We didn’t know that Unbounded Brilliance was Stone Clan domana until a few days ago. If he’d told his son anything about the Spell Stones or the esva, it was lost long ago.” Certainly they hadn’t been aware that the spells of the codex were inscribed on stones and could be cast remotely. His mother had taught him the domana finger exercises between rounds of patty-cake and cat’s cradle.

“How does your cousin know the esva then?” Mace asked.

Oilcan wasn’t sure, but he could guess. “She probably saw Jewel Tear and Forest Moss cast spells and copied them.”

Forge laughed. “What did I say, Mace? We breed true — too clever for our own good.”

Iron Mace snorted.

Forge glanced beyond Iron Mace and shook his head. “This is a war zone, Mace. You should keep your people closer.”

Iron Mace laughed. “I’m safe here.” He waved to the nearly completed wall. “You have the passive protections in place, and you are here with two of your Hands. I see no point to wearing my people to the bone. They have to rest sometime.”

“You would not have this problem if you took another Hand.”

“And have five more mouths to feed.”

“The clan would more than double your support.”

“Things are not that simple. This is why you fail so badly at politics.” Mace gave a slight wave and strolled away.

Forge frowned after him.

“He cannot take what hasn’t been offered,” Forge’s First, Dark Scythe, said.

“If you change your mind,” the note read in messy English, followed by a phone number and then lots of x’s and o’s. Oilcan frowned at the scrap of paper tucked into his glove box. Who was this from? The phone number had an area code, so it wasn’t a Pittsburgh number.

He rooted a little more until he came up with a fresh pad of paper and a pen and headed back into Sacred Heart, trying not to think about the note. Undoubtedly it was from a female post-doc that he’d met at one of Lain’s Startup Cookouts. It really didn’t matter which one — they all ended messy.

Ryan MacDonald was the last woman he had dated. She had been delightfully laid-back. Toward the end of her thirty-day stay on Elfhome, though, they slipped into the familiar pattern of all his relationships. The conversations that danced around the depth of his feelings. The tentative testing of his commitment to Elfhome. Ryan at least didn’t push for him to move to Earth; instead she hinted that she could return to Elfhome for a permanent position.

It ended like all the others. Her in tears and the familiar refrain “If you would only say that you loved me.”

Any other Shutdown, he would have locked himself away at his barn and drunk himself into a stupor. On the off chance that Tinker would return from Aum Renau, though, he got permission to ride out Shutdown at the enclaves and thus was there to welcome her home.

He flipped open the pad and tried to distract himself by scribbling down the start of a new to-do list. (Tinker teased him about using paper, but sometimes writing something down and then burning the paper was the only way to deal with things.) Roach had hauled away the last dumpster filled with rubble from the restroom demolition. He needed to take down the three-story chute, carefully, in case he needed it for a second story remodel of the bathrooms. The cement board was up and the seams sealed. All that was left was the tiling.

His footsteps echoed in the front foyer, reminding him that he was alone for the first time since he found Merry. Not completely alone. Blue Sky was treating the kids to DVDs. Oilcan could hear the faint strains of music from somewhere upstairs, and buttered popcorn perfumed the air. Iron Mace was working in his rooms. His Hand was using the gym as a training hall. Forge was consulting with Prince True Flame on defenses out by the faire grounds.

But Thorne Scratch wasn’t quietly shadowing Oilcan for the first time in days. Iron Mace had called her aside while Roach was loading up the dumpster. She had left Sacred Heart to do Iron Mace’s bidding — making Oilcan wonder if they had quietly come to an arrangement already.

The mystery note reminded him that this time he was the one that was leaving “in just a few decades.” He was the one wondering how Thorne Scratch felt. He was the one that desperately wanted to ask the measure of her feelings. And it was probably going to be the same messy end.

He crumpled up the note and shoved it into his pocket to burn later.

Blue Sky and Baby Duck came charging down the stairs, Repeat the elfhound puppy half tumbling on their heels. “Out of popcorn!” Blue yelled as they ran past. “And Rustle lost his belt buckle!”

Oilcan sighed. “How?”

“I don’t know!” Blue shouted back as all three vanished into the dining room.

Oilcan shook his head. Rustle was a black hole for personal items. He had lost everything from the irreplaceable iPod to three left shoes. Oilcan added “Rustle: belt buckle” to his to-do list and continued up the stairs.

He had used up the last of his money to buy tile for the bathing room. Wollerton’s didn’t have enough of the gorgeous blue glass tile to cover the entire room. He had to buy other tiles to have enough square footage. Before he could start laying the tile, he needed to decide on a design. The project should relax him, as art was always soothing. It let him take a big hunk of chaos and reduce it down to something neat and orderly.

It was a brainless choice for the swimming pool-like tub. The elves liked to add salt and minerals to the heated water. Since the cloudy water would obscure most of the inner walls, the tub itself could be of plain white tiles.

He switched to his datapad to do calculations on how much square footage the glass tile would cover. He sang to himself as he sketched out a 3-D model of the room and overlaid a grid to show coverage. Once he got the room tiled, the acoustics were going to be amazing.

His brain went back to Rustle. The musician’s arm was still not healing readily. True, Tinker’s arm wasn’t as badly broken, but she had regained limited use of hers in two days of the same aggressive healing spells. Nor was Rustle sleeping as much as Tinker did while healing. Maybe he should take Rustle back to the hospice. Perhaps something about the kids’ weird genetic makeup meant that the healing spells didn’t work the same on them. What Pandora’s box did Tinker open when she picked the chest’s lock?

“Knock, knock, pick the lock,” he sang. “Open the box, take the spell from uncle’s room, run away, save the day. .”

Oilcan trailed off as he realized the song wasn’t some innocent children’s song, but a literal history of his family.

Strong arms caught hold of him, and he was jerked off the ground.

“So he did leave a record, after all,” Iron Mace growled into Oilcan’s ear. “I was afraid he would. It was obvious he must have, the way all his children turned against their clan. No, no, no.” Mace pressed something soft against Oilcan’s face to muffle his shouts. “We don’t want to get the doubles involved in this. Too many innocents have suffered already.”

Oilcan stopped shouting as he realized only the kids were on the third floor. Mace’s Hand was down on the first floor, and Forge was across the street. Even Thorne was out — carefully sent away. He focused on trying to get free, but Mace had him tight.

“Just relax, let the saijin do its work.” Mace carried him toward the bank of windows standing open to let out the construction dust.

Oilcan buckled in Mace’s hold even as the edges of his vision went shimmering white with the drug.

“Go to sleep,” Iron Mace growled. “That way you won’t feel anything.”

Oilcan struggled to keep his eyes open. He couldn’t move. He felt like he was sinking into warm, bright quicksand. Even Oilcan’s fear was slow, seeping through him. Was this how Amaranth really died? Drugged to helplessness and then murdered in a way to look like she had killed herself? Had Mace dropped her from a window, too?

Forge’s voice came thundering from a great distance. “What are you doing? Put him down! Get away from him!”

The world was washed in brightness as Mace laid him on the floor, the flower kissing his face. Oilcan struggled to roll his head, but Mace was holding him still. Mace hovered above, a darkness in the shimmering light. “You didn’t do anything to save my sister. I told you that she was driving herself insane with all that digging through the moors for his body. I told you that you had to take her away from that place, take her somewhere not haunted by his ghost. You didn’t listen. You did nothing, and she slipped through your fingers.”

Forge’s voice lost its thunder. “I didn’t think she would — I didn’t think—”

Oilcan tried to shout his fear, and it came out a moan. No, no, don’t listen to him!

“If you do nothing, we’re going to lose all we have left of her!” Iron Mace raged, sounding like a grief-stricken older brother — but then, he’d had centuries to perfect the act. “The Wind Clan already took one of our little ones. She’s gone to us. Are you going to let him slip through your fingers, too?”

“I’ve done what I can.” Forge finally eclipsed Oilcan’s view of the ceiling. He gazed down at Oilcan with eyes dark and luminous with tears. “You can’t—”

“Save him!” Mace shouted. “Or are you going to let him die, too?”

“You can’t just drug him and change him.” Forge reached for the flower.

Iron Mace caught Forge’s hand. “He’s twenty-two years old, Forge. Twenty-two! What does he know about life and death? He’s still a baby. The law says a parent can act for the good of their child.”

Oilcan’s eyes closed against his will, and he sank down into the light.

“He — he’s not a baby.” Forge’s voice was full of despair. “He’s good and kind and patient. . ”

The light was dimming, fading to black. Tooloo had warned Oilcan to be careful, that the Stone Clan would twist him around and then murder him in his sleep.

“And he’ll be gone soon if we don’t save him,” Mace thundered in the darkness. “Don’t fail him like you failed Amaranth.”

The last thing Oilcan heard was Forge groan and whisper softly, “Oh, child, forgive me, but he’s right.”

And then Oilcan was lost in the darkness.