Elfhome

40: CHILDHOOD’S END

The Rim had grown up and over Neville Island. The ironwood saplings of her childhood were now tall enough to choke out the Earth brush trees. Esfatiki, touch-me-nots, skunkweed, and jagger bushes had replaced the lawn down to the riverbank. There was no sign of the groundhogs that had plagued her grandfather’s attempts at a garden; Elfhome’s flora and fauna had done what her grandfather couldn’t. All the nearby houses — abandoned since the first Startup — had collapsed under the weight of thick wild grape vines.

It’d been three years since Tinker last visited the hotel where she grew up. She expected after the sprawling luxury of Poppymeadow’s that it would seem smaller and seedier, but it seemed just as large and imposing and rundown as ever. She had heard through Team Tinker that paparazzi had pried the plywood off the first-floor doors and windows to photograph the princess’ birthplace. Judging by the footprints in the dust, though, Esme was the only person who’d recently visited the grand old hotel.

Just to be sure, she let the small army she’d brought with her sweep into the building. There was no telling if she’d managed to jump ahead of her shadow or not with this move.

A loud splash made her jerk around and count heads. One, two, three, four. . and Blue Sky pulling Baby Duck away from the river’s edge.

“Stay away from the banks!” Tinker called. This was why she really shouldn’t be in charge of the kids — she sucked at taking care of helpless things. She didn’t have much choice in the matter. “The jump fish are really bad in this area.”

“Your grandfather raised two children here?” Thorne Scratch sounded like all the people who didn’t know her grandfather well. He had an unfounded reputation for being insane. There was method to his madness: they’d been far from any prying eyes on Neville Island.

“The jump-fish population was a lot lower when we were little. Every Shutdown thinned them down until Earth constructed a fish dam to keep them in Pittsburgh waters.” Since Thorne was looking unconvinced, Tinker added, “He’d throw out sticks of dynamite once a week, just to be sure.”

Maybe part of her problem with being a parent was she’d had such bad examples as role models. The dead father. The mother trapped in time. The mad-scientist grandfather.

She was halfway through the lobby when she realized she’d lost her Shields. She glanced back to the wide front doors. Stormsong and Pony were still outside, standing under the portico, gazing raptly at the lintel.

“What is it?” She called back.

“Hay Bell Ringing in Wind?” Pony read the glyphs printed there.

“My grandfather went by the name of Timothy Bell. Timothy is a type of grass commonly used for hay.”

“He claimed to be Wind Clan?” Stormsong asked.

“Oh, no, I did that, not him.” Tinker went back to the faded blue door to gaze up at the Elvish painted above it. She’d done a good job for only being six and balanced on a ladder. “He was angry with me for doing it and was going to paint it out until I told him it was because our family was too small. It was just before Oilcan came to live with us. We’d gotten the news that his mother had been killed. I started to have nightmares about something happening to my grandfather and being left alone. I wanted to be part of something bigger.”

Pony hugged her as Stormsong kissed her temple. “You are now.”

What was scary was that some little part of her always suspected she would retreat to the island for some desperate battle. She had left so much behind; telling everyone and herself that the grief was too fresh. On the third floor, behind a spell-locked door disguised as a bookcase, was her old server room. Oilcan had carefully mothballed it for her. Everything hummed to life as she flicked on her various computers and coaxed them to once again to talk to one another.

Her poor abandoned AI, Pixel, greeted her once she typed in all her passwords. “Hi, Tinker Bell.”

Was there a time she actually thought that was cute? “Do a systems check on all perimeter monitors.”

“Okay, Tinker Bell.”

She rooted through a box of headsets until she found one that she’d insulated for magic-work. It took her a while longer to get it to ride comfortably on her elf-pointed ears. She settled the headset in place just as Pixel reported back on various motion detectors and cameras she had scattered across the island. Despite years of neglect, over half were working. Since she had gone nuts on monitors, the overlap was enough to cover the island.

“Show me all moving objects.”

Pixel displayed the sekasha, the laedin, the children, a feral cat, and the ragged remains of a checkered flag waving in the wind.

“Mark all current moving objects as nonthreatening and ignore.”

“Okay, Tinker Bell.”

She sighed out. She didn’t want to spend time changing her user name.

“Go to code red.”

“Code Red initiated, Tinker Bell. No unidentified targets found.”

Good. That meant Neville Island was as deserted as she’d hoped. If she blew the island off the face of the planet, only the guilty would get caught in the crossfire.

Tinker took it as a good sign that Stormsong had to ask, “What exactly are we doing?”

Tinker finished pouring the treacle into the 55-gallon plastic barrel filled with ammonium nitrate. She waited until Stormsong duct-taped the lid shut before asking, “Can’t you tell?”

“No,” Stormsong growled. “That’s why I asked.”

“Good.” Tinker adhered a spell printed out onto circuit paper onto the top of the sealed barrel. She was working with one broken arm, her clueless Hand, and a small army of laedin-caste warriors who were mostly technologically inept. Even with Blue Sky helping (and warned not to explain anything), things were going hellishly slow. She had no idea how much time she had. A few minutes or forever? It depended on if her plan worked or not. So far: maybe.

Her only barometer was annoyed but mystified. “So, what are we doing?” Stormsong asked again.

“I’ll explain later.”

Tinker worked at ignoring the guilt at keeping her Hand clueless. Red Knife had told her that she was well armed and to apply the rules. Well, she was, perhaps more than he’d intended. If Prince True Flame said that she couldn’t track down the Stone Clan, then she would have to force them to come to her. Once she started to consider how to make them find her, she realized that was the answer to everything.

Providence had said she would have to fight her own shadow. The key, she hoped, was to keep her shadow in the dark.