Elfhome

2: ECHOING OF MERRIMENT

It was the elf’s tunic that caught his eye, a sun-ripe splash of yellow, like a daffodil in a raw spring morning. A female elf stood just outside the train station at the edge of Pittsburgh’s bleak Strip District. She was staring at a Coke machine as if it were the most amazing thing in the world. Her thick braid of walnut-brown hair swung back and forth as she swayed hip to hip, nearly dancing to music only she heard. She drummed her silent melody with a pair of olianuni mallets, complete with exuberant flourishes of victory.

Oilcan found himself slowing down as he drove past the station, watching her. There was something joyous about her that made him smile.

She was impossibly slender and surprisingly short. It made him think that she was an adolescent — she probably wasn’t over a hundred years old. A small mountain of brightly colored travel sacks and the distinctive bulk of an olianuni sat at her feet. As he rolled past her, she paused in her drumming to reach out cautiously and touch the selection buttons on the Coke machine — clearly mystified. The train aside, it could be the first machine that she’d ever seen.

He reached the light at the corner before he realized that it was odd that she was just standing there, alone. Usually one of the elves at the train station would be herding a newcomer to safety, especially a child. He sat through the red light, studying her in his rearview mirror. It took him a minute to realize why she was alone — there wasn’t a speck of Wind Clan blue on her. Her loose tunic shirt was yellow, and her leather pants and slouch boots were black. Even the ribbons and flowers threaded through her braid were yellow and black. She was Stone Clan.

The elf clans weren’t allowing a common enemy to deter them from feuding. Since the train station was Wind Clan territory, none of the elves there would help the female.

He sighed, put his pickup in reverse, and backed up to pull even with her.

“Hoi!” He called to her in Elvish. “Do you have someplace safe to go to? Is there someone who knows you’ve arrived here?”

She startled, looked behind her as if suspecting he was talking to someone else, and then came down to the curb to look in his pickup window. “Forgiveness, are you talking to me?”

“Yes. The streets aren’t safe after dark. The oni have been raiding at night. Do you have someplace safe to go to tonight?”

Her eyes went wide at the news. “I–I’m coming to my majority.” He was right; she wasn’t an adult. “I’ve heard so much about Pittsburgh. I’ve heard the music they play here — it’s so raw and wonderful — and — and with the war and everything, the Stone Clan is receiving remuneration. .”

Oilcan sighed as she trailed off. “Do you know anyone that lives in Pittsburgh?”

“I–I have a letter of recommendation to the domana Earth Son — is that bad?”

His dismay must have shown on his face. “Earth Son is dead.”

She gave a quiet “oh” of hurt as her plans unraveled. She frowned at the ground, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. “Majority” for an elf was a hundred, which made them physically equal to an eighteen-year-old human. Elves, though, sheltered their children so much that the extra years did little to prepare them for Pittsburgh.

“My name is Nahala kaesae-tiki waehae lou.” There was a reason most elves in Pittsburgh picked up short English nicknames. Literally her name was “echoing of merriment in stone” but truly meant “laughter echoing through a cave,” with the implication that it was the innocent laughter of children. The focus of sound in her name meant that her family were most likely musicians. If he had to pick an English name for her, he’d probably choose Merry.

Merry gave him a hopeful little smile.

“I’m Oilcan.”

“Oilcan.” She repeated the English word, clearly puzzled by it but undaunted. “There, we know each other now. I know someone that lives in Pittsburgh.” She paused, losing courage, but then rallied to finish with “Can — can I stay with you tonight?”

Why were the human runaways so much more streetwise than the elves who were nearly five times their age? She clearly had no idea what kind of danger she could be stumbling into.

Maybe it was the color of her hair, the hesitancy of her smile, or the open sweetness of her face, but she reminded him of his mother. Having recognized that, he couldn’t just drive away, but she was a minor female and he was an adult male, albeit still nearly eighty years her junior.

“I’m not sure I can just take you home with me,” Oilcan said.

Merry nodded as if she expected the answer. “Your household wouldn’t allow you—”

“No, no, I don’t have a household. I live alone.”

“That’s horrible. What happened to your household? Oh! Did the oni kill them?”

Oilcan laughed, shaking his head. “It’s something humans do when they reach majority. They live alone until they find someone to love.”

Clearly the idea was so completely foreign to her that she couldn’t quite grasp it. “But — isn’t that lonely?”

Months ago he would have said no. He had a comfortable rhythm to his life. He shared his work day with his cousin Tinker and split the weekends between hovercycle racing and the local rock scene. He actually had to work hard to create his time alone. But then the oni invaded and everything changed. “Sometimes it is lonely.”

“Let us be lovers,” Merry suddenly said in English, stunning him. “We’ll marry our fortunes together.”

He laughed after a moment, recognizing the lyrics, keenly aware that they were across the street from the old Greyhound bus station in Pittsburgh. He sang the next line of lyrics back to her. “I’ve got some real estate here in my bag.”

Her smile was radiant with delight. “You know the song!” she cried in Elvish and dived into one of her travel sacks to pull out a hand-bound journal. “An olianuni apprentice that I know let me copy his songbook.” She flipped through pages of carefully hand-drawn musical scores to find the Simon and Garfunkel song. Below the English lyrics were Elvish translations. His eyes caught on the line: “I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.”

Yes, that’s the way I’ve been feeling.

The first line had been horribly mangled in translation. “Lovers” had been mistranslated to an Elvish word that meant members of the same household and “marry our fortunes” to “face a common enemy.”

Oilcan laughed, shaking his head at the discrepancy between the two. “Get in.” He’d take her out to the enclaves and make sure the Stone Clan wouldn’t try to kill him for taking her home. “We’ll see what we can work out.”

The closest thing that the Stone Clan had to an embassy was Ginger Wine’s enclave out at the Rim. While the gates to the enclaves on either side stood open, the heavy doors to Ginger Wine’s were shut and barred. He rapped on the door, and the spyhole opened to reveal a pair of Wind Clan blue eyes.

“Forgiveness,” said a male voice that went with the blue eyes. “We are not able to take customers.”

“May I speak with someone from the Stone Clan?”

A slight shake of the head indicated that he couldn’t. “The Stone Clan domana are not here. They are out with Wolf Who Rules Wind ze domou ani.”

The door guard was one of Ginger Wine’s staff, since the title he used for Windwolf was the ultraformal “our lord.”

“Anyone would do,” Oilcan assured him. “Someone from their household? I merely have a question on propriety.”

“Earth Son’s sekasha are here,” the door guard said hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure he should be telling Oilcan the information. “They — they would be well-versed on propriety.”

“May I speak with one of them?”

“Nagarou!” The male gasped. He obviously knew who Oilcan was. For some reason, the Wind Clan elves had adopted his relationship to Tinker as his nickname. He was never sure if he should be flattered or offended. Did they call him that because they couldn’t remember his name, or because they’d adopted their domi’s cousin as their own? “They are sekasha! And they are Stone Clan.” The male glanced at Merry behind Oilcan and then whispered in English, “The Stone Clan are arrogant and conceited, and they eat and eat and eat as if they’re hollow. Everyone is frightened. We’re tripping over each other in our fear. It might be too dangerous for you to speak with their sekasha.”

Recent history made clear how deadly the sekasha could be. “Do you really think they would hurt me?”

The door guard obviously wanted to say “Yes,” but elves have a thing about telling the truth. Finally he admitted, “I do not know, but if they wanted to, they could. It is their right.”

As holy warriors, sekasha had the divine right to do whatever they wished to whomever they wanted. They were considered above the law. From what he understood, though, the very nature that made them above the law also meant that they didn’t run amuck, randomly killing people — only people that deserved it. For his own sanity’s sake, he had accepted their role as judge and executor.

“It will be all right,” he said. “I have a few simple questions and then I will go.”

The door guard considered him for a minute and then unbarred the door. “Please, nagarou, be careful.”

Merry refused to face the sekasha, even though the warrior was of her own clan. She cowered in the front garden, too afraid to go deeper into the enclave. Oilcan couldn’t understand why the lower-caste elves were so terrified by the higher caste they claimed to be perfection embodied. He knew from personal experience that anyone could become a killer. Wasn’t it better that the sekasha were so righteous that their violence was controlled and not random?

The door guard summoned Ginger Wine, the elegant, red-haired owner of the enclave. She also tried to convince Oilcan that talking with the Stone Clan sekasha would be unwise.

“Everyone is on edge here,” Ginger Wine murmured in English. None of the Stone Clan must be fluent in the human language. “It’s as if suddenly we all have two left feet.”

“I will be careful,” Oilcan promised.

The female elf sighed and nodded. “I’ll take you to Earth Son’s First.”

Ginger Wine led Oilcan through the sprawling public dining rooms of the front building to the inner courtyard. Apple trees heavy with ripening fruit filled the square acre protected on all four sides by the enclave’s other buildings. It was an area that normally no human would ever see.

From the kitchens to the right of them, there was a crash as if dozens of metal pots had been dropped, and High Elvish quickly devolved into shouted Low Elvish.

Ginger Wine sighed and bowed an apology. “Forgiveness, I must attend to that. Thorne Scratch on Stone is over there.”

Oilcan wandered through the acre of apple trees until he found the female sekasha.

Thorne Scratch was undeniably Stone Clan, with the brown hair and dusty skin that marked the clan. Her wyvern armor was iridescent black, shimmering like an oil slick in the dappled sun as she moved through her sword practice. Tattooed down her arms were the spells that triggered her protective shields, done in stone black.

“Forgiveness.” Oilcan bowed slightly.

Her eyes flicked to him, checking his position, and then her focus returned to her practice. “Well?” She had a smoky rasp to her voice like Janice Joplin. “What is it?”

“A young female of the Stone Clan arrived today by train. She came with letter of introduction for domana Earth Son, but he is dead.”

“I know,” she snapped. “I killed him.”

“Condolences on your loss.”

She whirled, and her sword’s point was suddenly at his throat, a strangely small prick of pain considering the danger it posed. “Do you mock me?”

“No.” And seeing the doubt in her eyes, he held out his own hard-won truth. “My father killed my mother in a drunken rage. Afterward, he was so grief-stricken by what he had done that he tried to kill himself. I imagine you must regret what happened — even if you thought it was necessary.”

Tears glittered in her eyes, and she turned away from him. “That is not the same,” she growled after a moment. “Your mother’s death is tragic. Earth Son’s death was inevitable.”

“It doesn’t lessen your pain.”

She glanced at him, and surprise flowed across her face. “You — you’re human?”

“Yes.”

She sheathed her sword. “I thought you were one of Jewel Tear’s household. You have the Stone Clan coloring. What are you doing here?”

“A young female of the Stone Clan arrived—”

“Yes, yes, you said that. Your point being?”

“The city is not safe for a child to be wandering around alone.”

“Child?”

“She is very young.”

“A double?”

Oilcan nodded. It meant that the elf only needed two numbers to represent their age, not three or four. It was the Elvish equivalent to “teenager.” Since majority came at a hundred, Merry was definitely a double.

“Gods save us from idiots,” Thorne Scratch growled in her raspy voice. He wondered what she’d sound like if she sang something slow and tragic. “What is a double doing traveling alone to this oni-infested hellhole?”

He could only spread his hands in ignorance. “I wish no harm to come to her, so I’ve taken her into my protection.”

“You?”

“Is there someone else that will? Would Jewel Tear take her?”

Thorne Scratch looked away, fighting to keep anger off her face. “Jewel Tear could not, even if she wanted to. She came here destitute. She has pushed herself to her limit, and perhaps beyond it, taking in Earth Son’s household. She is trusting beyond reason that the clan will compensate her for Earth Son’s failure. Jewel Tear cannot do anything for your double.”

“What of the other domana? Forest Moss?”

“Bite your tongue!” Thorne Scratch snapped. “Do not even suggest such a thing. He is mad. I would not give monkeys to him, let alone a child. And do not breathe a word to her of the possibility that he would happily take her, because she cannot imagine the pain he would put her through. Doubles think of now and tomorrow and maybe the day after that — they do not think in hundreds of years.”

Oilcan nodded. “Is it acceptable then that I continue to take care of her?”

She studied him a moment before asking, “Why are you doing this?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do. There are the oni and wild animals and — I’m ashamed to say — some humans—”

She cut off his honesty with a huff of impatience. “And there are some elves that would see a child of another clan as prey. We are kin at even our baser nature.”

He’d suspected as much.

“What is your name, human?”

“I’m Oilcan.” He held out his hand without thinking. Normally elves didn’t shake hands, so he was surprised when she took hold of his hand with both of hers. Her fingers were strong as steel and rough with calluses. They were a good match to his own rough hands. “I’m nagarou to the Wind Clan domi, Beloved Tinker of Wind.”

“I see.” Thorne Scratch scanned the courtyard. “And where is this double?”

“She’s waiting in the front garden.”

Thorne released his hand and sent off with a long, purposeful stride.

Oilcan hurried after her. “Go soft with her. She’s in the front garden because she is afraid—”

“Yes, yes, they always are.”

Merry squeaked when she saw the sekasha bearing down on her. As Thorne silently studied her, Merry edged slowly sideways until she was tucked up against Oilcan, looking very much like she wanted to hide behind him.

“Where are you from?” Thorne Scratch broke her silence to ask quietly.

“Summer Court.” The city was named for the fact that the queen held court in the city during the summer. It was located in Elfhome’s version of England, approximately where London stood on Earth. Merry had come across half the world by herself. “The Stone quarter by the ninth bridge. My household is small, beholden to Crystal Vein of Stone, who is beholden to the clan head, Diamond. I studied under Bright Melody of Fire.”

Thorne nodded. “Did you sever ties?”

Merry’s lip trembled and she whispered, “I severed ties.”

“Why?” Thorne snapped.

“I had to.” Merry flinched in the face of the sekasha’s anger. “It was the only way they’d let me go.” Merry caught hold of Oilcan’s shirt and twisted the fabric around with her fingers. It was as if she soaked up courage through the touch. She raised her chin to meet Thorne Scratch’s eyes. “If I’d stayed, I’d have had to play everything the way it’s always been played, because only the ‘gifted,’ the ones that play like gods walking the earth, can change anything. You have no idea what it’s like to see your whole future laid out for you, and it’s nothing but fitting into a neat little box they’ve designed for you. And all of a sudden, there’s this place across the ocean where you won’t be locked in because you’re — you’re just acceptable.”

Thorne shook her head and looked away. “I’d tell you at length what an idiot you’re being for coming here — but I was just as stupid at your age, so I have no right to criticize. What is done is done. Try to be a little more wise. You are in a city full of enemies. And terrifying as I might be, I am the only one that you can trust fully. Anytime you think you’re in danger, day or night, come to me, and I will keep you safe.”

Merry gave a tiny, wide-eyed nod.

Thorne turned to glare at Oilcan. “I am trusting you. Betray me, and I’ll have your head.”

Merry squeaked again in alarm.

“I won’t betray you.” Oilcan bowed to the sekasha.

Then Merry all but dragged him from the enclave by the tail of his shirt.

There — permission granted. Oilcan melted on the hot leather of the pickup’s seat in the late August heat. He still wasn’t sure how he was going to work Merry into his life, but at least he knew that he wouldn’t have holy warriors chopping off his head for shacking up with an underage female.

Snow Patrol had come up on the random play of his ancient iPod, and Merry had her eyes closed, air-drumming in accompaniment. She seemed sublimely happy.

“. . there’s this place just across the ocean where you won’t be locked in a box just because you’re — you’re acceptable.”

Windchime used to wave away praise, embarrassed, saying that his amazing skills were just passable. Oilcan always thought modesty was part of the elf psyche; every elf artist he’d ever met, from glassblower to weaver, would denounce their skill. It never occurred to him that the elves were comparing themselves to masters still alive in Easternlands. It would be as if Mozart and Beethoven and Elvis had never died and you were constantly being compared to them.

Hell, even Elvis wouldn’t have been “acceptable” for a world still locked on to Mozart’s standard. Elvis in a powdered wig trying out for the role of Figaro? Oilcan shuddered for the poor elf soulmates to the rock-and-roll king.

Oilcan wrote songs for local bands, but they were a hybrid blend of rock and roll and traditional elf music. No one compared his music to past masters, because there weren’t any. Not many people understood both cultures well enough to create a fusion of the two. A few years ago, before the first generation of humans grew up on Elfhome, there wasn’t even an audience to appreciate it. His art was embraced and celebrated because it was new.

The artistic freedom of Pittsburgh would explain why most of the elves that came to the city were artists. Weavers. Potters. Painters. Musicians. They settled close to the enclaves and sold their wares to humans. They were all young, and they all had been Wind Clan. But that was most likely about to change. Merry was probably just the first of the Stone Clan artists to arrive.

The next Snow Patrol song cued up on the iPod.

“Oh, I don’t know this one!” Merry waved her mallets in agitation. “He didn’t have this song.”

“He?”

“Chiming of Metal in Wind.” Merry gave Windchime’s proper name in Elvish.

The songbook with the mangled Simon and Garfunkel lyrics clicked into place. Windchime had been called back to Easternlands last spring by his family. He had left with a solar-battery recharger, two MP3 players, and promises to return within a decade or two. His leaving had seriously crippled the band he played with, since all their sets were built around his olianuni.

“If you know Windchime, you could have gone to Moser.”

Merry made a raspberry. “I asked for a reference letter, but Chiming of Metal said I was too young to travel alone. He wasn’t sure if Briar Rose on Wind would let Rustle of Leaves above Stone stay. He was sure, though, that she would refuse someone else from the Stone Clan, since they only needed one olianuni player.”

Yeah, that sounded like Briar. Carl Moser technically owned the artist commune, but his elfin lover had ultimate veto power. Oilcan hadn’t heard anything about a new olianuni player in town, but then again, elves operated on a different time sense than humans.

“When was Rustle of Leaves coming to Pittsburgh?”

“He left ahead of me.”

Pittsburgh and its outlying suburbs had been home to two million humans before the first Startup. Only sixty thousand remained. It meant whole sections of the city were nearly abandoned. Finding housing was easy — making it safe and livable was the trick.

Carl Moser was leading vocalist and bass guitar for his band Naekanain, Elvish for “I don’t understand,” which was usually the first thing humans learned to say. Moser had laid claim to an entire block of porch-front row houses on the edge of the Strip District. He was in a constant state of renovation as he merged the individual houses into a commune for artists. The place confused most humans since it presented twelve front doors to visitors. Since only the middle seven of the twelve houses had so far been merged into “main house,” it was sort of an intelligence test. The “front” door was the one painted Wind Clan blue with Moser’s name written out phonetically in Elvish on the lintel.

Moser threw open the door a few minutes after Oilcan rang the bell a third time. “Freaking hell, I’m going to take this damn thing off its hinges if no one else answers the frigging door.”

“Naeso sae kailani,” Briar barked somewhere in the back of the rambling house. The High Elvish was an extremely polite way to say “No way in hell.”

“Then answer the damn door!” Moser shouted back in English.

“It’s not my job,” Briar called back.

“Not my job, not my job,” Moser muttered in falsetto and then shouted, “Then freaking tell someone else to answer the door!”

“Floss Flower!” Briar shouted in Elvish.

“Shya.” The reply from the newest resident, a weaver, came from somewhere far to the right.

“You’re door guard from now on!” Briar shouted.

There was a pause in the clacking of a loom and then a slightly defeated “Shya.”

“Elves,” Moser growled quietly in English. “Always ‘who answers to whom.’ Who freaking cares as long as it gets done?”

“Anarchist,” Oilcan said.

Moser pumped his hand over his head. “Freedom!”

“You’ve gotta give for what you take.” Oilcan sang the George Michaels tune.

Moser launched into song. “Freedom! Freedom!” He jerked his head to indicate that Oilcan was to come in as he continued to sing, his fingers picking out chords on an air guitar. “You’ve gotta give for what you take!”

Merry eyed the Frankenstein monster of a room beyond the front door. Originally it was the living room with a large archway to the dining room and a staircase to the second floor. The stairs were completely walled off with plywood, and a steel garage door had been installed in the archway so the foyer could act as a barbican. All the enclaves out on the rim had similar fortified entrances, but usually more elegantly decorated. Oilcan tugged Merry gently inside and made sure the door was locked behind her.

The two houses to the right and four to the left of the building they entered had been merged into the great “main” residence. The load-bearing walls between the houses had been carefully breached so the dining rooms merged into one long room. Moser had paid someone that could cut ironwood to make him a twenty-foot-long table with nearly two dozen mismatched chairs around it. Platters of food were laid out for dinner.

“We’ve got meat!” Moser cried as Oilcan guided Merry into the dining room. Moser hit the automatic door opener on the wall, and the steel garage door rattled down into place. “You’re staying for dinner.”

“We won’t have meat if you invite all of Pittsburgh.” Briar came out of the nearest kitchen carrying another platter. She was wearing daisy-duke cutoff shorts and a halter top. She gave Oilcan a slight smile that vanished instantly as she glanced past him at Merry. “We’re not feeding her.”

“What?” Moser said.

“She’s Stone Clan.” Briar folded her arms. “We’re not wasting food on her.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Moser said. “I caught the damn river shark. I bought the damn groceries. We’re feeding who I say we feed. Someone has to witness that I’m a mighty provider.”

“I’m not feeding a filthy Stone Clan bitch,” Briar snarled.

Oilcan was glad that the conversation was in English. By the way Merry was ducking behind him, she could still understand the tone of Briar’s voice.

“She’s Oilcan’s friend,” Moser said.

“I don’t care. .,” Briar started to protest.

Moser played his trump card. “Nagarou’s guest.”

Briar went still except for a muscle in her jaw that jerked with her irritation. “Fine,” she finally snapped. “But he’s not leaving her afterward.”

“No, she’s staying with me,” Oilcan said.

Briar stormed into the kitchen to crash pots and pans together.

Moser leaned close to whisper, “She’s so proud of Tinker saving us from a Stone Clan domi, you’d think Briar had given birth to her.”

Oilcan winced and whispered, “Please, never repeat that to Tinker. She’d freak.”

“I am not a stupid man,” Moser whispered.

“Yes, you are,” Briar grumbled as she came back out of the kitchen with two bowls of salad. “Sit. Eat.” She thumped the two bowls down and shouted “Food!” to gather the troops.

Moser had added to his “family” since Oilcan had eaten here last. The count was now fourteen adults, equally divided between human and elf. As always, the conversation slipped and slided in and out of English and Low Elvish, often changing from one to the other in mid-sentence. The food was mostly produce out of the commune’s walled-in garden, cooked into elfin dishes. The star of the meal was fillet of river shark grilled to flakey perfection.

“It was just little baby river shark.” Moser stretched out his hands as wide as they would go. “Boy, it put up a fight.”

“You’re lucky it didn’t pull you in and eat you,” Briar growled.

“Or the jump fish didn’t nail you,” Oilcan said.

“I told you I’m not a stupid man.” Moser served Oilcan another fillet. “I was fishing from the Sixteenth Street Bridge. It’s too high up for jump fish.” Because Moser loved to entertain, he grinned at Merry, trying to make her more comfortable. “Do you like it?”

“Yes, it’s very good.” Merry’s smile was incandescent. “I like Wind Clan cooking. So many flavors in every bite. There’s a lot of human food I want to try. Chiming of Metal said I have to have peanut butter.”

There was laughter from the humans and a chorus of “Peanut butter is wonderful!” from the elves.

“Wait, you know Windchime?” Moser asked.

“We studied together under Bright Melody of Fire.”

“You play an olianuni?” Moser shouted and slipped into English in his excitement. “You’re fucking shitting me!”

“No!” Briar snapped.

“We need an olianuni,” Moser said to Briar.

“Never!” Briar stood up.

Moser stood up, too. “We need an olianuni!”

“No, no, no!” Briar thumped on the table, making all the dishes around her jump and rattle.

“This is Pittsburgh.” Moser put his hands on the table and leaned toward Briar. “We are Pittsburgh. We don’t let the chains of tradition bind us.”

“I will not work with a lying Stone Clan bitch!” Briar cried and stormed from the room.

Moser sighed and sat down.

“Shouldn’t you go after her?” Oilcan asked.

Moser shook his head and picked up his fork. “Nah, she’ll just throw things at me and be ashamed about it later. I’ll give her time to cool down. Since the war broke out, the elves are the only ones with money to burn, and elves want the fucking works — the drums and guitars and the olianuni. The other bands are booking gigs, but not us. We have too many mouths to feed not to work.”

“So, you haven’t heard from another olianuni player? A male called Rustle of Leaves?” Oilcan shifted the conversation back to Elvish for Merry’s sake.

Moser shook his head. “Never heard of him. Why?”

“Windchime gave him a letter of recommendation,” Oilcan said. “Merry says he should have arrived already.”

Merry nodded. “At Aum Renau, they said he took the train to Pittsburgh almost a month ago.”

“A month ago?” Moser’s voice echoed the dismay Oilcan felt. “If there was a new player in town, we should have heard about it. You know how people talk.”

Merry’s hand stole into Oilcan’s. “Do you — do you think something bad happened to Rustle of Leaves?”

Oilcan thought of Merry standing alone on the street, where any stranger could have picked her up. She would have gone with anyone. “Rustle of Leaves? Is he a double, too?”

Merry nodded. “Windchime said it would be safer for him to make the trip, since he was male and older than me. He said that Moser was a good person and would keep him safe.”

“Ah, shit,” Moser swore. “We’ve got to find this kid, Oilcan.”

The NSA agent, Corg Durrack, answered his phone with “Well, if it’s not the other Bobbsey Twin.”

“I need some help,” Oilcan said.

“What? Is it Find Novel Ways to Kill Durrack and Briggs Day? Fucking hell!” Gunshots rang loud over the phone.

“What the hell was that?” Then Oilcan realized what Durrack meant by Bobbsey Twin. “Is Tinker with you? Is she okay?”

“Oh, the fairy princess went home hours ago! God forbid she gets hurt! Let the NSA deal with fucking spiders from hell!” Another gunshot. “I’ve seen dogs smaller than these things!”

“Stop whining, Durrack,” his partner, Hannah Briggs, growled. “And ask the kid the best way to deal with spiders.”

Judging by the sound, they’d found a nest of steel spinners. “Flamethrower is the only way to clean out a nest safely.”

“Ha! Told you! Flamethrower!” Durrack said.

“Fine, let’s get out of here and find some flamethrowers.” There was another gunshot.

“Hold on.” There was noise of the two NSA agents running with occasional gunshots and a good deal of cursing on Durrack’s part. Finally he put the phone back to his ear. “Okay, so how do you want to kill us?”

“I need help finding a kid.” Oilcan explained how Rustle of Leaves had left the train station on the east coast but hadn’t arrived at Moser’s.

“Wait, the kid you’re looking for is an elf?”

The NSA agents had just arrived in Pittsburgh in June. While they obviously learned fast, there was much they didn’t know about elves. “An elf child. He’s like sixteen or seventeen.”

“Like?” Durrack laughed. “But really sixty years older than me?”

“Elves are still basically eight years old when they’re your age. Rustle of Leaves might be ninety, but he’ll look and act like a seventeen-year-old human — only he’s going to be a hell of lot more naïve. Elves are extremely sheltered while they’re growing up. He would have walked off with anyone that offered him a ride to Moser’s without realizing the danger he was getting into.”

“If Pittsburgh supported video on their cell-phone network, you could see me playing the world’s smallest violin.”

“He’s just a child,” Oilcan said.

“He’s an elf. Let them look for him.”

“I can call Tinker, and she’ll call Maynard, and Maynard will call you and tell you to do it. Or I can owe you a favor.”

Durrack was silent for a minute and then breathed out a sigh. “Oh fucking hell, I hate this planet. Fine. I’ll help you find this kid.”