Tinker

8: Redefining Self

Oilcan called out, "Tinker? Are you here?" as he came through the door and then checked at the sight of angry Stormhorse, flustered Nathan, and Tinker in a towel.

The sight of Oilcan destroyed all control Tinker had, and she went to him, suddenly crying. Her cousin held her without asking questions, and the males regarded each other in tense silence.

"I think it's time for you to go," Oilcan said quietly, and Nathan left without another word.

Stormhorse's hand rode his hilt, and he eyed Oilcan with open suspicion.

"Nagarou." Oilcan identified himself as a sister's son of Tinker's father. His Elvish had always been better than hers. He and Stormhorse launched into a High Elvish discussion, faster than she could follow, which ended with Stormhorse bowing and letting himself out of the loft. And then Oilcan held her until she wept herself out. Then, in fits and starts, mostly from editing out what she didn't want him to know, she told him about Windwolf and Nathan.

"Look at me; I'm shaking so bad."

"If you haven't eaten anything for three days, then you're probably weaker than you think. Stormhorse went to get you something to eat."

"He did?" She got up. "Where would he get anything this time of night?"

"I don't know. Why don't you get dressed before he comes back?"

So she went back to her bedroom to dress. She found herself pawing through her underwear drawer, looking for the plainest pair of panties she owned. She stopped herself, picked a pair randomly off the top, and pulled them on. Clean jeans, a T-shirt, socks, and then her boots. She stomped around, feeling more like herself.

Oilcan had cleared her kitchen table, wiped it clean, and was washing her few pots and dishes. She got a clean towel and started to dry.

"How long do you think it will take him to get back?"

The sweep of headlights through her loft announced Pony's return.

"Not long," Oilcan said dryly.

She smacked him with the towel and went to open the door.

Pony came in carrying stacked wicker baskets, wreathed in the perfume of heavenly smelling food. Setting the baskets lightly on her table, he undid the lid and lifted it off to reveal noodle soup in the hand-painted bowl of an enclave restaurant.

"I didn't think enclaves did takeout." Tinker sat down on the footstool, leaving her two battered and mismatched chairs for the males.

"I persuaded them to do so this one time." Pony sat the noodle soup in front of her. "It would be best if you eat this first."

"Why this?" The noodles were long as spaghetti but nearly as thick as her pinkie and had a slightly waxy appearance. After her experience with the beer, she eyed the soup with suspicion.

"Rich foods on an empty system might upset your stomach, and you need to eat as much as possible. This has very little fat."

Oilcan found her a spoon, and she tried the stock. It was keva bean paste mixed with hot water, simple but delicious. She had to fight to get the noodles into her mouth. Despite their looks, they were mild but good.

"I told them of your nagarou, and they sent enough to share." Pony unlocked the top basket and lifted it off, exposing the next level of food: steamed meat dumplings.

"Mauzouan! You can count me in." Oilcan fetched plates and silverware, got himself a beer from the refrigerator, and settled at one of the chairs. Pony unloaded the rest of the baskets, but remained standing.

"Why don't you sit?" Oilcan paused in sharing out the mauzouan to three plates.

"I am Tinker domi's guard. I should stand."

"Sit," Tinker snapped.

Pony wavered a moment, then pulled out a chair and sat unhappily. "This isn't proper."

"Currently I'm too peeved to care," Tinker snapped.

Wise man that he was, Oilcan set a dish of mauzouan in front of Pony without comment.

With Pony on the other side of the table, and food in her hands, Tinker could study him now at leisure. While pretty as all elves tended to be, he was by far the most solid of elves she'd ever seen. He wore wyvern armor, harvested from a beast that ran to the dark blues, with an underlining of black leather to keep the sharp edges of the overlapping scales from cutting him since they themselves couldn't be dulled. The armor left his arms bare from the shoulders. Permanent protection spells were tattooed down his arms like Celtic knots. For reasons she thought were no more than artistic, the spells were done in graded shades of cobalt; they shifted with the play of his muscles. Unlike most elves she knew, who wore dazzling jewelry, from complex dangling earrings to rings, Pony's only decoration was dark blue beads woven into his black hair.

While previously it had seemed to Tinker impossible to judge an elf's age, Pony struck her as young, but she couldn't tell if that was from some hint in his face or just his manner. He fairly bristled with weapons: a long sword strapped to his back, a pistol riding his hip, and knife hilts peeking out of various locations. Still, he met her gaze with a look that shifted from open honesty, to slight embarrassment, to bewildered confusion, and back around again.

"Where is Windwolf?" Oilcan asked as Tinker ate her soup and studied Pony.

"A message came from Aum Renau." Pony glanced at them to see if they understood. Aum Renau was the name of the palace on Elfhome in roughly the same place as the Palisades were on Earth—overlooking the Hudson River, near New York City. "His presence was requested by Queen Soulful Ember. He couldn't refuse the summons. He had to go. He wished to leave Sparrow to care for you. She's quite fluent in Tanianante" — the Elvish for "those many human languages" — "and Pitsupavute. The queen, however, requested her appearance specifically along with Windwolf's."

"The queen is in the Westernlands?" Oilcan asked.

"It is very unexpected. She has not been here since the treaty signing," Pony said. "He wished to bring Tinker domi with him, but he didn't want to take her so far away without consulting her first."

That would have pissed her off proper, but at least it would have saved her from Nathan being a jerk.

"How did Windwolf change me?"

"I–I do not really know, honestly." Pony screwed up his face, and Tinker suddenly liked the sturdy dark elf. "I am only of the sekasha caste, and still considered young. The domana understand the great transformation spells. Windwolf took blood samples while you slept; by the old reckoning, you're genetically domana caste now."

She shivered. "What do you mean 'by the old reckoning'?"

"There was a time when clan leaders often transformed their most trusted followers to domana caste. They were then considered full equals by the rest of the caste."

"And now?"

Pony touched his own forehead where Tinker bore Windwolf's mark. "There is the dau."

Which Maynard said elevated her to Windwolf's caste.

"When is Windwolf coming back?" Oilcan asked.

"He couldn't say," Pony said. "But if he can't return soon, he might choose to send for Tinker domi." Seeing the look on her face, Pony added, "If she wishes to join him."

Unfortunately, all the wonderful food meant lots of delicate dishes to be cleaned. Still, with all three of them washing and drying, the work went quickly. Pony, however, made no sign of leaving.

"Shouldn't you go back to the lodge?"

"Windwolf told me to guard over you. I can't do that at the lodge."

"So, you plan to stay with me until Windwolf comes back to say otherwise?"

"Yes."

Oh, great.

Tinker saw the look on Oilcan's face. "What?"

"You're sleeping at my place tonight," Oilcan said in English. "I wasn't crazy about you being alone, but him here too—I'd feel better being close."

"Then stay the night."

"You only have your bed and the couch."

"Oh, yes. Okay." She sighed and yawned. "Your place."

Oilcan had lucked into a place on Mount Washington, a sprawling three-bedroom condo in a high-rise apartment building, on the sole condition that he keep the elevator, air-conditioning, and heat working. His balcony looked out over downtown Pittsburgh and the endless canopy of elfin forest.

Pony worked to make himself invisible to them, keeping still and quiet. As Oilcan went to check on his rarely used guest beds, Tinker strolled out onto the balcony and looked down at the city.

Why had Windwolf changed her? Was it a gift for saving his life—a life for a life? Or was it more, as the sex implied? Did he love her? And what exactly did she feel about his gift? It was too frighteningly huge to handle. She was an elf.

"You okay?" Oilcan padded out onto the balcony with her.

"I'm fine—just a little rattled. What about you?"

"You mean, how am I with this?" Oilcan flicked his hand up and down to indicate her new body. "I'm cool. So you've got dorky ears." He leaned out and fingered one tip, and it felt embarrassingly good.

"Hey, don't mess with the ears."

Oilcan jerked his hand back and looked hurt. "Sorry."

"It's just—they're erogenous zones."

"Oh. Oh!"

"Exactly."

"Are we still cousins? At least in the genetic sense?"

"Would it matter if I'm not?"

"No, but it would be comforting if you were." Oilcan took her hand. "After my mother died, Grandpa said something to me. He said that as long as I and my children after me lived, my mother would be alive, living on through her bloodline. It's how humans reach immortality. It's why he made sure you were born, even after your father had died so long ago."

They lapsed into silence.

"Lain could check and see," Tinker whispered. "We could go see her tomorrow."

"But what if she says we're not?" She wondered how much it meant to him. If it meant a lot, she wouldn't give up Oilcan for Windwolf; she'd find some way of getting back to her real self.

"Whatever Lain finds, you'll always be my best friend and little sister."

"Little sister?"

"Based on love, not blood," Oilcan said. "Nobody can touch that if we don't let them."

She hugged him hard and wondered if he wasn't the smarter of the two of them.

They made an odd threesome on Lain's porch. Oilcan with his blatant humanity, Pony unmistakably elfin, and Tinker caught somewhere between the two. Lain answered the door, went pale at the sight of Tinker, and murmured, "Oh dear. Oh dear."

"It's really not that bad." Tinker tried for a brave front, and then failed. "Is it?"

Lain gazed at her for another minute before saying, "No, love, no. It's fine. Come in. I'd ask what in the world happened, but it's obvious that Windwolf happened."

"Pony, this is Lain." Tinker introduced the warrior. "Lain, this is Galloping Storm Horse On Wind, but he goes by Pony. He's one of Windwolf's bodyguards, but he's been told to guard over me. He doesn't speak English."

The two bowed to each other.

Lain led the trio back to her sprawling kitchen. Pony ranged through it and the connecting rooms, looking for danger.

"Where's his master?" Lain asked quietly in English, avoiding Windwolf's name.

Tinker followed suit as she explained about the queen's summons as Lain put the teakettle on. "Oilcan and I want you to test us to see how much he changed me—are we still cousins?"

"Of course you are!" Lain cried, then saw the looks on their faces. "There's a good chance you'll only be disappointed. He's obviously done something quite radical."

"But I'm still me. I feel the same. I think the same way. I have all my memories." Tinker had woken in a blind panic the night before, searched through old memories, factored out several large numbers, and considered a fix to one of her newer inventions before satisfying herself at that level. "The only thing different seems to be my sense of taste. Beer tastes awful, and I couldn't stand the instant hot chocolate this morning. Pony wouldn't drink it either."

"Well, beer is bitter because of the hops." Lain shooed Pony out of her path to the fridge with her crutch. "Elves seem to have evolved an intolerance to alkaloids. That's why they avoid coffee, tea, and nicotine in addition to the many toxic alkaloid-containing plants we stay away from as well."

"Well, that kills most of my favorite drinks," Tinker said.

"I have some herbal tea you can drink, but I think you'll have to be careful. A strong allergic reaction can be quite deadly." Lain took out a bowl of strawberries. "I've also found that elves are sensitive to certain types of fats we put in commercial food products. They love natural peanut butter, but the brands with trans-fat cause them trouble."

Tinker named her favorite brand of peanut butter.

"Sorry, love." Lain sat the strawberries in front of Tinker. "Luckily I make my own whipped cream, or that would be out too. Depending on the brand of instant you're using, it might be why you couldn't stand the hot chocolate."

Tinker considered her well-stocked kitchen at her loft. "I don't have any food I can eat, then."

"You'll have to rely on Tooloo more for fresh foods, then." Lain fetched the whipped cream. "Vegetables, meat, eggs, butter, and even the bread she bakes is most likely safer. Can I get you anything, Oilcan? Coffee? Tea?"

"I'll take coffee." Oilcan settled near to Tinker, fidgeting. "How long will the tests take?"

Lain shot a glance toward Pony standing guard by the door. "It's against the treaty to do gene scans of elves."

"I'm not an elf," Tinker growled, and dunked one of the strawberries.

"I know," Lain murmured. "But we can't let your guard know what we're doing."

Tinker controlled the urge to glance toward Pony. "Ah. Yes." She nibbled at the strawberry, considering. "Well, he seems to do what I tell him to do."

Oilcan also studiously avoided looking at Pony. "If we station him at the front door, then we can be in the lab unwatched."

So Tinker finished her strawberries, moved Pony to the foyer, and went back to the lab to have her blood drawn.

"When we're done, I'm going to destroy the samples and the results." Lain tied a tourniquet around Tinker's arm and swabbed down a patch of skin inside her elbow with alcohol. "It's a whole little Pandora's box we're peeking into. You will not tell anyone—not humans or elves—about this."

"We won't," Tinker promised.

Oilcan echoed it, and then added, "It's just for us to know."

Lain not only took a blood sample from Tinker, but also swabbed the inside of Tinker's mouth, plunked out a hair, and then asked for a stool sample.

"What?" Tinker cried. "Why?"

"Please, Tinker, don't be squeamish." Lain motioned Oilcan to sit in the chair Tinker just vacated. "The cells of the intestinal lining are excreted with the stool and are a source of DNA. I want to see how invasive this change is."

Lain was just untying the tourniquet on Oilcan's arm when the doorbell rang.

"Oh, who can that be?" Lain grumbled. She put the vials containing the blood out of sight, and stuck a bandage on Oilcan's arm. "Pull your sleeve down, Tink."

The woman on the front porch looked familiar. She brightened at the sight of Tinker and said to Oilcan, "Oh, wow, you found your cousin!"

"Yeah." Oilcan actually looked sheepish under Tinker's puzzled stare. "You remember Ryan. She's one of the astronomers?"

Oh yes, the one she'd tried to warn off the night of the cookout.

"I came over to see if there was any news." Ryan waved toward the Observatory. "I'm just getting done for the night, and I thought I'd check in before hitting…" She stopped and cocked her head. "You weren't always an elf, were you?"

"I've got work to do," Lain announced into the sudden silence.

"No, no! She—she—" Oilcan looked to Tinker for help.

"Don't look at me," Tinker snapped, then picked up on Lain's cue. "I want to go to Tooloo's to stock up on some food I can actually eat. Do you want anything, Lain?"

"Actually, yes. See what she has in the way of fish. A dozen eggs." Lain listed her needs as she crutched to the kitchen and returned with her shopping basket and a glass milk bottle that she held out to Tinker. "A pint of whipping cream. And some fresh bread would be nice."

Tinker took the empty return and wicker basket. "I'll be back in… two hours?"

Lain nodded. "That would be good."

That left Ryan to be kept out from under Lain's feet. Oilcan blushed slightly at his assignment, but indicated the dorms with a jerk of his head. "Let me walk you back to the dorms, Ryan, and I'll explain."

So they split up, each to their own task.

Pony insisted that Tinker sit in the back of the Rolls, so she hung over the front seat to give him directions to Tooloo's store. She noticed that he handled the car smoothly as he took it down the sharply curving hill of the Observatory.

"How long have you been driving?" Driving was an English word, since the nearest Elvish words implied horses and reins.

"Nae hae." No years. The full saying was Kaetat nae hae, literally "Count no years" but actually meant "too many years to count" — a common expression among elves; it could mean as few as ten years or as many as a thousand. After a thousand, it changed to Nae hou, or roughly, "too many millennia to count." In this case, however, Nae hae had to be less than twenty years, since that was when the elves were introduced to modern technology with Pittsburgh's arrival.

"The Rolls were part of the treaty," Pony explained. "It required that the EIA provide quality cars for ze domou ani's use. All of his guard learned, as did husepavua and ze domou ani, though not all enjoy doing it."

"Do you?"

"Very much. Domou lets me race, although husepavua says it is reckless."

She directed him onto the McKees Rocks Bridge. The morning sun was dazzling on the river below. "Who is husepavua?"

"Lifted Sparrow By Wind."

The name sounded familiar, but it took her a moment to place it; Sparrow had been the stunningly beautiful high-caste elf at the hospice. Pony had mentioned her once or twice the night before, calling her just Sparrow.

"Is Sparrow… Windwolf's wife?"

He looked at her with utter surprise on his face, reinforcing her impression that he was fairly young. "No, domi! They are not even lovers."

Oh, good. Pony was giving her amazingly direct answers, something she hadn't thought possible for elves. Perhaps it had to do with his willingness to obey her—had Windwolf told him to do so? Or was it an offshoot of being young? "How old are you, Pony?"

"I turned a hundred this year."

While that seemed really old to her, she knew that elves didn't start into puberty until their late twenties and weren't considered adults until their hundredth birthday. In a weird, twisted way, she and Pony were age-equals, although she suspected that he was much more experienced than she could hope to be.

"Is this the place?" Pony asked, pulling to a stop beside Tooloo's seedy storefront. To conserve heat in the winter, the old half-elf had replaced the plate glass with salvaged glass blocks. Somehow, though, she'd tinted the blocks, so the wall of glass became a stained-glass mosaic on a six-inch-square scale. Typical of elfin artwork, the picture was too large for a human to easily grasp. If one stood in the kitchenette and looked through the entire length of the shop, one could see that the squares formed a tree branch, sun shafting through the leaves, with the swell of a ripe apple dangling underneath. From the outside, though, one only saw the salvaged block and the muted colors in a seemingly random pattern—keeping the store's secrets just as the storekeeper kept hers.

The only nod toward advertising the store's function was painted under the length of the windows: Bread, Butter, Eggs, Fish, Fowl, Honey, Pittsburgh Internet Access, Milk, Spellcasting, Telephone, Translations, Video Rentals. Of the words that could be translated into Elvish, the rune followed the English word. It mattered much to Tinker that she could remember standing in hot summer sun as the cicadas droned loudly, carefully painting in the English traced onto the wall by Tooloo's graceful hand.

"Yes, this is it." Tinker slid out.

She hadn't considered Tooloo's reaction to her transformation. When the old half-elf saw her, Tooloo let out a banshee cry and caught Tinker by both ears. "Look at what that monster did to my dear little wee one! He's killed you."

"Ow! Ow! Stop that!" Tinker smacked Tooloo's hands away. "That hurt! And I'm not dead."

"My wee one was human, growing up in a flash of quicksilver. Dirty Skin Clan scum." Tooloo spat.

"Windwolf is Wind Clan." Tinker rubbed the soreness from her ears.

"All domana are Skin Clan bastards," Tooloo snapped.

Tinker winced and glanced to Pony. Thankfully, the exchange had been in English, but Pony obviously had picked up Windwolf's name and was listening intently. "Don't insult him, Tooloo. Besides, if you'd just warned me, I might have been able to avoid this."

"I told you the fire was hot! I told you that it burns! I told you to be careful. So don't cry that I never told you it could burn down the house. I warned you that Windwolf would be the end of you, and see, I told you and there it is."

"You have told me nothing." She went and got a basket, angry now but determined to keep her calm. "Knowledge is not cryptic warnings, indistinguishable from utter nonsense. 'All domana are Skin Clan bastards. What the hell does that mean? I've never heard of the Skin Clan."

"There wasn't a need for you to know if you'd just stayed away from Windwolf. I know humans; if it's ancient history, it doesn't pertain, so I would have been wasting breath to explain a war that happened before the fall of Babylon."

Tinker picked up a crock of honey, intending to put it into her basket. "Well, tell me now."

"Too late now." Tooloo stalked away, flapping her hands over her head as if to swat away questions. "Done is done!"

Tinker barely refrained from flinging the crock at Tooloo's retreating backside. "Tooloo, for once just tell me, damn it! Who knows what mess I might get into because you've kept me ignorant?"

Tooloo scowled at her. "I have things to do. Cows to milk. Chickens to feed. Eggs to gather."

"Well, you don't feed chickens with your mouth. I'll help you, and you can tell me what I need to know." Besides, Tinker had to keep Pony out from under Lain's feet for a full two hours.

Tooloo sulked but went to the store's front door, flipped the «Open» sign to «Closed» and threw the dead bolt, muttering all the while.

Tooloo lived in the one big back room of the store, a house done at miniature scale with changes in the flooring to indicate where walls should be. Mosaic tile delineated the kitchenette. The two wing chairs of the living room sat on gleaming cherry-wood planks. The floor around Tooloo's fantastically odd bed was strewn with warg skins. Tinker had spent countless hours on the floor, from studying the dragon shown coiled on the kitchenette's tile to building forts under the bed. She thought she knew it well.

Entering the room, Tinker discovered she didn't know it completely.

It felt like stepping into a pool of invisible warmth. No. There was movement, a slow current to it, heading east to west. She stopped, surprised, looking down at the wood. It did more than gleam. It shimmered as if heat roiled the air between her toes and her eyes. As she studied the floor, an odd, pleasant sensation crept up her legs until her whole body felt strangely light.

Even odder was the change in Tooloo's bed. The pale yellow wood seemed at once sharper and brighter, almost surreal, like someone had overlain computer graphics onto reality.

Pony followed Tinker's gaze, and grunted in surprise. "Dragon bones."

"Yes, dragon bones," Tooloo snapped, wrapping her braid loosely around her neck like a scarf of thick, silver cording. "That's how I survived on Earth all these centuries. Silly beast died without the magic, but its very bones stored massive amounts that slowly leaked off. Every night I slept in that bed, nae hou, aging only when I strayed away from it. I was tempted to burn it after the Pathway reopened, but waste not, want not, as the humans say. There were times I grew so depressed that I wouldn't stir out of it for months on end."

"Why is the floor so weird?" Tinker asked Tooloo, but the half-elf had stepped out the back, so she turned instead to Pony. "Can you feel that?"

"It must be a ley line."

"I can see it—I think."

"Yes, you should be able to." But he explained no further.

Deciding to focus on one mystery at a time, Tinker went out into the backyard after Tooloo. What used to be a small public park lay behind the store, but Tooloo had claimed every patch of green in the area plus several nearby buildings to use as barns, regardless of what their previous functions might have been. Fenced and warded, her small yard gave way to a sprawling barnyard.

Tooloo had already filled a pan with cracked corn from the feed room and now stood throwing out handfuls, calling, "Chick, chick, chick." All the barnyard fowl ran toward the falling kernels. She kept a mix of Rhode Island Reds (which were good egg layers), little bantams (which fared better on the edge of Elfhome's wilderness), and a mated pair of gray geese called Yin and Yang (that acted more like watchdogs than birds).

"Tell me about the Skin Clan." Tinker picked her way through the pecking and scratching birds. Pony hung back, staring in fascination at the chickens. She wondered if elves had chickens, or if they were one of the species that hadn't developed on Elfhome.

"Tens of thousands of years ago, in a time past reckoning, the first of our race discovered magic." Tooloo tossed out handfuls of corn. "It is said that we were tribes then, nomadic hunters. Our myths and legends claim that the gods gave magic first to the tribe that became the Fire Clan, and perhaps that is true. It is fairly simple to twist magic into flame.

"But one tribe rose up and enslaved all the rest—they were the ones who practiced skin magic. They learned how to use magic to warp flesh, and to remake creatures stronger and faster. They were the ones who discovered immortality, and they used the beginning of their long lives to make themselves godlike in beauty, grace, and form."

Tinker scooped out handfuls of corn and flung it at the chickens to speed up the feeding process. "I don't understand how they enslaved the others; surely not because they were pretty."

"Can you imagine the advances that your famous thinkers might have made if they had lived a thousand years? What would Einstein be creating if he were still alive today? Or what Aristotle, da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, and Hawking could create if they all worked together."

"Wow."

"As a race, we went from being bands of nomadic hunters to an empire with cities in a fraction of the time it took humans. As their realm expanded, the Skin Clan crafted fierce beasts to wage war and enforce their laws: the dragons, the wyverns, the wargs, and many other monstrous creatures. In time, they spanned the known world, which was roughly Europe, Asia, and Africa on Earth.

"All of this happened before humans dreamed of building their first mud hut." Tooloo dumped the last of the corn, tapping the fine dust and small bits of broken kernels out to be fought over by the chickens. "See, old news."

Exchanging the feed pail for wicker baskets, Tooloo headed for the one-car garage converted into a chicken coop. Long used to helping Tooloo with chores, Tinker took one of the baskets and worked the east wall of cubbyholes, lifting the day's eggs out of the still-warm nests. It was easy to tell which nest belonged to the bantams, as the eggs were much smaller. Pony stepped cautiously into the coop, peered into one of the cubbyholes near the door, and lifted out an egg, which he examined closely.

"Okay." Tinker carefully deposited her discoveries into her basket. "But there's some reason you're telling me about the Skin Clan."

"They are the seed of everything elfin." Tooloo systematically worked through the western cubbyholes. "Human are like snowflakes; nothing about humans is the same. They've chopped their planet up into thousands of governments, cultures, traditions, religions, so forth and so on. At their dawn, though, the elves were all gathered together and forced into the same mold and then made immortal. As we were when the humans started to build the pyramids, we are still."

Windwolf had talked about the stagnation of his race, but Tinker hadn't realized that it was so profound.

"Why haven't I heard of the Skin Clan before?"

"Because they're all dead, except for their bastard children, the domana."

"What happened? How did they die?"

"They didn't die, silly thing; they were killed. Hunted down. Killed to the last one—in theory."

With that Tooloo ducked out of the coop and swung around to her back door to set her basket in the store before heading for the small milk barn.

"Wait!" Tinker snatched up the last of the eggs, including the one Pony still held, and scurried after Tooloo. She caught up to her at the pasture where Tooloo's four milk cows waited to be let out. "Tooloo!"

"What?" Tooloo opened the pasture gate and the cows ambled to their stalls without guidance. "I'm trying to compress twenty thousand years of history into a teaspoon, and you complain? History isn't easy stuff. It's a tangled web full of lies and deceit. There's no easy way of pouring it out."

"Okay, fine, the domana are the Skin Clan's children?"

Tooloo scoffed loudly as she poured grain out to the cows. "The Skin Clan was the first of the castes, for they raised themselves up to perfection. Then they created the other castes. The filintau born for a clean breeding stock. The sekasha." Tooloo thumped Pony in the chest. "Sound and strong, able to withstand massive damage, but not necessarily smart. It's the same that humans did with dogs, chickens, and cows." She gave one of the cows a similar pat. "Breed a bloodline for certain properties until they're nearly a different species—and when they no longer suit, let them die off. When I lived in Ireland, I had this lovely herd of small, hardy Kerry cows that nearly went the way of the quagga."

"The what?"

"It was like a zebra. It went extinct in the days of Queen Victoria. Ah, there was a woman!"

"So, the Skin Clan set up the castes and fathered the domana?" Tinker tried to steer the conversation back to elfin history.

"As you will no doubt learn, you don't wake up and fully realize you're immortal. It takes a few hundred years." Tooloo washed her hands, took down a clean milk bucket, and moved the milk stool beside the first cow. "Once the genetic tinkering started, the Skin Clan grew increasingly infertile, so they originally accepted all their offspring into the caste. About a thousand years into their immortality, they realized that they were diluting their power by sharing it with their 'half-breed' children, so they ruled that only those born to a Skin Clan female could be accepted into the caste. It did not keep the males, however, from fathering children among the lower castes, and that's where the domana came from."

Tinker leaned against the stall side, watching Tooloo wipe the udder clean and position the milk bucket. Tinker drew a line at milking the cows, as she'd been swatted in the face with a tail once too often. Pony watched in complete mystification. Head tucked against the cow's flank, Tooloo settled into a fast milking rhythm, shooting alternating streams of milk into the bucket. "This happened a long time ago; Windwolf wasn't even born. And even if his father is a Skin Clan bastard, so what? Oilcan's father killed his mother, and that doesn't make Oilcan a bad person."

"Nah, nah, Longwind—Windwolf's father—is just a young buck too. Politics does what time can't; Windwolf's grandfather, Howling, was murdered and Longwind took his place as clan head. Howling, though, he was ten thousand years old when the blade found him, and he had been part of the Skin Clan downfall. But to be precise, he wasn't the bastard—it was his father, Quick Blade, before him, who was the bastard, but Quick Blade died in battle during the war."

"How do you know all this?"

"How do you know about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? These were the 'heroes' of the war and the leaders of our people afterward." Tooloo said it with such bitterness that both Tinker and the cow flinched. "It was, though, a simple trading of masters. Perhaps more benign than the Skin Clan, but iron-fisted all the same."

That Windwolf was one of «them» made Tinker uncomfortable with the conversation. Tooloo said whatever suited her with little regard to truth, and she hated the concept of being poisoned against Windwolf with lies. Still, it was fairly obvious from the caste system that the domana ruled and the others served.

"I don't understand," Tinker said. "If Quick Blade was Skin Clan, how did Howling get to be Wind clan?"

Tooloo sighed into the cow's flank. "The Skin Clan tried to wipe out the use of other magic, but they only drove it underground. And exactly what they were afraid of happened—the seeds of power became great trees. The ignorant but physically strong—like your strapping young sekasha there—pledged their services to those with arcane knowledge. Over time the castes linked together into the current clans, but they were slowly losing during the Years of Resistance."

"Until the domana joined the clans against their fathers."

"There's still hope for you, my bright wee one. Yes. The Skin Clan had added the ability to wield magic to their blood, and then fathered bastards among their rebel slaves." Tooloo stilled for a moment, considering the past. "There is, I suppose, an inevitability to it all."

Tooloo finished with the first cow and carried the milk to the scales to be weighed. "Thirty pounds. Nothing to piffle at, though Holsteins have been bred to output twice that amount. Here, take this back to the cooler."

Tinker reached for the bucket, but Pony stepped forward and took it.

"What are you doing?"

"It will be heavy for you, but nothing for me to carry."

Tinker snorted but let it go because, unfortunately, he was right. She found it disgusting that, while Oilcan wasn't much taller or more muscled, he was proportionally stronger than she was.

Pony eyed the bucket of milk as they walked to Tooloo's large walk-in cooler. "Ah, they are cows."

Tinker considered that the elves had a word for cows and chickens. "Yes. You seem… surprised."

"They don't look like our cows," he said. "And I have never seen any of ours milked before. Kuetaun caste handles livestock, not sekasha."

"Oh, I see." That would explain his reactions to the chickens too. "Not in a hundred years?"

"I devoted a great amount of time to training. Only the best are chosen to be bodyguards, and that is what I wanted."

"Why?"

"It is what I'm good at. I enjoy it."

"But, doesn't it mean you're setting yourself up as a sacrifice to someone else's life?"

"If I do my job right, no. But if I must, yes."

"I don't understand how you can make yourself anyone's disposable servant."

"I choose who I guard, that is the only way it can be. Windwolf values my life as much as I value his; he protects me as I protect him."

They had stopped in front of Tooloo's ten-foot-square walk-in cooler. Tinker unlatched the heavy door, frowning at what Pony had said; it seemed to defeat the whole concept of bodyguard.

"Windwolf protects you?"

Pony cocked his head. "Why do you find that so hard to believe? You put yourself between me and harm, do you think that Windwolf would do anything less than that?"

She what? When did she protect Pony? Oh, when Nathan was being a butthead. "That was nothing."

She yanked open the door and cool moist air misted out into the sunshine.

"You put yourself in harm's way to save Windwolf." Pony let her take back the bucket and watched with interest as she poured the warm milk into wide-mouth crocks. "Not only against the EIA imposters at the Rim, but against the wargs at the salvage yard."

"I don't plan to make a living out of it." From another crock that had already separated, she skimmed off the cream with a clean ladle, filling a pint bottle for Lain. "Grab me one of those quart jars."

"In all things, there must be those who are willing to guard and protect." Pony picked up the bottle of milk. "It is the way of nature. You humans have police and firefighters and EIA. It is not that I do not value my life, but if I risk it, it is for a worthy cause."

Tinker supposed that Pony's job was not much different from Nathan's. Stepping back out of the cooler, she latched the door and headed back into the store. Drat Tooloo, the half-elf had her seeing everything in a bad light already. And the comparison to Nathan dragged that whole mess up. Damn him, why had Nathan betrayed her that way? Beyond Lain and Oilcan, there wasn't another person in the city she would have opened the door for dressed only in a towel. The more she thought on it, the more she realized how much she misjudged Nathan. She had been looking at the cop, not the man. She expected him to stay the nice big brother type, only with kissing thrown in. In one giant step, they'd moved into new roles, and Nathan, the boyfriend, was a different person. That Nathan was possessive and overpowering. Perhaps her instinct to flee him at the Faire was for the best; perhaps no matter when or how they'd ended up on her couch, it would have led to Nathan trying to force her into something she didn't want.

And if that was the case, what did she do now? She'd opened the door and let the warg in; how did she get it back out?

Tinker tried, but she couldn't stretch the shopping out to the full two hours without alerting Tooloo or Pony that she was stalling. She and Pony returned to Observatory Hill a full forty minutes early, but Lain had already finished up and sat in the kitchen with a cup of tea and a stunned look on her face. The expression set off alarms in Tinker. She quickly stashed away the perishables from Tooloo's store and banished Pony to the foyer so she could safely discuss the results of the DNA tests with Lain.

"It's bad, isn't it?"

Lain raised an eyebrow. "What? Oh, no, I'm still stunned at the amount of change Windwolf accomplished in an adult seemingly without fear that it would kill you. You look so much like yourself that it didn't really click until I started working with your DNA. I–I-I'm in awe."

"Lain, please, you're freaking me out."

"You have no idea of the enormity of this. It changes everything we know about the elves' ability. We've considered the concept of elves being able to turn people into frogs with magic just folklore and urban legend."

"So you're saying I'm lucky not to be a frog?"

The stunned look vanished before annoyance. "Oh, Tinker!"

"Where did scientists think the gossamers and wyverns came from?"

"Humans have made amazing changes in animals over thousands of years of breeding. One only has to look at the extreme phenotypic variation of the canine genotype."

"What?"

"Dogs. From Chihuahuas to Irish Wolfhounds, they're thought to be all descendants from a species of small Northern European wolf."

"Lain, can we focus on me. What did you find out?"

"Don't you want to wait for Oilcan?"

"No. I think—if it's bad—he'll take it a lot worse than me. I want to deal with it so I can be strong for him."

"I wish I had thought to analyze your original DNA." Lain limped to her lab with Tinker following her. "This was a stunning chance to learn so much about the difference between our two races."

"Lain!"

"I'm sorry, but it's like watching someone destroy the Rosetta stone."

"The what?"

Lain sighed, picking up a thermometer. "You need a more rounded education."

"I am not in a mood to have my inadequacies discussed."

"Fine." Lain poked the thermometer into Tinker's ear, made it beep, and then took it out to look at the readout. "Ah, that's what I was afraid of." Lain limped to her medicine drawer and picked out several bottles. "Here, I want you to take these."

"Why?"

"Your white blood cell count is extremely high. Elves seem more resistant to disease, which suggests an aggressive immune system, so it's possible that an elevated count is normal. But you're running a low-grade fever, which isn't surprising considering all the cells of your body have been radically altered."

"They have?"

"All four of your samples were identical, which indicates the change was global."

"Oh. What are these?" Tinker eyed the pills that Lain shook out into her hand from several different bottles.

"Tylenol to control the fever." Lain recapped the bottles. "Calcium, folic acid, iron, zinc, and a multivitamin. I have no idea what Windwolf has done to you, but it might be viral in nature, so trying to stop the process might be disastrous. Those will help keep you strong through this; you probably should take a nap after this afternoon. Pushing yourself now could be very bad."

"So, all of my DNA samples were the same. What about mine compared to Oilcan's?"

"I separated the DNA out of all the samples, and used a restriction enzyme to cut the DNA into a defined set of fragments." Lain opened up a window on her workstation. "Those I stained with a fluorescent dye and passed it through the flow cytometer. As the laser strikes the fluorescent dye molecules that are bound to the DNA fragment, a photon 'burst' occurs. Because the number of photons in each burst is directly proportional to the fragment's size, the cytometer counts the photons in a burst to obtain an accurate fragment-size measurement."

Lain clicked open an image file showing a line of smudgy dots in a vertical row. "The resulting distribution of fragment sizes in the sample shows the raw DNA fingerprints. It's rough, but it's enough for our purposes. Basically, the more closely related two people are, the more gene sequences they will share."

"The smudgy dots?"

"Yes, those are gene sequences. This is the fingerprint of your blood."

"Okay." Tinker braced herself. "And Oilcan's?"

Lain reduced Tinker's sample and clicked open a second scan. "This is his."

At first glance, they didn't match. As Lain made them the same size, and placed them side-by-side, the differences only seemed greater.

"Oh." Tinker sat down, amazed at how much it hurt. She didn't think it would matter so much to her.

"It isn't as bad as it looks." Lain pointed to a cluster of dots in the center of Tinker's fingerprint. "These spots are from DNA on the telomere."

"The what?"

"Telomeres are segments of DNA at the ends of chromosomes. Each time a cell divides to make a copy of itself, the telomere gets shorter. Once it gets too short, the cell can't copy itself and dies. That's how we age. We've theorized that the elves would have longer telomeres than humans and thus age much slower; this is evidence that we're right."

"And the extra DNA is muddying the fingerprint, so to speak."

"Yes." Lain pointed to a second cluster. "This is from telomeres, and here too." Lain tapped a third section. "If you try to ignore these three regions, you'll see that the rest of the fingerprint is very similar."

Tinker squinted, trying to see «around» the smudges, wanting desperately to see the similarities. "I don't see it."

"Here." Lain opened up a third image. "This is my DNA."

"This is supposed to help?"

"Wait. I'm now isolating telomere DNA on your sample."

Red shot through Tinker's sample as the sections that Lain had pointed out as telomeres shifted color.

"Okay, let's find matching probe locus points in lane one and two." Lain flicked through another menu. Green flooded through Tinker and Oilcan's samples as ranks of black smudges turned to jade.

"That's what we share?"

"Yes." Lain pulled up a fresh copy of Tinker's DNA, isolated out the telomere, and placed it next to Lain's sample at the bottom of the screen. "As a control, let's compare your sample and mine."

Only a trace of green appeared.

Tinker looked back to the top of the screen, and all the lovely jade in the first two samples blurred slightly until she blinked away the tears. "So we're still cousins?"

"In my professional opinion, yes."

Tinker clapped, making the gods aware of her, and said, "Thank you."

"That settled, I have questions. How did Windwolf do this? Did he inject you with anything? Did he give you something to ingest?"

They spent the next ten minutes with Lain asking detailed questions and taking notes.

"You don't have to put down that we made love, do you?"

"Obviously it was vital to the spell. Sperm is made by nature to be a perfect carrier of DNA."

"Lain!"

"No one will know. This is just for me to know." Lain saved the notes, making them disappear into her computer system under heavy encryption. "So, Windwolf was the tengu of my dream after all."

Tinker paused, trying to remember exactly what Lain was talking about. "Oh, the raven elf."

Lain looked out her window at the garden Windwolf gifted on her. "You brought the tengu to me to bandage up. It turned you into a diamond and flew away with you in its beak."

"Lain, I'd rather not talk about prophetic nightmares and Chinese legends."

"Japanese," Lain corrected absently. "Just as the Europeans had brownies, and pixies, and elves, the Japanese have tengu, oni, and kitsune, and so forth."

"And Foo dogs."

"Well, the Foo dogs are Chinese, but they were imported along with Buddhism. The original religion of the Japanese is Shinto, a worship of nature spirits."

"If the tengu are the elves that can become crows, what are oni and kitsune?"

"Kitsune are the fox spirits. They usually appear to be beautiful women, but they really are just foxes that can throw illusions into their victim's mind."

Tinker made a face; silly nonsense was what she hated about fairy tales.

Lain tapped her on the head to stop Tinker from making faces. "Oni are fearsome ogres usually depicted as seven feet tall with red hair and horns. I've heard a theory that the oni are actually lost Vikings with horned helmets."

Now that sounded familiar. It all clicked together in her mind. "The three men who attacked us were very tall, with red hair. Windwolf called the pseudo-wargs Foo dogs. He also recognized your references to tengu. If we have legends of elves, and they are real, by simple logic then, the oni are real too."

Lain admitted Tinker's theory might be true with a thoughtful nod of her head, and then poked holes into it. "The world doesn't always follow simple logic. The cultures of the ancient worlds were highly contaminated by each other. The Chinese interacted with the Japanese, and then traded on the Silk Road to the Middle East, which spread into Europe. You can find the same children's story of Cinderella with the evil stepmother and the magical fairy godmother in almost every culture now. The oni could be just the Japanese version of our elves."

"But someone used Foo dogs and onilike people to try to kill Windwolf."

"There's so little we know about the elves, even after twenty years. For all we know, these attacks are part of political infighting."

Tinker considered it, and shook her head. "No. Tooloo just gave me a history lesson and—provided it's all true—the elves are quite homogeneous."

"Ah." Lain murmured and thought for several minutes. "Then maybe there's something about oni that the elves aren't telling us."

Tinker glanced toward the foyer where Pony stood guard. "Weren't telling us. Windwolf has changed the game by swapping one of the players to the other team."

"Well," Lain locked up her workstation. "You crack that nut, and I'll make lunch."

Tinker felt guilty when she walked into the foyer and realized that Pony had been standing there since they returned from Tooloo's. "Why don't you sit down?"

"It's not proper—"

"Oh, sit down!" She pointed at the chair beside the door.

Pony sat, unhappy but obedient.

Tinker settled on the fourth step of the staircase, which put her level with Pony. "What do you know about oni?"

"Oni?" Pony lifted his hands to his head and made his index fingers into horns.

"Yes, oni."

"They are cruel and ruthless people with no sense of honor. Their weapons are crude, for they are a younger race than either elves or humans, but they spawn like mice and would crush us with sheer numbers."

So much for oni being mythical. "They live on Elfhome?"

Pony looked puzzled at this. "No, then they would have been elves. They live on Onihida."

"So, where is Onihida?"

Pony screwed up his face in the way that Tinker recognized as him reaching the limit of his ability to explain something. Finally he held out his left hand, palm down. "Elfhome." He waved his right hand under it. "Earth." Then, holding his right hand still, he moved his left hand under his right and waved it. "Onihida."

She pointed at his left hand. "How did you get to Onihida? Or did the oni come to Elfhome?"

"We found them." Pony looked daunted. He sat silent for several minutes, thinking. "There were at one time certain caves and rock formations that formed Pathways to walk from one world to the next. They were perilous, for the movement of the Moon and the planets made them inconstant."

It confirmed her family legend of caves being gates. Tinker suspected that a mineral deposit running through quartz next to a strong ley line could mimic the hyperphase field of a man-made gate. Like the gate in space, the power needed to be supplied to only one side to create two-way travel. Based on what Windwolf told her about gravity affecting magic, then perhaps ley lines had «tides» which would cause the gates to occasionally fail.

Pony plunged on. "While we bent our minds to shaping magic, humans learned to forge bronze and then steel. For goods we could not make ourselves, we walked the Pathways to Earth. We kept close to the Pathways and traveled heavily cloaked and mostly at night, for without magic we lived a breath away from death. But the risks were always well rewarded with rich trade goods."

Obviously Pony was using the historic «we» since the Pathways had mysteriously failed prior to the 1700s, and he had just hit his majority.

"But some of these Pathways led to Onihida," Tinker guessed.

"In a manner, yes." Pony scratched at the back of his head, pondering how to—as Tooloo put it—compress history into a teaspoon. "Where a Pathway opened on Earth, magic would flow out. While humans would only find a Pathway through blind luck, a domana could sense it from a distance. Still maps were made to keep careful track of the Pathways. One day on Earth, a domana found a Pathway that was not on our maps. Nor, when the matching location was investigated on Elfhome, could it be found where it opened. A group adventurous in spirit decided to investigate where the Pathway led. Twenty journeyed out, only two returned."

"The oni killed them?"

Pony nodded. "At first, the explorers had thought they'd somehow traveled to Elfhome, for Onihida—unlike Earth—flows rich with magic. Then they realized that the plants and the animals were unknown to them, and showed signs of being spell-worked." The elfin way of saying the object had been bioengineered. "Whereas on Earth, they would have easily traveled undetected, wards revealed their presence, and they were surrounded before they could flee back to Earth. The oni lords 'invited' them to a nearby fortress. The explorers were treated well, served rich foods, and offered beautiful whores. The oni called them their brothers and tried to deceive them, but a dragon always shows his teeth when he smiles."

"The oni wanted to know where the gate to Earth was?"

"Natural gates apparently were usually quite small." Pony measured out four feet with his hand. "Many only wide enough to take a pack horse through, and sometimes much smaller." He reduced the width to only two feet. "They were within dark caves, and like the veil effect," he waved his hand about to take in the house around him, shoved from Earth into Elfhome, "invisible. Anyone without the ability to detect a ley line could search closely, even to the point of stepping in and out of worlds, and never find it. Like the elves prior to the birth of domana, no oni passing through a gate to Earth had ever returned."

So that the oni didn't realize a gate wasn't just a deathtrap to be avoided until the elves showed up. "Obviously the explorers didn't reveal its location."

"At first, they easily evaded the questions, for they did not know the oni language, and deliberately misunderstood their gestures and the demands for maps to be drawn. But they were forcibly detained, taught the tongue, and asked more directly. Then they were tortured, then healed, and tortured again until their minds broke."

"That's horrible!" Tinker shuddered. "But the gate only led to Earth. The elves could have given it up to the oni without risking Elfhome."

Pony stood to pace. "The oni had spell-worked their warriors to be far stronger than the average man. What's more, they had discovered the secrets of self-healing and immortality, yet continued to breed like mice. With their numbers and abilities, they would have flooded Earth unchecked."

"I'm surprised that the elves cared that much about Earth."

"The explorers had traveled Earth for centuries; some had taken human lovers and sired half-breed children." He leaned against the banister to give her a soulful look. She found herself suddenly aware of his eyes, dark and full of sincere concern. "We have always seen humans as our reflection, good and bad. Man was how gods made the elves before the Skin Clan remade them."

Pony spoke with the same bitterness as Tooloo used while explaining the origin of the domana as the ruling caste.

"If elves hate the Skin Clan so much, why hasn't spell-working been banned?"

"It was for a while. Blight struck our main grain crop, though, and a great famine followed, so one of our most holy ones, Tempered Steel, petitioned for reform. Evil lies in the heart of elves, not in magic."

This was one bit of elfin history she knew—learned from puppet shows during the Harvest Faire—only she had never understood the full context. Much was made that Tempered Steel was a sekasha monk, which made sense now, since a domana's motives for bringing back spell-working would have been questionable. The creation of keva beans was linked to Tempered Steel's reform, saving the elves from starvation.

"Two of the explorers survived?" She steered the conversation back to the oni.

"Two escaped, reached the gate and returned to Elfhome. Once their tale was told, sekasha were sent to destroy the gate from Onihida to Earth, and then systematically all gates from Earth to Elfhome were destroyed."

"That seems rather drastic."

Pony clicked his tongue. "They say an elfin carpenter is more thorough than a human one, for he has forever to hammer down nails."

"Did they warn travelers first?"

"We had no way of contacting all the far-flung traders."

Thus her elfin ancestor and Tooloo were trapped on Earth. While long lived, without a source of magic, even elves age and die.

Pony half-turned, head cocked. "Someone is coming."

There were footsteps on the porch, and the front door opened. Oilcan paused in the doorway, surprised to find Tinker and Pony in the foyer, focused on his arrival. He tried for nonchalant but Tinker could read the tension in him. "Hey."

"Hey." Tinker held out her hand to him. "I got back early too."

He lifted his arm to take her hand and allowed her to pull him warily into the room. "Is it good?"

He meant the news about the tests.

"It's good." Tinker gave his hand a squeeze before letting go. "Everything's cool."

The tension flooded out of him with a huge sigh, and he grinned hugely at her. "Ah, that's great."

"Lain's making lunch."

"And she's finished," Lain called from the kitchen. "Come eat while it's hot."

The EIA was located in the Pittsburgh Plate Glass corporate headquarters, the Rim having cut it off from all of PPG's factories and most of its customers. The building was a fairy castle done as a modern glass skyscraper. Pony parked the Rolls in the open courtyard, ignoring all the "No Parking" signs. Tinker wasn't sure if he couldn't read English, or if such things didn't apply to the viceroy's car.

There seemed to be some protocol to walking together. Outside she hadn't noticed it, but as she wandered about the crowded lobby, looking for an office directory and gathering odd looks, Pony tried matching her step in awkward starts and stops.

"Do you know where Maynard's office is?" she snapped finally.

"This way, ze domi." Pony led her to the elevators, where she gathered a few more double takes before the elevator's doors closed them off from curious stares.

What tipped people off that she was now an elf? Her ears weren't really visible, and certainly her hair was in the same «pure» hairstyle as always. It had to be the eyes—the shape and vivid color. She made a mental note to get a pair of sunglasses.

They hit the top floor, the doors opened and Pony pushed back an EIA employee by mere presence. It was still startling to see Pony go from invisible to in-your-face in a blink of an eye. After assuring himself that the floor was clear of menace, he allowed Tinker off.

On second thought, it probably wasn't anything about her tipping people off, it was the six-foot-something elfin guard.

The space beyond the elevator was small, elegant, and tastefully decorated to elfin sensibilities. The only furniture was two chairs for waiting visitors, and a receptionist desk staffed with a woman pretty enough to be mistaken for a high-caste elfin female.

"I'd like to see Director Maynard, if I can."

The woman was definitely staring at Pony as she asked, "And you are?"

Tinker gave the receptionist her name—making the woman's eyes go wide as if this were some startling news—and added, "Tell him it's very important that I see him."

Maynard came out of his office, saying, "Where have you been—" He took in first Pony's presence and then her new eyes. "Tinker?"

"Tinker ze domi," Pony corrected Maynard.

Maynard flashed a look back to Pony and then bowed to Tinker. "Tinker ze domi. It is good to see you're safe."

Oh, this couldn't be good if Maynard was doing it too.

A few moments later Tinker was in Maynard's office and, with careful maneuvering, Pony was not.

"I need language lessons," Tinker complained, ranging his office nervously. The reason for the tiny foyer was Maynard's office seemed to take up a large portion of the top floor. Must be a bitch to heat in the winter, although the AC seemed to work fine. The wall of windows looked out over the North Shore to the elfin forest beyond.

"I thought you spoke Elvish." Maynard anchored the conversation to his desk by sitting down behind it.

"Tooloo taught me like any elf would, cryptically. I would like a more direct routine, like a dictionary! I want to know for sure I understand what the hell is going on, instead of walking around thinking I know but probably getting it all wrong."

"Such as?"

"What the hell is this whole ze domi, ze domou, ze domou ani? I thought it was like Mr. and Ms., only politer. And what exactly does husepavua mean?"

"Husepavua literally means 'loaned voice'; figuratively it means an assistant. Lifted Sparrow By Wind is Windwolf's husepavua. Sedoma is the word for 'one who leads. Domou is 'lord. Domi is 'lady. Ze denotes a level of formality. Ani/Ana indicates the tie between the speaker and the noble. When it's Ana it means the speaker doesn't share a tie with that lord or lady. Ani means the speaker and the person he or she is addressing shares a tie with the noble. Basically 'my lord' or 'our lord. »

My Lady Tinker. That's what Pony had been calling her. And the elves at the enclave. All the little presents. She'd nearly forgotten that. May I wish you merry, my lady.

Her knees went, and luckily there was a chair close enough to collapse into. "Am I—am I—married to Windwolf?"

"It seems a very strong possibility." Maynard spoke with what seemed like exaggerated care. "What exactly has happened since you left the Faire with Windwolf?"

She was surprised for a moment that he knew her movements and then remembered that he was the head of the EIA. "We went north to his hunting lodge and… and" — she swept a hand down over herself to indicate the transformation—"he cast this spell on me and I woke up yesterday like this. Pony says that Windwolf was called back to Aum Renau, and that he ordered Pony to guard me, so Pony hasn't left my side since yesterday. He slept on the floor of my bedroom last night. I think he slept."

Maynard winced slightly. "Yes, a very strong possibility that you're married to Windwolf."

She sat there stunned for a few minutes. Maynard got up, opened a cabinet to expose a small bar, and poured out a drink for her. She eyed the clear liquid, dubious after the beer, but it was strong and sweet and burned its way down. After she drank it, she realized it was the same stuff that the elves at the enclaves had used to toast her during Nathan's date—only it tasted much better now. "What was that?"

"Ouzo. Anisette liqueur. The elves love it."

She groaned as she realized that the elves had toasted her marriage in front of Nathan. Oh, thank goodness he hadn't understood what was going on—a pity she hadn't known either. "I just want to know when I supposedly agreed to all this. I didn't ask him to do this." She meant making her an elf. "At least I don't think I did. And I know there wasn't any wedding."

"You probably accepted a gift from him?" Maynard made it a question, clueing her.

"Well, there was this weird brazier that he gave me. That's when he marked me."

Maynard pinched the bridge of his nose as if to ward off a headache. "I'm guessing that the brazier was a betrothal gift. Windwolf offered marriage—and everything it entails—and you accepted. When he put the dau mark on you, you were, in essence, married."

"You're kidding."

"In elfin culture, it is offering and acceptance that are important. Everything else, as we humans are wont to say, is icing on the cake."

"That's it? No priest? No church? No vows? No blood test?" Well, strike that. Pony had said that Windwolf gave her a blood test.

"That your word of honor is binding is the keystone of elfin society."

"I don't know if I want to be married to him! What if I want to get out of it? Do elves have divorce?"

"Frankly, I don't know." He sighed. "I'm sorry, but the last thing I want to do is to disturb the marital bliss of the viceroy. That would be bad for relations between the two races."

"Are you saying that you can't help me?"

"No." Then he clarified himself. "I'm not saying that." He spoke slowly, obviously studying what he'd say before speaking, looking for traps. "This is a very delicate situation. On one hand I'm going to have humans, on Elfhome and Earth, see this in the worst possible light. And on the other side, any complaints might seem to be questioning Windwolf's honor."

"Big whoop-de-do!"

"Windwolf is acting head of the Wind Clan in the Westernlands."

It irritated Tinker that she had such an incomplete understanding of elfin society. She knew that there were clans and castes and households and families but, like most humans, could never get a clear picture of how they all worked. While she knew that major clans were named after the four elements, and that there were lesser clans, she'd only met elves from the Wind Clan. They had names like Lifted Sparrow By Wind, Galloping Storm Horse On Wind—and Wolf Who Rules Wind. As a child, she'd assumed that «Wind» meant they were part of the same family, until Tooloo explained that it denoted clan alliance, that most clan members were not related, and that a family usually shared the same clan, but not necessarily always. Clear as mud, as her grandfather would say.

What Tooloo had taught her thoroughly was the elfin code of honor. You kept your word, and you never implied that an elf's word wasn't as solid as cash. A single slur could pit you not only against the elf you insulted, but all the elves «beholden» to them. Implying that the head of a clan wasn't honorable would be slurring the entire clan, in this case, all the elves in the Westernlands.

"Let's start with the simple things first," Maynard said. "Are you in love with Windwolf? Do you want to be married to him?"

If those were the simple questions, then they were in trouble. Life as an elf was easier to imagine than being married. What did married people even do when not having sex?

Maynard sat, waiting for her to decide, saying nothing to sway her.

"I don't know," she finally admitted. "I've never been in love before; I don't know if I'd recognize it when I felt it."

"But it's a possibility?"

"It would be easier for you if I said yes."

"Yes, it would, but I'm not going to close my eyes to a rape, if that was what it was."

"No!" Tinker squirmed in her chair. "I can take care of myself. I wanted him. I just didn't expect this!"

"I've heard you speak low tongue; you're extremely fluent. Windwolf might have assumed that you knew his culture better than you do based on your fluency of his language."

"Well, I don't. I can't believe that there's nothing in the treaty to cover this." Tinker pushed back hair to expose her ear. "You made laws against this, didn't you?"

"We didn't know the elves could do this," Maynard said quietly, "in order to prevent it. Is that why you're here? Do you want charges pressed?"

"No. At least I don't think so. Depends. I haven't had a chance to talk to Windwolf yet."

"Why are you here?"

Tinker shifted in her chair. "It's weird. Before this, if I found something out, I'd consider things in a 'me versus the EIA' way. What do I get out of it? Will I get into trouble knowing this? Will this bring the EIA down on me? And now—maybe I'm afraid people will think I've changed loyalties as well as my ears."

"What did you learn?"

"There were, might still be, natural gates on Elfhome. It's a matter of getting magic to resonate on the right frequency, and you open up a wormhole to another dimension. Most of Westernlands is unexplored, so there might be gates here that the elves don't know about."

"Between Elfhome and Earth."

"Or someplace else," she said. "We have legends of more than just the elves. In Japan, the people from other worlds are known as the oni. Pony told me this morning that the oni are from Onihida, and they're the main reason that elves stopped trading with humans a millennium ago. The oni are very tall, and red haired, with a grudge against the elves."

"Windwolf's attackers."

"Somewhere, there's a gate to a third world open, and the oni are coming through. They're here, in Pittsburgh."

"Does Windwolf know?"

Tinker considered and nodded. "I think he might. Certainly, it might be the reason that the queen of the elves is in the Westernlands."