by Wen Spencer
Law wanted the commune’s newest addition, Widget. She was a cute-as-a-button African-American teenager who wanted to be a translator. She was a whiz with the computer and had learned fluent Elvish online but hadn’t actually managed to graduate from high school. Locals would hire someone without a diploma; Pittsburgh had a crying need for people with Widget’s skills. The EIA wanted people who had doctorates in linguistics and they controlled the work visas. Unable to legally immigrate to Pittsburgh, the teenager had risked her life to swim the Ohio River at Shutdown in the dead of winter. (Of all the insane things! The girl had thought that river shark hibernated or something stupid like that. Biology was not her strong suit.)
Law had fished Widget out of the water and brought her to Usagi’s. The girl hadn’t gotten pregnant yet (maybe was still a virgin) so she needed to lay low. Law had been quietly connecting her with people like Ellen who needed part-time computer help and would keep their mouths shut.
Law wasn’t going to find out if Widget was home by asking Moon Rabbit—the little half-elf’s attention was now locked on the porcupine—nor was it polite to stand at the door and holler like a mad woman. She was going to have to venture deeper into the chaos to find Widget. “Kitchen” meant no work shoes and the like, so Law skinned off her rubber boots.
Bare Snow made an odd noise.
Law turned to find the elf pointing at Moon Rabbit, slack-jawed.
“Tauntiki.” Law only knew the word for “child” because Usagi often used it to call her children. As if summoned, Shield of a Thousand Leaves came toddling in after his older sister. Leaves had on a black cape, white mask and a top hat.
“Brizzy!” he squealed in a pitch that could break glass.
The appearance of a second oddly dressed child seemed to have broken Bare Snow. She went down to her knees to examine them closer. Which was good, because the herd of other half-elf children came thundering to the door to see Brizzy. They quickly decided that a new elf was much more interesting. Bare Snow disappeared in a wave of children, babbling in squeaky-voiced excitement. “Oh my God, her hair is blue—” “She’s Mercury—” “No, no, it’s long blue hair, she’s Mars—” “What does your dress say?”
Leaving Bare Snow to the children, Law picked her way to the kitchen. The restaurant had been an expensive French cuisine place with a stunning view of downtown Pittsburgh. The dining room had been done in elaborate crown moldings with massive crystal chandeliers. At one time people had had to pay a hundred dollars for a plate of fancy food and amazing views. The elegant room now acted as the commune’s common area. Normally it looked as if a tornado had dumped a thrift store onto a French palace. Today, though, it looked like several toy stores had been added on top of the usual chaos.
No matter what the family area looked like, the kitchen was always spotless. Usagi had gotten the kitchen USFDA approved. The commune made the bulk of their money selling “Elfhome jams and jellies” on Earth. A surprise inspection when the kitchen wasn’t clean would sink them. Usagi had replaced the restaurant’s original swinging doors between the big kitchen and the converted dining room with Dutch doors. The standing house rule was the bottom half was always, always closed to keep out pets and children.
Today obviously wasn’t normal for anyone, not just Law; the kitchen was a disaster zone. The sink had wicker baskets full of rinsed fire berries. On the two big commercial-grade stoves were several pots of bright red jam, a pan of boiling water with lids and a forest of thirty-three quart water bath canners. With the exception of the stoves and sinks, every surface was covered with thousands of canning jars. The bulk were filled and labeled but scores were still empty. The heat of the kitchen was staggering. All the windows were open with box fans struggling to move the stifling humid air.
Usagi was a mini-Martha Stewart: five-two, blond bob, and the business drive to make millions. Despite the chaos and heat, she wore a neatly pressed pink gingham apron and crisp matching kerchief on her head like some highly starched skull diaper. As usual, she looked like she could plow through hell while drinking tea with one pinkie raised. Just the sight of her always made Law feel like she was too tall, too awkward, and somehow all boy.
The feeling intensified as Law spotted Widget sitting in the far corner, right leg up, ankle obviously swollen by some injury, with an old-fashioned ice pack on it.
“Law!” Widget threw up her hands in an unvoiced demand for a hug.
Usagi was much more to the point. “Oh, thank gods you’re here; we need help!”
Saving damsels in distress: the story of Law’s life. “What in the world is going on, darlings?”
“Everything!” Widget smelled of Dove soap as Law gave her the demanded hug.
“It’s been the week from hell,” Usagi stated. “The nota inesfa were late coming in. The day before we started picking, Widget fell down the stairs.”
“I’m so sorry!” Widget cried.
“It’s not your fault!” Usagi waved off the apology. “I love the ferrets, and with this place we really need them to keep the rats out, but oh my gods, every time you start down the steps, there they are, wanting to play with your ankles.”
A timer went off and Usagi turned off flames under the forest of canners.
“You didn’t break it, did you?” Law shifted the ice pack to examine the swollen ankle. If it was broken, it could be a hairline fracture.
Widget winced. “Babs thinks it’s just badly sprained.”
Widget didn’t have the golden ticket of being a mother to a half-elf yet, so she couldn’t go to Mercy Hospital for treatment. Babs was the commune’s midwife. Qualified or not, Babs ended up treating everything from runny noses to broken fingers.
Usagi continued listing their streak of bad luck. “Clover developed edema on the first day of berry picking; her feet swelled up to soccer balls.” Clover was nine months pregnant and ready to pop. “Babs ordered her into bed with air conditioning and cold compresses. Hazel has been working double shifts because two of the part-timers at the bakery got caught and are being deported.” Usagi windmilled her arms in sheer frustration. “It was just me and Babs and the kids picking. It took forever! We finished two days ago and we’ve been canning nonstop since then. We’re almost done but Clover went into labor. Babs is upstairs with her. We need to have a full pallet packed and ready to go when the truck shows up.”
“I’m here for you.” It got her a fierce hug that threatened to break bones. For a little thing, the woman had muscles. “Where should I start?”
“Scrub up.” Usagi pointed at a clean apron hanging by the door. “Suit up. Build a shipping box, pack it with jars with labels, seal it, and stack it on the pallet on the loading dock. Lather, rinse, repeat.”
“Consider it done, but I need Widget to do some database digging when she’s free.”
Widget threw up her hands. “I’m free right now. I’ve labeled everything that I can. I have to wait until the seals set up on the next set of jars.”
Law knew that by “scrub” Usagi meant under her nails and up to her elbows. Law moved berries out of the way so she could wash her hands. “I’m looking for the owner of the license plate BAD-0001.”
“Someone’s gonna get it,” Widget sang as she fished her tablet out of a messenger bag. “What did this B-hole do?”
“He took a female elf out in the middle of nowhere and stranded her there.” Law said.
“Oh my gosh!” Widget cried. “Did he hurt her?”
“No.” Law dried her hands and found the shipping boxes. “He might have planned on coming back later, but I found her first.” And have no idea what to do with her. “She remembers his license plate. I want to find out who to keep an eye open for.” Law stated her reason for wanting to identify the man. She wasn’t sure why Bare Snow was keen on tracking him down.
“You should tell the police or the EIA or someone.” Widget was sometimes hopelessly naïve. Which was why she had needed Law to haul her out of trouble and hook her up with Usa
gi.
Usagi snorted loudly as she measured jam out into jars.
“What?” Widget asked.
“I had a dickhead of an ex while going to college,” Usagi explained. “He got me kicked out of my dorms because ‘my guest’ wouldn’t follow rules. I got a restraining order for him, and moved into an apartment.”
Usagi banged around the metal utensils, growing angry as she told her story. “I got kicked out of there because I’d called the cops too many times. The landlord called it disturbing the peace.”
“You’re kidding!” Widget cried.
“No. The shitty thing was that by the time I’d call the cops, I’d be so scared and angry that I’d be screaming at the world. Dickhead would be calm and smirk and do that male ‘must be that time of the month’ thing. Like it’s unreasonable to be upset by a man who’s a foot taller and eighty pounds heavier than you and just won’t leave you alone. The cops would end up hassling me more than him. All he would have to say was ‘she’s my girlfriend’ and that would be the end of it. Once upon a time, long past regretting, I’d said ‘yes’ to this man and that was all that mattered in the cop’s head. It didn’t matter that I’d been saying ‘no’ for months, that I’d given up a full scholarship and moved to the other side of the country. It didn’t matter that I wanted nothing more from him. We were ‘a couple.’ This was a ‘domestic quarrel’ and we were both guilty.”
Usagi took a deep breath, eyes closed. “God, sorry, it’s been twelve years and it still pisses me off. I finally applied to the University of Pittsburgh and moved an entire planet away from him. I had plans of doing this—” She waved her hand to take in the kitchen and the hundreds of canning jars. “But at the other end of it, I’d be the one living on Earth, calling the shots. In my senior year, he’d gotten my address and started to send me letters. He had plans. Plans that included me. And I just snapped—I was pregnant within a month.”
“Wow,” Widget breathed. “That sucks.”
Law nodded to acknowledge the unfairness of it. Most people were good, wonderful people that would give you anything you needed—time, money, patience. There were, however, one or two people who should be just taken out and shot.
Usagi was probably right for the wrong reasons. If the male that drove Bare Snow truly was an elf pretending to be a human, then neither the police nor the EIA could do anything about it. Even if he was a human (and Bare Snow was mistaken about the accent) he actually hadn’t broken any laws. Yet. The man definitely planned something hinky but the police would have their hands tied until someone was hurt or dead.
Someone like Bare Snow.
Law had built, packed, sealed, and stacked thirty boxes when Widget blew out a loud raspberry.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Law said.
“BAA to BAZ was assigned to the EIA!” Widget cried.
“What the hell?” Law said. “The EIA doesn’t have that many vehicles.”
“The range numbers are reserved.” Widget tapped on her tablet and shook her head. “Basically it lets the EIA generate random plates to put on their cars instead having to go to the city for plates. Kind of independent but cooperative.”
Law nodded. “Same old. Same old.” The city and the EIA were two huge cog-turning mechanisms, dependent on each other while trying to stay totally separate. The city was a territory of the United States with elected officials and a nonmilitary police force. It maintained the infrastructure of Pittsburgh: the roads, the water, the sewage and the like. The EIA was a United Nations entity created to oversee humanity’s presence on an alien world at the edge of Queen Soulful Ember’s domain. It controlled access entering and leaving Elfhome and had the final word on everything related to the elves.
Widget frowned at her tablet. “It seems as if the license plate BAD-0001 is on a white Ford Explorer. It’s labeled UPU. What the hell is that?”
“Unmarked, private use,” Usagi said. “Most of the ‘official’ EIA vehicles are white with ‘U.N.’ painted on the hood and sides. But the staff is from all over the world and they occasionally need access to cars for personal activities like shopping. The EIA has a motor pool of unmarked cars for private use. UPU. I could have used one while I interned with the EIA but I never had the need for a car.”
“So anyone that works for the EIA has access to them?” Law asked.
“Yes,” Usagi said. “You’re looking at about five hundred possible males. He would have had to sign for the car, so there’s a paper trail.”
“Can you find out who used that car?” Law asked Widget.
Widget blew another raspberry. “The city of Pittsburgh has an ancient system. It’s easy as pie to get in—actually it’s easier than making pie, if you ask me. Rolling pastry is hard! EIA’s systems were just updated two years ago with more firewalls than God. I can’t get into their system.”
“Oh my God, who is she?” Usagi pointed at the doorway. “She’s gorgeous!”
Bare Snow peered into the kitchen with curious eyes. A collection of little hands and the tops of heads gathered on the sill of the closed half-door.
“Tell her! Tell her!” the children whispered in Elvish.
Clearly uncertain about her mission, Bare Snow spilled out a long discussion in High Elvish, sprinkled with rote-learned English phrases of “peanut butter” and “chocolate milk” and “I’m not asking. I’m telling.”
Usagi covered her mouth to keep in a surprised laugh. “That is not funny,” she finally said loudly to the children. She glanced at the kitchen clock. “Oh! I didn’t realize how late it was.” With her back to the door, she grinned hugely. “I didn’t feed them dinner but they know not to get underfoot when I’m working on a deadline.”
With practiced ease, Usagi smeared scoops of peanut butter and jam onto slices of homemade bread, squishing them together, and poured glasses of milk, stirring in chocolate syrup, and then lowered each plate and glass down over the other side of the door to a child. “Bring me your dirty plates. Blade and Thunder, you’ll have to take sandwiches up to your mothers when you’re done eating.”
While the children were given their dinner, Bare Snow continued to ask questions. A blush started to creep up Usagi’s face even as she tried to control giggles.
“Poor thing. She wants to know where we got all the baby elves—did we steal them or just find them? Why do we have weasels running loose? Why is there a woman upstairs in a bucket of water, screaming? And why doesn’t anyone seem worried about that?”
“Bucket of water?”
The giggles won. “It’s a birthing pool! Only it’s tiny compared to what elves consider a proper tub.” Usagi put plates and glasses in front of Law and Bare Snow. “Here, you probably haven’t eaten either.”
The fire berry jam was like sweet fireworks against the rich creaminess of the peanut butter.
Bare Snow took a tentative bite of the sandwich and her eyes went wide. “Mmmm!” She took another bite, much bigger, swaying back and forth. “Mmmmm.”
Usagi explained that Clover was having a baby. She added that all the children were half-elf and had been born to human mothers in the same way. This triggered dozens of questions that Law never had the courage to ask. It amazed her that Usagi actually answered them all.
The father of both Moon Rabbit and Shield was a laedin-caste warrior who belonged to the viceroy’s household and only visited Pittsburgh occasionally. Usagi had deliberately chosen a male that wouldn’t be able to keep close watch on her. After having Moon Rabbit, Usagi decided that her daughter should have a sibling, so she’d never be alone. Usagi also wanted her children to be full siblings, so she’d sought the same male out a second time. She’d been afraid that he’d only been with her the first time out of curiosity and wouldn’t want a reunion. The male, however, seemed eager to be with her again.
Bare Snow didn’t seem surprised. “I’d heard that humans are like peanut butter, but I didn’t understand until now.”
Law had always wondered what the ma
le elves saw in human females. Not to knock Usagi and her housemates, but none of them came close to Bare Snow’s beauty. The elf was stunningly beautiful, the way that the sky was always perfect even when filled with rolling storm clouds. Humans, like Law, were like thistles. She supposed some people could like scruffy, but why roll in the weeds when you could have the sky?
Then again, Law did have a pet porcupine.
“I am Ground Bare in Winter as Killing Snow Falls in Wind. Please, call me Bare Snow.” She used the English words instead of the Elvish. “I like that name better. I came to Pittsburgh hoping to find a place to belong. I thought that I would be happy with anyone that offered to take a pale shadow of myself. The wind. The ground bare in winter. Now I know that I would be miserable unless I was wanted for all of me.”
Widget gave Law a confused look.
Law knew what Bare Snow meant, felt an echo within herself. So many people just wanted part of the package that was Law. They didn’t want her to be independent and capable. They called her “male” as if no woman could do what she did and still be a woman. They didn’t want her to be gay, while ignoring the fact that they never “chose” to be straight. Or they didn’t want her to work as a forager, despite the fact that they hated their job and were envious of her freedom, or to live in a barn, despite the fact that they thought it was cool and had always dreamed about it. She was friends with the people that didn’t want to change her, mold her into their idea of “good,” but even they had little pieces of her that they didn’t want.
Law didn’t want to derail the conversation by laying bare her soul, so she looped the conversation back to the whole reason she was at the commune. “So the license plate lead is a dead end?”
Widget stared up at the ceiling, squinting, as if peering into Pittsburgh’s Internet clouds. “Well, we could go at it from another angle. I can hit the city’s driver’s license database. There’s a security field on it to denote EIA employees. It also tracks gender, hair color, eye color, height and weight. We could winnow through the males to see if any match up to her perp.”