Project Elfhome

by Wen Spencer

  “So, have you gotten a chance to meet Princess Tinker?” Olivia asked instead.

  “Tinker domi!” Aiofe corrected with a laugh. “The Wind Clan elves get really cheesed off if you call her Princess.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s their domi! They’ve been in Pittsburgh long enough to know what ‘princess’ means. The two words are worlds apart.”

  “Really?” Olivia’s heart sunk.

  “In English, ‘princess’ means basically a pretty girl that has no power in government whose only value is to produce children for the bloodline. We don’t have anything close to the absolute authority of a domi. She could order her guards to kill any elf in Pittsburgh and no one would question it. It’s her right. To call her Princess Tinker is a sign of disrespect.”

  “Oh.”

  “One of the boyo gave me this.” Aiofe opened a small lunch cooler, took out a plastic bag and held it open. There was a dead rabbit inside. Someone with a great deal of skill had killed it with a rifle bullet to the head. It’d been field dressed but not skinned. “I think he’s sweet on me, but I don’t know what to do with it.”

  Olivia’s stomach rolled at the smell of blood, recalling the dead oni on Penn Avenue. She swallowed hard, reminding herself that it been weeks since she had protein beyond eggs and milk. “I’ll help you cook it for dinner.”

  Aiofe grinned. “I’ll wet the tea.”

  * * *

  According to the newspaper, the newly arrived Stone Clan elves were staying at Ginger Wine’s enclave. The elves’ businesses gathered just over the edge of where Pittsburgh abruptly ended, as if a giant blade had sliced through the city. Beyond the thin line of cement dust and sheared-off guardrails was virgin forest as far as the eye could see.

  Olivia took a bus out to the University of Pittsburgh and walked the last few blocks to the Rim. The enclaves faced humanity with tall, blank stone walls. Each compound was a block wide and hundreds of feet deep with two- and three-story buildings forming a sheltered orchard courtyard. While the enclaves acted like hotels with restaurants, she’d never actually been inside one of them. They were supposedly very expensive.

  She walked down the street, reading the names printed in Elvish over the front doors. Ginger Wine’s door was shut and locked. When she tentatively knocked, a spyhole slid opened up and blue eyes gazed down at her.

  “We’re not taking new guests.” The male obviously learned English from a native Pittsburgher.

  Olivia steeled herself against the fear that was jangling through her. “I would like to talk to Forest Moss.”

  The eyes went wide with surprise. “That nutcase? No, no, you should avoid him. We all do.”

  At least it made her fear turn to annoyance. “You shun him?”

  “I do not know this word: shun.”

  “You don’t talk to him? You don’t look at him? You pretend he doesn’t exist?”

  He tilted his head. “He’s domana and Stone Clan and insane. It is best that we avoid him. Even the Stone Clan people avoid him.”

  “So absolutely no one talks to him?” She knew it was silly to be angry on his part but she’d lived through being shunned. It’d been an agonizingly lonely three months before she caved to the shunning. She had thought she could easily deal with not having to talk to the silly idiots who filled up her life, but she didn’t realize that her own family would join in to break her will. At the time, she thought it was because they believed her marrying Troy would be the best thing for her. Only after she caved in and agreed—so she couldn’t call her wedding night a rape—she realized that they were only concerned that they wouldn’t end up sharing her punishment.

  “He is dangerous,” the elf said, as if that forgave everything.

  And she’d been “stubborn,” “stupid,” “sinful,” and a host of other things muttered behind her back but never to her face, and always just loud enough for her to hear.

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “He’s not here. He’s off with my lord, Windwolf. They’re out hunting oni and won’t be back until late. You should go home; the streets aren’t safe after dark anymore.”

  If she left Oakland, it would only be to go walk Liberty Avenue to turn tricks. “Can I wait inside for his return?”

  “We’re considered Stone Clan territory for the duration.” He did not sound happy about the fact. “I’m not allowed to let strangers in without one of them giving me permission. Go home.”

  He closed the spyhole, effectively ending the conversation.

  * * *

  Hours later the elves returned to the enclaves in force. Hundreds of them poured into the area from somewhere to the east. Most of them wore the Fire Clan’s red, and then there was a small clump of Wind Clan blue. A Stone Clan female was marked by a handful of elves in black. Olivia missed Forest Moss until the last moment. He walked apart from the others, completely alone despite the throng. Five Wyverns moved with him, seemingly guarding over him while not actually interacting with him. They kept out of reach, always with their back to him.

  She hurried through the crowd of elf warriors, trying to reach his side. But he’d entered the enclave and the door was firmly locked.

  * * *

  Her place had been too silent in the mornings. It reminded her too much of when she was being shunned. She’d splurged on an old digital clock radio within a week of arriving in Pittsburgh. After two days of failing to talk with Forest Moss, she woke to the news that Ginger Wine’s had been attacked during the night. Dozens of elves had been killed in the attack; their names, however, weren’t being given out. With her heart looping through her chest like it was on a rollercoaster, she took a bus out to Oakland.

  Ginger Wine’s was a smoking rubble. Oni bodies were stacked on the street like cordwood. There was no sign of the dead elves. In the summer heat, the slaughterhouse stench was nearly unbearable.

  A work crew from the EIA were loading the oni bodies onto trucks.

  “Do you know which elves were killed?” Olivia asked one of the men. “What happened with their dead?”

  The man pointed toward the Faire Grounds where black smoke was billowing up. “Elves cremate their dead; say it frees the souls to pass on. Ginger Wine only lost two of her people. The rest are all Stone Clan.” He obviously thought she was friends with the Wind Clan elves that ran Ginger Wine’s establishment.

  “Was Forest Moss killed?”

  “The domana? No. He wasn’t here. He had been out with Windwolf. He totally lost it, though, when they got back. He wandered off screaming.” The man gave a vague wave toward downtown. “Completely out of his head.”

  * * *

  Forest Moss was on the top floor of Kaufmann’s. She’d found him only because of the concentration of Pittsburgh Police, EIA and Wind Clan elves gathered around the department store. Olivia apparently missed Tinker domi by minutes. In her wake, the elves and humans were trying to come to an agreement about what should be done with Forest Moss. None of them were happy about the elf lord occupying Kaufmann’s but no one wanted to risk trying to get him to leave.

  She cautiously worked her way through the store, dodging the Wyverns who were searching the aisles. Judging by their speed, they were using it as an excuse to keep a distance between them and their charge.

  Forest Moss was in the back corner of the children’s department. He’d collected all the mannequins around a child’s tea table with a toy china tea set. The dolls gathered around him, smiling brightly, holding out stiff white hands to welcome him. Somehow Forest Moss had reduced a half-dozen various mannequins to plaster dust. It hazed the air and covered everything with fine white powder.

  Why was he here of all places? Why was he destroying the dolls even as he treated them to tea? There was so much she didn’t know about him, not even his age. From the photos she’d seen of him, she knew that his hair was always pure white, even without the fine dust. It poured down over his shoulders and was gathered in a loose ponytail just about his hip
s. She couldn’t tell his age from his profile, it was so marred by the scars encircling his empty eye socket. His eyelid had been sewn shut, the scars vivid white as his hair against his dusky skin.

  “It’s all your fault,” Forest Moss wailed as he clutched an eight-year-old girl mannequin to him. “You were supposed to protect them. They whispered little lies to you and you believed them all. Our beautiful lovelies, all dead, because you failed them.”

  She took a deep breath as she felt a wave of sympathy toward him. She still felt responsible for Tyler’s death even though she had been helpless to prevent it. She’d been overruled at every turn. His “real mother” let him play with the rough older boys. As “men” the teenagers didn’t need to listen to her arguments that Tyler was too young to play in the hayloft. She couldn’t talk her husband and sister-wives into taking the four-year-old to the hospital after he’d fallen. In everyone’s eyes, she was old enough to fuck, but too much a child to make any demands on how her “children” were raised.

  How much more guilt was Forest Moss feeling because he hadn’t been helpless?

  Maybe Forest Moss needed her as much as she needed him. Certainly she would have given anything for someone to reassure her that she had done everything she could to save Tyler and that his blood was on other people’s hands.

  Taking another deep breath to steel herself, she closed the distance between her and the tea table.

  Forest Moss whipped about to see her, hand pressed to his mouth, fingers cocked oddly. He paused, his brow knitting together. Unlike his hair, his eyebrow and eyelashes were dark brown. Judging by what was left of his face, at one time, he’d been very handsome. And he seemed much younger than she expected. If he were human, she would have guessed him to be in his mid-twenties.

  She’d spent days trying to arrange for this conversation but she hadn’t considered exactly what she would say. At least, not in Low Elvish. When she ran through this moment in her head, everything was in English with a lot of slang and curse words thrown in. “I heard that you—you—you want a someone to be your domi? A human domi. I’m—I’m—” Willing sounded too much like a marriage vow. “I want—I need you.”

  He stared at her for a full minute as if he couldn’t see through the dust that drifted through the air. His good eye was dark brown, the eyelids almond-shaped in a way that looked almost Asian. “What magic is this that all that I want suddenly lives and breathes? Do I dream? Ah, if I do, I wish to die before I wake.”

  He still had his right hand up the shirt of the girl mannequin, the buttons straining.

  She reached out and cautiously unbuttoned the brightly flowered blouse, exposing the large brown hand against the white plastic skin. The dark eyebrows rose in surprise.

  She wet her mouth against her nervousness. He was just another male, like any other john. Normally she wouldn’t allow a free touch but there were language barriers to cross. Elves normally didn’t have to pay for sex with humans; there were too many elf-obsessed women willing to give it away. And Olivia wanted something more than just money.

  His good eye went wide as she guided his right hand to her hip. She had on low-rider jeans and a midriff; his hand rested on bare skin. He breathed out shakily, his gaze riveted on where they touched skin to skin. His large hand made her look like she wasn’t much bigger than the mannequin he’d been molesting. He swallowed and put his other hand on her and watched vividly as he ran both hands over her stomach. The half-naked girl mannequin teetered from its sudden abandonment and then toppled over.

  With a low moan, Forest Moss dropped to his knees in front of Olivia. He pulled Olivia close so he could mouth her belly as he pushed up her shirt.

  Weeks of selling her body and Olivia still wasn’t used to that moment of when the protection of clothes was pushed aside, leaving her exposed and vulnerable. She swallowed hard on the fear that surged through her, as if it was a wild beast that wanted to scramble up her throat and come howling out her mouth. She locked down on whimpers.

  She had learned the hard way that it was dangerous to close her eyes. She forced herself to watch him carefully, watch him for the start of an attack. He cupped her bared breasts reverently, tears streaming from his one good eye.

  After several heart-stopping minutes of worship, he murmured, “Water to a male dying of thirst. Nay, heavenly cream. Once I start to lap it up, will I be able to stop? Do I dare? If the thirst is not quenched, then does the tentative sip make the need all the more torturous?”

  It seemed the best time to open up negotiations. Normally she wouldn’t let a guy get this far without talking price, but this time, she was asking more than twenty bucks. “I’m not just for the taking. I need something in return. Make me your domi.”

  He leaned forward, his lips nearly touching her. It made her wince despite the fact she should be well used to this by now. “But I have suffered this thirst so long, I think if I do not drink deep and long, I will die.”

  “Make me your domi.” She hated every word coming out her mouth. It was ironic she’d fled to Pittsburgh to get out of the mockery of marriage that she’d been forced into. “Promise me that you’ll make me your domi and you can do what you want.”

  He looked up at her, his one eye searching her face. “This sweetness could be for one as wretched as me?”

  “Only if you take me as your domi.”

  Fear filled his face. “I—I am not prepared for pavuanai wuan huliroulae. I have nothing to give you.”

  She didn’t know the phrase but she was afraid it meant he was broke. “You don’t have money?”

  “Money?” With shaking hands, he pulled out a small beautiful silk pouch. Undoing the drawstrings, he poured several large coins into his hand. Elf bullion. Her heart leapt at the coins. According to yesterday’s newspaper, they were trading for five thousand American dollars per coin. She expected him to give her just one but he spilled all the glittering gold into her palm.

  She gasped, instantly torn. This was much more than she expected but with it, she wouldn’t have to fear winter. As long as there was food to be bought, she could afford it. Did she take it? Did she give some back? Did he even know the value of what he just handed to her? Was it spare pocket change to him? Or was it all that he had?

  When she considered the condition of Ginger Wine’s, it might be all that he had.

  “Do you accept?” he asked breathlessly.

  Did she? Her breath caught as she realized that she was on that verge of no return. Like when she went to her mother and told her that she’d marry Troy. When she walked down the aisle of the Zion church to where Troy waited with his other wives. When she looked at the pregnancy test that she’d bought at the drug store with hoarded cash and realized that she needed to flee Kansas or doom her baby to a life at the ranch.

  And that had worked out so well.

  Was she about to make another horrible mistake?

  But really, could she truly continue to run all the risks of being a streetwalker through a Pittsburgh winter as she got bigger and bigger with child?

  Work or starve her unborn child along with her or this.

  She closed her fingers on the gold coins. “Yes. I accept.”

  He crushed her to him, and with desperate whimpers, seemed to feed on her. He lifted her off her feet, laid her back on the low table with the tiny china teacups and little platters of cookies. The child mannequins all grinned silently as they watched him move over her, weeping and whimpering.

  When he pulled away from her, she thought it was to pull down his pants. Instead he fumbled out a leather bag and produced a thick pencil.

  “No, no, no. Must be careful. Must be sure or they’ll use their swords to put things right.”

  He held her still with one hand pinning her hard by the shoulder. With the fat greasy point of the pencil, he drew something on her stomach.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shhhh.” He pressed the pencil to her lips, his one eye bright. He drew another line
and said something in Elvish that she didn’t recognize. The drawn lines gleamed momentarily and fluttered. He whispered another word and the light faded. He pressed his free hand to her belly, smearing the lines. “Perfect! Perfect!” He glanced around at the watching mannequins. “But not here. They’ll be back and they will not want to stand around and wait for me to have my fill.”

  He meant the Wyverns. No, she’d rather not have them watching. She wasn’t that brave.

  She guessed the location of the freight elevator and that the newly arrived elves wouldn’t know enough about department stores to cover it. She took Forest Moss down to the delivery docks and out onto the street.

  Where could she take him? Ginger Wine’s was nothing but rubble. She wanted bank rate of exchange on the bullion, not whatever a hotel would give her because she didn’t have enough American dollars to pay for a room. Which left her house.

  Feeling like she had just stolen an elf lord, she guided him to her home.

  * * *

  The only highlight of the worst summer of her life been finding the Victorian house on Mount Washington to squat in. Yes, it was too big for her but the kitchen had a wood-burning stove, a sitting area big enough for a bed, tall windows that faced south, and high ceilings that made the room seem even bigger. She would be safe and warm all winter in the one room. If the war hadn’t broken out, it would have been perfect.

  She hadn’t realized that she’d be bringing Forest Moss home with her. She nervously scanned the room after she’d pulled him inside and bolted the door behind him. Luckily she’d washed her breakfast dishes and left them drying in the rack. Her bed was a twin-sized futon on the floor. She’d washed her sheets and air-dried them just the day before. The half-finished quilt she was sewing by hand out of fabric remnants even managed to make the futon look like a real bed instead of sheets spread out on the floor. She had black-eyed Susans in a Coke bottle by her bed and herbs growing on the windowsills. Her place wasn’t pretty as Aiofe’s place but it felt cozy to her.