Project Elfhome

by Wen Spencer

  She swallowed down a whimper. The bottle cost over ten dollars for just one ounce. She had never tasted the spice mix, let alone used it. She couldn’t put the open bottle back on the shelf; the spice would start to degrade once the seal was broken. It would be unfair to anyone else to pay so much money for an open bottle.

  “This would be very good on fowl,” he continued. “You need more meat for your baby to be healthy. When we find our own place, I will see that we are given live chickens instead of prepared meals. That way we can quickly have a whole flock. I will cook for you. I’ve gotten very good at it.”

  If he cooked as well as he made love, then it would be a feast beyond her imagination. She blushed furiously and added the spice to her cart.

  The cashier rang up her purchase with shaking hands. It was more than Olivia had ever spent on anything. She reluctantly handed over all her American cash. She had the elf gold bullion but each coin was worth thousands of dollars. She was going to have to exchange one to buy winter clothes.

  * * *

  The next morning, their fragile peace fell apart. Orders came from Prince True Flame for Forest Moss to report for combat. Glaive insisted that Olivia be left at the cathedral.

  “I want my domi to come with us!” Forest Moss cried. “I was not at the enclave to protect our people when the oni attacked. I will not leave her behind.”

  “Ginger Wine’s was taken by treachery, not by simple force.” Glaive used the same tone one would use with a willful child. “You would have died if you had been there.”

  “She is with child. I cannot dashavat her until the baby is born.” Forest Moss used the same word that the marines had used. By the look of distaste on the Wyvern’s face, it wasn’t a good thing. “She cannot defend herself like Wolf Who Rules’ child bride.”

  Olivia ducked her head so her face wouldn’t show. She was actually two years younger than “Princess Tinker” but she hadn’t told Forest Moss that. She had allowed him to believe that humans considered her an adult. Since she had been forced into a marriage at fifteen, she thought of herself as “adult” even if most of the humans in Pittsburgh would disagree. Made to grow up, she wasn’t going to let herself be stuffed back into the bottle of “child.” It was her experience that the only difference was children had to do what they were told.

  “The kitsune made the oni invisible to everyone at Ginger Wine’s,” Glaive continued. “The oni killed nine of our Stone Clan brethren and took Jewel Tear before anyone could react. Your presence would not have made any difference to the outcome.”

  “The child bride…”

  “Would have also been taken. We have no defense against mind tricks. The Wind Clan domi survived only because the oni limited their ambush to Ginger Wine’s.”

  Tears started to run from Forest Moss’ one good eye. “I cannot abandon my domi. She is defenseless!”

  “The oni have no reason to attack her,” Glaive said. “She is only domana-caste via her dau mark. Taking her would not give the oni access to the Stone Clan’s Spell Stones. She has nothing of worth.”

  She had a small fortune in elf gold bullion in her purse but she didn’t want to point that out.

  “If you drag her along,” Glaive finished, “she will be in direct line of fire for all the oni forces.”

  Forest Moss started to rock in distress.

  Glaive put his hand on his sword, his eyes narrowing in calculation.

  “Please.” Olivia stepped forward and cautiously stretched out a hand to the rifle on Glaive’s back. “Can I have this?”

  Glaive’s eyes widened in surprise but he didn’t stop her as she took it from his back. It was a true military-issue full automatic, a little heavier than the semi-auto that her stepfather owned. It seemed as if the construction wasn’t of regular gunmetal, but it functioned exactly the same.

  She checked to make sure it had a full magazine. “I’m not defenseless.”

  Forest Moss paused, startled out of his panic.

  “I don’t want to be part of the fighting.” Olivia still wasn’t sure if she understood what the war was about, and what the oni planned for the humans in general. If she was going to kill someone, she wanted to be sure it was the right people. God had been fairly clear on “thou shalt not kill” but then he muddled the waters with lots of smiting of enemies. Olivia was fairly sure that anyone trying to kill her intentionally became “the right people,” but if she was merely unintentional collateral damage, the morality of defending herself was uncomfortably gray.

  “You can use that weapon?” Forest Moss asked.

  “My mother,” she fumbled with the Elvish. She didn’t know the word for divorce, remarry, or stepfather. She wasn’t sure elves had such things. “When I was a child, she joined a group of people that don’t see eye to eye with almost everyone on just about everything. They own a great deal of guns.” Probably more than was legal considering the effort they went to keep their gun purchases secret. “They taught me how to use this weapon.”

  Target practice was the one nondomestic activity that she was allowed to do, so she learned to do it well. She also learned a great deal about brawling but that was never “taught.” It was a natural result of making her stepbrothers look bad on the firing range.

  “I should stay…” Forest Moss started.

  “No, you need to go.” It had been the one qualifier Prince True Flame put on their union: Forest Moss had to continue his duties. “The oni know nothing about me. They don’t know my name or what I look like. I can mix into any group of humans and disappear.”

  His eyebrows quirked as he considered it.

  She leaned against him, lending her strength to him. “I will be fine. You need to do your duties.”

  He needed to be useful or the Wyverns would kill him.

  Forest Moss wrapped his arms around her and they stood while he grew calm with the assurance that she would be safe.

  * * *

  She thought that the Wyverns would take all the royal marines with them. To pacify Forest Moss, however, they left all twenty of the marines with her. There was no way she could blend in followed by a flood of red. Yes, she could go shopping with them in tow, but she’d hoped that she could see a doctor for a prenatal exam. She suspected that a pelvic exam with the circus in tow could be dangerous for the doctor’s health, but she wasn’t completely sure.

  She set to work cleaning, hoping that they’d go exploring again. Within an hour, they’d scattered throughout the building. They’d figured out the various access points to the twentieth floor and were guarding them in rotating shifts. What they didn’t realize was that they’d missed one. Children’s Literature had once spanned two floors with an ample library on the floor below. Hidden behind a panel in one corner was a dumbwaiter to ferry book trucks between the two. It was a tight squeeze, but she could fit inside.

  She took with her one of the elf bullion coins that Forest Moss had given to her. She left the machine gun behind because humans with guns drew attention, especially when they visited banks. She meant it when she said that she could easily blend in with the general population. She’d been doing it for weeks.

  * * *

  Olivia was waiting on the corner for the downtown bus, elf-free for the first time in days. She was reading the newspaper with her hair up in a bun and her reading glasses on. It felt good to be able to blend in with the crowd of other humans waiting for the next PAT bus to come lumbering down Fifth Avenue. Did Superman ever feel like this? The relief of being just like everyone else?

  She recognized the wave of change go through the crowd before even looking up. The quick scuffling and inward breaths of fear. Wyverns were coming. What now? She looked up as a familiar number of Fire Clan red bodies came marching up the street, but she didn’t know any of the faces. This wasn’t the group that had gone out with Forest Moss.

  How did they even find her?

  Were they even looking for her?

  For a moment she thought they were going
to walk past her but then they stopped a few feet past her.

  “There you are,” a female voice said in Elvish.

  The female was short for an elf, dusky-skinned and dark-eyed like Forest Moss. Her dark brown hair had been hacked short so it stood up in uneven tufts. She gave Olivia a predatory grin.

  Oh, joy, another crazy elf.

  They stood for a few minutes, taking study of each other. The female wore a bright yellow high-low dress that was cut above the knees in the front but trailed down the back to almost the ground. It nicely showed off her little slouch boots of black and silver snake leather. Her bare arms and legs were covered with fading bruises. She looked like someone had dragged her through hell and back.

  After the third or fourth minute of staring silently at Olivia, the female raised a finger and tapped it downward, ending with a point at Olivia’s chest. “Right. You have no idea how to act. When you meet someone for the first time, you tell them your name.”

  “But you know my name, because you were looking for me.” What name did the elf expect her to give? Red? Olive Branch?

  “Consider it practice,” the female said.

  Freaking crazy elves.

  “Why aren’t you telling me your name?” Olivia asked.

  “Practice,” the female repeated. “If you don’t learn, everyone will think you’re uncivilized.”

  “What if I don’t care what any of you think?”

  The female reacted as if she never considered the possibility. The bus came trundling down the street.

  “I’m getting on this.” Olivia pointed at the incoming bus as she had no idea what the Elvish word for it was. Did elves even have a word? They lived like fairy-tale people with swords and horses and massive flying fishes.

  “Where are we going?” the female asked.

  “We?” Olivia put away her reading glasses and took out her coin purse.

  “I’ve sought you out in order to speak with you.”

  The bus rumbled to a stop with a growl and hiss of hydraulic brakes. The door opened. All the people waiting on the corner froze in place, waiting to see what Olivia decided.

  “Oh, hell.” She muttered in English and stomped up the steps of the bus. The driver’s eyes widened as the Wyverns and then the battered female elf boarded after Olivia. There was a sudden mass exodus via the back door of the bus. None of the other humans waiting at the corner got on.

  Olivia fed quarters into the coin box. “Can I have a transfer?”

  “Are they with you?” the driver murmured.

  “No.” Olivia took the slip of paper that the bus driver handed her and slumped into one of the bench seats a few feet back. As she dreaded but expected, the female settled beside her and the Wyverns took up stations around them.

  The handful of brave humans still on the bus clustered in the back.

  “Do you really not care what the others think of you?” the female asked.

  “No,” Olivia said as calmly as she could.

  “They can kill you,” the female said.

  “Why would they?” Olivia believed the elves would but she needed to know the triggers. She had never been totally sure that Troy would kill her, but she’d learned what would drive him to dangerous rage. “I’m unarmed and much smaller and younger than any of your people.”

  “Our people,” the female corrected her. “You are to be considered one of us now that Forest Moss has marked you.”

  Joys of marriage, or whatever the elves called it. Fine, Olivia would stick to this female’s semantics. “Are there no laws against killing?”

  “There are laws,” the female said. “But if you’re challenged to a duel and do not fight, they will call you a coward.”

  “Fine,” Olivia said.

  “Have you no pride?” the female asked.

  Pride was her biggest flaw, according to Olivia’s mother. “I pride myself at being much stronger-willed than the bullies that seek to dominate me. I would be shamed if I sink to their level where violence is necessary to display my character.”

  “If you’re to be domi,” the female stated, “you must protect those you hold.”

  Olivia wasn’t sure if they had totally strayed from the point or not. It seemed like playground-level mentality. Did the elves do double dog dares? “If someone attacks me, it is my fault for being weak, and not theirs for being cruel?”

  “But how can you protect your people if you do not fight?”

  “Are we discussing what other elves think of me,” Olivia said, “or the oni attacking me?”

  “Elves,” the female said.

  “And why would elves attack elves? Aren’t the oni the enemy?”

  The female stared at her, head tilted in confusion. Considering the fact that she was hundreds of years older than Olivia, it took all of Olivia’s willpower to keep the practiced “just trying to clarify” look on her face. Really, years of defending her vision of Christianity had made this an easy exercise.

  “I’m Jewel Tear on Stone,” the female finally introduced herself.

  “Oh.” Olivia felt bad. She should have guessed. The Wyverns didn’t protect normal elves, just the domana-caste, and there were only a handful of those in Pittsburgh. Just days ago, the female’s household had been butchered by oni and she’d been kidnapped. Yes, Jewel Tear would consider protecting her people important. Olivia might have misunderstood the entire conversation. The straight As of her home school language classes really hadn’t prepared her for nuances of actual conversations.

  “I’m Olive Branch over Stone.” Olivia gave her elf name and put out her hand for handshake.

  Jewel Tear eyed her hand with suspicion. “Humans keep doing that around me. What does it mean?”

  “It is a gesture of friendship and trust.” Olivia held her hand steady, waiting, even though she was fairly sure that Jewel Tear wasn’t going to shake her hand.

  “Oh. We do not do that. Our hands are our weapons. We do not entrust them with those we do not love.”

  Forest Moss would often take her hands in his and entwine their fingers. Olivia hadn’t realized what an act of faith it was for him. It made her feel oddly giddy. She dropped her hand into her lap, embarrassed by the rush of emotions.

  Jewel Tear didn’t seem to notice. “You should know that two of the incoming Stone Clan domana are Harbingers. They earned their reputation during the Rebellion. They are powerful and dangerous enemies.”

  “They are Stone Clan?” Olivia was missing something in the translation.

  “Sunder is an old, old elf born at the dawn of the Rebellion. To hir, the Clan War was a short and messy affair, insignificant to the thousands of years that shi fought. If shi thinks that you are dangerous to our people in any way, shi will kill you despite your being Stone Clan.”

  Olivia had learned the gender neutral pronouns in high school but hadn’t realized she’d ever use them. “I see.”

  Jewel Tear lowered her voice. “Darkness is the one you should fear. His great joy in life had been his niece, Blossom Spring from Stone. His beloved younger sister died giving birth to her and he raised Blossom Spring as his daughter. Blossom Spring had been with Forest Moss when he was captured by the oni. He escaped. She did not.”

  “She was killed?” Olivia hoped that Forest Moss didn’t abandon the female.

  “Her First, Granite, drowned her in a chamberpot.”

  Olivia stared in horror at Jewel Tear. “Why would he do that?”

  Jewel Tear leaned in to whisper. “She’d been raped by the oni. They had made her pregnant.”

  Olivia reeled at the implications. Did this mean that the Wyverns would have killed Olivia if Forest Moss had slept with her while she wasn’t pregnant? And what did this mean for Jewel Tear, who been kidnapped by the oni? “Why?”

  “Granite needed to kill her unborn oni bastard to protect the Spell Stones.”

  Those things again. “What are those? The Spell Stones?”

  “They are our greatest strength but
also our greatest weakness. Granite could not allow the oni to gain access to them.”

  “But what are they?”

  “It’s how the domana cast their clan’s esva. Forest Moss will teach you. Until you can protect yourself, you should keep your distance from Darkness. So, where are we going?” Jewel Tear asked.

  Olivia didn’t know the words for what she planned for the day. Since Jewel Tear’s presence meant Olivia once again had a Wyvern guard, she couldn’t visit the OB/GYN as planned. Nor did Olivia know if she could trust this female. She learned the hard way that a few minutes of kindness often meant nothing. It would be a mistake to assume that Jewel Tear saw them as “friends” or even “allies.”

  Luckily, while the conversation had been short, the bus had gone straight downtown without stops. Olivia wasn’t sure if this was because there hadn’t been anyone waiting on the corners as the driver approached or if he’d had flipped the sign to “out of service” in order to expedite getting the Wyverns off his bus. Either way, they were nearing the first stop on Sixth Avenue. She reached up and hit the “request stop” button.

  “We’re going here.”

  * * *

  Mellon Bank’s sole building sat in the heart of downtown. It was an old building from the nineteen hundreds with marble floors, tall columns and three-story-high coffered ceilings. Olivia attempted to stand in line, but once again the line evaporated because of the presence of the Wyverns. Gritting her teeth, she stepped up to the suddenly not busy teller’s window.

  “I need to exchange this for American dollars.” She pushed the gold ingot across the counter.

  Apparently this was not a common request. The teller needed to get his supervisor who was an older woman. She in turn fetched another woman, older still.

  “Miss…?” The manager paused for Olivia to fill in the missing name.

  In for a penny, in for a pound. “Stone.”

  “Stone?” the manager echoed with confusion.

  “S. T. O. N. E.” Olivia spelled it slowly.

  The manger’s gaze flicked to the collection of elves waiting behind Olivia and then down at the long oval gold ingot on the counter between them. So far, none of the bank employees had even touched it. It sat gleaming on the polished granite like some dangerous trap.