by Wen Spencer
"On a date! To the Faire! Hey, you should go. It's Midsummer Eve's Faire tonight, so it's extra special. The Faire grounds are out just beyond the Rim." She leaned out the window but the Hill blocked any sign of the Faire. She pointed out the Hill, explaining that the Faire grounds lay behind it. "Just ask anyone for directions. On any old map, its off of where Centre Avenue used to be."
"Will there be a lot of humans there?"
"Yeah, sure, don't worry; you won't stand out."
"Okay then, I'll be there."
* * *
There was a note tacked on her front door. By the style of paper—thick, creamy, handmade linen—and the elegant script, she guessed that it was from Windwolf. A single piece of paper trifolded, the note was sealed shut with a wafer of wax and a spell that would notify the writer that the note had been opened, and perhaps by whom. The outside had her name written so fancy that she didn't recognize it at first:
Tinker
The inside gleamed softly as she unfolded, a second spell being triggered, but it faded before she could tell what it did. Unfortunately the writing was in a language that she could only guess to be High Elvish.
She considered driving to Tooloo's to get it translated, but the old half-elf would probably only lie to her. Maynard? She glanced at the clock—after five. Nathan would be here within an hour, which didn't give her time to go downtown and back. If she took it with her to the Faire, though, surely someone would be able to read it to her.
Nathan knocked at exactly six o'clock, and looked slightly dazed when she opened the door. "Wow, you look wonderful."
"Thanks!" She stepped out onto the sloop, armed her security system, and locked the door. Her outfit had no pockets, and it had taken an hour to pare things-to-be-carried down to a single key and Windwolf's note; she stood a moment, unsure what to do with the key. The note was fairly simple to carry, but she couldn't hold the key all night. Her bra presented a natural pocket, so she tucked the key under her breast. Would it stay there? She jiggled a moment. Yes. "Are we going to eat first? I forgot to eat all day."
Embarrassingly enough, Nathan had watched the whole key thing and now stammered, "Y-y-yeah, I've made reservations at one of the Rim's enclaves, Poppymeadow."
She tried to ignore the burn on her face. "I didn't think you liked elfin food."
"Well, it's like eating at my mom's; you get what's being served, and if you don't like it, they still make you eat it."
"They do not."
"Okay, they make you pay for it, and they don't give out doggie bags."
He wasn't being logical. "So why are we going?"
"Because I know you like it."
She thought of the makeover woman's advice and nodded slowly. "Okay."
In the car, Nathan became oddly silent as he headed for the Rim.
"What do people normally talk about on dates?" Tinker asked to break the silence.
Nathan shifted uncomfortably, as if this stressed that he was older and more experienced than she was. "Well, normally you get to know each other. Where you're from, who your parents are, if you have brothers and sisters. You know. Background info."
"We know all that."
"Yeah," Nathan said unhappily. "Common interests and if nothing else, the weather."
Common interests? Bowling? That made her think of Windwolf. No, no, not a good idea.
"It sure was hot this Shutdown." She started the inane conversation about the weather.
* * *
As the steelworkers had at one time divided themselves into richly ethnic neighborhoods, so did the current inhabitants. The UN workers, which made up the bulk of the EIA, lived within downtown's triangle of land, using the rivers to shield them on two sides against packs of wargs, the occasional saurus, and other Elfhome creatures with big mouths and sharp teeth. On the South Side, sheltered less so by the Monongahela River and the bulk of Mount Washington, was a set of Americans whose expertise was the freight trains that did the East Coast run. Mixed in with them were the oil workers who kept a steady supply of natural gas flowing throughout the region, supplied by gas wells long since tapped on Earth. On the sliver of the North Side remaining, a Chinatown had grown up, part of the treaty with China when their gate triggered the whole mess. Native Pittsburghers were sprinkled everywhere, refusing to move despite everything.
Lastly, in Oakland, were the elves.
The elfin businesses sat just beyond the part of old Oakland that had been razed by the Rim. The southern side of the street was graveled parking lots with large warning signs that the lot fell into the Rim's influence during Shutdown and Startup. The northern side of the street was elfin enclaves, half a block wide, high-walled and gated, built firmly on Elfhome. Once through the gates, one was into lush private gardens filled with exotic flowers, songbirds, and glowing cousins to fireflies.
Since it was Midsummer Eve, the traffic was heavy for Pittsburgh, and Nathan had to cruise the parking lot for several minutes to find a space. Most of the crowd, however, were heading several blocks to the east where the Earth street ended abruptly in the Faire grounds.
There was a group of mostly elves waiting to be seated as Tinker and Nathan came down the garden path of the Poppymeadow enclave. A female elf with long silvery hair that nearly reached her ankles glanced toward Tinker. Her eyes went wide in surprised recognition. "Tinker ze domi!"
Tinker startled; of the handful of elves she knew, this wasn't one. She glanced behind her to see if maybe an elf noble named Tinker was standing behind her. The garden path was empty.
The other waiting diners turned, saw Tinker, and bowed low, murmuring, "Tinker ze domi!"
She didn't recognize any of them. To cover her confusion, Tinker bobbed a shallow bow to the crowd and gave a semi-informal greeting. "Nasadae!"
The domo of Poppymeadow pushed through the diners, bowed low, and gushed out High Elvish faster than Tinker could hope to follow.
"Please, please, Taunte," she begged him to use the low tongue.
"You honor me!" the domo cried, taking hold of her hands. "Come. Come. You must have the finest seat in the house."
He guided the bewildered Tinker through the waiting diners, into the public eating areas, and to an elegant table set into a small alcove. Nathan followed, looking as mystified as Tinker felt. "Here! Let me be the first to wish you merry!"
"Thank you, but . . ." Tinker started to ask why they were fussing over her, but the domo was already gone.
"What was that all about?" Nathan asked.
"I'm not sure," Tinker said slowly.
"What were they saying?"
"You don't speak Elvish?"
"Not really. Just enough to do a traffic stop. What did they say?"
Tinker flashed to the patrol guard who had roughed her up at the hospice on Startup. She pushed the ugly comparison away; no, Nathan wasn't like that. Wait. The hospice.
"Tinker?"
"Um, they recognized me somehow, but I don't know them." Or did she? Was the silver-haired female the one who had helped with the surgery on her hand? Startup had been a blur, but that would be a whole crop of elves who would know her.
"Maybe they know you from the hoverbike racing," Nathan suggested.
Elves called her Tinker-tiki at the races, which was a friendly informal condescending address, on the order of "baby Tinker." This had been Tinker ze domi, an address of extreme politeness. More likely these were elves who knew her from the hospice. Certainly between her arrival with the flatbed at Startup, and Windwolf carrying her through the hospice yelling the next morning, and this morning's fight with the NSA, she had made herself memorable enough. All the elves at the hospice most likely knew that she had saved . . .
Realization hit her. She barely kept her hand from reaching up and touching her forehead. The elves had to be reacting to Windwolf's mark! She glanced worriedly at Nathan. If he thought this weirdness meant that Windwolf did have some claim on her . . . She winced; she didn't want to deal with a jealous Nathan a
gain. What a mess.
The domo returned with a bottle labeled in Elvish, two drinking bowls, and a small silver dish of something white. While she was trying to decide if it was sugar or salt or something more exotic, the domo flicked it onto her, exclaiming, "Linsa tanlita lintou!" He continued in Low Elvish, saying. "May you be merry!"
What the hell? Tinker blinked in surprise, too confused even to form a reaction.
The domo pushed one of the small drinking bowls into her hands, saying, "Praise be to the gods."
She at least knew how to react to that. "Praise be," she said, and drank the wine. What was in the glass was clear, sweet as candy, and burned the whole way down. While she gasped for breath, the domo vanished again.
"You okay?" Nathan asked, and she nodded. "What did he throw on you?"
"I think it was salt."
"Why?"
"I don't know." Nor could she guess. What had the domo said? Linsa and lintou were both forms of the same word—purity. Tanlita was the word tanta meaning "will make" in its female form. Pure into purity? Purity into cleanliness?
The food began to arrive on tiny delicate hand-painted dishes. At an enclave, you ate what you were served. Tinker usually liked it because there were no choices to be made, and you weren't stuck with a large portion of something that was only so-so, or in envy of what another person ordered. Sure, you never knew what you were about to be served, or sometimes had already eaten, but it made the entire meal an adventure.
She could really do without adventure and mystery in her life right about now.
Like most businesses in Pittsburgh, the enclaves relied heavily on local produce to supplement the supplies brought in during Shutdown. Thus the dishes appearing before Tinker and Nathan featured woodland mushrooms, walnuts, trout, venison, hare, keva beans, and raspberries. Luckily the dishes came with built-in conversation: What do you suppose this is? Oh, this is good. Is there more? Are you going to eat that?
It made it easy for Tinker to ponder what the domo meant by "wish you merry." Had she translated that right? Merry what? Merry dinner? Merry Midsummer's Eve? Merry Christmas? Why did languages have to be so vague? This is why she loved math!
During the third round of dishes, the other diners started to appear at the table. They would slip up, eye Nathan doubtfully as he grew more and more surly, then smile warmly at Tinker and press something into her hand, saying, "I wish you merry!" The first was the silver-haired female, with a flower plucked from the enclave garden, which seemed innocent enough. It wasn't until the second diner pressed a silver dime into Tinker's hands that she realized she should have refused the flower. Now she couldn't refuse following gifts without grave insult, something you didn't do with elves. So she smiled and accepted the dime and prayed that Nathan wouldn't blow a gasket. Flowers, coins, note paper folded into packets containing salt, and a small cage of slender vines woven into a cage holding a firefly followed.
"What's with the bug?" Nathan asked.
"I don't know." She winced as she realized that she was whining. "It is kind of cute, in a weird kind of way."
"Why are they doing this?"
"If I told you, you'd get all bent out of shape, and I don't want to deal with that."
He frowned at her and pushed his latest dish away. "Look, why don't we just go to the Faire? I don't feel like eating any more."
The domo saved her from having to abandon all the gifts behind. He came forward with a basket while Nathan went off to settle up the bill.
Under all the gifts, she found Windwolf's note. "Please, can you read this—and translate it to low tongue for me?"
"Yes, certainly." He glanced over the note. "It is from Wolf Who Rules. He—" a pause as the domo worked through translation from formal to informal "—will see you at the Faire."
Oh wonderful.
"What is it you say: I wish you merry?" she asked awkwardly. "Merry what?"
"Life. I wish you a merry life. May all good things come to you."
That seemed harmless enough. Nathan appeared, waiting, so she didn't ask about the salt or the gifts.
They stopped at the Buick and dropped off the basket. Night had fallen, and the Faire had awakened a gleam of multicolored lights and the beat of exotic music. There by the car, they seemed to be in their own envelope of space-time. Nathan pulled her close, kissing her while slipping his hands under her silk duster and running his hands down the back of her dress. For a little while, it was very nice; his strong warm body holding her, the smell of his musky cologne, and the excitement of kissing in the open darkness. It felt similar to when she raced her bike fast down Observatory Hill, exhilarated by the speed, heart leaping to her throat every time she slid out of control toward the edge of the tree-lined road.
At some point, though, Nathan realized that the duster shielded his hands from any chance passersby, and he slipped them down and then back up, this time under her dress. He straightened slightly, pulling her off her feet, at the same time kissing down her neck to nuzzle into her breasts.
"Nathan." It was getting too scary, and she was a little angry that he was taking it so fast, out in the open, as if he wanted to be seen, so that everyone would think that she belonged to him. It was as if this was his way of marking her.
"No one's here." He was strong enough that he could support her easily with one hand. Their joint focus became his free hand, rough fingertips on her inner thigh, exploring higher.
"Nathan!" she hissed, wriggling in his hold. "Someone might come. Put me down."
"We could get into the car," he groaned into her hair.
Into the car and what? Did he think the car afforded shadows deep enough to disguise what he wanted to do? Or in the car, they could go to someplace more appropriate? His place? Her place?
"No." She squirmed more, tempted now to use elbows, knees, and the practically sharpened tip of her shoes. "I want to go to the Faire."
He gave a long-suffering sigh. "Are you sure?"
"Yes!"
"All right." He set her back onto her feet. "Let's go to the Faire."
* * *
The first booth beyond the gate was a portable shrine to Redoeya; she paused to clap and bow to the statue and drop a dime into his silver-strewn hands. She considered, eyes closed, hands clasped. What was it that she wanted? In earlier years she had prayed for things as simple as winning something from one of the booths. Searching her heart, she found only conflicting desires. Finally she prayed simply: May I figure out what it is I want in life.
"Why do you do that?" Nathan had hung back, looking a mix of annoyed and bewildered.
"I always do that." She headed for the sweet bun stands as Faire custom number two; one needed to get them fresh and hot. "Tooloo said that if Grandpa wasn't going to put me in the protection of human gods, then she'd see me protected by the elfin ones."
He made a face.
"What?"
"Oh, I was fairly sure you weren't Catholic, but I expected you to be at least Christian."
"And?"
"Nothing."
Nathan bought sweet buns for both of them, and they drifted on, pulled by the tidal force of moving bodies.
There was more of everything at the Faire than she'd ever seen before. Another row had been added to the basic grid to accommodate the additional booths. Despite the extra space, more people strolled through the aisles: elves dressed in human fashions, humans dressed in elfin fashion, parents with infants, couples of mixed races, and most surprisingly of all, armed guards of both races. Tinker had never seen on-duty guards at the Faire before. She wasn't sure if the tension she felt came from the armed presence, or her own sudden unease with Nathan.
"I can't believe there are armed guards here," she said to Nathan as they passed the third guard, her dark EIA uniform and flat black gun a black hole for attention.
"The viceroy was nearly murdered twice," Nathan said. "And then there's the whole thing with the smuggling ring. With this many people in one place, it's the smart
thing to do."
"I don't like it."
"You wouldn't have ended up tangling with that saurus if there'd been more than Windwolf and his bodyguard at the Faire."
Tinker flashed to that day, the saurus standing with a foot pinning the lower half of Windwolf's bodyguard to the ground and his upper half in its mouth. In an image that haunted her nightmares, the saurus pulled upward, stretching the guard's body obscenely long before shaking its head, tearing the male in half. She shuddered. "Let's not talk about that."
But once called up, she couldn't stop thinking about the day. Strange how she couldn't recall Windwolf's location until he was yelling in her face to run, and how, even now, she didn't remember him as wounded, only angry.
In a sudden rewrite of history that was almost dizzying, she realized that Windwolf had lost a friend that day, not only torn to shreds but also eaten. How long had they known each other? A hundred years? Poor Windwolf! No wonder he had been so angry.
"Guess." Nathan interrupted her thoughts.
"What?"
"So guess what they named the baby."
Baby? She glanced around and spotted a human woman showing off her baby to curious elves. She had always thought it odd that elves seemed fascinated by babies, but considering what Windwolf had said, a young adult elf may have never seen an infant in his or her life. She had to admit there was something intriguing about the miniaturization of a being that babies represented, but they were, on a whole, too fragile for her to deal with. She supposed that if someday she had "kids" she would have to deal with "babies"—an utterly frightening thought.
Nathan was still waiting for her to guess the baby's name and was growing impatient.
"I don't know the mother. Who is she?"
"What?" A frown quirked at the corner of Nathan's mouth as he scanned the brightly dressed crowd. "No. Not her," he said, spotting the baby being passed around the knot of adults. "My sister's baby. Guess what they called my niece."
Oh, yes, his sister Ginny lived in Bethel Park. She had been waiting for Shutdown to go to Earth in order to have her second child, but the baby came a week early, and she delivered at Mercy Hospital. When Tinker had talked to Nathan before Shutdown his sister hadn't named the baby yet.