Cornucopia

by Debra Dunbar

  A man came from a back room wiping his hands on his dark blue robe. He looked to be late twenties or early thirties with a shock of brown hair and an angular face. He wasn’t much taller than I was, with a thin build that said he spent more time doing work that required fine motor skills instead of heavy labor. He greeted us in a language that sounded a lot like the Elvish Nyalla spoke when she’d first arrived. Then his eyes slid from Rutter to me and widened in shock before he dropped his gaze to the floor in front of my feet.

  The words were still in Elvish, but from his posture and the cadence, I guessed he mistook me for some sort of Elven royalty. Then he looked a few feet up at my sneakers, my jeans, my Lord of the Rings t-shirt.

  “You must be the botany expert that the Iblis sent.” These words were in perfect English, as if he’d lived his entire life in some mid-western town.

  “Amber Lowrey.” I walked forward and extended my hand. He hesitated, forcing his eyes up to my face and taking my hand.

  “I’m Kirby. Mage Kirby. You’re…young. And I didn’t expect you to look so much like an elf.”

  Back home I took on the appearance of someone who was one hundred percent human. I’m not sure if it was a self-preservation thing on the part of my demon half, or just me being a chameleon. Hel was the only place where I seemed to change appearance, although I had no conscious control over it. Full demons could change their race and gender at will, but back home I always looked the same. I assumed that here, I’d always look like a high-born elven woman.

  “It’s…a sort of accommodation. Will I be staying here or somewhere else? Who is coordinating this project? I’m assuming there is a human liaison that I’ll be working with while I’m here.”

  Kirby just stared at me a moment, his eyes glazed over. Then he shook his head and touched an amulet that hung around his neck. “I have a room for you upstairs. It’s not fancy. I’m sure it’s not what you’re used to. I’m sorry.”

  I laughed. “I’ve been living in a dorm room for four years with cement block walls and metal frame bunk beds. I’m sure the room you have is more than suitable. Now…the project?”

  He flushed red. What was going on? This guy was a mage, a talented and respected practitioner. He was also at least five years my senior. But here he was acting as if he were a bumbling teenager and I were Mrs. Robinson.

  Oh. Half succubus. No wonder he was flustered.

  “Where am I staying?” Rutter chimed in. He was pulling glass jars off the shelves and sniffing herbs. “In the room with Miss Amber? I want to stay with Miss Amber. I know she’s a half-succubus, but she looks like an elf lady. She smells like one too.”

  I hesitated. Normally I wouldn’t care if Rutter shacked up with me, as long as he didn’t snore, but I’d probably need to be getting some mattress action in while here, and the little demon’s presence would hinder any sexual activity. Although I wasn’t sure having sex in a room with Kirby right next door or down the hall was a good idea. I’d might need to find somewhere else to work my mojo.

  The thought put a knot in my stomach – working my mojo that is, not having to do it in a forest or an abandoned mill. If I were to help this community I’d need energy. Which meant I’d need sex. But who in all of Hel was I supposed to have sex with? Were there single, reasonably aged humans here who would be willing? The thought of having sex with demons scared me. Irix had always told me sex demons were at a disadvantage when it came to offensive and defensive capabilities as compared to other demons. I’d need to use my pheromones, or sweet talk my way out of any scary situation. And if they found out I was half-elf…no, demons were off the table. Elves? Equally problematic. Hopefully this town was filled with humans – humans that wouldn’t compromise my ethics. I wasn’t about to be the one who broke up a marriage, robbed the cradle, or sent Grandpa to an early grave.

  And no socks with sandals. A girl had to have standards.

  “You can shack up with me, Rutter. But not in my bed, okay?”

  He saluted. “Got it.”

  Kirby looked relieved that he didn’t have to arrange accommodations for the demon. “Are you tired? Or do you want to get started?”

  “Get started.” I was so fired up about this. “Rutter can you take my bag upstairs?” I’d packed a few clothes and some toiletries, not sure what would be available to me here, but I had another reason for getting Rutter out of the room. I needed to talk to Kirby.

  I watched Rutter climb the back stairs then turned to the mage. “I know I look like an elf, but I’m only half-elf. I’m going to be doing a lot of genetic modification on crops and trees, and for that I’ll need more energy than I currently have.”

  Kirby stared at me, perplexed. I waited, hoping he’d catch on. I got the idea that Kirby was kind of prudish and I didn’t exactly want to come out and ask him to provide a list of willing sexual partners of an appropriate age.

  Sure enough, he finally put the pieces together and realized what I was talking about. His face turned beet red, and again he touched the amulet around his neck. “I can ask, but I don’t think we’ll be able to accommodate your…needs. The humans here were all enslaved by elves. I doubt if any of them will be eager to have intimate contact with one. Unless…can you change form like the demons do? Maybe if you appeared human…”

  “The other side of the gates I look human, but here elf is all I can seem to manage,” I confessed. This was going to be a problem. If none of the humans would have sex with me, I’d need to consider demons – and I really didn’t want to consider demons.

  “I’ll ask around,” Kirby repeated. Again he touched the amulet around his neck, his hands shaking slightly.

  “I assume that’s to protect yourself against me.” I pointed to it. “You don’t need to worry. I don’t seduce unwilling people. I won’t entrance you and make you have sex with me.”

  “It’s not…I don’t want you to know my fantasies.”

  I did have a rather embarrassing habit of sensing the fantasies of those I met. It was a rude, prying thing to do, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. The succubus in me was always on the prowl for a potential partner, and sensing someone’s deepest desires helped that part of me decide whether I could satisfy them or not.

  “I’m sorry. And yes, I probably would sense your fantasies. If it’s any consolation, I’ve sensed some pretty freaky stuff in the last year. I mean, really freaky stuff.” I’d done most of that freaky stuff, too. I’d not been sexually repressed when I thought I was a human, but my late-teen explorations were nothing compared to the things I found myself doing – and enjoying – as a half-succubus.

  “This isn’t freaky. I just don’t want anyone to know.”

  He wasn’t the only one with embarrassing fantasies, but I wasn’t going to push him into revealing something he didn’t want me to know about. Time to get back to the project. I’d worry about where the heck I was going to get enough energy to do all this later.

  “I checked out some of your crops and trees on the way in and I have ideas for drought and heat-resistant alternatives. The big questions are how fast is the climate going to change, what’s the end state, and do you know anything about the soil?”

  Kirby blinked, his shoulders relaxing with the change in topic. “It’s soil. That’s about all I know. I’ll have you meet with a group of the farmers, then afterward I have the crop records for you to peruse. The farmers should be able to answer any of your questions. Rutter will need to interpret since most of the humans here speak only Elvish, and I was told you didn’t?”

  He sounded incredulous that someone could look like me and not speak Elvish. “I don’t. Will you be coming with us?”

  He shook his head. “Not this time. I’ve got some orders I need to work on. Have Rutter bring you back when you’re done and you can check the records. After that, we can discuss preliminary plans, as well as what resources you might need.”

  Sounded great to me. I rubbed my hands together, unable to keep from grinning wi
th enthusiasm at the thought of starting this interesting and challenging project.

  “Then let’s get started.”

  Chapter 2

  The farmers were helpful in that they knew the challenges of the soil, particularly the changing Ph. They also had dire news about the slow decline of the artificial climate controls. I’d been thinking of plants and trees that would thrive in southern Nevada, or New Mexico, when I should have been thinking of the Sahara Desert. The whole place was reverting to the demon lands just outside the fading barrier. Within the next few years, the soil would be acidic and filled with iron, the temperatures would swing sixty to eighty degrees from day to night, and the air would be dry as dust.

  My heart ached. I could give them immediate relief, but even the modified crop production would dwindle and they’d be starving in two years. I needed to find edible plants suitable to the landscape here – crops that were indigenous to Hel. I wasn’t sure that even those crops would sustain a human community like Libertytown, but it was a start. What had seemed a challenging project at the onset had now become an ongoing one where I came back every six months or so to check how the plants adjusted to the changing conditions, and tweaking where I could.

  I knew it was temporary, but it was the best I could do. Hopefully in a few years, if the situation had deteriorated beyond what I could do to help, the humans would finally be convinced to leave.

  It was late afternoon by the time Rutter led me back to the magic shop. The mage was bagging a mixture of herbs, a row of wands on the counter beside him.

  “So, what do you think?” Kirby looked up at me with a quick smile before continuing to concentrate on the herbs. He seemed more at ease around me than he’d been previously.

  “I think you should move,” I told him, only half joking. “If not out of Hel, then somewhere besides Libertytown. The elves are leaving Hel. Maybe you can take over one of their kingdoms.”

  “It would be a short-term stopgap. Without the high elves here to maintain environmental conditions, the kingdoms will eventually revert to the normal landscape of Hel. I’d hate to uproot everyone for a few extra years of sustainable agriculture only to be right back where we are now. Besides, not all the elves are leaving. There are a few groups in each kingdom who have elected to remain. I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate us looting their homelands.”

  “But aren’t the remaining elves going to be in the same situation as you? If the high elves are gone, who will maintain the artificial environment?”

  Kirby shrugged. “I think they have some minor skills. The kingdoms might not be as lush as they are now, or the residents might be reducing the area of effect. Either way, I don’t want to run the risk of elves finding us trespassing on their property. They’re very territorial, and most of them blame the decline of their society on us. Well, mostly they blame the Iblis, but they also blame us.”

  Strike one. “I can do some crop modification, but nothing I know of is going to survive what Libertytown is eventually going to become. There has to be some indigenous plant life in Hel I can replicate. What do the demons eat? They must grow some kinds of crops, have livestock.”

  Kirby burst out laughing. Even Rutter joined in.

  “Oh, Miss Amber. You are so funny! Demons don’t grow plants,” Rutter told me.

  “They don’t,” Kirby confirmed. “They like to mooch off of the elves and dwarves, but mostly they eat whatever they come across. Most of those plants and animals would be poisonous to humans, or at the very least not nutritional.”

  Strike Two. Maybe. From what Kirby had said, I doubted that the humans could mooch off of the elves, but dwarves? I’d forgotten there were other races here.

  “What do the dwarves eat? Maybe I could use some of their plants from this area. Or perhaps you could trade other skills and merchandise to them for food.”

  The mage looked up from his herbs, a puzzled expression on his face. “They mostly live in the mountains, so the climate is a bit different, but there are dwarves in the swamps and in the desolate lands. I doubt they import all their food. There must be something they eat.”

  Jackpot. Well, maybe not jackpot but possibly a solid lead. If I could get a good read on these plants, I could modify the ones the farmers were using, or even bring back specimens to replicate here.

  “Is there any way you can put me in touch with a dwarf? Someone nearby I can talk with about these plants and their agriculture?”

  Kirby pondered my questions a moment. “There’s an old dwarf out in the swamps who has been there forever. She’s the closest one I can think of that might be able to help.” The mage looked over to Rutter. “She’s a bit unconventional. I have a dwarf client coming by tomorrow. I’ll ask him to take you to see her and make the introductions.”

  A glimmer of hope. Maybe I could cobble together a solution for these people after all. And there was one other possible solution I wanted to throw out there.

  “What about purchasing all of your food? I realize that puts all the residents of Libertytown in a position of relying upon another group for food, but if a decent trade contract can be put together, you should be able to stockpile food for emergencies.”

  Kirby considered my idea. “That would be a last resort. There are groups here who would be happy to take advantage of that situation. We might be supplying them with luxury goods and services, but they’d have our lives in their hands. I don’t feel comfortable about the balance of power in that sort of arrangement.”

  I understood, but these contracts didn’t have to be with the elves or the demons. Sam had joked about having Peapod deliveries to Hel, but I didn’t think that idea was too farfetched. The humans in Hel had much to offer, and an enterprising human the other side of the gates might be willing to provide a shipping container full of shelf-stable foods as well as fresh meat and produce in exchange. I pondered how I could broker such a thing, and decided that would have to wait until I returned home. It was becoming clear that I’d need to come back on a regular basis. I could scout out possible intra-gateway trade and propose it when I returned.

  Kirby settled me in back room with a table and a chair, and a gigantic leather-bound book. After fidgeting for nearly an hour, Rutter snuck off to go “explore”, leaving me in the shop with Kirby. I could hear the mage walking around the front room where the shop was located. Every now and then there would be a thump of something heavy, or a scraping noise. Had he been here all day long? Did he work twenty-four seven? I was beginning to think this mage had no life outside of his magic.

  The book was the most depressing thing I’d ever read. Within months after taking possession of the area from the elves, the humans had begun to note a trend of increasing temperature and a drop in rainfall. I read the long list of numbers, looked over the charts, noted the correlations and predictive statistics. As I thought, the area had nine months to a year before their little sanctuary would be indistinguishable from the desert. The logs on crop production were equally disheartening. Survival rate of plants had plunged, even with the humans limiting the varieties to the more drought and heat-tolerant varieties. It was dark by the time I closed the book. I’d grabbed some crackers and something that looked like beef jerky from a cabinet, wondering if Kirby ever ate dinner.

  Stretching, I made my way back to the front of the building, thinking I might just head to bed early and dive back into this in the morning. The mage was still in his shop, polishing stones by lamplight, a set of carving tools to his left. “Do you ever rest?” I teased. “Go party? Run naked through the woods? Kiss a girl? Eat dinner?”

  He looked up to give me a quick smile. “This is my life. Most mages are infant changelings. I fell through the elven trap at ten years old. I’ve had to work twice as hard to make up for lost time.”

  I tilted my head, looking at him intently. “All magic, all the time. I know you’ve returned to see your parents. Isn’t there anything else in your life? A girl the other side of the gates? A girl here? A passion for
dominoes or a good smoked porter?”

  He shook his head. “All magic, all the time. I see my parents once a month. I don’t really have time for dating, or dominos, or smoked porter, whatever that is.”

  It seemed kind of sad, but maybe this was his passion, and magic was a jealous mistress?

  “I’m not a virgin,” he told me out of the blue. “There were a few girls when I was in academy, but just casual, you know. I don’t have time…just no time for anything else.”

  I’d met the occasional asexual person. He didn’t have to rationalize his feelings to me, but I got the impression there was more behind his hasty explanation. He’d not wanted me to know his fantasies, and his abrupt announcement made me even more curious what they were and why he was so desperate to hide them – and desperate to make sure I knew he had some sexual experience. Did he want to have sex with goats or something? I wouldn’t judge, but that wasn’t exactly something I could help him with.

  “You don’t want me to see your fantasies, is it possible that you don’t want to see them yourself?”

  He stared at the stone in his hand, rolling it around his palm. “Hardly. I’ve had them in my mind for most of my life. They’ll never be realized. My fantasies are of something that will never come to pass. Doesn’t mean I don’t see them every night.”

  This was exactly the sort of man I went for back home. They desperately wanted something that they would never have in real life. I gave that to them. I gave them the impossible. And sharing their energy with me for the rest of their lives was a small price to pay for the realization of their sexual dreams. But I couldn’t help Kirby if he didn’t want to have those fantasies come to life.

  “If you ever decide you want my help, let me know. I’m game for anything – as long as it doesn’t involve killing or socks and sandals.” Or animals, because I couldn’t exactly transform myself into a goat.