“These. If you convince the mortal to renounce our gift, we shall restore you both to what you were, and you may leave us. If you fail, you keep our gifts. He stays as our Fool. You leave or stay as you please.”
“Oooh,” said several of the younger elves. One, the small girl, clapped her hands.
“Bitch,” said Leda.
“It is the Game,” Eilva’ar explained contentedly. “Play if you wish to keep him. Go if you prefer.”
Leda touched her tongue to her upper lip, then nodded. “Wolfboy. Concentrate. Can’t you tell what they’ve done?”
“Yes. They’ve made me human. It’s nice.”
“Oh, screw it.” She started to say something in the odd Elvish speech, the one they used to shape spells.
“No!” Weyaka’an said. “You may not use magic to undo our gift to him. It is our only condition.”
Eilva’ar said sweetly, “You will make us take your powers back, should you persist. Do not turn this into a test of force, for that you could never win.”
“You suck. What about illusion, then? Surely that’s fair.”
Eilva’ar glanced at Weyaka’an and back at Leda. “It would have a certain elegance, should you succeed. And a piquancy, should you fail.”
“All right.” Leda snapped her hands and shouted. I was Wolfboy then, and the others were dressed in elaborate silks and leathers, not like savages but like Elflands elves.
“No!” I howled, and filled my mind with, Illusion, she said it was illusion, so this is a lie, a damned lie for whatever damned reason, she doesn’t want me to be free again, it’s illusion! Pure illusion!
I was human once more. The wild elves smiled, watching us in their paint and trinkets. A few applauded.
Leda scowled, then shouted again. Stars whirled about me. There was nothing to stand on, only more stars below, the only lights in a darkness through which I fell, ever faster. I felt ill. Both parts of my mind, the watching part and the acting part, said, This isn’t true! Reject it!
The glade returned, flickering oddly, as if two images of the world were fighting for dominance. I couldn’t make out details until I saw what I knew was true: my human form, the kind wild elves, Leda in her rich elf’s dress.
“Yes,” Eilva’ar said. “As I predicted.” The watchers laughed when she added, “Have you any other tricks for us?”
“Forgive me, Wolfboy,” Leda whispered. She slapped me, hard and fast.
I touched my cheek. “Why?” I was hurt by the fact that she’d hit me, not by the blow. Though she seemed to have put her strength in the slap, for all the effect it had, I might as well still be the Wolf.
“Renounce them, Wolfboy! They want to keep you as a damn pet!”
“It’ll be fun here. I won’t be a freak.”
She hit me in the stomach with her fist. For a flicker of an instant, I saw myself covered with reddish fur, Leda in her silver-gray coveralls, and the other elves in silk and leather. That faded.
“Wake up, Wolfboy!” She hit me again, and I saw she was crying. “Oh, gods, wake up, please!” The wild elves laughed and clapped their hands. “It’s not worth it, Wolf. You get speech, that’s all. They couldn’t make you human. There’s a curse so tangled around you that no one could undo it. Even if those bastards could help, it wouldn’t be worth this.”
“Go away,” I said. “If you have to lie to me, just go away.”
She stared, then raised her hand to slap me again. I caught her wrist. In a low, grating voice, I said, “I. Want. To. Stay.”
“Oh, God,” Leda whispered.
“So. You admit defeat?” Eilva’ar pointed away, where the plum black Triumph bobbed near a tree. “Your floating disturbance is there, if you wish to leave us now.”
Leda snapped her head toward Eilva’ar. “You’re so pathetic. Hiding in the woods, afraid of what’s happening in Faerie and the World and Bordertown. Your stupid Game is out of date, Kate. Pretending to be savages so humans won’t know about you when they already live among us in Bordertown, when Faerie and the World trade regularly—”
Weyaka’an sneered. “It is degeneracy.”
“It’s progress. Look at you! You can’t even get the details of your Game right. Why should you pretend for Wolfboy’s sake that Weyaka’an’s the leader? Because humans were ruled by men when we dealt with them before, back when they were little more than the savages you’re pretending to be? It’s stupid!”
“Perhaps.” Eilva’ar plainly did not care. “The Game still entertains us. Your human may amuse us for forty years or more, eh? And then our antiquated ways will win his replacement, I suspect.” She pointed again. “Your vehicle awaits you.”
“Did I say I was quitting?”
“There is no need. You’ve clearly lost.”
Leda glanced at me. I nodded, seconding Eilva’ar. Leda closed her eyes briefly, swallowed, then stepped close to me. She lifted her hand. When I flinched, she said, “I won’t hit you again.”
I let her touch my cheek. She said, “I’m sorry I hit you. I thought I could startle you into seeing the truth. I was wrong. I’m sorry.” She took me by both wrists and tugged. We sat on the grass, cross-legged before each other. She continued to hold my hands. The wild elves watched intently, but Leda ignored them.
“I don’t know what to say. You’ve been good to me. I can’t repay you by leaving you here.”
“I’m happy.”
She shook her head, a quick, pained movement. “Please. Don’t say anything.”
I smiled. I liked sitting there with her holding my hands.
After a moment, she spoke. “Wolfboy, I—” She shook her head and started again. “When I was going through withdrawal, what bothered me most was that you didn’t know anything about me, yet you took care of me. I got over being embarrassed about being helpless, but I can’t get over your helping me. I’m not a good person.”
I opened my mouth to speak. She touched my lips to seal them. “I’m not. Maybe the folks who adopted me were too strict, or maybe they weren’t strict enough, I don’t know. I didn’t think my parents loved me, but now I’m not sure that’s true. Or that it matters. I was a brat. Okay, José?”
She stared at me until I nodded to please her.
“I got worse. Lots of running around, so the parents got more strict, so I ran around more. And I did stupid things. Maybe the worst was abusing my magic. I used it for pranks, making people’s pants disappear, turning a teacher’s necklace into a cobra. The teacher almost died when it bit her. I ran away, and things were better for a while, but when things went bad, I went home again. And I went back to my old habits.”
She bit her lips. “’Bout two years ago, my father wanted to send me to Faerie. I went on a party instead. He had some wizards strip me of my magic. I guess he thought it was the only thing left to do. So I took my bike and ran away again, knowing this time I didn’t have a home to return to.”
It was an interesting story because it was important to Leda, but I had trouble remembering its beginning. She squeezed my hands. “I didn’t care about anything, Wolf. You know how the last couple of years were, what I did to get by. You saw what I was when you met me.”
I nodded. I hadn’t liked her, for some reason. I liked her now, though, so why did that matter?
“Yet you took care of me.” She exhaled abruptly, a harsh laugh, so I laughed too. “I thought you were really stupid.” That was hilarious, so I laughed harder. “Why would anyone take care of someone like me?” I opened my mouth to laugh even louder, and she said, “What made it horrible is I figured something out.”
That wasn’t a punchline, so I waited. She winced, then said, “I turned you into Wolfboy. I didn’t see it right away. Not until I was getting sick and...”
I nodded to reassure her. The punchline was coming, but I was getting worried because I’d forgotten the setup for the joke.
“You know me, then. And it didn’t matter to you. I couldn’t figure that out. ‘Cause I’m—”
She shook her head again, then pulled on my hands so I would stop watching a dragonfly that had landed on her knee. Its blue-green wings sparkled in the sun.
“When I was a kid, I thought I acted wild ‘cause I didn’t have real parents, just adopted ones, as if being a parent was something you were instead of something you did. And I acted wild ‘cause the world wasn’t like in stories. No perfect people doing nice things all the time.
“Then you came on like the knight in shaggy armor, y’know? In spite of everything.” As she said that, I felt for a second as if I’d eaten something rotten.
“That’s when I realized people had been taking care of me all along. Even when—no, especially when—I ran away, when I was on my own and it didn’t matter what I did, everyone took care of me. The people who gave me food or spare change or a place to sleep. The people who got out of my way when I went racing through the streets. None of them perfect and nice all the time, but all taking care of me, whether they realized it or not.”
She looked at her hands, then turned her face up to meet mine. The dragonfly had flown away, to where I couldn’t see it without turning away from her, which would make her sad. “I care, okay? That’s why I want to get you out of here. Because I owe everybody something. Because I—” Her upper lip got an odd crease in it as she worked her mouth in frustration, and I wondered if I should tell her about it. She finally said, “I owe you everything.”
She studied my face. I decided not to say anything about the crease, because it was gone. She touched the back of my hands to her eyes, blotting her tears with the fur—no, the skin there. She kissed each hand once above the knuckles, then released them. I watched her stand.
Eilva’ar asked, “You admit defeat?”
Leda looked down and shrugged.
“Go, then,” Eilva’ar said.
Leda bent over, put her arms around me, and kissed me lightly on the lips while I sat perfectly still. She whispered, “I love you, Wolfboy.” Then she turned and ran toward the bike. All the dragonflies had gone away. Maybe she had scared them. Was she going to find more?
“It is victory.” Eilva’ar glanced at me and beckoned. “Rise, Fool.”
I lifted my head enough to meet the wild elf’s eyes. Something damp trickled along either side of my nose.
I looked at Leda approaching her bike, then back at the wild elves’ camp. Two scenes rested uneasily on top of each other, each blurring the other. In one, Eilva’ar, Weyaka’an, and the rest stood, distant and imperious, dressed in elaborate brocades and silks like rich Elflanders on a picnic. The trees around us were live oaks, not sequoias. Beyond them, something built of crystal and silver stood like a palace or an airship.
That scene disappeared like a vision in a popped soap bubble. Eilva’ar, a naked wild elf once more, beckoned impatiently with one finger. “Now, Fool.”
Leda gunned her engine. I looked. Her hands moved stiffly, as if she was doing some magic that she hadn’t tried in years.
Watching the shapes she carved in the air, I thought, What a strange elf, to say in farewell, No, you have big fun.
I said, “Eilva’ar?”
She nodded, waiting to see how I would begin the rest of my life as her clown. “Yes, Fool?”
“Kiss my furry ass, Cass!” I spun on my heel, screaming, “Hey!” at Leda’s back. “Wait up!”
She glanced over her shoulder. She wore her faded coveralls, and her hair was as short and wild as ever, though the elves had managed to wash the purple dye from it, and I thought I’d never seen anyone so beautiful.
Shouting, “Wolfboy!” she raced the Triumph toward me. I leaped onto its back. It dipped under my weight, bouncing once on the ground before it leveled itself.
Leda grinned. Her engine’s roar obliterated the cries from Eilva’ar’s camp.
Chapter 16—Homeward Bound
Leda cut the Triumph’s roar as soon as we left the wild elves’ sight. Sometimes you want defiance, sometimes, discretion. Or maybe Leda just wanted to talk. After a minute or two of riding in silence, she said, “’Ass, Cass?’ I dunno, Wolf. If that’s what rhymetime reduces you to, maybe I’ll give it up.”
I tried to answer and could only growl.
She said, “Oh. Sorry.”
I looked back. We were leaving the forest. No one was following that I could see, hear, or smell. If the large silvery thing was a vehicle, it probably couldn’t maneuver among the trees.
My nose was close to Leda’s neck. If I hadn’t known to hunt for it, I would never have been able to find, somewhere under the smell of the woods and the bike and her soap and all the glands that had kicked in since puberty, Florida’s scent. I didn’t need to ask to see the birthmarks on her shoulder.
Plucking paper and a pencil stub from my pockets, I scrawled a note, using my knee for a desk. The wind tried to snatch the page, so I shielded it with one hand. On the wheelless bike, there was no vibration to make it hard to write. The only challenge was finding the right words. I wrote, DON’T BE SORRY. I CHOSE. IF I COULD DO IT AGAIN 1000X, I’D CHOOSE THE SAME. & BE GRATEFUL. I passed that up to her.
She smiled over her shoulder. “Woofboy.”
I passed another note. Why didn’t you just tell me?
We probably covered two miles of open plains before she spoke. “Tell my first best friend that the kid he’d befriended had turned him into something he hated? Guess.”
I wrote, WHEN DID YOU RECOGNIZE ME?
“Like I said in front of the would-be wildies. Not until you were nursing me through the worst parts. I couldn’t believe it then, not till later, when I woke up among the would-bes. Still doesn’t make sense.” She laughed. “You’re not nearly as big as the Wolfboy I remember, but you’re at least as pretty.”
I didn’t want to write the next one. I BROUGHT YOU HERE TO ABANDON YOU. I KNEW YOU WERE LEDA, WHO CURSED ME.
She laughed. “Yeah, you sure made me suffer.”
I MEANT TO.
She nodded. “Okay. Why?”
‘CAUSE YOU WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR FLORIDA— She glanced back over her shoulder at my notepad. I crumpled that sheet and threw it away. ‘CAUSE IF YOU HADN’T CURSED ME, I WOULD’VE BEEN ABLE—
When she saw the second paper wad fly, she said, “Hey, Critter, don’t litter. Oops. Already backsliding.”
I wrote, I’M GLAD YOU’RE BACK.
She said, “Big ditto.”
We rolled on. The sun wasn’t part of the wild elves’ magic, and when you’ve got a bike, you’ve always got wind. I grinned as the country turned from plains to new forest. Eventually, I wrote, SO, WHAT HAPPENED?
She laughed. “I was going to ask you. It was eleven or twelve years ago for me, and I was just a kid then.”
I wrote, REMEMBER MILO’S SPELL?
She shook her head. “Milo cast a spell? I remember being locked up with Mickey and Goldy. One of the guards had a gun and she was going to shoot—” She looked back at me, then ahead at the road. “Oh. She was going to shoot you. I was trying to jump her, to stop her, I guess. I can’t remember if I had a plan. I just had to stop her.”
She spoke as if she saw something dimly in the distance and describing it drew out its details. “I landed on the floor. I thought the girl had dodged me, and I couldn’t see well or breathe well, ‘cause I’d kicked up a lot of dust, a lot more dust than I remembered being on the floor. So I spun around, trying to catch the girl’s gun while I was blind and coughing, and—”
She nodded decisively. “The room was empty. The light through the window was brighter than it’d been. It hurt my eyes. The cage they’d locked us in had been pushed up against a wall and packed full of cardboard boxes. The floor was covered with dirt and guano. Some rats—nonhuman ones—ran to hide as I looked around. They and I were the only living things in the room. I couldn’t—” She shrugged. “I guess I felt like Alice Through the Looking Glass, only I didn’t think of that then. And I was a lot more scared than Alice. What was Milo’s spell supposed to do?”
“A theory.” She laughed. “That’s reassuring. Okay. I ran—” She lifted her head, swerved around an ancient pileup of cars, wrecked at the time of the Change, and said, “Outside. I wasn’t yelling, ‘cause I was afraid to, but I was listening, and I’m pretty sure there wasn’t anyone in the building.”
I nodded.
“Outside was scarier. Bordertown had changed, too. I couldn’t quite see how, then, but I knew it. Some of the buildings were in better shape than I remembered, some were worse, some were the wrong colors. The ones that were the right colors were the wrong hue. Even the plants had changed. Trees and bushes were the wrong size, or they were growing in places where there hadn’t been any. I hunted for someone who could explain what’d happened, but Elsewhere was just an empty storefront, and Danceland was a boarded-up bus station.”
I winced, which she couldn’t see. She seemed pleased to be remembering this so well.
“The most frightening find was Castle Pup, where I’d been safe the first time I’d been homeless in B-town. I remembered watching it burn, yet now it stood where it had always been. It may’ve had fewer broken windows than I remembered, and more rubbish in its doorway, but it was the same building. I went in. The entry was dark, but it was always dark, remember? I heard noise inside, like people talking. So I climbed the front stairs, calling the names of people we knew there.”
I winced again. She didn’t need to say that mine had been one of the names.
She laughed. “I don’t know if I expected to be met by you and the old gang or by your ghosts. I think I’d decided I was in a dream world by then. What met me were a bunch of Packers who chased me off, yelling about what they did to elves who didn’t keep to their own turf. I escaped ‘em easily. In some ways, it was nice to face a familiar problem. Does that help your theory?”
I couldn’t make myself laugh with her. I nodded and handed her my note.
MY THEORY, BY WOLFBOY. MILO DIDN’T WANT TO HURT ANY OF THE RATS. HE THOUGHT “TO REVERSE TEN YEARS” WOULD MAKE THE SUBJECT OF HIS SPELL 10 YEARS YOUNGER. WHEN HE HIT YOU INSTEAD OF A WHARF RAT, WE BELIEVED YOU’D BEEN REGRESSED PAST BIRTH, TO SOMETHING LESS THAN AN EGG AND A SPERM CELL. NOW I THINK HIS SPELL WORKED PERFECTLY—HE JUST MISINTERPRETED IT. IT MOVED HIS SUBJECT TEN YEARS BACK IN TIME.
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