by C. Gockel
Tara’s eyes snap to him. “It hit your femoral artery?”
“I didn’t mention that?” Lionel says, busy putting some chips into a container. “Yes. What else … I can World Walk … too easily, that’s my special talent. Most of us have individual talents that don’t take a particularly large amount of energy or concentration … I can make myself invisible, which is how I wasn’t found when I got shot. I managed to stay hidden until my attackers passed me.”
Tara gets that prickly feeling in the back of her neck. “Did you see your attackers?”
Lionel tilts his head. “Who exactly shot me? No.”
Had the figures in blue had guns? Tara thinks she saw holsters on their hips.
“Are all those magical powers unusual for elves?” Tara asks, something nagging at her.
Frowning, Lionel turns a Tupperware lid around in his hands. “It’s … common for some.”
But it’s uncommon for you and that’s been hard, hasn’t it? The insight comes in a flash, but Tara doesn’t seek clarification, or offer any empathy. It’s best to keep distance between yourself and people who think you’re lesser by virtue of things outside your control.
Lionel leans against the counter, and his brows become drawn. Clutching his shoulders, he grimaces. Even though he’s a little bit of a jerk, she has the urge to reach out and touch him out of sympathy.
She’s lonely, obviously.
She should get a cat.
“Do you want more medicine?” she asks, carefully keeping her hands on the Tupperware.
He whispers, “My bones shouldn’t hurt … it’s my leg that was hit.” He shakes his head. “I have to go home.”
She couldn’t agree more. “We’ll find you a World Gate,” she says.
“You know about those?” he says.
“Since Loki showed up, everyone knows,” she replies.
He shivers. “The Destroyer.”
She raises an eyebrow. Hadn’t the Dark Elves and Loki been in league with one another? She decides she shouldn’t ask. She should get him to a World Gate that takes him home.
She grabs the garbage bag from beneath the sink. And then, unable to resist, she says, “Airplanes are machines that fly through the air and carry up to hundreds of people.”
He looks up and narrows his eyes at her. “You’re lying.”
“Nope,” she says, lifting her chin.
“Hippalectryon,” he shoots back.
“What’s that?” she asks, envisioning an electric hippopotamus.
Massaging one of his shoulders, he winks. “That is a word that is the same in your language and Elvish, I feel it. You just don’t know what a hippalectryon is.”
“Surge protector,” she says.
His face gets hard. “Velociraptor,” he hisses, and then his eyes go wide in a horrified expression … probably mirroring Tara’s perfectly.
In unison, they demand of each other, “You have those?!”
Tara’s lips part. She says weakly, “We only know about them from their bones.”
At the same time, Lionel says, “Occasionally there’s a bad egg.”
Her eyes go wide. She did not want to hear that. “I’m going to take out the garbage.” Tying up the bag, she says, “Be right back.”
Leaving him perusing some photos on her refrigerator, she goes down the hall. Her phone rings with her mom’s tone and she answers just before she reaches the door. She gets a torrent of “Tara, Alma just called me, the plane flight is tonight! I have to take off of work and go! Can you believe she got the date wrong?”
“Yes,” Tara says, not able to remember a birthday card that wasn’t late or terribly early from Aunt Alma.
“Don’t be mean, she loves you,” says her mom.
“I know, Mom,” Tara says.
“I won’t be able to do your hair tomorrow,” her mom says.
Tara tries to pretend that it doesn’t hurt. Her mom has always done her hair since she was a little girl. “It’s okay, Mom. I’ll survive.”
“I miss you already,” her mom says.
“I miss you, too,” says Tara.
“Oh, I’ve got a client, I have to go!”
“Love you, Mom,” Tara says.
“I love you too, Sweetheart.” The line goes dead. Tara puts her phone on the little shelf by the door to get a better grip on the garbage bag, and then huffs. She left her cruddy-cheap slip-on shoes by the front door when she walked to her mom’s car, only her boots are here … her Italian leather, stacked heel, Jimmy Choo ankle boots that she picked up at a yard sale for twenty-five dollars. Up until she found an elf in her alley, that was about the most magical thing that has ever happened to her. They are not boots to take out the garbage in. She sniffs, nearly gags on the reek of the bag, and slips them on. Before she goes out, she peeks out the window for signs of trolls, wyrms, men in blue, and velociraptors. No one is in her yard, or the alley that she can see. She steps out the door, and is just down the stoop when she is attacked, not from the alley or the yard but from above.
Carried Away
Lionel is looking at a very interesting painting of amazing detail that features Tara and some humans of a complexion more like his own. Oddly, the beautiful piece of art is hanging haphazardly from a magnet attached to a metal box that might be one of the “ice boxes” he’d heard of.
He reaches up to touch the edge, and the sleeve of Tara’s lumpy spare garment falls back, revealing the edge of his soulmark. Is it his imagination, or has it gotten a little faded around the edges? He exhales and closes his eyes. He hadn’t told her that he has looked for his soulmate, sending out missives with every delegation that passed through the Queen’s Palace … even to the Night Elves. He has never heard back. He knows he is too young to get married, but the games of the palace weary him. They feel hollow, meaningless. He’d hoped that with his soulmate he’d have something different. Even if it was just friendship for a few centuries or so. He pulls his forearm to his stomach. Friendship … what if she told him of all her paramours and set off his jealous streak? What if she was like Light Leaf? He shakes his head at his own foolishness. That was the thing about soulmates though; they were supposed to be of accord with you, by definition.
From outside comes a shout from Tara. “Get away! Get away!”
Before he’s even thought about it, Lionel finds himself racing down the hall, grimacing in pain … the World Gate controlled by the Dark Elves is just a few hundred paces down the narrow roadway behind her home. Would they hurt a human to get to him?
Clasping his key tight, he reaches the back door. Through a tiny window he sees Tara in the yard holding her hands above her head being dive-bombed by a familiar bird.
Lionel bursts outside and the cold air hits him like a blow, the near-freezing pavement beneath his almost bare feet makes his soles feel like they’re burning.
The dive-bombing raven is screaming, “Where is he? Where is the elf? We heard you, woman!”
Another bird is ripping at the garbage bag rawking, “Tamales!”
“You’re screaming in Elvish, Muninn!” Lionel shouts at Odin’s winged messenger. “She’s human.”
Flapping to sit atop a fence, Muninn rawks, “Oops.”
Picking up the headscarf that was torn from her head, Tara gapes at the bird. Lionel puts a hand to his face, mortified at how they’ve treated her and deeply disturbed by their presence. He’s used to seeing them in his official capacity. He’s only seen them once in an unofficial capacity when he’d accidentally world walked to Midgard as a child … he doesn’t want to think about what their presence might mean.
Muninn ruffles his feathers, and in English says, “Don’t look at me like that, I’m not the thinking part of this team.”
On the bag, the other raven, Huginn—whose name means “thought”—hops and clacks its beak. “Tamales! Corn, corn, corn, corn, masa!”
Lionel’s skin heats. “Apologize.” The word comes out almost a shout, and he finds himself taking a
step toward the raven.
The bird hops back on the fence. “Aw, come on, Lionel—”
The air between him and the bird shimmers.
“Sheesh! All right, don’t turn me into a birdcicle,” Muninn rawks.
Lionel puts his hand down. He doesn’t remember raising it. Had he tried to freeze the bird?
Muninn cleans his wings, defecates, and then mutters in Tara’s direction, “Sorry, whoever you are, but you did call us.”
“I didn’t call you,” Tara protests.
Muninn walks toward her on the fence. “Sure you did, Sweetheart,” and in a facsimile of Tara’s voice says, “Jesus, Odin don’t let Lionel die!” He ruffles his feathers. “Or some such. You prayed, I heard.”
“You prayed for me?” Lionel asks in wonder. Sometimes magical beings hear prayers, but only when it relates to their higher purpose. If Huginn and Muninn were ordered to find Lionel, they might consider it their purpose.
“I—” Tara stammers, in the process of wrapping the scarf around her hair. Pausing, she points at the bird. “Not to him.”
Grasping the key, Lionel takes a step toward her. The day is dreary but he sees Tara silhouetted by a doorway and backlit by sunlight again. He has the sensation that he’s flying, or has broken free. He wants to thank her for saving his life again, and it occurs to him that maybe it’s just his subconscious wanting to bind himself to her because he wants to keep this feeling.
“Right,” says Muninn. “Well, you can’t go back through the World Gate down the street because it’s been taken over by Dark Elves.”
“I thought you were a Dark Elf,” Tara says, and the vision evaporates.
“Ruh-roh, Scooby,” says Muninn.
“Tamales!” rawks Huginn.
“You have to go to Mary Bartelme Park,” says Muninn. “There’s a gate there. The big guy would come for you himself but he’s looking for—”
“Shut up, Muninn!” rawks Huginn, something green and mushy dropping from its beak.
Lionel swallows. The “big guy” would come for him himself? He takes a deep breath. No, no, no … perhaps the queen is worried he could give sensitive information to their enemies, and requested the assistance of Odin’s messengers. Yes, that is all. She’s called in a favor.
“Give me some of that, Huginn!” squawks Muninn.
“Ew,” says Tara, her nose wrinkling. “That was mixed in with six-week-old sour cream and a bad avocado.”
Flapping down to the bag, Muninn shrugs his wings and rawks. “We’re scavengers!”
“We should go inside,” Lionel says, feeling suddenly tired and wary. There may not be velociraptors on earth, but they are perhaps only five hundred paces from the gate. They might be overheard.
“No way is it pooping in my house,” Tara exclaims, tying her scarf.
Grasping the key, he sends invisible projections along the block, but he doesn’t sense any magical beings.
He’s distantly aware of Tara muttering, “I pray and get heard by a dirty bird.”
And one of the birds saying, “You should be honored.”
Pulling the projections back to himself, he lets one of them slip through the outbuilding where the chariot sleeps. The apparition winks out near the door that opens from that building to Tara’s little yard.
That was odd. He takes a step toward the door. His other apparitions sense nothing magical in that corner. In fact, they sense an odd absence of all ambient magic around a brown, coppery bag.
Lionel shivers. He’s not sure what it is, but he’s sure it’s wrong. “We have to get inside,” Lionel says, stepping toward Tara and putting a hand on her arm.
“What?” says Tara, her eyes going to his hands.
Has he done something taboo? He can’t bring himself to let her go, but takes a step back, hand still on her. He has to keep her from the wrongness. Trying to explain, he says, “Something is obstructing my magic and—”
The door from Tara’s outbuilding bangs open and a mesh of coppery brown goes flying through the air. It lands on Lionel and he notes that it’s wire-like and sharp. In the periphery of his vision he sees the ravens take off in a flurry of feathers and hears their angry cries. He calls out to Tara, “Run, Tara, run,” and gasps as the words come out in Elvish, not her Midgardian tongue.
Somewhere Tara yells. He hears a thud, a yelp, and in Elvish tinged with the accent of the Dark Elves, “Tie up the Valkyrie, too!”
He pulls the silk cord of his key into his palm and squeezes so tight it hurts, but he feels no magic. The mesh around him is getting tighter, pain explodes in all his limbs, and Lionel can’t think at all.
“Put me down!” Tara cries, trying to wiggle out of the sack she’s in. It’s wire and cutting her face and hands. The sack is being held at her feet and head by figures she can’t make out—other than to realize they’re not wearing cop-like uniforms. They’re not speaking English either, and she has no idea if she’s being understood. They’re moving fast down her alley and she’s rocking, bouncing, and occasionally scraping against the cobblestones.
Behind her, she hears Lionel moan and angry words from her captors in another language.
Lights go off behind her eyes in every color of the rainbow and for an instant, Tara thinks that she must have hit her head. The air suddenly gets ten degrees warmer and she smells decay. She smells fetid water, and her nose wrinkles in disgust. “Lionel,” she calls. “Lionel, where are we?”
Lionel says something, but it’s not in English. Someone kicks her halfheartedly in the hip. She hears a louder thud behind her, and hears Lionel sputter and gag. Tara gulps. Rainbow light—a World Gate. She thinks she read something that @godsofradioshack posted about rainbow light between the worlds. She’s in another world.
She looks around, and from her awkward angle makes out a sort of fort that looks like something from an Old West movie—logs with sharpened tops. Instead of cowboys, there are Indians along the wall, bows in hand. The Indians are of every shade with pointed ears, wearing clothing that looks medieval rather than Native American.
Two elves are arguing near her. She’s dropped unceremoniously on the ground, and struggles to free herself, but is abruptly hauled up again. A few minutes later, she’s passing through a gate made of logs. All around her are dark alien trees and swamp. She hears Lionel give a low moan, and is ridiculously grateful he’s coming with her.
Their captors take off at a lope. Sharp grasses poke at her, and she sees strange black shadows swoop above. Tara picks at the net that’s carrying her, but the wire is too strong to break with her fingers. She tries with her keys and gets them ripped away. She squints at the wire … it’s in a weird shape … octagonal. She’s heard Eisenberg speak about “Promethean Wire,” a sort of “cage that inhibits dark energy within it.” She bites her lip. Could that be why Lionel seems to be so helpless?
The bag bounces, and she feels the netting biting into her skin and warm sticky wetness on her cheeks. She tastes blood, but the cries from Lionel make her realize that he’s got it much worse. She’s not sure how far they’ve gone when she hears voices, and sees figures with pointy ears in rag-like clothing around her. They have what look like machine guns strapped to their backs … AK-47s like Loki’s minions the Dark Elves?
She remembers Lionel apparently isn’t a Dark Elf. Why didn’t he tell her? And whose side is he on?
They go up a gentle rise, and the ground goes from being stinking mud and water to dry packed earth. She thinks she sees a few squat buildings, and then is carried into a dark interior that smells like mildew. She hears footsteps and what sounds like curses. Before she knows it, she’s unrolled from her bag onto a floor covered with sharp, dry grasses. As she struggles to get up, two more elf men throw Lionel next to her, and he lets out a horrible cry of pain. Unsteadily rising to her feet, Tara lunges over him, trying to block the exit before they close it, but their captors slam a barred door lined with the same octagonal mesh in her face.
Tara stares
through the bars, sees a rough stone wall and a tiny window through which dim light penetrates the gloom. “Why are you doing this?” she shouts. She shakes the bars, but the lock doesn’t give, and the mesh cuts her fingers. Pain makes her take a step back. She feels wetness on her face that isn’t blood. Taking a deep breath, she remembers the words her father used to tell her when they were wiring houses. “Whenever you get frustrated, slow down and think. Less haste is more speed, Tara.”
Taking a deep breath, that is half a sob, she focuses on how her cage was made. Through eyes blurred by tears, she notices that the mesh is soldered to the bars with thick alloy bands. Tugging at a joint, she only manages to hurt herself and backs up with an angry cry. The contortion of her cheeks makes her cuts burn. Reaching up, she finds welts. She jerks her hand away, and sees blood on her fingers.
Forcing herself not to touch and infect the wound, she pats down her pockets and groans. She left her phone at home. She could have used the light.
On the floor, Lionel moans again and Tara goes over to him. “What did they do to you?” she whispers.
His face and hands are scratched and bleeding like Tara’s. But he also has a sheen of sweat upon his brow, and he’s doubled over on the floor, clutching his shins, rocking slightly, the silken cord and key still around his wrist. The key is the old-fashioned kind. Either their captors didn’t notice it or figured rightly that it would be useless to cut through the mesh.
Lionel moans again and Tara doesn’t know what to do, other than push his sweat-slicked bangs away from his face and pull his head into her lap. He looks like he is in agony.
“Lionel,” she says. “Lionel, do you understand me?”
Lionel’s eyes flutter open, and he shakes his head. “Llee wanlewee, nil.” He hisses and closes his eyes.
He doesn’t understand her. He’s not touching the bullet wound, although she can see the wound is starting to weep again. He’s rubbing his shins …
He said earlier that something was obstructing his magic in English. But then they’d been trussed up and he’d called out in what she thinks was Elvish. The wire has to be the magic-stopping Promethean stuff she’d heard about … Tara begins digging through the straw and the damp ground beneath it. About half an inch beneath the dirt, her fingers scrape across more wire. She tries prying at it with her finger, but it doesn’t budge. Her eyes dart around in the darkness. It must have an edge that might be a weak point. She looks at the doors of the cell where the mesh had been so carefully soldered … or maybe it wasn’t.