Spirits White as Lightning

by Mercedes Lackey

  How did you find me? she wondered again, but she didn't ask. There'd be time enough to ask questions later.

  Or there wouldn't.

  * * *

  She had to find someplace to get in out of the weather. Damn all well-meaning fools—her last ride had told her she could pick up the main road just over the hill, and now she was wandering around in the rain, no sign of a road, and about as lost as a body could get and still be in West Virginia. Without her flashlight, she'd probably have broken her neck already.

  Got to keep going, she told herself stubbornly. At least she was on some kind of a road. Roads had to lead somewhere, didn't they? Just not always where you were planning on going.

  She wished she had something to eat. She wished she had a home where she could feel like somebody's daughter, instead of like another employee.

  But that's over with, now, isn't it? You've picked yourself up and gone to Canaan, and if Lord Jesus wants you back the way Daddy's always saying He does, then He can come tell you so Himself.

  Her name was Heavenly Grace Fairchild—though she preferred "Ace," and if she had her way, nobody was ever going to call her by her birth name again. Heavenly Grace, Inc. was her father's ministry, carried for an hour three times a week on several thousand Christian networks coast-to-coast. Her earliest memories were of riding in the ministry's bus from one tent revival to the next, of singing hymns at the head of the Heavenly Grace Choir, but that had only been the start of things for Billy Fairchild. He'd had plans—first, for the Cathedral of Heavenly Grace, now a 25-story office building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then for a worldwide empire.

  But she didn't want to be a part of that. It seemed that the more houses and cars and thousand-dollar suits her daddy got, the more he and Mama argued. And no matter how righteously her daddy pitched the Gospel, it always seemed to stop the minute the cameras stopped rolling. Jesus had been a poor man, hadn't he, bringing words of comfort and love to poor people? The older she got, the less she could see how what her daddy was doing had anything to do with Jesus. She'd begged him to let her stop performing, whipping up the audiences with hallelujah hymns in the studio, but he wouldn't hear of it. And when he'd hired that secretary of his, Gabriel Horn, she'd known that she'd never be allowed to stop. The plans for her going off to college that her mama had talked about so proudly had been set aside. There was plenty of money—there'd always been plenty of money, for as long as Ace could remember—but she wasn't going to be allowed to leave. Not if Daddy and Gabriel had their way.

  So she'd run. She didn't know where she'd end up, but anywhere had to be better than Tulsa. And maybe they wouldn't want her back, now that she'd rebelled. Lucifer had rebelled, and been cast down out of Heaven for doubting God's word, but Billy Fairchild wasn't God, and Ace thought that sometimes you had to take matters into your own hands.

  A flash of lightning turned the sky white, and in the brief illumination she could see a set of iron gates up ahead. That meant a house. Maybe they'd take her in for the night, or maybe at least there was a garage there she could hide out in until it stopped raining.

  But when she got to the gates, she saw they were old and rusted, and the building beyond was only an old ruin, charred by fire. Still she kept on, hoping for shelter. The rain had stopped as she walked, and the clouds rolled back, leaving a full moon riding high in the sky. It gave her enough light to see by, but now the temperature was dropping—even in summer, wandering around at night in wet clothes was a good way to catch your death. She had dry clothes in her pack. Maybe there'd be someplace here she could change into them.

  But when she got inside, she found that the years and the fire had left nothing behind but the house's shell. The upper stories had caved in and burnt to ashes, and where there had been cellars, those too stood exposed. Tears of disappointment filled her eyes, but she scrubbed them angrily away.

  As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw a bundle off to one side, something under a tarp. She set her pack down in the doorway and went over to look.

  Somebody's left a bike here! She pulled the tarp all the way off, staring at it in wonder. A gleaming Harley-Davidson motorcycle, looking just like it had wheeled off the showroom floor. The keys were even still in the ignition.

  I won't take it, she told herself, even if Johnnie had taught her to ride his old Indian before Daddy'd canned him for looking too familiarly at his only daughter. But whoever left it here has got to live around here. I could just take it and ride it down to the road and leave it for them. She hugged herself, shivering, but need won out over scrupulous honesty. She slipped her backpack on again and swung her leg over the saddle.

  The bike started on the first try. She wheeled it down the steps and back onto the road.

  When she saw the lights off to the side of the road, Ace couldn't keep her conscience quiet any more. This wasn't borrowing. This was stealing, and if she did that, she'd be just as bad as Daddy, taking things from people and saying it was okay because he needed them more than the other people did. She sighed, and turned the bike off the road, toward the light. At least she could tell the bike's owner that it wasn't a good idea to leave your ride out in the middle of nowhere with the keys in the ignition.

  But when she got there, nobody was in the cabin. She knew the bike belonged here—there was a helmet in the corner, maroon and cream just like the bike. It looked like they'd left in a hurry, too—there was a glass of Coke sitting on the table, still cold and fizzy. The light was coming from a kerosene lantern, and it wasn't a good idea to just go off and leave something like that burning. When she went back to shut the door, she saw it'd been torn off its hinges, and the bolt was snapped clean through.

  Somebody in a mean mood broke in here, Ace thought to herself with a shudder. She knew she ought to leave right now, but she was cold and wet and hungry—and worse than any of these, she was tired and lonely. I'll just stay for a little while, until I dry off and warm up. Maybe I can figure out the right thing to do, something that'll help me and won't hurt anyone else. Or maybe they'll settle their problems and come back.

  But she had a cold feeling down in her bones, like whoever'd been here wasn't going to be coming back any time soon.

  I'll just stay for a little while. Until I can figure out what to do.

  FIVE:

  THROUGH DARKEST ELFLAND

  WITH GUN AND CAMERA

  Saturday morning dawned bright and clear. Eric had told Hosea that he was going to be away for the weekend and so wouldn't be available for busking, but Hosea took it in good part. He'd discovered the New York Public Library's reading room, and was spending a lot of his time there. During the week, Eric'd had a spare set of keys to the apartment made, and given Hosea the security codes, so Hosea could pretty much make his own hours. He was an early riser, often gone for the day before Eric awoke. For a man his size—or anyone, for that matter—Hosea was quiet as a cat, and never disturbed Eric on his early-morning exits.

  Eric dressed with particular care in his flashiest RenFaire clothes. He buckled on his sword belt, and took his sword down from the top shelf in the closet. He hadn't worn it since he'd been living in Underhill, but the elves would expect him to wear it, as a symbol of his rank. He didn't put it on, though. Swords and modern cars were an awkward combination.

  Last of all, he took his flute and slipped it into his embroidered gig bag, slinging it over his shoulder. He couldn't match the Naming Gifts Maeve would be receiving from everyone in Underhill, so he hadn't bothered to try. He'd gone to FAO Schwartz and bought the biggest stuffed pink bunny he could find, and for the rest, had composed a piece in her honor. Beth would like that—it was a variation on the piece Spiral Dance had always ended their sets with, called "The Huntsman's Reel"—and what better gift for a Bard to give?

  Sword and flute in hand, bunny under one arm, he went down to the parking lot, where a gleaming candy-apple-red Lotus Elan awaited him. It had taken a certain amount of negotiation to get Lady Day to surrender her m
otorcycle form even for one day; elvensteeds could sometimes be stubborn. As a concession, he'd allowed her to pick the form, and this was what she'd chosen. It took a little work to cram the sword and the bunny into the microscopic space behind the seats, but he managed it and levered himself into the driver's seat. He almost wished she'd chosen something less conspicuous, but it ought to amuse Ria.

  "Okay. Let's go," he said, and the elvensteed roared to life with the deep-throated hum of a racing engine.

  * * *

  Ria had offered to pick Eric up, but he elected to meet her up at the Nexus north of Manhattan instead. It was a great day for riding, and besides, on the whole, he didn't want to get into a habit of depending on her. He was still twitchy about that; the time he had spent in her father's Underhill domain as her private boy-toy was not among the moments he was particularly proud of. He headed directly for his destination, and only a few minutes after they started, Lady Day was heading over the bridge toward Sterling Forest.

  It was surprising the amount of half-wild land there was so close to the city. If he hadn't known that NYC was 90 minutes away, Eric wouldn't have been able to guess from the surroundings. Sterling Forest State Park was nestled in the gently-rolling Ramapo Mountains—known for centuries to be filled with haunted places and strange creatures, and for good reason. The Nexus lay in a copse of trees accessible only from a long-disused farm road, the farmhouse itself long abandoned, nothing left but the foundation and chimney.

  Behind the house, down a gentle slope, a deer trail led into woods, deep within which lay one special grove of trees that didn't look as if they'd ever been touched by anything but wind and weather. Where there was a Nexus—a power source that tied Underhill and the mortal world together—there was either a Gate already there, or Eric could make one easily. In this case, there was one already, a Portal that hung as a hazy curtain between two oak trees, visible only to those who had the eyes to see it. He was early; Lady Day had shut down the faux-engine noise she made as soon as they were off the main road, and they rolled up to the Gate surrounded by nothing more intrusive than the cracking of twigs under her wheels. He got out of the Lotus, looking around for Ria.

  Eric didn't have long enough to wait even to wonder when Ria would get there; shortly after he and Lady Day rolled to stop, unshod hooves thudding on the turf warned him that someone was coming. Somehow he didn't think it was Ranger Rick.

  Ria rode into the pocket clearing on a coal-black elvensteed with hooves and eyes of silver, dressed to the absolute nines in something silky and flowing and midnight blue. Eric didn't pay a lot of attention to high fashion, but this didn't look like anything he'd seen during glimpses of shows on the news during Fashion Week. It also wasn't High Elven as he knew it. As always, Ria was setting her own style, it seemed.

  "I didn't know you had a 'steed," he said, as Lady Day shivered all over and made a transformation herself—into a blue-eyed white horse, who stared down her long nose at Ria's mount in friendly defiance.

  Ria glanced at the giant pink bunny and raised an eyebrow. "It's more appropriate to say the 'steed has me," she replied with good humor. "This is Prince Adroviel's way of keeping track of me. Oh, he's very gracious about it, but there wasn't much question—if I want to enter Elfhame Melusine, I'd better be either in your company or Etienne's, and preferably both."

  "Oh." There wasn't much that Eric could gracefully say to that, so he didn't say anything at all. Ria didn't seem put out—and she certainly looked fantastic, sitting up there sidesaddle on the magnificent 'steed.

  "I hate being fashionably late," she said pointedly, as he got himself into Lady Day's saddle with a minimum of awkwardness. After more than a year Underhill, riding still wasn't second nature to him, but at least he wasn't as clumsy about it as he'd been when he first arrived there.

  "So do I, and this should be a good party," he replied. "Do you want to key the Gate, or shall I?"

  She waved her hand languidly at the shimmer of power between the trees, and he took that as answer that he should open it. It occurred to him a second later, as he whistled the little trill of music that fitted his magic into the Gate and gave it the place it should take them to, that the Prince might not have entrusted her with a key. The elvensteed could take her there, of course, but she and Eric wouldn't arrive together if it did. . . .

  The shimmer brightened, then pulled aside, exactly like a curtain, revealing—nothing. Not blackness, nothing. Emptier than the space between the stars, the path of a Gate had scared the whey out of him the first time he'd seen it; now he just let Lady Day take up her place beside Etienne, and the two of them passed through together.

  There was a moment of cold, a faint brush against his face and hands of something like threads spun of liquid hydrogen, and they were through.

  They passed instantly from broad daylight into twilight; from the wild and overgrown, untidy forest covert into truly ancient forest, the kind that must have stood in North America before Columbus, that never knew the touch of an axe. Huge trees that would have been dwarfed only by the sequoias and redwoods of California rose all around them. The ground beneath the trees, regardless of the fact that there couldn't possibly be enough light under the thick branches to support much vegetation, was covered with lush and fragrant flowers in palest pink, faintest blue, and purest white. All except for the path, of course, which was literally carpeted in emerald moss as deep and soft as any high-quality plush number in a Fifth Avenue condo.

  The fact was that there would never be any light under these trees; Elfhame Melusine lay in a perpetual twilight. Eric remembered from Dharniel's few "geography" lessons that Elfhame Melusine was one of the Old World hames, whose members had chosen to withdraw from the World of Men rather than cross to the New World.

  "Well," Ria said, looking around, as the 'steeds paused to allow them to get their bearings. "Not very much like my father's domain, is it?"

  "What, Elfhame 90210?" Eric asked, and was rewarded by her peal of laughter.

  In fact, she laughed hard enough that she had to clutch the pommel of her saddle, and even her 'steed gave out a noise that sounded like a snicker. "Elfhame 90210! Oh lord—" she gasped. "90210! That's gorgeous!"

  "Thenkew, thenkew," he responded, bowing at the waist slightly, and a bit tickled at his own cleverness. "Thenkew verrymuch, I'll be here all week, leddies and gennelmun."

  "Oh lord—" She straightened up and carefully wiped the corners of her eyes with a fingertip. "It was, wasn't it? Poor Father! Even he couldn't keep from copying the mortals he despised."

  "Well, I can't say that I hadn't seen places just like it in the Beverly Hills version of Find-A-Home, because I had," Eric responded truthfully. "And just about every room in one issue or another of Architectural Digest. No two rooms out of the same house, mind, but still . . ."

  "Still," she agreed. "So, what's all this? It's not like Misthold or Sun-Descending, is it?"

  The 'steeds paced forward onto the carpet of moss, making no sound at all.

  "I met a guy from Savannah that calls this Elven Classic," Eric replied. "He says that over in Outremer they say this is how Elfhames looked for centuries—the ones tied to Groves and Nexuses in the Old World, that is. Some of the Seleighe Sidhe wanted things to look like the way they'd been at home when they moved over here to escape Cold Iron, and some, like Adroviel, want their homes to stay that way. There're variations, and these days there are even some who've remodeled their Elfhames to look like the way we—mortals that is—have described them in literature."

  Ria's hand flew to her mouth to smother a laugh. "You don't mean that somewhere Underhill there's a Last Homely House?"

  He grinned. "And a Hobbiton, and Galadriel's Forest. And, sadly, there's also places that role-playing gamers would feel right at home in, and a spot that looks like Ridley Scott just left it behind after filming Legend, complete with enough crap permanently floating in the air to give an allergist nightmares." And every one of them the One True Elf
land, for the ones who find it.

  She bent over again, laughing so hard that she wheezed. "I guess—that Father's taste—wasn't quite as bad—as I thought," she managed to get out.

  Eric shrugged. "He had good taste, really good taste," he pointed out, as the 'steeds picked their way across a meadow fully of swaying lilies of the kind normally seen woven into the hair of the maidens in Alphonse Mucha posters. "He only imitated the high-quality stuff. That's their failing, you know, their one big lack—they can imitate like nobody's business, but they can't create. That's what they need us for, or they'd fade away into Dreaming out of sheer boredom." Maybe sleep and creativity are more closely linked than people think. Elves don't sleep, either—not normally.

  She sobered immediately. "I never thought of that. Why didn't I ever think of that?" She shook her head. "Father never did anything much with LlewellCo except use it as a way to launder kenned gold until I was old enough to be interested in business—"

  Eric raised an eyebrow—a Spock-like gesture he'd practiced secretly for years just on the chance that one day he'd get to use it to maximum effect. "I rest my case," he said pointedly. "And, need I add, that was probably the major reason why he sired you in the first place. Using you as a spare battery pack was just lagniappe."

  She didn't look stunned—she looked angry, but only for a moment before letting the anger go abruptly. "It makes perfect sense," she replied bitterly. "He wouldn't have to keep taming and training mortals every few decades—he'd figure to get at least a couple of centuries out of a half-breed like me. Though—he couldn't have known I'd have a head for business, could he?"

  Eric shrugged, but she was already answering her own question. "Of course he could; he probably cast all sorts of spells when I was born to bend me in that direction—"