"It—changes," Stormsong said.
And change it did as a tornado sucked the house up into the air and plopped it down in glorious color. Dorothy's dress turned out to be blue checked and she acquired glittering red high heels that they called "slippers," the source of Esme's overalls and red boots in Tinker's dream.
It took Tinker several minutes to realize how Glinda the Good Witch worked into her dream. "That's Black. She had the wand and the crown. And she was crying."
"I think I would cry if I was stuck in a dress like that," Stormsong said.
Tinker had to agree with that assessment. Tiny little people in weird clothes surrounded Dorothy and talked in rhyming singsong voices.
"Oh, this is so weird," Tinker whispered.
"Does this make more sense in English?" Pony asked.
"No, not really," she told him. "Do they ever stop singing?"
"Not much," Stormsong said as the munchkins escorted Dorothy to the edge of town and waved cheerfully good-bye.
"Oh, of course they're happy to see her go; she's a cold-blooded killer," Tinker groused as Dorothy discovered a talking scarecrow. "Oh gods, they're singing again."
Dorothy and Scarecrow found the apple trees that threw fruit, and then the Tin Man, whose first word was "oilcan." Tinker huddled against Pony, growing disquieted.
"What is it, domi?" Pony asked.
"How did I know? I didn't see this movie before, but so many things are just like my dream."
"Maybe we did see it and forgot," Oilcan said.
"Something this weird?" Tinker asked. "And we both forgot?"
Pony's lion showed up next. Tinker scowled at the screen. It annoyed her that she didn't understand how she had dreamed this movie—and that her dream self had cast Pony in such a cowardly character. "All these people are dysfunctional, delusional idiots."
Finally the foursome plus dog found the wizard, who turned out to be a fraud.
"What was this dream trying to tell me?" Tinker asked.
"I am not sure," Stormsong said. "Normally an untrained dreamer borrows symbols uncontrollably—and this movie is rife with them. Everything from the Abandoned Child archetype to Crossing the Return Threshold."
"Huh?" The only threshold crossing Tinker knew about related to chaos theory.
"Dream mumbo jumbo." Stormsong waved a hand toward the television screen.
The wizard/fraud had produced a hot air balloon, and was saying good-bye. ". . . am about to embark upon a hazardous and technically unexplainable journey to the outer stratosphere."
"Dorothy is taking a heroic journey," Stormsong continued. "She crosses two thresholds, one out of the protected realm of her childhood, and the other completes her journey, by returning to Kansas. If you were familiar with this movie, I would say you were seeking to move past your old identity and claim one that reflects growth. The tornado could be a symbol of the awakening of sexuality, especially suppressed desire."
Tinker resisted the sudden urge to shift out of Pony's arms. "I didn't dream about the tornado."
"Yeah, well, the odd thing is that you're not familiar with the movie. So the question is: Where is the symbolism coming from?"
"Don't look at me!" Tinker closed her eyes and rested her head on Pony's shoulder. "So, what should I do next?"
"Tell me your last dream again."
"I'm up high with Riki and he's a flying monkey. He's got the whole costume, and I'm the scarecrow. Riki talks about me melting the witch and setting him free. Then I'm on the ground, and Esme is there as Dorothy, Pony was the lion, and Oilcan was the Tin Man."
The movie was obviously drawing to a close as Dorothy tried to convince people that her journey had been real.
"We wanted to go to the wizard," Tinker said. "But the road ends with the black willows, but they're also the trees in the movie that throw their apples. Esme keeps saying we need the fruit. I don't know. Do black willows even have fruit?"
Thankfully the movie was over and the credits rolled.
"I am not sure," Stormsong said slowly, "but I think, domi, finding out more about this Esme would be best."
"I'm going to have to talk to Lain about a lot of things." She went to her phone mumbling, "Fruit. Esme. Flying monkeys. Yellow brick roads. Munchkins."
She got Lain's simple unnamed AI. "It's Tinker."
"Tinker," Lain's recorded voice came on. "I'm going to be spending the next few days at Reinholds with the black willow. If you need me, you can find me there."
Tinker hung up without leaving a message. Sighing, she considered her home network. She should take it out before someone broke in and stole it. Pushing back from her desk, she lazily spun in her chair, scanning her loft. "I should really—you know—move out."
Oilcan glanced around, bobbing his head in agreement. "Yeah, unless you get divorced, I don't see you living here again. Well, I've got to go. I still have those last drums on the flatbed. I need to go dump them with the rest."
"See ya." She continued to spin, thinking of what she needed for the move. A truck. Boxes. People. As she considered how many boxes and how many people, she realized how little she really needed to move. Her computer. Her books. Her underwear. Most of her clothes were ratty hand-me-downs of Oilcan's, or too oil-stained to wear around the elves. Her battered furniture, her unmatched dishes, and all her other sundry things were just odds and ends she had picked up over time and weren't worth keeping. She could have a yard sale. She could make up a flyer and put an ad in the newspaper. They would need a way to tag all her stuff, a cash box with a starter kit of change, a tent in case it rained. They could sell hot dogs and sauerkraut to raise more money—except she didn't need money. Hell, a yard sale was a stupid idea.
She spun in her chair as plans came to mind and proved unneeded. And where would she move her stuff to? She supposed the computer could live in her bedroom at the enclave, but what about all her books? Her jury-rigged bookcases would clash horribly with the elegant hand-carved furniture. She could probably get bookcases. Snap her fingers. Make it so. But where would she put them?
Windwolf didn't fit into her life, but did she fit into his either?
She bumped into something and stopped spinning.
Stormsong stood beside her, looking down at her. "You're going to make yourself sick doing that."
"Pshaw." She stood up and toppled over.
Pony caught her and carefully put her back into the chair.
"I wish you guys wouldn't hover," Tinker snarled as they stood over her.
Pony crouched down so he was now eye level with her. "You are still upset."
She sighed and leaned her forehead on his shoulder. "I don't like being like this. This isn't me. I feel like I'm living without my skin. Everything hurts."
He put his arms around her and eased her into his lap. "Domi, I have been with you every day for some time now. I have seen you happy and relaxed. I have seen you bored. I have seen you snarling into the face of the enemy. And you were always yourself until two days ago. Something has changed."
"Do you think the oni dragon did something more to me than just draw magic through me?"
He considered for a few minutes, and then shook his head. "I do not know, domi."
"How do we check?" She asked.
He and Stormsong exchanged looks.
"Let's go to the hospice," Stormsong said. "And have them check you."
* * *
The hospice people poked and prodded and did various spells on her and shook their heads and sent her home feeling even more unbalanced. Her beholden fended off Windwolf's household, else she probably would have been doused again with saijin and put to bed. Ironically, the only place she had to retreat to was her bedroom, which didn't feel like home.
"There's no me in this room!" She paced on the bed just to get as tall as the sekasha. "This is not a room I live in. I need a computer. And a television. Internet connection! Is it any wonder that I feel like I'm going nuts when the most mechanical item in this suite
is the toilet? Hell, I don't know even where to find my stuff! Where is my datapad? Where's—where's—shit, I don't even own anything anymore!"
The sekasha nodded, wisely saying nothing, probably thinking she was insane.
"I mean, how am I supposed to do anything? I know I have stuff. I had you put stuff in the car to bring home. Where did it go?"
"I will find it," Stormsong said and went off to search. While Tinker was still pacing the bed, she returned with the MP3 player Riki had left for her at Turtle Creek, the Dufae Codex, her grandfather's files on the flux spells and Esme, and a bottle of ouzo. Of course everything had been cleaned and given lovely linen binders tied with silk ribbons. Elves!
Tinker settled down with the file and a glass of ouzo. Smart female Stormsong. Must keep her. She tossed the player onto the nightstand where she might remember to take it to Oilcan, dropped the codex and the flux folder onto the floor, and opened up Esme's file. As she noticed earlier, the file contained general public information. NASA bios. Newspaper clippings. Interspersed into it, though, was detailed personal information. One paper was a genealogy chart of Esme's parents going back a dozen generations on both sides. Another set of papers chronicled medical histories for family members. Another sheet claimed to be account numbers for a Swiss bank account. Tinker weeded these unique papers out, wondering how and why her grandfather had such information on Lain's sister. Lain herself, she could understand. But Esme?
Last item in the file was an unlabeled manila envelope. She opened it up to find a photo of her father and Black wrapped in each other's arms, looking blissfully happy.
"Who the hell?" Tinker flipped the picture but the back was blank.
"What is it?"
"This is Black." Without her blindfold or hands covering her face, Black was clearly a tengu. She had Riki's black hair, blue eyes, and beaklike nose.
"This is Oilcan?" Stormsong pointed to Leo.
"No, my father." Tinker looked in the envelope to see what else was inside.
There was a handwritten note stating:
Two can play this silence game. I'm not going to let you pressure me into leaving her just so you can have grandkids. I've made a deposit at a sperm bank, just in case things change. I don't know what else I can do to make you happy. The next step is yours. If you don't call, this is the last you'll hear of me.
The attached form noted that Leonardo Da Vinci Dufae had deposited sperm to be held in cryo-storage for his personal use.
The last sheet of paper in the file was a form from a fertility clinic on Earth. Tinker read over it three times before its full import hit her. It was a record of her conception.
Esme Shenske was her mother.
She was still shaking when she found Lain at Reinholds. The xenobiologist was dressed in winter clothing and running the slim willow limbs through a machine. She glanced up as Tinker stormed into the big freezer.
"What is it, dear?" Lain paused to pluck something off the limb and place it in a jar.
"Look at this! Look!" Tinker thrust the form into Lain's hands.
Lain took the paper, scanned it, and said quietly. "Oh."
"Oh? Oh? That's all you have to say?"
"I'm not sure what to say."
Something about Lain's tone, the lack of surprise, her uneasiness got through, and after a stunned moment, Tinker cried, "You knew!"
"Yes, I knew."
"You've known all along!"
"Yes."
"How could you lie to me all this time? I thought you . . ." She swallowed down the word "loved," terrified to have to hear it denied. ". . . cared for me."
"I love you. I have wanted to tell you about Esme for so very long, but you have to understand, I couldn't."
"Couldn't?"
Lain sighed and her breath misted in the freezing cold. "You don't know everything. There's so much that I had to keep from you."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means what it means." Lain busied herself labeling the jar; the contents wriggled like worms. "Don't come storming in here all hurt and emotional about something that can't be changed."
"You could have told me!"
"No, I couldn't have," Lain said.
"Tinker, my sister is your mother. See how easy!" And then cause and effect kicked in. "Oh my gods, you're my aunt."
"Yes, I am."
"But what about those tests you did to show Oilcan and I were still related? You used your own DNA as a comparison."
"I didn't use my own. I used a stored test result. I wanted to make it clear that you and Oilcan are still cousins."
Tinker could only stare, feeling betrayed.
"Oh, put the hurt eyes away. I have been here for you, loving you as much as humanly possible. What does it matter that you called me Lain instead of Aunt Lain? I have always given you the care I would give my niece, no matter what you or anyone else might know." Lain snorted with disgust. "I always thought that Esme was a result of lavish parenting until you came along—daily I've been stunned to realize it was all actually genetic."
"That hurts," Tinker snapped.
"What does?"
"That you could look at me and see my mother and never share that with me."
"Nothing about your birth and life has been cut-and-dried. I suppose that was one reason I wasn't that surprised when—out of the blue—you changed species."
A sound of hurt forced itself out of Tinker, and Lain came to fold her into a hug.
"Oh ladybug, I'm sorry, but I did my best."
"Can we get out of here and talk? It's very creepy and cold."
"Oh, love." Lain sighed, rubbing Tinker on her back. "This is the only time I'm actually going to be able to do this."
Tinker pulled out of her hold. "What are you doing that's so damn important?"
"I'm justifying all your hard work at preserving this." Lain gave her a hard look that meant that she thought Tinker was acting spoiled. "I'm scanning the structure of living limbs before this thing wakes up."
"What are these?" Tinker picked up one of the jars. Inside, small reddish-brown capsules had broken open, spilling out tiny, hairy green seedlike things, all wriggling like worms.
"Those are its seeds," Lain said. "It's possible that the Ghostlands somehow drained the tree of magic and made it inactive. It hasn't accumulated enough to wake, but the seeds need less magic."
"Seeds—are—fruit, aren't they?"
"Yes, dear." Lain focused on the limbs.
Okay, I have the fruit. Now what? Tinker eyed the seeds as they wriggled about. "I think—"
"Yes?"
"I think—Esme is trying to drive me nuts."
"Ah, that means you're family."
Tinker shoved the jar at Pony to keep while she continued her argument. "Why didn't you tell me? Why did you and Grandpa keep it a secret? Why Esme? Was she in love with my father?"
"I never knew why Esme did any of the things she did. She certainly never explained herself. I don't think she ever knew your father. I didn't think she knew your grandfather and yet—somehow—they managed to create you. She called me from a roadside pay phone right before she left Earth. She told me that she'd hidden clues to her greatest treasure in my house the last time she had visited but wouldn't say anything more. She kept repeating, 'The evil empire might be listening, and I don't want them to have it,' like she was some type of rebel spy."
"Huh?" Tinker felt as if the conversation had just veered around a blind corner. "What evil empire?"
"That's what we called our family; the empire of evil. Our stepfather was Ming the Merciless, his son was Crown Prince Kiss Butt, and our half brothers were Flying Monkeys Four and Five."
Tinker fought to ignore the sudden intrusion of The Wizard of Oz into the conversation. "I was her greatest treasure?"
"Yes." Lain went back to examining the limbs. "Although I'm stunned that she had the maturity to recognize that. I was expecting something more trivial like her diary, or bearer bonds she'd stolen off o
ur stepfather. But no, it was a copy of that form, and your grandfather's address, and a note saying, 'Watch over my child. Don't tell the empire of evil—or a world away won't be far enough.' No please, no thank you, no why she had done it."
"So you're not happy that I was born?"
"Don't you twist that into something personal. I thought—and still think—it was horribly selfish and irresponsible of her, as if a child needed no more care than a dandelion seed. Throw it to the wind and hope for the best." Lain made a sound of disgust. "Which is so like Esme."