John trotted down the concourse steps, trying to escape the remorse he felt, but it followed him. He should have told Lightning Strikes that he had a son. If it had been John, he would have wanted to know before he died. I couldn’t be sure, though, that Blue would be safe!
Blue flashed past, spotted John, and pulled in a sharp loop, heading back toward him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” John walked out to meet him.
Blue slid away, keeping out of grabbing range. “I don’t want to be one of them! If I can’t be with you, I won’t be with anyone!”
“Blue, this isn’t solving anything. Cut the engine and talk to me.”
Blue frowned and started to reach for the keys and then spotted Stormsong tucked in the shadows of the stands. “What is she doing here?” He gave John a look full of pain. “You’re just going to give me to them?”
“I don’t want to, Blue, but it might be the best thing for you.”
Blue twisted hard on the power and shot away.
“Blue!” John shouted.
Stormsong made a sound of disgust. “You know—you suck at this.”
“I’m just doing the best that I can. It’s not like I had a great model to work from. When I was little, if I was bad, my mother would say ‘I just can’t take it anymore, I’m taking you to the EIA. You can go live with another family on another world.’ And after Blue Sky was born, it became ‘take care of him, or I’m taking you both to the EIA.’ Okay, so I’m not the best parent in the world. I really don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I have never, never threatened to give him up.”
“You should have given him to us! We would have done a better job than this!”
“I wasn’t willing to risk his life to find that out!”
“If you’re worried about his life, then stop fighting with me and do something about him!” Stormsong pointed upward.
Blue Sky raced up the tallest ramp that climbed skyward. At the summit, he popped up and landed on the very rim and balanced there. As the bike teetered on the narrow ledge, Blue killed the engine.
When Stormsong had said “hurt himself” she wasn’t meaning by accident.
“Blue!” John shouted. “Don’t be insane! Come down!”
“I won’t be one of them!” Blue shouted.
Stormsong kneed John in the balls. Surprise made him scream at the pain. He didn’t even see the second hit. He went sprawling in the dirt, with black closing in. Distantly he was aware that Stormsong had drawn her pistol and was taking careful aim down at him.
“John!” Blue shouted and the hoverbike’s engine snarled to life.
The gun thundered over and over again, the shots echoing off the stands.
Somehow Stormsong had emptied her gun and missed him. John scrambled away from her, aware that she was drawing her sword. Blue was roaring toward them.
“You promised!” John held out his hand, pleading to her. “You promised not to hurt him.”
“And I’m not going to,” she said quietly as Blue leapt at her. She spun, caught Blue in midair with her left hand. As his weight spun her around, she sliced the hoverbike’s spell chain. The engine’s power diverted into the lift and the hoverbike soared upward on maximum lift. She continued the turn, slamming Blue against the ground and pinning him there.
Blue thrashed in her hold. “You murdering whore! I’m going to kill you!”
“Blue, she didn’t hurt me.” John’s head was clearing; his balls ached and he felt like vomiting, but he was basically unhurt. “Shut up before you make her mad.”
Blue went still in surprise, and then squeaked, “John!”
Stormsong let Blue go. The boy scrambled to him. John hugged him tightly, relieved that he hadn’t self-destructed. The sekasha looked on with sadness in her eyes.
“Why the hell did you do that?” John asked her.
“We protect those we love,” Stormsong said.
Meaning she knew that Blue would come to John’s protection. John supposed this was what she meant by solving all problems with violence.
* * *
Blue kept himself between John and Stormsong as they pulled down her floating hoverbike, maneuvered it to his pickup and killed the power. After they strapped the bike down, they drove back to Poppymeadow’s enclave in silence. Blue huddled in the middle, a small ball of hurt. Stormsong cleared them through checkpoints. Thunderclouds gathered, threatening a downpour.
The same servant opened the gate at Poppymeadow’s, letting them in. “Domi is sleeping in the garden room.”
“Again?” Blue sneered.
Stormsong cuffed Blue on the back of the head. “Tinker domi moved heaven and earth to save all the people of this city. She is a good and just leader. But until her injuries are fully healed, she will have to sleep often.”
Apparently they were now considered trustworthy; they weren’t searched, nor escorted through the enclave. The garden room turned out to be a small conservatory filled with a riot of blooming flowers. Tinker slept curled on a chaise with only Pony in attendance. Stormsong knelt beside Tinker, and kissed her forehead to wake her. “We’re back, domi. We found the child and brought him back.”
“Hm?” Tinker opened her eyes sleepily. “Oh, good.” She yawned and reached out for a hand up. “I was worried. Thank you for keeping him safe.”
Tinker hugged the female sekasha. The depth of Stormsong’s affection showed on her face.
We protect those we love.
The sekasha weren’t standing guard over Wolf Who Rules’ wife—they were protecting their beloved domi. She had won their hearts. Nor was the fact all that surprising. Blue had always bordered on puppy love for Tinker. She was courageous in a fight, fiercely loyal, never lied, and kept all her promises.
John supposed that if Blue had to go to someone else, at least it was someone he knew he could trust. “Tinker, I’ve thought about this, and I’m willing to do whatever is best for Blue Sky. I ask that he stays in Pittsburgh, and I want to be able to see him.”
“You don’t want me?” Blue fought to stay stoic in the face of the news.
“This isn’t about wanting you, or not wanting you. This is about what’s best for you. They’re right. You probably would have been better off with your father from the start.”
Tears filled Blue’s eyes and he bowed his head to keep them hidden. “Why does everyone want me to be an elf?”
“Because you are an elf.” John tapped him on his pointed ear tips to remind him. “And without meaning to, I’ve poisoned you against yourself. I know this hurts, but I really think you should come and live with Tinker.”
Blue bowed his head lower, shaking it. “If I become one of them, you’ll be afraid of me. You will hate me.”
“Blue, I swear to you, nothing you can do or say or be will ever make me hate you.”
“I don’t want to lose you!” Blue whispered.
Tinker put her arms around Blue. “When I was thirteen, and Oilcan was seventeen, he moved out. I felt like I was losing him, but I wasn’t. We’re even closer now, because we don’t have to fight over all those little annoying things that come with living with someone. What to watch on the TV and whose turn it is to take out the trash. He’s still there for me anytime I need him. You’re not losing John. You’re gaining a very large family.”
Blue scoffed. “Just what I need, a dozen more people to tell me what to do.” But he turned and hugged Tinker tightly.
* * *
The elves had said that Blue was free to come and go as he pleased. John expected that Blue would put it to the test. He didn’t expect that it would be so soon. Close to midnight, Blue sulked into the shop.
“What are you doing here?” John moved his bowl of popcorn so Blue could sprawl on the couch beside him.
Blue made a sound of disgust. “Do you know that Stormsong is the only elf in Tinker’s household that speaks English?”
“You’re fluent in Elvish.”
“It’s a pain to have to
speak it all the time. And besides, there’s so many things in Pittsburgh that Elvish doesn’t have a word for!”
“True.”
“What are you watching?”
“Something Oilcan loaned me.” John suspected the loan had been an excuse to make sure he was coping with Blue being gone. “It’s a season of a reality TV show called American Chopper. This family custom-builds motorcycles.”
Blue usually disliked gearhead shows, so John was surprised when he exclaimed, “Oh, cool,” and settled in to watch, apparently contented. Two handfuls of popcorn later, Blue added, “You know, the enclaves don’t have TVs, computers, flush toilets, or electricity.”
“Barbaric,” John said.
“And get this! No showers! You’re supposed to bathe in this big heated swimming pool with everyone else. Males and females together!”
John laughed at the disgust in Blue’s voice. “Was there anything you liked?”
“I got to watch them sparring with practice swords. It was really cool.” Blue gave a sigh of happiness. “You should see how they can move. They say I’ll be able to fight like them someday. And they gave me this cool bow. I can’t wait until you see it. You should come eat breakfast with me tomorrow. The food is amazing.”
The cold knot in John’s stomach dissolved. John had thought he was losing his baby brother. He’d been afraid that the damage he’d accidently done to Blue Sky was permanent. The sekasha obviously knew how to coax Blue Sky toward accepting his elf heritage.
“Breakfast. Sure, sounds good.” John mussed Blue’s hair. It actually sounded as if they were gaining an extended family.
DRABBLE
How Oilcan Does Not Meet Team Mischief
“Oilcan,” the tiny voice whispered in ultrasonic range. “Oilcan!”
He opened his eyes and blinked.
And blinked again.
There were four mice on tiny hoverbikes on his nightstand. They had racing goggles perched on their heads and scarves of various colors wrapped about their necks.
“We did it!” One fist-pumped its little paw. “Hooyah!”
This made the other three cheer and clap their hands.
“Hello?” Oilcan whispered. Was he dreaming, or had his life just gotten a whole lot odder?
“We have an important mission for you,” the pink-scarfed mouse stated.
“Life and death!” the green and red mice cried.
“Me?” For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what he could do for talking mice.
“You are Orville Wright, correct?” the blue mouse asked. Unlike the other three, this one sounded male. Like Christopher Robin to be exact.
“And you hate your name, correct?” Pink asked. “Orrrrville.”
Which was exactly how the kids in grade school used to mangle his name.
“Yeah,” Oilcan said. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“You have to find us wonderful names!” Red and Green cried. “Orville Oilcan, you’re our only hope!”
“They don’t want to call me Chuck Norris,” Pink explained. “They want to call me Charlene!”
“And they say we can’t be Jawbreaker!” Red and Green cried.
Jawbreaker?
“By the time we can do anything about it, it’s going to be too late,” Pink said. “We’ll be stuck with horrible names.”
Their point wasn’t completely off since he still had people that refused to call him anything but Orville. All the tax forms and legal documents, too, required him to use his “real” name.
“We want cool names!” The Jawbreakers cried.
“And I want to be Chuck Norris. If Alexander can be Alexander Graham Bell then I can be Chuck Norris Dufae.”
“Okay.” Somehow this had to be Tinker’s fault. “What names do you want?”
“Crimson Death!” Red cried.
“Cthulhu!” Green cried.
This wasn’t going to be simple as it sounded.
* * *
And no, this doesn’t happen either!
PEACE OFFERING
Since war broke out between the elves and the oni, the stories in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had gotten a lot more bizarre. Walking trees loose on the North Side. Dragons terrorizing Oakland. A spaceship crashing into Turtle Creek. Flocks of men with crow-wings mobbing downtown.
The Post-Gazette was still printed on paper complete with non-scalable fonts. Olivia had to wear her secret identity glasses to read it. She looked like a prim and proper librarian with them on, auburn hair twisted up into bun, a vintage blue gingham sundress on. No one could tell she was an illegal immigrant, a runaway teenage bride, and a whore. She and Superman. Both from Kansas. Both hiding behind the glasses. Both not what they appeared to be.
“Oh, I love this war.” Peanut’s moaned comment sounded like pure sex.
Olivia glanced up from yesterday’s newspaper. They were waiting for the keva bean handout on Penn Avenue, a block and a half from the head of the line. Earth Inter-dimensional Agency personnel and Pittsburgh Police officers had been on crowd control since dawn. A flood of red uniforms, though, signaled that the Fire Clan had arrived with the keva beans.
Everyone had gone tense as the elves fanned out, even the police and EIA personnel. The royal marines were laedin-caste and proved to be a surprisingly friendly and laid back group. Unfortunately Prince True Flame of the Fire Clan had also brought with him nearly fifty of the holy sekasha-caste warriors known as Wyverns. Because they were considered morally perfect, the Wyverns were above the law. They could and would kill anyone that pissed them off, even other elves. The humans scanned the incoming troops, looking for the scale-armored vests and protective spells tattooed down the Wyverns’ arms in Fire Clan red.
After a few minutes, it became apparent that there were no sekasha among the elves. The crowd seemed to take a collective sigh of relief.
Only Peanut had been unfazed by the arrival of the royal troops. She eyed the marines like they were red-frosted cupcakes. Until the war broke out, all the male elves in Pittsburgh that were interested in intercourse with human women had already been claimed. Peanut had been up against the window of a bakery, drooling at what she wanted and couldn’t get. Every day now brought more elf troops to the city. “Oh, I need to get some of this yumminess.”
“Don’t you get enough at night?”
Peanut laughed. “That’s all men. It’s the difference between a stale Twinkie and one of those hot fresh-made coffee rolls loaded with cinnamon and topped with icing.” She mimed licking her fingers. “Elves. They live forever and they see nothing wrong with sex, so they do it all the time, and they do it oh so well.”
Olivia wondered if it was also why half of the marines were female. Certainly her life would have been very different if her family hadn’t considered sex connected to sin and a woman’s weakness.
She’d arrived in Pittsburgh during the last official Shutdown in mid-July. It was the farthest from Kansas she could get; a totally separate universe from the one she’d grown up in. Elfhome was the world of elves that was a mirror to Earth, with Pittsburgh the only human outpost. It seemed like a perfect place to hide from her husband.
She’d gotten a job, found an empty house to squat in, and everything seemed good. Three weeks later, war broke out. Pittsburgh found itself lost deep in virgin forest, three hundred miles from the nearest elf settlement and an unknown number of oni hidden within the city limits. All contact with Earth and its bounty had been cut off.
Olivia had always believed that if she worked hard and used her head, she’d land on her feet. The writing on the wall, though, told her that she wasn’t going to survive this war. She might be from Kansas but she wasn’t Superman.
Certainly she was no longer surviving with any virtue intact.
Before the war, there was actually a shortage of workers for low-paying jobs. The city had needed people like her to fill the gaps. She’d been working at a bakery on third shift. She was paid under the table, so ev
en though she was only making minimum wage, nothing was being held out for taxes or benefits. A week after the war started, though, the bakery was out of flour, sugar and salt.
Since then, she’d been walking Liberty Avenue with the other hookers, trying to keep food on her table.
“Oh, I want that one.” Peanut pointed at a clump of elves standing nearby. Olivia couldn’t tell which one had caught the girl’s eye. The elves looked like they could be brothers or cousins. Tall. Lean. Red haired. That they were impossibly handsome went without saying; they were elves. “Save my place?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Olivia whispered as Peanut shifted into full streetwalker mode, pulling down the neckline of her tight shirt to show off almost all of her breasts. “This is going to be the only handout. The food is here. The line is going to start moving any minute.”
“I’ll make it quick.” Peanut started to broadcast her interest at the elves and they received her message loud and clear. “Isn’t he gorgeous?”
“All elves are gorgeous.”
“That old one with the messed up face; he isn’t.”
The newspaper had carried candid photos of the new elf lords as they had arrived in Pittsburgh. Only one hadn’t been Paris model beautiful. “Forest Moss on Stone?”
“Yeah, him, he’s freaky looking. They say he’s a complete nutcase.”
Three of the male royal marines drifted over to peer down at Peanut. Olivia was a fairly tall woman but the elves were all a foot or more taller. They were armed with rifles, swords, and daggers. She’d been raised with ten stepbrothers and could probably match any human male in a fistfight, but the combination of the males’ height, weapons, and their sexual interest made her shift away from Peanut.
I’m not really with her. I’m a librarian. Can’t you tell by my glasses?
“I’m Peanut Butter Pie.” Peanut slid her mini-skirt up high enough to flash her red panties. The elves’ eyes dropped from Peanut’s sizable breasts to her lace-covered groin.
“I have heard that peanut butter is very, very good,” one of the males said.