Tinker (12 page)

The elves said that: I release you of all pledges. The irony of it kept Tinker from cheering. Knowing Lain, though, it might have been her reason for using the phrase. So Tinker said, "I'll think about it."

* * *

Dusk fell slowly. As the sky darkened and the stars started to peek out, the conversation turned from the world left behind, the experience of Startup, and the rustic amenities that the scientists found in the dormitories, and focused on the sky itself.

First Night was always fun; it was like watching children discover Christmas. Since it always rained during Startup—the warmer returning Earth air colliding with the chillier Elfhome climate—this was the scientists' first real sight of Elfhome's stars. Their faces were turned upward at the winking lights, and they murmured reverently, "Oh, wow!" Once Tinker's eyes adjusted, she could see the upraised hands, pointing out sights. As always, the cry of "Look at Arcturus!" went up. The elves called it the Wolf's Heart, on the shoulder of the constellation they called the First Wolf. One of the brightest stars in the sky, Arcturus was also the fastest moving; there was a fifteen-degree difference between the star of Elfhome and Earth.

"I can't believe this is the same sky we were looking at two days ago," someone close at hand said with awe. "A twenty-mile drive south, and all the constellations shift. Look at Corona Borealis! It doesn't look anything like a C anymore."

"Twenty miles south, and a side step into another dimension," another voice corrected the first speaker.

Because they would need to share the big telescopes, they all had personal telescopes set up. After minutes of fiddling, they excitedly swapped views.

"There are new stars in the star formation region of the Eagle Nebula—"

"Where?"

"M16—in Serpens."

"Look at the alignment of the planets. They'll be in full conjunction on Friday."

They ohhhed, and ahhhed, and talked about constellations that up to that point had only been textbook learning.

* * *

Tinker spent the night at Lain's. Oilcan picked her up in the morning and they headed over to the scrap yard. He went over the schedule he'd planned for the day. As usual, he was spending the days after Startup doing running, tracking down supplies and goods they needed. Tinker gave him a full report on her meeting with Maynard, Lain's garden, and finally the mystery calls on her home system.

Oilcan stopped at a red light at Route 65 and looked at her sharply. "I think I should leave Bruno and Pete with you."

"Please, no. I think it will be a while before I can deal with large dogs again."

"I don't like you being alone when everything is so weird."

"The weirdness is over," Tinker asserted.

"Someone is trying real hard to find you, Tinker. They're searching the neighborhood for you. Someone tried to kill Windwolf."

"Can't be the same people." She wished he wouldn't dwell on it—it was scary enough without him talking about it. "Windwolf was attacked on Elfhome before the Shutdown, and the calls started from Earth after Shutdown."

"So? Whoever's trying to find you is still
on
Elfhome."

"Whoever it is has nothing to do with Windwolf being attacked." Tinker could see where this was heading, and stopped it. "I'll arm the office security system first thing. My home security system is still running. I'll be okay."

Oilcan grumped a while longer but gave in, promising to check in with her often. No doubt he'd also find a way to let Nathan know.

Tinker tried to detour the conversation. "Can you do me a favor and see if you can track down some peroxide this morning? Lain says it's best for cleaning up large amounts of blood. We need to replace all the first-aid supplies, and I need pads."

"I restocked the first-aid kit," Oilcan said. "I also got you groceries. They're at my place. But you've got to get your own female stuff."

"It's not like they bite, Oilcan, and everybody knows they're not for you."

"It's embarrassing. Besides, I didn't know what type to buy."

"I used most of them to bandage wounds. Any kind will do."

"You get your own," he stated firmly. "Do you want me to bring the rest of the stuff over to your place tonight?"

A bid to make sure she was okay. Once there, he'd probably stay late.

"Nah. I'll eat out—get a pizza and some beer. Just bring it with you tomorrow."

He looked unhappy, but he let it go at that.

* * *

Windwolf came to the scrap yard late in the morning. One moment he wasn't there, and the next he stood watching her.

She stood looking back. She had been running in tight circles all morning—not wanting him to show, eager to see him, terrified of him appearing, cautioning herself that he might not come, and as the day wore on, nearly sick with the thought that she had read more into the situation and he wasn't coming. Now that he was here, she had no clue to her heart. That tight circle just spun faster, emotions whirling too quickly to latch on to.

Pick one, idiot,
she growled at herself.
Happy. I'll be happy to see him
. Her happiness welled up so quickly and strongly that she suspected it was the truest of her emotions. She walked out to greet him then, a smile taking control of her face and refusing to give it up. "Hi!"

Elegantly dressed in elfin splendor, he looked out of place in the grimy scrap yard of rusting broken metal and shattered glass. He seemed a creature woven out of the glitter of sunlight on the river. Behind him, and well back, were armed elves—his bodyguard.

Windwolf nodded in greeting, an inclining of the head and shoulders that stopped just short of a bow. He presented a small silk bag to her. "For you.
Pavuanai wuan huliroulae.
"

It was High Elvish, something about talking together—at least that was what she thought
pavuanai
meant. She didn't recognize the word
huliroulae
.

Tinker eyed the bag suspiciously, thinking of Lain's garden and the xenobiologist's warning, but it didn't look dangerous. "What is it?"

"Keva."

"Oh." Tinker took the bag, opened it, and found indeed the golden cousin to soybeans. Genetically altered for millennia, keva beans were the elfin wonder food. Raw, roasted, fried, ground for flour, or even candied, keva beans were at the base of all celebrations. These were roasted with honey, one of her favorites. Still, this was her reward for saving his life? She noticed then that one of the guards held a fabric-wrapped bundle that looked for all the world like a present. Maybe this was a weird gift-giving appetizer. "Thanks."

Windwolf smiled as she popped one of the mild nutty beans into her mouth. "You said you would teach me horseshoes."

She laughed in surprise. "You really want to play?"

"Do you enjoy playing?"

She nodded slowly. "Yeah, it's fun."

"Then I wish to learn."

"Well, okay. Let me grab the shoes and the keys."

The keys were for the gate between the scrap yard and the small wood lot next to the scrap yard. Pittsburgh had many such pockets of wildness, places too steep to build on, full of scrub trees and wild grapevines. The lot was a series of level steps between steep drops, stairs cut into the hillside leading from level to level. There she and Oilcan had set up regulation-sized horseshoe pits.

"It's a simple game. You stand on one end, here, and throw the horseshoes at the stake. Like so." Tinker made sure she wasn't going to hit him with her swing, and tossed the horseshoe with a well-practiced underhand pitch. The horseshoe sailed the nearly forty feet and clanged against the stake in a single clear ringing note. "A ringer! That's what you're trying for." Her second shoe hit and rebounded. "But that's what normally happens."

He took the second set of horseshoes from her. He eyed the large U-shaped pieces of metal. "Are the horses on Earth really this big?"

"I don't know. I've never left Pittsburgh."

"So Elfhome is your home?"

"I suppose. I think of Pittsburgh as my home, but only when it's on Elfhome."

"That's good to know," Windwolf said.

And while she tried to decide what that meant, he copied her underhanded throw. He gracefully missed the stake by several feet. "This is harder than it appears."

"Simple doesn't necessarily mean easy," Tinker said.

They crossed the playing field to the pit to gather the shoes.

"Are you and your cousin orphans in this place?"

"Well, close. Oilcan's father is alive, but he's in prison. When he gets out, he won't be able to immigrate."

"Will Oilcan want to see his father?"

Tinker shook her head and concentrated on throwing the horseshoes. "His father killed his mother; not on purpose—he just hit her too hard in anger—but dead is dead." Not surprisingly, Tinker missed the stake. "Oilcan works hard at being the antithesis of his father. He never drinks to the point of being drunk. He doesn't yell or fight, and he'd cut off his hand before he'd hit someone he loved."

"He is a noble soul."

Tinker beamed at Windwolf, inordinately pleased that he approved of her cousin. "Yes, he is."

"My family is unusual among elves." Windwolf's horseshoe landed closer to the stake this round. "We elves do not life bond as readily as you humans, and I think sometimes it is because of the manner in which we are raised. Siblings are usually centuries apart, fully grown and moved on before the next becomes the focus of their parents' attention. We are basically a race of only children and tend to be selfish brats as a result."

"You're blowing my preconceived notion that you're a wise and patient race."

"We appear patient only because our conception of time is different. Amassing oceans of knowledge does not make you wise."

They collected horseshoes with oddly musical clangs of metal on metal.

"But your family is different?" Tinker prompted Windwolf.

"My mother loves children, so she had many, and she did not pace them centuries apart. She thought that when a child was old enough to seek out playmates on his or her own, it was time for another. Amazingly, my father put up with it, mostly. Perhaps their marriage would not have survived if we were not a noble house with wealth and Beholden." Tinker knew that Beholden were the lower castes that acted as servants to the noble caste, but she wasn't sure how it all worked. "The Beholden gave my father the distance he needed from so many children."

Given that his mother could have spent centuries raising children, Tinker blinked at the sudden image of the old woman who lived in a shoe, children bursting out at the seams. "How many kids are in your family?"

"Ten."

"Only ten?"

Windwolf laughed. "Only?"

"I thought maybe a hundred, or a thousand."

Windwolf laughed again. "No, no. Father would never submit to that. He finds ten an embarrassment he suffers only for Mother's sake. Most nobles do not have any children." Windwolf's voice went bitter. "There is no need for propagation when you live forever."

"Well, it keeps your population from growing quickly."

"The elfin population has only declined in the last two millennia. Between war, accidental death, and occasional suicide, we are half the number we once were."

That did put a different spin on things. "That's not good."

"Yes, so I try to tell people. I had great hope that with this new land would come a new way of seeing the world."

"Had?"

"The arrival of Pittsburgh was unexpected."

Tinker winced. "Sorry."

"It actually has been beneficial," Windwolf said. "Enticing people to an utter wilderness was difficult; few wanted to suffer the ocean crossing for so few comforts. Human culture, though, is attracting the young and the curious—the ones most likely to see things my way."

"Good." Tinker focused back on throwing the horseshoes. That's what she liked about the game. It encouraged a flow of conversation.

"What about you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you desire children?"

She missed the stake completely, only the chain-link fence keeping the horseshoe from vanishing into the weeds. "Me?"

"You. Or would you rather be childless?"

"No." She blurted out the gut reaction to the question. "It's just I've never thought about kids. Sure, someday I'd like to have one or two, maybe as many as three, but hell, I've never even—" She was going to say kissed a man, but she supposed that wasn't true anymore. "You know."

"Yes, I do know," he purred, looking far too pleased, and it put a flash of heat through her. Her and Windwolf? Like her dream? Suddenly she felt the need to sit down. As if he were reading her mind—gods, she hoped not—Windwolf indicated the battered picnic table beyond the horseshoe pit.

As she clambered up to sit on the tabletop of the picnic table, she wondered what it would be like to be with him, as they had been in her dream. "How old are you?"

"For an elf, barely adult. For a human, I am ancient. I'm two hundred and ten."

Or 11.6 times older than she was. Nathan suddenly seemed close to her age.

"Is that too old?" Windwolf asked.

"No, no, not at all." Tinker struggled for perspective. Elves were considered adults at a hundred, but until they reached a thousand, they were still young. Triples were what the elves called them, or those that could count their age in three digits. Windwolf could be compared to a man that just turned twenty; only he'd been born in the 1820s.

And she was like one of Oilcan's astronomers to him, staying only long enough to break his heart.

First Nathan and now Windwolf. Well, didn't her choice of men suck?

"Have you ever played ninepins?" Windwolf asked, breaking the silence.

"Bowling? Yeah. But only with humans."

"I am much better at ninepins."

"Tooloo says humans should never play ninepins with elves. It always ends badly for humans."

"This Tooloo is a font of misinformation. She was completely wrong about the life debt."

"How so?"

"The debt between us is not yours. It is mine," Windwolf said.