There was a time, according to her grandfather, when all the roads and bridges in Pittsburgh had been well maintained. The roads into Fairywood were now a maze of missing bridges and broken pavement. Some of them were only passable because her Dodge had six wheels and massive ground clearance. She wasn’t even sure how anyone would get out this far, unless they took a wrong turn off the misnamed Interstates onto Route 60 and then got majorly lost.
“I bet it’s a goat. Crazy Lady said ‘goat.’ Goats are white like snow. Or an indi, they kind of look like goats, only a hundred times cuter. They’re like cotton balls with horns.”
They crossed into Fairywood and the roads got rougher. Because of the Chartiers Creek and the steep hillsides, there were only three streets that led into the heart of the neighborhood to do the little housing plans circling loop things. With the exception of someone’s little yap dogs barking up a storm in the distance, the neighborhood seemed utterly lifeless. The houses looked like they’d been abandoned years before the first Startup. Unlike most of the places in Pittsburgh, they’d been boarded shut instead of left open to the elements. Weather had blasted all the paint from surfaces, leaving graying wood. It nearly seemed like life had been bleached out of the world by time.
Then on the most remote corner of the neighborhood, on a street that ended in a cul-de-sac—there was a house with a stark, freshly painted white door.
Law pulled to a stop and stared at it. “I guess it isn’t a goat.”
She had a variety of weapons in her pickup. She spent too much time out in the middle of nowhere not to go armed. She had everything from an easily annoyed porcupine to a Barrett .50 caliber rifle. The question was which was appropriate for the situation. Crazy Lady said that someone was willing to use deadly force, but Law only had the mystery woman’s assurances. She was going to look like the crazy one if she went in waving a gun and there was just some scared female inside.
“Come on, Brisbane, we’ve got a house to check out.” She tugged on her Pirates baseball cap. “And maybe a game of ball to play.”
She got out a turnip and her bat and off they went.
No one answered her polite knock. The door wasn’t locked. She swung it cautiously open.
The house had never been finished before the first Startup. Rough-framed stairs led upward without any nod towards safety. The ceilings were just joists. The walls were unpainted drywall. With the windows boarded over, the building was a dark cave, the sunlight from the doorway the only light.
Brisbane trundled in.
“Brizzy!” Law whispered.
The problem with a fearless pet was that he went where he wanted to go, which wasn’t always the same place she wanted to be. He didn’t come back when she called, which meant he probably could smell something he wanted to eat.
Law hissed a curse. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the house. “Hello?” And then considering she was sent after someone with an elf sounding name, she added in, “Sekia?”
She should have brought a flashlight. After a morning of sun reflecting off water, she felt blind in the cave-like dark. She took out her phone and shone it into the darkness. “Sekia?” And then in English. “Is anyone here?”
Brisbane muttered from somewhere deep in the house. He’d found something to eat but couldn’t get to it. There would be no calling him back.
Sighing, she crept forward, panning her phone’s light left to right. The house was one of these “open floor plans” that equated into three big rooms downstairs, connected together via large archways. There seemed to be some light shining in the back of the house. “Seriously, Law, why do you keep getting mixed up in shit like this? You don’t know even if there’s a girl…”
A shadow crossing through the slant of light from the door made her spin around. She couldn’t tell what had cast the shadow. She couldn’t see anyone. She hadn’t heard any footsteps.
“Hello?” She called louder in Elvish, “Snow? This place is not safe.” Her high school Elvish classes never covered situations like this. She used Elvish when selling to the enclaves at the Rim but usually the conversations were limited to food, time, money and the weather. Can you get me fish tomorrow? No, you cannot eat my porcupine.
There was a whisper in the darkness to the right of the doorway. As Law stared into the darkness, her eyes slowly adjusted until she could see someone standing there. Somehow she hadn’t seen the person tucked into the shadows.
“Hello? Nicadae!” Law tried for cheerful while tightening her hold on the baseball bat. “Sekia?”
“Sekia.” A soft, confused female voice echoed and continued in Elvish, “Who are you?”
“Law.” She patted her chest. She hated her full name but elves complained that her name was way too short. “Lawry Munroe. Who are you?”
The figure moved forward into the light. The female was smaller than Law expected. Her baby-doll dress of white fairy silk managed to be very demure for how stunningly short it was. Black curls spilled down her back, nothing like the impossibly straight controlled hair that Law associated with elves. Bare feet. The female pressed a hand to her chest and spilled out High Elvish in a flood.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Law cried in English. “Naekanain.” The one Elvish phrase that was useful for all occasions: I don’t understand. Law was fairly fluent in Low Elvish; she had to be to trade with the elves. High Elvish, though, was a whole different language. “Are you Snow?” She pretended to shiver. “Snow? You?”
That got a long, uncertain look.
“Okay.” Law scratched at her back with the baseball bat. She reasoned out the logic of her problem in English. “Crazy Lady got: Fairywood, white door, female. Let’s say it’s a given that someone is coming to kill any female behind the white door, regardless if you’re actually Snow or not.”
“Naekanain.” Snow said slowly, assuming this was actually Snow.
Law simplified—“We have to go”—then realized she’d said it in English. She repeated it in Elvish and used the “come here” hand wave that elves used.
“We have to go,” the female echoed the English, but she turned and headed deeper into the house.
Law threw up her hands in frustration and chased after the elf.
Off the unfinished kitchen was an area that probably would have been the mudroom. A spell light illuminated the small rough area. Brisbane was rooting through a pile of travel sacks, grumbling at the fact that he couldn’t get to whatever attracted him.
“Brizzy!” Law whistled and held out the turnip. “Come on. We have to go.”
The elf gathered up her travel sacks. The look she gave the cave-like kitchen was clear enough: whatever the reason she was there, she didn’t like the place. She was perfectly willing to pack up and abandon it, even if the ride came with a porcupine.
The elf’s hair was blue-black.
Out in the sun, it was really beautiful. Glossy, loose waves fell down to her hips, coal-black but with subtle dark blue highlights. Human women would either pay hundreds of dollars or sign a pact with a devil for such hair. Her skin was the flawless pale, pale white of elves, even her bare feet. She had long athletic legs. The fruffy baby-doll dress of white silk covered all the naughty bits—barely. Her eyes weren’t the vivid blue almost every elf Law ever met had, but a deep stormy gray, the color of thunderclouds.
That said, she looked like she hadn’t slept for days, and her beautiful eyes were red as if from crying. But far from being despondent, she explored the Dodge with great interest. She pushed all the buttons, cranked the window up and down and up and down and turned the radio on and off. When she found the maps in Law’s glovebox, she gave a happy cry.