“Why?” Law asked.
“Because of the clan wars.” The answer seemed strangely condensed.
When Law was a kid with crayons, she always left the sky paper white unless she did a sunset of yellows and oranges. It was the mythical ocean that Law had never seen, the lakes and the rivers that were blue. To the elves, Bare Snow’s answer probably would make as much sense as Wind Clan claiming blue as a color when there was a Water Clan. Bare Snow’s last name was Wind; why shouldn’t she go straight to the head of the clan in the Westernlands? How did she end up on the other side of the city?
“I had always thought that how my parents met was romantic: a chance meeting on a desolate island. I realize now that the years alone had been sheer torture for my mother. That she had been so lonely that she would risk her life to talk to another being.”
Sensing that Bare Snow was about to go off into another long, long story, Law asked quickly, “So you talked with someone here in Pittsburgh? And they took you to the house?”
Just as Bare Snow had been about to break down, a male approached her on the street. He claimed there was a special area belonging to the Water Clan and that he’d been sent to take her to it. Law was fairly sure that was a complete lie. According to her high school civics class, as long as the gate was functioning, the city was to be wholly human-owned. (Which always struck her as odd wording since if the gate wasn’t functioning, Pittsburgh wouldn’t be on Elfhome. That was the entire reason they called returning to Earth Shutdown.) Elves weren’t allowed to claim anything inside the Rim. More importantly, humans couldn’t settle outside of it. Newcomers liked to bitch and moan about that since it meant they couldn’t go off and dig up emeralds or pan for gold in North Carolina.
“And this human, he had the Ford? The white automobile?”
“Nae. Nae human.”
“It was an elf?” Law thought Bare Snow had told her it was a human.
Bare Snow considered, screwing up her face as she thought. “Looked human. But he was not human.”
“Huh?”
“I’d been to Summer Court. All the households I talked to had spoken in a very austere manner of speech. It is based on the Wyverns’ way of speaking, only more formalized. Here in Pittsburgh, there are only Wind Clan households, and specifically those from the highlands. You can tell by the way they talk; it’s a very marked accent. Even the sekasha at Caraway’s had it when he was using the Low Elvish. It means that the viceroy must not use the very formal court language and thus his people feel no pressure to adapt.”
Law wondered if she was ever going to find out how Bare Snow got to Fairywood. “I don’t understand.”
“All the humans I’ve talked to—Law, Ellen, Patty, Jon—they speak Low Elvish with highland accent.”
Who the hell is Jon? Law didn’t ask. She focused on the mystery human who wasn’t a human. “This male didn’t have the right accent?”
Bare Snow winced and spoke hesitantly. “It isn’t that he didn’t have an accent, it was he had too much of an accent. Not even the enclave elves speak as broadly. It was obvious that he was pretending. Once I started to listen closely, I picked up traces of old tongue, that no elf would ever teach a human, not even unintentionally.”
“Are you sure?”
“The old ways have been rooted out. Young elves are not taught it. No old one would be so lax to use it without thinking.”
“How do you know it then?” Law asked.
Bare Snow blushed and looked down at her hands. For several minutes, it seemed like she wasn’t going to answer, and then she said quietly, “The gardener needs to know the weed from the flowers.”
Usagi’s place on Mount Washington was the kind of playful chaos that only a home with many small children and pets could achieve. The toys started halfway down the block, growing denser as Law neared the front door. She was sure that any home intruder would end up facedown on the floor with a dozen Legos embedded in his feet. Certainly she needed to step over several large Tonka construction vehicles and two Big Wheels to get down the sidewalk. There was no yard to speak of; the two raised planters had given way to endless landscaping projects with said construction toys.
Bare Snow bent to examine the trucks, pushing them to and fro. She probably hadn’t seen a cast-metal toy before. She was making motor noises for them just like a child would; maybe it was instinctual.
Usagi’s door was painted Wind Clan blue. Law frowned at it, wondering if the white door in Fairywood had been an indication that Bare Snow was Water Clan. Why blue for Wind and white for Water? Law rang the doorbell.
After several minutes, the door opened and Moon Rabbit Warrior gazed up at Law. The little half-elf was in her tweens but she looked six. She was naked except for a pair of butterfly wings strapped to her back and a pink tutu. Her long black hair was up in its customary pigtails, showing off her elf-pointed ears. In the background, the commune’s TV was playing a cartoon video at full volume. The sweet cinnamon smell of fire berries washed over Law; it smelt like Usagi had spilled an entire orchard of the fruit somewhere in her house.
As usual, Brisbane ignored all formalities and waddled into the house.
“Hi, Moon,” Law started. “Is Widget…”
“Moooom!” Moon shouted at the top of her lungs. “It’s Brizzy!”
“Is his mommy with him?” Usagi shouted from the kitchen.
“Yes!”
“Hi, Law! We’re in the kitchen!”
Usagi’s was haven to human women who had found their way to Pittsburgh one way or another. They were in love with the idea of magic, elves, and a mystical other world, or maybe just completely disenchanted with Earth. Most of them had the reputation of being “elf groupies,” sneaking illegally to Elfhome just to have sex with elves.
In truth, they were taking advantage of a loophole in the treaty. Elf DNA, starting with blood samples but also including children, wasn’t allowed to be taken off Elfhome. Elf tradition stated that children couldn’t be forcibly taken from their mothers. It created a little known and rarely exploited way to get permanent resident status in Pittsburgh.
It didn’t guarantee a living, nor did elves pay child support (although Law wasn’t sure if the males even knew of their children’s existence). Usagi gathered together other female illegal immigrants with marketable skills to pool resources. They’d taken over an abandoned restaurant building and set up a commune. While each woman shouldered a shift of watching the children, they all also had part-time jobs outside the commune. It was part circus act, part logistical nightmare to get any one woman alone.
Law wanted the commune’s newest addition, Widget. She was a cute-as-a-button African-American teenager who wanted to be a translator. She was a whiz with the computer and had learned fluent Elvish online but hadn’t actually managed to graduate from high school. Locals would hire someone without a diploma; Pittsburgh had a crying need for people with Widget’s skills. The EIA wanted people who had doctorates in linguistics and they controlled the work visas. Unable to legally immigrate to Pittsburgh, the teenager had risked her life to swim the Ohio River at Shutdown in the dead of winter. (Of all the insane things! The girl had thought that river shark hibernated or something stupid like that. Biology was not her strong suit.)
Law had fished Widget out of the water and brought her to Usagi’s. The girl hadn’t gotten pregnant yet (maybe was still a virgin) so she needed to lay low. Law had been quietly connecting her with people like Ellen who needed part-time computer help and would keep their mouths shut.
Law wasn’t going to find out if Widget was home by asking Moon Rabbit—the little half-elf’s attention was now locked on the porcupine—nor was it polite to stand at the door and holler like a mad woman. She was going to have to venture deeper into the chaos to find Widget. “Kitchen” meant no work shoes and the like, so Law skinned off her rubber boots.