Blue Sky
Two weeks after Pittsburgh became permanently stranded on Elfhome, the war between the elves and the oni reached John Montana’s gas station. John had been greasing the CV joint of a Honda he had up on the rack when the bell on the pumps chimed, announcing someone had pulled up for gas. He listened for the sound of his little brother’s feet moving across the ceiling above him, but could only hear the rumble of rock music. He ducked out from under the Honda, walked to the old fireman pole that dropped down from their apartment, and yelled, “Hey! We’ve got a customer down here!”
The bell chimed again and again, like someone was jumping on the air hose, making it trigger. Just kids messing with the air hose, John thought, and headed outside, still carrying the grease gun.
He hadn’t been expecting trouble. It had been a summer of hell since war had broken out between the elves and the oni, with humans like John caught in the middle. But with the recent dramatic events, he thought that the elves had won, and the war was over.
Looking at the sea of elves in Fire Clan red massed outside his gas station, John realized that he was mistaken. Most of them were common garden-variety laedin-caste soldiers, but sprinkled among them were the holy sekasha-caste warriors, with spells tattooed down their arms. The elves had been distracted by the chime, playing with the novelty of the air hose like kids. When they noticed him at the garage’s third bay door, though, all play died from their faces, and the eyes they turned toward him were hard and suspicious.
“Oooohhhh, shit.” John felt his stomach tighten into a cold knot. The evening news had covered what had happened in Chinatown just days before, showing the blood-washed sidewalks and the headless dead of the oni flushed out of their hiding spaces. The elves weren’t taking prisoners.
They saw the grease gun in his hands and they drew their swords.
“It’s not a weapon!” John cried out in low Elvish, dropped the tool, and stepped backwards. “It’s not a weapon!”
“Get on your knees!” one of the sekasha shouted in high tongue.
John raised his hands, holding them out to show they were empty and got down on his knees. This can’t be happening. “It’s not a weapon,” he continued in low Elvish because he was more fluent in it. “I fix automobiles. It’s only a tool for applying oil to the automobiles.”
The sekasha nudged the grease gun with his toe and watched it leak. Satisfied it was harmless, he signaled to the laedin-caste elves to search the garage. “Is there anyone else in the building?”
“My little brother. He’s just a child. Please don’t hurt him.”
“If you’re both human, you have nothing to fear.”
That was the problem—they weren’t.
One of the other sekasha produced a sheet of fine handmade paper, a spell inked onto its surface. John knew what this was. The oni used spells to disguise themselves as humans. The paper held a counterspell to break the illusion. The elves pressed it to John’s forearm, spoke the verb component and a static charge ran over him like low voltage electricity. The hairs on his arms and back lifted and stayed standing.
“John, who was playing with the…” His half-brother, Blue Sky, came sliding down the old fireman pole, landing in the center of the chaos. He stood only chest-high among the armored elves, thankfully looking younger than he was. He glanced around at the strangers, unafraid, until he saw John on his knees in front of the sword-wielding sekasha. “John!”
“I’m not hurt!” John cried. “Everything is—no, no, no, no!”
Blue had launched himself at the sekasha, shouting, “Get away from him!”
John surged up, reaching for Blue, but an elf caught him by the back of the head, jerked him back to his knees, and pressed a sword blade against his windpipe.
“Don’t move!” the elf behind him snapped.
The sekasha dodged Blue and tried to sweep out the boy’s legs. His brother back-flipped over the sweeping foot. Without even turning, or looking, the sekasha slashed backwards with his sword.
“No!” John screamed and fought the hold on him. “He’s a child! A child!”
The sword hit Blue Sky in the head, smashing him to the ground. John shouted out in wordless dismay.
“Hush!” the sekasha commanded, sheathing his sword. “I used the back of my blade. He’s only stunned.”
The sekasha held out his hand for another spell paper and placed it against Blue’s arm. He activated it and a distortion of air flowed over Blue and vanished. The boy groaned as the sekasha turned him, carefully, gently, to examine him.
His gaze was suspicious when he looked back at John, but he signaled to the others to free him. John didn’t bother to stand, just scrambled on his hands and knees to Blue and made sure that his little brother wasn’t hurt. As a testament to the sekasha’s skill with his sword, there was only a slight bruise on Blue’s forehead, and his eyes weren’t dilated. The boy glared at the sekasha, so John locked him in a hold.
The Fire Clan sekasha grunted. It was hard to tell if he was amused by Blue’s glare or annoyed by it. “What are you doing with this child? Where are his parents?”
“We share a mother,” John said. “She is sick. She went back to Earth. His father is dead.”
“Who was his father?” The sekasha asked.
The one thing you didn’t do was lie to elves. As much as John wanted to say that he didn’t know, it would be worse to be caught in a lie. “Lightning Strikes Wind.”
Unfortunately, the warrior recognized the name. “He was one of the Wind Clan sekasha?”
John nodded.
“He is—fourteen?” The sekasha tried to guess Blue’s age.
“I’m seventeen,” Blue answered for himself. It was a sore spot for him, because he’d been mistaken for as young as ten.
“Shhhh,” John hushed him.
“You don’t feed him right; he’s too small.” The sekasha stood and walked about the bay, studying the old fire hall that John used as a garage, from the fire pole that Blue had slid down to the gas pumps outside. He stomped on the air hose, making it chime again.
Blue was shaking with fury in his hold. John, however, was terrified that the worst could just be starting.
“Wolf Who Rules,” the sekasha named the head of the Wind Clan. “Does he know about the child?”
“No.” John had lived in terror of this day. He didn’t know how the sekasha would react to their holy bloodline being mixed with human. Even if they didn’t kill Blue Sky outright, there remained the chance they would take him from John.
The laedin-caste warrior appeared to sketch a bow to the sekasha. “The building seems clear, holy one.”
“Clear!” the sekasha shouted.
Profound silence filled the garage as the elves went still, waiting. John had heard that the Stone Clan, newly arrived to Pittsburgh, was using spells to find oni hidden within the walls of buildings and secret tunnels underground.
“Clear,” someone outside shouted. The elves relaxed.
The sekasha signaled for the others to move to the next building down. “If he was not sekasha-caste, I would not care what you do with him. My duty here is clear. He is of the holy blood. His clan must be told. This is no way one such as he should live.”