“We can teach you!” Bare Snow said.
Hazel came back for another round of bread dough. “We need to come up with protocols on how we’re going to deal with emergencies so we all know what the plan is. I had no idea what to do when fighting broke out at Station Square. If Widget hadn’t been able to tell me that everyone was safe, I would have gone there.”
There was a sudden stampede of little feet in the room over their heads.
“Oh, the children are awake,” Hazel said.
The kids were good and didn’t scream or shout as they came thundering down the stairs, but the damage was done. Clover’s baby woke up crying.
“Once more into the breach, my friends.” Clover stood up.
Counting Clover’s infant, the commune had seven children. The six who could walk swarmed the table. The Bunnies were all shades of hair color, skin tones, and sizes. Their children, though, all looked like full siblings with straight black hair, blue almond-shaped eyes, and pointed ears. Moon Rabbit, the oldest, led the charge. She was fourteen but looked and acted six, which was why she only occasionally seemed able to dress herself. This morning she only had on her Wonder Woman underwear and was dragging her rabbit onesie behind her. Her right pigtail braid had unraveled, so her black hair hung to her waist. The other children were equally in various stages of dress. Her little brother, Shield of a Thousand Leaves, still looked like a toddler at five years old. He was crying because he had tried to put on a pair of costume butterfly wings and gotten them stuck on his head. Blade climbed into Bare Snow’s lap since his mother, Clover, had headed upstairs to deal with her colicky baby. Thunder went to lean against his mother, Babs, but her lap was still full of ferrets. All the kids were talking and crying and screaming.
Law loved the children and enjoyed the chaos in small doses, but she had hit her limit. She was already standing up when her phone rang. The screen showed that it was Alton Kryskill.
“I need to take this.” She used the call as an excuse to flee the house completely. The sidewalk outside the house was strewn with toys. She had to pick her way carefully to a clear spot. “Hi, Alton! How did it go?”
She’d asked Alton to check her fish traps and deliver anything he found in them. Luckily she had only promised “water produce” to Caraway’s enclave as she had expected Oktoberfest to chew up more of her time.
“I found your traps without any problem,” Alton reported. “They were full. I got everything to Caraway’s and Chili Pepper was happy.”
“Great!”
“Are you free? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
Law frowned at her phone. What would Alton want to talk about? It boggled her mind. About how she found out about the train? She had left dead bodies behind her. How she derailed the train alone? She doubted Hazel or Widget would have mentioned Bare Snow to Duff.
“Now?” Law said when she realized that she’d been silent too long.
“Yeah, if you’re free. I’m on Mount Washington at the moment.”
Which was an alarming coincidence.
“What are you doing there?” Law glanced around.
“My little brother Marc has a place on Grandview, the old Greely place.”
Law turned to look toward the distant WESA radio tower. She had only been to the house once during an epic high school party that went south when one of the football players didn’t listen to the warning “she’s drunk, leave her alone.” He did listen to the autographed hockey stick to the side of the head, though. There was a reason she wasn’t offered the place when the Greely family moved Stateside last year. “Okay, meet me at the Duquesne Incline.”
Looking at Alton Kryskill, it was easy to see why Widget was crushing on his little brother Duff. The Kryskills all had piercing blue eyes, beautiful honey gold hair that poets would write sonnets for, and a build that made them seem godlike. Alton added a neatly trimmed beard, slightly darker in hue than his golden locks, that accented his strong chin.
The “Asian woman” who accompanied Alton had all the little tells of a tengu warrior: lean, muscular body, strong nose, ink-black hair. The female identified herself as Yumiko Sessai. A few months ago the name “Sessai” wouldn’t have meant shit to Law. After a summer of covertly fighting the Skin Clan, Law knew it indicated that the woman was one of the near-mythical yamabushi, who were said to have magical powers. All her intel said that they were stalwart protectors of Jin Wong and the other members of the Chosen bloodline. The Kryskills had gotten very deep into the tengu camp somehow if Alton was running with a yamabushi.
Alton didn’t want to talk about it — which was fine with Law, since she had her own secrets to keep.
Yumiko was willing to believe that Law was badass enough to take on an entire train full of oni warriors single-handedly and yet knew no more than the average Pittsburgher about oni history. It would seem naïve of Yumiko, except for the fact that the Kryskill family had pulled a cannon out of thin air and taken on six giant walking catfish. Yumiko might consider “foragers” on par with Paul Bunyan and Daniel Boone. It was also possible that Yumiko expected Alton to later educate his family.
Whatever the reason, Yumiko patiently covered oni history as it pertained to current events.
At one point, three worlds — Elfhome, Earth, and the oni homeworld of Onihida — had natural gateways connecting them at countless points. It was through these gates the first “greater bloods” appeared on Onihida. The invaders had a strange new magic unknown to the inhabitants: powerful bioengineering spells that allowed them to create horrific war monsters. They quickly conquered Onihida.
What the tengu only recently realized was that these “greater bloods” were actually Skin Clan elves who had already conquered Elfhome in the same manner. Originally their entire race had rounded ears like humans, but the Skin Clan gifted their slaves with pointed ears, so that slaves could be identified instantly. It meant that the ancient members of the master race could pass as humans, and had been doing so in Pittsburgh since the first Startup.
This matched up with what Law had discovered on her own at the beginning of summer. She and Bare Snow had covertly fought and killed several EIA employees who looked human but were actually Skin Clan elves.
Yumiko connected many dots that Law was missing. The Skin Clan had set their sights on the powers held by the godlike dragons that were from a fourth world. Neither the tengu nor the elves were sure how many dragons the Skin Clan had managed to trap. They did have a list of known victims: Clarity, Brilliance, Honor, Impatience, Joy, Nirvana, and Providence.
According to Providence, the dragons had decided that the captured individuals had trespassed on the elves’ homeworld and thus were responsible for their own sad fate. Because they thought waging a war with the Skin Clan would be unjust, the dragons simply put Elfhome and Earth under interdict. They attempted to protect Onihida by destroying the gates that linked it to the other worlds, not realizing that the elves had already pushed their way onto that planet.
The Skin Clan started out small in their experiments, using the genetic material from the slain dragons. They wanted various magical abilities like seeing the future, teleporting between worlds, and phasing through walls. They made the mistake of using their slaves as test subjects, accidentally gifting some of them with godlike abilities. The following rebellion was both ironic and inevitable. After that, the Skin Clan discovered a new application for the captured dragons: powerful spell bombs.