She winced at the prices listed on the case. Everything was twice what it cost a month ago. She checked her wallet trying not to think of what she’d done to earn the twenties inside. If she got a bottle of milk, butter and a dozen eggs, she’d have enough money left over for a bag of apples and potatoes and three zucchini. The apples and potatoes would keep if she kept them cold and dark. The zucchini would give her something other than milk and eggs to eat.
There was a small rack of slickies in the back of the store. One of them was labeled “Princess Tinker” and “all new photos!” She picked it up and flipped the images.
According to the slickie Tinker had invented hoverbikes and been one of the star riders on the racing circuit. One picture showed her flying around a corner of a racetrack, head-to-toe mud. Another she was standing after a race, face muddy except where the goggles had protected her eyes. There was nothing elegant or regal about her. How did she get to be a princess?
The next page showed her about to step into a gray Rolls Royce. She wore a rich bronze-colored gown of fairy silk. A fortune of diamonds adored her throat and left wrist. A small wedge of blue marked the center of her forehead like a beauty mark. Her husband and his guards towered over her, emphasizing that she was just a tiny thing.
Clothes, apparently, did make a princess. The caption was in Elvish, and read “Beloved Tinker Domi.”
Was “domi” then the Elvish word for Princess? Certainly “she commanded it to be given out” suggested that Tinker was more than just a concubine. The marines had said that Forest Moss wanted a human domi because no elf would have him. Why not? And what exactly would the job entail?
Aiofe was in her backyard, taking down her laundry. Olivia could see the girl from her kitchen sink. She’d avoided the anthropology student since she’d found out that Aiofe was doing an internship with the EIA. The UN police force had ultimate power in Pittsburgh in regards to humans. They were the ones that deported illegal immigrants. People were saying that with Pittsburgh stranded, the original treaty with the elves was void and that the EIA no longer had any authority.
If anyone could tell Olivia about Forest Moss, it was Aiofe. Olivia put on her librarian disguise; auburn hair twisted up into a bun and reading glasses balanced at the end of her nose. She felt vaguely guilty when Aiofe brightened at the sight of her.
“Ah, Red! I’ve been worried about you.” Aiofe had a slight Irish lilt to her voice. “I’d been meaning to come over and knock, but your light is never on.”
“I’m still working night shift,” Olivia partially lied. Out of habit, she joined in taking down the clothes and folding them neatly. She avoided the indecently frilly panties and bras to focus on the T-shirts sporting logos from the University of Pittsburgh. “You’re not working today?”
“They let me go early since I’d been up all night getting things coordinated for today’s handouts. At dawn they gave me my share and told me to go home. To be truthful, I think they may be afraid that rioting might start and they didn’t want a wee Jackeen to be underfoot.”
Unlike the elves, most of the human forces were male. Obviously the men thought that Aiofe couldn’t defend herself. Unfortunately they probably were right. While Aiofe was as tall as Olivia, she’d been an only child and gone to a girl’s school where the “contact sport” was soccer. Good little girls only learned to defend themselves when they were exposed to little boys who had been taught that roughhousing was how real men acted.
“Everything seemed to be going well when I left,” Olivia reassured her. She liked the familiar comfort of doing chores with another woman. She’d been so lonely lately.
“That’s Pittsburghers for you.” Aiofe shook out a towel and folded it. “They’re so used to reality standing on its head that they’re taking it all in stride. I figured that was the case and so I came on home. Can I ask you something?”
Olivia’s heart leapt as she thought of all the questions she didn’t want asked. There were so many truths she’d been keeping from everyone. “What is it?”
“How do you grow beans? I was thinking of planting some of what they gave me.”
Olivia laughed in surprise and relief. “You can’t grow those keva beans now.”
Confusion filled Aiofe’s face. “Aren’t dried beans just the seeds of bean plants? Why can’t I put them in the ground and have them grow?”
“We’re less than a month from first frost.”
“What’s that?” Like Olivia, Aiofe had no family and her college friends had been on summer break when the war broke out. The girl was only marginally better off than Olivia in that she had a respectable job translating for the EIA, but there were times she seemed dangerously young and naïve.
“When it drops below freezing, most plants die. In Pittsburgh, the first frost is usually mid-October. That’s why the leaves are starting to turn.” Olivia pointed to the sugar maple that straddled their backyards. The edges of its leaves were tinged with yellow. It served as a reminder that despite the late summer heat, autumn was officially only days away.
“I know why the leaves change,” Aiofe complained. “I just don’t know anything about growing stuff. I was born in the farming country of Whites Cross Ireland but we moved to a flat on College Green in Dublin when I was little. I don’t know these things. Food always comes from the market.”
“I don’t know how long keva beans take to mature but they seem a lot like kidney beans and those take three or four months to grow. If we’d planted some back at the start of the war, then maybe there’d have been time, but now is too late. You’d just waste your beans.”
Aiofe blew a raspberry out. “The story of this war.” She threw her hands up in the air and waved a pair of red silk panties in the air. “Yay.” She dropped her hands. “Boo.”
“Huh?”
Aiofe tossed the panties into her plastic laundry basket. “Oh, the elves haven’t allowed humans to travel out of Pittsburgh, so everything we knew about them was what we could learn from the ones here. They were all Wind Clan beholden to the viceroy because he owned this half of the continent. With the oni invasion, though, he had to call on the other clans for reinforcements. Yay! We have this massive flood of new information.” Aiofe waved a black pair of panties this time. “Boo! Pitt is a ghost town because we were on summer break. None of the anthropology professors are on Elfhome. It’s only me and five other grad students with internships here in Pittsburgh. We’re taking notes like crazy.”
“The Fire Clan and the Stone Clan?”
Aiofe nodded, plucking down her bright underwear with no outward sign of embarrassment. “The Fire Clan is here as a neutral party because the queen sent them. From what we’ve been able to gather, she’s the only one with a true standing army. It’s a force that she normally uses for peacekeeping missions between the various clans. They’re not getting anything out of the war except keeping Elfhome safe from invasion. The Stone Clan sent a small mercenary force and the Wind Clan is paying for the mercenaries’ help. That’s the tale, cut and dried, but every day we’re learning all sorts about the political nastiness between the clans. Yay!” She threw her hands up in the air. “Only Pittsburgh is now in the middle of it.” She dropped her hands with a sigh. “Boo.”
“Forest Moss. What’s the story with him? What happened to his eye?”
Aiofe scooped up her basket and nodded toward her backdoor to indicate that Olivia should follow her in. “What we didn’t know until recently was that the oni and the elves went to war before. Apparently all three planets had ways to go through caves to get from one to the other with Earth smack in the middle. Forest Moss and his household were the first elves to find Onihida. That’s the oni’s world. The oni took them prisoner and tortured them all, trying to find out how to get to Elfhome. They tied Forest Moss down and burned his eye out. He’s the only one that survived.”