Olivia shivered as she thought of the sunburst of scars circling Forest Moss’ empty socket. How long did they burn him with hot knives before they actually plunged the tip into his eye? Were there more scars hidden by his clothes? “Is he really crazy?”
“He’s not the full shilling, as my da would say.”
Aiofe hadn’t prepared for winter yet, so her kitchen seemed spacious and airy. She’d spent her spare time painting the walls butter yellow and putting up crisp white curtains instead of bracing for freezing winds and a possible loss of electricity or gas. The kitchen table was doubling as a desk, overflowing with actual paper books, newspapers, datapads and slickies. Aiofe obviously trusted the EIA and the elves to keep Pittsburgh functioning until the peaceful end of the war. Olivia glanced about, feeling guilty that she hadn’t taken the girl under her wing and shown her how to prepare her place. Olivia wasn’t even sure that Aiofe would take her suggestions; she was nearly five years younger than the grad student. She probably would think Olivia’s mistrust of the government was hopelessly militant redneck.
“So, have you gotten a chance to meet Princess Tinker?” Olivia asked instead.
“Tinker domi!” Aiofe corrected with a laugh. “The Wind Clan elves get really cheesed off if you call her Princess.”
“Why?”
“She’s their domi! They’ve been in Pittsburgh long enough to know what ‘princess’ means. The two words are worlds apart.”
“Really?” Olivia’s heart sunk.
“In English, ‘princess’ means basically a pretty girl that has no power in government whose only value is to produce children for the bloodline. We don’t have anything close to the absolute authority of a domi. She could order her guards to kill any elf in Pittsburgh and no one would question it. It’s her right. To call her Princess Tinker is a sign of disrespect.”
“Oh.”
“One of the boyo gave me this.” Aiofe opened a small lunch cooler, took out a plastic bag and held it open. There was a dead rabbit inside. Someone with a great deal of skill had killed it with a rifle bullet to the head. It’d been field dressed but not skinned. “I think he’s sweet on me, but I don’t know what to do with it.”
Olivia’s stomach rolled at the smell of blood, recalling the dead oni on Penn Avenue. She swallowed hard, reminding herself that it been weeks since she had protein beyond eggs and milk. “I’ll help you cook it for dinner.”
Aiofe grinned. “I’ll wet the tea.”
According to the newspaper, the newly arrived Stone Clan elves were staying at Ginger Wine’s enclave. The elves’ businesses gathered just over the edge of where Pittsburgh abruptly ended, as if a giant blade had sliced through the city. Beyond the thin line of cement dust and sheared-off guardrails was virgin forest as far as the eye could see.
Olivia took a bus out to the University of Pittsburgh and walked the last few blocks to the Rim. The enclaves faced humanity with tall, blank stone walls. Each compound was a block wide and hundreds of feet deep with two- and three-story buildings forming a sheltered orchard courtyard. While the enclaves acted like hotels with restaurants, she’d never actually been inside one of them. They were supposedly very expensive.
She walked down the street, reading the names printed in Elvish over the front doors. Ginger Wine’s door was shut and locked. When she tentatively knocked, a spyhole slid opened up and blue eyes gazed down at her.
“We’re not taking new guests.” The male obviously learned English from a native Pittsburgher.
Olivia steeled herself against the fear that was jangling through her. “I would like to talk to Forest Moss.”
The eyes went wide with surprise. “That nutcase? No, no, you should avoid him. We all do.”
At least it made her fear turn to annoyance. “You shun him?”
“I do not know this word: shun.”
“You don’t talk to him? You don’t look at him? You pretend he doesn’t exist?”
He tilted his head. “He’s domana and Stone Clan and insane. It is best that we avoid him. Even the Stone Clan people avoid him.”
“So absolutely no one talks to him?” She knew it was silly to be angry on his part but she’d lived through being shunned. It’d been an agonizingly lonely three months before she caved to the shunning. She had thought she could easily deal with not having to talk to the silly idiots who filled up her life, but she didn’t realize that her own family would join in to break her will. At the time, she thought it was because they believed her marrying Troy would be the best thing for her. Only after she caved in and agreed—so she couldn’t call her wedding night a rape—she realized that they were only concerned that they wouldn’t end up sharing her punishment.
“He is dangerous,” the elf said, as if that forgave everything.
And she’d been “stubborn,” “stupid,” “sinful,” and a host of other things muttered behind her back but never to her face, and always just loud enough for her to hear.
“I need to talk to him.”
“He’s not here. He’s off with my lord, Windwolf. They’re out hunting oni and won’t be back until late. You should go home; the streets aren’t safe after dark anymore.”
If she left Oakland, it would only be to go walk Liberty Avenue to turn tricks. “Can I wait inside for his return?”
“We’re considered Stone Clan territory for the duration.” He did not sound happy about the fact. “I’m not allowed to let strangers in without one of them giving me permission. Go home.”
He closed the spyhole, effectively ending the conversation.
Hours later the elves returned to the enclaves in force. Hundreds of them poured into the area from somewhere to the east. Most of them wore the Fire Clan’s red, and then there was a small clump of Wind Clan blue. A Stone Clan female was marked by a handful of elves in black. Olivia missed Forest Moss until the last moment. He walked apart from the others, completely alone despite the throng. Five Wyverns moved with him, seemingly guarding over him while not actually interacting with him. They kept out of reach, always with their back to him.
She hurried through the crowd of elf warriors, trying to reach his side. But he’d entered the enclave and the door was firmly locked.
Her place had been too silent in the mornings. It reminded her too much of when she was being shunned. She’d splurged on an old digital clock radio within a week of arriving in Pittsburgh. After two days of failing to talk with Forest Moss, she woke to the news that Ginger Wine’s had been attacked during the night. Dozens of elves had been killed in the attack; their names, however, weren’t being given out. With her heart looping through her chest like it was on a rollercoaster, she took a bus out to Oakland.
Ginger Wine’s was a smoking rubble. Oni bodies were stacked on the street like cordwood. There was no sign of the dead elves. In the summer heat, the slaughterhouse stench was nearly unbearable.
A work crew from the EIA were loading the oni bodies onto trucks.
“Do you know which elves were killed?” Olivia asked one of the men. “What happened with their dead?”
The man pointed toward the Faire Grounds where black smoke was billowing up. “Elves cremate their dead; say it frees the souls to pass on. Ginger Wine only lost two of her people. The rest are all Stone Clan.” He obviously thought she was friends with the Wind Clan elves that ran Ginger Wine’s establishment.