Ellen laughed. “I hope you’re right. I’m short on money; all I have are ones and fives for the cash box. Can I pay you when you pick up your buckets?”
Ellen normally prided herself on paying up front. It had been a hard summer on everyone with the military lockdowns, but hardest on people like her. Between being cut off from their regular providers and their customers hoarding cash for the winter, small business owners were struggling.
“Sure, no problem,” Law said
“How much do I owe you?” Ellen asked.
“Twenty bucks.”
Ellen smacked her.
“Ow! What’s that for?” Law cried.
“I am not a charity case. You’ve got two mouths to feed.”
“We eat very well.” Bare Snow had odd ideas as to what a proper diet was. Every meal had to have like thirty ingredients in it. Meat. Grains. Vegetables. Fruits. Spices. All mixed together into little froufrou dishes. “This morning, we had baked apples stuffed with bacon, onions and goat cheese.”
“Oh, that sounds good. Get me the recipe.”
The recipe seemed to be whatever strayed into Bare Snow’s hand, but it was probably more premeditated than that.
“We’re making money hand over fist off the enclaves,” Law said. “We might be the only people in Pittsburgh currently doing well. I don’t need to make a profit off my friends. Besides, if I charge you less, you can charge your customers less, and people will have more fun at the festival. Pittsburgh needs that.”
Ellen hugged her hard. “You are a good person, Law. Thank you. These last few weeks have been an utter roller coaster ride. Everyone has been hunkered down in the South Hills, waiting to see if the worst is over yet. I’ve got all these bratwurst, no customers, and no way to freeze the bloody things. I would have been sunk if the Changs hadn’t pulled out of the festival.”
“They pulled out? Why?”
“I don’t know. Vinnie called saying that one of the Chang boys had roughed him up for the money they put down last year to hold their normal slot.”
The Changs traditionally sold meat-on-a-stick at fairs. They put their restaurant-honed skills to use by marinating skewers of chicken, saurus and wild boar in teriyaki sauce and cooking them on massive wood-fired grills. Because they could pump out large amounts of great-tasting food, they usually had the best location at any festival. It explained Ellen’s prime real estate.
What Ellen obviously didn’t know was that the Changs were half-oni. Law had only put all the clues together a few days before Tommy Chang threw in with the elves. She nearly had whiplash as her long history with the Chang family underwent a drastic rewrite.
What happened that made the Changs pull out of the festival? Had this happened after Trixie called demanding apples to candy? Or was this before, and thus the whole reason Trixie was suddenly scrambling to put together a booth at Oktoberfest?
The big eight-foot-long zalituus horns had reached the end of the bridge and started to blow, signaling that the shrine was nearing the end of its journey. Bare Snow started to bounce in place.
“I’ve got to go!” Law said. “See you Monday!”
The elves that were working booths drifted toward the front entrance, summoned by the horns. Most of the humans were like Law; if they had the time, they would go see the pageantry that the elves were creating. It wasn’t their religion so they could easily miss it if they were too busy. A handful of humans countered with human traditions, plastering pilgrim hats and turkeys everywhere despite the fact it was only September.
Law pointed at the back of Ellen’s tiny house. “Bare Snow, you can leave that wagon here and go see the shrine installed.”
Bare Snow pointed away from the entrance. “No, I want to get funnel cake!”
“Funnel cake?” Law glanced up the street. Yes, three booths up, a bunch of high school students were drizzling batter into hot oil to make the tangled-ribbon cakes. Judging by the “Team Big Sky” banners and their remarks, the kids were younger siblings of the team members who were out looking for Oilcan. The team captain, John Montana, wisely decided that the search was too dangerous for the teenage kids.
“Moon Rabbit says funnel cake is heavenly and I should get lots,” Bare Snow said.
And share it when they passed Usagi’s again. In certain regards, Moon Rabbit was very much her mother without any brakes.
Law doubted that this funnel cake would measure up to previous years’. Just about anything fried and covered with sugar, however, would be heavenly to a child. “Go on. I’ll deliver the apples.”
Hopefully Trixie was somewhere ahead.
When Law was nine years old, her parents had declared that she was too wild and unmanageable for them to handle. They sent her bouncing between various family members as they focused on throwing hissy fits of mutual selfishness that ended with their divorce. Years eleven and twelve she spent as an unwilling slave to her grandfather, up to her elbows in grease, rebuilding the Dodge and listening to his war stories of setting up the railroad on Elfhome. She ended her servitude by explaining in detail her budding attraction to girls.
She celebrated her freedom by roaming the city all summer, looking for someone to put words into deeds.
She found Trixie, hiding from the oni, not that Law knew that at the time. Trixie had been half-starved, physically scarred, shockingly knowledgeable about all things sexual, and desperately in need of saving. The girl tripped every trigger that Law didn’t know that she had. Law fell hard but she was never sure where she stood in Trixie’s heart. All the secrets that Trixie refused to tell Law seemed like proof that the girl didn’t care about her.
It was embarrassing to realize that Trixie had been keeping Law safe from her own stupidity. Law hadn’t been able to imagine anyone that she couldn’t level with her fists or trusty “Lady Luck” baseball bat. The oni could have easily killed Law or worse. Law never even imagined worse; she had been too naïve.
Life since June had been an education on worse.
At the very end of the street, right before it opened up to the amphitheater space, Law found the Chang girls. Trixie and three of her younger female cousins were nervously pacing behind a makeshift counter. Hand-painted signs read CANDY APPLES $2.
“Where the hell have you been?” Trixie cried in greeting. She rocked a girly tomboy look with her black hair cut pixie-short, red tank top that flaunted her arm muscles, and tight faded blue jeans. She wasn’t starving to death like when they first met, but her jeans made it obvious that she was still painfully skinny. “We couldn’t heat the candy until we had the apples.” She used her cigarette to light a propane burner. “After we coat the apples, we need to let them cool. We really needed an hour prep time and the shrine is already here.”
Law ignored the bitchiness; Trixie was between a rock and a hard place. “I found a small McIntosh orchard that everyone missed.” With an uncertain winter looming in front of them, everyone in Pittsburgh was gleaning abandoned farms for fruit. Law was needing to range farther and farther out. “I know this won’t last you the whole weekend, but it should get you through today and tomorrow. I’ll hit the orchard again and get you more.”
Trixie flicked her cigarette onto the asphalt and ground it out with her red ballerina flats. “Tell me where it is and I’ll send someone out to it.”
“It’s near the Rim…”
“They’ll have guns.” She picked up one of the apples. “If it was rice, it’d be no problem, but you try to explain the difference between McIntosh and Red Delicious to these idiots, you get a blank look.”
Trixie meant her male cousins. Apparently she’d tried sending them out to get apples and hit a brick wall of ignorance. Trixie handed the apple to one of the girls that had been unloading the apples into large plastic bins. “Wash them and put them on sticks.”