Elfhome

“How old are you now?” Forge dragged Oilcan’s attention back to the debate.

Oilcan sighed, hating to answer. “Humans reach maturity in less than two decades.”

“I realize that. How old are you?” Forge pressed for an answer.

“Twenty-two.” Judging by the dismayed looks all around, he just reduced himself back to a five year old in their eyes. “Pittsburgh is my home and if I had to choose a clan, I would chose the Wind Clan. Because of the children, though, it would be best if I could merely stay neutral.”

“Wind Clan?” Iron Mace cried. “What idiocy is that? You are Stone Clan!”

“He is not!” Tinker pushed her way through Windwolf’s Hand to stand between Oilcan and the Stone Clan domana. She was wearing shorts, a Team Tinker T-shirt and tennis shoes. She had her right arm in a sling and was snarling in Low Elvish. “He’s old enough to decide his clan and he decided to be neutral, so back off!”

“Who is this?” Iron Mace demanded.

“This is Beloved Tinker of Wind.” Prince True Flame gave Windwolf a look that clearly demanded his cousin to take control of his child bride. “She is the Wind Clan domi.”

The Stone Clan continued to look confused.

“She is my cousin.” Oilcan added the Elvish term that clearly mapped out how they were related. He shifted back to Low Elvish as Tinker wouldn’t be able to follow the conversation otherwise. “But we were raised as brother and sister.”

Forge instantly grasped Windwolf’s reasons. “You returned her immortality!”

Iron Mace, though, focused on the negative. “You spell-worked one of our clan’s children?”

“I am not a child.” Tinker snapped. “And I’ve never been Stone Clan. I have always considered myself Wind Clan.”

“It is all we’ve ever known,” Oilcan added.

Iron Mace shook his head. “Clearly Unbounded Brilliance’s children lost all memory of who they really were along with their immortality.”

Tinker scoffed. “Our grandfather knew that we were once Stone Clan and he chose not to have any communication with them.”

Their grandfather had viewed almost everything connected to elves with faint distrust. Oilcan had always contributed their grandfather’s wariness to the fact that Tooloo seemed incapable of telling the truth. Perhaps he knew that contacting the Stone Clan meant they would be scooped up and forced to be children the rest of their lives.

“Why didn’t he send word?” Forge asked. “I’ve been searching for nae hae for my son.”

“It does not matter.” Iron Mace snapped. “The Wind Clan has no right…”

“Wolf Who Rules offered, I accepted — there doesn’t need anything more than that!” Tinker shouted.

“Enough!” Prince True Flame roared. “We are at war. We do not have time for this petty bickering. Humans are considered adult at eighteen, so he can chose to be Stone Clan or not, if he wishes.”

“Forgiveness,” Oilcan said to Forge and to Thorne Scratch. “But I chose not to be Stone Clan.”

#

Oilcan fled back to Sacred Heart while Prince True Flame dragooned Iron Mace into the war effort and dragged him off for a war council. Forge begged off, pointing out that he could lay defenses but was generally a noncombatant. Prince True Flame allowed it, maybe seeing it as payment for losing his grandchildren, or maybe that he could babysit the two baby domana cousins.

Oilcan wished he didn’t feel so guilty for protecting himself. But if his mother’s death had taught him anything, it was that you couldn’t live your life ignoring your own heart for the sake of someone else’s happiness. He’d watched his mother die a little bit at a time for years before his father landed the killing blow. She should have fled to Elfhome, following her love of elf culture, instead of worrying about making his father unhappy. Her leaving his father wouldn’t have been as bad as his father rotting in a prison cell, knowing he’d killed the only good thing in his life.

Tinker walked beside Oilcan, occasionally bumping shoulders with him, and giving him worried looks.

“Oh, oh, what’s the look for? You’re the one with the broken arm.”

Tinker bumped him a little harder and stuck out her tongue. He laughed; it made him happy that despite all the madness of her change and the war, they were fundamentally the same. He could understand Forge’s immediate obsession. In Tinker, Oilcan heard echoes of his mother’s voice and grandfather’s sharp humor. If he lost Tinker, it would be like he lost his mother and grandfather all over again. He couldn’t bear the loss.

It didn’t surprise him that Forge followed them up the steps to Sacred Heart. Oilcan wasn’t sure how to deal with the elf that reminded him of his grandfather. Would the elf obey Prince True Flame or would he steamroll over everything to drag Oilcan back to the Easternlands?

Tinker turned to glare with suspicion at their great-grandfather. “What do you want — besides the obvious? You can’t have Oilcan.”

Unstoppable force met unmovable object. If Oilcan wasn’t sandwiched between the two, it would be entertaining.