Elfhome

Unless the tengu realized that Kajo was pulling the strings, they wouldn’t find Oilcan in time. Tommy hurried through the warren to his room, hoping that Bingo had been in too much of a rush to think of everything. He’d learned very young that information was the key to staying alive — gathering it up and then keeping to yourself. He opened his closet and triggered the latch to his secret storage cubbyhole. Everything was still in place. He pulled out his maps.

Forge was newly arrived in Pittsburgh. The tengu would assume that the domana didn’t know his way around nor have access to cars or trucks. They’d be searching Oakland and downtown and maybe beyond the Rim, in the virgin forest. Kajo, though, would make sure that Forge could get to any place easily. A random human that had a truck. An elf that knew how to drive would be bumped into Forge’s path. A tengu? No, not a tengu, not after what Jin did to the last ones that endangered Oilcan. But maybe a half-oni that didn’t know how pissed off Tommy would be if he found out.

So someplace impossible to find, controlled by the Stone Clan, and that had enough magic to power a transformation spell.

He found his map of magic springs within a hundred miles. The oni built camps on top of a handful of the strongest and used cloaking spells to hide them. The Stone Clan had been given a huge chunk of land to the south of Pittsburgh, just beyond the Rim. Last week the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had published a map showing how the land was divided up. Forest Moss didn’t have the resources to develop his land, nor had Jewel Tear. Earth Son — Kajo’s little puppet — could have started clearing land. And yes, not far from the Rim, in Earth Son’s parcel, was a very strong magical spring.

“I’m going here.” He showed Spot the map. “Right here where I marked this. Take this to Bingo. Tell him to have these other springs checked out. I think I’m right, but I’m not sure. We need to find Oilcan and protect him. Kajo is after him.”

40: Childhood’s End

The Rim had grown up and over Neville Island. The ironwood saplings of her childhood were now tall enough to choke out the Earth brush trees. Esfatiki, touch-me-nots, skunkweed and jagger bushes had replaced the lawn down to the riverbank. There was no sign of the groundhogs that had plagued her grandfather’s attempts at a garden; Elfhome’s flora and fauna had done what her grandfather couldn’t. All the nearby houses — abandoned since the first Startup — had collapsed under the weight of thick wild grape vines.

It’d been three years since Tinker last visited the hotel where she grew up. She expected after the sprawling luxury of Poppymeadow’s that it would seem smaller and seedier, but it seemed just as large and imposing and rundown as ever. She had heard through Team Tinker that paparazzi had pried the plywood off the first floor doors and windows to photograph the princess’ birthplace. Judging by the footprints in the dust, though, Esme was the only person who’d recently visited the grand old hotel.

Just to be sure, she let the small army she brought with her sweep into the building. There was no telling if she managed to jump ahead of her shadow or not with this move.

A loud splash made her jerk around and count heads. One, two, three, four…and Blue Sky pulling Baby Duck away from the river’s edge.

“Stay away from the banks!” Tinker called. This was why she really shouldn’t be in charge of the kids — she sucked at taking care of helpless things. She didn’t have much choice in the matter. “The jump fish are really bad in this area.”

“Your grandfather raised two children here?” Thorne Scratch sounded like all the people who didn’t know her grandfather well. He had an unfounded reputation for being insane. There was method to his madness: they’d been far from any prying eyes on Neville Island.

“The jump fish population was a lot lower when we were little. Every Shutdown thinned them down until Earth constructed a fish dam to keep them in Pittsburgh waters.” Since Thorne was looking unconvinced, Tinker added. “He’d throw out sticks of dynamite once a week, just to be sure.”

Maybe part of her problem with being a parent was she’d had such bad examples as role models. The dead father. The mother trapped in time. The mad scientist grandfather.

She was halfway through the lobby when she realized she’d lost her Shields. She glanced back to the wide front doors. Stormsong and Pony were still outside, standing under the portico, gazing raptly at the lintel.

“What it is?” She called back.

“Hay Bell Ringing in Wind?” Pony read the glyphs printed there.

“My grandfather went by the name of Timothy Bell. Timothy is a type of grass commonly used for hay.”

“He claimed to be Wind Clan?” Stormsong asked.