Elfhome

“Spell-working is really at the heart of why the elves so vehemently oppose the oni. The greater bloods practice wholesale bioengineering on their people. The tengu were humans that an oni greater blood spell-worked as punishment for resisting their takeover. He merged them with the crows who were feasting on their dead fathers and brothers.”

Lain sighed. “Yes, I understand that applying bio-engineering indiscriminately to sentient beings is morally wrong. But there is so much that the elves and even the oni could teach us. Most biologists coming to Pittsburgh from Earth look down their noses at the ‘primitive’ elves without realizing that the elves had been manipulating DNA with magic for thousands of years before we even began to imagine what it was.”

Tinker didn’t want to stand and argue the point in front of Stormsong. She was fairly certain that Stormsong wouldn’t hurt Lain, but she didn’t want to find out the hard way that she was mistaken. Being wrong once was enough. “Lain. Really?” Tinker motioned to the sapling dashing madly about the nursery bed. “A food we need to chase down and catch?”

Lain scoffed but allowed the subject to be changed back to the saplings. “I’m going to have to do something with them before they get much larger. Based on what I learned from the mature tree, I think they’ll freeze nicely. I could thaw them out one at a time to study.”

“Monster popsicles,” Tinker said. “Black willow flavored.”

Lain smiled at her; a rare and treasured thing. “I’ve missed you.”

Three little words that made Tinker’s heart seize up. While she was growing up, Lain was the closest thing to a mother that she had. Betrayed couldn’t describe how Tinker felt when she learned that Lain had lied to her every day of her life — she let Tinker believe that they weren’t related when in truth Lain was her aunt. She had to cling to the knowledge that Lain had always been there for her. Lain had nursed her through childhood colds, stitched up cuts, cleaned out wounds, taught her how to deal with the mysteries of menstruation and expanded her knowledge past quantum physics. Without Lain, she wouldn’t have been able to save Windwolf life, escape from the oni, or anything. And wasn’t that the truly important thing? “Yeah. I’ve missed you too.”

Lain took Tinker’s right hand and ran light fingers over the spectacular purples and yellows mottling her forearm. “Did you break it?”

Tinker tried not to wince as the feather touch still gave her tinges of pain. “It was just a hairline fracture. I basically slept for a week while the healing spells were running and it’s back to new.”

“With all our science, we still can’t heal a bone that fast.”

“The spell focuses magic onto the elves’ regenerative powers, puts it into hyper-drive, which is why I slept for most of the week. Also ate like a pig every time I woke up — which also meant I spent the rest of my awake time in the bathroom. It was a really annoying week.”

Lain kissed her on the forehead. “I was worried about you, ladybug. I’m glad to see you’re looking like your old self.”

“It’s the shirt.” Tinker didn’t want to go out in just a camisole so she had raided Stormsong’s bedroom again. The result was yet another of Roach’s limited editions: a hoverbike sliding sideways through a cloud of dust that spelled out “Tinker.” (She wouldn’t have borrowed it but Stormsong had pulled it over her head and grinned.)

Lain hugged her and then let her go. “I had a feeling that you would be coming to see me, so I made cookies and lemonade.”

#

A rifle was lying on the island of Lain’s sprawling kitchen. It was Lain’s Winchester. The twenty-two-caliber rifle was the least powerful of Lain’s guns, just a popgun when compared to her Barrett Light Fifty. Any trip into Elfhome’s virgin forest required a gun and often a flamethrower. Lain used to collect samples of Elfhome plants, kept them in quarantine for a month and then ship them to Earth during Shutdown.

“Are you going out?” Tinker sighed as she realized that Pony and Stormsong had drifted between her and Lain. She wanted to smack them for acting suspicious of Lain. In truth, though, she couldn’t entirely blame them. They had been there when Lain finally admitted the truth. They had seen how badly Tinker lost it. They knew how crazy Lain and her sister Esme — Tinker’s real biological mother — had made Tinker.

“I’ve been having a problem with groundhogs,” Lain took a pitcher of lemonade out of the refrigerator and set it beside the rifle, making the sekasha twitch. “I expanded my outside beds and planted them all with keva beans. The damn rodents act like I set up a feeding trough.”

Since Lain didn’t need the rifle for anything life threatening, Tinker picked it up and carried it to the gun rack in the center hallway. The Barrett Light Fifty was missing. The big gun was protection against the giant reptilian saurus; it was extreme overkill for groundhogs. What was Lain thinking? “Why aren’t you using your live traps?”