Elfhome

It was hard to imagine anyone calling Merry’s playing just adequate. She glowed as she played, her mallets a blur. As she warmed up, she added mad flourishes with her mallets on the upswing and little yips of excitement. He started with the songs he was fairly sure she knew, those he had glimpsed in her hand-scribed songbook. He had been hoping that she could just keep up with him but she outstripped him. Encouraged, Oilcan launched into songs that Windchime had been most familiar with and thus most likely taught her.

Almost as if their songs summoned them, the members of Naekanain appeared. Snapdragon showed up with his tribal drums, Moser with his bass guitar, and Briar with a bottle of ouzo and they really let lose, tearing into the human elf fusion of music that was uniquely Pittsburgh. As always, Moser’s deep growl of English and bastardized low Elvish was electrifying against Briar’s angelic high Elvish. As they played, more and more people drifted into the gym up to listen.

Oilcan was glad to see that the growing audience was all three races, although they still kept to separate camps. The tengu with their backless tanktops and unruly short black hair perched on the bleachers. Elves, looking ethereal even while leaning on brooms, their glorious long hair braided with ribbons, kept to the back of the room. Humans gathered close to the music, varied as snowflakes: short and tall, thin and wide, ugly and beautiful, white and black and Asian.

“You should have charged a cover for this,” Moser shouted at him as Snapdragon and Merry blasted into an instrumental duet that was more like a duel of speed.

“They paid with labor.” Oilcan shouted back.

“No food?” Moser pouted.

“There is food.” Tinker appeared out of the crowd, carrying a basket fragrant with the scent of meat dumplings. A great deal of food, considering the number of Poppymeadow’s people behind her bearing baskets.

“Coz!” Oilcan bumped shoulders with her in greeting. She bumped him back with a grin. She was dressed down in T-shirt and shorts, looking the most like herself in months. She had her five bodyguards with her; although for some odd reason they all had cat whiskers drawn on their faces.

“You always were my favorite.” Moser swung his guitar onto his back and snatched the basket out of Tinker’s hands.

“What about the next set?” Oilcan cried. While he was glad to see Tinker, her arrival certainly was triggering a shift in the audience. All three groups were moving in, trying to be as close to her that her Hand would allow. He knew that the humans were peeved that the elves had “stolen” their girl. To the elves she was domi and “singlehandedly” defeated the dragon that even Prince True Flame couldn’t kill. She held the tengu, and judging by the way they looked at her, that mattered a lot to them.

But none of the groups seemed happy about having to share her. Stopping the music would be bad. But it wasn’t like Moser was being paid to perform beyond the food that Tinker just handed him.

“Sing your cousin that new song you wrote for her,” Moser said.

“You wrote me a song?” Tinker squealed.

“Bastard.” Oilcan snarled at Moser. He hadn’t told Moser that the song was about Tinker but the words were obviously inspired by her.

Moser backed away with the basket. “You said I butchered the words anyhow!”

“You wrote me a song?” Tinker said. “You’ve never wrote me a song before.”

Oilcan had written lots of songs about Tinker; he’d just never shared them with anyone. The lyrics ranged from angry to loving to overprotective, depending on his mood, and once the moment was passed, the words felt too dangerous. What if Tinker thought he was always that angry with her? How badly would she take (because she would take it badly) the rant against her self-centered obsessive curiosity — especially since the whole thing with Nathan had ended so badly? And gods forbid, someone got the wrong idea about the whole “crawl into my bed, hold me tight, and make me feel all right” which he wrote when he was ten and she was six.

Tinker smacked him. “Don’t you dare say no if you sold it to Moser.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll play it.” He had sold it because it felt safe — mostly because it wasn’t about his relationship with her. He wasn’t sure, though, how she would take it. He led into the melody so Merry had a chance to learn it. “It changes though, watch for it, and — and improvise.”

Merry laughed and nodded, eyes gleaming with her joy, her face glistening with sweat.