Project Elfhome

by Wen Spencer

  “I’m going to have to see some ID,” the manager stated.

  Olivia pointed to the dau mark on her forehead. “I’m Forest Moss on Stone’s domi, Olive Branch above Stone.”

  The manager glanced again to the Wyverns. Olivia could almost see the gears grinding through the logic in the manager’s head. The bank most likely only dealt with the elves’ gold-based standard at a computerized report level. They probably didn’t have any way to verify the gold content of the bullion. Elves didn’t lie. The Wyverns were the most morally straitlaced of the elves—as well as the most dangerous. The Wyverns wouldn’t allow Olivia to lie and might be offended if the bank suggested that she wasn’t trustworthy. The enclaves all used American currency as agreed upon by the UN treaty. If the bank refused to accept the ingot, they could jeopardize the entire economy of the city.

  If Olivia weren’t so dependent on the outcome, she would feel sorry for the manager.

  “You wish to exchange this one gold bullion for American currency?” The manager verified her risk level.

  “Yes, this one.” Olivia didn’t mention the others, which would obliviously rattle the manager’s cage.

  The manager took a deep breath and asked calmly, “And how do you want that?”

  “Tens and twenties please.”

  * * *

  Jewel Tear had been silent until they left the polished marble of Mellon Bank behind. “Can we talk now?”

  She had planned to go to a doctor’s office next and get her first real prenatal exam, but she didn’t want to go with a horde of elves in tow.

  Shopping was nearly as vital and this way she wouldn’t have to worry about how she was going to carry everything back home.

  “We can talk as we walk.” Olivia led the way down the block to Kaufmann’s.

  Odd how one afternoon would suddenly endear the place to her. This was where she’d met Forest Moss. He had not been at his best, but perhaps it was better that way. Her husband Troy had been careful only to show his better side until after the wedding.

  Olivia had arrived in Pittsburgh with just the clothes on her back. She had pieced together the barest of necessities by shopping the secondhand store in the South Side. Cheap dishes. Battered pots. Summer dresses. Threadbare sheets, blankets and towels. She needed to quickly replace all that she lost when her house collapsed, and more. Native Pittsburghers would be stocking up on food. It was the scientists and college students and EIA employees on temporary assignment that would need more. Sooner or later, they would realize that they were on Elfhome to stay and would need coats, boots, hats, and blankets to make it through winter.

  But first, she was feeling queasy. She might as well start with the drugstore in Kaufmann’s basement.

  She went down the baby aisle, scented with baby powder. There were only two boxes of Preggie Pops. She dropped one box into her basket and opened the second one for a lollipop to suck on while she shopped.

  “What is that?” Jewel Tear took the first package out of Olivia’s basket and eyed the obviously pregnant woman on the cover.

  “It’s medicine.” Olivia tore the plastic wrap off the lollipop. “For pregnant females. I’m going to have a baby.” And then to make things perfectly clear, she added, “A human baby.”

  “Is that why she’s fat?” Jewel Tear continued to stare in fascination at the box’s art.

  “Yes.”

  “But you are not fat.” Jewel Tear held out the lollipop package to compare Olivia’s profile to the woman’s on the box.

  Olivia sighed. “I’m only two months pregnant. I’ll look like that when I get to be—” She eyed the picture,—“about six months pregnant.” Which was kind of stupid since most women had morning sickness mostly in the first trimester.

  “Six months?” Jewel Tear echoed in surprise. “Half a year? How long will you be pregnant?”

  How long were elves pregnant when they had babies? They were immortal. Did that mean they were pregnant for years? Was that why the Wyverns weren’t worried about Olivia being with Forest Moss at the moment?

  Maybe answering Jewel Tear’s questions was a mistake. Olivia cleaned the store out of prenatal vitamins, and then added in diaper cream, diaper wipes, pacifiers, and rattles until the basket was overflowing. She pushed the full basket at the Wyvern hovering nearby to get rid of him.

  “Go get me another basket,” she ordered.

  “How do you know that you’re pregnant without magic to tell you?” Jewel Tear whispered.

  Olivia eyed her. What did this crazy elf want? She’d been silent at the bank and through the first floor of the department store, and even the first few aisles of the drugstore. And now this whispered question and fearful glance to see if they were overheard.

  The Wyverns only agreed to Olivia staying with Forest Moss because she was already pregnant by a human. Domana weren’t allowed to have half-caste babies. Olivia wasn’t sure what they were going to do once she had her baby and was fertile again. Until a few days ago, she wasn’t sure if she would survive the winter. She would worry about spring when it arrived.

  What would pregnancy mean, though, to Jewel Tear? The elf had been kidnapped and dragged off into the wilderness for days. Olivia glanced down at the bruises on Jewel Tear’s arms and legs. Had she been raped? Was she worried that she was carrying an oni bastard? Did elves permit abortions? Some Christians believed that a woman’s life was secondary to a handful of cells that someday might be something that could exist outside her body. Did the elves use the reverse of the same twisted logic? Jewel Tear should die along with the half-oni fetus? Like the female drowned in the chamberpot?

  “Come with me.” Olivia went down the aisle to where the condoms were displayed and snatched up the same test she’d used two months earlier. “Where’s the nearest restroom?” Olivia asked the sales clerk as she pushed money across the counter to pay for the test.

  “Down—Down the hall, to the right.” The clerk was staring over her shoulder at the Wyverns.

  She collected her change. “I’ll be back to pay for the other items.”

  They had to let the Wyverns check the bathroom for assassins and escape hatches before achieving privacy.

  “I don’t know for sure this will work.” Olivia ripped open the test. “It detects a human pregnancy hormone. I’m not sure if elves have the same hormone. Weirdly enough, I know these don’t work for animals like horses and cows. But humans can interbreed with elves, so we can’t be that different.”

  “Like the Wind Clan half-breed, Blue Sky?”

  Olivia nodded. She’d read about the boy in the newspaper. “Yes, his mother was human and his father was one of the Wind Clan sekasha.” She uncapped the test. “See this part. Pee on it.”

  Jewel Tear eyed the test and then looked at her. “I’m sorry, your Elvish is sometimes hard to follow. Did you say ‘pee on it’?”

  * * *

  The digital readout on the little plastic stick read “pregnant.”

  Jewel Tear would have thrown it in the toilet to flush away the evidence if Olivia hadn’t stopped her.

  “No, no, that won’t work.” Olivia knew from experience. “Here, wrap it up with toilet paper and shove it into the bottom of this trash can.”

  They both washed their hands afterward. Olivia studied Jewel Tear in the mirror. The elf seemed to be running through some intense interior dialogue and was oblivious of her. Every emotion from fear, to uncertainty, to amusement chased over her face but she didn’t seem devastated by the news.

  “You are two months pregnant, yes?” Jewel Tear whispered.

  Olivia nodded.

  “So it takes several months before someone can look at you and tell?” Jewel Tear asked hopefully.

  “Do you want to have the baby? There are ways to stop it.”

  “Yes, there are,” Jewel Tear whispered.

  “Humans have safe ways to do it,” Olivia explained more clearly, just in case the elves’ way involved something like swords and chamberp
ots.

  Jewel Tear wrapped her arms about her, almost seeming protective of the child she carried. “I don’t know what I want to do.” She stood a moment, rocking in place, staring off into the distance. And then her gaze snapped to Olivia and sharpened. “No one can know about this.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.” Olivia had enough troubles of her own. Jewel Tear’s problem, however, could be her own in less than a year. “What would they do to you if they found out?”

  “They would kill it,” Jewel Tear whispered. “Half-caste, they might show mercy to, but not half-oni.”

  “What about half-human?”

  Jewel Tear looked surprised. “I thought your child was full human.”

  “It is,” Olivia admitted. “But I don’t know what will happen after I have the baby. Will they take Forest Moss from me?”

  Jewel Tear looked surprised. “You love him?”

  “Yes.”

  Jewel Tear waved away her concern. “After your child is born, he will make you an elf, like Wolf made his domi an elf.”

  “What?” Olivia cried.

  “Forest Moss cannot change you now. The risk is too great that your child would be horribly deformed or killed in the womb. Nor is it entirely safe to dashavat children. He will have to wait until the child is mature before making it an elf.”

  Events of the summer made more sense. “Windwolf made Tinker an elf because he could not take her as domi otherwise?”

  “Yes, his sekasha would not allow him a non-domana lover.”

  * * *

  They returned to the drugstore, silent in their fearful worries. Olivia collected her basket and took it to the front counter to pay for the contents. There was a mirror behind the cashier. She found herself staring at her reflection as he scanned all her items.

  “She is with child. I cannot dashavat her until the baby is born,” Forest Moss had said when arguing with the Wyvern that morning.

  Olivia reached up and touched both of her human ears.

  Tinker had been a human girl. Windwolf had changed her into an elf.

  The Wyverns expected Forest Moss to change Olivia after her baby was born.

  “Miss?” the cashier said. “Miss?”

  She stared at him, hands over her ears, still reeling. They expected me to become an elf!

  “Do you want anything else?” the cashier asked.

  If she wasn’t changed, the Wyverns wouldn’t let her stay with Forest Moss after her baby was born. Forest Moss would be crushed if he lost her. And if he snapped again, the Wyverns would kill him.

  “Miss?” the cashier asked again.

  She pulled out her fat envelope of bills from exchanging the gold bullion. Forest Moss had already paid her to stay with him for forever. She didn’t fully realize the terms. She had thought that being a domi was like getting married; you promised to cook and clean and have sex. She should have realized the catch; Tinker had been born a human but been transformed somehow into an elf.

  But Olivia didn’t want to be an elf.

  Moving on sheer automatic response, she tucked her change into her purse, accepted the heavy bags filled with her purchases, and moved away from the counter for the next mythical customer to check out. She and the elves had the drugstore to themselves. Everyone in Pittsburgh knew how deadly the Wyverns were—even to their own.

  She forced herself to focus long enough to troop upstairs, back to the children’s department where she first made her deal with Forest Moss. She’d thought she had known all the possible ramifications of becoming his domi. She thought it could be no worse that prostituting herself to nameless men on the street in the middle of the night.

  She’d spent years resisting pressure from her family to become someone else. To believe in their narrow-minded, bigoted God. To see herself as a flawed creature whose soul depended on her husband’s virtue because that’s how they interpreted God’s words. To become meek and submissive before all men because that’s how they twisted God’s will to suit their desires.

  She knew in her heart that they were wrong. She clung to her God through all of the years of beatings, verbal abuse, belittlement, and shunning. Her God didn’t see her as a lesser creature because of her birth as a female. Her God didn’t want her to grovel at the feet of others simply because they had been born men. No one stood between her and Him. She was like an infant on her heavenly father’s shoulder, loved and not judged, and no one could convince her otherwise.

  But she’d been born a human with a human soul. To warp her entire existence so that she was something else? Something immortal? She would never die and thus never go to heaven. Never rest on her heavenly father’s shoulder, surrounded by his love?

  She had offered herself to Forest Moss. There was no denying that he needed her like air. Without her, he could very well die.

  Fear made her stomach churn. She got out another lollipop to quell the sudden need to vomit. I’ve got months before this is really a problem. And so far, the Wyverns have been puppy dogs compared to the men of Zion Ranch.

  Jewel Tear held up the tiny onesies. “Will it—your baby—be this little?”

  The female might be pretending to ask about Olivia’s baby but she meant her own. Jewel Tear flicked a glance toward the Wyverns who were all looking at the tiny clothes with equal dismay. Honestly, all the elves seemed to be spectacularly clueless about babies, for being hundreds of years old. She was starting to think that none of them had ever seen a baby before.

  Was that why Jewel Tear was even considering keeping her baby? Because she was afraid she’d never get a second chance to have one? The poor thing had no clue what she was getting into. Olivia had been terrified of going into labor all alone. Of having to take care of a newborn with no one else to help keep food on the table. No wonder Jewel Tear had tracked Olivia down; she had no one else to ask for advice.

  “It—my baby—needs to be small enough to—” Olivia’s Elvish failed her. She picked up a stuffed rabbit and demonstrated a baby dropping down out of her pelvis.

  Jewel Tear’s eyes went huge. “Oh!” Apparently she hadn’t considered “pregnant equals giving birth” before. Jewel Tear eyed the rabbit and then clearly fought the urge to press her hand to her womb. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

  “Yes.” Olivia tossed the rabbit to the nearest Wyvern. “A lot.” She added two packages of cloth diapers. By the time her baby was born, the stores would have been picked bare. On second thought, she added another two packages for Jewel Tear. “Most women, though, seem to forget how much it hurts in a short period of time. I think if the memory stayed sharp, they wouldn’t have a second baby.”

  “I see. And it stays little for how many years?”

  It. Obviously Jewel Tear hadn’t started to think of the baby as a person yet.

  Olivia handed the Wyvern a pile of yellow onesies, two packages of caps, and a dozen receiving-blanket gift sets. “It’s about a year before a human baby can walk or talk.” God knows how long it took elf babies because elves obviously had no clue. “Babies mostly eat and sleep at first. They cry a lot. They throw up constantly. They pee and poop and you need to clean that up. They can only drink milk from your breast.” Olivia assumed all supplies of formula would be gone by the time she had her baby in April or May. “You can’t leave your child alone, ever. You must carry it with you everywhere you go.”

  Jewel Tear picked up another one of the stuffed rabbits and eyed it. “It sounds horrible. Why do you want one?”

  Olivia hadn’t really wanted to have a baby. It all came with the package deal of being forced into marriage and unprotected sex. Jewel Tear was right, though. Olivia could have gotten an abortion as soon as she reached Pittsburgh. She felt stupid to admit why she decided not to, but Jewel Tear had trusted her with her greatest secret. The female elf had earned some of the truth. “I love little children. They’re sort of sluglike when they’re first born, but by the time they’re two, they’re just so full of wonder at everything. Everything is marvelous
to them and it’s a joy to share each new experience with them. And they love you so fiercely and completely. You are their entire world.”

  Blushing, she picked out the rest of what she needed, loading down the Wyvern. Jewel Tear, she noticed, hadn’t put down the stuffed rabbit. As if it was a test run for taking care of a baby, the female continued to carry it as they checked out and headed home.

  * * *

  They collided with the cathedral’s unit of royal marines once they returned to Oakland. The marines greeted the Wyverns with relief, ignoring Olivia until it was revealed that she hadn’t been kidnapped and then rescued. Then they turned toward her like her stepbrothers who she’d outfoxed and made to look bad.

  Jewel Tear kept her eyes down, staying out of the conversation, still cradling the stuffed bunny in her arms.

  “Oh, be quiet,” Olivia finally snapped.

  “Why did you leave their protection?” one of the Wyverns asked.

  Olivia threw up her hands and pushed through the soldiers to the line of humans who had paused to watch with interest. They froze in fear as they became the focus of all the elves’ attention. “Without the marines, I’m a human, one of sixty thousand, helpless and thus harmless.” She stepped back beside Dagger. “With them, I’m one of four females. I am a target, but I’m still helpless.”

  “She cannot offer protection until Forest Moss changes her,” Jewel Tear added quietly without looking up. “Can you blame her for not yet wanting the responsibility of her position?”

  She really wished Jewel Tear hadn’t used the word “blame.” It was her experience that people were more than willing to blame the most innocent of people merely because they could. Her sister wives used to blame her for bad weather, uncooperative animals and misbehaving children.

  The Wyvern breathed out frustration and shook his head. “The enemy might not be able to pick you out of a crowd today, but they will learn your face, and you will be a target even if you have not been changed yet.”