Five Odd Honors

by Jane Lindskold

  “Great! I can meet you out front at three.”

  Brenda told Shannon, and wasn’t surprised to see her roommate’s eyes brighten. After all, Brenda being away meant that Shannon and Dermott would have some serious private time. Brenda wondered just how well Shannon’s Catholic resolve was holding up under the pressure of Dermott’s adoration, but she decided that was none of her business.

  Parnell looked momentarily concerned when he heard Brenda was going away, but when he heard she was going home, he relaxed so visibly that Shannon grinned.

  Shannon probably thinks Parnell’s relief is because he has a crush on me, and everyone knows I don’t have a boyfriend at home. I wonder what she’d think if she learned that his relief had more to do with his being my bodyguard, keeping me safe so I can do something the sidhe think is important somewhere down the road.

  On the car ride home to Greenville, though, Brenda started regretting her decision. Other than the most general of generalities, Dad would not discuss anything to do with the Thirteen Orphans. He wouldn’t even talk about Pearl’s “accident” other than to express relief that Auntie Pearl hadn’t been seriously hurt, and to confirm that Nissa was going to move to San Jose so Pearl wouldn’t be alone.

  The weekend home went well. To Brenda’s surprise, Thomas actually was glad to see her—and not just because of the tee shirt with the USC gamecock that she’d bought him as a last-minute birthday gift.

  Privately, wishing that Dad was being open enough that she felt like sharing the joke with him, Brenda admitted to herself she’d picked the shirt because the jaunty fighting chicken reminded her of Des Lee.

  After Thomas’s birthday party, Brenda tried to get Gaheris alone, but her dad steadfastly avoided her. Brenda didn’t think it was a coincidence when Keely volunteered to drive her daughter back to Columbia on Sunday afternoon.

  “Give you some mother-daughter quality time,” Gaheris said brightly when Keely suggested it, but Brenda heard his words as “Avoid more father-daughter uncomfortable time.”

  Gaheris’s stubborn silence, combined with Brenda’s growing suspicion thathe ’d issued an ultimatum to the other Orphans, demanding that they keep his daughter in the dark, changed her feelings about learning more about Parnell and his strange heritage.

  The last couple of times I’ve called San Jose, Brenda thought, I could barely get confirmation that the scouts had returned to the Lands, and that Des had managed to check in when they crossed that petrified forest. That’s it. Fine. If I can’t learn anything from my so-called friends, maybe I can learn something from people who at least think I’m worthy of being courted as an ally.

  Of course, now that her resolve was set, when Brenda got back to the dorm no one was around. She’d phoned Shannon, giving her an estimated time of arrival, so at least she didn’t catch her friend and her beau in amorous embrace, but she did feel a little hurt that no one was there to welcome her back.

  Shannon came back an hour or so later, Dermott-less.

  “He’s playing soccer with some of the guys,” she said. “Boring . . . I have reading to do for English and History.”

  Brenda realized she did, too, but as she tried to immerse herself in Arthur Miller, she found herself resenting a salesman who couldn’t understand where his own kids were coming from, resenting golden boys who didn’t do what they were expected to do.

  Brenda didn’t see Parnell until the next day, after her second class. He ambled up to walk with her to the cafeteria for lunch. She nearly hugged him, an impulse which surprised her as much as the actual act would have surprised him.

  “I want to know more,” Brenda said.

  “About?” A teasing light in his eyes.

  “You know.”

  “I do,” Parnell said, relenting, perhaps hearing from the tone of Brenda’s voice that she’d had her fill of witty fellows that last weekend. “But not here, not now. How about I drop by this evening and offer to take you for a stroll?”

  “I’ll be ready,” she said.

  Parnell was as good as his word, showing up as twilight was gathering, complaining that American students took their studies far too seriously and his Irish brain cells needed a rest.

  Brenda saw the hope in Dermott’s eyes—he and Shannon had been “studying” since dinner—and had to swallow a grin as she said she’d be glad to go out for a while.

  Parnell also saw the look the young couple exchanged and was less kind, filling the time that it took for Brenda to grab her sandals and a room key by making comments so loaded with double entendres that they were nearly single.

  Brenda grabbed Parnell by the arm, rolling her eyes at a blushing Shannon.

  “Sure and begosh and begorrah,” Brenda said in a very, very bad imitation of an Irish brogue, “here I am wishing to take a break myself, me lad, and you stand there a-prattling. Will you be interested in buying me a latte and studying the stars rather than dry words on a page?”

  “Gladly, fair colleen.”

  Giggling, they left, but the giggles stopped as soon as they were outside the immediate vicinity of the dorm.

  “Okay,” Brenda said when they were well away from eavesdropping ears. “Tell me more.”

  “Better than telling,” Parnell said. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you a couple of things that should assure you that I’m not just spinning a yarn, not assuming you’re a credulous reader of myth and legend and occasional bits of fantasy fiction who will swallow any tall tale.”

  “All right, then,” Brenda said. “Lead on, MacDuff .”

  “Isn’t it ‘lay on’?” Parnell quoted with as wicked a grin as he’d ever given Dermott and Shannon.

  “When I say lead,” Brenda said, hiding her embarrassment at his double entendre with mock hauteur, “I mean lead.”

  Parnell took Brenda to one of those overlooked spaces that during the day would be filled by ample foot traffic as students passed back and forth to classes, but at this hour, when even the night classes were over, was deserted.

  Parnell paused, turned slightly away from Brenda, scanned the immediate area, appeared to listen. There was something foxlike in his alert demeanor. Brenda found herself remembering her dream meetings with the green-eyed woman of the sidhe she’d come to think of as Leaf.

  Leaf’s ears had been slightly pointed.

  When she was a horse, too, Brenda thought with a suppressed giggle. I wonder if Parnell’s ears are pointed. Hard to tell under those curls. I wonder if that’s why he wears his hair so long. I mean, longer hair seems to be coming back in, but it’s hardly universal.

  At last Parnell murmured, in a voice so soft Brenda wondered if he was talking to himself, “Right. All clear. Here goes.”

  He turned toward Brenda and motioned to the lawn beneath the tree. “If you would have a seat upon this grassy sward?”

  Brenda lowered herself onto the lawn under the oak, anticipating the slightly prickly feeling of the close-cropped blades, wishing she’d thought to change into long pants. The university kept its lawns in beautiful shape, but that meant hardy strains of grass and frequent mowing, neither of which made for softness.

  To Brenda’s surprise, this grass was almost as soft as moss. There were tiny flowers growing in it: pale blue with gold centers, the stems as insubstantial asspiderwebs . She lifted her hand, horrified that she might have crushed some of the miniature beauties, but the flowers rose up again as if they had never felt her weight.

  She looked at Parnell and realized that she could see him more clearly, his image no longer dimmed by the gathering dusk. Had a nearby streetlight gone on all of a sudden? She glanced around, noticed the surrounding area still cradled the blue-grey threads of twilight. Her heart began to pound harder. Parnell answered the question in her eyes.

  “A wee bit of enchantment, yes . . . How can I convince you what I’m telling you is true if afterwards you’ll be able to tell yourself you were fooled by the darkness? Don’t worry. We’re not spotlighted here—the oppos
ite, in fact. I’ve thrown up a ward around us. To any who pass by, this space under the spreading oak is unoccupied—as in a sense it is.”

  The last was said with a note of challenge, and Brenda rose to it. “You’ve moved us a little into somewhere else. That’s why the grass is so soft and the flowers aren’t all smushed.”

  “Your experiences as a scion of the Thirteen Orphans have served you well, acushla,” Parnell said. “Keep your heart firmly rooted in those memories. Last time we spoke, I spooked you some, I think.”

  “Well, you were talking about otherworldly creatures, and pronouncing warnings of doom and destruction,” Brenda said tartly.

  “I didn’t say you were wrong to be spooked,” Parnell replied. “I knew what I had to tell you would not be easy to take, and as I told you then, I had hoped to have more time to work you around to liking me so maybe you’d trust me a bit more easily, but Pearl’s ‘accident’ was too much of a warning to ignore.”

  “I remember,” Brenda said. “So, go on.”

  “I want to start by presenting you with my bona fide character as a weird alien creature not in the least human,” Parnell said. “That means later you can’t get angry at me for holding out on you.”

  Brenda felt her fingers clutching the turf and forced them to relax and straighten. She gave Parnell a curt nod.

  “Okay.”

  He shifted slightly, bringing his right arm out in front of him, turning the hand so the palm faced upward.

  Brenda tensed again, expecting almost anything other than what happened. Parnell took a pocketknife out of his left pocket with his left hand, opened the blade with an ease that spoke either of much practice or ambidexterity, and then, before Brenda could move or protest, cut himself across the ball of his right thumb.

  “ ‘If you cut us,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘do we not bleed?’ The difficulty is . . .”

  He bent, wiped the knife on the turf, folded it, stood, and slid the blade back into his pocket. Then, with his left hand, he gently squeezed the ball of his right thumb.

  Something white as snow, thick as sap or honey, oozed from the cut.

  “. . . our blood—my blood—is white.”

  Brenda let impulse carry her past shock. With an almost apologetic glance at Parnell, she gently touched the wound on his thumb. There was no sleight of hand at work here. At even this slight pressure, more of the white oozed forth.

  She jerked back her hand, nodded acceptance.

  Parnell stuck his thumb in his mouth, a completely natural gesture, one Brenda herself had done dozens of times after nicking herself in the kitchen or on the edge of a sheet of paper.

  After a moment, Parnell removed his thumb from his mouth, examined the still oozing wound, and tamped it with a perfectly normal handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.

  “One good thing,” he said. “My blood won’t stain this like yours would.”

  Brenda was still too stunned to speak.

  “You find references to the white blood of the sidhe folk here and there. Most of the time such references are framed in a Christian context—an excuse for the sidhe folk’s professed propensity for stealing human children. The legends say we’re trying to breed red blood into the next generation so we will be considered human enough to be admitted into the Christian heaven.”

  “Are you? ”

  Parnell laughed. “No. If heaven’s that picky, most of us aren’t interested. We don’t even steal human babies. We’ve rescued a few, but that’s not the same at all. Humans are interesting, yes, but it’s a wholly human idea that you folks are some pinnacle of creation the rest of us are striving to reach.”

  Brenda tried hard to find something intelligent to say.

  “Is that the only difference between us? Your white blood?”

  “Oh, no,” Parnell said. “There are many others. That was just the easiest way to show you that I’m as different as some of the people I’m going to introduce you to. . . .”

  Brenda held up her hand. “Wait. Is this—” She ran a hand in the air to indicate the green-eyed, honey blond young man who sat comfortably curled on the grass near her, “how you really look?”

  “Right now it is,” Parnell said, “and believe me, it’s hard work maintaining a full shape-change, so I’m not shifting again. What you’re seeing here isn’t a mere glamour. I could be x-rayed and every organ would be in its proper place, every bone perfect.”

  “But if you were hit by a car,” Brenda protested, “you’d bleed white goo.”

  “Actually,” Parnell said, “even that detail has been attended to. I made a minor adjustment tonight—and don’t be deciding that the whole thing is a trick.”

  “Don’t worry,” Brenda said. “I’m not. I never even heard about the white blood thing. You’d have done better to give yourself pointed ears or something if you’d just wanted to fool me.”

  “Harder,” he said. “For reasons I’m not going into . . . And less likely, anyhow. Not all of us have pointed ears. We’re not Vulcans or Romulans. Now, are you ready to meet a friend of mine?”

  Brenda felt herself biting into her upper lip with her lower teeth and quickly corrected the gesture. She knew it looked really ugly, like she was some sort of ogre with an overshot jaw.

  “Uh, sure. Is it Leaf?”

  “Oh, no. You’ve met Leaf, sort of, kind of. I’m going to introduce you to someone else.”

  “Okay . . .”

  Parnell looked directly at the trunk of the oak tree. “Come out, Gall. There’s a lady waiting to meet you.”

  Brenda waited, expecting someone to walk around the trunk of the tree. Instead the trunk of the tree itself began to change character. What she’d taken for a lumpy growth—an oak gall, now that she thought about it—began to move.

  Clapping her hand across her mouth to stifle a sudden squeak of surprise, Brenda watched as the oak gall grew—or extruded, she really wasn’t sure which—skinny arms and legs. Using these, it pulled itself from the embrace of the tree’s bark and hopped down onto the ground next to Parnell.

  What stood there had no real head or body; it was just a small lumpy mass the color and texture of oak bark. The entire thing was about the size of a baseball, but not nearly as neatly spherical. It had a face in the way that you sometimes see faces on tree trunks—a sense of eyes, a nose, and a mouth, unevenly proportioned, but unforgettable once you saw them.

  Brenda remembered how in her room at home there had been a stain on the paint on her bedroom wall, hardly more than a heightening of shadows. One night, padding into her partly lit room after a trip to the bathroom, she’d suddenly seen it as a demon face, ferocious and evil. Even in the brighter light of day, Brenda couldn’t remove the impression that a demon was there and watching her. She’d hung a picture over the “face,” but even then she could imagine the evil-seeming, glowering face was still there. Eventually, she’d convinced her mom to let her repaint.

  That was how Gall’s face worked. It wasn’t anything like a face in the proper sense, but once Brenda saw it, saw the eyes bright as beetle carapaces staring at her with curiosity equal to her own, she couldn’t ignore that it was really there.

  Now that she’d had a moment to adjust, Brenda noticed that Gall wasn’t humanoid. He had three legs, rather like twigs, set in a rough tripod around his base. He had at least four twiglike arms.

  “So,” said Gall, addressing Parnell, “is this a maiden or a hero?”

  “Are the two mutually exclusive?” Parnell said. “Who this is, as you know perfectly well, is Brenda Morris. Remember, my lumpy friend, you agreed to come here. Don’t pick now to act up.”

  Parnell’s tone was friendly but stern. Brenda was reminded of her dad talking to one of the boys when he acted in that jerky way boys can when they’re nervous.

  Nervous, she thought. Yeah. Well, me, too.

  “This,” Parnell said, turning to Brenda, “is Oak Gall—that is, you can call him that until he tells you otherwise. He’s not the only
oak gall, but there are times he acts as if he is.”

  Brenda held out a hand, doing her best to act normal.

  “Hello, Mr. Oak Gall. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  Oak Gall walked forward, his gait spiderlike on those three spindly legs, but no less graceful for that. He took her hand—grasping it between two of his own and making a shaking motion. He was stronger than she’d expected.

  Why do I expect to know anything? White blood. Walking and talking tree lumps.

  Parnell was watching them both carefully, and Brenda realized that this meeting was as much a test for Oak Gall as it was for her.

  I wonder why it matters? she thought. But what she said aloud was, “Anyone else lurking about?”

  “Not tonight,” Parnell said. “I thought two of us were enough.”

  “And one of you,” Oak Gall said. He’d sat down, sprawling by supporting himself on various arms and legs. The more Brenda looked at him, the more she realized that her mind was what had superimposed the idea of arms and legs on the little rounded figure. Structurally, Oak Gall more resembled a daddy longlegs. If it lived in trees, that made a whole lot more sense than humanity’s awkward bilateral symmetry.

  “So there are Chinese spirits,” Brenda said, thinking aloud. “And now I have to accept Irish ones. What else?”

  Parnell shrugged. “Just about anything you can imagine.”

  “Imagine? Then do we give you your shapes through our imaginings?”

  Oak Gall made a rude noise that Brenda decided to interpret as a derisive laugh. Parnell sighed.

  “No, not really. Sometimes we take on the shapes you have created for us, because that’s what you expect, but we aren’t creatures of your imaginations.”

  “What are you?”

  “Living, thinking beings . . . The world is full of us if you would just look. Modern humans don’t want to look, so they miss a lot.”

  Brenda flung her arms around her legs and pillowed her chin on her bent knees. After a long moment, while she tried to wrap her brain around all this weirdness, she sighed.