“Heebie-jeebies?” Edofine asked.
“A way of saying it freaks me out,” John clarified.
“Freaks me out?” Edofine asked, sitting down across from John.
Sara now took a dish of a spinach salad with canned tuna, no mayonnaise, to the table. “Conversations with Edofine tend to follow this pattern, John. English is his second language and he’s not good with slang. Let’s begin. We have clam chowder and tuna salad. The clams and tuna lived free and died with a minimum of pain, I promise.”
“I can see that bit about conversation patterns,” John said, wryly.
“I would still like to know what heebie-jeebies means, but if I am annoying you I will go ask Kryvek when he returns from teaching, or perhaps Lira.”
“How are things with Lira, anyway?” Sara asked.
Edofine couldn’t keep the grin from his face. “It would tire you to hear all my praises and thanksgiving.” He took a sip of the chowder. “This is excellent. I never thought something extracted from a cow would be so enjoyable.”
“Pretty creamy, isn’t it? I can only say that I washed the spinach in the salad.” John took a few bites of salad, and then asked, “Let me get this straight. Lira is half-Eudemon.”
“Indeed, she is,” Edofine said.
“And the Eudemons are always attacking and killing the Elves. You’ve killed Eudemons.”
“Much to my regret. I had no other choice.”
“How does a half-and-half happen, then? Why do you love her?”
“She is a product of rape, and her Elf mother raised her as an Elf. She cannot help her parentage.”
Sara pointed one of her thumbs at the ceiling, something that baffled Edofine. “I applaud you for your species tolerance.”
They ate in silence for a while, Edofine busily absorbing the humans’ emotions. John didn’t like silence, so he asked Edofine about what sports he was interested in. Edofine explained the joys of archery and tree-climbing as long as his life wasn’t at stake, as it usually had been. John ended up giving a lengthy explanation of American football. Edofine wondered how humans could go around attacking others, even if it was in a game setting.
John stated no judgments about Edofine, but Edofine knew John found him overly sentimental, sensitive, and spineless. Edofine found John honest, loving towards his wife, but harsh and demanding. Sara followed the conversation with anxiety; hoping things would be all right between them.
At the end of the meal, when both males praised Sara for her good work, John cleared the table and served coffee. “Do you drink it black or with sugar?”
“I have never had this beverage,” Edofine said, stirring the dark liquid and staring into its depths.
“Take a sip first, and if you don’t like it it’s okay,” Sara said.
Edofine sampled it without anything added. An odd feeling of wellbeing and confidence rushed through him, confidence as he had never felt since coming to the human world. He drank more, slurping it down with eagerness. When he laid down the empty cup, he felt equal to a hundred hostile Eudemons. “Very good,” he murmured.
“Do you want to watch a little TV with me? A football match comes on in fifteen minutes,” John offered.
Sara smiled at him with gratitude for his efforts to be nice to Edofine. “It’s a difficult sport to understand, and it’s okay if you—are you all right?”
Edofine rocked back and forth in his chair, snickering. His pupils appeared to have blown immensely wide. “Forget Christine, yes. Once I have bid your leave, I will find Lira and take her to the bridge. Heeheehee. Too bad Kryvek’s neighbors dislike him and give him trouble, hahahaha. I think I will go have them relax. Everyone needs to relax. Someone should give this coffee to the warriors. Hah!” His short chuckles turned into full-scale laughter, so loud and unabashed that Sara briefly thought he might be possessed.
“You probably should calm down,” John said.
“That is the weak way. I believe I may be able to—I think I can—spirits, I call them to me, hahahahaha!” Edofine jumped up onto the table, spread his arms out, and sang in Elvish at great speed.
“I don’t like this,” Sara whispered to her husband.
As Edofine’s song grew louder, things started materializing near the ceiling and dropping down to the floor. The things were shoes, to be exact. All kinds of shoes, neatly tied together in pairs, some with high heels and some with cleats.
Edofine surveyed his work and giggled. “If I sing long enough I can shoe the whole city, at least until they disappear in the dawn.” he said, stepping down. He pulled John from his chair. “Why do you not dance with me? Everyone wished to dance. My clan was called the Dance Clan until those filthy demons murdered them.” He abruptly shoved John away.
John spluttered, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but you’re scaring Sara and you need to stop.”
“Sons of unmarried porcupines, I will show them!” Edofine shouted, running out the door.
Sara ran after him and caught hold of his arm. “Edofine, please don’t do something stupid. Is it the coffee?”
“’Tis indeed. Let go of me, female. Great things are afoot.” Edofine pulled away easily and tore through Kryvek’s apartment. He emerged with a wooden longbow and quiver full of arrows. “It is not enough to tell you of my skill. I must show it to you.” He laughed again, doubling over from the hilarity.
“We need to get Lira—now!” Sara told John. “It’s okay, Edofine. Just put the pointy weapons down.” She backed into Lira and Christine’s door, turning the doorknob behind her.
John squeezed Sara’s hand and darted into the living room, shouting, “Quick! Edofine’s gone berserk!”
Lira jerked up from her position on the couch.
“What happened?” Christine asked.
“I don’t know; we were just talking over our coffee.”
“You gave an Elf coffee?” Lira asked, her eyes widening. She went out to the hall.
John wrung his hands. “Was there something wrong with that?”
“I told you Elves were sensitive to everything,” Christine said.
“You didn’t say mild stimulants made them insane!”
Meanwhile, Edofine had kicked in the Youngs’ door. Lira saw several feathered arrows stuck in the walls of the hallway. The elderly couple was aghast when Edofine turned off their television—they had been watching Jeopardy—and he started another song, completely improvised.
Lira ran over to him. “I’m sorry to both of you. There’s an explanation. Ed, come on. We need to get you to the OMHI for an antidote.”
“This is the best I have felt in years!” Edofine argued. “Let go of me.”
They wrestled for a while, which was all the more disturbing because Edofine started laughing again. Then, like a light switching off, he dropped limply onto the carpet, unconscious.
Lira gasped and pressed her ear to his chest. He was still alive, but the hyperactivity had been too much of a strain on his heart.
Chapter Fourteen
Patients and Healers and Intruders
Kryvek shoved the glass door of the OMHI building out of his way, waving at the security guard as he ran—she fortunately recognized him. Then he nearly leaped down the three flights of stairs, avoided crashing into a cart laden with vegetarian lunchboxes, and came to a screeching halt at the reception desk for the healthcare center.
“May I help you?” asked the woman dressed in a pale yellow suit and green neckerchief.
“Edofine, alias Edward Fletcher,” Kryvek gasped out, gulping for air and steadying himself against the wall. “Edofine. He’s here.”
“Yes?”
“His cousin. I am. I’m his cousin. Is he okay? Where is he?”
The woman made a few clicks on her computer. “Oh, the Elf with the caffeine overdose. He’s stable. Go to room eight. Good luck.”
Kryvek patted her hand in thanks, slipping through the hallway while loosening his brown tie and unbuttoning his collar. He had ab
andoned his beloved Girls’ Choir and come straight from the high school, dashing out of the evening practice, when he heard the news. His hands shook, and his eyes stung with guilt and regret. Why couldn’t he have prevented this? A simple sentence would have saved Edofine. He was a fool for thinking Edofine, innocent, childlike Edofine, would be ready to handle the dangers of the human world.
He knocked on the door of room eight, which John opened.
John adjusted his glasses. “Hi,” John said, seemingly caught off-guard.
Kryvek gently pushed him out of the way and sat down on a wooden stool next to the bed. Sharing the vigil were Lira, Sara, and Christine. Christine had brought her work with her and was busy writing, pausing to exchange glances with Kryvek. Sara paced the length of the room. Lira held Edofine’s hand, her face one that could have been carved from granite.
It was difficult for Kryvek to look at his cousin, so young and vulnerable, for he was connected to masses of tubes and needles. There was one saving grace—no screen with a waving line representing Edofine’s pulse. At least he didn’t need that.
“What did they do?” Kryvek whispered.
Lira whispered, dead calm, “They pumped his stomach. It’s been barely two hours.”
Sara dug into her purse and drew out a checkbook. She held it out to Edofine. “I’ll pay the bills. It’s all my fault. I bought the coffee. I...” She turned pale and sank to her knees, weeping.
John crouched down beside her and enveloped her into his arms. “We didn’t know, baby. He’s not going to blame you. It wasn’t our fault.”
“Yes it was,” Sara wheezed. “Lira, I’m so sorry. Kryvek—it’s so scary. Forgive me.”
Kryvek nodded. “Of course. Someone should have told you coffee is a hard drug for Elves. You did the right thing bringing him here.”
“Lira brought him here,” Christine said. “We were all panicking and crying, but she stayed calm and drove. Her hands didn’t shake at all.”
Lira’s mouth stretched about one centimeter, and she began to stroke Edofine’s hair. He was deathly pale, his delicately pointed ears deaf to the love around him. “All I have is my strength,” she murmured in Elvish.
“Has anyone tried magic?” Kryvek asked.
“They wanted to ask your permission. Most of the Elves have gone home, though, and it would take a while to call them back,” Christine explained. “Sara, you don’t need to be so selfless. The OMHI will pay all his medical and educational expenses for one year, and then they’ll give him loans if he gets a job.”
John cleared his throat. “Is it all right if we leave? I hate to say this, but I have to go to work tomorrow, and Sara’s about collapsed.”
“That’s fine,” Kryvek mumbled, wincing a little from the burden of Sara’s agony and John’s confusion, which he heard clear and loud. Lira and Christine’s pain poured into his ears as well, and he knew only one way to let it out.
“Goodbye,” Sara said, still sniffling.
John shook Kryvek’s pale hand in his dark one, and they left.
“I’m staying here,” Lira said.
Christine protested, “But you’ll be tired. You’ve had a long day and this is not a good place for rest.”
Kryvek stood and hugged Christine. “Lira is set on this, Chrissy. You won’t be able to budge her. You should go, though, because the Anthropology Department needs you to lead it. The strain is going to be too much; I can hear you cracking.”
“I feel so weak and useless,” Christine replied, softly returning the hug. “And fat. Always weak and useless and fat.”
“No, no. Don’t say that. You have great endurance and courage, but you need to save it and be strong enough to let us take over. Can you do that?” Kryvek looked with his silver-brown eyes into Christine’s hazel.
She bit her lip and nodded, then kissed Lira on the cheek. “Don’t lose hope,” she said, and then she was gone.
Kryvek caressed Edofine’s face with his fingers. “When he first came I thought he’d be an awful nuisance.”
“Have you changed your mind?” Lira asked, not taking her eyes off her lover.
“No. He’s still an awful nuisance, but he’s a sweet, caring, charming nuisance at the same time. I can’t believe we forgot to tell either him or the Tufts about coffee and Elves.” Kryvek switched to Elvish. “He’s all I have left of my blood relatives. I cannot lose him.”
Lira spoke in Elvish as well, as they both did for the rest of the conversation. “People have always been afraid of me at first, and then a small number changed over to love. He loved me from the first day. He senses more than even another Elf would.”
“I don’t want to wait until next morning for other Elves to come. Do you?”
Lira shook her head. “This may sound ridiculous, but I do not wish for anyone else to touch him. He is ours.”
“I’m not very skilled at the healing Song.”
“Neither am I.”
“Shall we make an attempt? Have you shared your energy before?”
“I have, but this is going to drain us unless we come up with some pretty powerful wording.”
“Let me begin. I was working on a poem this morning, and I think I can use it.” Kryvek put his hands on Edofine’s head and began to sing.
How much blood really matters
Is beyond my reckoning
Though our souls are bruised and battered
And our dreams are often shattered.
I live, I think, I love, I sing
And tonight I sing for you.
Lira placed her hands on top of Kryvek’s, plucking Kryvek’s haunting tune and adding her own words.
For ages the wise have attempted
To share and find true peace
And our races were not exempted
And we have not yet perfected
But tonight, let your fears cease
I give my strength to you.
Kryvek closed his eyes, listening to the air around him. He heard the hum of fluorescent lights, the rumble of traffic above, and the clatter of footsteps in the hall. He thought of his childhood in the Dance Clan village, sitting by a pool and watching the dragonfly nymphs transform and fly away. Then Edofine would try to pull him up, telling him about marvelously tall trees with perfect branches for climbing, or an expedition to find wild strawberries. Kryvek usually had turned him away. Throat dry and insides burning, Kryvek raised his voice.
How I love you matters not to me
Or anything else, but now I grieve
To see you fallen because of another .
Lira felt herself crumbling. Though her name was about tears, she hadn’t shed them since her mother screamed to the forest in anger for having a half-demon child. Lira had been ten years old at the time. To come so far, to have been so lonely, and then to find complete rapture in another being, and then to bid it goodbye was more than she could bear.
I would cut my own feet from the bone
Rather than see you slip away
Spirits, I cannot now be alone
What evil there is, be undone!
Leave my Edofine, I pray.
They repeated the last line together. “Leave my Edofine, I pray.”
For a moment, there was silence, but then Kryvek and Lira’s hands disappeared into Edofine’s head, which had become a source of icy blue light. The vortex ripped through their bodies and burst into sounds of draining, sucking, and pouring. An unseen Elf choir sang meaningless syllables, and a lone Eudemon male shouted in words neither understood.
The sound then dwindled as the two struggled to breathe. The magic pulled their entire beings into the half-empty vessel. Birds sang, even though they were underground and it was nighttime. The blue light filled the room, blinding, and then sank into Edofine.
Completely exhausted, Lira fell backwards onto the floor. Kryvek sank to his knees, praying both to Jesus Christ and to the woodland spirits, hoping neither would be offended at the inclusion of the other. Edofine’s loved o
nes both fell asleep as they were.
* * * *
Nobody remembered to feed Krith. He banged on the oven door a few times, and then opened it to call out. “Hello? Anyone there? I’m starving.”
He couldn’t stop worrying about Edofine, whom he had seen rush in to grab a bow and arrows. Krith heard Sara shrieking that she was sorry, and ask if the Elf was going to die. With his worries came a drop in body temperature, and he reached up and out to turn up the heat to five hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
Then he shrank back to the back corner of the oven, for he heard voices that did not belong to his friends. After a moment he recognized one of them as Mister Yale, the landlord.
“Absolutely disgraceful, sir, that’s what it is. Strange noises, bizarre behavior—it’s a wonder I put up with Fletcher for so long. I knew there had to be something at the bottom of it.” Mister Yale unlocked the door to Kryvek’s apartment. With him were two policemen and a drug-sniffing dog.
“If there really are methamphetamines in here, Rachel will find them,” promised one.
“I don’t know what drugs they’ve been running,” Mister Yale replied, shuffling through Kryvek’s music sheets and flinging them aside. “All I know is Mister and Mrs. Young said that cousin of his attacked them. He was obviously high on something. They’re my oldest tenants, and I can afford to lose this guy.”
The dog looked straight into the oven, and Krith clenched his fists. He was about to be exiled again, and after Edofine, he had no one to take him in.
“Some company that calls itself the OMHI wants to buy the building. They say they want to rent apartments out to crazy people. I told them a flat no. Found anything?” Mister Yale extracted some chewing tobacco from a tin and stuck it in his mouth. Krith salivated, having been without nicotine for weeks.
There Rachel was, barking at the darkened oven. Krith wished he happened to be larger right now, because defending himself would burn up the mass he had left. The policeman who had her on a leash said, “Look, he left the oven on. All the way up, too.”
“Turn it off first,” Mister Yale said. “I don’t want to be stuck with the electricity bill.”
The policeman swung the door open. His eyes and mouth gaped. “Holy shit.”
Humans and Demons and Elves Page 12
