Tinker was right to be scared.
He gazed at all the threads leading to his photo. In theory, he was well suited to take six more kids. He had spare bedrooms. Forge had stated he was going to stay in Pittsburgh with his ten sekasha warriors. At some point the rest of Forge’s household should arrive, adding dozens of laedin-caste guards. Thorne Scratch had plans on how they could add to Oilcan’s Hand.
Maybe if he hadn’t talked to the mice, he would be more willing to gamble that his household could handle the added chaos of Tinker’s siblings. The mice made him honestly consider the problem.
Their grandfather, Tim Dufae, had barely been able to ride herd on Tinker when it was just her. Oilcan had been only ten years old and newly orphaned when he came to Elfhome. He had been an emotional train wreck from watching his mother be murdered by his father. Yet he’d still found himself acting as a semi-parent to his six-year-old cousin. He supposed it just came with the territory of being in a household with a younger child. He’d been lucky that Tinker adored him from the first day. She never tried to make trouble for him; it just worked out that way.
The five Stone Clan children in his care had been betrayed by their clan, captured by the enemy, imprisoned without hope of rescue, raped and tortured, and had watched helplessly as other children were slaughtered and eaten. Rustle’s arm was still shattered. Baby Duck had amnesia with no idea what her real name was or how she ended up in Pittsburgh. Cattail Reeds and Barley were emotionally fragile. Merry was already acting as emotional support for the other four children since Oilcan kept her safe from being kidnapped. To make those kids be semi-parents to six Tinkers? No, that would be criminal.
“I think it needs to be you,” Oilcan said.
“I–I—I — please?” Tinker said. “At least think about it?”
He didn’t want to say yes but looking at her with bed head, steel-toed boots and nightgown on, he had doubts that Tinker’s household could cope with another two magical girl geniuses terrorizing them, let alone six. It might also end up like Lain and Tinker’s relationship — they often butted their heads together like big-horn sheep. Tinker might not get along with her little sisters.
Thorne Scratch shifted so she was in his side vision. Once she had his attention, she nodded to indicate that she was sure it would be fine for him to take the twins.
She was so naïve.
Oilcan looked down at his feet so he wouldn’t have to meet their eyes. Could he actually say yes, considering the state of his kids? Yes, being semi-parent to Tinker had been harrowing at times, but Tinker had always listened to him when he put his foot down. She could be reasoned with. She’d been insanely mature for her age, even at six years old. By thirteen, Tinker had set up her own business and, in most practical terms, conducted herself as an adult. Tinker had shown him nothing but compassion when he arrived on Elfhome. The twins would probably be considerate of his kids’ emotional state. It might even be helpful to have someone else at Sacred Heart who understood human technology.
He looked back up at the strings connecting the various photos of possible guardians. “I’ll take the kids. I can see if Esme wants to live with me for a while to give the twins options. Maybe even Gracie too. Not as part of my household but like co-mothers for the babies or something. I don’t know. We can get inventive. This is Pittsburgh.”
3: ROCK-A-BYE BABY, ON THE TREETOPS: REFRAIN
Louise jolted out of sleep. She flailed with the light sheet covering her. Her quiet cries of dismay turned to ones of frustration. Her twin, Jillian, had her left hand pinned to the futon mattress that they shared.
For a moment Louise was completely disoriented. She expected her old bedroom, the one she had shared with Jillian most of her life. The streetlights would shine through the one window to fall across the foot of their beds. There was always the hum of traffic, the sirens of distant ambulances and police cars responding to some unknowable emergency, and occasionally the bark of a lonely dog.
The airy space wasn’t their bedroom. It swayed ever so slightly in the wind. The smell of autumn leaves hung in the air. Elf shines floated like fireflies through the air, barely holding back the cave dark of moonless night.
“Oh,” she whispered as she realized that she was in Gracie’s small treehouse, far above the forest floor, on Elfhome. Their home in Queens was hundreds of miles and another universe away. The treehouse, while charming, was rustic in almost every sense of the word. Their playhouse on Earth had more bells and whistles before they blew it up. Electricity. Wi-Fi. Furniture. Direct access to the ground.
The twins were in the roughly eight-foot-square living room of the treehouse that looked like a Japanese teahouse. Tatami mats covered the floor. One wall was the trunk of the ironwood tree. The other three walls had sliding shoji doors. The east and west panels of translucent paper over wooden frames were closed against night drafts. The southern door stood open to the narrow patio that wrapped the treehouse. There was an overhead light fixture powered by small windmills but they weren’t allowed to turn it on. The oni might spot it. The only piece of furniture was a kotatsu table currently leaning against the wall to make room for their futon mattress. The rest of the area was taken up by the nesting box.
Gracie Wong Dufae — their biological father’s widow — was asleep in her tiny bedroom, another thirty feet up the massive tree. Proving that the tengu weren’t just humans with wings, the poor female had spent the day laying four huge eggs, each larger than an ostrich egg. They were sky blue with black speckles; apparently it was the normal coloration for oni crows. The twins had strategically missed all the drama; they’d deliberately spent the day exploring the hidden tengu village, returning only to find another egg had been laid in the blanketlined, temperature-controlled nest. Louise was glad they managed to save her unborn siblings but Gracie popping out eggs was a little weird and creepy.
“Oh, you little brats,” Louise whispered as she remembered the dream that woke her. Crow Boy — the yamabushi Haruka Sessai — was missing from his normal sleeping spot of the treehouse’s patio. It could mean that her dream had been true; he might have met or was meeting with Jin Wong even now to give the tengu spiritual leader a report on all that they knew.
“Hm?” Jillian woke. She tightened her hold on Louise’s hand.
“I dreamed that — that — that…” Louise stuttered to a halt. Had she told Jillian that her dreams had been coming true since they first turned on their magic generator? At first Louise didn’t know what was happening. She couldn’t see magic like Jillian could; she never thought that it would affect her in any way. By the time she realized she had a special power, Jillian was lost in grief. Her sister was still fragile.
“I dreamed of Mommy and Daddy,” Jillian raised their joined hands to wipe tears from her face. “Peter Pan had taken Mommy away to tell the lost boys stories. Daddy went too because he wanted to fly. We were tiny and helpless like Tinker Bell; just little gleams of light. We tried to find Mommy and Ming locked us in a birdcage like the one we saved Crow Boy from.”
Louise didn’t know what to say or do to make things right for her sister. Their grandmother hadn’t let them go to the funeral. They hadn’t gotten a chance to say goodbye or even confirm with their own eyes that their parents were dead. Louise hadn’t truly believed it until she talked with their Aunt Kitty, who had no reason to lie. Considering Jillian’s state, though, perhaps it had been for the best. Maybe Jillian couldn’t have taken the brutal truth.