“How do you conjugate it?”
“Fuck, Fucking, Fucked when used as a verb. It can be used as a noun, indicate person, place or thing, generally derogatory.” This was the not the conversation she thought she’d be having with Pony this evening. “It could also be combined — creatively — with other words. Fuck-head. Fuck-off. Fuck-wad.”
“I’m starting to understand a little more about human fascination with sex.”
“Besides the fact that it’s so damn fun?”
“What is damn?”
“Pony!”
“I feel that it is time that I learned English.”
She felt a pang of guilt knowing that Pony hadn’t understood any of Nathan’s last words, that he had only seen her struggling in Nathan’s hold and her cry for help. “Yes, that would be good.”
“Why do you feel this way? That you have ‘fucked up?’ You have done the best you can against very difficult situations.”
“Pittsburgh is stuck here on Elfhome. Nathan is dead. Half the people I know probably hate my guts now. I’m not sure even Oilcan or Lain will ever want to see me again. I cheated on my husband, and seduced you! How is that ‘the best?’ Gods forbid, if I had done my worse!”
He reached out and pulled her back, into his lap.
“Pony.” She wriggled, trying to escape him.
“Domi,” he whispered into her hair, his lips brushing the tips of her ears, sending a shiver of want through her. “Have I no will of my own? Am I your puppet?”
She stared into his dark eyes and felt cold dread take hold. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Because if you’re in control, I am not to blame for my actions?”
“Pony, please.”
“And if I am not under your control, does that make me a terrifying stranger? Someone that you do not know?”
She clung to him then, afraid that he would slip away from her. “Please, Pony, you’re the only thing sane about my life right now.”
“You are being unfair to both of us to say that what happened was only by your hand. I am not your puppet. You did not act alone. You can not be solely responsible.”
“You do what I tell you to do. I told you I wanted sex and you gave it to me.”
“I choose to do what you tell me.” He took her hand and nuzzled her wrist. “I was pleased that you trusted me enough to turn to me and to stop when you changed your mind.”
“I’m just supposed to use you? Get off and then throw you across the room? Like you’re some kind of—” She was going to say ‘vibrator’ but elves didn’t a word for battery-operated sex toys. Nor did she want to hurt him more by being crude. “— substitute for my husband?”
“That is what I am. I am to be here for you when Wolf can not be.”
“But — But — And you’re okay with that?”
“I have lived my entire life knowing that as a sekasha, if I became a domi’s beholden, that she might take me to bed. And I knew, when I offered myself to you that meant all of me. My life is yours. My love is yours. And I have watched you fight the demon spawn themselves to keep me from harm. Nothing happened yesterday that I did not know might happen, that I wanted to stop, and that I am sorry about — except the part about being thrown across the room.”
If he thought this was going to make her feel better, he was wrong. She felt worse, and struggled to keep from showing it. Obviously she sucked at it as sadness filled his eyes.
“I did not realize until Stormsong explained that humans are so — singular — with their love. It is not our way.” Pony used the inclusive “our” meaning that they both belonged to it: she was one of them. “That is why we sekasha are naekuna; so you can turn to us if you need us.”
“Oh, Pony, I might have the body of an elf, but in here—” she tapped her temple. “I’m still a human. I can’t commit to one person — heart and soul — and then take another one to bed, without feeling like I’m doing something wrong. I just can’t.”
“I know.” He said it with quiet acceptance in his voice, and then nothing more. After a minute, she leaned against him and soaked in his calmness. It still felt wrong to stay so close, so intimate with him when she was married to Windwolf. Her logical side, though, was starting to recognize what Pony must know — that while she was emotionally fully human now, that in a hundred years or so, she would slowly grow to be elf inside as well as out. And to elves — a hundred years was a very short time.
Well, sitting wallowing in her own pain wasn’t going to help Pittsburgh. Time to pull rabbits out of her butt. How could she communicate across realities when Earth wouldn’t have a receiver for her transmitter? She already tested Turtle Creek for radio waves, and nothing recognizable was coming through. She entertained the idea of linking two phones together with a phone line and tossing one into the discontinuity. No, a phone would sink like the gate had. So would messages in bottles.
She sighed and slid out of Pony’s lap. “Time to get busy. I need to do some modeling.”
Communication with Earth was a simple science problem. What was happening in Pittsburgh was a vast sociological problem in which she didn’t know how to solve. She didn’t even know where she stood in regards to it. How far did her responsibility extend? Were the elves right in hunting down all the oni and killing them? The scientist in her could see the simple logic of it. Both races were immortal, only the oni were prolific and the elves weren’t. If the elves did nothing, the oni would win eventually out of default. Morally, genocide was wrong — did the elves have a choice? It wasn’t like the gods had put both races on one world. The oni had invaded, which put them in the wrong. It would be stupid to put them in the right simply because they failed to kill the elves first.
And what about the tengu, who seemed to be a race separate from the oni and on Elfhome against their will? What was her responsibility to them? Riki had betrayed her, but if the tengu children were telling the truth, he had been forced to choose between her and his cousins. She knew she would move the world to protect Oilcan; how could she hold Riki’s betrayal against him when that meant putting the children into danger?
And how many tengu were there on Elfhome? Would she be protecting Riki, the three kids and the unnamed ‘aunt’ or were there more? A dozen? A hundred?
Where did her responsibility begin and end? Could she protect all the humans and the tengu too? Or to keep the humans safe, would she have to ignore what was morally right?
And under it all was the dark suspicion that she didn’t really have the power to protect anything, despite what Tooloo might think. True Flame thought she was a useless child. The Stone Clan was trying to kill her. Windwolf had lent her his power, but if she took a stand against him, would he take it back?
When Wolf asked Tinker to be his domi, he suspected that she would be able to lead. Certainly, when she spoke, people obeyed. She didn’t seem to be aware that she had the quality, but the day she saved his life, everyone listened to her without quarreling. Time and time again since then there had been satisfying — although usually mystifying — proof that he was right about her. He found his domi deep in another mysterious project in the middle of the Westinghouse Bridge, overlooking the Ghostlands.
“What is this?” Wolf pointed to a large cylindrical machine beside his domi.
“This is an Imperial Searchlight.” Tinker patted the three-foot tall light fixture. “It uses a Xenon 4000 watt bulb to output 155,000 lumens. They say that the output is visible at distances of more than twenty kilometers.”