This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Wen Spencer
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3671-6
eISBN: 978-1-62579-310-2
Cover art by Stephen Hickman
First Baen printing, September 2014
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spencer, Wen.
Wood sprites / Wen Spencer.
pages cm — (Elfhome; 4)
ISBN 978-1-4767-3671-6 (hardback)
1. Twin sisters — Fiction. 2. Gifted persons — Fiction. 3. Imaginary places — Fiction. 4. Families — Fiction. 5. Imaginary wars and battles — Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.P4665W88 2014
813’.6—dc23
2014020008
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Pages by Joy Freeman (http://www.pagesbyjoy.com)
Printed in the United States of America
Electronic Version by Baen Books
Acknowledgments
Books are not the effort of just one person.
Many thanks to the people who gave me a
helping hand during the course of this book.
Dan Kosak
Brian Chee
Andy Bradford
Bonnie Funk
Kevin Geiselman
Ruth L. Heller, DVM
Nancy Janda
Laurel Jamieson Lohrey
Sue Petroulas
Hope Erica Ring, M.D.
June Drexler Robertson
David Stein
N. A. Young
Aaron, Becky, Katie, and Josh Wollerton for being
willing subjects of science experiments for fiction.
The Barflies at Baen’s Bar who were willing to
figure out exactly what I said thirteen years ago.
And especially Traci Scroggins, who fought the good fight.
To my sister, Kathy Sue Flower
Who is eighteen months older and yet has
always been shorter than me. She wore dresses
that matched mine. She shared long summers of
secret forts and rambling adventures. She slept in
the top bunk of our bed year in and year out.
Because of her, I have an inkling
of what it is to be a twin.
1: What's In Your Easter Basket?
Louise Georgina Mayer learned many important life lessons the week before her ninth birthday. The first was that flour was indeed explosive. The second was not to experiment with explosives indoors — or at least not in a small wooden playhouse that doubled as a film studio. The third was that adults — firemen, EMTs, policemen, her parents — liked to state the obvious when trying to make a point. Yes, she realized that they’d miscalculated while still airborne — thank you very much. The fourth was that her twin sister rocked — Jillian sat there with blood streaming down her face and managed a wide-eyed story of innocence that pinned the entire event on their Barbie dolls. Fifth was that people believed the stupidest things if you delivered the story while bleeding.
Sixth was that her parents were liars.
“That can’t be right,” she told the emergency room nurse who was applying the bracelet to her wrist that claimed she was blood-type AB. The man blithely ignored her, so she said it louder and clearer. “That’s not right.”
“Hm? What isn’t right, sweetie?” the nurse asked although by his tone he still wasn’t paying attention.
“I’m blood-type O,” Louise stated firmly. She was going to be a geneticist someday. Maybe. A geneticist or an animal trainer or a circus performer. Unlike Jillian, Louise couldn’t decide what she wanted to do with her life. Jillian wanted to write, act, and direct big-budget action movies, hence the entire flour explosion. According to their alibi, Barbie was merely pinned under her pink convertible in a blizzard. In truth, the planned small explosion was special effects for Soulful Ember, queen of the elves, using magic to defeat an army of man-eating black-willow trees. It was supposed to be the climax of episode twenty-four in their partially accurate series chronicling the history of Earth’s twin sister, Elfhome.
“Type O?” The nurse became focused. He picked up a tester, and there was a sudden sharp pain in her finger. The machine beeped, and he shook his head. “No, you’re AB positive. See. Here, let’s do your sister.”
He made Jillian wince, and the machine beeped again. The display said: AB+.
Which was completely impossible. Both of her parents were blood-type O, which was amazing because they were such different people. Their father was tall, weedy thin, Nordic pale, and hopelessly nerdy looking. Their mother was an equally tall African-American warrior queen who struggled daily not to be anything but solid built. Two type-O people made a boring genetic grid: O across the board with the only possible outcome being O. Louise and Jillian weren’t identical twins, which made it even more impossible.
“I always said that we were adopted,” Jillian said once the nurse left them alone. While their dusky skin could be a blending of their two parents, the twins’ silky straight brown hair was too well behaved to be from either of their parents, and it was becoming apparent that they were never going to be tall.
“We can’t be adopted,” Louise said. “There’s that icky video of us being born. All that screaming and blood and everything. That was Mom saying the S and F words.”
Jillian giggled. Their parents had planned to watch the birth videos — again — on their birthday until Jillian reminded them how many times their mother cursed while giving birth. Luckily their parents hadn’t mastered video editing to the point that they could simply erase out the swear words.
“Maybe we got it wrong on how blood type works,” Jillian said.
“It’s not that complicated.” Louise sketched out the four boxes on the sheet of the bed with her fingernail. “At least — it didn’t seem that complicated.”
“Their donor cards are wrong?” Jillian suggested.
Louise shook her head. “They’re universal donors. The blood bank wouldn’t get that wrong. It would be bad.”
However they considered it, the facts just didn’t seem to add up.
Eventually their parents swept in, smelling of smoke and radiating concern.
“What were you doing in your playhouse that made it explode?” their mother asked. She cupped Jillian’s chin with her elegant dark hands and made a sound of dismay over the stitches at the edge of her scalp.
“Honey,” their father said in the tone that said he thought their mother was being silly. As they got older, they were realizing that their father was child-naïve at times.
“George, don’t baby them. They’re too intelligent to be babied.”
Jillian got all wide-eyed innocent again, which didn’t work nearly as well without the streaming blood, but the stitches helped. “All we were doing was playing with our dolls. Barbie had spun out in the driving snow—”
“The flour and the sifter and the fan?” their mother asked.