FREE STORIES 2012(84)

"That's Pittsburghers for you." Aiofe shook out a towel and folded it. "They're so used to the reality standing on its head that they're taking all in stride. I figured that was the case and so I came on home. Can I ask you something?"

Olivia's heart leapt as she thought of all the questions she didn't want asked. There were so many truths she'd been keeping from everyone. "What is it?"

"How do you grow beans? I was thinking of planting some of what they gave me."

Olivia laughed in surprise and relief. "You can't grow those keva beans now."

Confusion filled Aiofe's face. "Aren't dried beans just the seeds of bean plants? Why can't I put them in the ground and have them grow?"

"We're less than a month from first frost."

"What's that?" Like Olivia, Aiofe had no family and her college friends had been on summer break when the war broke out. The girl was only marginally better off than Olivia in that she had a respectable job translating for the EIA, but there were times she seemed dangerously young and naïve.

"When it drops below freezing, most plants die. In Pittsburgh, the first frost is usually mid-October. That's why the leaves are starting to turn." She pointed to the sugar maple that straddled their backyards. The edges of its leaves were tinged with yellow. It served as a reminder that despite the late summer heat, autumn was officially only days away.

"I know why the leaves change." Aiofe complained. "I just don't know anything about growing stuff. I was born in the farming country of Whites Cross Ireland but we moved to a flat on College Green in Dublin from the time I was little. I don't know these things. Food always comes from the market."

"I don't know now long keva beans take to mature but they seem a lot like kidney beans and those take three or four months to grow. If we planted some back at the start of the war, then maybe there be time, but now is too late. You'd just waste your beans."

Aiofe blew a raspberry out. "The story of this war." She threw her hands up in the air and waved a pair of red silk panties in the air. "Yay." She dropped her hands. "Boo."

"Huh?"

Aiofe tossed the panties into her plastic laundry basket. "Oh, the elves haven't allowed humans to travel out of Pittsburgh, so everything we knew about them was what we could learn from the ones here. They were all Wind Clan beholden to the Viceroy because he owned this half of the continent. With the oni invasion, though, he had to call on the other clans for reinforcements. Yay! We have this massive flood of new information." Aiofe waved a black pair of panties this time. "Boo! Pitt is a ghost town because we were on summer break. None of the anthropology professors are on Elfhome. It's only me and five other grad students with internships here in Pittsburgh. We're taking notes like crazy."

"The Fire Clan and the Stone Clan?"

Aiofe nodded, plucking down her bright underwear with no outward sign of embarrassment. "The Fire Clan is here as a neutral party because the Queen sent them. From what we've been able to gather, she's the only one with a true standing army. It’s a force that she normally uses for peacekeeping missions between the various clans. They're not getting anything out of the war except keeping Elfhome safe from invasion. The Stone Clan sent a small mercenary force that the Wind Clan is paying for the mercenaries’ help. That's the tale, cut and dried, but every day we're learning all sorts about the political nastiness between the clans. Yay!" She threw her hands up in the air. "Only Pittsburgh is now in the middle of it." She dropped her hands with a sigh. "Boo."

"Forest Moss. What's the story with him? What happened to his eye?"

Aiofe scooped up her basket and nodded toward her backdoor to indicate that Olivia should follow her in. "What we didn't know until recently was that the oni and the elves went to war before. Apparently all three planets had ways to go through caves to get from one to the other with Earth smack in the middle. Forest Moss and his household were the first elves to find Onihida. That's the oni's world. The oni took them prisoner and tortured them all, trying to find out how to get to Elfhome. They tied Forest Moss down and burned his eye out. He's the only one that survived."

Olivia shivered as she thought of the sunburst of scars circling Forest Moss empty socket. How long did they burn him with hot knifes before they actually plunged the tip into his eye? Were there more scars hidden by his clothes? "Is he really crazy?"

"He's not the full shilling, as my da would say."

Aiofe hadn't prepared for winter yet, so her kitchen seemed spacious and airy. She'd spent her spare time painting the walls butter yellow and putting up crisp white curtains instead of bracing for freezing winds and a possible loss of electricity or gas. The kitchen table was doubling as a desk; overflowing with actual paper books, newspapers, datapads and slickies. Aiofe obviously trusted the EIA and the elves to keep Pittsburgh functioning until the peaceful end of the war. Olivia glanced about, feeling guilty that she hadn't taken the girl under wing and showed her how to prepare her place. Olivia wasn't even sure that Aiofe would take her suggestions; she was nearly five years younger than the grad student. She probably would think Olivia's mistrust of the government as hopelessly militant redneck.