Part 11 (1/2)
Tinker shook her head and concentrated on throwing the horseshoes. ”His father killed his mother; not on purpose-he just hit her too hard in anger-but dead is dead.” Not surprisingly, Tinker missed the stake. ”Oilcan works hard at being the ant.i.thesis of his father. He never drinks to the point of being drunk. He doesn't yell or fight, and he'd cut off his hand before he'd hit someone he loved.”
”He is a n.o.ble soul.”
Tinker beamed at Windwolf, inordinately pleased that he approved of her cousin. ”Yes, he is.”
”My family is unusual among elves.” Windwolf's horseshoe landed closer to the stake this round. ”We elves do not life bond as readily as you humans, and I think sometimes it is because of the manner in which we are raised. Siblings are usually centuries apart, fully grown and moved on before the next becomes the focus of their parents' attention. We are basically a race of only children and tend to be selfish brats as a result.”
”You're blowing my preconceived notion that you're a wise and patient race.”
”We appear patient only because our conception of time is different. Ama.s.sing oceans of knowledge does not make you wise.”
They collected horseshoes with oddly musical clangs of metal on metal.
”But your family is different?” Tinker prompted Windwolf.
”My mother loves children, so she had many, and she did not pace them centuries apart. She thought that when a child was old enough to seek out playmates on his or her own, it was time for another. Amazingly, my father put up with it, mostly. Perhaps their marriage would not have survived if we were not a n.o.ble house with wealth and Beholden.” Tinker knew that Beholden were the lower castes that acted as servants to the n.o.ble caste, but she wasn't sure how it all worked. ”The Beholden gave my father the distance he needed from so many children.”
Given that his mother could have spent centuries raising children, Tinker blinked at the sudden image of the old woman who lived in a shoe, children bursting out at the seams. ”How many kids are in your family?”
”Ten.”
”Only ten?”
Windwolf laughed. ”Only?”
”I thought maybe a hundred, or a thousand.”
Windwolf laughed again. ”No, no. Father would never submit to that. He finds ten an embarra.s.sment he suffers only for Mother's sake. Most n.o.bles do not have any children.” Windwolf's voice went bitter. ”There is no need for propagation when you live forever.”
”Well, it keeps your population from growing quickly.”
”The elfin population has only declined in the last two millennia. Between war, accidental death, and occasional suicide, we are half the number we once were.”
That did put a different spin on things. ”That's not good.”
”Yes, so I try to tell people. I had great hope that with this new land would come a new way of seeing the world.”
”Had?”
”The arrival of Pittsburgh was unexpected.”
Tinker winced. ”Sorry.”
”It actually has been beneficial,” Windwolf said. ”Enticing people to an utter wilderness was difficult; few wanted to suffer the ocean crossing for so few comforts. Human culture, though, is attracting the young and the curious-the ones most likely to see things my way.”
”Good.” Tinker focused back on throwing the horseshoes. That's what she liked about the game. It encouraged a flow of conversation.
”What about you?”
”What do you mean?”
”Do you desire children?”
She missed the stake completely, only the chain-link fence keeping the horseshoe from vanis.h.i.+ng into the weeds. ”Me?”
”You. Or would you rather be childless?”
”No.” She blurted out the gut reaction to the question. ”It's just I've never thought about kids. Sure, someday I'd like to have one or two, maybe as many as three, but h.e.l.l, I've never even-” She was going to say kissed a man, but she supposed that wasn't true anymore. ”You know.”
”Yes, I do know,” he purred, looking far too pleased, and it put a flash of heat through her. Her and Windwolf? Like her dream? Suddenly she felt the need to sit down. As if he were reading her mind-G.o.ds, she hoped not-Windwolf indicated the battered picnic table beyond the horseshoe pit.
As she clambered up to sit on the tabletop of the picnic table, she wondered what it would be like to be with him, as they had been in her dream. ”How old are you?”
”For an elf, barely adult. For a human, I am ancient. I'm two hundred and ten.”
Or 11.6 times older than she was. Nathan suddenly seemed close to her age.
”Is that too old?” Windwolf asked.
”No, no, not at all.” Tinker struggled for perspective. Elves were considered adults at a hundred, but until they reached a thousand, they were still young. Triples were what the elves called them, or those that could count their age in three digits. Windwolf could be compared to a man that just turned twenty; only he'd been born in the 1820s.
And she was like one of Oilcan's astronomers to him, staying only long enough to break his heart.
First Nathan and now Windwolf. Well, didn't her choice of men suck?
”Have you ever played ninepins?” Windwolf asked, breaking the silence.
”Bowling? Yeah. But only with humans.”
”I am much better at ninepins.”
”Tooloo says humans should never play ninepins with elves. It always ends badly for humans.”
”This Tooloo is a font of misinformation. She was completely wrong about the life debt.”
”How so?”
”The debt between us is not yours. It is mine,” Windwolf said.
”Yours?”
”How could the count be any other way?”
”During the fight with the saurus...”
”You saved my life. I was dazed, and you distracted the saurus by putting out its eye at great risk to yourself.”