Authors: Gael Baudino
“Yup.”
“Is this what you did to me?”
Hadden laughed, and the sound was clear and bright even over the telephone. “Not exactly. You were already coming around when Ash and I reached out to you.”
“So what do I do now?”
“Keep an eye on her. If she runs into trouble, try to be there. It's been only four months since you changed . . . so you should remember how it goes. Try to show her that you care.”
Lauri hesitated. “That's going to be kind of rough. Amy already has me pegged as some kind of bitchy libber . . . and she's pretty much right. I doubt if we have much in common.”
“Ah, but you have a great deal in common: you're an Elf, and she's going to become one.”
“Yeah.” Her tone was doubtful. “But there's one other thing. Did you feel how scared she was this afternoon?”
“I did.”
“That wasn't just about maybe losing her job.”
Silence on the other end of the line. After a while, Hadden said: “I think humans have a lot of fears. Some of them we understand, some we can't. I don't know what to make of it. Maybe she'll lose it as she changes. I hope so.”
But Lauri hung up feeling vaguely dissatisfied. She could not shake the feeling that Hadden had missed something in his evaluation. She tried to salve her thoughts with his comments about Amy's eventual change, but when she got into the office the next morning and found that Amy had a black eye, she was not reassured.
It was not a bad injury, and Amy had attempted to conceal it with makeup. Lauri centered herself among the stars. “Hi, Amy. How are you doing?”
“'Lo.” Amy hardly looked up. She was hunched over the computer keyboard as though expecting to be flogged. She did not seem at all inclined to talk, but Lauri waited by the reception desk until she finally met her gaze. Again, she saw the deepened blue, the slightest trace of a gleaming.
“Have a good day, kiddo.”
Amy only looked frightened. “Uh . . . thanks.”
“Yeah . . . take it easy.” Chagrined, Lauri retreated to her desk.
She was out in the field with Hadden that day, and she had already decided to take the opportunity to talk further with him. She did not say anything, though, until they had broken for lunch. They had found a quiet park, away from the main thoroughfares, and had sat down in the shade of a tall locust tree.
Lauri opened her lunch and bit into a ham and cheese sandwich. “Amy has a black eye,” she mumbled.
“I noticed.” Hadden was busy with tuna salad.
“What do you think? Did you ask her about it?”
“I did. She didn't want to talk. I didn't want to pry.”
“Something's wrong,” said Lauri. “I feel it.”
A sparrow lit on her knee and looked at her expectantly. She reached out, stroked the bird absently, then fed it a bit of bread.
Hadden grinned. “Remember back when you wanted to pet birds?”
The sparrow was joined by two others. Lauri fed them, also. They stayed, waiting.
“They want more than food,” said Hadden. He reached out and scritched one of the birds. “Here, let me show you.” He beckoned, and a sparrow flicked over to his hand. “You always know that we're a soft touch, don't you?” he said to it. He glanced at Lauri. Find your stars, breathe in their light, and let it flow into your hands. Watch.”
He cupped his hands beneath the bird and closed his eyes. Lauri watched the shimmer in his hands grow stronger, and the sparrow chirped with delight and fluttered and fluffed as though it were in a warm bath. It seemed willing to stay right where it was indefinitely, but Hadden finally opened his eyes and told it not to be greedy. With another chirp—of mild indignation—it flew off.
“Your turn,” said Hadden, sitting back against the tree.
Lauri found her stars, gathered the remaining two birds, and let the light flow. When they had taken wing, she looked up. “Did you and Wheat just figure these things out as you went along?”
“Sort of. I imagine we have all sorts of talents that we don't know about yet. All we have to do is figure them out.” A pause. “Did you know that Ash healed one of her neighbor's boys the other day?”
“She healed him? That's pretty good stuff.” Lauri went back to her sandwich. “What did he have? A cold or something?”
Hadden was looking off into the distance . . . and perhaps farther than that. “Leukemia,” he said quietly. “His mother was just taking him off to the lab for a second round of tests, and Ash looked at him and saw it. Somehow, she managed to . . . to whatever. She doesn't know what she did. But when the test results came back, they were negative.”
Lauri had not moved since Hadden had named the disease. Ash was a slender, graceful lass, the owner of an employment agency, and Hadden's lover. A healer? Leukemia? Lauri looked at her hands. “That's . . . that's . . .” She could get no farther.
Hadden's voice was close to a whisper. “I wonder if we can't all do things like that.”
“Kind of . . .” And she had worried about not sweating! “. . . kind of puts a different light on this whole thing.”
“It does. It's not all singing and dancing in the firelight.” He glanced at her, smiled. “Stop shaking, Lauri.”
She laughed nervously, closed her eyes again, and let the starlight calm her. “It scares me, I guess,” she said after a time. “I've looked at all this as just . . . a different way of living. I never thought . . . well . . . about having some kind of power.”
Hadden did not reply for a minute. Then: “What do you think happened between you and Amy? Isn't that power?”
“I never thought of it that way. I . . . I guess so.”
They got back to the office just as Amy was collecting her things. She looked up as they entered, and Lauri was relieved to see that some of her smile was back. “Mr. Bloomfield called,” she said. “He's delighted.”
“Good,” said Lauri. “It was worth the trip, then.”
Amy blushed. When she turned away, though, Lauri wondered whether she sensed the barest hint of a light about her.
“What are you doing for dinner tonight, Amy?”
The question seemed to jar Amy. Lauri sensed that some scenario was playing out in her mind . . . sensed, too, another surge of fear. “I . . . I . . . I have to get home.”
“OK.” She kept her tone casual. “Some other time, maybe.”
“Right.” Amy nodded, gave her a quick smile, and hurried for the door.
But she paused and turned. “Uh . . . maybe tomorrow night?”
“Sounds good to me.”
Amy darted out. Lauri stood, hands on hips, watching her get into her car. “For a minute there I thought she might be worried that I wanted to get in her pants or something.”
Hadden shook his head. “I doubt that she even knows you're gay.”
“I've never tried to help anyone through the change. I'm out of my depth.”
Hadden put an arm around her shoulders. “It teaches you a lot. Worried?”
Lauri considered, letting the question hang. Though she had no definite idea what Amy's problem was, a faint suspicion was beginning to form in the back of her mind, one that she did not like. True, she could have reached out among the stars, linked with Amy, and read the woman like a book, but that would have been a violation, like rape, and if her suspicions proved at all correct, then Amy had already been violated . . . was, in fact, being violated almost constantly.
“Yeah,” she said at last. “I'm worried.” She gestured at herself. “I've only been this way for a few months, so how the hell am I supposed to be qualified to do anything? Maybe you should take over.”
“No.” Hadden shook his head. “This is something you have to do. Consider it advanced training.”
There was humor in there somewhere, but Lauri was too preoccupied to find it. “I'll try to remember that.”
“Try something else, too,” said Hadden. “Remember who you are. And remember what you are.” He took one of her hands and held it up before her. It was shimmering, silver and bright.
***
The next day, Amy's eye was still ugly, but she was smiling again. Lauri, who had paperwork to do, now and again took a moment to watch her. Yes, something about the blond woman had indeed changed, at least to elven eyes. Lauri was fairly sure that Amy herself was not yet aware of it.
After work, they went out to a Pizza Hut and chatted over a mushroom and pepperoni with extra cheese. Amy seemed open and cheerful, and laughed at Lauri's tales about her downstairs neighbor and his billion-watt stereo.
“. . . so I finally went down to complain,” she said, “and he took a swing at me.”
“He tried to hit you?” But there was a sense of apprehension beneath Amy's laughter. “What did you . . . what did you do?”
Lauri shrugged. “I pitched him into the lake. Everyone laughed. He kept the volume down after that.”
Amy giggled nervously and nearly spilled her Coke. “You're tall enough . . . I didn't realize you were that strong.”
“I've studied Tae Kwon Do for a few years. It comes in handy.”
Amy set down her drink and looked at her as though for the first time. Her face was a mixture of awe, puzzlement, and a touch of fear. “You're very brave.”
Lauri laughed, trying at the same time to read Amy's expression. “Nah . . . I'm just one of those horrible feminists you're always hearing about.”
For a moment, Amy's thoughts seemed to turn inward. “Sure . . . OK . . . I guess so,” she said slowly. Lauri had the impression that another scenario was playing out in her mind. “It must be interesting.”
They were definitely an unmatched set: Amy in her Gunne Sax dress and impeccably applied makeup; Lauri in denim and denim, her hair a black mop and her face bare of any color except a suntan. Still, they could talk, and there was, moreover, a bond between them of which only Lauri was conscious so far, a bond that was growing steadily. Eventually, Amy would be finding stars behind her closed eyes. Eventually, Lauri would have to figure out how to explain what was happening to her.
“How do you feel about the mountains?” Lauri asked. “You want to take a lunch up there this weekend?” She admitted to herself that it would be a definite novelty to see Amy in Levi's. Unless, of course, she wore calico and a bonnet on such trips.
“Well . . .” Amy seemed uncertain. “Rob . . . that's my boyfriend . . . usually likes me to stay home with him on weekends.” She paused, staring at the ice melting in her cola. “But . . . but he's going out with some friends. I . . . I guess I could.”
“You live with Rob?”
She did. And it turned out that they kept an apartment together only a few minutes from where Lauri had thrown her neighbor into the lake.
“Let's do it then,” said Lauri. “You can get those pesky men out of your hair for a while.”
Amy giggled and nodded; but she looked at her watch, then, and she gasped. “Ohmygod, I gotta get home. Rob will—”
The fear. Panic, really.
Amy caught herself. “Can we pay up?” she said quietly. “I really have to go.”
Lauri looked at her for a few moments, sizing her up. “No problem. I'll pick you up on Saturday.”
Amy was relatively error-free the rest of the week, her only mistake being a minor one regarding the admittedly simple filing system used at TreeStar. Hadden caught it on Friday afternoon just as they were closing the office. “Don't worry,” he said. “You can fix it on Monday.”
Amy stammered an apology. Hadden dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Go home and have a good weekend. Monday is early enough to worry about it.”
Amy looked grateful, and she picked up her purse and headed for the door.
“Don't forget about tomorrow,” Lauri called. “Nine o'clock sharp.”
A giggle. “Ron will still be in bed.”
“Hey, all the better!”
“Tomorrow?” said Hadden as the door closed behind Amy.
“We're going up into the mountains for the day,” said Lauri.
“Sounds like fun. Ash and I are going up to the Home. Why don't you drop in?”
Lauri watched through the window as Amy got into her car and pulled out. “We'll be up there,” she said, “but that might be rushing things. Amy doesn't even know that Elves exist, much less that we're building a rec center off Highway 6. Of course, why should that bother her? Happens all the time, right?”
Hadden laughed. “I wouldn't exactly call it a rec center. But . . . well . . . you know these mortals . . .”
“Mortals. Hmmm. Not for much longer.” She glanced at the street, then at Hadden. “This may be rough.”
“Oh?”
“Her black eye. I think her boyfriend beat her up. I think it wasn't the first time, either.”
Hadden sat down in a vacant chair and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The blood had taken his beard away, but the habit persisted. “I was afraid that was going to be it. It does explain a few things.” He looked sad. “You're right. It could be rough.”
“Yeah. Rough. Real damn rough.” Lauri was aware that the starlight in her eyes was shining brightly, even dangerously.
***
Forty minutes west of Denver, there was an odd little exit from Highway 6. Lauri turned her Bronco onto it and dropped back a gear for the dirt road and the steep grade.
Amy watched the trees and the hillside crawl by. “I never noticed this turnoff before,” she commented. “I've been out this way too. Rob and I used to go out to Idaho Springs.”
“It's kind of hard to find unless you know just what you're looking for,” Lauri said. “But there's a nice place for a picnic out here.” The road was rutted from the heavy loads of stone and wood that had been hauled over it, and Lauri made a mental note to suggest some smoothing: the area was starting to look too much as though there was construction going on. In fact, there was, but there was no sense in advertising it.
The road wound into the mountains, rising and falling for twenty minutes or so until it descended and dead-ended in a flat puddle of bare earth.
“State park?” asked Amy.
“Privately owned,” Lauri answered. She did not mention that she was part owner.
There was one other vehicle there: Ash's Mercedes. Lauri pulled in beside it and shut off the engine. There was a breeze that day, and it sang in the trees, the rustle of aspen blending with the sigh of pine. A deep feeling of peace lay upon the land here, and Amy must have sensed it, for Lauri saw that she was staring out of the open window as though she had never seen trees or mountains before.