Forest Moon Rising (24 page)

These girls were a full half Nörglein. From newspaper reports of missing hikers in the local forest about fifty years ago, I suspected they were part of that batch of ill-conceived children.

“Why did your brother think I would talk to you?” I hedged, blocking the doorway.

Scrap moved to my shoulder. He stayed his normal gray-green translucence. Nothing threatening about these girls. Yet.

“Oak said you kind of understood us. That maybe you could help us ... um ... figure out some things,” Blackberry replied. She kept her gaze on the ground.

“Things like why your body is changing?” I’d spent a few years, early in my writing career, substitute teaching to help make ends meet. Adolescent girls didn’t scare me as much as they scared themselves.

Both girls blushed.

“Are you willing to part with some information too?” I asked.

“Like ...?” Blackberry asked, finally looking up with the boldness that fit her namesake plant.

“Like why your family invaded the back room at Cooper’s?” I wasn’t about to mention the crystal ball, just in case that hadn’t been the object of their quest.

Yeah, right.

“That’s family,” Blackberry said. She set her chin and clamped her mouth shut.

I made to close the door.

“They were looking for something to help heal Father,” Salal interjected. She rammed her delicate foot in front of the door.

Try as I might, I couldn’t close it, even if I was determined to crush her foot.

Demons have more strength than the average human. A lot more strength. I’d seen a Sasquatch teen, in human form, shoulder three of his fallen comrades and sprint a hundred yards without breathing hard.

Ever try to break a salal vine? The fibers will shred your hands first. Blackberries are worse with thorns that slide under fingernails and imbed deep into tender joint tissue.

“Something special that you wouldn’t know about,” Blackberry added.

Oh yeah?
Scrap sneered.

Both girls looked at him, then away quickly, as if remembering they weren’t supposed to see him.

“Were your brothers the ones who beat up my friend, Starshine, trying to get her to part with that something special?”

“Um ...” Blackberry drew an intricate design on the floor with her bare toe. It absorbed all of her attention.

“Did you have any part in that?” I asked. My feet shifted to
en garde
and I held my hand out, palm up, ready for Scrap to transform.

But he didn’t. He rose up and fluttered around the girls’ heads, sticking his forked tongue out at them and lashing their hair with his tail.

“That was our brother, Cedar, and some of our father’s helpers,” Salal insisted. “We offered to go, but they wouldn’t let us. Cedar said it was men’s work. What makes one thing a man’s work and the next a woman’s?”

She tilted her head and stared at me in honest puzzlement.

“I think you girls should come in. I’ll make tea and we’ll talk,” Allie said from behind me. She’d moved up silently, ready to guard my back if needed.

I opened the door and stepped out of their way. The two girls made their way to the barstools, cautiously looking over their shoulders at me with each step.

We settled around the counter that separated the kitchen from the great room. Allie and I kept to the kitchen side. I wanted the girls to feel they could leave at any time without having to go through us. Possibly violently.

Ooooh, girl talk,
Scrap crooned taking a perch on the wine glass rack.

“Does he have to be here?” Blackberry asked, pointing at my imp. We all knew that the girls could see Scrap. No sense in pretending anymore.

“He’s gay, no need to be embarrassed.”

“We don’t care if he’s happy. He is male,” Salal said also looking askance at Scrap’s antics. But her eyes didn’t truly focus on him, just tracked his general movements.

“In today’s slang, gay means that he likes boys. Homosexual,” Allie explained.

Our two guests stared at each other in some long unspoken communication. “Fir,” they whispered.

“We’d still like this to be private,” Blackberry mumbled.

“Can you take a powder, pal?” I asked. “Go find some mold to gorge on in the basement. I’ll call if I need you.”

Ah, you’re no fun,
he pouted.

Women who pout to get their own way drive me crazy. I’ve known too many of them—including my own mother—to put up with their practiced manipulation.

But on Scrap, the expression looked more ridiculous.

Swallowing my mirth I banished him with a gesture. I sensed he only went as far as my office and eavesdropped shamelessly.

“What do you need to know?” Allie asked, forthright and no nonsense.

“Why do I bleed?” Blackberry asked, equally forthright.

I got out a blank notebook and colored pencils. The discussion went downhill from there. I’d never had to teach sex education before but I knew how, part of my general education degree.

“In our culture, women don’t have to have babies just because the men want them to,” I finished.

Blackberry opened and closed her mouth a couple of times.

“Spit it out,” I said gently.

“We ... we spend a lot of time in Old Town.” Blackberry traced an arcane pattern on the counter with her fingertip.

“And?”

“And I’ve made friends with an old woman at the Asian pharmacy.”

Portland has a small but thriving Chinatown and a large Asian population, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, the whole range of Oriental cultures.

“And ...”

“She’s been giving me black cohosh once a month since I started, you know ...” She tapped the drawings we’d made in the notebook.

“To keep you from getting pregnant.”

“I guess.” She shrugged and turned her back to us, studying the river through the broad windows.

“Okay. But a girl your age shouldn’t need it. You shouldn’t have to have sex unless you want it. Even then I think you are too young to fully understand a deep relationship.” Gee, I sounded preachy. But I think Blackberry needed to hear that.

She shrugged again, without looking at me.

“A woman gets to choose who she has sex with and when. For the man to force her is a heinous crime,” Allie expanded my statement.

“Sex is best when shared by a couple with deep affection. It is the ultimate in communication; communication that goes beyond words. Sex should be an extension of true and abiding intimacy, not just to make babies,” I added.

We walked all around the issue of their father being a scumbag who needed to be wiped out, the sooner the better.

I hoped the lingering wound I gave him from the Celestial Blade festered and caused him a great deal of hideous pain.

Salal’s jaw dropped as the idea behind the words penetrated her mind first.

“How does your father feel about you having sex?”

“He has never mentioned it. He doesn’t talk to us about his women and the new babies that will come to him.” she whispered.

Blackberry looked off into a corner, clamping her jaw shut. I saw the muscles around her mouth twitch, as if she was grinding her teeth.

“He only talks to us about our mission to nurture the forest. Keeping out the invasive nonnative plants is a never-ending job. It’s a sacred duty,” Blackberry added, obviously more comfortable talking about work than life. Like most people.

Then again, a lot of people mistook their work for life. Like me.

Allie seemed to recently have made the distinction and chose the better alternative.

“What does your father do when he traps a woman and takes her home?” I asked. The girls weren’t ready for the idea that their father was a nonnative invasive plant. If he didn’t belong in this ecology, then they didn’t either.

“Trap? He doesn’t trap them. Traps are for vicious animals that go rogue,” Blackberry insisted.

“He changes the paths so a woman gets lost. Then he offers her a return to safety in exchange for sex. That’s a trap, coercion. And I call it rape,” Allie returned equally forceful.

“What about when he traps a man, then shape-changes and spends the night with that man’s wife?” I pressed on. “That’s trickery of the worst kind.”

“Wh ... what do you call it when he gives me to our brothers, or his helpers to practice on?” Blackberry studied her tea mug as if the depths of the liquid held the answer. The whirlpool in her cup betrayed her agitation and shaking hands.

“That’s abuse of the worse kind. You don’t have to put up with it,” I said, horror-struck.

“You don’t have to go back to it,” Allie added.

“F
ATHER RESPECTS HIS WOMEN enough to put them in a trance so they enjoy the experience and do not remember him until after his child is born. He makes himself look very handsome for them. He also takes them into a back room in our home so that they have privacy.” Blackberry didn’t sound as convinced as she wanted to be.

She also completely ignored her own situation.

“More trickery,” Allie snorted.

“Let’s talk about your home. What does it look like?” If I could find the dark elf’s lair, I could take him out. Once he was gone, the new forest babies could learn to let their human half dominate. Gradually, the woodland genes would fade into dormancy.

What would happen to the five teens? I had to get the girls out. Now. The boys?

Later. I’d make that decision later. Or they would. They were almost adults, ready to take responsibility for their own lives. But they couldn’t be allowed to continue their father’s ways.

No way. No how.

Something the girls had said wiggled and slid around the edges of my mind. Something about invasive nonnative species. Their father was out of his native environment and therefore a noxious weed.

I knew that keeping English Ivy from strangling native trees was an ongoing battle with the parks department. The butterfly bush had just been added to the list of pesky plants. A native of China, too many of the fragrant shrubs had escaped planned landscapes to take over creek banks, crowding out helpful natives.

The girls said that keeping those plants under control was part of their work.

Could the parks department and their volunteers manage without the additional help of a family of forest elves? Volunteer groups. They were around but how did I find them? How effective were they?

Goddess, I was digging myself deeper with every thought twist. I needed to concentrate on one thing at a time.

“What about our home?” Blackberry asked suspiciously.

If I remembered correctly, one species of blackberry, the big one with huge berries was also an invasive nonnative species too. Maybe she was named after the smaller and less aggressive local plant. The one with tiny thorns designed to hook into the delicate flesh of a bear’s mouth to keep the animals from stripping the plant of greenery just to get to the berries.

“How big is your home? Forest Park is huge. There are large stretches where a small hut could blend into the background and stay hidden. But a big modern construction with lots of glass wouldn’t.” I needed a map.

“Not hard to hide something that’s mostly underground,” Salal said on a shrug. She too avoided her sister’s horrible confession.

“Caves? I didn’t know the geology of the hills was conducive to extensive cave systems.” I’d absorbed bits and pieces of information about rocks and plate tectonics and such from my deceased husband. Dill had a Ph.D. in geology and spent a lot of our three-month marriage crawling around the high desert plateau of Central Oregon and Washington. I’d shipped his rock collection back to his parents, postage due, after they tried to stiff me on Dill’s life insurance and inheritance of the house.

“She didn’t say caves,” Blackberry snorted. She didn’t want to part with information her father wanted to remain secret, but as a teen she needed to let me know that her knowledge was superior to mine.

“If not natural caves ...” I mused.

“Then unnatural tunnels,” Allie offered.

“The Shanghai Tunnels!” I whispered. I’d seen a program on TV about what lies beneath major cities. Often whole underworlds. Portland had a sordid history of subterranean opium dens, brothels, and cells for unwilling recruits to the maritime industry. Not all of them had been fully explored. Local rumor claimed that some of them went all the way into the West Hills.

Forest Park covered a huge tract of those hills. Why couldn’t some, or just one of those tunnels lead to an elven home?