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Earth Son slapped away Moss' hand. "I am not blind."

"Then you must see that this city is filled with fertile young females? There are so few
domana
females, and they are a choosy lot. The law prevents us from taking lovers outside our own caste who are not
sekasha
with
naekuna
, and the
sekasha
frown on us making another caste into
domana
—that would be too much like our Skin Clan fathers. Would not the
sane
plan be to follow Wolf Who Rules' path, winnow out the perfect female from the thousands and thousands of humans, and make her elfin?"

"No!" Earth Son flinched back from the mad one. "Are you capable of even recognizing sanity?"

Forest Moss thought a moment and then shrugged. "The sad truth is: I am not sure. But neither am I sure I care. I have found a certain freedom in madness. Ah, but it is oh so lonely. I do not wish to be alone anymore. Unfortunately, I have fallen into a paradox. As
domana
, I cannot attract a household without
sekasha
, but the
sekasha
no longer trust me. I failed to protect what was mine. What a small mistake led to my downfall, and I did not make it alone. At our first encounter with the oni, despite their displays of friendship, we should have fought. One miscalculation and all was lost. Lost forever."

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"I fell in love," Windwolf stated coldly. "Do not mistake my honest passion for calculated convenience."

Forest Moss made little flicking motions with his hand. "Feh, feh, I will love her. She will, after all, win me what I wish for the most. I tried to show my responsibility and leadership by holding dogs and monkeys, and small birds. Surely keeping safe such fragile packages of life shows some ability to protect? Alas, no elf has offered themselves into my keeping."

"And this mad plan would bring you respect?" Earth Son looked puzzled.

"Beloved Tinker holds two
sekasha
. I'm told that she lacks a full Hand merely due to the limits of time.

Even the renowned Bladebite offered to her. Surely there is another female of the same caliber in this city."

"No," Windwolf growled. "My
domi
is a rare and treasured find."

Forest Moss refused to be distracted from his plan. "Ah, well, I will have to settle for some lesser gem then. Let us be off. There are dragons to kill, and females to impress."

With the elder Stone Clan male strutting off, Earth Son had no choice but to agree to go after the dragon. It made sense now that Forest Moss had tried to use the
aumani
to gain Little Horse. Although young, Little Horse's bloodlines meant young
sekasha
would be willing to look to him as First. There was some sound reasoning to that—as well as this current plan of Forest Moss. Both, however, were equally distasteful.

Hopefully Malice would cut short Forest Moss's plan.

Tinker spent hours in the infirmary, choosing spells out of the Dufae Codex, modifying them to work with the batteries, printing them off, and casting them. She was learning that she wasn't cut out to be a doctor; having to touch strangers so intimately was still unnerving.

Being weightless was at once a joy and a constant reminder that she wasn't on Elfhome. What had happened when she fell into the Ghostlands? Pony had been up on the scaffolding with her. Had he fallen into the deadly cold and died? Or had he fallen through, like her, and was now lost on another world, or out in space? The possibilities terrified her. She wouldn't allow herself to even consider what that might have happened to Windwolf. There was, however, the dreadful knowledge that Windwolf would put himself between Malice and Pittsburgh, and continue until either he or Malice was dead. She had to get back and help Windwolf—somehow.

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The largest drawback to being weightless was that you didn't fall down when you fell asleep. One moment she was drifting in a niche, waiting for some crew to move past, trying to think of a weapon that could kill Malice. The next she was wondering if there was enough black willow left to make lively maple-flavored ice cream. Dragons, Oilcan was telling her over the phone, had a weakness for sweets.

"You're going to have to make it." She became aware that she had made the phone from two tin cans and a long string of red thread strung between them. The thread vibrated as they talked, a blur of red, resonating to their voices. Resonation was the key to everything. "It's really easy to make. Just follow Grandpa's recipe."

She realized then that the ice cream had been what they needed all along—but she had taken the recipe with her. While she considered this, she drifted through the wall of the spaceship. Space, it turned out, was all sticky, sweet black treacle. Here was all the molasses they would want. She could make the ice cream out of this—only how did she get it back to Pittsburgh? Fling it from orbit? No, no, it would all burn up before it hit Pittsburgh.

"
Domi
?"

Tinker looked up. Stormsong was drifting toward her, a flowing angel of hazy gleaming white. The
sekasha
had one hand on the red thread and was following it to Tinker's tin-can phone. "Stormsong, I'm stuck in the treacle."

"No, you aren't." Stormsong held out her hand and Tinker caught hold of it. It felt warm and intangible as a sunbeam. "Remember."

"Remember what?" Tinker cried as Stormsong hazed to a nebulous gleaming form.

"There's no place like home," Stormsong whispered, brilliant now.

Tinker blinked against the brilliance. Stormsong had transformed to a shimmering ghost of Impatience.

She clung to some of his snaky mane.

"
Sssssaaaammmmmmaaananana
." Impatience's voice rumbled against her skin.

A loud gasp made Tinker turn her head. Jin floated a few feet away, gazing at her with amazement. They were back in the infirmary, the wall beside her lumpy and cold and the smell of smoke and blood omnipresent.

Am I still sleeping?
Tinker looked back at Impatience.

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"
Huuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuu
," Impatience rumbled and faded away.

Jin drifted toward her, his eyes still wide as he gazed at her. "Remember what?"

Tinker scrubbed at her face. Was she awake or still asleep? Her right hand felt warmer than her left—like she had held it over a open flame. "There's no place like home."

"That's it?"

Dragons have a weakness for sweets and space is treacle?
"Maybe." Tinker realized that she was awake now—yet somehow Jin had experienced part of her dream. "Did you hear Stormsong?"

"The dragon's name is Stormsong? That doesn't sound like a dragon name."

Was pinching yourself an accurate test to see if you're awake? If it was, then she was awake. "You
saw
the dragon?"

Jin nodded. "And I heard it. It said, 'Remember.'"

"You understood what it said?"

"I'm Providence's child."

"You're what?"

Jin cocked his head in his birdlike inspection of her. "You walk with the dragons but don't know their way?"

"No."

Jin crossed to her side and settled beside her. "Providence is the guardian spirit of the tengu. Each generation a tengu child is born with the mark of Providence upon him." The tengu undid his shirt buttons to expose his chest. Over his heart was a red birthmark that looked like the flowing outline of a dragon.

"We're taught the language of the dragons."

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A whole mysterious part of her life suddenly made sense. "This is what he was looking for."

"The dragon?"

"No, Riki. He kidnapped me and made me strip. He wanted to know if Impatience marked me but he didn't tell me what the mark was for."

"Who is Riki?" Jin asked.

"A tengu—stuck between a rock and a hard place. Apparently he tried to stay out of oni control, but they took his younger cousin, Joey, hostage. It put us on opposite sides, which is too bad, because I think we could have been good friends."

Jin reached out and touched the necklace Keiko had given her. She'd forgotten she was even still wearing it. "Did he give you that?"

"No, his younger cousin Keiko did. She said it would protect me from tengu."

"It will." He tugged it out of her neckline so it laid overtop. "But you've got to keep it out where it can be seen. That way we can tell you're under the protection of the Chosen blood."

"The what?"

"I'm the Chosen one. The spiritual leader of my people. I decide the path for my people and they follow me. Riki and his cousins are all my nieces and nephews. In my absence, my people are turning to them."

"Which made them targets for the oni wanting to control the tengu."

Jin nodded.

Having experienced people turning to her for leadership, Tinker felt sudden sympathy for Riki. "One thing I don't get. These people are astronauts and still buy 'the chosen one' bullshit?"

"When you're born a mythical creature, you tend to have a different mind-set on these things."

"Wait—so—all this colonization—going back to Onihida stupidity was your idea?"

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Jin looked away. For a moment, Tinker thought he wouldn't answer, but he sighed, and said, "We're half bird—we can't breed with humans—not without magic. Yes, a couple hundred of us came to Earth before the elves destroyed the pathway, but it wasn't a big enough gene pool. For generations we've been careful not to interbreed, but we were coming to a dead end. We had to find some way to get back to Onihida and the rest of our tribe. You have no idea what it's like to see genocide bearing down on you."

"If Riki was looking for a chosen one, then that means the tengu don't have a leader."

"It seems like it."

Tinker yawned. "When this is all over, I think I'm going to sleep for a week. Are we going to get gravity back?"

"We did another course correction, but it seems like something is pulling us down toward the planet. It's already pulled all the debris into reentry. We're not spinning up this time to save fuel."

"So—if we don't do anything, eventually the ship will be pulled out of orbit?"

"It seems like it."

Tinker groaned. She didn't want to deal with dreams! "No place like home—that's what Dorothy says to get home. The stupidity was that she had the means to get home the entire time; she just didn't know it. I have no idea how that Glinda bitch gets away with being the 'good' witch. What do I have on me?"

She unloaded her pockets, letting the items float in orbit around her. Although the dress had limited pocket space, she still managed to fit a large amount of stuff into them. Not only did she have her datapad, she also had her camera with the recording of Impatience trying to teach her—something.

"Oh my, these could be my ruby slippers!"

Tracking Malice proved difficult, despite his size. The massive dragon leaped and bounded and shifted through buildings like he was a ghost, leaving a shattered trail. Wolf chafed at the slower speeds that others traveled, but True Flame would not relent, and Wolf had to acknowledge that the older elf had battle experience, whereas he did not.

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The trail led up the Monongahela River valley to beyond the Rim, and then disappeared without a trace.

"There is something wrong here," Wraith whispered to Wolf as his Hand gathered close. "Smell the blood?"

Wolf gazed at the still, boulder-strewn forest around them. There was a slight blurring to the trees, as if a mist hazed the air. He would not have noticed it if the
sekasha
hadn't called his attention to it. Pulling out a survey map for the area, he confirmed his suspicions.

"I think this might be an oni encampment, covered by an illusion."

The sekasha pulled their
ejae
, readying themselves for a possible ambush.

Forest Moss did a ground scry, took a few steps, and repeated it several times until he stopped beside an ironwood sapling. "Wolf Who Rules, break this tree."

Wolf aimed a force strike at the sapling and unleashed it.

The sapling vanished when the leading edge of his blow struck it. A tall square stone, inscribed with spells, replaced the sapling for a heartbeat before disintegrating into rubble. An oni camp sprang into being around them. The boulders changed into rough cabins. Mossy logs became well-gnawed humanoid carcasses. Blood soaked the ground and everywhere were dragon tracks.

"All the magic flowed toward the sapling." Forest Moss nudged the remains of the crude oni spell stone.

The
sekasha
moved out to search the cabins.

"Malice has wallowed in magic and feasted on oni." True Flame used his sword tip to point out that the skulls were horned. "Maybe it slipped its bonds, like the little one did."

"There were no spell markings on Malice." Wolf wondered too the significance of the dragon's name.

Tinker had called Impatience "hyper." If the dragon's names reflected a personality, perhaps one named Malice needed no prodding to wreak havoc.

"I am not sure what the other beast is, but there is no mistake here, this is an oni dragon." True Flame pointed out a four-toed print in the dirt. "The little beast has five claws like the hand of an elf."

Red Knife reported for the
sekasha
, saying that the cabins were empty of oni and any evidence of what
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they planned. "There were, though, a hundred oni here only hours ago."