Chapter 29

(Author's note: What? Two chapters in one day?? Yeah. I'm trying really hard to make up for, at least a little, my long absence. At least before real life work creeps back in again to keep me from writing.)

My head was spinning, even as Milo and Tallana ushered me down to the kitchen. I don’t think Biv really shared my misgivings about the message on Puck’s computer, from the looks he kept shooting me over the table, but he didn’t say anything. I think I loved him a little for it. If I was wrong, I was the biggest idiot ever. If I was right, pretty much everything I’d ever thought about human nature applied to Puck and whoever his people were, too. It was a horrifying thought.

Milo was blissfully unaware of it, though. Once Tallana begged off babysitting duty…and I knew that was what it was, I wasn’t stupid….on the grounds of having to go back to work, he cheerfully volunteered to make us something to eat. Mind you, I wasn’t hungry at all, but when someone eight feet tall demands that you sit down and eat something, it probably isn’t wise to argue. So I found myself at the table with Biv, while Milo nattered away at us and made us grilled turkey sandwiches…apparently there is no such thing as a cold sandwich in his world…..and soup that I didn’t quite have the nerve to ask what it contained. He fended off Biv’s insistence on helping, which left Biv disappointed, but the food was very good. Better than I’d expected. I knew Biv could cook, but I guess it only stood to reason that Milo could as well; after all, why open a restaurant/bar if you couldn’t cook worth a damn, right?

Long after the food was gone, we were still sitting there. Biv left frequently (almost every hour on the hour, I watched the clock) to check on Kiasis, but he always returned, looking satisfied that she was alright. I decided to finally stop obsessing over the meaning of the message I’d seen and at least try to show some manners by actually talking back to Milo, for a change. I was pretty sure his voice had to be getting a little hoarse by now, although with its natural raspiness, I never would have been able to prove it.

“So…” I ventured, a little hesitantly. “You’re….from the same place as Puck, right?”

Milo snorted a bit in response. “If you mean Earth, yes. If you ask my age, though, I’ll just lie about it.” He grinned, and I was a little unnerved to realize that his beak actually contained two neat rows of razor sharp teeth. “Let’s just say I’m a few years his elder, and leave it at that.”

“Did your people migrate to Faerie too, then?”

“Who, us? No, child. Never. You won’t see more than one or two gryphons on Faerie at all, if even that.” He paused, a metal mixing bowl in his hand, to stare thoughtfully at the ceiling. “You know, I used to know exactly how many of us did join the migration….five, six maybe? But I’m just not sure anymore. Most of us stayed with the humans.”

I frowned a little. “So…..you’re the last of your kind, then?” Because I was pretty sure I’d have heard of a race of gigantic bird-lion-dragon people at some point during my life.

“Whatever makes you say that…?” He looked genuinely perplexed for a moment. “No, I don’t know how many of us are left, but there’s a good deal more than just me. I haven’t had contact with any of them in….oh, wow. Must be close to fifty years, by now. But they’re still around. You wouldn’t think it to look at us, but we’re very good at blending in.” He shot me a wink, the little crest of feathers on his head twitching a little. “We’re around.”

I couldn’t help but look a little disbelieving at that, but I didn’t comment. “Why didn’t you go? I mean….from the way Puck talked, the humans treated you all….pretty badly.” I propped my chin on my hand, still frowning. I was still trying to grasp that yes, there were eight foot tall bird-lion-dragon people wandering around, apparently invisible, in our midst. “Why stick around…?”

He snorted again at that, pulling the eggs out of the refrigerator. “Look at me. Frankly, my folks fared a lot better than most of the other races did. Humans were scared to come near us. We had a mission, and we were determined to stick to it.” He grinned again at my questioning look, and again, I had to struggle not to flinch. It was more than a little creepy. “We’re the guardians of Mother Earth. We couldn’t just up and leave her. Hell, if not for our kind, the humans probably would have used her all up a good two or three centuries ago.”

“You….protect the Earth. …..From way out here.” Yeah, that seemed plausible. It was only a few parsecs away. Right.

“Well…….sure. Close enough.” He grinned again, as if I’d gotten it all wrong but he wasn’t about to correct me. “You know, Puck’s mellowed a bit since I knew him last. I’m almost gonna be sad to see him go, this time.”

“You knew Puck before, then?”

“Oh, sure. I remember him and your grandfather both quite well. I served as Oberon’s Captain of the Guard for something like….three or four centuries, up until a century or so before the migration.”

“What happened?” Surreal as the experience was, I enjoyed hearing Milo talk.

“Ah, well…once the wedding was all over and done with, Oberon and Titania merged their armies. I stuck around for a good while after that, mind you, but having Karu as my second in command was just a bit…..uncomfortable.” He shrugged one furry shoulder, and I could see the crest of feathers on his head was standing on end a bit. “I got along with the lad well enough, mind you, but still….that brother of his….” He shuddered, an impressive sight on someone as massive….and as fuzzy….as he was. “Anyway, I figured I was due for a nice retirement, after the service I’d put in. So Oberon let me go with his blessing. I puttered around for a bit…even worked as a mercenary for a while, but eventually I decided I’d just had enough of killing things for my paycheck, and I opened the inn. This very one, actually. Had it imported from Earth, stone by stone, and put ‘er all back together again.”

“Wow…!” I looked around at the tall ceilings and intricate woodwork that surrounded us, even there in the kitchen. “That must’ve been—“

“One hell of a project, yes. Took me about three years to get everything just the way it was, and then I added on a bit….even imported the rocks from the same quarry the originals came from.” He chuckled a bit, not bothering with a measuring cup as he dumped flour and sugar into the mixing bowl. “I’m at an age where I just don’t handle change all that well, I’m afraid. Didn’t take Puck too long to track me down, once he got here, either. I guess some crazy old coot importing an entire building all the way from Earth tends to stand out in peoples’ memories.”

The rest of the afternoon passed by much in the same vein. Milo had had an interesting life, to say the very least; every story he told us led into another one, and another. I wasn’t too sure how long Biv had lived there, but every once in a while Milo would tell us something that would even surprise him. Pretty soon, I’d forgotten all about Puck’s computer, and his appointment, and the entire day had passed by, filled with surprisingly pleasant conversation and very good chocolate chip cookies. Whatever Puck was up to upstairs, I figured it must have been working out well, because none of us heard a peep from him at all….not until Milo declared it time to start on dinner and the clock was striking five o’clock, Earth time.

Milo had been in the middle of a fascinating story about Leonardo DaVinci that he made me promise never to repeat when Puck finally came bounding down the stairs, a light jacket in his hands.

“Sorry, guys, I won’t be home for dinner. Got an appointment I almost forgot about! I’ll grab something when I get back.” He paused by my chair to give me a peck on the forehead. “Princess, no more sneaking off to rescue strange men. ….oh, and save me some cookies!”

He was there and gone in such a whirlwind that Biv and I were left there just sort of staring at each other.

“Biv,” I said slowly. “Do you know where the park is…?”

“Well…yes…” He seemed a little hesitant to admit to the fact. “But—“

“Great! C’mon!” I all but dragged the poor guy from his chair, herding him towards the door.

Milo turned towards us with a frown, but before he could protest, we were out the door. It was almost half a block before I realized we were running…or at least, I was running and dragging Biv along behind me, and he was already gasping for breath and turning a concerning shade of red. I slowed down to a walk, frowning. “Not a big runner, huh?”

“Can’t……as….asthma.” Came the wheezing reply. Fumbling around in his pocket for a few seconds, he finally pulled out a little white contraption and squeezed it into his mouth, breathing in deeply, but he still seemed pretty out of breath as he spoke. “Sorry…!”

I stopped, waiting for him to catch his breath. Sure, I felt bad for him, but I had no idea where the park was without him. “It’s okay. I don’t think Milo’s following us anyway. Is it far from here to the park? I mean, it’s just a little after five now. If it’s close, we can afford to sit down for a minute.”

Biv shook his head. “Just over the hill. We can keep going, though.” He still sounded a little winded, but he wasn’t on the verge of gasping for air anymore, at least, so when he started walking again I didn’t protest. “You don’t really think Puck’s going to meet up with…him, do you?”

I just shrugged. “I hope not. But we won’t know until we see who he is meeting.”

“Couldn’t you just….trust him…?” Biv looked up at me…it felt weird to have someone have to look up at me….hopefully. “It’s probably just one of his lady friends, anyway. There are a few of them…Katherine, Katrina…..um…..K…Kandie, I think….”

“No.” I said flatly, not even waiting for him to finish. “I can’t. If he’s not doing anything wrong, he doesn’t have anything to hide.”

We were at the crest of the hill, now. I could see the park ahead. It was as dingy and crowded as the rest of the world that I’d seen so far, and coming from someone who grew up on a mining colony, that was saying something. Biv wrung his hand once, nervously, and I thought there might have been a faint tremor in his voice. “You know…..sometimes, Puck’s concept of wrong…..it can be a little……flexible.”

“Yeah,” I said sourly. “Isn’t everybody’s.” I could see that one side of the park had been sectioned off into what looked like a street fair, or something. It was packed with people so tightly that it looked like one big, shifting mass in places. The other side was more sparsely populated, with a few kids of varying sizes playing on dilapidated equipment that even I didn’t think looked safe…..except that they seemed to be playing with it less than they were throwing the junk at it that littered the ground……and what seemed to be one adult making at least a pretense of watching them. Whatever was going on on that side, it did not include Puck.

“Okay,” I decided, shrugging my shoulders. “I guess he must be on that side, if he’s anywhere. It shouldn’t be too hard to find him.”

Fifteen minutes later, I was ready to concede defeat. We could barely walk in the crowd, much less look for anyone…..or at least, I couldn’t. Biv seemed to be making his way through the thick bustle of people with practiced ease, forcing me to hold his hand just to keep from being torn away from him. Finally, I tugged him to a halt. “Shit, Biv, we might as well give up! We’re never going to find him in this….this mess!”

He just shot me a faint smile, tugging at my hand and speaking louder than I would’ve thought he was capable to be heard over the noise, the sound cutting through the myriad voices, strains of music, and what I assumed to be the sizzling of the unidentifiable meat that I could smell cooking somewhere. “Don’t give up yet…!”

Being from a colony, I thought I was used to crowded conditions, but I felt like a child as I hurried a little to keep up with Biv. When he finally came to a halt in front of a food cart, I frowned. I might’ve spoken, but the smoke and the steam and the burning meat smell nearly choked off my air supply.

Biv didn’t seem bothered by it at all. He reached up and tapped on the cart’s plastic window to get the attention of the broad figure inside. The window was opened by a thick hand, and Biv stretched up to his tiptoes a bit to be heard. “Hi Sam! Have you seen Puck anywhere around…?”

I would’ve been hard pressed to say whether Sam was male or female….the possession of both a five o’clock shadow and two pendulous breasts was throwing me for a loop…..but whatever the gender, s/he nodded, answering back in a raspy voice. “Just passed by here a little while ago. Said he was gonna go grab a drink at the beer tent, just up the aisle.”

“Thanks!” Biv shot me a triumphant grin as he tugged me along again. I could’ve kissed him at that very moment, if I weren’t too busy trying not to fall behind.

Finally the crowd thinned enough for us to at least walk side by side, and to be heard without screaming at each other. But as soon as I fell into step beside him, he disappeared from my line of view as he just…..stopped walking. “Holly…!”

I followed the line of his arm to his pointing finger, all the way to the figure ahead…..too far ahead, I hoped, to get a good look at us, through all the other people around.

The thick cloak he wore did little to hide the way he moved, far too graceful to be human and too precisely to be anything but a trained soldier. It would’ve given him away even without the telltale wisps of white hair that peeked out from beneath the cloak’s hood as he looked around, obviously looking for someone in particular.

For once, I was positive it wasn’t me. I guess I was right about what the K had stood for after all.