Wen Spencer - Tinker

Her boots in hand, she stepped over the channel and went out into the plaza for a closer look. Attracted by her movement, elf shines drifted to her in order to light the way. Without scale, she had mistaken the size of the monoliths, thinking they were only nine or ten feet tall. As she hiked across the wide flat plaza, they loomed taller and taller as she neared them, until they towered nearly twenty feet above her. The monoliths were made of polished granite, with spells permanently inlaid in their surfaces. She peered at the elaborate arcane design as the shines floated around her, reflected in the polished stone.

The spells inscribed into the rock were unlike anything she had worked with before, so much so she couldn't even guess their function. She found a jumper point sunk deep into the stone and realized that the monoliths were layers of inlaid slabs, in essence huge macro chips. They could trigger complex spells fueled by the massive amount of magic represented by the ley line—but to do what? And why hadn't Sparrow wanted her to know about them?

Someone was walking toward her, footsteps loud on stone. She turned to find Windwolf coming across the plaza, still in the matching bronze. As usual, all her emotions went tumbling so she wasn't sure what she really felt. Relief. Desire. Anger.

"Tink."

And she remembered him kissing her neck, whispering, "Trust me, my little savage Tink."

With a snarl, she flung her boots at his head, and immediately regretted it. What if she actually hit him in the face? She didn't want to hurt him—well, yes, she did—but not that bad.

Windwolf flinched his head aside so her boots sailed past him, not even ruffling his hair. "Is something wrong?"

"Yes! Look at me!"

"You look beautiful."

"Why did you do this to me?"

"I did not want you to die. You did not want to die."

"I thought you meant I was sick! I thought you were going to heal me of something." She pointed to one of her now-pointed ears. "You didn't tell me that you were going to make me an elf!"

"I thought you understood." He slipped his hand through her hair to run his fingertips over her ear point. "At least as far as you could."

His touch sent electric sparks all through her body. She wanted him, wanted him so badly it terrified her. She pulled away, trembling with more than desire. "Play fair. I'm not stupid, you know; I would have understood."

"It will take you a human's lifetime, and perhaps more, to understand what it is to be an elf. Can a wildflower tucked in the roots of an ironwood understand what it is like to tower over everything, face to the bare sky? Can the wildflower understand facing winter instead of going dormant underground? Can it imagine surviving lightning strikes and forest fires?"

She punched him in the shoulder, hard enough to knock him back. "Oh, don't go metaphysical on me. 'Do you want to be an elf? That's all you had to ask so that I knew what decision I was really making. I feel like you tricked me. I feel like you betrayed my trust!"

"I am sorry that you feel like I tricked you," he said in a low, sincere voice. "The timing was important, and I rushed things to meet the window of opportunity. I thought you understood as much as possible and consented fully. I would never betray you."

Much as she didn't want to, she believed him. Without malice or arrogance on his part, it seemed pointless to argue blame. She had, after all, given her consent, stupid as it was in hindsight.

"Can you change me back?"

"Is it so bad that to die a human is better?"

"Not to die human, to live a human."

"Is being an elf so bad?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. I don't like having someone follow me around." She didn't name Pony, feeling like she'd be betraying him. "And I don't like strangers showing up with swords and demanding that I drop everything to come with them. I don't like wearing these stupid clothes, and being looked at as if I'm some rude, ignorant thing. And I hate that saying even this makes me sound whiny."

"Ah."

He stood silent and still as she stalked away to retrieve her footwear. Tinker was too angry to be motionless, too civilized to scream like she desperately wanted to. After throwing her boots at him, she was too shamed to shout without provocation. If he had said something, anything, to let her vent, she would have happily latched on to it. He remained quiet as she pulled her boots back on; if he could wear his boots, she wasn't going to stand around in stocking feet.

"Tinker, I am sorry," he said finally. "I did not want to make you miserable."

"Well, you succeeded in doing just that."

He opened his arms, offering comfort without asking her forgiveness. She glared at him but her anger had run out, and all that remained was lonely hurt. She leaned against him, letting him wrap his arms around her and kiss her temple.

They stood unmoving and silent for several minutes until all the hurt was soothed away and curiosity took over.

"What are these monoliths?"

"They are the Wind Clan Spell Stones," Windwolf said. "It is from these that the Wind Clan domana derive their power."

"What do they do?"

"In the same manner that magic can allow travel through worlds, it can allow power to cross worlds."

"I don't understand."

"One calls for power, and it comes."

She shook her head, still not understanding.

"I will show you."

Windwolf stepped away from her, and held out his right hand, thumb and index finger rigid, middle fingers cocked oddly. "Daaaaaaaaae."

Tinker felt the tremor in the air around Windwolf, like a pulse of a bass amplifier, first against a sense she hadn't been aware of before, and then against her skin. She realized that she had felt the magic triggering. Windwolf's hand apparently was taking the place of a written spell, and his voice starting the resonance that would focus the magic into the pattern set up by the spell. Once triggered, the spell would continue until canceled or all magic was sucked out of the area.

Even as she realized that, the spell stones reacted. With the same "magic sense" she felt the sudden vast structure around them come alive. The invisible sluggish current that she had noticed before began to move faster, surging toward the standing giants. When it reached the monoliths, the violet gleam of magic crawled up the spell tracings. So close to the end of the visible spectrum, the effect was at first barely noticeable, and slowly grew to unmistakable. As she stared, the air around the monoliths started to distort, not from heat or light, but some other potential that echoed back on her "magic sense."

Allow travel through worlds… allow power to cross worlds.

He was talking about the quantum effects on a hyperphase level. Windwolf had the ability to jump magic from this point to his location. Judging by what she just felt, Windwolf would preform a trigger and it would bridge the gap between him and the spell stones, allowing the power to jump back, along the quantum level resonance.

Triggered and waiting, the massive power pressed invisibly against her.

Windwolf gestured and intoned another guttural vowel, and the power slowly collapsed. He indicated that she should be silent and still and, afraid that she might trigger something, she held motionless.

"You will be taught how to use these." Windwolf broke the silence when he deemed it safe to speak again.

Tinker let out the "oh wow" she'd been holding in. "I had no idea that elves could control magic like this! I've never seen anyone do anything like that in Pittsburgh."

"Only domana can summon magic. Only Wind Clan domana can call on these stones."

Somehow the monoliths were keyed to a specific genome, so the domana of one clan alone could set up the correct resonance to match the stones.