Five Odd Honors (28 page)

If I did not wish to be guilty of overconfidence, I might even pity our opponents.

Then Loyal Wind looked at where Pearl sat pale and wan enfolded in the hold of her bulky chair and revised his opinion.

No. Never pity. Those who hunt tigers must expect to be bitten. Our enemies will be awaiting our return.

Brenda called Pearl daily after Albert’s report of Pearl’s “accident.” She was reassured that other than massive ch’i depletion and a few minor cuts, Pearl was doing well. Pearl also told Brenda that the scouts had returned from their “camping trip” and had made some adjustments to their gear before returning to the Lands.

Brenda wanted to know more, but knew that Pearl would not say more over the phone. Gaheris Morris was even less help, but he did add that the scouts had been in San Jose for a couple of days before they had departed once again for the Lands.

He also made it very clear—in the nicest way possible—that what the scouts or the Orphans were doing was no longer any of Brenda’s business.

“Study hard, Breni. Figure out what you want to major in. You’ve done your part and more.”

So Brenda tried to distract herself, hanging out with Shannon (with and without the increasingly omnipresent Dermott), meeting up with other friends, buying textbooks, going to her first few classes. Even a few days gave her the distinct feeling that sophomore year, with its pressure to settle on a major, was going to be different from freshman year.

Then there was Parnell. The Irish transfer student had soothed Dermott’s bruised ego sufficiently that the two had become buddies. They would often arrive at Brenda and Shannon’s room together. Since there always seemed to be a point where Shannon (or Dermott) would “suddenly” remember an appointment or something that had been forgotten or simply get lost in the sort of private gooey talk that makes everyone but the participants nauseated, Brenda found herself more and more often in Parnell’s company.

Not all that much time had passed since their initial meeting, but Brenda was beginning to feel Parnell had potential to be a real friend. She wondered if he might want to be a bit more.

Parnell claimed to have kissed the Blarney stone—repeatedly—and the way he said this gave the impression that the stone in question had been quite enthusiastic about their osculatory interludes. Despite his gift of gab, Parnell was very good at encouraging thoughtful conversation, above and beyond the jokes and quips most guys his age thought passed for wit.

It didn’t hurt that Parnell was handsome, with his dark honey surfer boy locks and brilliant green eyes, nor that Flying Claw had been “home” and apparently hadn’t bothered to leave her a message.

Surely Flying Claw has figured out how to use a cell phone by now. Surely he could have found time to call if he was in San Jose for several days. I wonder if Honey Dream is working on him again. Of course she is! I wonder if he minds.
. . .

It didn’t hurt that, when Brenda was in Parnell’s company, Brenda found herself on the receiving end of some more or less covertly envious glances.

Most of all, it didn’t hurt that wherever Parnell had been brought up, dating was still practiced. Dermott hung around Shannon looking hopeful and possessive—and his behavior was a huge step up from the majority of guys who seemed glad to take advantage of those times when a girl was in the vicinity, but who didn’t make much effort to maintain a relationship.

Parnell, by contrast, could be positively courtly. He had the gift for opening doors without making the action seem like he thought Brenda was too stupid to figure out a door latch. He’d treat her to coffee or lunch—and was gracious when she returned the favor. He even brought her flowers once. Wild flowers, true, picked from a landscaped median strip, but the first time any guy had brought her flowers.

Well, other than those funky corsages guys’ mothers make them get for prom,
Brenda thought.

This early in the term, homework wasn’t exactly exhausting. Midterms were comfortably far away, and other than for her German and English Lit classes, Brenda had very little in the way of daily assignments. There was plenty of time for long walks in the evening, when the humid heat seemed comfortable by contrast to the day. The USC Columbia campus had grown large and rambling in its more than two hundred years of existence, always offering another turn, another side street between mostly quiet buildings.

Brenda and Parnell were walking along a tree-lined concourse when Parnell suddenly cut off in the middle of an amusing anecdote he’d been telling about three bottles of beer, five guys, and a set of parallel bars.

“Very well,” he said softly, and Brenda wondered if he was even talking to her. “We are alone.”

Parnell turned to her, his green eyes serious and seeming somehow several shades darker. “Look, Brenda. I wasn’t supposed to need to get into this so quickly, but Pearl’s being attacked has changed matters.”

“Getting sick,” Brenda corrected, but her words were a fencer’s sword, raised to block and parry. “Having a heart attack.”

“Getting attacked,” Parnell said. He paused, his usual glibness completely vanished.

Brenda felt her blood run hot and cold, her pulse quicken, and her breath come shallow. She had remembered Parnell’s resemblance to the handsome squire in her dream—the dream that had been interrupted by Loyal Wind’s contacting her with the news about Thundering Heaven and Bent Bamboo.

However, there had been no way—especially not within the rules and regulations Pearl and Des had explained bound not only the Orphans but the indigenous magical traditions as well—to raise the point. She simply could not say, “Hey, did I dream about you one night? You were dressed like a squire from a book of Arthurian legends.”

At best, that would have sounded flirtatious. At worst, really, really dumb.

“Attacked,” Parnell repeated for the third time. “By a spirit—a hsien—with a specif c affinity for metal.”

Brenda blinked, but didn’t admit to anything. Pearl and Albert had, between them, managed to—if cryptically—get across at least that much. She’d needed to go look up what element was associated with the Monkey and the Rooster, but at least what Pearl and Albert had said would have come across to an eavesdropper as nothing more than Chinese astrology.

I’ll listen. I won’t volunteer anything, but I’ll listen.

Parnell steered Brenda to a comfortable seat next to a spreading oak. The trunk was wide enough that they could both lean back against it, intimate, but not unduly cozy.

Parnell glanced at Brenda, then decided that her silence could be taken as a reply.

“Brenda, before you end up the next target, there is information you should know.”

Brenda made a noncommittal sound that might be taken as “Go on.”

“Last month, you had several conversations with a woman who—for sake of convenience—I’m going to call Leaf.”

He glanced at Brenda, then continued. “Leaf is a relative of mine. She had a feeling that your father was going to try and keep you from getting much more involved in the Orphans’ business. Gaheris is probably right to do so. They’re involved in some dangerous matters.”

“Orphans. Leaf.” Brenda heard herself talking even though she’d resolved to stay quiet. “You know?”

“A bit. Enough. Enough to know that you never told the Orphans about your dreams about Leaf. You passed on her warnings, but you never said where they came from.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s not like Leaf was telling me to ask them to do anything other than what they wanted to do anyhow,” Brenda said. “They—we—really didn’t need a distraction.”

“Fine reasoning,” Parnell said approvingly. “Anyhow, what you did for us—for Leaf and all—put a stopper in the business, but it’s not over, as you well know. Leaf decided that we owed you a bit of protection, since you wouldn’t be living in Pearl’s warded domain. I’m that protection.”

“You?”

Brenda remembered some of the things Leaf had told her about herself. Her traitor tongue spoke ahead of her resolve.

“Are you sidhe folk?” Spending time with Shannon had made fresh all the Irish myths and legends they both loved. “A member of the Tuatha de Dannan, like that?”

“Sidhe, sure,” Parnell said.

A little whisper in Brenda’s brain, memory of a joke she and Shannon had come up with last year around exam time, when they’d sat up way too late.

Tuatha de Dannon, the yogurt fairies, cousins to the Keebler elves.

Brenda swallowed a hysterical giggle. She’d gotten used to the Chinese stuff , learned to take it almost for granted. She hadn’t had much choice, not with Albert Yu getting brain-raped right before Brenda was supposed to meet him. She’d believed all that stuff Auntie Pearl and her dad told her because it made more sense than not believing.

But Brenda’s encounters with Leaf had been dreamlike, and here was the boy of her dreams—quite literally—sprawling on the ground next to her, telling her that he was an elf.

“Sidhe,” Parnell went on, considering, maybe wondering about the weird little smirk that Brenda knew was twisting her lips, even though she was trying her best not to giggle. “But not really Tuatha de Dannan. Look, before I get into other matters, I’d better clarify what we are.”

“Okay,” Brenda managed, letting out the swallowed laughter on the exhalation. “Go ahead.”

“When I say we’re sidhe, we’re not talking all those noble, elfy-welfy Tuatha de Dannan types with their lineages going back to dubious Spaniards and all those interminable battles over cows. Those tales are the result of the later residents trying to supply themselves with retroactive history.”

Brenda nodded. “Like those stories that talk about ‘real’ Irish being descended from Milesius of Spain after he beat all the Formor. Stuff for people who don’t want to believe that they’re descended from savages who painted themselves blue, or worse, from the savages who came in and wiped the blue people out.”

“Right,” Parnell said. “You understand pretty well.”

“Hey,” Brenda said, “I grew up believing I was of mixed German and Irish descent, more Irish than German, but both. You aren’t going to find another pair of cultures as fond of creating mythic histories to make them feel better about their ancestry.”

“I’m not going to let you distract me,” Parnell said with one of those winning grins. “We can debate that later. I’m going to tell you about my own ancestry.”

“Go on.”

“Like I said, forget the noble elves with their high brows, pointy ears, and fondness for elevated music and poetry. We’re talking the underbelly stuff , the Little People who weren’t always so little. We’re talking the breath and pulse of islands.”

“Islands?”

“The United Kingdom: En gland, Scotland, Wales, and, of course, Ireland. Biggish islands dotted around with some really dinky islands, the whole brimming to the eyebrows with myth, legend, folklore, poetry.

“Islands are weird places, Brenda. Land that belongs more to water than to earth. Ever wonder why the old stories held on so hard there? Why Saint Patrick could banish the snakes but not the bogles? One word for you, chicky: islands. And islands are in you, girl. The blood of islands.”

Brenda listened, mesmerized, hypnotized, but she forced herself to protest.

“But Grandma Elaine, she’s the one who told me all the old legends. This underbelly stuff isn’t what she loved. She loved just what you’re sneering at, all the pretty stories: King Arthur, Finn, Deidre of the Sorrows, heck, even Robin Hood. Are you saying those aren’t part of the blood of islands, too?”

“They are. Those who know that the monsters are real, can you blame them for dreaming of all the rest?”

Very softly, Brenda replied, “No.”

“Even in the pretty stories,” Parnell went on, “there are hints of older lore. Gawain playing the beheading game with a knight who keeps growing back his head. Cuchulain’s battle transformation from a normal human into something pretty horrible. The Formor, who even the Irish can’t seem to decide are monsters or are just somewhat irritating kin of the prettier folk.

“But I’m not here to tell you stories you already know, Brenda Morris. What I want to do is to prepare you for the idea that those stories are real—as real as you are. You spoke of your grandma Elaine, but remember, you inherited from your mother’s side as well.”

“Oh,” Brenda paused, thinking this over. She’d grown so accustomed these last few months to thinking of herself as Gaheris’s heir that she’d almost forgotten what came from her mother’s side. “Parnell, why is it suddenly so important that I know this now?”