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Chapter 11: Birdsong by Night
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Birdsong was in the shower, they'd been on the road all day, and Moira was bored. Bored, bored, bored. Any other night, she might have wandered down to the motel pool and done some laps in her skivvies. But a) she'd had a look at the "pool" on the way in and she was pretty sure there was shit growing in there, b) it was too cold to swim outside anyway, and c) Professor Birdsong had made her swear that she wouldn't leave the room. He looked like a dude who took swears seriously, too.
Moira'd already chipped the remaining nail polish from her toenails, flipped through all the channels on the bolted-to-the-armoire tv, tried unsuccessfully to pick the lock on the minibar, and raided the tiny closet for an extra blanket and a towel to dry her damp hair. Birdsong had given her first crack at the shower, and it had felt divine.
Now, though, Moira was out of things to do. With a sigh, she rolled over and stared vacantly at her purse on the nightstand. It was her sole remaining possession, if one discounted the ruined party dress currently stashed behind the seat of Birdsong's stolen pickup and the itchy WalMart-wear she currently sported. God, it was a good thing no one she knew was likely to see her here in the boonies of ... Alabama was it? She couldn't remember the last state line sign they'd passed. That was probably a good thing, too.
Her eyes glazed over, and her mind drifted. In fact, she was so out of it that when her little black handbag started to move across the nightstand all by itself, Moira didn't even bat an eyelash. Goody, she mused, either her purse was spontaneously levitating or she was hallucinating. Either way, she was probably fucked. Again.
So, bowing to the twisted whim of fate, Moira decided to let the purse continue its little trek. Maybe it was a sign. Yeah. Sign say, Wake up Moira: This is all just a sick dream brought on by equally sick fantasies of Professor Birdsong in the shower. Wet. Nekkid. With no available towels.
"Shut up, Brain," she mouthed. But Brain paid no heed. After all, there was nothing wrong with fantasy. Every girl needed a good fantasy now and then. Like, say, the fantasy that she was happily toasted and back in her room at the co-op, and no hell-spawn creatures wanted to kill her, and her parents were safe at home someplace, and Nic had a normal non-elf girlfriend, and Greg had fashion sense and wasn't so bleepin geeky, and ...
Unfortunately, Moira's detailed discussion with her inner id was cut short when the purse reached the table edge, teetered dramatically, and fell with a plerp onto the thin motel carpet. The impact unlatched the main compartment, spilling the contents all over the floor. Moira just looked at the mess for a second. But then she forced herself to give a shit, rolled over to her stomach, hung her head and half of her body over the side of the bed, and began cleaning up.
A blinking red light made her pause, and it took her all of about five seconds to put two and two together. Red light. Phone. Duh. The purse hadn't been getting all telekinetic after all. It was the phone. She'd switched the ringer over to vibrate when she'd gone in to the Red Room a lifetime or so ago, because hearing a ringer over club speakers just wasn't gonna happen. And just now, someone must've called her, making the phone vibrate its little self right off the nightstand.
Big whew. Moira figured that she could use a few more non-supernatural, non-black-helicopter events in her life. She reached for the phone and thumbed to the incoming call log. The most recent number was unfamiliar, but Moira pressed Call and flipped over onto her back, staring at the ceiling.
After three rings, someone on the other end picked up.
"Hello?" Male voice, vaguely familiar.
"Hey. This is Moira. You just called me," she said.
"Moira!" He said her name like it was a holy word, and her toes tingled a little. She knew right away who this was. "Are you all right?"
She smiled at the ceiling.
"Yeah, I'm good. We went to WalMart today so I could finally get out of that gawd-awful dress. I'm wearing corduroy, if you can believe it. It itches something hideous. Oh, and Birdsong lifted a car in Memphis. With a Swiss army knife and my student ID card. Did you know he could do that shit? Color me impressed." She chattered on for a minute, knowing Greg wouldn't have much to say. He rarely spoke anyway, but she could hear him breathing on the other end, and that was enough.
"So, who'd you end up with anyway?" she asked finally. Back at the plane, Greg had argued to stay with Moira when the group split up. There had been other arguments, too, the nastiest of which had been between Birdsong and Minou. It'd been in that weird th-sounding language, which had frustrated the hoohah out of Moira. In the end, Birdsong had grabbed Moira's arm and yanked her along the tarmac. She had no idea who else had teamed up, or if everyone else had stayed together.
"I'm with Nic," Greg told her now. "That's how I got your mobile number." Moira could tell that Greg was still on edge, but she was comforted by the knowledge he was with Nic. She remembered Greg's fierce look back in New Orleans, and the way he held her hand on the plane. He just knew how to make other people feel safe, she decided. And she believed he knew a thing or two about keeping them that way, too.
"What about the others?" Moira asked.
"I have no idea." She could almost feel Greg's shrug on the other side. "I don't know how to contact them, and I'm not even sure it's safe to do so. Birdsong would probably filet me if he knew I'd called you."
"Consider it our little secret," Moira said. "I think he's way overreacting anyway. Nothing has happened since we left Memphis. I mean, nothing dangerous or supernatural or vile. Oh wait, no: He did sing a lot of songs in the car." She wondered if Greg could sense the eye-rolling she was doing now.
"We haven't had any dangerous encounters either," Greg said solemnly, obviously not picking up on her weak attempt at humor. "I think we're okay for now. We're keeping a low profile."
"You mean you're in disguise?" Moira queried, pitching her voice in dramatic masterpiece-theatre style.
"Yeah. Sort of," Greg hedged. She could tell he didn't want to give details, so her own sick mind filled in the blanks. Greg in drag. Nic dressed up as a lumberjack. Moira almost cracked herself up.
The phone connection fitzed, and Moira heard the sound of a distant electronic bell.
"Where're you at?" she asked.
"Bus station. We're Greyhounding down to Miami. From there, who knows. I have a few friends in the Caribbean, so maybe we can get there. What about you guys? I guess you drove out of Memphis..." Greg let his voice trail off.
"We're someplace in the Deep South still," Moira told him. "Alabama maybe, or Tennessee. I get all those southern states mixed up. Clerk at the WalMart even called me 'ma'am' if you can believe that shit. But anyway, some place with lots of fields, and ...cows."
Greg laughed, and the weight of doom lifted for a moment.
"Yeah, you strike me as a girl who's used to city life," he chuckled, but then sobered a little. "This has to be hard on you..."
Moira heard the shower stop, and she pressed the phone closer to her face.
"Shit, I think Birdsong's done with his shower. Gotta go; take care, and give Nic a hug for me," she whispered into the mouthpiece.
"Shower?" Greg seemed unhappy with the thought, which made Moira grin again. "Well, er, okay. Please be safe, Moira," he urged.
"Yeah. You too." She pressed End before she was tempted to say anything else. Reaching a hand over the edge of the bed, she dropped the phone onto the pile of purse entrails and stared up at the ceiling. Even when she heard the little bathroom door open and knew Birdsong was right there, probably nekkid, she forced herself not to turn and sneak a peek. Oh, the self-control. Really, Moira was very proud of herself.
"You're still here," Birdsong observed. "Good girl." Moira hoped he was teasing, but she sort of suspected he wasn't. She knew he was worried, but he'd been ordering her around all day. It was getting on her nerves. She heard him open the little closet and poke around in their meager wardrobe.
"Good girl? If I beg, do I get a biscuit?" she returned, lacing her voice with sarcasm.
She saw movement, just a flash really, and by the time she focused, he was already tightening the white string on his sweatpants. Shitfuckgoddamn. Self-control, after all, was vastly overrated.
"Depends," Birdsong said easily, and she was positive he was reading her thoughts right now. "Are you hungry?"
Moira's mouth went dry. Had Dr. Birdsong, possibly the most gorgeous creature on the planet, just said something pervy? No, no, she must be misinterpreting.
"Bet yer boots I am," she said.
#
Nearly 400 miles, eight pizzas, two hotel rooms, and thirteen gas stops later, Birdsong turned their stolen truck off the main highway and took a bumpy winding pseudo-road straight into the mountains.
Moira had never been this far away from civilization, but now she was so deep in hickville that even the cows were scarce. When night fell, she rolled the window down (manually: Birdsong hadn't been thoughtful enough to lift a truck with power windows) and hung her head out. She had taken six hours of astronomy in college and now tried to remember her Drake equation variable for sun-like stars in the universe. This far away from artificial lights, it looked like she could see every single one of them.
She was a sucker for a starlit night, so she kept her head out the window as long as she could, and she wondered at Birdsong's silence. He had been bitching at her to stay safe for days, and even Moira knew that hanging half out of a truck going around 60 on a dirt road was dangerous.
Finally she gave up trying to bait him into another reprimand. He was no fun tonight anyway. She pulled her head back in, though she didn't roll the window up. Not yet.
"So when are you gonna tell me where we're going?" she asked.
"When all the dark powers are vanquished and Arda is remade," he replied sotto voce.
"Is that, like, never?" Moira rejoined. She knew this conversation; they'd been having the same one, more or less, for the last two days.
"Something like that," Birdsong replied. "When are you going to stop asking me?"
"When asschairs stop chasing me and you stop acting like my dad and I know for sure that Nic is okay."
"Touche," the professor smiled, though he kept his eyes on the road.
"No seriously," Moira continued. "I thought we did that whole split-up thing to throw those dragons off our scent or something. And we haven't seen any dragons in days. I think we lost 'em."
Birdsong didn't answer right away, but he slanted a strange look at her. After about half a mile, he dimmed the headlights and pulled the pick-up off the road. He drove it past the drainage ditch and deep into the tree line. Moira wasn't even sure how he managed to fit it between the close-set trees without taking out either the truck or a good chunk of the forest.
When Birdsong cut the engine, Moira felt completely enclosed in the black forest. She didn't dare stick her head out the window now, but if she had dared, she knew what she'd see: only black where the stars had been. The trees were that dense.
Birdsong turned to her on the bench seat. One long hand rested on the cracked vinyl between them, and Moira stared at it intently. His pale skin glowed in the stark darkness, but that no longer struck her as a weird thing. It just was: He was elf.
"Moira, we need to talk," Birdsong said in a low, steady voice. "Our enemies have never been this good at tracking us. Over the years, Miren and I have developed some good methods of evading those who wish us harm. But this time, it is almost as if they had a homing beacon attached to us. Miren thinks that someone within our group betrayed us, but I have a different suspicion, one that I did not share even with her."
"What's that?" Moira asked, though her thoughts had hooked on to that word "betrayed." She had a pretty clear idea of who might have done it. Dirtystinkincocksucker...
"Moira?" Birdsong's voice cooled her anger in a word, and wrested Moira's undivided attention. Her gaze traced the fine angles of his fingers, looking for the veins beneath. She couldn't find any. Weird. Didn't elves have blood?
"Uh huh."
"You don't happen to have anything in your possession… an heirloom of some sort?" he asked.
"Heirloom?" What the hell was he talking about? Moira forced herself to look up. "Well, let's see. My mom's vinyls of the White Album and Sgt. Pepper are in my room back at the co-op, strictly under lock and key. I think Grandma keeps some of dad's old junk, but it's nothing special."
"Nothing else?" he pressed. "A piece of jewelry, perhaps?"
Moira's eyes narrowed.
"Why?" she asked.
He stared at her for a long moment, and it seemed that his pale eyes noted everything. Her pulse, her soul, her memories, the smear of lipgloss on her tooth. Birdsong frowned slightly.
"No reason," he said slowly. But Moira wasn't about to let it go at that. That look had meant business: He wasn't talking about vintage Fab Four or the silver trinket box her dad had sent her from Brasil when she was nine.
"Tell me," Moira demanded. "I'm sick of everybody keeping secrets. I can handle it. Just tell me what you're talking about."
Birdsong sighed.
"There is a gem in your family, and Miren and I have long suspected that it has some meaning for our enemies. They have sought it in the past, and have shown that they are likely to murder for it. If you carried it, perhaps that would explain their ability to find us, and the risks they have taken in search of it."
Moira knew exactly which gem he was talking about.
"The occhio della strega, you mean? The green stone?"
"The kings of old called it the Elessar."