43: THE JENGA TOWER OF DOOM
Oilcan had just returned to Sacred Heart with the last load of furniture when Moon Dog came out of the building to greet him.
“You’ve returned?” Oilcan called in greeting as he climbed out of the flatbed. Maybe he misunderstood what the male said earlier.
“I have cleared my conscience of moral obligations,” Moon Dog said. “I can now say yes.”
“Oh, good! Thank you!” Oilcan wondered if there was more to it than that. It seemed that there should be but there hadn’t been with Thorne Scratch.
“Third floor?” Floss Flower asked as a collection of humans, elves and tengu lifted his newest purchases off the truck.
“Yes. Please. Thank you!” Oilcan grabbed his tablet from the flatbed’s cab and followed the furniture up the staircase. “Okay. We’ve got a couple empty spaces on the third floor. You can choose one of them to be your private room.”
Oilcan had had Moser’s people move Jewel Tear’s furniture down to the second floor. He hadn’t been entirely happy that Jewel Tear claimed a room on the family floor, but he’d let her stay as there seemed to be something going on between her and Tommy. Since she had moved to Tommy’s new enclave, Oilcan wanted the space to revert back to family only.
It gave them three very large classrooms on the family floor. There were also five mystery rooms—offices or storage rooms—that could be respectable-sized bedrooms. Assuming he could get the twins to stay, he planned for them to share one of the classrooms. The twins were asleep when he’d headed out for the first load of furniture. He’d asked Briar Rose to make sure that the twins got breakfast, picked out which of the three rooms they wanted, and see that their incoming furniture got delivered to it.
He planned to reserve one of the classrooms for the four babies—once they got born. (When are they going to be born? Soon? Half a year from now? Scratch that, any time would feel like too soon. Don’t think too long on it. Oh, I forgot to look for cribs and such.)
He paused to make a note. Four cribs. Find out what else babies need. Find someone who knows about babies.
Oilcan continued up the grand staircase with Thorne Scratch and Moon Dog following him in semi work mode. If he’d counted right, it left them with only one big room and the five smaller ones. He wanted his Hand to have their own private rooms, someplace to call their own. He would probably also need some space for the babies’ caregivers. Esme? Gracie? Both of them? An entire platoon of women?
Was the tengu yamabushi boy staying with the twins? He’d slept in the gym the night before simply because Moser’s people didn’t want to jostle the wounded boy by carrying him up two flights of stairs. He might need a separate bedroom.
When Oilcan first came to Pittsburgh, the old hotel felt too big and too empty for him. It reminded him too much that he was a world away from everything he knew. Everyone that he’d cared about. That his mother was dead. Tinker guessed that and would often crawl into bed with him. The twins might feel safer if the boy shared their room. Certainly it was big enough to create a private space with bookcases and wall hangings.
Oilcan wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea though. “Sleeping together” was one thing with a grieving ten-year-old cousin being raised like a brother and quite another with a fourteen-year-old male who wasn’t related to the girls. Those four years made a big difference.
Oilcan also wanted to set up a living room like a typical American family had, so that the twins had neutral ground to interact with the other kids, all of whom were older than them, but not as clever. The smaller rooms wouldn’t be able to handle a dozen or more people at once, so he’d told Briar Rose to put the big sectional in the classroom that the twins didn’t pick.
He felt like he was quickly running out of space. It was a claustrophobic feeling, like he was being backed up against a wall.
You’re not alone. Everyone will help out. Tommy’s family knows about babies. Forge can help control the chaos. Moser’s people could bridge the gap between humans and elves.
“I got you a bed.” Oilcan forced himself to focus on the immediate problem of getting Moon Dog settled in. Oilcan had bought a double bed for Moon Dog, as the male was much taller and wider than his kids. It was just a mattress and frame, not a full true bed. He hadn’t picked out a headboard or any other furniture, thinking that Moon Dog might want to choose his own things.
“I wasn’t sure what you would like in terms of furniture,” Oilcan explained. “There were so many choices. We can go back to the store—tomorrow or later—and pick out anything that pleases you. We could even hire a woodcrafter to make something, if you would like something more Elvish.”
“Oh, no, I would like to see what the world has to offer before choosing,” Moon Dog said. “Yesterday, there was a bewildering array of furniture that I did not know existed. I might want a chair that moves but I am not sure. It might just be the novelty of it. I will have to meditate on the question.”
Still, Oilcan felt a little bad. They hadn’t touched the smaller rooms yet. They all needed to be deep cleaned, the many bullet holes in the plaster patched, and then painted. Well, Moon Dog could pick out the room he wanted and then stay temporarily in the classroom designated as the nursery.
“Forgiveness, but things will be haphazard for a while,” Oilcan said as they reached the top of the stairs. “This summer has been hectic and unplanned. Things will all be temporary until work can be done.”
“It is wonderful!” Moon Dog sounded like it was. “At the temples where I grew up, everything was literally set in stone. Nothing could be changed—especially the style of fighting. I’m hoping that the Wind Clan will spar with me so that I can learn more about how they fight.”
“Domi’s Hand is quite welcoming.” Thorne Scratch spoke for the first time. She was quietly radiating happiness at the situation.
Oilcan led the way to the first mystery room, feeling somewhat better. He hadn’t considered that Moon Dog would welcome things being chaotic.
Oilcan’s bedroom was at very right of the stairs, guarding the other rooms. Merry, Rustle, Cattail Reeds, Barley, and Baby Duck had rooms strung out beside his. To the left had been the empty classrooms. The first was set up as a living room as he planned. The large sectional attempted to dominate the center of the room and failed, as even it was not big enough. Someone had donated a big-screen TV and got it hung on the wall. The area needed work to be homey.
He took out his tablet and made notes to get area rugs, a coffee table, at least two end tables, and more artwork for the room.
Across the hall was the first mystery room. He was surprised to find it cleaned, repaired, and freshly painted. Someone was a step ahead of him. Moser’s people? The tengu? The elves? It was hard to say. The mystery painter had used the paint leftover from the kid’s rooms. The main color was a warm tan called Honey Oak that Barley had picked, but one wall was Rustle’s deep green.
It was a nice room, around fourteen feet by twelve feet, though a little uneven as the door was off-center and the walls jutted out or in to account for the neighboring restrooms. It had one big window in the back, looking over the kitchen courtyard. It had no closet, so it would need a dresser or armoire to hold clothes.
“This is one of the private rooms for you or Thorne Scratch.” Oilcan reminded himself that since he’d grown up in a hotel, the space felt small but it was larger than the spare bedrooms of his old condo. The smaller of the two had been a tiny eight feet by ten feet, not counting its closet.
“I will take this one, if First allows,” Moon Dog said. “It is near the stairs, so I’ll be able to hear anyone coming or going.”
“I will allow it,” Thorne Scratch said.
“It’s not too small?” Oilcan asked as it was the smallest of the mystery rooms.
The two sekasha laughed.
“This is three times what we are given at the temple,” Thorne explained. “Many had no windows.”
Oilcan couldn’t imagine. Even his small bedroom in Boston had a window.
“No window was sometimes a blessing in the winter,” Moon Dog said.
Winter! Did the room have heat? Yes. There was a heat vent by Oilcan’s feet.
“If you don’t like the colors, they can be changed,” Oilcan said as he made a note to look into the heating system for the building. He remembered that it was up to date but that didn’t guarantee that it actually worked. The first hard frost would be in a matter of weeks.
“I like the colors,” Moon Dog said. “They are quite welcoming.”
On the other side of the restrooms was a slightly larger mystery room, narrow and long with three windows on the right-hand wall. It was only eleven feet wide but nearly eighteen feet long. Like Moon Dog’s room, the wall jutted out and in as they detoured around neighboring rooms. It had been cleaned, repaired and painted as well. The paint from Oilcan’s bedroom had been used: a cream yellow and a rich brown called Weathered Oak. The color scheme had been flipped, making the brown the accent instead of the main one.
“I will take this one,” Thorne Scratch said.
“There’s a bed for each room.” Oilcan looked around. He’d seen them being carried up the stairs.
The twins had claimed the bedroom across the hall. The door stood open, showing off a mountain of furniture piled up in the center of the room like some kind of Jenga game. There was no sign of the twins, the mice, or the baby dragon.
“Oh no,” Oilcan whispered.
He hurried into the room and circled the tower, trying to figure out what piece to take down first without toppling the entire pile.
“Why would they do this?” he said out of sheer frustration. How do you clean, patch, and paint two rooms to perfection and then do this craziness?
“Because we told them to?” Jillian said from within the furniture mountain.
Well…yes, that sounded like something Tinker would do.
The twins climbed out of the pile. They were wearing Naekanain T-shirts like dresses and tennis shoes—because he hadn’t realized that they didn’t have any clothing with them. Scratch going back to Once More With Feelings tomorrow or the day after, he should go back tonight and buy out their girls’ clothing section. Maybe. Assuming that the twins weren’t leaving.
“Is it because you want to go back to Haven?” Oilcan guessed. With Tinker, the furniture tower might be because of something that simple or part of some weird plan to steal a bulldozer or sneak out to a street fair after being forbidden to travel that far by go-kart.
“No!” Jillian gave a honest sounding cry of dismay.
“While Haven is charming—” Louise started.
“And isolated,” Jillian added.
“—the tree houses are simply magical,” Louise continued.
“And painfully rustic,” Jillian clarified even further.
“And terrifying to get down out of,” Louise added.
Jillian gave her sister a surprised look. “No, that’s the coolest part. The needing someone else to fly you up and down is what sucks.”
Louise cut to the chase. “We really don’t want to live there.”
“And we don’t want to live with Alexander,” Jillian said firmly.
“She’s scary,” Louise added quietly. “In a cool way, but…we don’t think we would get along with her, day to day.”
“We’d butt heads like mountain goats,” Jillian muttered darkly.
Oilcan wondered what had happened during the day that triggered this impression. “The Jenga tower?”
“Has served its purpose,” the twins said in unison.
They stared at him in silence for a minute. The twins didn’t want to explain.
“Okay,” Oilcan said. “We can take it down?”
The twins nodded without adding anything.
“And you want to stay here?” he asked.
“Yes,” Jillian said.
“Please,” Louise added.
He didn’t want to rush them. His grandfather did that to him—although much of it was purely political. His grandfather had been just a photograph and a voice over the phone every few months. Almost a total stranger, he showed up at the doorstep of Oilcan’s foster home just days prior to Shutdown. He’d spent most of the month working through red tape to make sure Oilcan could cross the border legally. Without much introduction or explanation, they’d driven to Cranberry and camped in the sprawling parking lot at the edge of the quarantine zone, waiting to cross. Oilcan didn’t know where they were going (the hotel at Neville Island) or who all waited for them (no one until the next morning when Lain brought Tinker home). The big, dark, empty hotel had been like something out of a horror movie. Already unsettled by his grandfather’s grieving silence, the place terrified him.
The last thing Oilcan wanted was for the twins to feel uncomfortable at Sacred Heart.
Oilcan started to carefully dismantle the tower. People drifted in to help. He shooed away anyone who tried to steer the twins into setting up the room. For some reason they just wanted everything clustered haphazardly in the center of the room—and that was fine. They had their world taken away from them. They should be given control over as much of their life as they needed to heal.
While the elves might want the guardianship of the twins cleared up quickly, Oilcan didn’t see the need to force the girls to choose one yet. The twins didn’t want to stay at Haven. Whether or not Gracie could shift from the tengu village to Oakland was unclear. Neither the twins nor Tinker wanted them at Poppymeadows. Lain’s house was big but it still didn’t have the room for six children, no matter what Esme wanted. It meant that regardless of who they picked, they would stay at Sacred Heart.
If Sunder wanted to make it political, then they would fight that battle when it happened. Until then it would be best for the twins if they could float along, unofficially, until they knew what their hearts needed to heal.