Wood Sprites

They were so tiny and light. The two of them barely weighed anything at all as they squirmed about, all soft rabbit fur and plastic bones. They felt so fragile that it took her breath away. She could crush them by accident.

This isn’t really them, she reassured herself. They’re still safe within Tesla.

“What’s wrong with names like Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey or Rachel Carson?”

“We want names like Tinker and Oilcan!” the babies squeaked in chorus. “They’re so cool! You should see them race! They’re awesome!”

“Race?” Louise wondered if she was mistaken about the whole “awake” thing.

* * *

Sometime during the night, the babies had visited the Jello Shot forum and discovered a vast treasure trove of pictures and video of Alexander. All of them had to do with hoverbike racing. The still shots were all after winning a race, covered with mud except where goggles protected her eyes, grinning triumphantly. In many of the photos, Orville was within arm’s reach, smiling just as brilliantly.

The Jello Shot people were divided in several camps. The haters were disappointed that Alexander didn’t look like the valkyrie from The Queen’s Salvage

. What did Prince Yardstick see in such a short, dirty, wild thing? With so many beautiful female elves to choose from, why had he married her?

The romantics decided that the blonde in the video was a clear reference to Disney’s Cinderella and that Lemon-Lime had merely presented an iconic princess with a Pittsburgh twist. Clearly the masses weren’t ready for the truth, which was “Love is indeed blind.”

A growing number of fans, however, were entranced by Alexander. They wanted to know everything about her, hence the unearthed videos. The sources were Pittsburghers in college on Earth, people who had studied at the University of Pittsburgh, and the small but rabid niche fandom of hoverbike racing.

The Jello Shots had found an amateur documentary made during last year’s blistering hot summer. The filmmaker was Charles Wyatt, a grad student in history attending the University of Pittsburgh. Apparently it was his only effort at making a documentary, and it showed. All the scenes were horribly framed, badly scripted, and lacked anything in terms of editing. At least he had a rich, deep voice. He saw the hoverbike as the first integration of elf magic and human machine. It might turn out to be like the Jacquard loom, which could be “programmed” via paper tape, arguably the great-grandfather of the modern computer. “A chance to record history as it’s being made by the people actually making it,” Wyatt announced at the start of the video. He’d conceived of the documentary with only a few months left on Elfhome to film it. Almost immediately, he ran into an unexpected reluctance of those involved to talk to anyone with a camera.

Wyatt started with the president of a company that made hoverbikes.

The man laughed and shook his head. “I don’t really know how they work. I could rebuild the gearbox for the spell chain blindfolded, but explain how it actually makes the bikes move forward? No.”

There was a long surprised pause that hadn’t been edited out. “I was told you’ve made all the hoverbikes in Pittsburgh.”

“Mostly. There are a handful of custom jobs that we didn’t do. Deltas. The next generation. They’re faster.”

“How can you be the only manufacturer of hoverbikes and not know how they work?”

“We’re mostly just modifying motorcycles. We order in superbike racers with twin four-stroke twelve-hundred-cc engines. Hoverbikes need powerful engines for the lift drives. We strip them down for the engine, the transmission, and the entire electrical system, including the headlights — just about everything but the frames and the wheels. We discovered it was easier to carve the frame out of ironwood. The flexibility of the wood allows for more vibration damping and better impact tolerance.”

“Vibration? Like what you get while riding a bicycle on a rough road? Is it really that much of a problem in a flying vehicle?”

“No, not that. The spell chain is sensitive to some sound resonance. .” The president paused and considered the camera with a slight widening of his eyes, as if he realized everything he was saying was being recorded. “I’d rather not discuss specifics. Company secrets and all that.”

“But-but-but where do you get the spell chains?” Wyatt asked. “Who makes them? Are they actual chains?”

The president considered for a moment before admitting. “Yes, there’s a chain. The design is under patent, but we’re trying to keep it a literal black box. We have an exclusive licensing agreement with the inventor. Like I said, except for a handful of custom models, we’re sole producer of hoverbikes in Pittsburgh, and we would like to stay that way. It’s a small niche market, and we have to sink a lot of money into parts and labor before we can make a profit.”