[6] Trickery, Stage Machinery

One world's components cascaded, so smoothly oiled that sleekness alone might entertain if not novelty, but otherwise this microcosmic piece of clockwork meant nothing to the much greater world it inhabited, a world of grids and matrices, a world of tables and integers, a world of taxes and revenue. The switches flipped. Here the parts grated, here they scraped with metal shrieks, but never did they fail, and their lack in presentation they compensated via the inexorable pull of their order.

That order led to a one-story house in a Cleveland suburb, a house with three bedrooms and two baths (one bedroom having for the past five years operated as a fitness room), a house ostensibly owned by Avery Fenster Waringcrane, 42-year-old widow and mother of two, although if you asked her to produce the property deed she would've become blank in the eyes.

Avery gripped her scalp through the pretty red hair she failed to pass to either of her children and demonstrated that blank-eyed expression now, lips barely moving as she muttered: "I failed."

"You haven't failed, Mother," said Shannon Waringcrane, 24, elder of the aforementioned children. "Try to be less ridiculous."

Shannon received the text as she pulled into the parking complex for work that morning: "OMG! Your brother is missing. Come ASAP!!!" Of course, Shannon couldn't simply skip work, and knowing her worthless brother he probably wasn't missing at all, so she ignored the message until she finished for the day, the last before the Thanksgiving holiday. When she finally trekked across the city with her coworker and boyfriend, Dalt, she found Mother's house dark, freezing, and fusty with alcohol. A bottle of vermouth, three-quarters empty, languished on the kitchen counter.

"I've been such a bad mom." Mother's shellshocked expression devolved into a disconsolate sob. "I've been so bad to you and Jay."

"You haven't been bad. Now tell me what happened already."

In such a worthless state they found Mother and in such a worthless state Mother remained, insensible to Shannon's demands for information. Dalt, generally irrelevant, wandered off to the side and admired a shelf of photographs of the Waringcrane family.

"I tried to be good. I really tried. But it was so hard after your father went away. I tried my best though, you know that right Shan-bear? You know I've always tried, right?"

Shannon grunted at the infantile nickname. Worse than a child, begging for approbation―How utterly risible. Unfortunately, Shannon couldn't laugh. She'd already confirmed Jay was nowhere inside the house, a feat previously thought impossible, so she needed answers.

"When was the last time you saw him, Mother. Mother. Listen to me."

She snapped her fingers in Mother's face until Mother blinked and gawked openmouthed at the hand and managed, barely, upon three more repetitions of the question, to respond:

"I don't―I don't remember!" Immediately segueing into a fresh bout of tears. Miserable. Even in the dimness Mother's red hair shone, and Shannon's thoughts went to the mirror of her own apartment, where she uncovered a single long gray strand running from the absolute peak of her head.

After significant cajoling, including an endless slew of more specific questions ("Did you see him today? Did you see him yesterday? What were you doing?" Et cetera), Shannon managed to extract a rough timeline. Mother last saw Jay the previous morning―Tuesday, November 21―eating breakfast before she left to buy groceries. In lieu of any chronological precision from Mother, Shannon fished the grocery store receipt from the recycling bin and placed this encounter between 10 and 11 AM, which from Shannon's recollection was unusually early for Jay to be awake. Mother didn't see Jay afterward, but for the rest of yesterday she assumed he was where he always was, locked in his room playing computer games. The next day―Wednesday, November 22, also known as today―Mother fell into a tizzy because she misplaced her car keys and knocked on Jay's door to ask if he knew where they were, but he didn't answer. After an hour of searching she found the keys and knocked again to tell him she found them; still no answer.

The next part of the story became an ordeal all its own. A premonition of catastrophe had gripped Mother as she stared at that silent door. She recalled, in superfluous detail after her sparse account of dates and times, the clamminess that crept from her fingertips, the palpitations of her heart, the rapidity of her breathing as she reached for the doorknob. The retelling came amid sporadic pauses to sob, pauses that sometimes lasted several minutes, as she attempted to intimate―without being able to say―what she expected to find waiting in Jay's room, something perhaps similar to the state in which she and Shannon discovered Dad all those years ago. But when the door flew open nothing so dramatic greeted her. Jay was simply missing.

At one point during this brutal tug-of-war, Dalt accidently knocked over a framed photo of Shannon at age eleven, which of course rendered Mother useless for the next fifteen minutes as Dalt fumbled around the closet for a broom and swept up the shards as best he could. Shannon hated that photo anyway; she had braces.

When it all finally ended, Shannon asked: "Did you call the police."

"Hh—huh?"

"The police, Mother. Did you call them."

"Don't, don't you have to be missing for twenty-four hours first...?"

"That's a myth, Mother. Besides, you last saw him over a day ago anyway."

"I guess that's right..."

Shannon didn't want to call the police. Jay probably left somewhere without saying; he'd be back before dark. Maybe for the first time in his life he made a friend, a little nerd friend to play video games with, and he went to their house for a playdate. Maybe he finally reached the emotional maturity of a Kindergartener, with all the sense of one too. The only wrinkle with the theory was that Jay left his phone behind. But who knew why he did anything? Absolute worthlessness.

"Oh Shan-bear, what if he's been kidnapped? What if somebody broke in while I was at the grocery store—"

"Broke in? Broke in. Mother. Mother, please."

"What if he—what if he—like your father—"

If Jay fucking killed himself Shannon would go down to Hell personally and kill him again. Mother already lived through that shit once, even if Shannon personally thought her father deserved it.

"He doesn't have the spine," Shannon said, which didn't console Mother as much as expected.

Out of nowhere swooped Dalt. "Yo Mrs. Dub," he said, his workplace-mandated tie now untied and limp around his neck, "you don't gotta worry about a thing. It's all gonna be totally fine. Your son's just having a fun time around town and forgot to tell you, one-hundred-percent guarantee. I did that shit every weekend when I was his age. Dad kicked my ass for it too."

Something about his cadence, his tone, his sedately masculine voice—something about it finally managed to soothe Mother in a way Shannon utterly failed to do for the past hour. It took no further persuading; after saying "Thank you, Dalton, you're so kind," Mother became placid at once, sitting quietly as Shannon and Dalt moved to the kitchen to confer.

"So you think your little bro's just hanging out somewhere?" Dalt asked.

Shannon crossed her arms and gripped her chin tight between thumb and forefinger. "I have a hard time believing in a crisis, at least."

"He's technically been missing since yesterday though."

"Maybe. Maybe he was in his room yesterday and only left this morning."

"So we call the cops or what?"

On one hand, police tromping around the house asking questions might spiral Mother into hysterics. On the other, a full scale manhunt would be exactly what Jay deserved for being a useless mooch who lacked the basic courtesy to tell Mother where he was going. Besides, calling the police was the proper process.

She removed her phone from the pocket of her trim blue blazer and hit the digits: 9-1-1.

"911 what is your emergency."

"Yes," said Shannon with a tilt of her head and one hand on her hip. "I'd like to report a missing person."

From there, everything proceeded efficiently. The dispatcher, a bored-sounding woman with an indiscernible accent, asked a sleight of ordinary questions: Full name (both of the missing person and the person calling—and Shannon had to spell out "Waringcrane" three times to get it through), date of birth, where and when they were last seen, et cetera. Shannon relayed the information she collected from Mother in stiff, formal, impersonal tones, at times shooting Dalt a look whenever the dispatcher put her on hold, which happened more often than Shannon expected.

Then it ended. The dispatcher said: "Alright, I'll file a missing persons report for Mr. Jay Waringcrane. Thank you."

"That's it?" said Shannon. "You're not going to send someone down here to check out his room or something?" Frankly, if they didn't come it'd relieve her of mother-assuaging duties, but she assumed it was an unavoidable part of the process.

Another long wait. Dalt leaned in, trying to hear, and Shannon flicked at him to make him back up.

Finally a new voice came on the line, sharper and male. "Mrs. Waringcrane."

"Miss."

"Miss Waringcrane. Do I understand correctly that you're reporting your brother, Jay Waringcrane, missing?"

"That's what I told the dispatcher. Who are you?"

Brief pause. "Miss Waringcrane. Rest assured, we'll be filing a missing persons report on your behalf."

Shannon threw up a wild shrug. "Yes, the dispatcher said so. Who are you? Aren't you going to send someone down here?"

"Miss Waringcrane—"

"You don't have to say my name every time."

"Miss Waringcrane, at this time, we don't believe that to be necessary—"

"Why not?"

"Miss Waringcrane."

Shannon turned her head away from the phone and expelled an exasperated gasp. She composed herself over Dalt's repeated silent questioning and returned to the phone. "Yes?"

"Miss Waringcrane, given the details you've provided, we don't believe there's a need to send an officer to your house."

"You still haven't told me why."

"It's procedure. Based on your report there are no signs of foul play. You yourself mentioned you believe your brother left voluntarily. Now we'll still put up a bulletin. But if we find him and it turns out he did in fact leave of his own volition, we have no obligation to report his whereabouts to you."

For a few moments, Shannon stared in silent disbelief, her eyes focused on the open bottle on the counter, with a glass beside it still smeared with the last drops of vermouth. "That's procedure?"

"Given the nature of your particular report, yes. Your brother doesn't meet the criteria for what we call an expedited search. He's not in need of medical attention, he's not mentally impaired, and he wasn't abducted or kidnapped. Those criteria in mind, we'll do what we can with the resources we have available."

It took everything for Shannon not to call the man a useless piece of shit right then and there. Only respect for the institution of the police held her back—respect for the institution, not the fallible individuals operating within it. She was no expert on missing persons procedure but she could smell, smell the veneer of botchery underlying this entire conversation, the shoddy craftsmanship and the distinctly bumbling whiff that imbued every lazy government payroll stiff unconcerned with upholding the proper way of doing things. She didn't know exactly how, but something wasn't right here. Something. Yet the man spoke with so much confidence. He didn't sound like a bumblefuck, despite the smell. Was it not simple laziness? The concept of willful incompetence defied comprehension. Nonetheless, she lacked the institutional knowhow to challenge the criteria he stated. Shannon Waringcrane was a tiny but integral piece of the much broader machine of the world, crafted to minute specialization. Had the question revolved around tax codes, she could've eviscerated him. But policework lay beyond her narrow scope. She lacked even the most basic ammunition to fire, no matter how strongly she intuited an error.

"Don't worry, Miss Waringcrane," the man said. "If your brother wants to be found, we'll find him."

The call ended.

Amid a bevy of now vocal questions from Dalt, Shannon remained mindful of Mother and calmly walked out of the kitchen, through the entryway living room, out the front door, to Dalt's monstrous SUV, and into the driver's seat. She shut the door behind her, leaving Dalt gesticulating wildly outside, and she screamed.

When she finished screaming she exited, patted down her blazer, and expelled a deep breath.

"What the fuck happened Shannon?"

"I've filed a missing persons report."

"So they're sending someone down here?"

She calmly and precisely explained what the policeman told her: Jay's case didn't meet criteria for such "expedited" metrics of searching.

"Wow." Dalt pocketed his hands and took in the breadth of the suburban culdesac. "Didn't know it worked that way."

And Shannon was already on her phone, already looking it up, already typing into the search engine: "What happens if police think a missing person left voluntarily?" And amazingly, the results supported what the policeman said. The police would investigate, but not in an "expedited" fashion. And if they found the person and the person didn't want to be found, they wouldn't reveal his location. Utter nonsense! Even if it was all proper procedure, the police sure assessed Jay's case quickly, based on only basic details. More importantly, someone shouldn't simply be allowed to disappear like that. Someone shouldn't be able to say "No" to the logical order of the world and abandon it entirely.

"I mean, it makes sense." Dalt's attention wandered up, to the murky, cloudless sky. "I bet most people who go missing do it on purpose. You don't know how many times I wanted to run away from home growing up. I guess if you're a kid they don't let you do it, but your brother's nineteen now. Why can't he leave if he wants?"

Shannon, for a brief but intense moment, wanted to seize his loose necktie and wind it tight around his throat. But the moment passed. Or turned inward, not at herself, but at the mental image of her brother, her utterly worthless brother.

Jay's entire life Mother made excuses for him. When he did the bare minimum and barely scraped through middle and high school, it was always: "Oh, he's simply not challenged enough. Oh, he's simply having trouble adjusting to the way school works." Never a word of admonishment, never even a suggestion that Jay should have to actually try, should actually exhibit effort to earn his place in this world. Shannon earned it. Never once in her life had she not earned it. Valedictorian. Mock trial. Varsity track and field. She went to a good state college—summa cum laude. She got a career at a prestigious government institution, paid her own rent, became self-sufficient immediately upon graduation. She did every possible thing right, every possible thing the way it was supposed to be done.

Yet Mother floated in a world all her own, a world insensible to these objective metrics of value. No matter what Shannon showed up to say, no matter how great an accolade she achieved, it was: "Oh, that's so nice, dear."

Oh, that's so nice, dear.

Oh, that's so nice, dear.

Oh, that's so nice, dear.

And Jay was "so nice" too. And Jay was a "dear" too. No matter how brazenly he failed. No matter how—

Dalt's arms wrapped around her from behind. They held her steady as he pressed his lips to the nape of her neck. "It's okay," he said in that reassuring voice of his, "it's going to be okay, Shannon."

He didn't understand why she was upset, but she let him reassure her anyway. It was his value, after all. But the moment his wandering hands got an inch too frisky, she broke away with a single tug and started back toward the house. "Well, I suppose that's that."

Dalt dogged her with pleading puppy eyes, but when he got the message from her rigid body language he acquiesced with a sigh. "You're right though, dick move from your brother. Doesn't he know tomorrow's Thanksgiving? Terrible timing."

Right. Shannon couldn't wait to suffer through an entire turkey dinner listening to Mother bewail the absence of a son who couldn't give less of a shit about her.

"You know though," Dalt continued as they reentered the house, "we could do a little investigating of our own."

"What do you mean."

"Your brother left his phone behind, right? If we cracked his passcode I bet we'd find some clues about where he went. It's not like he had a car right? He must've left some kind of trail."

"We're not police, Dalt. Or hackers."

But all of a sudden Dalt was excited, more excited even than when he'd been pawing her body. "Think about it. My Dad got locked out of his phone once and we were able to get the code still. It was easy even."

"Shannon? Dalton? Is everything okay?" Mother said from the other room.

"Everything's great Mrs. Dub. We just got an idea." Now he tugged Shannon's sleeve, dragging her toward Jay's room. "Come on come on."

Dalt donning his detective cap, making himself more important than he was, but what could Shannon do except humor him? She preferred to purge this stupid Jay episode from her mind, let him realize the only world he really wanted was his bedroom, wait for him to slink back as voluntarily as he fled, and then chew his head off. But once Dalt got a dumb idea into his head he couldn't be stopped.

Jay's room turned out not to be the rancid maelstrom she expected. Instead of a feral animal's den, strewn with torn and eclectic bedding and half-eaten foodstuffs, she entered a place barren and empty. But not neat. The bed wasn't made as much as vaguely smoothed over, almost as if when he last rolled out of it the whole thing managed to, by pure chance, shuffle into a semblance of order. No posters on the walls, the floor unvacuumed but devoid of clutter. On a desk sat the two thousand dollar "gaming computer" Mother unadvisedly purchased for him as a high school graduation gift. If one looked more carefully (as Shannon always did), one might notice crammed under the bed and in the half-open closet the hidden disaster accumulated over the course of nineteen years, toys and games originating from every point of Jay's short life, infancy to adolescence. Building blocks, Candyland, toy racecars, footballs, baseball gloves, Legos, Pokemon, a stuffed giraffe, green army men—boy's things, things purchased for a boy by parents incapable of perceiving a personality within their child beyond the static default of his gender; much as they had for her. But unlike Shannon, Jay lacked the drive to even toss out these single-use knickknacks and build his own self, and so the surface placidity of the room bristled underneath with so many rejected offerings.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The phone was on the bed, the one outward piece of haphazardness, left as though tossed there. Dalt grabbed it immediately and confirmed the lock screen that prevented entry without a 4-digit code.

"I assume your mom tried stuff like birthdays and all that."

"She probably tried nothing."

"Doesn't matter anyway. Here's how I did it with my dad." Dalt fell into Jay's swivel desk chair and banged the spacebar with a sharp finger, turning off the screensaver and showing a desktop background swarmed by program shortcuts for about five hundred video games, with names that included words like "Tale" and "Legend" and "Quest." "The trick is, if you've got an email account associated with your phone, you can actually send yourself a recovery code. Let's see if he's signed in."

Dalt opened a web browser and went to Gmail and sure enough, Jay was already signed into his account. An unconscionable lapse of security, but Jay of course couldn't care less about that, given he never left the room anyway.

Switching between Jay's phone and computer, Dalt tapped a few buttons and clacked a few keys. A new email appeared in Jay's inbox. Dalt opened it, tapped Jay's phone while reading, and held the phone up for Shannon to see. With a voice he probably thought was cool but only made him sound like a doofus, he said: "I'm in."

"Don't get any ideas. You're no hacker, my brother merely has zero concept of account security. Or maybe he didn't care." Probably he didn't care. Which aggravated her much more.

"Now let's see who he was talking to." Dalt glanced through the last few text messages. "Hm! It appears your brother was talking to nobody."

"No surprise."

"However!" Dalt held the word for dramatic flair even as Shannon folded her arms and tapped her foot, clear signs that he willfully ignored. "I bet absolutely anything we'll find what we need if we check the history of his map app. You said he never leaves the house right? If he went somewhere, he would've needed to look up how to get there. Lemme just open the app... go to the timeline... and BOOM."

He leapt up, rattling the chair, shoving the phone nearly into her face to display a blue-and-orange line snaking its way across a map of Cleveland. "He only used this app once in the past month. When did he use it, you might ask? Monday. The day before the last time your mom saw him. Coincidence, my dear Shannon? I think not!"

"You embarrass me when you talk like that."

And because he already knew he embarrassed her, he did it again. "Chalk one up for the Daltster! Modern day Sherlock Holmes. Ace fucking detective, that's right!" Big sheepish grin on a smugly confident face. Shannon focused on the app's route. It led from their current location to an address in downtown Cleveland, close to the lakeside. The route zigged and zagged, and the directions listed beside it indicated several sources of public transportation. Tapping the destination brought up basic information and a picture of the exterior: A dumpy, unassuming downtown office building.

"So let's go check it out yeah?" said Dalt. The correct thing to do would be to call the police again and provide this new information to the case. But Dalt read her mind and responded, in his own Daltish way: "Come onnnnn Shannon, the police were giving you the reacharound, they don't fucking care. We can handle this ourselves and be back in time for dinner. Easy."

"The entire point of authorities is that they understand their business better than us. Which is why we should rely on them—"

"I am an authority, Shannon! If nothing else, tracking people down is what I do. I mean, your brother isn't evading taxes like the guys I'm used to, but it's the same fucking thing. Come on Shannon. I can do this."

Despite her previous protest, Shannon had already been considering. It still struck her as vigilantism. But when her eyes settled on Jay's bed, at the junk shoved under it, she realized maybe this was in fact something she had to do, that no police officer could manage. The police might know detective work, but they didn't know Jay. Nobody really did, not even Shannon. Certainly not Mother. But of all humanity, Shannon knew him better than any other. Knew exactly his utter lack of worth and purpose in this world. Knew exactly the need to drag him back into the machine kicking and screaming if need be. The police thought it was okay for someone to simply disappear. Only Shannon, it seemed, knew better. And that made this her job. Her role.

"Fine," she said, a single sharp exhalation more breath than word. Dalt bellowed a boyish whoop, seized her by the shoulders, and danced her rigid body away, only stopping to tell Mother they'd be back soon. Mother, sedate, waved tiredly from the couch, eyes glazed.

As they got in Dalt's SUV, Shannon stared at the route on Jay's phone and wondered: Where the Hell did Jay go exactly?

—

Into a worse world Jay Waringcrane tumbled.

A thousand fairies cycloned around him, chirping and singing, their previous choral sense devolving into cacophonic blare. Out of the mixture individual forms sometimes surfaced and what surprised Jay most, a distinct fact onto which he could anchor himself among the pandemonium, was that the fairies did not look much like Olliebollen. In fact, most looked nothing like her. Some were gnat-like, some the size of children, some with insect features and some with human, some nude and some swaddled in clothes stitched of leaves or flowers, some with mushroom caps, some in gossamer gowns. Some were stumpy and fat, more like gnomes or hobgoblins, with warts on their faces. Some lacked wings altogether and flew on the backs of birds or insects. No pattern or theme unified the mass, not even something as simple as "elegance." In fact, in this frenzy, even the fairest or most serene of them produced not one ounce of poise.

While many zoomed up to boop Jay's nose or dance upon the brim of his hat, they remained far more cautious in approaching Makepeace, who kept a tight hand gripped on Jay's shoulder. Jay thought he understood the distinction: Makepeace wore metal armor, and the fairies didn't seem to like metal. Jay held up his bat in front of him and that also slowed the fairies' approach, but they found ways to flit past his flimsy guard and bug him nonetheless.

And whatever Jay did didn't matter. He and Makepeace—and Makepeace's horse—were floating, carried by some unseen but steady pull toward an unknown destination. The court, the fairies kept babbling: the court of Flanz-le-Flore.

"Say as little as possible," Makepeace whispered. "Show no emotion."

Easy, thought Jay.

The mass deposited them onto ground that rose up out of nowhere. Jay and Makepeace wobbled and grabbed onto the other to keep from falling (the horse remained stolid despite its broken leg) as the tornado of fairies dispersed into smaller and looser whirlwinds, stragglers dropping onto the floor to toddle this way or that and others gripping long and luminescent boughs of trees thatched into a roof over their heads. Light shone through in spotlights; the scene before them—literally a scene, given it looked like a theater—glittered.

A wooden circle served as the stage and onto it various fairies plopped, rolling and tossing in strange and almost parodic assortments of "formal wear"—shinier daisies than the rest. They cleared their throats and puffed their chests and unraveled papyrus scrolls and when they spoke their breath blew dandelion seeds that floated up and fluttered in the light. In scattered voices, they said—

"Gentleman and gentleman and horse!"

"We present to you!"

"On this fine autumn day!"

"In our lush and wondrous wood!"

"A moment of purest bliss and pleasure!"

"Tasted by no human in centuries!"

"Behold, dear friends:"

"Our frolicsome and festive Queen Flanz-le-Flore!"

The fairies on the floor and in the trees and fluttering back and forth all rose a raucous cheer. Makepeace's grip on Jay's shoulder tightened to the point of pain, as if he expected Jay to do something foolish and wanted to warn him off it, even though Jay planned nothing whatsoever. Onto the stage descended a throne of gnarled sticks, some budding bright red leaves.

Seated on the throne was a woman who might have been human. She looked only slightly shorter than one, and was proportioned like one, and had a human face, and human hair, albeit in shades of green—her skin slightly tinted green too. A flower crown adorned her head. Instead of clothes, something like henna covered her arms and legs and torso, the designs as varied as the court over which she presided, entire whimsical and rustic tales in tattoo: a bard on a rock fluting to deer, a shepherd sleeping while a wolf stalked his sheep, a lovesick girl baring a dagger at her breast. Antithetical to the rest of her nearly nude appearance, though, the queen wore two beat-up brown boots a size too large for her.

Her wide eyes swallowed Jay and Makepeace in expectation. But Makepeace said not to talk, so Jay didn't, and they wound up waiting a long time in silence before the queen said:

"I am Queen Flanz-le-Flore of the Court of Flanz-le-Flore!"

Jay and Makepeace continued not to speak.

The queen scratched the fur of a badger sleeping in her lap. Her eyes somehow grew wider, and Jay became aware that her gaze was trained specifically on him.

"And you are the hero from another world!"

More silence. Many of the fairies watching became bored and started fooling around. Two on the stage whipped out sticks and began a fencing duel. Everyone else on the stage except the queen moved into a circle around the pair and cheered them on, and eventually, Flanz-le-Flore herself broke her stare to watch the mock swordfight. She even applauded the "winner," briefly waking her badger who yawned and went back to sleep.

Jay tried to communicate "This is stupid" to Makepeace with just a look. Makepeace nodded in agreement. Finally, breaking his own stricture, Makepeace relinquished Jay's shoulder, stepped forward, and said, "Now that introductions are over, how about my good man and I head along our merry way?"

The comment snapped Flanz-le-Flore's attention to them. "What was that? Oh yes, go ahead, ta-ta." She shooed them as she glanced back at a second mock swordfight, this time between the previous winner and what appeared to be an ordinary dormouse who only scampered away. But a moment later she jerked back and jabbed a finger at them. "No! Wait. Wait, wait, wait. I had something so very important to tell you, hero. What was it again?" She glanced around her court. "Can anyone tell me what it was?"

A dumpy type fairy fluttered on comically undersized wings to whisper in her ear. She nodded, as though in only partial understanding, before finally grasping it. "Oh, yes. Right. So very right."

Her eyes drifted to the swordfight, which the mouse had won, and which now entered the third round: mouse versus sparrow, but this was apparently less interesting than the previous bouts, because her eyes snapped back and she said:

"You, hero, shall become my husband!"

"Fuck no," said Jay.

"Attendants, adorn the groom."

"I said no," said Jay, as a group of fairies approached carrying a crown and a ring, as though they'd been waiting for this exact moment all along. He waved his bat at them and they held back.

Makepeace stepped forward, extended a graceful and courteous gesture toward Flanz-le-Flore, donning his most princely smile and doffing his tricorn hat. "O beauteous queen of fae, neighbor and even sometime friend to my kingdom, the good hero has experienced much difficulty of late, and is in no proper state of mind to consider such serious matters of the heart. Would it be not prudent to allow him first to rest and reflect on your offer, so that your marriage might be one made in love's true embrace, rather than—"

He got no further, because Flanz-le-Flore snapped her fingers and Makepeace's head became a donkey's. The rest of the speech emerged as pneumatic braying, accordion-like.

The entire court erupted in laughter at the ass in princely armor, laughing and pointing and tumbling out of their trees and floating to the ground like feathers. The attendants attempting to crown Jay laughed, Flanz-le-Flore laughed, the dueling mouse and sparrow laughed, and Jay realized he was laughing too. He couldn't help it. Makepeace slowly realized his changed state. His inset eyes flickered alarm as his hands reached to pat his elongated snout and he brayed frantic dismay. But then Makepeace's brief moment of alarm passed. The braying changed from panic to laughter, as though he were in on the joke and not its butt, and he followed it with a bow and a folksy style of tapdancing made only slightly ungainly by the armor he wore. The ungainliness added to its comic mode. Soon the fairies were cheering as he danced. A troupe whistling on blades of grass set music to the clippity-clop of his boots and the synchronized clapping of a thousand tiny hands beat a pulse across the court. All eyes remained riveted to him, all except the horse, who only looked wherever it wanted, and Jay, who couldn't fucking stand it.

Makepeace varied the motions of his dance, seemingly becoming unbalanced as his big ass head weaved to and fro, culminating at the song's crescendo in a grossly overexaggerated slip that cartwheeled him to a kneeling position, arms spread to signal applause, which came in droves.

God damn that man.

"How surprising," said Flanz-le-Flore. "It may have taken four hundred years, but the seed of John Coke finally learned the meaning of humor. Well done, so very well done indeed!" As if in reward for his efforts, she snapped her fingers and Makepeace's head returned to normal. To focus on anything other than his resentment, Jay wondered if transformation was Flanz-le-Flore's unique magical ability, like how Olliebollen's was healing. Maybe as a fairy queen, Flanz-le-Flore could perform more than a single trick.

The court devolved into a loose gathering of chatter, many fairies swirling around Makepeace to sing him words of praise that he returned with his own debonair gestures that left them swirling away blushing. Jay wanted to mention that Makepeace was more than willing to let his girlfriend vivisect the lot of them, but even if they believed him that kind of petty theatrics would only make the situation worse. So much for "say as little as possible," "show no emotion," huh Makepeace?

Only after her long arms ringed around his shoulders and her body pressed against his from behind did Jay realize Flanz-le-Flore had left her throne in the hubbub. "Why so glum, my future husband? If you like, I can turn your friend back into an ass."

"He's not my friend. Get off me."

"Do you believe Flanz-le-Flore, Faerie of Transmogrification, isn't a meet enough wife for you? Is she not enchanting enough? Is that why you reject me, hero?"

He still held his bat. He only needed to snap it back to bean her in the face, and even if the hit was weak it'd be worth it to test what metal actually did to a fairy. Instead he remained rigid as a statue. "Why not marry him instead."

A quizzical hum tickled his ear. "The prince of Whitecrosse? But he's nothing, he's a sieve full of sand. Compared to a hero from the land of God, he's a, hm, an insignificance."

Even if he didn't hit her, he wanted to at least shake her off. Her hands pressed against his chest, while the rest of her floated behind him. But he felt like any movement at all, even the most brusque, would somehow be too intimate, and that absolutely revolted him to the concept of motion at all. "Everyone keeps calling me a hero. But I've done jack dick so far. I hate empty flattery."

"It doesn't matter what you've done. It's what you will do. I can feel it inside you, hero. Something no human in this world has—at least not to any substantial degree. But you, yes, oh very much so, I feel it. An essence. A power. Humanity."

All of Jay's grousing thoughts dispersed in an instance. "Humanity," he said. An image of Perfidia flashed in his mind. Her longwinded spiel. But it had to be a coincidence, the word had other definitions. "Are you saying Makepeace over there isn't human."

"He's a husk," Flanz-le-Flore whispered, drawing closer to him, the curves of her body pressing against his back. "They all are, the humans of this world—he's better off than most, if only barely. But they're all husks. Drained dry of that essence. Empty of their God's love. All of them—save you. In you there's true power, power that can shape a world like this."

Pulled into a private existence within a seething crowd, Jay detected in her voice a faint ethereal echo. No longer did her words possess the aimless boredom from when she sat on the throne; this was no mere whimsy. But he couldn't believe what she was saying. She really was talking about Humanity, with a capital H.

"I know a fairy who said you guys don't believe in God."

"Oh yes, that—companion of yours." Flanz-le-Flore's fingers tightened on Jay's shoulders. "Olliebollen Pandelirium. We know all about him. He—"

"He?"

Flanz-le-Flore hesitated. "Okay I don't actually know if Ollie's a he or a she. But that's insignificant. They're one to watch out for. He, or she, or tweedle-deedle-dee, is in communion with beings beyond our ken." She paused, drifted into a new thought. "As for believing in God, well—belief has nothing to do with it. Those attuned to the ways of this world know with certainty: There is no God here. This land was created by no deity; merely a Master. But through that Door, perhaps..."

Her sibilant voice trailed off. Jay might've dismissed her rambling as inane pseudo-philosophy if he didn't know for a fact the hard reality underpinning it. A land created by no deity. Could Flanz-le-Flore know about Perfidia? Did Perfidia know Flanz-le-Flore knew about Perfidia? The question of how much Perfidia controlled this world came to him before, but now it took on a nature more than simply second-guessing everything that happened to him.

"Why does any of this matter to you," he said.

"Because what you have inside you, your Humanity, is a power no animus in this world, nor any relic either, can replicate: a power to change fate's predetermined course. Only you can shatter the fetters of this world's Master. Only you—hero."

No trace of her previous boredom remained. Her voice became intense; unshakeable in its presence. Despite the flurry of fairy activity that continued around them she and Jay seemed to coexist in a space of their own. Flanz-le-Flore possessed a scent, a pheromone, one he became cognizant of at that moment, mixed within the plying tones of her voice and the soft sensuality of her fingertips divided from his body only by the thinnest fabric of his jacket. But he withstood these sensory pleasures once before already, when Charm used her magic. He remained like stone now, his eyes set dead on the vague mush of color ahead of him. It was easier this time; her touch mostly just sickened him, and he wanted nothing more than for her to let go.

"But you are weak, hero, in other ways," Flanz-le-Flore continued, pressing her face against his cheek, chilling him with her complete lack of body heat. "You are frail. You are slow. Thus the mechanisms this world's Master put in place have dominion over you. Is it not so? A beast's claws can still slay you. A man's sword can still spill your bowels. Force controls your actions. So you need a greater force if you wish to wrest control."

It was true. The threat of death was why he agreed to let Olliebollen stay, even though he suspected s/he worked for Perfidia. And the need for power of his own was why he agreed to go to the monastery, to take the relic that revived the dead.

"So become my husband, hero," Flanz-le-Flore whispered. "Join yourself in union with me and partake freely of the power I possess, both the power of my animus and the power of the court I command. And I shall become a whetstone upon which you may hone that Humanity inside you to a blade sharp enough to strike open this very world, to reign over it completely, to conquer even its devilish Master. Is that not a lovely offer, hero, a very lovely offer indeed?"

By now her entire body was coiled around him like a snake. One thigh shifted against his hip, one hand slithered along his side, and her green hair in plantlike strands brushed against his shoulders and made his neck itch. But despite the severe feminine authority she attempted to muster against him, despite the creeping paralysis within himself from such close contact, Jay could only feel sorry for her. Because really, he'd only been waiting for her to say her piece and shut up.

"No," he said.

He said it with less difficulty than he said it to the twins, or to Olliebollen, or to anyone else when they asked him to do something. Frankly, he didn't even need to think very hard, or logic anything out. If it was true what Flanz-le-Flore said about the people of this world being husks, puppets to the string of the "Master" Perfidia Bal Berith, then—

"You're only a husk yourself."

From his current position, a full swing of his bat would never reach someone so entwined with him. But he brought back his bat anyway, aiming only to jab the smooth circle of metal that served as its knob against the hand skittering fingers spiderlike across his chest.

She was quicker than he expected and even with the element of surprise she fluttered off him before the knob even came close. He whipped around, knowing that if she could transform him into something useless with a snap of her fingers he needed to attack hard and fast to stop her, but she danced out of his range, trailing an elegant arabesque of pixie dust in her wake as the clamor of her court shifted and Jay found himself suddenly within a wide-open circle.

Shit, he thought, but Flanz-le-Flore did not snap her fingers, nor did her fairies perform any magic either. Instead, now at a safe distance, she spread her arms wide and spoke again:

"Then fill me, hero! Fill my husk of a body with your Humanity. Make me more than nothing and I shall repay you with all the art of my soul! With my power it can be done—as Faerie of Transmogrification, I can make one thing into another, I need only know what the other thing is! You must let me know you, you very much must!"

"I can't trust you any more than the fairy I already have," said Jay, "but at least that one doesn't want me to marry her."

"You are a fool, hero. A fool! I am not the only one who seeks what you contain inside yourself, but I am the only one among them magnanimous and just. Do you think that cruel archbishop and his degenerated whores will offer you this type of union? Those predators stalk my woods and hunt my brethren, seeking only to devour them and digest their animus for themselves! They shall do the same to you—feast on your flesh and blood, eviscerate your corpse of all you contain! But I, Flanz-le-Flore, I—"

Someone stepped in front of Jay. It was Makepeace.

"If my good man Jay doesn't want to marry you, then shouldn't you ease up a little? Nobody likes a suitor who reeks of desperation."

He glanced over his shoulder to gave Jay a look and Jay preemptively scowled expecting that look to be a wink. It wasn't. It was a look of absolute seriousness, a look that conveyed simply: Be careful.

Flanz-le-Flore gazed down at them. She floated several feet above the ground, and although she possessed translucent wings they did not beat at all, frozen in utter stillness.

"Hm. Very well. I shall 'ease up.' But I request in return only that the two of you relax in turn. Yes, relax. Relax!"

Instantly she relaxed, dropping from the sky and into her throne, which several fairies maneuvered beneath her moments before she fell. She landed with her arms spread, smiled sleepily, and yawned.

"Relax," she repeated. "Relax. You are my valued guests, and shall be treated with absolute hospitality. After your battle earlier against those contemptible women, you must be exhausted. Allow my subjects to see you to your room. Oh, and your rather interesting horse as well—we'll be sure to take care of it. That's a special horse, you know."

Everyone looked at the horse, which looked back.

"It's just a horse," said Jay.

"Not at all," said Flanz-le-Flore. "Something about it is different from all other horses. Something about it is breaking the rules. Not to mention your recklessness has left it in such a tragic state."

The horse snorted. It held its broken leg up off the ground, but appeared to experience no pain. Flanz-le-Flore motioned to some of her fairies, who swarmed around the horse and lifted it off the ground with the same phantom force that brought them here. Slowly, it rose and drifted away, giving Makepeace one final, forlorn look before it vanished between the trees and mushrooms.

"Anyway," said Makepeace, "my horse notwithstanding, we were hoping to go on our way—"

"Nonsense, oh what utter nonsense. I'd be a terrible host if I let such tired young travelers charge into the great dangers of the world beyond unprepared. But, young prince of Whitecrosse, if you absolutely positively needed to leave, I might allow it if your dear friend was willing to accede to my most gracious offer..."

Of course. Jay watched Makepeace for any change in expression that might indicate what he thought of that deal. But Makepeace's face didn't flicker.

Flanz-le-Flore leaned her cheek against one fist and tapped her foot. After an interval of silence, she yawned. "Very well. Take the time to mull over what I said while you wait in your room. Now out of my sight—Such activity leaves me drowsy."

She kicked one of her beat up old boots and hit something near the base of her throne. Instantly the ground under their feet disappeared. Down they both fell through a dark passage, out of Flanz-le-Flore's theater and into the "room" she'd most generously prepared for them.