In the amphitheater/kitchen Fairyland with time running fast, I dove into the moat around the stage as an otter and chased minnows.
Things were simple and things were complicated. A huge and powerful organization was in a battle with another huge and powerful organization, and if the one that had evil things that possessed people won, the creeks, bogs, and lakes I grew up in would be destroyed.
So one organization was doing what it could to help me, but they didn’t want the other thinking I was connected to them. All in all, I owed them for what they had given me, but they had their own thing going on. Even if they were on my side, they seemed more dangerous to me than the side I was against. There was mention of a Dread Lord being involved. I just identified that person with the Shadow’s Queen. Either way, I was happy to stay away.
The Shadow’s Queen wasn’t trying to destroy the world, but she was happy to mess with others’ lives. Maybe that was the price of being a queen, but it still wasn’t right. It’s horrible being royal, and I don’t even think the royals know it. I suspect they complain all the time, but very few of them give it up.
I spun and turned in the water, chasing schools of fish and weaving through long green fronds as I swam. I had responsibilities. The way things were going, I needed to be sure things would be okay after I died. Even after I come back as a Fairy, I might not last long. Things had been rough in the last year. I had a lot of Fairylands. Too many and more coming. I needed names for them. The Fairylands I used to move things around in either had frames, floors, or were entirely empty. The storage worlds had floors and holes to move things from floor to floor while reducing, altering, or eliminating gravity.
They needed labels of some sort just for me to keep them all straight in my mind. I needed to be able to return to any one of them, just in case, and I needed to keep them fueled. My staying in them fueled them, so I needed to divide my time in them.
Snipsnort had a name. Fairyland Dynamics didn’t have a name and I didn’t like its old name, “Dogbane.” But Swampy thought it should be “Rougarou.”
The amphitheater/kitchen was more than just that. It had a garden and a moat. Under the amphitheater, it had examples of art, room for storage, room for a bunch of heavy equipment, and a large area for making art. I needed to talk with Goldilocks and Olivia since we shared it.
Before I did much else, I needed to go back to Real and figure out what to do with Feile Griff.
I climbed out of the water, shook off and turned back into a boy. Then I went to the transport Fairyland that had gateways that interconnected the other transport Fairylands.
#
There were other gateways that interconnected, but this one I decided to call it “Nexus” since “Interconnect” was too long and “Link” seemed to simple. Nexus was an empty Fairyland and sort of a central one that mostly got passed through.
#
Then I went to “Effect.” also empty, and almost unused by me. Goldilocks liked to make it glow for positioning it and made illusionary division lines to help locate things.
I had named two worlds, and realized that while I needed to do this, I really needed to deal with Feile Griff. She was a danger, sort of, but I unlike the Efreets, I didn’t feel like it was right for me to kill her, and I had gotten all sorts of warnings not to kill her.
#
I moved to the transport Fairyland that I had taken gateways that linked it to several others and moved them around in Real. I named this one “Almost Real,” and went through the gateway to the barn that Feile Griff was preparing to burn down.
#
I asked, “Do you have to burn it?”
She said, “It could give clues about my decisions. I don’t want them to be able to follow me.”
I said, “They’re gone. They have been destroyed. All four of them.”
Feile said, “Even if it were true, and I doubt it, there are more of them. They want to hire me. If I say no, they will want to know why. If I say no, they may decide to eliminate me.”
I asked, “Why do they want to hire you?”
She stopped writing runes and looked at me. “Fine art is not as regulated as a lot of other things. It’s one of the ways that the rich move money so it is protected. I am an expert on art, so they want me in America to evaluate authenticity. That way they can convert rubles to art and art to well-laundered money in the international scene. I would rather not. Anything I do to help them helps bring the world one step closer to destruction.”
I asked, “Is that why the North American Deaths don’t like you?”
She shook her head. “You’re a Goblin. You should know. Cops end up serving the rich and powerful. That’s just how it is. The North American Deaths think they are putting off or stopping the end of the world. Truth is they are just cops. Cops end up serving the rich and the rich, as a general rule, never do anything to prevent destruction if they can make money instead.”
I said, “You sound like Olivia.”
Feile nodded. “We both were used and abused by the gods. It takes some of us a thousand years to learn this lesson, but eventually you learn that the folk at the bottom are all considered tools and numbers by those at the top. Odin is trying to stop the end of the world, I’ll grant him that, but his methods turn truth into lies and lies into truth. I’m a Dwarf so I’m immune to whatever power he uses to make women swoon, but I respect that his heart is in the right place, for now.
“Despite that, he is one of the rich, and you can’t trust any of them. But then I have to consider who I am talking to. You rule one of the great Fairylands of old, and you can create more gold than any Dwarf has ever seen without even lifting a hand. You are new to this, but in the end you will be just like them.”
I asked, “Olivia knew Odin?”
Feile said, “They were like brothers, not that it ever did Olivia any good.”
I gave her a confused look.
Feile said, “Look, I’m a Dwarf, and I am not the right being to explain gender issues to someone who has been stuck as a preadolescent for half a century. What I have learned is this. If someone is currently saying they are a girl, then just shut up and call them a girl. If they say they are a boy, just call them a boy. If it’s more complicated than that, just shut up.”
She looked at me and asked, “How well do you know Olivia?”
I smiled. “Do you want to evaluate some art?”
She shook her head. “Since I can’t take everything here, I need to destroy it all.”
I asked, “Can I have it?”
She said, “If you take it from Real, Deaths will get involved. Trust me, the Barvarian Council is a lot more lenient than they are in North America, but Deaths are Deaths and when you leave craters in real, they get angry.”
I took a gateway and cross-connected to an empty transport world and tried encircling the area with the barn, but it was warded. I left the wards on the outside limit the gateway and moved all but me, Feile, and her runes to a transport world. As blocks of wood with wards and runes on them fell and small bits of paper with runes on them drifted in the wind, they burst into flame around and above us.
I barely noticed as I was falling. I turned into a bird and slowed myself since there was a really deep basement and storage area that had been dug out below the barn that just disappeared.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Feile landed with a thud and water from a pipe that I had just disconnected by removing the barn was pouring out and splashing near her.
She ran to higher ground. “You stole my barn.”
I landed on the ground above and looked down. “You stole my excavator and planned to burn the barn down.”
She got a determined look on her face. “My bag is on a table in the barn. I wasn’t going to burn the bag.”
I asked, “Are we even-steven if I give you your bag?”
He face showed obvious greed. “My bag and five pounds of gold.”
I asked, “Gold coins or art?”
She looked at me and said, “Wire. Gold wire, pure gold wire on spools.”
I shifted gateways around and made her what I thought was about sixteen gauge gold wire on a gold spool. I messed up on weight. The spool was heavy so the total was closer to fifteen pounds.
I set it down on the ground beside me and put her bag beside it. Then I sat down and started making gateways. A boring task that needed to be done. I slowed all my worlds down to match with Real so I wouldn’t miss anything.
Feilie asked, “Are you going to help me out of this hole?”
I continued the spell until the gateway I was making was finished. “Sorry, I was in the middle of a spell. I just made you about fifteen pounds of gold and brought you your bag. Since it’s getting wet down there, I figured you might prefer having your purse stay dry.”
She made an angry face at me so I started making another gateway.
She pulled a rock out of the side of the hole and started to try and shape a rune in the dirt. After trying a few times, she said, “My shoes are going to be ruined if the water reaches them. I like these shoes.”
I finished making the second gateway before the water level reached where she was standing. “Alright, I’ll make a deal to get you out of the hole.”
She grimaced.
I asked, “Should I start another spell?”
She shook her head. “What’s the deal?”
“If I take you somewhere, you aren’t allowed to take anything or put any runes in that world without my clear intended and expressed permission.”
She said, “That’s pretty precise for someone new to making deals with supernatural beings.”
I said, “Some of my brothers were pretty tricky about making deals, so I grew up learning to be careful.”
She nodded. “I don’t generally take things, but we did get off to a rough start. Will you take my word, or do I have to give a binding oath?”
I said, “I’ll accept your word, but keep in mind that if you weasel out of it, your word won’t be worth anything to me in the future.”
She nodded. “That’s fair. Okay. Get me out of this hole.”
I shifted gateways around, put two back to back, and moved them so that one could open beside me and one beside her. “We haven’t made a deal yet. And I don’t really want anything from you. Last time I got something from you, it was worse than disappointing.”
She said, “We made a deal about my placing runes.”
I shook my head. “If that’s the deal, and I took you here to the surface out of the hole, then you would be breaking your deal if you ever made a rune in Real without asking me.”
She winced. “Okay, we didn’t make a deal yet. I see your point.”
I said, “You can appraise art. Can I get your honest opinion about something?”
She gave me a look like I was crazy. “I’m an old-world Dwarf made by Giants. I always say too much and offend people. It’s what we do. We might try to point out extra flaws or point out the good things if we are making a deal, but I’m not going to lie about art.”
I slid a gateway down the road a ways and into a crevice in a rock outcropping and then took the rest of the gateways back.
I picked up her purse and the spool of gold. As an owl, I flew down to where Feile was and turned into me. I offered her my hand and took her to the amphitheater/kitchen.
#
She dropped to her knees and started examining the art. “Whatever you paid for this, you stole it. This is as close to Fairy-addled dream art as it gets before turning outright insane. Did a woman do this? Had to have been. A woman who wishes she were Helen of Troy or Olivia.”
Feile got up and walked over to the sink and then she looked at a salt shaker. “Insane, almost dream-like art. Timeless, haunting.”
She glared at me. “Are you actually using this to cook in?”
I said, “It all works.”
She shook her head. “I understand testing it, but stop. This needs to be preserved. You rich people don’t know how to value things.”
I put her bag and spool of gold on a counter and started thumping out a rhythm on the sink and counters around it. “You’re making fun of me.”
She recoiled. “Don’t. Fine, I see that it’s an instrument but don’t.”
I asked, “Is it really that good?”
She said, “It’s no Michaelangelo, and I would value a Vernier as worth a lot more, but this is a strange and wonderful piece. It’s comfortable and functional and a lot of it is the right height to use and a lot of it was made so a range of height would be comfortable. It also has a haunting sort of beauty that only gives way to the warmth and functionality.”
She looked out the window. “There are sculptures out there. Can we take a look?”
I nodded and led her to the elevator. She picked up her bag and the spool of gold before following.
She said, “I’ve seen the Artist named Ben’s work. This isn’t his. This is more fluid and more primitive. No one else does work this large though. Is the artist alive?”
I nodded. “So far.”
She said, “There was a mention of having you learn art from me. I’m not teaching. If you can, learn from this one. Don’t learn too much though. There is a dream like quality that makes me think her Fairy will end up daft.”
We walked out to the gardens and she approached a statue of Olivia. “She’s human. The artist was born human. You almost have to be a born mammal to have this much fixation on breasts. It probably doesn’t seem excessive to you since you were born human, but to someone made human it’s pretty obvious.”
I gave her a sideeyed look and then she smiled broadly. “Oh, I see it now. The artist has also seen Emerald, the Dread Lord’s wife. She wanted to make sure that no one confused this as an image of the Shadow’s Queen so she emphasized the differences between them and made sure you immediately see the difference. You know there is a theory that Goldilocks and Emerald are actually the same person.”
I shuddered at the thought, but I didn’t have a way to refute it. I decided that it wasn’t true, but I suspected the idea was going to bother me for a while.
Feile asked, “How did you even pay for all of this?
She looked closer at the statue. “The sculptor is a Fairy queen. No question about it and definitely insane. Why would she make a statue of stone when she could make it from gold?”
I said, “Gold weighs a lot more.”
Feile said, “She could have made it hollow. That would be expected. No this artist is throwing wealth to the wind and either showing off in an insane way or she is just plain too crazy to see. Quartzite is wonderful but common. She could have done an alloy. Quartzite is complex. If she could manage Quartzite she could have made it out of a single gem, and it would have been even more valuable. Alright, having seen this and examined it, don’t learn art from her. She could be dangerous.”
I nodded.
From a balcony on the floor above the kitchen, Goldilocks shouted, “Phil, are you going to cook something?”
I turned into a rook and flew up to her and landed on the railing. In a low voice I said, “I’m showing this to Feile Griff, and she thinks it was all made by an insane Fairy queen. Don’t give it away. She also thinks you might be the Queen of Shadows.”
I was watching carefully to see if Goldilocks reacted to that bit of information. Instead I felt something enter the Fairyland. There was mass but no weight.
Goldilocks laughed and then looked at me closely. “I’m not that good an actress, but tell me the truth. Do you think I might be the Queen of Shadows?”
I looked down. “No, I am quite certain you are not the Queen of Shadows.”
Goldilocks said, “Phil, you’re amazing. I don’t know how you do it. When you asked, there was a feeling like maybe you thought it was true. But when I asked, you answered with absolute certainty that I was not. How do you change so fast?”
I said. “Because, amazing and wonderful as you are, Goldilocks, I don’t think you can be in the same place at the same time with yourself.”
I felt the mass leave the Fairyland. I slipped into shadow and started looking. I knew she was in her own form, since she had similar mass to Goldilocks. She hadn’t take any control over the Fairyland, so I knew she was herself. She was brilliant at shadow play, so she could probably enter and leave without my noticing, but she would have to have moved a gateway off of her while in her physical form. I found the gateway. More gateways were streaming out of it.
I whispered. “If I wanted to try and keep a relationship secret, the last thing I would do is invest a bunch of gateways in spying on the person.”
All the gateway dissipated.
Goldilocks and Feile were walking together when they caught up with me.
I was in a small kitchen I had put down by the sinks and bathrooms by the mudroom that was ready to go and make sculptures apart from not having any glaze or clay to work with.
Goldilocks asked, “What are you doing?”
I asked, “Do you know anyone who can dowse for gateways or runes?”
Goldilocks said, “Emmy can.”
I asked, “Emmy?”
She answered, “The Queen of Shadows.”
I said, “Never mind.”
Feilie asked, “What are you looking for?”
Goldilocks said, “You know how you mentioned that the artist that made this might be close to daft?”
Feilie looked at me and her eyes widened. “Oh. That explains it. He’s looking for things that aren’t really there.”
I said, “Goldilocks, didn’t I ask you not to give away my secret?”
Goldilocks hugged me. “You did, but she said such nice things about you that I just had to tell her that you are my apprentice.”
She stood and brushed my hair back. She grabbed my jaw and moved it. “You know, Phil, with a good dentist, you might look quite a bit more presentable.”
I winced. “Are you aware that right now a Dwarf is managing to seem a lot more tactful than you are?”
Feilie shook her head. “That’s what I was thinking. Just because there is a chance that you might not look like such a thuggish and sullen preadolescent if you had some corrective dental surgery, there is no cause for saying it out loud in front of others.”
I said, “Feilie, we should probably take you back to Bavaria now.”
She said, “I’m on the run and it this looks like a good place to hide out. If I can convert this spool to cash we could order enough materials to keep me going and working on artwork for years.”
I looked at Goldilocks.
Goldilocks asked her, “Do you cook?”
I took myself to Snipsnort and just sat at the seven-way crossroads.