In my Happy Place, a couple of pillows, still in their plastic wrappers, where placed where the bed had been, but the bed—frame and all—was gone. A smell of ammonia and bleach was in the air. Most of the statues I had made to prop up the paintings were still here, but most of the paintings were gone. I wasn’t sure if the paintings were stolen or incinerated. I looked at the paintings remaining and decided that stolen or incinerated, it was a good thing they were all unsigned. Unless the missing ones were a lot better, and my vague memories suggest that they were not, it was no loss to the world that they were gone.
While lost in a mental fog, I had not made disturbed, deranged but brilliant art. I was considered calling the Cleaning Fairy back and having her take the rest of it, Statues as well. I shifted to the storage Fairyland with the rest of the beds, pillows, and sculptures of Goldilocks.
#
I decided to test and make sure I still could make decent art. I threw together some swirls of illusion, and then filled them in with figures of Goldilocks and Olivia dancing. Stone wasn’t going to do for what I had planned, so I switched to aluminum and decided it didn’t have the look I wanted and went for bronze instead. I looked at what I had done and then pulled and pushed the lines to give it more motion and then got rid of it and started over.
I relaxed my mind and then made a loose illusion of what I wanted. Then I made it in gossamer, and it was too shiny. I made it real, but I wasn’t happy with it. It didn’t have the look I wanted, and the ammonia smell was bothering me.
I made illusions of me in a range of clothing. I was one of those awkward looking eight- or nine-year-old kids that looked like a bully’s sidekick. No point in making a sculpture of myself at this stage. Maybe not at any stage. My teeth were uneven, not bad, but not quite right. I looked like a popular kids less popular little brother. Nothing to be done about it.
I had the cards nature dealt me, and I wasn’t really complaining. When I thought about dressing up in the past, I always thought of Zydaco or Cajun musicians. That could range from Western to Sunday school to street clothes. These folk played music and unless they were in a parade, the look was not what they sell. I changed into me in one of the Phil Thibodeaux suits and started to take off the gloves and the mask. Then I decided I actually looked pretty good in the mask. I had good eyes and I thought I looked a bit smarter somehow. I shifted gateways and returned to where Goldilocks and Olivia were.
#
I had been in a sped-up world so no time had passed here in Real.
Goldilocks and Olivia circled me examining me.
Olivia said, “Well the mask and the gloves are an odd touch and you are still in Sunday clothes.”
Goldilocks said, “I smell ammonia. What were you doing?”
I said, “Just testing some art, nothing special.”
Olivia said, “Let’s see it.”
I looked up. “Sorry, I didn’t think and used you for a model, Olivia. I do that a lot. I’ll go destroy it.”
Olivia said, “Lets’ go see it.”
I shifted gateways so they could see it without it being there so they wouldn’t smell the ammonia. The statue had aged and darkened while I was gone, so I shifted time in the storage Fairyland to slow it back to Real.
Olivia said, “Well, he’s no Ben.”
Goldilocks laughed. “I love Ben and his art. But, yes, this is a bit less posed and a lot sexier than anything he would do.”
I shook my head. “I covered all the dirty bits.”
Olivia laughed. “You have to see Ben’s art to understand. It’s the best! Brilliant, charming, even deep, but somehow you don’t even imagine the dirty bits are even there when you look at one of his works.”
Goldilocks gave me a hard look. “If you use ammonia vapors to age bronze, any expert is going to know you faked it. I’m going to have to teach you how to do patinas and make them real. This looks good, and I suppose since you are a new artist we don’t want your stuff to pass for ancient, but when we start doing forgeries, I’m going to have a lot to teach you. You know you are a great artist when you can pass your work off as forgeries.” She stood back and looked me up and down. “You’re still dressed like you’re going to church, but at least now it’s interesting since you look like you’re ready to do surgery.”
Goldilocks asked, “Are you coming, Olivia?”
Olivia shook her head. “Darla’s a bore and her constant gossip parties don’t interest me at all. Are you going to summon your way there or use one of the gateways I know you have hidden?”
Goldilocks smiled brightly, “Darla’s circle of friends think it takes me hours to make a gateway. I can charge more for them if I keep it theatrical. They never catch on that all the tricky stuff I do to set up Fairylands uses a couple of dozen gateways, so they’re happy to pay extra when they need a new one.”
Goldilocks gestured and started a summons, “Darla, darling, is this a good time for me to visit?”
I slipped into Goldilock’s shadow as Darla answered and brought us through.
#
In a mansion that made my manor house in Snipsnort seem small, a woman just a little taller than me said, “It’s always a good time for you to visit, Goldie. I heard the saddest news, are you okay, Goldie?”
Goldilocks asked, “What happened, Darla?”
Another woman said, “It isn’t like you have had many apprentices, Goldi. How can you be so casual with his death?”
Goldilocks laughed. “King Snipsnort? I assure you he’s doing fine. Who told you he was dead?”
Darla said, “Well, then was that just theatrics. Or are things more complicated than I thought? Feile Griff got a summons and left. She was quite certain that King Snipsnort was dead, and they would be coming after her next. Odd, that. She’d been telling the story that she had been framed, and your apprentice was likely to be trying to track her down and kill her.”
A muscular woman with large jewelry asked, “What are you teaching your apprentice anyway? You always seem so jealous of your world crafting. Not that your competition stays in the trade. Well, not that anyone is in competition with the artist named Ben.”
Goldilocks said, “We have to be generalists in our trade. Art, magic, technology, and craftsmanship are all part of world shaping. I suppose my work’s a bit to complicated to really explain to someone outside the trade. Where did Feile Griff get off to?”
Darla shook her head. “She didn’t say. That girl is always into something. A month ago she was making waterwheels that were pitched to play music that would lull people to sleep and calling it art. Seriously, who wants art that makes people collapse around the display?”
The muscular woman said, “She’s a Dwarf. Forgive her, she comes close but never quite understands. The last thing I heard was she was trying to make wind chimes that no one could hear. Made no sense to me. It’s not really a wind chime if you can’t hear it.”
Goldilocks asked, “So when is your next art show?”
The muscular woman said, “Goldi, until my art is sold and delivered or at least insured on someone else’s property, the last thing I want to do is to tell you about it.”
Goldilocks looked around the room. “Well, maybe I came at the wrong time. Don’t worry, Perry, your artwork is entirely safe from my interest.” She looked as though peering into the distance. “Oh, wait, I’m being summoned. I better go outside to have this conversation.”
She walked out into the garden and then took a trail into the wooded area inside the brick walled yard.
At a bench she said, “Phil, this might be a good place to hide a gateway for later. Much later, after you are an established artist, until then don’t waste your time.”
I slid out of shadow, made a gateway, and slid it into a small wasp hole in the mortar of the brick wall.
Goldilocks looked back at the path. “We should go. I don’t think you’ll learn anything else here.”
She held out her hand and took us to the storage world with the beds and sculptures.
#
She walked around the statue I’d made of her and Olivia. “Can I have it?”
I nodded and she hugged me. “You really do understand me. Look, if you are going to track down Feile Griff, you may need to do it fast. Call if you need me, but you probably need to proceed quietly, leave no traces, and keep to the shadows. That isn’t really what I’m noted for. Be careful. If they think you’re dead, there may be a reason.”
I hugged her one more time, let go, and went to the Fairyland with the barn and cherry trees.
#
I sped time and took to the shadows and ended up in a cherry tree surrounded by ripe cherries. I was munching away when I felt someone with a stronger hold on the world slow the time to seven times the speed of Real.
A pair of Goblin girls stepped out of the barn. “Whoever sped time must have left. Do you think it might be related to the stolen excavator?”
“You heard about the walking excavator?”
“It looked like one of the cooler new toys. So, yes, I have an alert for when spider or walking excavators are brought up. There was a plan to weaponize it, so I’m wondering why we don’t just track it down. There has to be a gateway hidden on it.”
“I was told that we wanted plausible karmic separation from the owner so we can’t just use the tracking on it.”
“Are they scared the owner will do something bad?”
As far as I know, they just don’t want prognosticators to link us with the owner. They get silent when you ask for any other details.”
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“So we can’t track the walking excavator?”
“Well, we can, but we won’t. So we keep an eye out for it, but without the weapons mounted on it, and two people trained to use it, it’s just a digging tool and not a good one. The charge will run out before they get half-way trained.”
“I thought it never ran out of power?”
“That’s only for the person it was intended for. It doesn’t really matter. They’re planning a better one anyway.”
“So what do we do about Feile Griff?”
“She’s a female Dwarf, last thing we want to do is mess with her. If she dies, all the other Dwarves are going to decide to avenge her. They couldn’t care less about her alive, but they will drop everything to go after whoever killed her.”
“So she just gets to try and ruin everything, and she just walks away?”
“I got this directly from one of the Heads. We’re in the middle of a destiny war, and no one is safe ‘til it ends. No one. Here’s the thing that bothers me. Someone sped time here. That only happens when someone is on the list of those who can speed time here, but then we were sent to investigate who did it.”
“Do you want to pick some cherries while we investigate? A thorough investigation might take hours.”
“That’s why I volunteered.”
I sat quietly in the tree I was in for nearly an hour before they left and I could safely shadow step down to the barn. Once in shadow, I think I could hide from just about anyone if I was careful. Entering shadow this close would set off ripples a clever Goblin might notice.
I slid through the gateway to the cave where Feile Griff had been working.
The cave was empty apart from the circles with gateways. There were eight other gateways in a pattern here other than the one that went to the cherry world’s barn. In the painted circles were painted images. The one I stepped out of had a bunch of cherries stenciled on the stone floor. The other circles had stenciled pictures of fruit, so I guessed they had fruit trees or vines or patches. I hadn’t been invited to those, but I considered going to the one with the peach. I shook my head, and then realized that Feile Griff probably had to have take the excavator through one of these gateways. I had an excuse to explore them all.
I shadow stepped up the stairs and looked at the gazebo with all the raspberry bushes around it. No one was up there, so I went back down and started examining the area where Feile Griff had set up her shop. There were scratch marks where the racks of steel parts had been, and the sort of scorch marks and iron splatters you would expect from a place where someone had ground steel and done welding. A pair of wooden bathroom doors with images of a girl in an old-fashioned pink dress and a noble looking boy in blue clothing that would get a boy of that age beaten up, were on the doors.
The scorch marks were obscuring another circle on the floor with a gateway. Instead of an image of fruit, there was the image of a beer stein. I decided to test it out.
#
I was in a large barn like building with rows and rows of time coolers on one side and brewing and bottling equipment on the other side of a glass wall. There was a tractor and harvesting equipment The tractor looked like it had been pushed out of the way, and Marks on the ground led me to suspect the missing spider excavator came through this way. I followed the tracks out through a field of grain and past arbors that looked overgrown with a vigorous weed.
The tracks stopped so I looked for a gateway. Someone had scattered dirt to conceal the tracks and hide the stone the gateway was on. It was so obvious that I started getting nervous. This was the easiest trail anyone had ever had to follow. Signs placed by the side of the path wouldn’t have made it any clearer. For all I knew the Goblin girls’ conversation could have been planned as well. Without really opening the gateway or changing it, I slipped into the shadow of a pebble half over it and then slid through the twisted shadows of the gateway.
#
I was under a tree beside a truck that had been damaged by being pushed from the side. From the marks on the ground and a few steel bars that were lying on the gravel, the spider excavator had come through here with a trailer behind it and pushed the truck out of the way.
A few buildings stood around a large gravel area, and a couple of men were talking in German to a police officer and pointing to the truck. I ducked and got closer.
I didn’t remember being gifted with German, and the gifting I had seemed to be fading. I was probably gifted when I was asleep. I wasn’t brilliant at German, but I could make it out. I knew everything but the words. I listened for a while and then gave up. I saw a gravel drive that I could tell someone had driven on with one of the six wheels not aligned properly. This made it easier to track. I ran out of trees and shadows before the drive made it to the main road, so I had to step out of shadow and walk to the intersection to figure out where the spider excavator had gone. With a wheel out of alignment, a large trailer and heavy equipment on the trailer, it was going to be easy to track.
Constantly popping out of shadow to check the road and then going to the next intersection was getting tiring so I shadow stepped a long way down the road, checked, and then continued until I couldn’t see marks. I was able to read a lot of the road signs but a lot of words escaped me.
After a few turns, I saw one of the racks with sheet metal had fallen off the trailer.
I slipped out of shadow and walked over to it.
A man stood up and stepped out from behind the flipped-over rack and gestured to the sheet metal and bars.
“Mr. Goblin, do you know anything about this?”
I asked, “Excuse me?”
I realized we were both talking in what I thought was German, but the word Goblin had more devil-related connotations.
He gestured to the metal. “There’s a six blah blah blah with a blah blah blah up ahead and it would be real nice to find out some specifics and have whoever blah blah blah it take it back to where it came from.”
I said, “My German isn’t so good. Do you speak English?”
He nodded. “A little. Do you know anything about a six-wheeled vehicle?”
I nodded. “It was given to me, but it got stolen by a Dwarf.”
He asked, “Small human or Legendary?”
I said, “Legendary.”
He asked, “Can you get this stuff out of here before anyone asks about it?”
I nodded. “How far ahead is it?”
He gestured with his head towards the rack and metal. “This first if you can manage it. The rest of it is just a few kilometers ahead. Is this alien technology?”
I looked at him and winced. “I have trouble keeping up with things. Are there aliens?”
He looked up at the sky and then touched the side of his nose. I wasn’t sure what he meant. I made a quick gateway and took the metal to Fairy.
He looked startled. “Art thou a Fairy King?”
I nodded. “What gave it away?”
“On the list of warnings to watch out for, it mentioned gateways. We are trained that if a being makes a gateway, cooperate with them whenever possible.”
I said, “Thanks, then. Your English is quite good. Much better than my German.”
He smiled. “Probably not.”
I said, “Do you have a car nearby?”
He shook his head and disappeared.
I took to shadows and found the excavator and the trailer. The man was with two others beside the excavator. Two more men were standing a distance away from the excavator signaling for cars to go around.
I walked up and asked, “Should I wait until the cars get past?”
The man asked, “Can you drive this thing? If you can get it off the road, we can clear out traffic quickly, and you might have a moment with no witnesses.”
I got up and opened the door to the cab and looked around it. One seat was the driver’s. There were more controls. I was familiar with a four-legged spider excavator, so it didn’t look entirely impossible to use, but there was a power indicator that said it was out of power. The indicator was on a display, so it was a lie or at least a partial one. I sat in the driver’s seat, and the power indication went away and the rest of the panel turned on. I lifted the extra wheels so they would be out of the way and then lowered the cab for stability.
Aligning the wheels and driving the excavator forward and to the side of the road was easy after that.
I stepped back out and arranged a gateway to be ready to take the excavator and trailer to Fairy at the first opportunity.
The man said, “You managed to power it.”
I nodded.
Another man asked, “Art thou a Fairy King?”
I said, “King of Snipsnort.”
He didn’t grin or laugh, so I decided I liked him. Odd thing about that moment. I realized that I really did think of myself as the King of Snipsnort. I still saw myself as a fishmonger and as Goblin kid raised in the swamps, but it had finally settled in my mind that I was a king of Fairy.
I laughed because I figured I was going to have to work extra hard to keep from developing the low-life behavior that came with that sort of occupation.
The traffic cleared so I waved to them and took the excavator and trailer to Fairy.
#
Searching through the equipment, I found that the detector bell, the computer, and the box she was using to weld with were missing. I checked the cab and found a half-eaten sandwich and a few empty beer bottles.
I had the six-legged two-driver excavator that I didn’t really care about, a trailer, and a bunch of metal. What I didn’t have was the computer and sensor that were used to hurt Hubert. I could care less about the welding machine, but I didn’t want that computer and sensor to remain out where it could hurt my friend.
I returned to Snipsnort feeling far from victorious.
#
A small, winged Fairy in black was looking at her refection in a gossamer mirror I had left near the seven-way intersection. She was switching hair color and shape while posing. “Phil, what is better, magenta or turquoise.”
I said, “Teal maybe but that might be cold. Do I know thee?”
She turned and posed. “Sad, less than a day dead and already forgotten. What sort of girl do you like? Hourglass or pear? Both are classic for flying Fairies, or do you like Twiggy?”
I shook my head. “Thou art saying you, that’s probably a bad habit. Apart from Goldilocks, I don’t have an opinion on girls. I have to run now, so have fun with it.”
She said, “Stay a bit longer. After others see me, my appearance will be harder to change. Pear-shaped it is, then. It’s the shape I’m used to. Should I go with the black hat and Spanish moss?”
She changed her appearance and she had a black witches hat, bat wings, and a black goth dress with a Spanish moss pattern.
I asked, “Did I meet thee in the swamp recently?”
She nodded. “Call me Swampy, short for Swamp Witch. Just call me Swamp Witch when you are upset.”
I asked, “Art thou really going to dress that goth?”
She smiled brightly showing sharp teeth. “I’m not going to go for tattoos or piercings, but yes.”
She flew to my shoulder and said, “Giddyup.”
I took to shadows and took us to the manor house. Hubert was naked with patches and electrodes stuck on him. He was still surrounded and connected to wires.
Anthony and Caerwyn waved for me to come over. Swampy jumped off my shoulder and sat on the edge of a table looking at Hubert.
Hubert spoke slowly with an even tone. “Good to see you. The way all the Goblin girls and Fairies ran off I was worried that something had happened to you.”
I nodded.
Caerwyn looked at Swampy. “Who is this?”
Hubert said, “I saw her long ago, back when I still had my Studebaker. She is on our side.”
Anthony asked, “Was it real or prophecy?”
Hubert said, “It was a possibility that I thought was long gone. It is good to see you, Swampy.”
She smiled. “I have so much to tell you. But first, Phil will need to be wired up so he stays in one place to listen.”
I said, “Not happening. I plan to go up on the roof and do some painting and sculpture. I need to find out what my style is before Goldilocks teaches me to make forgeries or clouds and stars.”
Caerwyn asked, “Why would we wire up Phil?”
Fuzzy jumped up on the table and said, “My play toy, thanks.” Fuzzy gently picked up Swampy with teeth showing.
Swampy waved and said, “Good, they’re both girl kitties.” Fuzzy disappeared into shadow with her.
Anthony said, “I’ll start wiring up Phil. Phil, take off your clothes.”
I backed up.
Anthony said, “No, this is brilliant. Give Caerwyn the crystalizer weapon so he can analyze it. Then he can make Hubert immune to it, and we can tune Hubert to resonate with you as the intermediary and initial filter. After that, I will get wired and made immune. Phil can adjust what he crafts and then pass the tuning instinctively to Hubert just like he used to have a connection with him.”
Caerwyn said, “Brilliant. So, when Phil makes art, he can tune it to resonate and pass the frequencies to Hubert. Then as it spreads and gets taken away and put in other Fairylands, Hubert becomes more and more secure. The more artwork you do, Phil, the stronger and safer Hubert will become.”
Hubert said, “That is brilliant. Phil, hurry and get your clothing off. The sooner we get you set up the sooner I can take of these patches.”
I transformed and handed Caerwyn the weapon with the bell end. “Careful, it has multiple safeties for a reason.”
#
I woke up to a pain on my arm. Swampy was victoriously holding an electrode patch and the tape on it had arm hairs stuck to it that the small bat-winged Fairy had just ripped off of me. I rubbed my arm.
I started to yell at her, and she put her finger in front of my mouth and said, “You don’t want to wake up Caerwyn. He has been working on this all night. Go set up the kitchen.”
I had sat down and then slumped for a moment. I hadn’t planned on sleeping, but sitting in one place and not being in shadow after a long day had put me right to sleep.
I looked at Swampy and realized I was naked so I winced, turned, and started peeling off tape to get the electrodes off of me.
Swampy laughed. “Who is going to look at you after they have seen Hubert?”
I put my finger in front of my mouth. “Shhh. You don’t want to wake Caerwyn.”
She stuck out her tongue and pulled down on her lower eyelid to expose her eye.
As I peeled tape I whispered, “Did you act like that when you were alive?”
She shook her head. “No, but now that I’m small and cute, I can pull off acting like an anime character. As a mascotu, this is perfectly acceptable behavior.”
I asked, “You plan to spend eternity acting like a brat?”
She smiled, showing sharp teeth. “I’m trying things out. I don’t know what I want to be. Maybe the goth clothing and bat wings are just a phase. Who knows? I can still turn into a rook, so I might be able to learn another form. I was planning to sit on your shoulder and give you guidance, but my prophetic dreams about myself have all been Hubert related, so I think I am going to abandon you and go sit on his shoulder. Do you think you can set up the kitchen without my help?”
I made a shooing away gesture and continued taking the tape off until I was free and then transformed into me in comfortable clothing.