A whale flew up and said, “No time to explain, get in.”

He opened his mouth wide. I looked at his teeth, and I looked out over the expanse of ocean. Everyone had warned me that the Fairy sea was not something to trifle with, but I figured that if I flew as a rook and stayed above the clouds, I would be safe. Apparently, I was wrong.

Fortunately, I could fly through the air faster than the whale could swim. It looked like he was having trouble staying this high anyway. I circled and landed on him.

“Now that I’m going your way, do you have time to explain?”

The whale started dropping altitude. “I’m you from the future. I’m here to warn you so you don’t mess up your life.”

I asked, “Do I turn evil in the future?”

The whale said, “No, you can trust me in all ways.”

I said, “So if I turn into a rooster and if I crow as a rooster, it won’t hurt you?”

The whale pitched to one side and said, “Long way down.”

I said, “Roosters can glide.”

The whale stopped flapping his flippers and tilted forward. We started to plummet. “This is going to hurt.”

I spread my wings and watched him fall. He leveled out before he got too close to the waves, and his splash as he entered the sea wasn’t terribly violent.

I saw a lighthouse in the distance, and it wasn’t one of mine. The clouds were sparse, and I didn’t see any whales flying, so I started drifting lower.

A cove with ships and a pair of towers in the middle of a village on a high hill were set above the cove. I flew over the town and past it. I passed another tower and a village with a wall around it.

I heard singing and someone playing a drum, so I sailed a bit further and landed in a wooded area. I put a gateway in the hollow of a tree to be able to get back here and flew back up to the place where the music was and landed on a wall to listen.

The man was singing in German, and for once, the German was clear to me. It was a song about a son who had gone to Fairy to find a magic lute that his mother had heard when she was a child. When the son returned, time had passed, and his mother was gone and no one knew him so he went back to Fairy to try and find his mother.

It was sad, and it made me think of my families.

#

I took myself back to my Fairyland of bog and swamp and flew to the island with the banana trees. None of them were ripe. A few of the trees had fallen and started to rot, but small banana trees were growing from the roots.

A small Fairy with bat wings in a black one-piece bathing suit was digging in the dirt around one of the fallen banana trees.

I landed on the branch of a banana tree that was beginning to bend from the weight of a huge bunch of small green bananas. “Swampy, you changed clothing.”

She looked up at me. “Phil, you could help me dig.”

I got down, turned into my normal self, and made a gossamer shovel.

She pointed to the small banana trees growing from the roots of a fallen tree. “If we dig these banana pups and just leave one, we can plant the rest of them on the island next to the village our house is in.”

I asked, “Has your divination found out when we’ll start getting Fairies for the village?”

She nodded. “I ate all but one of the ripe bananas. I saved it for you to feed to your stepfather. He’ll be our first Fairy.”

I asked, “You really ate all those bananas?”

She said, “I want to build up the mass. I want to be able to turn into me in the form I had before I died and be big enough to dig one of these on my own.”

#

My stepfather was out on the pier fishing. He had aged more in the last couple of years than I had in the last fifty but that’s life as a Goblin. He looked up as I stepped onto the pier.

We exchanged nods. I walked out and sat by him.

He asked, “Do you catch a lot of fish?”

I answered, “You should have seen the one that just got away.”

He asked, “Phil, you don’t hate me do you?”

I shrugged. “Never knew you well enough to hate you. You ain’t blood but as far as my original family goes, you’re all I got.”

He said, “I should have looked for you. The sheriff was a friend, and said he would keep an eye out.”

I said, “It’s water under the bridge.”

He started reeling in his line. “Phil, you look like you have aged maybe a year in the last fifty. Are Goblins immortal?”

I shook my head. “We age slow. Some slower than others. We can step into shadows, see pretty well in shadows, and have good hearing. That’s about the only difference between being human and Goblin. I look and feel nine years old, but I remember fifty years more than that.”

He nodded. “Fifty-two years more than that. So you aren’t immortal.”

I shrugged. “Maybe I am now. I have a little sister who met Vikings.”

My stepfather raised his pole and cast the lure back out into the water. “How do you become immortal?”

I offered him a banana.

He asked, “It’s small. What’s this for?”

I said, “Eating. Unless you go to heaven or hell, if you eat that you will go to a place where there are piers, bayous, and fishing. That’s the best deal I can offer.”

He asked, “How do you make a deal like that?”

I said, “Last time we met, I was just a normal Goblin boy. The sort you see on the street and never notice or that hides in the shadows under your bed when you are little. Now, I’m a king of Fairy. I still can’t do much while sitting here on the pier, but in Fairy, I do alright.”

He said, “You kidding me?”

I said, “The banana is pretty good. Try it.”

He peeled it and tried it. “It is good. Phil, I don’t mean to bring you down, but I will be seeing the other side pretty soon. No chance of Heaven, not by any measure I can make.”

I asked, “Have you seen a doctor?”

He said, “I have managed to stay out of debt and would rather die that way. A man who ran a backhoe and tractor all his life can’t afford to die in a hospital if he wants to stay out of debt.”

I nodded. “I have money. More than enough.”

He said, “Can’t take your money. I was no good to you. Wouldn’t be right. You already gave me some fish and a banana, that’s more than I ever gave you.”

He pulled back his pole and started reeling in. He was busy pulling in a pretty nice catfish, so I took the moment to disappear.

#

I was summoned by Hey Guy. “King Snipsnort, this is The Guy In Charge of Awesome. Where are you right now?”

I said, “In a junkyard in Real.”

Hey Guy asked, “Is it one of those places with steel everywhere?”

I said, “That would be every junkyard in Real.”

He asked, “Can’t you find some place more fun?”

I said, “It is fun. I have a huge crane with a magnet. I just wanted to study how it worked and use it one more time before I gave it back.”

“Who are you giving it back to?”

“That’s complicated, but I was given a lot of stuff in Real, mostly junkyards and heavy equipment and I want to give it all back.”

Hey Guy said, “First thing you’ve said that made sense. Get rid of all that iron.”

He disconnected. I started clearing up the bits that had dropped from my last move and then I put the arm where it would be stable and shut down the crane. I waved to the watchman at the gate and he waved back. The gate slid back, and I got into my car and drove it out of the junkyard.

I startled as a Goblin looked back at me in the rearview mirror. I hadn’t notice him when I got into the car.

He asked, “You a wizard? Keep driving. I don’t think you can throw a spell while driving.”

I kept driving.

He said, “I heard from someone who heard from someone that you don’t age. Since you got the round ears, you’re not a Goblin. Since you got no issue with iron, you’re no Fairy and a Daemon would be a lot better looking. You have to be a wizard.

“Here’s the thing. I’m a Goblin. I can spy on folk, and I can get around easy. If you’re a wizard, you can summon something and have it gift me. I dropped out of the human world when I was in fourth grade, so I want gifting of everything I missed.

“I know, you’re thinking ‘Just go haunt a school and learn. It’ll just take a few years.’ Problem is, we Goblins have a soft spot for children with parents who don’t love them. So I have to stay away from schools, or kids are gonna start disappearing. I can’t afford to support a bunch of kids who are just getting over their previous parents, so school isn’t an option.”

I nodded. “Sadly, I know exactly how you feel. I never made it past second grade so you got two years on me.”

We went by a streetlight, and he got a good look at my face. “You’re that box drummer from the first night of the festival. How come your ears are round?”

I pulled over to the side of the road. “I got surgery on the ears. Sorry to call this short, but I don’t plan to drive all night. You can get out here.”

He stabbed me through the seat.

#

I’d been on edge so I was at the seven-way crossroads in Snipsnort before he managed to move the blade around. I changed into me uninjured and sped up Snipsnort.

I was standing in a raised area in the middle of a seven-way crossroads. Sitting with their backs to me were a pair of girls who looked college aged. They didn’t seem to have noticed me.

The taller girl asked, “Do you think King Snipsnort really comes here?”

The other girl pointed to one of the statues around the intersection. “If he does, it’s to gawk at the statues, and if that’s his type, we’re out of luck.”

The taller girl said, “They say he’s about to hit puberty. Boys that age aren’t really picky. They say he isn’t that good looking, so I think our odds are pretty good. If he weren’t king, we would be out of his league.”

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I was beginning to feel the injury despite being transformed. I didn’t have a chance to see the injury. I knew my Goblin family avoided other Goblins, I’d just learned a painful lesson as to why.

#

I went to Anabranch, my Bayou Fairyland. I slipped into shadow just in case I had gotten an infection. I didn’t feel like there was any poison, so I was probably going to be okay.

At the pier we sat at, Swampy landed beside me and looked up. “You know there is a gateway to a Fairyland set up for medicine in the Fairyland you didn’t name Rougarou.”

I felt my back. “I’ve gotten more than enough gifts from mysterious sources. If you think about it, and they want to keep our connections hard to track, they need to stop giving me stuff.”

Swampy said, “The Efreets have a team of prognosticators trying to influence the future and make sure you don’t have one. Odds are slim to nothing you won’t live long if you don’t have a Fairyland you can go to when you get hurt.

“As far as I can tell, the Efreets know you’re out there, but so far, they don’t know who you are. When that changes, we can expect attacks to aimed better. Before that happens, we need Hubert brought up to full strength. I can’t do this all on my own. So you know what you have to do.”

I shook my head. “I don’t really.”

She ran to the pier and sat down and started stirring the water with her bamboo pole. She stared into the water. “Oh, no. It was bad enough that you were overgifted and went into lala land from too much unsorted knowledge. Now your mind is turning to mush for another reason. Phil, you can expect to start noticing girls soon.

“’Til then, while you’re still able to think, let me explain what you need to do. First off, make a lot of stuff that’ll resonate for Hubert. Whenever you have a chance, make more of your sculptures, kitchen appliances, and heavy machinery. It doesn’t have to work, so go wild and just do it.

“Then we need you to man up, claim Rougarou, and find your hospital Fairyland.”

I waved to Swampy and went to the Fairyland that was at one time Dogsbane and more recently Fairy Dynamics LTD.

#

I was in a courtyard in the middle of a small castle. Growing in the planters were mushrooms.

A lady Fairy, with long charcoal-colored wings like a moth that had been in a fight, was standing at a reception stand like she was about to take my reservation.

She curtsied. “Long live King Snipsnort.”

I said, “Thou dust not have to do that, I am not king here.”

She gave me a smile. “Let a girl have her dreams. How can I serve thee, great king?”

I asked, “Your dreams?”

She said, “Someday I might get married you know.”

I gave her a confused look.

She smiled at me and fluttered her eyes. “Thou must know that there is a tradition that lets a king bed a newly wed girl.”

I said, “I’m, like, biologically nine years old, and I am pretty sure thou art making that up.”

She fluttered her eyes again. “Call it what you will ‘jus primae noctis, droit du seigneur, droit de jambage or droit de cuissage.’ It is a fine tradition in Fairy and a girl always dreams about having a perfect wedding.”

I gave her a blank look, and she winked at me.

Another female Fairy came up to the reception stand and said, “King Snipsnort, please come this way.”

The Fairy receptionist in gray asked, “Where art thou taking our liege?”

I said, “Not thy liege,” as the new girl said, “His doctor.”

I followed the new Fairy as the Fairy in gray said, “Oh, playing doctor. Why didn’t I think of that?”

The girl leading me said, “I don’t think you have to worry about that first night stuff. As far as I can tell, some of the druids took advantage of it, and the kings that tried to went down in history as colossal jerks. Even if it is traditional in Fairy, you don’t have to go to the wedding, and you don’t have to insist on your ‘rights.’”

She led me to a tower in the middle of a small market area. An old lady Fairy in front of the tower was selling bottles of snake oil.

The old lady looked at me and said, “Thou art a lively looking lad, dust thou wish to test our wonderful elixir?”

She took out a spoon and wiped it on her apron before opening a bottle of snake oil and pouring some of the thick black syrup into the spoon. The syrup bubbled and puffs of green smoke rose from it. I looked closely at it and it wasn’t poisonous. It smelled like licorice.

She held the spoon out to me with a hand under it to catch the drips that were coming down from the spoon. “This will make all thy injuries disappear.”

I winced and looked around. All the Fairies in the small market were watching me. Since it wasn’t poisonous, I let her shove the spoon in my mouth and gagged a bit as I got the syrup in my mouth. Not the worst thing ever but odd and too sweet.

She said, “It will make all thy problems disappear, or maybe make thee disappear.”

She picked up the table and disappeared. The girl that led me to this market was gone when I looked for her. Then I felt it. I was connected to a new Fairyland. I looked at the crowd and then I went to the new Fairyland.

#

The old lady Fairy and the younger one were both dressed in green scrubs. The old lady had a large wooden popsicle stick. The younger one had a metal stick with a light on it. She stuck it in my ear and looked through it.

The old lady came at me with the popsicle stick and said, “Say ‘Ahhhh.’”

I winced.

She said, “Open wide.”

I opened my mouth, and she looked down my throat with a flashlight. “Some dental hygiene would be good. Have you been taught to brush your—Oh, woof, apparently not.”

She backed up and handed me a mint in a clear wrapper.

The young girl put a thing around my arm. It began inflating and cutting off the blood circulation.

The old lady pointed to a poster with letters on the wall and said, “Start reading the letters from the ninth line down.

I shifted the mint in my mouth so I could talk and read the letters as the younger girl put her freezing cold stethoscope against my bare skin and looked at her watch.

A little girl in a cute little doctor outfit came in and smiled at me. She read from a clipboard. “Stab wound in his twenty-third from primary form. Stomachache in his twenty-eighth and a tick on his primary owl form. He has not developed multiple form as an owl, rook, otter, or rooster.

“The stab wound is above his kidneys, but the parietal pleura was punctured. The patient comes from a line of Goblins with slow regenerative capabilities, and he shows healing across transformations.

“King Snipsnort, art thou currently taking any medications?”

I said, “Some aging pills.”

The little girl said, “Hmm. Can I see them?”

I said, “They are in a bottle in a backpack in another form.”

The young girl took the arm thing off of me and said, “Thou canst transform now.”

I changed into me with the backpack and pulled out a bottle of the aging pills.

The child doctor looked at the bottle and took notes. “Nurse, we need to order a nine year supply for King Snipsnort and a fifteen year supply for me. Go ahead and get twenty more bottles so we have them in stock.”

She took out a small rubber tomahawk looking hammer and hit me hard on the knee. “Did that hurt?”

I nodded and rubbed my knee.

The little girl said, “We will need to get someone to gift him with toughness. Canst thou turn into the owl with the tick?”

The old lady turned into a raven and leapt to the arm of a chair.

I turned into an owl. The raven plucked a tick off me and swallowed it.

The little girl doctor squealed and jumped. She returned to her normal composure. “Sorry, thy owl form is just too cute for words. Let me get ready and then thee canst turn into thyself with the stab wound.”

I asked, “What’s all of this going to cost?”

The little girl shouted, “May Bell, our patient needs to discuss payment options.”

A man wearing makeup came out from the same doorway the little girl’d come from and said, “Please follow me.”

I followed him to a small room with a computer and pictures of horrible mouth diseases on the walls. He gestured for me to sit and closed the door. I felt us shift to another Fairyland.

He went around, sat at his desk, and opened a folder. “Phil, you are trying to give things back to someone who wants to maintain some anonymity. That person gave you things that were not on the record as belonging to him and for his own reasons, needs for those possessions not to become linked to him. As a result, your taking and keeping said properties is more than convenient for that person.

“Additionally, it has become apparent that a functioning Fairy hospital without ties to that individual will aid him in his goals and may end up protecting a lot of his properties. Is all that understandable?”

I asked, “How does my having a Fairy hospital protect his properties?”

He drummed his fingers on the desk and stared at me for a moment. “By surviving, you increase the odds of the world not being destroyed. The individual concerned has a lot of property in the real world that has historic, artistic, and economic value. So, by preventing the world’s destruction, you help insure the continued value of this individual’s property.

“Additionally, the Fairyland that was previously known as Dogsbane, has the potential to become competition with ShadowFeet Holdings.”

I nodded. “And he doesn’t want competition?”

May Bell narrowed his eyes at me. “Where would the fun in that be? No, the only probable chance that the realm that was once Fairy Dynamics might become real competition would be if it is under your leadership. Don’t think you will ever be number one, but we want the competition and the competition will keep a lot of technically inclined Fairies from coming up with more destructive ideas. So we want you to keep stealing our technology and try to keep up with us.”

I asked, “Does this make any sense?”

May Bell said, “Look, idle Fairy hands do work the Devil fears. We need you to not only deal with the enemies of our world, but we need you to also keep some of the more creative Fairies occupied.

“Seriously, I am about to reincarnate and forget about all of this. I want to have a nice, long, and rewarding life, and right now, it is looking pretty unlikely. Unless you and a few others manage things well, I doubt I will survive long enough to see any of the wonders of the world.

“Now as far as billing goes, you are owed for treasures and worlds given and you have managed to hand over the next world the Efreet’s plan to move to and eventually have the inhabitants of that world destroy it, just as they are encouraging men to destroy this one. As a result, you have insured that this world is likely to be the last one they destroy. It is, of course, possible that you and others can prevent the destruction, but I have to admit the world is looking pretty grim right about now.

“So, it is unlikely that we will be able to pay back any fraction of what we owe you and will continue to owe you. I am afraid we will have to remain quite thoroughly in your debt. These Fairies are your vassals now, and they want to do the work you are allowing them to do. This is your Fairyland, and for your Fairies to have a productive and content existence, you need to give them ample opportunity to practice medicine.”

I nodded. He got up and opened the door for me. “Next time we meet, I won’t remember you, and hopefully, I will have lived an interesting and fulfilling life. Take care, King Snipsnort. My replacement will arrive in a couple of days. There is some gifting we need to take care of before she can take over.”

I walked back out, and the three girls gestured for me to get up on a padded and paper-covered table.

The young girl said, “Shirt off, back up. Put thy head here.”

I lay down with my face sticking through an opening.

The old lady said, “Sorry. We are going to need thee naked in the form that got the stab wound.”

I looked up and she was holding a towel to drape over my butt after I transformed.

I said, “How do I transform naked into a form that wasn’t naked?”

She said, “We may have to cut your shirt then.”

I said, “It has blood and a stab wound in it. I don’t think I mind thou cutting it.”

I looked at the little girl. She was sitting on a stool with her eyes closed. “What is she doing?”

The young girl said, “Preparing for psychic surgery. Please lie down and transform.”

I turned into me with the cut and felt blood soaking into my shirt. They were cutting the shirt, and my back shifted from hurting to itching.

After a few odd pangs, the little girl said, “Okay, you can sit up now.”

The young girl was wheeling a big light thing in with a small sink and drill-looking things.

The little girl closed her eyes and got close to my face with hers. She made an illusion of a set of teeth and a skull with transparent skin.

The three of them looked closely at it and then glanced at me.

The young girl started making an illusion of my face and shifting my jaw around. The illusions aged a bit and shifted back to young and then there were nine illusions of my face shifting between ages.

The old lady pointed to one. “That is thee without intervention. See how thou age with thy teeth shaping your face and how they will cause issues as new teeth come in.”

She pointed to the one beside it. “This will be how thou wouldst look with some basic work to prevent issues. If thou could find a normal doctor who knew Goblin physiology, this would be thou with basic surgery and no further care.”

“This one is thee with care and braces if a talented orthodontist without any psychic or mystic powers gave thou full care. The other five are the faces thou couldst have if we made a few modifications. As thou canst see, with the raw materials thou bring, thou couldst be quite handsome.”

The little girl pointed at one and said, “That one.”

The young girl said, “I like this one better.”

The old lady said, “No, this one. Thine choice is more handsome but has a stalker look, and the square jaw looks a bit too obviously heroic.”

The little girl pointed at the old lady’s favorite and shook her head. “Fat cheeks and dimples. Everyone is going to want to pinch them.”

I looked and pointed to the one that looked the least like a bully’s sidekick.

They all winced in unison.

The old lady said, “That one is going to hurt for a while. No way around it. I liked it best, but it almost seems cruel.”

I kept pointing at it, and then I looked over all the illusions and said, “I’d prefer to keep some options, but if I’m going to choose, it is this one.”

The young girl gestured to a dental chair and picked up a rubber mask.

#

I woke up in a bed. I was wearing a thin garment, and there was a metal thing in my mouth and connected around my head. It was uncomfortable but the pain was not bad. The young girl came over with the rubber mask and showed me an image of myself with a backpack.

She held the mask near my face. “Since thou want a few other appearances, we can give thee all of them in different forms, but thou willst have to transform to the other copies of thee that hast not undergone surgery. If thou want this form fixed, please nod and then turn into it.”

I nodded and transformed. The metal thing stayed with me, and the pain was unbearable as it shaped my face. She put the mask on me, and thankfully, I went to sleep.

I woke up and she smiled at me. “Art thou ready for the next form?”

I tried to talk and then I used Fairy speech. “I need to eat between transformations or I get sick.”

She pointed to a clear bag with a tube running to my arm. “It has a silver needle so it will stay in thee. Please go to thy next form.”

#

They were talking as I started to come awake.

The old one said, “Fairy kings are stubborn things. I would have given up from the pain after the second form.”

The young one said, “A year ago, he probably wouldn’t have taken the pain. Now, with three girls present he probably felt he had to.”

The little one said, “Thou art the only one of us that counts. I’m too young and Aren is too old.”

I started to get up. The young girl came over with a mirror. The face in the mirror was like a better looking brother. It wasn’t me. I didn’t really like looking like him, but then I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my face. I had multiple faces in other forms. I changed into them, regretting having agreed to the changes. I only looked like me in six forms of me. It didn’t really bother me. It was only as bad as not getting ice cream when all your brothers had ice cream. It wasn’t the end of the world, and I didn’t think it would bother me long.

I am who I am, and changed, I am who I am. It isn’t really a lie unless someone married me and wanted children that might look like me, but then, natural-born Goblins are rare. A couple could be married for a hundred years and not have a child. At least that was what the stories said. It made sense. If you live fifty times as long, you don’t want to have too many children. The story was that we were crafted by Elves in another world so we could take care of their horrible children.

There was another story that the Elves sculpted their own bodies and faces so that few resembled their original form. But the story also said that after sculpting their forms, their children would then resemble children of the changed form. I didn’t think that would be true for me.

I looked up at her and asked, “Do you think I could have one of me with the basic orthodontic work and pointed ears?”

She lifted the rubber mask and smiled.