In Anabranch, I sat on a pier beside Swampy and stirred the water with my bare feet.
Swampy said, “You had a moment in Lisbon where you went strange. Things shift when you go strange. The future gets strange and little holds together. Next time you go strange, visit me as soon as it stops. I want to see what the destinies are before everyone else adjusts things. I may be able to see what could be without what everyone else is trying to make it be. It might give us options we would never see otherwise.”
I asked, “Do you think I will go strange again?”
Swampy nodded. “There is a chance that when you appear others will someday scream, ‘Daft,’ and flee. Then others will come and you may have to flee. I am as scared of the others as I am the daft.”
I asked, “What is a Daft Fairy?”
Swampy looked at the water for a while. “You have heard that the world is an illusion. Imagine that the world is a lot of illusions. If you take one away and replace it you might see things differently. My vision is like that. I see what could be as the light shifts through ripples on the water.
“I focus on a view, and it becomes more likely. I talk you into doing something, and the chances are that the world will end up the way I saw it ending up. If you take more than a few of the illusions away, you might not see things the way others do. You might just see past enough of the illusions to get part of the joke.
“That’s being daft. In the ripples, I see a girl walking up a path and looking down at the valley below. She turns and holds her little finger out looking down at the valley below while laughing. Then she picks up a small pretty stone from the path and holds it out between her fingers and places it in the valley below. Now there is a giant beautiful bolder that has made a small lake in the path of the river and water cascades down from the bolder. Then she runs down the path to go see the boulder that a moment ago was a pebble in her hand. That’s being daft.”
I squinted at the water to try and see what she was seeing. “I thought destiny was all about order. I mean, seeing it sounds like wispy woo-woo but you generally give me solid information. What about Biblical prophets?”
Swampy said, “Their prophecies killed people. Putting order on the universe may be the sort of woo-woo you mean. Just because our perceived world says order rules, that doesn’t mean that our perception is the real one. Maybe that is why the daft are so dangerous. Maybe they return the universe to how it is supposed to be. Just because something makes no sense to you and me, doesn’t mean it isn’t right.”
I shook my head. “Even though I travel in Fairy and Shadow and do things mortals never dream of, I still have to fix breakfast or we are going to stay hungry. I still have to pee after I wake up. If perception of reality means we live in different realities, there has to be some common ground.”
#
At The Met, I decided to purchase a membership so I could visit and maybe get the Goblins to give me some slack. There was a range of donation levels, and they mail you your cards so I summoned my contact in New Jersey.
“Pardon me, sir, while I get my mask and gloves on.”
I said, “All I need to get is an address for the Met to send me membership cards.”
“Sir, you have a membership. It is under the name of a trust, but you have a card. It should be in your desk, sir.”
#
Standing in front of the painting of Velasquez, Juan de Pareja, I wondered if I would ever be able to create art like that. A lot of the paintings I’d passed were great, but I thought I could do as well. This painting was a step above all of that. In an odd impulse, maybe because the trustworthiness of the man in the painting, I decided to see if Juan de Pareja would like to see the painting.
I went out side and started a summons, “Juan de Pareja. Phil, the kid you met at the Prado, summons thee.”
Enzo answered the summons.
“Hello, Phil, I was just wondering about you earlier today. Are you a wizard?”
I said, “Not sure what I am. In any case, I’m in New York looking at what may be the greatest painting that was ever made. My membership card lets me bring guests, so on impulse, I decided to see if you wanted to look at a picture of you that was painted long ago.”
Enzo said, “I would love to but for two small things. I have no way back to Madrid, and it is unwise to appear before images of yourself. People tend to suspect things.”
I said, “I can get you back to Madrid. After all this time, no one will think you’re anything but a look-alike. You would be more suspicious if tried to hide the resemblance.”
He said, “I would love to come see it then. Can you really get back and forth between Madrid and New York?”
I said, “Come on through. I’ll get you home when you are ready to leave. Better yet, bring me through to where you are so I can take you right back to where you are.”
#
In a room filled with printers and computers, Enzo was standing by an art station with a large drawing pad. I slid a gateway to the floor and opened it. I arranged another gateway and led Enzo into New York.
#
Standing in front of the painting, Enzo started to cry. I gave him a towel and he laughed.
#
In a less busy area, Enzo said, “Daemons play horrible games to pass the time and seem brave. I lost a bet and as punishment, I had to be a slave for a period of time. Velasquez freed me. He was a great man and a great artist. Let’s go back and look at the painting. I will try not to cry this time.”
#
Out on the streets of New York, I bought Enzo a couple of hot dogs, and we sat and watched the crowd go by.
Enzo gestured to a statue. “I am told you do sculpture. Have you made one of Olivia?”
I nodded.
Enzo asked, “When you see her next, can you ask if she would pose for me?”
I smiled. “I will but I can’t guess what she will decide. Anything else you want before we take you back?”
Enzo said, “I would love to do a bit of shopping, but don’t have any American money.”
I shrugged, “I’ll buy. I can afford to be generous.”
He decided on a New York Police Department sweatshirt as his souvenir for New York. It wasn’t expensive.
#
Sometimes church is cheerful. Sometimes church can be rough. This was one of the rough times.
The sermon was about how your soul shrinks every time you decide not to help someone. I found myself close to tears. The old man I sat with clearly agreed with the lesson, but he wasn’t crying. I suspect he gave everything he could afford to.
My wealth wasn’t really my own, but I gave it whenever it was convenient to give anyway. Just like the sermon described, I thought, “I can’t save everyone.” As soon as the old man and I parted ways on our walk, I took myself to Fairy so I wouldn’t have to talk with Deacon Dan while I was on the edge of tears.
#
An old man sat beside me inside the circle where seven roads joined under a dome supported by columns.
I asked, “How many years does it take to become an old man in Fairy?”
He said, “We wear the face we earn. I have been an old man for several thousand years. I don’t mind. I’m still spry and folk let me rest when I want to.”
I asked, “If you were the King of Snipsnort, what would you do?”
He said, “Probably ruin things. Offend everyone. Make changes to things that are working pretty well as they are. It’s hard to say, really. If I were the king’s adviser, that would be great. Nothing would be my fault, and I could still watch all the dancing virgins slowly take off their clothing to music.”
I asked, “Does that really happen?”
He said, “If you were king, wouldn’t you make that happen? I bet all the pretty Fairies are lured into his palace. I mean no disrespect to our great and mighty lord, but there is a reason they call him Kink Snipsnort.”
I smiled. “He has a terrible reputation?”
The man nodded. “Yes but he keeps the carts on time. What with fixing the roads and all.”
#
In the kitchen with Hubert and Anthony, I asked, “Did you know I am kinky Hitler?”
Anthony said, “Well, you could have a worse reputation.”
I thought about it and wondered how it could be worse. Nero, maybe. Caligula, perhaps. I shook my head. “No I can’t imagine a worse reputation.”
Hubert said, “You should probably do a few more charitable acts.”
I asked, “How do we take care of the poor?”
Anthony stood. “It has been said that the poor will always be with us. Take that as meaning the selfish rich will always be in charge. You may be one of the few that is doing what has a chance of helping the poor. Taking the evil spirits out of the wealthy sounds like the best plan yet. Reform has to start at the top, and it almost never does.”
#
Jeremy called. “I should be back in the states by next Sunday, so I look forward to playing music with you Sunday afternoon.”
I said, “We don’t really play with each other. Since we both do percussion, we play around each other. It’s still fun.”
Jeremy said, “I saw a pair of percussionists playing an instrument together, so I was stupid and had it sent to me. We could have built one easy, but this one is authentic. We’re in Biarritz right now, Noa is selling her place, and my uncle wanted me there to send him pictures and answer questions about some of the art she is selling.”
I asked, “Does she need money?”
Jeremy replied, “Heavens, no, but she doesn’t surf anymore, and she never gets out to that house, so she is just selling while she thinks the market is good. Sad, though, Biarritz is beautiful.”
#
In Snipsnort there was a place with white mountains in the distance, an area where the stone had been cleared down to a foundation, and a thin tower with a stair on the outside had a waterfall coming down from the top to a clear moss-lined stone pool below. A zigzag road carved in the stone led up to the bare area and there was a stairway shortcut up the center. Along the road were huge white stone blocks with crystal veins in them.
I flew over the carved-out area they were calling castle Brightstone and imagined the rest of the nobles maneuvering through all the stone blocks and throwing eggs at each other. This was definitely the right place to have the Fairy nobles play their roughest games. I wasn’t sure it would be a good place for a castle. The stone blocks were pretty, though.
#
In one of the lost manor houses, I discovered the reason it was considered lost. The town had suffered through a fire years ago and as an emergency measure they had moved into the manor house. For over a hundred years, they had been continuing to use it and now it had grown and become one with the town. I had no need for it and I liked the town, so I walked out the front gate without anyone knowing I was the king.
#
The other lost manor house was smaller, but it had a stable. It was being used as a pub of sorts, and I was politely told it would not be proper for a child my age to go in there. Again, I walked away and decided it would be easier to build something new than to clean the place up, and I didn’t want the grief of arguing over it and evicting people.
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#
My palace was a finished property, and it was being cared for like it was really a palace. It was also an over-sized bunker, mostly open and absolutely solid. It looked like someone saw a modern concrete structure that was impressive but had no soul and decided to make it out of stone.
The best I could say about it was that it would probably stand the test of time. The staff area looked comfortable, but it also looked like a bunker. If I had rough guests and expected a fight, this was the perfect palace. Looking up at the overly large stones on columns as thick as the room between them, I was tempted to start adding graffiti. This had the grand look and feel of the structure under a major city intersection where highways and interstates merged, crossed, and looped around.
I laughed because this was the sort of place where you might meet Goblins in real life, apart from the one that might be under your bed or hiding in your closet.
I didn’t really need a house, mansion, manor, or palace, and one castle was good enough, but after seeing a few grand buildings in Casablanca, Lisbon, and Madrid, I might like to make something like that. I decided that I should visit more of Europe first and maybe a few other places.
Fortunately, I was well equipped to travel the world, and I didn’t have anything else on my schedule. I considered travel and thought about what instrument to take with me. Not that I had to choose. I hadn’t yet tested the instrument from the Djinn’s world. I had exposed myself to toxic dust in the form I had been in and had been holding the instrument.
#
The world of death seemed like it ate the toxic dust, so I went there and turned into myself with the instrument. It ate the toxic dust. I had a way to decontaminate. It was a weird way, but it worked like a charm.
I took myself to a transport Fairyland so as not to have the mood of the strange, and in its own way, toxic world of death influence the music. Holding the instrument from the Djinn’s world, I realized this was a unique thing so I sat down with it and closed my eyes. I examined the instrument. Simple, clean construction. Nothing terribly fancy. Some spots inside were carved out. There was a shaker with seeds inside. I rocked the instrument, and it made a sound like a rainmaker. The red veins in the wood were natural. The yellow was the result of chemical treatment.
Having memorized the pa-ad, I was ready to make another. I changed forms to protect it and then thought better of that.
#
In my protective suit, I carried the wooden seedpod-like instrument and put it back where I took it from and froze it in time. I returned to the world of death to decontaminate my suit, then I went to my transport Fairyland and took a gateway to Realmsedge where Farren the Younger was cooking.
I looked out at the cove and saw a fishing boat coming in from the sea outside the cove.
There was chorus of “Long live King Snipsnort!” and without looking I waved my hand and said, “Please rise.” I was beginning to get casual about it. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing, so I said, “And I thank thee for thy good wishes and wish the same for each of thee.”
They seemed rather pleased, so I decided to use that reply on a regular basis.
Faren put a plate on the counter. He’d served a different fish before.
I looked up at him and he nodded. “Your majesty, since you opened the cove back up we are getting a broader range of fish. This is one of our favorites.
I sat and ate and decided that life was good, and the afterlife might be just as pleasant.
#
I walked past the spot where Swampy was sitting and stirring the water with a length of bamboo.
As I passed, her she shouted, “Whatever you are about to do, don’t do it.”
I asked, “Sit on the pier?”
She said, “You are about to make something. Don’t. Later, much later maybe, but whatever you are about to make will bring attention we don’t want. The beings that possess know that something is up. They do not share their secrets readily, but they conspire with each other and meetings have been missed.” She beckoned to me. “Come sit beside me.”
I sat and stirred the water with my feet. I decided not to make a copy of the pa-ad. Swampy poked at ripples with her pole. It was pleasant, with a light wind making ripples of its own. I was distracted by Swampy’s tiny figure as she made ripples so I kept my eyes on the ripples.
I got sleepy and sort of crossed my eyes and saw layers of shadow on the weeds, rocks and sand below the water. The shadows crossed in an intricate pattern, and I found myself almost snoozing off. I saw an opening in the shadows and a voice cried, “Got a new one!”
Three Goblin girls were sitting and watching a turned off old-time TV from back when they were still big and like a cabinet.
There was a tape deck for playing video tapes connected, but there was no power to it. Ripples of shadow from the bayou above were dancing across the lumpy half-shag rug half-bed that the girls were sitting on. The TV was on with ripples running across the screen. Maybe that was what they were watching.
One of the girls pushed her chair back. It was more like she pushed part of the couch she was on back, and it became a chair except it was part of the floor, and maybe the ground and furniture were all part of the back of an animal, and we were all small, except the TV would have to be small, too.
The girl pulled me down to sit on the couch her chair became, and we were on a couch behind the couch the other two girls where on.
She whispered. “I’ve seen this part a hundred times, so I’ll fill you in. Are you a fan of K-dramas?”
I shook my head. “I don’t watch TV.”
She laughed. “These aren’t on TV. This is one of my favorites. The Dong sisters wrote it.”
I asked, “The Dong sisters? Who are they?”
“They aren’t in Real, nothing real has to be Real, it only has to matter and if you love it, it matters. We love this show. Let me fill you in, it’s all subtitled and the English name is ‘Off Pitch.’”
She pointed to the screen with the waves of shadow crossing it. “There he is. That’s the main character. I could die, he is so handsome. Anyway, he’s a failed music director. Ghosts show up and sing off pitch and ruin everything for him, so he writes and adapts music for others. He wears headphones when he does music so the ghosts can’t mess with him. He never admits he can see ghosts.”
I looked at the screen and almost saw two Asian faces in the lines of shadows. I looked back at the girl beside me and noticed she had nice legs. She touched my chin and pointed my head back to the screen. “Stay unfocused or it all goes away.
“So the music director has a twin brother who was a prosecuting attorney who also saw ghosts and was just killed. He runs to his director brother and tells him he died and the director goes to see if his brother can be saved and at the scene he can’t get in because there are police but then one of them mistakes him for his brother and lets him in and when he sees the body, he drops the baton he always carries and it rolls where it is hidden right by the body and a detective notices it and they turn the head and look at the director and the baton and now they think the director is the dead one and that the living one is the prosecutor.
“He has no way to explain the baton and doesn’t want it to look like he did it and he wasn’t the twin with the cool head and now his twin is yelling at him and he sort of collapses in place and the police take him out of the room.”
I lay back on the fur couch sort of thing and shut my eyes as she continued.
“The two brother are jealous of each other and there is a general ghost that keeps them from arguing by saying their mother would come back and scold them if they argued.
“It turns out the reason the prosecuting attorney is so mad at the music director is that the general who was their mother’s spirit contact decided to go with the music director and not him.
“The general said, ‘What the nation needs is inspiration and not an eye for an eye making everyone blind.’
“The attorney would occasionally brag or let leak his powers. The director never did. A lot of their story is revealed by flashbacks.
“In high school, the attorney guy before he was an attorney bragged to a girl and showed off that he knew more than he could normally know.
“The girl talked to the director-to-be and said, ‘Your brother is creepy. He acts like he knows things.’
“The general standing behind the director-to-be, nodded in agreement, and looked over at the attorney-to-be.”
I fell asleep and I was in the ripples. A pair of winged Fairies were riding on grass blowing in the wind and looking down at the ripples I was in. They had large brimmed hats that were flopping about in the wind.
The one in the red hat said, “Alien radiation is the only explanation.”
The one in the green hat said, “I’m not saying it’s aliens.” Then he nodded to me like he was.
#
I woke up with my head in Swampy’s lap. Swampy smiled down at me. “We don’t have time for this. Stir the water.”
I sat up, embarrassed, and kicked the water with my feet. Wet feet made my need to pee worse.
Swampy said, “So much revealed, keep kicking make it splash.”
I splashed water. Not an ideal thing to do with a full bladder.
She looked down and then slid off the pier and into the water. I noticed she was full sized as I slid into shadow and into the woods where I could take care of business.
#
On the pier, I sat beside Swampy. She was taller than me.
She pointed at the ripples. “You went daft for a bit. I had a chance to see things without interference. What do you call the ones that possess people?”
I said, “Translated from their language: ‘The Spirits of Oppression.’ They consider it a compliment. I guess we should call them Oppressors.”
She pointed to the ripples. “There, the pattern has been set. They will be seeking you now. We must let them find you, but not as you. Sorry if I am being cryptic, but now I know why oracles are cryptic. We have enemies we don’t want to know that we know what we know.
“Go to New York City and look for Oppressors. They will find you soon, and they will bring a bone to you.”
I looked at her. She was part-gossamer and part-real, and I was very aware that I was close to a beautiful woman. I went to my transport Fairylands and went to New York City.
In Central Park, I sat at a bench and started looking up where the rich people in New York stayed. Tall buildings around the south end of Central park was the general consensus of a few articles on the web. Some of the buildings were described as empty, so it seemed my search might be complicated.
I felt a pair of them. I looked and five men were jogging. Two of them slowed down, and the other three slowed down with them. I met eyes with the two that slowed down. They were Oppressors. I wondered how I appeared to them.
In the Oppressor’s language, the older one said, “It is my turn.”
The younger one said, “Both of these bodies are too valuable to just leave, and they are not well enough trained to be left.”
The older one said, “Stay near and watch him. Don’t claim him but keep him from others. I will go and drug this body so I can come and we can claim him.”
The younger one said, “If I can resist. I will agree, but this one is tempting.”
The older man approached me with a look similar to greed on his face. “Young man, have we met before?”
I said, “I haven’t spent much time in New York, so it is unlikely.”
He smiled. “Would you like to go to a party?”
I wanted to learn more, and I didn’t understand why they were talking and not attacking like the ones before. I felt that any child my age would know to run from this creepy guy though. I decided to see what they would do, so I let the horror on my face show as I stood on the park bench and jumped behind it.
He made a gesture, and the men with him started to come around the bench. I took off running. I was in great shape, but they were all athletic adults, and I had a nine year old’s physique. I didn’t want to escape, but I didn’t want to be caught. I had not thought this through. Running to an open area with lots of people in it seemed like the best choice.
I didn’t look back. I felt the two of them behind me. I nearly made it to a clearing when I felt another presence in front of me. An attractive lady, flanked two men who were clearly bodyguards, was looking at me as I ran.
She smiled at me and gestured to her guards. “Keep them from bothering the boy.”
She shouted to me, “Follow me, you’ll be safe.”
I was quite certain that she was lying, but I followed her as she led me down a well traveled path.
I felt another presence. It was like a convention here. I wanted to turn into a rooster and deal with them all. I followed her. She was talking on her cell phone, but I could not make out the conversation.
We got to the sidewalk by the road, and I felt another presence moving fast. The first two were farther back but still close. A dark thing crossed the road and came for me. I was trapped. I could fight them, destroy them, but I’d reveal myself in any case.
Tires squealed and the shape went high and backed away. A man stepped out of the car. He was the presence I’d felt on the road. I looked up at the dark thing. It had a presence but it was not like the others. It was more like a ghost.
The woman took my arm. “Quickly.”
I ran with her through traffic. I was ready to drop into shadow under the cars if anything happened. We made it across. We ran to a building and past a pair of men at the entry. The man from the road came in, followed by the two jogging men.
We were in an elevator, and the door was closing as the man from the road put his foot in the way of the elevator door and it opened. He got in. I started to run out, but I was grabbed. The two jogging men came into the elevator and the door closed.
I looked up at the woman and without moving a muscle in her face, she asked in their ancient language, “How are we going to decide this one?”
The man from the road said, “Legion?”
The older of the two joggers said, “I am willing to accept the challenge.”
I didn’t have any trouble acting nervous as we entered the lady’s apartment.
The lady said to a woman who was waiting inside the apartment, “Quickly, get all of the staff out of here. Everyone has the rest of the day off.”
The woman gave me a nervous, guilty look as she ran out of the room. I was led with little chance of mundane escape into another room with large paintings on the walls. All of it modern.
At the door, the woman looked back. “I won’t take the challenge, but I want more than the normal exchange for this one.” She stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her.
I asked, “What are you doing?”
The younger jogger said, “No one is going to harm a hair on your head. Don’t worry, you are too precious for that.”
The man from the road turned a ring on his finger as he looked at me. The ring he spun was brownish-yellow and didn’t look valuable. It seemed out of place. He met my gaze and put his hand out and lay it against the back of my neck. The gesture was more than a little strange.
The door opened and the lady came back in. “The staff is gone. We are alone.”
The man with the ring asked in the ancient language, “Do we fight for control, or do we attack each other and take what we can?”
The older jogger asked the woman, “Can I get a sedative? The body I am in is not yet trained.”
The man from the road adjusted his hand on my neck and I felt it. The ring was bone, and I could learn the form. I slipped off a shoe and started to scream. Several of them smiled as if I was making it more fun. I turned into a giant rooster and continued the scream. Glass covering artwork shattered. I opened the gateway on my shoe wide and bound the spirits to my world of death while taking them there. I made them Fairies and closed the gateway.
Returning to a transport Fairyland, I went through another gateway to my shoe and put it on as I sped time for a moment in the world of death.
All of their bodies were lying on the ground. I sat beside the lady and closed my eyes. Her hearing was damaged. Apart from that and a lot of pain, she seemed okay. She was unconscious, but I put her to sleep and fixed her ears. Ear injuries are painful.
The two joggers were in similar shape. I got to the man with the ring and he was dead. Thinking back, there had been an extra Fairy, so the man he’d been was now gone as well.
I picked up the ring of bone and transformed.
I’d been impulsive. The advice I had been given on transformation said I needed to spend a day in the form to make sure I could control it perfectly. From my arms, I was a reasonably large man with the sort of muscles I always wished I’d have when I grew up. I was naked. Checking out the men with me, the younger jogger was big enough so I took off his clothing. I left him his underwear.
I dressed in his clothing, went to Anabranch, and sped time.
#
Swampy said, “Um, wow. I did not expect this. I think that’s a Daemon body. Phil, was that from the bone?”
I said, “First bone I felt I could change into. I hope it’s the right one, I don’t think I have a lot of forms remaining.”
Swampy nodded. “It may not be the right one, but it won’t be a waste. You need to see your reflection.”
I made a mirror. Oddly, this form didn’t bother me as much as the variations of myself did. It wasn’t me, but it didn’t have to be me. I started slow with the exercise. This body had instinctive balance. Swimming was the problem, all the muscles made it sink. It had no buoyancy. I spent the day as a Daemon and then slept.
#
Sitting beside Swampy, I kicked the water for her.
She looked at my reflection in the water and shook her head. “Phil, see how many versions of him you can be and then go shopping. He’s going to need a wardrobe.”
I considered shopping and then worried that some Daemon who knew this Daemon might see me. If someone came to me wearing the body of someone I cared for, I think it would bother me. If I knew they were dead, it would be a different kind of bother.