The glass walls of the office allowed us to see most of the factory, but the office had been designed years before the factory was filled with CNC machines. With the glass door closed, the noise was bearable without hearing protection, but we still had to shout at each other to be heard over the noise.
I shouted to Caerwyn, “Can you handle this if I disappear?”
Caerwyn shook his head. “If Mr. Miller is superstitious, an albino like me is the last person he’s going to want to see.”
I grabbed my hair with both hands and rocked my head. “He’s not superstitious. Don’t even say that. It makes people who know what I am sound stupid.”
Caerwin said, “I’m a Daemon. For me ‘superstitious’ is a nuanced word. Like the word, ‘Bro’ can mean affection, closeness, just a guy, talented, brilliant, or stupid, superstitions can mean aware, nervous, stupid, or believing nonsense. Not that I can name a lot of nonsense. No wait, palmistry is worthless. A good psychic doesn’t need a stupid crutch like looking at lines in hands. If a good palmist switches to using a real divination tool like the I Ching, they’re going to suddenly make a leap in accuracy and drop palmistry in an instant.”
I said, “Well, let me clarify this. Mr. Miller is Black. When you say superstitious in that context, you’re going to sound racist. It make him sound stupid when the truth is he knows so much more that most folk do. He senses things and he knows I am a Goblin. I’m trying to do him a favor, and if he knows I’m involved, everything will fall apart.”
Caerwin shouted over the noise, “This is Louisiana. A Black person has every reason to be suspicious of the melanin deficient. As an albino, I’m the last person he wants to meet. I’m so white I make white people nervous. If were a Black man, and nervous about the supernatural, an albino like me would be the last person I wanted to meet, superstitious or not. If he senses what I am, he will have twice the reason to get nervous.”
I shouted, “He’s not superstitious, he senses things and his wanting to avoid the supernatural is perfectly reasonable. Apart from your skin and rather impossible good looks, I don’t think he will have any reason to suspect you’re immortal and descended from the gods.”
Caerwyn yelled back, “None of my line were ever worshiped, apart from the natural physical attraction that comes with being so physically perfect. My family avoided the god thing.”
I begged him, “Please, Caerwyn. He was scared of me when I was just a swamp-dwelling Goblin, but he was kind enough to make me a cajon that’s still one of my most treasured possessions.”
Caerwyn laughed at me. “I’ve noticed that you’ll happily give someone a hundred pounds of gold, but you never let anyone near the wooden crate you sit and pound on. Why is this so important?”
I waved at the open expanse of the huge building I had taken over for my artwork and pointed to the CNC machines that were cutting out wooden panels. “Mr. Miller had the idea to combine tongue drums on the side panels of a cajon. Then he decided to look for a company that could do the CNC work to mass produce them, and when he asked around, he heard that my company used to do a lot of that sort of thing.
"When I heard about it, I was delighted to do it cheaply for him. Seriously, I own Mr. Miller big time. He was generous when I had nothing. I wanted to do him a favor and I knew we could do it right. If he finds out I’m a King of Fairy and filthy rich, he’ll probably run.”
Caerwyn put his finger to his lips, making a “Careful what you say,” gesture.
I turned, Jeremy was climbing up the stairs to the office.
I shouted, “Jeremy, Caerwyn and I have to go run an errand. If Mr. Miller shows up while we’re gone take care of him, show him around ,and don’t mention my name.”
Jeremy shouted, “Mr. Miller was just here but he said he had to run and left.”
I just sat and thought about it as Jeremy and Caerwyn talked. I didn’t pay any attention to what they said. I was too busy trying to figure out how to solve this.
I stood and hit the CNC production line emergency stop button. “Did Mr. Miller see me?”
Jeremy said, “I had just pointed you out and told him you were the owner.”
I sat back down. Jeremy didn’t know anything about Fairylands so I couldn’t include him in the conversation and I couldn’t explain Mr. Miller’s reaction. Jeremy was a fellow percussionist and a friend I had traveled with, but he was not up to speed on the supernatural.
I was scared that Mr. Miller would abandon his first attempt at a mass produced cajon. He hadn’t paid me yet, but now I was scared that he would refuse delivery and try to pay anyway.
A pair of workers came up the stairs.
One of them asked, “Why was the line shut down?”
I said, “I’m sorry. You can continue production. I was just nervous that there was going to be change in the plans.”
Caerwyn asked Jeremy, “Since you’re a percussionist, do you want to try out one of the new cajons?”
Jeremy looked around, “Are any assembled?”
Caerwyn got up and led him to the room we had soundproofed the week before. He sat on a cajon and started thumping a gentle beat. “We try to test them from each run. Phil likes them, but we want a second opinion.”
I was entertained by this since Caerwyn had been picking up my habit of thumping things and, from my point of view, was a pretty solid percussionist.
#
In the soundproofed room, Jeremy started playing on a cajon, and Caerwyn joined in on another.
I called and made sure we hadn’t been paid and we wouldn’t take any pay until a shipment was made. I was worried about Mr. Miller’s reaction. He’d only left a few minutes before. I shadow stepped and beat him to his house. Since he could detect me when I moved through shadows, I didn’t dare spy on him in person, so I stood in the garage he made cajons in and set up a gateway to Fairy. With the gateway well hidden and only receiving sound, I left, hoping I wasn’t going to make things worse by spying. I returned to my art studio. The production line was still off.
From the shadow I was hiding in, I listened for a moment before sliding back to my office and stepping out of shadow.
The crew leader said, “We’re ready to start cutting again. is everything okay?”
I gave him a thumbs-up and went to the soundproofed room to join Caerwyn and Jeremy.
They stopped playing when I entered.
Jeremy said, “Phil, we need a sink, microwave, and refrigerator in here.”
Caerwyn said, “Worst idea yet. It’s bad enough that we make loud noises in a sound proofed room with loud noise outside. If we have an enemy, he’s going to have the perfect opportunity to sneak up on you. By making it easy to stay here for hours, it gives your enemies a lot more time.”
Jeremy said, “Phil, I thought I was paranoid, but Caerwyn is way worse than me.”
Caerwyn asked, “Why are you paranoid?”
Jeremy winced. “Well, just between us, my uncle’s the only one in my family that I trust, and I wouldn’t dare to get between him and a work of art he really wanted. My sister was kidnapped when I was little, and she was never the same afterwards. When she found out the ransom money was taken out of the trust fund Grandfather set up for her, she started acting up, and I started examining my own family and decided they were all a bit off.
“Then a friend got kidnapped, and one of my father’s business partners got greedy. About the same time, I met an old friend whose family had gone bust after they were caught for tax evasion.”
I asked, “How do people lose everything to tax evasion? Are the penalties that high?”
Jeremy said, “They’re the only real penalties the rich face. We can avoid just about everything but that. Truth is that if you have to evade taxes in a risky manner, you’re probably going broke fast and are unable to stop spending money.
“That’s why I decided that it was a lot better to seem poor that it was to seem rich. I was going through my trust pretty fast, and the kids around me that were richer were spending more of my money than me. Funny how fast a rich kid can clear out and leave you holding the bill.
“While we are talking about money, my uncle still wants to meet you and discuss an art project. How do you feel about making a trip to Oslo?”
I shrugged. I knew Oslo was in Northern Europe, but apart from that, I couldn’t pretend to know anything about it or what language they spoke there.
#
Caerwyn and I were downstairs in his server room in his old mansion across from Hubert’s mansion in Louisiana looking up places to see in Oslo.
Caerwyn stopped talking in Swedish and switched to Norwegian, “I got you some 360 degree cameras. If you’re visiting Oslo, do a brother a favor and record everything you can.”
I nodded. “That might be easier. I have a better camera but getting anything but a still image off of it is a nightmare.”
Caerwyn said, “Not fair holding tech out from a brother. What sort of gear do you have?”
I asked, “How important is security in this room?”
Caerwyn said, “Since I moved my operation to Fairy, this is all a sandbox and trap. While it’s functional and real, it’s got internals watching. I want this place discovered but only by serious top end hackers.”
I asked, “I can give you top end, but it may be higher grade than you expect.”
Caerwyn shook his head. “Nothing here gives away anything I mind being given away.”
I transformed into myself with the artist’s bag Goldilocks had given me.
I unclipped the tripod from the bottom of the bag and showed him how it worked. Then I pointed to the small bumps on the tops of the legs and junctions.
“I was given this when I was doing watercolors in Portugal. Each of these bumps is a camera that records close to every photon that hits it and saves the angle and frequency. It goes way beyond visible and it records sound and direction at the same time. So far, I have managed to link it to an illusion to view and hear what was recorded and get an image off of it. It’s way advanced Fairy tech and not like any other I have seen. Most of the complex Fairy tech tries to avoid being complex enough for a Fairy to possess it and take it over. This thing is different. It partitions things and passes things back and forth between the partitions and does complex stuff I haven’t figured out yet. I can reproduce them, and they end up linking with each other, but I can’t make any sort of use of them.”
He picked up the bag. “Nice bag. Whoever made it understands universal and timeless grace. Are these cameras, too?”
I pulled out a black paint palette and opened it. “See the flat black paint job on the outside of this pallet? It’s a camera. Every flat black fitting in the bag is a camera. The rings on the backpack, too. All the cameras know the other cameras’ locations and positions. I don’t think it is transmitting anything, but if someone walks by with another camera like this, and their camera has the right handshake, all the data will be exchanged. I have altered the handshake, but these guys are clever. They may have a way around what I have done.”
Caerwyn said, “So we need to be careful what we say. How much does it know?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m the King of Snipsnort and I am apprenticed to Goldilocks and I can travel in shadows. It knows all of that. Since Goldilocks has one of these too, and I hadn’t changed the handshake yet, her tripod and backpack knows that, too. I mentioned it to Goldilocks. She didn’t seem to mind and I think she already knew.”
Caerwyn gave me a puzzled look. “Of all the people I can think of, I would think she would value privacy more than anyone. Can you—”
Caerwyn narrowed his eyes and picked up the paint palette. “A lot of science fiction has stories where people put on viewing devices but end up inside the web and possibly lost if the connections break. It makes for a good story, but unless you’re doing weird astral projection along the wires and having an out-of-body experience, it’s kind of silly.
“Back when computers were tiny, I tried it. I have a lot of gifting and experience in weird physics, so I figured it was worth a try. I had a little success early on, but now I think it’s close to impossible. As technology has tried to eliminate error, by trial and error they have built wards into the structures and mostly prevented that sort of thing.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“They just selected for designs that worked reliably but the end result is reliable warding. But this could be different, I’ll try and see if I can examine it from the inside. If I start shaking, slap me.”
Caerwyn squinted more and then relaxed. His face went limp-looking and his eyes unfocused. Still partially open but with a vacant look. He started to slump and then jolted to sitting straight. “Warded. No getting in. How do you reproduce these things?”
I picked up the palette and opened it. I looked at the watercolor paints in wells waiting to be wet and turned into images on paper. “Caerwyn, a Fairy overgifted me. We were in Fairy with time sped up so no one would be able to intervene. She taught me way too much too fast. I lost my mind for a while. I don’t remember a lot of it. I don’t think I was myself, and I don’t know how long I obeyed her or what I did. She taught me to copy things.”
I thought about the plate of fish, and my stomach went queasy.
Caerwyn made a worried expression and then a quizzical one. “What did you copy?”
I forced down the feeling of queasiness. “Odd things. Picture frames, anatomical parts, the same plate of fish over and over—”
I stopped talking. There was a vague memory of making intact corpses from bits of skin. The bodies were not in the small Fairyland I was in when I came to my senses. There were a lot of gross things there but no intact corpses. I shook my head.
Caerwyn looked away. “If it bothers you, you don’t have to talk about it. I was just curious. On another subject, what are your plans for visiting Oslow?”
I shrugged. “Plans occasionally work out in Fairy. You can make illusions of things and then prototypes in gossamer before committing to real materials. In Real, plans are fine, but if I’m going someplace I have never been, how can I possibly make a plan for what I want to see? If someone came to Louisiana and got a tour guide, all they would end up seeing would be a couple of charter boats, the French Quarter in New Orleans, and some Spanish moss hanging from a tree. You might get a few meals in and drinks in the expensive places, but you probably came for Mardi Gras, and you will leave with a few strings of beads and a glass with a ‘gator image stuck on the side and think those are good souvenirs.”
Caerwyn smiled at me. “Here we are in Baton Rouge, but I don’t get out much. If you find a good string of beads and a glass with a gator on the side, I’d love to have a few souvenirs.”
I gave Caerwyn a long look. “Are you sure you don’t want to see if Rodrigo can cure your albinism?”
Caerwyn closed his eyes. “Depends on how much nasty stuff he wants me to drink. Everyone thinks they have a cure and no one does. I can’t transform and so far, no one else can transform me. I guess it makes me safe in a way. I think my being albino is linked with that, so I don’t think a bunch of bitter herbs tossed in a blender is going to do anything but make me feel nauseous.”
I asked, “What was the worst?”
Caerwyn opened his eyes and looked up. “Leeches. Lots of leeches. The theory was that I had silver in my bloodstream and that prevented my change and it was making me pale. Apparently, arsenic can give you pale skin. This was a long time ago. I looked up silver recently and found out it can give you blue skin if you are badly enough poisoned by it. What’s Rodrigo’s theory?”
I shrugged. “Something about a disease made by Elves that he wants to cure you of so you can immediately catch it again and have it fix itself. Do you have an Elven disease?”
Caerwyn said, “Not that I know of. Find out how he plans to cure it but don’t commit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Elf so I don’t see how I could have caught a disease from one.”
I asked, “Where you born this way?”
Caerwyn nodded. “My mother must have met an Elf when she was pregnant with me. So far that’s the best explanation I have heard. I doubt it seriously, but I will be sure to ask her when I see her next.”
Speaking of Elves made me think of a woman I met at a clandestine meeting inside a large iron furnace. I started putting my watercolors up. “Caerwyn, I met a woman with eyes like the night sky.”
Caerwyn asked, “Do you think it was an illusion?”
I gestured by shaking my hand with my fingers spread. “No. I was already a Fairy king when I met her. I would have noticed that. I think she’s related to the creatures who possess others, but they always seem like a cross between a dark flying rag and bird made of blurry shadow. She asked me to call on her when I needed her. She said to summon her using the name ‘Midnight Treason.’”
Caerwyn asked. “How will you know when you need her?”
I shrugged. “No telling. I’m playing this by ear, Caerwyn. No, not even that. I’m making it all up as I go.”
In the distance, I heard a chime like cathedral bells.
Caerwyn said, “That’s the doorbell.”
Caerwyn was using Google maps and streetview to look at Oslo.
The chime went off again. Since Caerwyn wasn’t getting up, I figured he probably didn’t answer the door because his mother didn’t want anyone to remember his rather striking appearance.
I got up to go to the door.
Caerwyn whispered, “Pretend we aren’t here.”
I asked, “Don’t you even want to see who it is?”
Caerwyn brought up another window on his computer. “We can look, but it’s going to be a salesman or a delivery person and neither are worth getting up to see.”
He brought up an image of his front door. A woman in a heavy cloak was at the door. She turned like she could tell she was being watched. The cloak was empty.
Caerwyn asked, “Anyone you know?”
I slid into shadow and through a hole in the wards. I shadow stepped down from the roof, across to a tree, and along a hedge until I could see the doorway. The woman in the cloak was the dark being I had met before and told me to call her with the name Midnight Treason.
She looked around like she knew I was watching her. I stepped out of shadow.
She visibly relaxed. “Phil, is there a safer place? A place no one knows?”
I glanced at the hidden camera that Caerwyn was probably watching through. I thought about all the Fairylands I knew and wondered which I wanted to reveal and which she might consider safe. I held out my hand and took her to a world where a castle drifted in a lake.
#
We stood on a bank in the shade of a mulberry tree. I sped time and started picking mulberries. “I am sorry, I think I summoned thee without a need.”
She picked a mulberry and looked at it. She asked, “Is it safe to eat?”
A Fairy I had not noticed lying by the tree sat up. “Pyramus would never poison thee. And on the other side, Thisbee wouldst not wish thee ill.”
I asked, “The other side?”
The Fairy squinted. “Me thinks I know thee well yet I do not ken who thou art. Well, the underside other side. On the other side upside is Amoryus and under Amoryus is Cleopes. They are all sweet, but couples can be that way. It is possible that Sharon’s fruit is so sour because she envies the couples.”
I asked “Sharon?”
He pointed to the large flowers in hedges. “By the fruit thou shalt know them. Amoryus is lavender, Cleopes black. Pyramus is red, of course, and Thisbee is white. Sharon has a range of hues, but her fruit is more sour than lemon.”
Midnight Treason turned her face towards mine, and I was again startled by her lovely dark face and emptiness with stars in the distance for eyes. “I meant for us to be in a place where we could speak without witnesses.”
The Fairy frowned and started walking towards the water’s edge. He looked back at us, clearly hurt. “Well, in a thousand years, no one has ever before accused me of being a witness. Some nerve some beings have.”
He stepped into and under the lake and was gone from sight. Ripples spread.
I puzzled over the ripples and tasted a mulberry. It was sweet and delightful.
Midnight Treason said, “Need is a funny thing. Oft it has passed before thou knowest. I have a need of thee, though. Canst thou make me a Fairy?”
I felt and I knew that I could. I nodded.
She looked around at the castle and the hedges and put the mulberry in her mouth. She smiled as she chewed it and swallowed it. “Please, if thou wouldst then, make me a Fairy.”
I felt like I was destroying a beautiful and frightening work of art and using the bits of it to make another work of art as I made her into a Fairy. She was still dark and beautiful but her eyes were no longer the empty vastness of a star-filled sky. They were dark eyes that twinkled and seemed to draw you in, but they were no longer disturbing.
She smiled. “Now I am bound to this Fairyland and I belong here. That is no small thing. When you need to know things about those who would destroy thy world come here and seek me. I am abandoning my name so that none can trace me. Give me title so thou canst call for me when thou wilt.”
I smiled. “Lady Nightsky, I have a question. How do the Efrits detect me?”
She had just picked and eaten another mulberry so she waited until she had finished it. “By several marks we know thee. First is thy resonance. It calls to us. It makes us look closely. But then thy value is clear. Value is an awareness muted in many but clear in my kind. A lot of human children have it. A human toddler can instantly notice that something is valuable or forbidden when it enters a room. It will run to that item and try to claim it, eat it, or break it, depending on its form of expression. Thou might distract a child with a bright red ball or a toy that makes noise, but eventually the child will return to wanting the item most valued and protected by others.
“You hold so many strings of destiny. Who would not wish to own thee, wear thy form, or break thee if they could not have thee?”
She picked another mulberry and chewed it. “There is another thing. My kind rarely takes on the shell of appearance that I had when thou met me. Instead we prefer to dwell inside others and control their minds and bodies. Some bloodlines make better horses than others. Some bodies allow more of an Efrit’s powers to manifest than others.
“Thou art like a prize stallion. A mustang that must be possessed, broken and ridden. As long as thou dust resonate like a bell that calls, thou wilt be noticed and in that noticing the kind of being that thou hast saved me from being wouldst be drawn to thee like a moth to a candle, a shark to blood, or a worm to an apple.”
I sat at the base of the tree. My memory of this Fairyland felt like a well-remembered but long past dream. I made this half right side up- half upside down castle before I became the me I know as me and remember growing up as. I was a Fairy king then, but I don’t think I claimed any Fairyland as my own.
Lady Nightsky walked to the edge of the water. I didn’t warn her it wasn’t water. But then it seemed my ripple puzzle from before this life had been solved and it was water. She put her foot in. Since gravity on the other side pushed this way, and the gravity on this side pushed down, there was a layer of water sandwiched between the two layers. It seemed clear enough so someone either fixed the problem of the water being cleaned or someone was maintaining this.
A small fellow tugged on my shirt.
I recognized him but I didn’t recall his name. He pointed to the water and nodded like he was proud of it. I nodded and he smiled. As I recalled he was a friend and a rival, a Fairy king and a Daft Fairy. Just the thing that everyone is scared of.
I asked, “Since I am no longer a Daft Fairy, should I be scared and run?”
He laughed and then looked up at me and did a sort of winking squint as he thought about it. “Na, thou art Daft-Daft. Look at thee, choosing on a whim to be mortal, easily killed and likely to live ‘til the clocks all wind down. That takes a commitment to impulsivity that few would dare.
“No, no, I fear thee. Thou has gone beyond the corner and split thyself between mortal, sensible and Daft. So I—No, I have the perfect solution.
He stood, looked at me, smiled, and then put a face of sheer horror on and ran. “Everyone flee, for the love of all, save thy-selves. We have a Fairy king that has gone Daft-Daft. There is no knowing what could happen.”
Other Fairies popped up from behind stones, and small animals stood on their hind legs.
A spiny mammal that I didn’t recognized rolled over laughing. Fairies started running and screaming.
A large bush got taller and started screaming as it ran. “Abandon Fairyland, abandon Fairyland, we are all lost if we do not flee.”
Lady Nightsky turned to face me. “Who are we running from?”
The spiny mammal managed to control his laughter. “The one thou art talking to. He’s gone Daft-Daft. Terrible thing that. Don’t stay near him, he could turn thee normal. Or at least I think that is where this game is headed. Still, this game may last for a while. I had better get out of here before they decide I was influenced by him and run from me.” He started quickly waddling off. “I’ll be on the other side of the lake as I suspect all the folk that don’t flee the Fairyland will be.
“I’m not sure if we would prefer to continue the game and have thee chase us there or stay to this side and call this the rational side. I best stop this conversation. Even without thee talking, I am beginning to feel all rational.”
He waddled to the waters edge, looked back at me, and waved his tiny fingers with large claws before falling into the water and beyond.
Lady Nightsky asked, “What was that about?”
I walked to the edge of the lake examining the ripples. “I know, what with me being an Efrit slaying, fishmonger Goblin, and king of Fairy, I seem completely rational, yet in truth I am part Daft.” I sighed. “I don’t think I can escape myself by running or diving to the other side of the lake.”
#
After exploring Oslo, for a while I became a bit nervous about what sort of art project Jeremy’s uncle had in mind. Oslo was a bit more bold minded about public art than I was used to in Louisiana. Most my art is functional, architectural, or what I find attractive and cool. I don’t really try and send a message with my art but then, most of the sculptures I saw in Oslo clearly had messages but not a lot of those messages were clear to me.
Jeremy and I had planned to meet at the hotel, but I decided to visit the airport anyway, just to see if there were good travel brochures, deals, or details about the airport that Jeremy might ask about.
The airport was gray and white and I was feeling like I didn’t fit in. Well, I wouldn’t fit in, I was a swamp child. I’m happiest up to my waist in bog water with Spanish moss hanging down. At the edge of my senses, I kept feeling like there were possessing spirits just out of range. Nothing I could exactly pin down. I wanted to call it off. I wanted to go back to Fairy. Fairy wan’t safe and there were strange things there, but the real world was feeling less and less comfortable.
If a possessing spirit just entered my body and tried to take me over, as slimy as that felt, I would at least know what I was facing and have the tools to deal with it. But at that moment, I was in a form of myself where I did not resonate like a beacon and call them. I still resembled myself, but I wasn’t comfortable with how my jaw felt after surgery, and I was not comfortable with the slight change in my face when I saw it reflected.
I looked a bit less like a boy soon to turn thug, but I was used to my old reflection and the slight difference made my feeling of not being myself seem stronger than usual.
A woman asked me, “Are you lost?”
I smiled at her, shook my head, and hurried off. Knowing that there were good folk around made me feel better.
#
Streetlights and posts with cables cast shade, so it was easy to sail through shadows on the way back to the center of Oslo. A couple of times, I felt dark presences in the distance but nothing I could point to. I wasn’t here to hunt them. Not yet. I needed to know more about them first. I wanted to meet them without them knowing I knew what they were.
Out of shadow and in the cold night air, I looked up at the clear sky and knew it would be colder tomorrow morning. Cold didn’t hurt me, my Goblin nature could take much worse than this, but the cold was part of the mood and the menace I felt.
#
In Anabranch, my swamp Fairyland, I sat on the boards of a pier with my bare feet stirring the water.
Beside me, Swampy sat staring at the ripples. “Phil, it’s okay for you to look at me. Get a good look and enjoy. I don’t want anyone stealing you from me so that might be your best defense.”
I smiled as I looked at the ripples trying to see what she was seeing in them. “Not planning on getting all girl crazy anytime soon, Swampy. Don’t worry, as soon as I go girl crazy you’ll be the first to know.”
Swampy looked up at me. “What’s your hotel room like in Oslo?”
I continued looking at the water. “Nice enough if I had to spend the night there, but I would rather sleep somewhere safe and comfortable.”
She turned back into her small bat-winged Fairy form and lay with her back against my leg. “I have seen enough visions in the water, and all of them are confused right now. I keep seeing conflicting images with Mr. Miller in them. I can’t sort out or see what you need to do. The plague we are all predicting is coming on us quick. This winter we may know what it is and what it means, but right now it’s making a mess of what we can see.
“You need to get Hubert up and running as a prognosticator. We need his help sorting out the future.”
I nodded and lay back on the pier. Soon enough, I’d have to sleep and then adjust time so I was up and ready to step out of my hotel room in time to meet Jeremy.
#
The breakfast buffet was wonderful. I wasn’t going to leave Fairy and go to my room so I could exit it and look normal until eleven, but I woke up hungry and decided to try out Norwegian food. I loved eggs, sausage, and smoked salmon. There were a lot of other choices but right then and there, I wanted eggs, sausage, and salmon.
Even after eating my fill, I had time to waste before Jeremy showed up. I looked around the hotel, and it was even fancier than I had first noticed. Presidents, stars, famous musicians, and kings had stayed here. I’d been thinking of finding a place to sit and slap a beat out on my udu so Jeremy would know where I was, but I didn’t really feel comfortable doing it in such a fancy setting.