Uncle Anthony drove up in an expensive convertible. I looked out the window to make sure no one was with him before I shadow stepped down to greet him.
He stopped when he saw me and got out. I went and looked at the convertible.
Uncle Anthony said, “Phil, it’s worse than you think, Consider that cars have only been around for a brief time. By the time you look old enough to drive one, they may not exist. A lot of change can happen in three hundred years.”
I asked, “Need help with your luggage?”
He shook his head. “If word got out a ten-year-old was helping one of the mighty Titans of old carry his luggage, I’d become a laughing stock.”
I opened doors for him as he carried his luggage from the carriage house to his usual room. “Uncle Anthony, be honest. Do I look like a ten-year-old?”
He shook his head. “Not really, but you can pass for one. You almost act like you’re twelve, so I think you could pull it off.”
I said, “Thanks for the kind words.”
Uncle Anthony said, “No, seriously, I’m not insulting your maturity. Inside this house, you’re an adult, but you keep a facade of being a child when you’re outside or around others.”
I gestured for him to follow. “Let’s go to the tanks. You can pick the fish you want to eat.”
While we were looking at the fish, the feral cat I was calling Stripe came and watched from a distance. I shadow stepped to the refrigerator in the carriage house where I kept my bait and got a couple of hunks of fish to throw to the cat.
Uncle Anthony said, “You’re never going to tame it.”
As I tossed the fish to the cat, I said, “It won’t come close, but it eats mice, and every now and then it wants some fish. I’m not trying to tame it. We have legends of Goblins who have taken in pets and become part-pet and part-Goblin. I’m told that it’s horrible and it really happens.”
***
While sitting around the kitchen island eating blackened catfish, Uncle Anthony brought up Fairylands.
“So, Roland, you remember Galen?”
Mr. Hebert said, “Galen of Pergamon?”
Uncle Anthony shook his head. “No, Galen the Dutchman.”
Mr. Hebert asked, “How is he?”
Uncle Anthony said, “Couldn’t be better. So, here’s the thing. He’d heard about the McNally Fairyland and managed to loot it like no one else has ever managed.”
Mr. Hebert laughed. “No way. The folk in the Fairyland are too tight to let a nickel slip, and the living laird outside the Fairyland is tighter than them. If Galen managed to squeak away with more than a week’s wages, they would send a death coach for him.”
Uncle Anthony smiled and ate a bit just to tease us and to build suspense. “So, he went near enough to the entrance, but not so close as to alert any of the guards or seem like he knew a Fairyland was near. Then he took out bagpipes and started practicing.”
Mr. Hebert looked at me. “Galen owes me forty ounces of gold, so this may be good news. Wait, Galen is tone-deaf.”
Uncle Anthony said, “Was tone-deaf. The Fairies, unwilling to put up with the noise and not wanting trouble, snuck up and gifted him. Then after he was able to play, they snuck him into the Fairyland to play for them. But that was just the start. He had a flute, a lute, and a lyre with him and managed to switch between them and learn to play them all. He said he could have faked not understanding them and gotten a few languages, but he feared he would be over-gifted. So, how much would it cost you normally to instantly learn to play by ear, remember tunes, and have expertise in four instruments?”
Mr. Hebert said, “It would only be a good idea if you knew the Fairyland had real mass and was not going to try and poison and keep a person. That would be deadly to try, and if they caught on that the person was playing a trick, even the nicest Fairylands can turn dangerous.”
Uncle Anthony asked, “Have you found someone yet to test your untried Fairyland?”
Mr. Hebert shook his head. “Three years ago, I was thinking about having Phil to do it. Now I wouldn’t risk it for all the value we could get from a fully cooperative Fairyland able to convert mass. Phil and I get along too well. Eventually, we’ll find someone foolhardy enough, but until then, I wouldn’t try it, and Phil is smart enough to stay away. I have to visit England this March, so this year won’t be good for it even if we found someone.”
Uncle Anthony asked, “Aren’t you even tempted a bit, Phil?”
I shook my head emphatically.
Mr. Hebert said, “I’m going to get him a passport, and I plan to take him with me to England this March anyway.”
Uncle Anthony said, “Bad idea. He looks ten and won’t change. They get a record of him, and in three years, they might be wondering why he isn’t in school. When you can’t show them a thirteen-year-old child, you could get into all sorts of trouble.”
Mr. Hebert gave Uncle Anthony a smug look. “Lots and lots of small countries will let you buy citizenship. If we say eight years old to start and give them an iffy photo for the ID, we can use it for at least three years. Then we go to another country. Someone asks, we tell them Phil, or whatever name we choose, went back to his home country. No worry, no suspicions, and no issue with school or records since he’s from another country.”
Uncle Anthony nodded. “That’s as clever as something Galen might come up with.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
***
I watched as Mr. Hebert drove off. My passport never arrived. When it was time for Mr. Hebert to go to England, there was no way for me to come. Maybe I could have hidden in shadow, but the truth was that I wanted to be able to take care of all the fish we were raising. They’d probably be okay, but I really didn’t trust anyone else to take care of them.
***
I was sitting on the edge of the deep tank playing my penny whistle when I felt something sting my neck. I slapped it with my hand. It felt like a wasp or a bee. I crushed it and felt another sting. Looking at my hand, I saw a small dart sticking out. I collapsed to the wet cement floor by the tank and felt myself being picked up. I tried to remember the conversation about Galen that we’d had five months earlier. I recalled Mr. Hebert and Uncle Anthony had said Galen was lucky that the Fairyland he visited was one of the nice ones.
***
“You stole a people.”
“Did not. He fell down and we carried him to safety.”
“And you poisoned him. He gonna die of gossamer and you did it. You know how much you scream when the gossamer shakes start? Everyone will know you killed a mortal.”
“Did not, did not. He was in the way of the dart.”
“Tell that to the queen.”
I looked around and didn’t see anyone. I felt ill, so I slid into shadow and sought a view of the place. I ended up high in a tree on a hill in a maze. The tree was dead, and the hedges were leafless remains.
I could still hear voices. Some of the dead branches in the maze below shifted like someone was passing through the bushes, but I didn’t see anyone.
“He gone.”
“He can’t be gone, the gateway closed. He can’t leave ‘til it opens again.”
“He ded way before then. We got no food he can eat. He ded, ded, ded, ded, ded, ded.”
“He fertilizer then. Everyone, fan out. We find him.”
“He in tree. Only tree we got and he in it.”
“Put down that blowgun!”
“He in tree, I’m gonna dart him.”
A female voice from below asked, “Do you play chess?”
I said, “I know the rules.”
I felt another sting in my neck. I knocked the dart loose and started to fall. I stepped into timeless shadow and listened. Shadow stepping seemed to take care of the poison.
The female voice said, “Great, a mortal is brought in, and I finally have a chance to play chess. Then my own subject kills him.”
“Didn’t.”
“Did too.”
“Didn’t.”
“Ow!”
I saw the blur of darts.
The female voice said, “If a dart hits me, someone is losing their head. Stop fighting and figure out where the mortal went.”
A few more darts flew, and the lights went out. Since there were no shadows in total darkness, I fell to the stone below me.
“Okay, we didn’t mean anything. You can turn the sun back on.”
The female voice said, “Why? You’ll just start fighting. Do you think the mortal will be missed?”
“No, he was playing a flute by a fish tank.”
“Flageolet.”
“Still a flute.”
“Not.”
A new voice said, “I still smell a mortal’s breath. He is feeding our world.”
“If you hadn’t ate the goats, they would’ve been feeding the world.”
“The goats had no grass.”
The female voice asked, “So you interrupted a musician playing and then abducted a mortal?”
“In our defense, my queen, we was bored, he wasn’t stopping, and the gateway was going to close soon.”
The female voice that was apparently their queen said, “So you darted a playing musician, abducted him, and brought him here.”
“No. We just...Well, when you put it that way, it makes it all sound bad. But it wasn’t like that. You had to have been there. We were jumping up and down in front of him, and he just ignored us.”
“Rude that. Like he was too good to look at us. I mean, we were dancing.”
“You were dancing, really?”
“You were too.”
“I was jumping up and down. Jigging to one of those Irish odes to depression would just be silly. No wonder he wouldn’t deign to look at us. He thought I was dancing ‘cause I was surrounded by idiots doing interpretive jigs to a lament.”
The queen asked, “Did you stop to consider that he might not be able to see us?”
“Yah, no. I mean, he was toodling Irish music. What sort of sot would toodle Irish tunes if he didn’t see Fairies?”
The lights turned on.
The queen said, “Do we have anything to feed him? We want to claim him before he dies. We should probably go ahead and off him so he doesn’t go through the gossamer shakes. If he dies before being committed as a Fairy here, someone is going to suffer. Maybe several someones.”
The voices started arguing at the same time that it was the other’s fault.
I looked and still didn’t see anyone. Years ago, I saw the man that the other Goblins said was a Fairy. To tell the truth, though, I never saw any other Fairies. Even when they said Fairies were making the flowers bob up and down in the wind or playing up in the trees, all I saw was the effect of the wind or a few dragonflies.
I didn’t know for sure how long I’d last, but passing long hours in shadow was possible. Hunger and thirst could be put off when hiding in a solid, stable shadow. I just needed a good boundary. Not a crisp one, just dark and light side by side, but a subtle one that wasn’t likely to go away.
I hunted through the Fairyland and learned it. Past the maze was greenery and castles, but the shadows were not real. They didn’t feel right, and the disorienting quality of them was like waking from a fever dream. Except going through shadow was how you got rid of fever, and this fever you got by going through strange shadows.
A manor house on the edge of the dead maze was closer to ruin than not. I avoided a stable that had strange shadows. The three intact manor houses had odd shadows as well, so I learned the maze, the tunnels below the maze, and the older manor house. Then I settled into shadow and listened to the voices in order to pass time.
“The mortal’s smell left, but I still think he is near.”
“Oh, you think he is near? When did you ever think, and why would what you think matter?”
“I was a sensitive when I was alive. I know these things.”
“As if. Our queen is barely a Fairy queen, and as far as I can tell I am the only Fairy here with any sense.”
The queen said, “If you had any sense, you would not be saying such things about your queen.”
“It might be different if our Fairyland had a name. All the famous Fairylands have names.”
The queen said, “Then we might be found and have another invasion. We lost our water during the last invasion. We don’t have much more to lose.”
“We got darts. We got lots and lots of darts. Way more than we had in any of the invasions. I say we invade right back. We might get someone who can repair things.”
“I say we make contact next time the gateway opens. Then we trade for stuff.”
“We got nothing to trade. We didn’t even get that guy’s tin flute.”
“It was steel and it was a flageolet. If you are so brave, then you pick it up next time.”
“It was dropped into wet by a pool of wet. It’ll be rust by the time the gateway opens. For them, four seasons will pass before the gateway opens again.”
“Guys,” the queen said, “Find the mortal. I’m dropping the illusions. I know, it’s just depressing without them, but we need to find him.”
The lighting shifted. I moved to find a new hideout and ended up exploring. Without illusion, the maze only had the one ruined manor house. Two of the others were bare foundations. The third had been burned down, and only bits of wall and chimney remained. Out past the maze was a large expanse of burned stumps and the dry bottoms of ponds. Half-stuck in the dry, dead, cracked earth were several boats. The boats looked to be in better shape than anything else in this barren, dry place.
A voice whispered, “I hadn’t seen it with the illusions all down. Now I am getting angry.”
A louder voice said, “This is getting me really, really angry.”
There was a shaking sort of glimmer. I looked toward the voices, and from a spot of quivering yellow orange light, another voice said, “We can linger here arguing as it all falls to ruin, or we can show the villains of the Rummage Fairyland that they can’t just steal a neighbor to ruin.”
More lights started hovering and moving to a stone archway on a stonework platform in the middle of several empty pools with deep cracks.
As the lights gathered around the archway, I noticed that the shadows seemed to twist but were still connected to something in the middle of the archway.