I was in a large stone chamber with circles set up for opening gateways and trailers with shipping containers on them and three spider excavators. These excavators looked different. The buckets were three-in-one buckets with extra fittings. The hydraulics were different and the cables were armored.
A man stepped down from one of the cabs and walked up to me. He was about my height and solidly built. “Can you transform?”
I changed into me wearing a hard hat, mask, and gloves.
“And you can take things with you. What flying forms do you have?”
I said, “Rook and owl.”
He pointed at one of the spider excavators. “Then get in the cab and see if you can turn into a rook and take the excavator with you.”
I climbed up into the cab and closed the door. It was different with more controls. The basics were the same, but there were a lot more switches. I put on the seat harness and secured myself in the chair. The chair lifted and adjusted position for me. The foot controls shifted position. I grabbed the basic controls and turned into a rook and spread my wings to land gently on the ground.
He nodded at me and held his arm out like he wanted me to land on it.
I flew up and landed on his arm making sure not to grab too tight with my talons.
He kissed my head and gifted me three times. “Now you can practice with the other machines, shift the position of the gateways, and open a more respectable gateway. Don’t be gifting the spell to make this gateway to anyone. It’s rather exclusive.”
I said, “I have not been gifted with gifting.”
He said, “Wise, keeping some of your powers back and hidden. Find a better line though. Anyone who knows gifting knows it can’t be gifted. You take a gift to easily not to have the power. Still, it is wise to hold back.”
He lifted his arm, and I flew off and landed as myself. “How do I judge the height when I bring the excavator back?”
He said, “Just do it. We’ll see if there is a problem.”
I turned into me in the excavator. Apart from being really hungry, it worked easily. I used the controls and lowered the machine into a more stable stance. It moved silently. No engine noise, no noise at all. There were controls that let me retract the teeth and use the bucket as a grabber. There were controls to change the contours on the tires. I tested all the controls and made sure it was in a wide, low, and stable stance before changing into me without the excavator around me. I fell and went to shadow. I came out of shadow higher, turned into a bird, and caught the air before landing. There were tricks to this that I needed to practice.
The man walked to a spiral staircase carved in stone and gestured for me to follow. He started walking up the stair, so I had to shadow step to catch up. The stairs came up to an open area with a gazebo and a hedge around it.
The man pointed at a hedge. “I was told to tell you to eat some of the raspberries. You can keep your equipment down there if you want. Leave it there with a note if you break any of it. Any improvements or complaints, leave a note.”
I tasted a few berries and looked back. The man was gone.
There was a small arm with a grapple for pulling trailers on the excavator opposite the bucket. I connected to a trailer and got out of the cab to open a gateway to Snipsnort. I adjusted the position of the gateway and then realized this would be faster than pulling the trailer. I slid the gateway as far as I could see, shadow stepped ahead, and continued sliding the gateway from as far behind me as I could see to as far ahead of me.
Shadow stepping up into trees didn’t work as well as I thought it would, since the leaves obscured my view. I took out some sausage and ate some before turning into a rook and filling up on meat. Then I took to the air and made quick progress shifting the gateway to the manor house. Then I brought trailer after trailer up beside the manor.
The time coolers looked like shipping containers. One of the coolers had an envelope taped to the door. I opened it and looked over the ten page recipe inside. It detailed how the grain for the flour used to make roux should be ground. It was an odd recipe that detailed every step and gave proportions instead of measures.
It looked interesting but a bit tedious.
Hubert came out of the mansion. “Are you done pulling things around, or should I stay out of the way?”
I handed him the recipe. “Done for now. What do you think about this?”
He said, “Looks like it is worth trying, but I have never known anyone that made their own Worcestershire sauce, and this cook expects you to grow all the spices. We should buy the ingredients and try this, though. I love crawfish etouffee, and this looks like it might be good. To actually do this the way they want you to we would need all the trees and a serious garden.”
I opened the shipping container. Inside there were rows of potted trees. I started looking at labels. Bay trees, lemon trees, calamondin trees, all sorts of citrus, and even sassafras trees.
Hubert yelled from further back in the container. “There are doors to other rooms. This is bigger than it looks. A lot of these plants aren’t in the recipe.”
He came back to the front of the container. “There are more live crawfish than we could eat in a year. Someone is serious about crawfish etouffee.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
I shook my head. “Hubert, some things I am involved in just don’t make sense.”
Hubert said, “The instructions here by the door say the separate rooms will stay frozen in time unless a person is present. The crawfish should stay fresh until we need them. Do you think it will be safe to release crawfish into to this world?”
I shrugged and stepped out of the container. I went to the next one and opened it as Hubert closed the one we were just in.
Mr. Hubert joined me and we looked in the container filled with kitchen appliances. “Looks like you are going to have to set us up with an area to put in a rather large garden and a big kitchen.”
I felt a summons. “Fargone Banana begs an audience with King Snipsnort. Can Fargone Banana visit?”
I brought her through. I thought it was a her. She was wearing a dress and lipstick. Apart from that she looked like a banana that you probably couldn’t safely pick up without it making a mess.
The top of the banana looked like it was about to pour out juice and slime as it moved the way someone looking around might. “Nice world.”
A section of peel bent up and waved for me to get closer. I knelt down to listen.
“The agreement was for a hundred and fifteen tons of mulch but—here’s the thing—you might have something I’m looking for, so we might be able to adjust the deal. I mean this is a really big world, after all. It’s possible that someone might have something I’m looking for and well, I got mulch.”
I said, “I could probably use some mulch here since I want to set up a garden, but the mulch is for another Fairyland. How long does it take for mulch to turn to good garden soil?”
The banana started jumping up and down. I expected it to smush into goo with every jump. It stopped and looked up at us. “Well, here’s the thing. I’m a bit of a collector, and someone was trading some limited edition gold coins. The word on the street says the source is one of those Windy City wizards that smart Fairies avoid. That means if I want one of those coins, I might have to go through three connections to try and obtain one. There is a rumor, though, that maybe he got them from another source.”
I turned into me holding two gold coins.
The banana part sticking above the dress shifted back, and I winced, expecting brown mush to ooze out. “I love it when a treasure hunt pans out! Are there plans for your garden?”
Hubert said, “I have some drawings on a table inside, but we just got a bunch of seeds, trees, and plant starts. We may have to rearrange things.”
The banana held up two sections of peel. “Can I see one of the coins? I’ll be careful with it.”
I handed the banana a coin.
It examined it. “Goldilocks would kill to get some of these. How many were minted?”
I said, “One thousand. There was a prototype coin, but it wasn’t quite right.”
She reluctantly handed the coin back. “So a prototype exists. That gives me another treasure hunt. Finding these things is always fun, and when another layer to the mystery is revealed it makes it all worthwhile. So do we have a deal?”
I looked at Hubert.
Hubert asked, “Can I see a coin?”
I handed him one of the coins. He looked at me. “Nice work. Someone has been practicing. What is this, about a pound, I think? If we can get mulch for this in Fairy without a lot of complications, we come out pretty well.”
The banana made a nodding gesture. “So we want this all done quiet, simple, fast, and easy then. Might be a bit more expensive. How about one of the coins, and you get me a clue on where the prototype is.”
I made a gossamer blanket and lay it out on the ground. I turned into me with a handful of coins and sat down. I put the coins down and sorted through them.
The banana sat across from me on the blanket and started spreading coins out. “Found it. Oh, it’s perfect. So, how is this deal? We set you up in your other Fairyland like the original deal stated, and then we set up the garden here with a complete deluxe package everything you need. I get three of the coins and the original.”
It held out a section of peel like it was ready to shake hands. I shook hands and it shouted, “Deal!”
It took out a marble, and small decayed fruit started pouring out of the gateway on the marble. A team of them started running into the manor through the door Hubert had left open. More of them were working together to open the containers. A group of moldy oranges started filing out of the gateway with small wheelbarrows. Then flying Fairies came through the gateway.
They started busting a hole in the wall around the manor house. There were fruit and Flying Fairies digging and sifting dirt. Anthony came out as a pair of Fairies started yelling about matching the bricks on the original wall. The banana yelled over them, “The deal specified quiet!”
The argument continued with the two Fairies glancing towards me and whispering about matching the stone.
Like pictures of slaves building pyramids, the damaged-looking fruit made gossamer sleds and ropes to maneuver potted plants and kitchen appliances from the containers. There was occasionally shouting that was quickly silenced as a large addition to the manor was made with an enclosed garden and orchard around it.
As another section of walled garden was being set up a Fairy shouted, “Call in some plumbers. They don’t have running water, Crossroads Council specifications insist on a kitchen having running water.”
Another Fairy shouted, “Great, now you have been brought up code. Architects, might as well add bathrooms.”
The banana ran to them and shushed them.
I whispered to Hubert and Anthony, “Wasn’t this just for garden soil?”
The banana picked up the coins I had offered and said, “No going back on the deal. We play for keeps around here.” The banana smiled and showed teeth. No face, just a split in the peel with teeth.
The Fairies were breaking rock by making a clear gossamer tube to drop a gossamer bronze cylinder with a crystal tip on the stone below. I started watching their methods as they worked.
#
Anthony looked up at the manor house. “Phil, I am finally well and I think improved. Hubert though, is barely functional when you aren’t around. The cats purring seems to help, but cat’s don’t continually purr, and they don’t stay near. Here is my real fear. Archer made a device that could detect Hubert’s resonance. If Hubert returns to Real, Archer will probably know. But we need to get things that will resonate properly for Hubert. My fear is that Archer will be hunting for just those things and destroying them.”
I said, “Take care of Hubert, I’ll see what I can do.”
#
In Hubert’s mansion, I sat at the kitchen table with Caerwyn looking at plans he had taken from Archer’s computers before signaling Archer’s failsafe system to put out an EMF burst to destroy Archer’s equipment.
“Phil, I didn’t have a choice really. I destroyed all the originals. Well, I triggered their explosions. They were set to go off if you got too close, and the last thing we want is for the cameras to send data to Archer. That leaves us with a problem, though. Some of these components are custom built and have to be tuned. Without one of the originals, we don’t have a way to test them.”
I pointed at my chest. “If it detects me, it might be close to right. There’s a collection of resonate junk at the manor in Fairy. We can test using that. Some of it’s pure acoustical, though. That helps, but what he needs is the more subtle forms.
“I can make test examples in Fairy, and we can see about making a detector.”
Caerwyn brought up a browser on his computer and started a search. “Some of this stuff is hard to get and mostly available overseas. Without going to a market in China, we can’t just get some of this stuff. We may have to buy some high dollar items just to take out parts worth a few bucks.”
I said, “Let’s do it. What do we need?”