I summoned Lord Lodestone, and he brought me out in a kitchen where two women and a man were busy cooking.

Lodestone said, “Welcome to my humble home.”

I bowed to them. They did quick bows and curtsies and continued working.

Lodestone said, “Forgive them. They know not who thou art.”

I shook my head. “As if I know. I heard that I had several places to live.”

Lodestone said, “Most royals in Real do and we would hardly want to have lower standards for thee. We have been trying to get a Fairy king for some time, but when we think we have a deal, they end up backing out of it. Thou may have noticed that our noble court is a bit close to daft, and once thou doest meet the nobles that are not generally at court, thou wilt wonder if the water in this Fairyland is tainted. The common folk seem quite a bit more stable, and I think they are more stable than their counterparts in Real are. It is our nobles that makes one wonder if madness is what makes a Fairy powerful.”

I looked at the cooks and back to Lodestone. “I saw a walled manor near Leidingstad. Is it really mine?”

Lodestone said, “It is expressly thine. Technically, all of this is thine, but each Fairyland is different. This one has a lot of the folk, and if thou didst go around claiming everything, thou might find that they consider this Fairyland more theirs than thine.

“If thou art not too much worse than the nobles, they will probably decide they like thy quirks and happily put up with them. Fairy royals are not generally famous for their emotional stability or reasoning, so, as long as thou doest not go too far and are not too much of a coward, thou canst probably do as thou wilt.”

I asked, “So I could bring a few friends in?”

Lodestone nodded. “Keep the numbers down though. Much more than a hundred and we might get complaints. If thou could make sure they eat before they come it would be better.”

I asked, “So we don’t feed them?”

He shook his head. “No, this is simple economics. If they come in well fed, then the odds are good that they will not take out more fee than they brought in. Thy realm is more stable than most. On that subject, hast thou tried making anything yet? Not gossamer or illusion, I saw thee do such when thou practiced after gifting. We don’t have the gift of making real things in this Fairyland, but there was some mention that thou didst already have such gifted. Hopefully, it isn’t worn out. Hast thou tried gold yet? It is said to be one of the simplest.”

I tried it and made a gold ring. I could feel that I had a large reserve to draw on.

He looked at the ring. “We have a few sculptors here, but I am not sure if any of them can gift their skills. Pity that. Artistry matters.”

I made an illusion of a statue and adjusted it. A leaping Asian carp. I made it in silver on a gold pedestal. Then I made it real. I still hadn’t made a noticeable reduction in my reserve.

He looked at the statue. “Is it mine?”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

I nodded. He tried to pick it up, but it wouldn’t budge.

I waved to him and bowed to the cooks. “I need to check on the manor house and see if I can get in.”

He nodded and I slipped into shadow.

#

In front of the manor house, the note on the door said, “Do a nice spruce up and put flowers in the vases. See about finding a small staff. Not more than twenty. Don’t hire them yet. If the king looks like he is going to be too hard to get along with, Bogview Castle out past nowhere is where we want him.”

I used the knocker on the small door.

No one answered. I walked around the stone wall and found two more doors. They were locked and warded. Walking back around, I heard a door slam. I went to the front. The note was gone, and there was no one around. I used the knocker on the door and waited. No one answered.

I shouted, “Hello!” a few times and no one answered. I hid in shadow and waited. After a while a man came out, looked around, and shut the door behind him. He locked the door, looked around again, and started walking down the hill. I stayed in shadow, moving from tree to tree. He went to a cottage. I hid in his shadow as he went in. He closed the door and shouted, “Dearest, we have trouble.”

A woman came down the stairs. “What is it this time?”

“I think the king was trying to get into his manor. We want him mad enough to go away and use one of his other dwellings but not angry enough to do anything vengeful. I’m sort of scared now that I didn’t go far enough, or I perhaps went too far. If he is anything like the duchess, we may be in trouble. At the very least, I could lose a pretty nice job where I don’t have to do hardly anything.”

He hung the key ring on a hook and followed his wife to another room. I picked up the key ring and left. I went farther down the hill, passed through the front entrance of the town, and into the market. I found Leafsound in front of a shop where a man was making chairs.

I circled back, left shadow, and walked to the shop.

Leafsound said to the man making chairs, “No, he seemed quite reasonable. By all the stories, kings of Fairy can be pretty awful, but he was quite polite and just trying to find some bones.”

I stepped into the shop. Leafsound turned and bowed low. “Long live Snipsnort.”

The man sitting and weaving cord to make a seat nodded respectfully. “Long live Snipsnort.”

I said, “Thank thee for the kind words, Leafsound, yet there is one that will not like me soon enough. The caretaker of the manor saw fit to not answer the door and tried to drive me off.”

Leafsound winced. “My lord, we will try to take care of this immediately.”

I said, “I have been considering this for a while, and I think I need to deal with this. I just wanted to warn thee that I might be making a bit of a display.”

Leafsound winced again. I bowed and turned. Behind me, I heard two voices say, “Long live Snipsnort.”

#

I went to the caretaker’s cottage and knocked on the door. I heard shutters close above me. I looked up. I slipped into shadow and found that he had warded his house. I shadow stepped up a tree and to the roof of the house. I fell through rough reeds and onto a bed. He came into the bedroom with a bronze poker in his hand; the end smoked like it had been heated up in a fire and gotten some resin on it while pushing wood around. I turned into a giant rooster and crowed at him. Windows broke. He dropped the poker and ran. I went down the stairs. The door was open. People were running in fright. I found the key to the cottage door and locked it. Then I slid through shadow up to the manor house.

I walked through the nice gardens and stopped to take a drink from a covered spring-fed pool with a spout. The water was wonderful. Following a covered walkway from the spring to the house, I explored the manor. No showers and no running water apart from a few cold pools down in the basement that were spring fed. No electric anything. Apart from that, it would be perfect if we managed to get electricity. We wouldn’t have to have any servants, but we got along fine in a large house with only Mr. Hebert and me.

I reconsidered the servant thing. We had cleaning and gardening help at Mr. Hebert’s house, so a few servants a couple of times a week would be nice.

Anthony was there fairly often, and he made things easier. Archer was a bit more difficult when he imposed, but we weren’t planning on inviting him to Fairy.

I matched time with Real and summoned Mr. Hebert.

Mr. Hebert said, “Get Anthony. We have a bunch of equipment to bring. Is there a safe place for it?”

I said, “It’s warded, and I have the key.”