“Making a deal with you,” Bal said, “is better than living like this. We’re cut off from our kind.”

I took a moment to look at the gnomes. They still weren’t talking and I was wondering about that. As I said, gnomes don’t know when to shut up and here were three that said nothing and made no noises.

“What about you?” I asked.

Wander, the gnome that had been sent as a guard, gestured with his hands and Olga leaped off the log she was resting on and said, “Wander says their voices were taken from them when the golems came.”

Golems?

“He says they are willing to do whatever you desire from them in order to regain their voices and their lives,” Olga said.

“We all are,” Bal said. “We are all prepared to pay you a kings ransom for your help.”

A king's ransom. That was a big ask on my part, one that I’d not yet made. One that I was actually considering making. But then, I considered a lot of things and discarded them as irrelevant or unnecessary. In this case, what I wanted seemed to align fairly well with what all of these creatures wanted. Freedom and power.

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“What about the forest animals?” I asked Borrowind.

“We are as trapped as the others,” he said. “It is unwise and unhealthy for us to continue this way.”

Whether or not Borrowind was making any sense, relatively speaking of course, didn’t matter. I like bears. I felt a kinship of sorts to Borrowind and I was certain we would have time together to discuss things. Plus there were other bears many of whom seemed to be a lot like Borrowind, thoughtful and kind. Doing what they felt was necessary even if they didn’t always agree.

I turned my attention back to the leaders of the forest and said, “I will agree to do this thing.” Yeah, weird formal language. Go figure. We were making a contract and contracts have a tendency to need weird formal language.

“At what price?” Moment asked.

“At the price of information and freedom and a promise to never be trapped within a faerie circle again,” I said.

Moment flew back to Mortal and Mighty and together they disappeared into the woods. I didn’t know whether they were going to agree to my terms. In truth, they might not have the authority to speak for all faeries, but unlike Gad I didn’t think they were leaving and not coming back.

“What about us?” Bal asked.

“What about you?” I asked in return.

“Are you going to use your powers against us once the curse has been lifted from the forest?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But isn’t it better to live in a little fear of me than to live the way you have been?”

“We agree,” Bal said. “I speak for the elves.”