“I didn’t,” he said and pulled the backpack over his arms into his shoulders.

“When was it destroyed?”

He paused a moment and then said, “I don’t know, exactly.”

“How about approximately?”

“I don’t know that either,” he said.

I nodded and briefly, so briefly, considered my next words. What are you looking for then? You are here in a forest where people no longer come looking at river you clearly can’t see past and trying to gain access to a castle that isn’t there.

“There are a number of problems going on around here and while I’m all for working the problems as they happen, the real issue are the people experiencing the problems. They seem to get caught up whatever gong on. Consumed even. To the point where existing inside the problem is much easier than attempting to escape what’s going on and figuring out how to fix things.

“I have no idea what kind of a person you are, or for that matter if you’re even real or if this is a part of the faerie ring, but I do know some things that are literally begging for more and better answers.

“For example, I happen to know there is at least one spot in the castle that has to be there. Right now. It literally cannot not be there because not even destroying the castle, allowing it to fall apart will have affected the room. A suite of room, really. There’s even a library and even a private privy hole hanging outside the walls of the castle.

“But what I’m see, other than the other side of the river as I’d mostly expect to see it, is a castle that’s somehow lost itself to time and, impossibly, taken my suite of rooms with it.”

I stopped talking, deciding to instead look at Ethan and let him stew over what I don’t, or may do, know. Poor guy looked like I’d dropped a lot of knowledge all up in that brain of his, which was making for an almost entertaining display of facial expression and halted responses. I couldn’t be absolutely certain, but one part of me seemed to come to life as I recognized the split between Ethan telling me a lot more and Ethan trying to kill me in my sleep. That’s always a precarious lip to tiptoe along. And was I tiptoeing along an information divide like it was my job.

“I don’t believe any of that is relevant at the moment,” Ethan said after taking on an odd, distant expression, occasionally giving of the impression he wasn’t talking to himself or actually alone, besides me.

He glanced up at the sky and the ushered us along the trail. “We have to be inside before dark,” he said. “The morning is a much better and clearer time to discuss these kinds of things. The castle and river. What you’re looking for. Forest creatures and fantastic inhabitants and all that.”

I wasn’t getting any Ethan was intent on discussing things in the morning rather than right now. If he’d pause for a moment, I could’ve told him about the traces that magic leaves behind. I’ve never had a need to look for the traces, which was what I’d been doing and would’ve been much faster had I bothered to pay any attention in the past. It is what it is, you know. I didn’t need it therefore it didn’t really need to exist for me. Now that I needed it, I had to work harder. I’d say it had to happen sooner or later, but it didn’t.

This was the faeries fault.

Not that I needed to assign blame somewhere (I did).

As I was thinking through identifying magic traces and what I could do between now and the morning to make finding them easier, we got back to the camp. Ethan went straight to his tent and disappeared inside. I thought about going to my tent, but instead decided to look around some more. If there was a jackalope, Ant, in the area then there had to be other fantastic creatures and if I could find one or a baker’s dozen of those, I might be able to get answers.

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I did drop off my backpack inside the tent Ethan had set up for me and looked around to make sure everything was as I’d left it, a mess. Then started to make a slow and deliberate circuit around the periphery of the camp and then into the trees and underbrush. Somewhere between the morning and now, the foliage seemed to accept me as someone who could walk around and I stopped getting snagged on things. Though finding animal trails, which is what I was looking for, was proving to be difficult. It was almost as though animals didn’t live anywhere near the camp.

After spending too much time looking for any animal trail, I decided it would be easier to find a specific animal trail. Normally there were rabbits and squirrels and skunks in the forest and while squirrels were pains to deal with and lived in the trees and didn’t leave trails on the forest floor, I knew skunk did. Plus they smelled like a mix of sulfur and something else. While not a perfect solution, adjusting how I was looking, such as allowing the smells of the forest to infest the inside of my olfactory senses, might give me better insight into the surroundings.

Which is exactly when I found the first animal trail, made by a skunk, who seemed to frequent this part of the forest, and who would probably make its way through here, regardless of Ethan or me, when it got dark.

My search was, however, interrupted by Ethan calling for me to come and eat something. I don’t know when he came out of his tent and started cooking or what it was he was making. The plants we’d foraged for had been deposited on the table and then disappeared by Ethan and the scents that were flowing out from the campsite to where I was drew back to the table and a plate of food waiting for me.

The first thing everyone should know, and this comes from experience (now), is when food is offered and you’re starving, don’t turn the food down. Food can be a tricky thing for a variety of reasons not the least of which are chemicals and other additives that can perform their own variety of magic. It’s also one of those things that, if you’re sufficiently desperate, can tie you to a person or an organization. Which is exactly what I felt Ethan was trying to do, not the additives but the connection and derived loyalty.

Since I wasn’t as hungry and the essence of the other hunger seemed to have dissipated a bit, I decided to try again on Ethan.

“What is it you’re doing here?” I asked. Might as well be direct.

“I don’t understand,” he said, looked at me, then went back to cooking.

“Here. In the woods. Why are you here? What are you really looking for?”

He said, “I’m not in a position to discuss topics like that with you at this time. As I said earlier, if you will wait until the morning we can discuss more of this and in greater detail than we can at this moment. However, at this moment I lack the ability to converse with you in any meaningful way and politely request that you cease attempting to gather information.”

That was more than I’d gotten out of him so far. A lot more. I considered pushing him a bit further, but then decided against it. Not that what he said or the way he acted was in any way peculiar, or more peculiar than usual given the short time I’ve known him, but something about Ethan suggested the only answers I’d get from him would be very similar to what I’d just elicited.

Seemingly satisfied, Ethan sat down and began to eat. I watched him for a bit and then ate some more of the food in front of me. I really was feeling better, which in itself was a bit surprising. Maybe my body was adapting to this new time? I didn’t know.

We ended up talking about the banal from my time. Ethan kept asking questions about my past, probing into where I came from, how I got into the forest, who I might know. He wanted to know a lot of things and since I had nothing better to do to kill time, I decided to play along and feed him with both true and false answers. There is an art to the symmetry of lying and keeping it close to the truth enough that if I was to slip up, the slip up could be answered away as some kind of misunderstanding.

Eventually, Ethan stood up and said it was time to be in the tents for the night. Again, I suggested we could spend the night together. There’s no better alternative for getting to know someone than sucking them off and asking questions, except for using my powers to make them tell me everything. The latter wasn’t possible and I was wondering why the former was proving to be difficult. While I cannot be certain, I was fairly sure that Ethan was into me, or my body. I am very hot. But he didn’t respond in any of the ways one would expect a man to respond.