I chose to ignore Faelix’s question as we heard noise not too far off. Looking at Faelix I moved my head to indicate he should check it out, but he declined in a non-verbal way.

“Am I not sufficiently scary to you?” I asked.

Faelix laughed, hard, in response. “No,” he said. “You done been tamed.”

I didn’t know how I wanted to respond to Faelix in terms of my being tamed, but this really wasn’t the time. “Why aren’t you going to check on who’s coming?” I asked, instead.

“Just your companions,” he said. “Bal and Clippings.”

Oh. Apparently Faelix was going to be more useful than I thought.

A moment later, as predicted, Bal and Clippings came into view, found us, and came over.

“Why are we here?” Bal asked.

“To storm the castle,” I said.

“To fend off the storm,” Faelix said.

“To quell the insurrection,” I said.

“To eat blueberries,” Faelix said.

“Stop it,” Bal said.

I took a moment to look at Bal, who was – as was true of every single elf I’d ever met, attractive. It was almost as though the universe had formed a committee that had formed a sub-committee that had created a working group who’d gone out and decided on a single race of creatures who would all be beautiful and landed on elves. They also landed on faeries, though in different ways and clearly for different reasons. I guess there was also the possibility that these two races took their ugly offspring and fed them to giant cats, but until this moment I’d never considered that and thought it highly unlikely.

There could certainly be something there, between us, but that was one of those things I’d have to decide on later. Right now, we needed to figure out plans to free the Forest of Never and then make sure Queen Maeve was safe. Faelix didn’t seem to care one way or the other. As far as I could tell, from looking at him, he was indifferent about anything to do with the faerie royalty or his mother.

That bit got me thinking. I’ve never had a mother and I have had circumstances that have caused me to watch grown men crying over their mothers or, as older men, the loss of their mothers. I wondered if faerie were different in that context, that the nature of being a male faerie and their importance to the continuation of the species also divorced them from emotional connection?

I didn’t have time to explore that, not now. We were close to full on daylight, Faelix had tried to explain what had happened in the grotto and Clippings had wandered into the cave and back out again announcing he sensed nothing magic or elemental or mysterious about the place. Except, of course, for the tricks and dirt and in some cases the mushrooms that grew along the walls and into small holes and crevices. As far as Clippings was concerned, there was nothing that could support what Faelix had said happened and Faelix, in a pique of anger that in turn led to him flying off in a rather exaggerated huff.

I didn’t quite get what would make Faelix upset over a disagreement, or what I saw as a disagreement, about what happened. But then I wasn’t a male faerie and I didn’t have Faelix’s proclivities. Maybe being contradicted was something that really set the faerie off. Maybe it set all faeries off in a similar, uncontrolled way. I’d have to remember to investigate that another time. Right now, I really did need to figure out next steps and without Faelix immediately available, I decided to see if I could find the barrier and therefore become aware of what it was, what it was made of, and any of the dragon-like scales we needed to penetrate.

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“According to sources,” I said to Bal, “there is supposed to be a barrier made up of something that overlaps like dragon scales, though I’ve never seen a dragon with scales, don’t get me started, and I believe Faelix had some idea how to see it, but you know …,” I waved off in the direction he’d gone, “I don’t think this can wait.”

Bal looked from me to the river and then up into the brightening sky and then back to me.

She said, “I don’t want to be a master's slave while I am tutored in the use and understanding of magic. I have no desire to spend the next one hundred or two hundred years doing whatever I’m told and expected to do it with a smile on my face.”

I was connecting the dots here. “I can see that as a bad way to go,” I said. “Apprenticed off to someone who cares more about themselves than an apprentice. Using you as a tool to do whatever they want. Get what they need. Perform rituals and acts.”

“Yes,” Bal said. “And ….”

“That doesn’t seek like the reward you deserve, or will have deserved, when we break the barrier and get our lives back on track. You deserve more autonomy than that. How long have you been in the forest? Never mind. Don’t try to answer that. It’s not important.”

I stopped talking and started thinking. Two different processes that aren’t, necessarily, mutually exclusive to the other, but sometimes it’s necessary to shut one process down in order to focus on the other. And it really seemed as though Bal wanted something from me that I should be able to figure out fairly quickly.

“What’s the process like?” I asked, then clarifying, “master and apprentice, the binding of the two?”

Bal opened her mouth to tell me, but I held up a hand. This was something I knew, even if it wasn’t obvious to me yet. I knew there was some way for her to get around the problem, or at least to influence it in a way that would work well for her. Except … except … except … Bal was doing a very nervous dance as she waited for me to figure out whatever it was I was working through.

“Okay, go,” I said to her, waving my hand so she’d both speak and speak quickly.

“I’ve been bound to you,” Bal said. “It’s not a permanent binding, but if you were to assert it as a master-apprentice bond and take me on as a student, then I’d be able to avoid other people.”

“Like Gad?” I asked.

She didn’t no and she didn’t need to. I understood bad blood when I saw it.

“I have to think about it,” I said. “I haven’t had an apprentice in, like, forever. Actually, never. I’ve never had an apprentice before and I’m not sure, coming out of a ten-thousand year faerie trap is the best thing to take on.”

Bal nodded and Clippings was about to say something when Faelix made a noise and flew overhead and then circled and finally landed about face level with me.

“Queen Maeve doesn’t believe the warning. The elves feel as though this is some kind of elaborate trick. And the gnomes decided it was time to take a collective nap under some garden somewhere deep in the forest.”

“That’s a nice garden,” Clippings said.

I looked at Clippings, a bit surprised at his daftness, and then at Faelix. “How do you know what Queen Maeve is thinking?”

“I spoke to her,” he said. “Someone had to.”

“I sent a twittering bird to speak with her and bring me back a message,” I said, I could feel my lips tightening and my teeth beginning to grind. “She was supposed to send the damned little thing back. Now it’s going to be out in the world doing who knows what kind of damage as it takes short messages from one person to another without any regard for propriety or privacy. That is precisely what I was trying to avoid and, while we’re at it, why would you go see Queen Maeve when you’ve been adamant about avoiding her and her retinue of female badass guards?”

“I never said I was avoiding my mother,” Faelix said. “And I cannot be held account for your assumptions to that end.”

I stared at him, mostly wondering if I got off some good magical shots whether or not he’d be affected by transformative magic. I was pretty sure I could make him into something else, but the more I was with Faelix, the more I realized his natural magics were pretty strong and he wasn’t going to let me get away with much. At least, not without doing something back.

Since I am, as you know, Flora Rose, there isn’t much, as in anything, he could do, but I also wasn’t going to test that hypothesis on a male faerie when I didn’t have all the information I needed before acting.

“What did she say?” I asked after a few moments of silence.

“She said to drop the barrier and let the world proceed as it must.”

“Drop the barrier?” I asked.