Prior to the cottage incident, nothing about Aptezor's adventure was novel or informative. That would have disappointed Wiuyo had she not already gathered enough material for a ballad. “I'll call it 'The Finding of the Four and Their Reunion,'” she decided.
The name startled Dirant. “Is there reason to be confident we will fail to meet the others, or? Surely this land is not so easily explored as that. We have not even seen Mr. Zatdil.”
“That was the most dramatic reunion I've ever witnessed, and you're saying there are more of you? We're wasting time!” Wiuyo resumed the journey without first ensuring the people required for there to be a second dramatic reunion would follow, though of course they did. “We're close to the border,” she assured them. Though they felt certain she had said something similar before, “close” has many reasonable meanings.
When they reached it, for it was indeed close, they recognized the transition without any elaboration on the part of the fairies. The landscape stopped. That was not to say a phenomenon waited for them similar to the guest world's inconceivable cellar. It was a simple matter of a sudden end to the mild dips and short heights, the mingled streaks of gray and orangish-gray, all of it replaced by perfectly level brown. Vegetation feared to approach, and they saw no buildings out there despite the accommodatingly level terrain.
“Is it safe to walk there?” Dirant wanted to ask, but the people to whom he wished to address the question proceeded into the border region before he rearranged it into a statement rather than a question. That of course did not prove the area to be safe for less fairy-like travelers. “Mr. Aptezor, it is the privilege of youth to rush ahead and try new things.”
“I'm shocked by your attitude, Dirant. May I call you Dirant?” Doltandon Yurvitas was smiling in the same manner as an employee who, hearing of a planned reduction in the workforce, receives a promotion against his expectations, and that to a position held by a former superior he sees stumbling out of the offices, vanquished in spirit.
“Certainly, Yurvitas.” Dirant hated to ruin the sudden accord between him and Yurvitas by saying it was a joke, and so he did not.
Taomenk stomped right past them, though he was still behind Aptezor. “Look at these shy villains. They're eager to wipe away the memory of what they did not ten minutes ago. Get going.”
They did go, passing the land's last edifice if barns deserved the term. Aptezor halted one step past the border, causing the three behind him to scramble back in terror. “That is surpassingly strange,” he remarked, his head turned toward the barn.
That building which ought to have extended over the border instead had its rear sliced off cleanly as if a baker with an oversized knife mistook it for one of his loaves. Not even an ogre had the size and Muscle to wield so immense a knife, a fact suggestive of the incredible power of bakers. At least the exposed interior held a few buckets and an entire second floor, a nod to an actual purpose unlike the ostentatious cottage's interior. Fairyland evidently respected borders with an aggression unknown in the natural world, where armies, attorneys, and armies of attorneys often were required to resolve disputes over such.
As curious as that was, the fairies had not paused to look. The humans hurried to catch up, whereupon Wiuyo put forward an unexpected question. “Which realm do you want to explore next? Don't say you have no idea. Feel inside for the bond-knowledge, the sense we all have of needing one another. How else are we drawn together?”
“Which realm? Ah, pardon me for the repetition. It is only that I had believed the fairy realm to be a single place.” The expressions of his companions reassured Dirant that his misapprehension had been shared.
The workers laughed. “A border with one side! A center on the edge!”
“Kings and queens with no kingdoms!”
Yurvitas took the mockery of his underlings as well as most bosses. “I've already seen a border between something and nothing. What do you say about that?”
“I want to see that.”
“I don't want to see that. It sounds scary.”
That settled the question if fairies possessed different personalities, or whether as one philosopher posited in his controversial Toward a Fairy-Like Governance, fairies had been the several physical expressions of a single guiding intelligence. The implications for social organization were obvious, at least if one read all 800 pages (depending on the edition). The suggestions therein had not been taken up by any known government, and once word of the authentic fairy-nature spread, they never would.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
One of the fairies proved so distinct from his fellows as to try to be helpful. “There are five realms, aren't there? Ishtu's, Ydridd's, Ava's, Zatdil's, and Jiojjil's, until one of them changes to Hacanthu. Jiojjil will win. He's the strongest, isn't he?”
“No, Zatdil is.”
“He just looks strong. Ydridd is too queenish not to win.”
“None will ever win.”
Aptezor moved to clarify the local geopolitical situation. “Does—“ He got that far before Dirant squeezed his shoulder and whispered a warning about the general futility of questions. “Thank you. The rulers of these realms must collect information about who enters their domains.”
“Should they be doing that?” a fairy wondered. Perhaps the tunneling fairies would eventually say their names to facilitate identification, but in the interval, he was known only as the one with the biggest boots.
“That's what the kings and queens are missing,” Wiuyo declared with the full conviction of the recently persuaded. “It's that quality known as tactical acumen. Humans have it. Twenty songs about a single battle can have varying verses because of the analysis, concentrating on specific parts, telling it from the perspective of a general, an officer, a soldier, and all kinds of approaches. Just six songs can say everything about the heart, only nobody's capable of singing them. Three humans beat four ogres. Think that over until I get these lyrics right, then think of them instead to help me out.”
“We employed a ruse suggested in an amusing little story about a mother bird desperate to stop the ogre brothers from eating her eggs,” Dirant explained. “Or does it reinforce the point that we teach our children such tactics?”
Humans and fairies alike agreed that it did, though their opinions split when it came to the proper emphasis. That is, were humans geniuses or fairies dullards? The discussion flattered, but it also reawakened Yurvitas's habitual impatience. “I'll write to Aunt Jeon that I'm a genius at warfare and see how she takes it. For now, we're stupidly immobile. Which realm has the most water?”
“Ah!” The three Adabans flattered him further for his astuteness in fixing on a criterion not directly related to their main purpose but essential for its fulfillment, though not the manner in which he asked it. Specifically, the “asked” portion was ill-considered.
“I don't care if they answer,” he said. “We'll walk along the border. When we see some, there we are.”
Wiuyo set off again. “An audience of these hard, earthy warriors with regal Ydridd! This will be the best lay I ever compose.” Then the others praised Yurvitas some more.
The lake district, the fairies called it, and so did the humans out of courtesy if nothing else. They saw no lakes from the border, though the verdant hills and still more verdant valleys suggested plentiful water. So overwhelmingly green was it that the first cartographer to see the place would unquestionably color it brown on the map in an exercise of defiant discretion. Paintings which purported to depict the paradise which awaits the just failed to communicate such tranquility as that mystical country implied for its dwellers, no doubt because of the irrepressible turmoil in the heart of every brush's wielder. Beautiful Yean Defiafi never appeared so inviting, to the lover of the outdoors at any rate. Architecture was another matter. Unlike the barren but partially developed district they had left, no artificial structure could be seen from the first hill they climbed.
“Mr. Dirant, what is your opinion of the commercial advantages of this location?” No more than a couple minutes of gazing upon that serenity and Aptezor was wholly restored, his tone even and inquisitive, his knees steady and his back straight.
“None whatsoever on account of the fairies. Supposing they leave as is their stated intention, this is an ideal location for families disenchanted with the city. Collecting rents is possible, and yet the canny businessman may prefer to establish, either solely or in conjunction with proprietors capable of running them, the assorted shops necessary to supply the hopeful farmers, ranchers, and possibly fishermen who will come in with money, regardless of how long they keep it. Furthermore, he might arrange for the town charter to be framed in such a way as to ensure the choice of the mayor is not left to chance. That is from a purely single-generation financial perspective of course.”
“I see. And what about a multi-generational plan? The public wants to know how to give our grandchildren a chance.”
“If true, it's the finest compliment the Adabans may be given and a rebuke to Yean Defiafi we may never bear.” Yurvitas closed his eyes and dreamed.
Dirant left him to that and answered. “Simply reserve the mayorship for one's own family in perpetuity. That is too long for any municipal constitution to persist unchanged of course. The entire stratum of local society capable of harnessing the resources required to amend the charter is however likely descended from one branch or another of the founding family, and there is no obligation to favor a specific line of heirs on the sole grounds of initial seniority.”
“A very thorough response, Mr. Dirant. Our readers cannot fail to be enlightened when they read it. Mr. Taomenk, what improvements may be made to this region in the opinion of an expert engineer?”
“Depends where the water is, Mr. Aptezor.” He refused to commit himself beyond that, and on each occasion his companions swallowed, they became more persuaded he was correct in his stance.
Just as they resumed their search for water and their missing associates, in that order, they heard drums and yet more songs of fairies, again of the non-entrancing variety. Almost as soon as they perceived the clamor from the right, the same came from the left. “Battle comes,” intoned the worker who employed a constellation of hairpins to compose the great silvery mass she kept up there.