Harvey said, “I expected you to be gone at least a few days. Are you weenying out cause you can’t stand the outdoors life?”

I answered, “Just bring us back to Real. For us it’s been a bit longer.”

Harvey brought us to Real and I slid off of Jacks back.

#

Jack shook his head. “Anything happen while we were gone?”

Harvey said, “Not really.

I took my pack off and went to the cottage.

“Harvey shouted after me, “You poor, poor boy, you thought it was rough before.”

I turned back, “What do you mean?”

Harvey looked at Jack and then back at me. “Not that you are the most buff muscle guy, but now you have lost the pale hunched skin and bone look. You used to panic whenever a pretty girl look at you. Now the pretty girls will have something to look at.”

I ignored him and went into the cottage. The laptop needed charging and I had a large mental list of things I wanted to look up.

#

The full moon was less than an hour away. This was going to be a two day affair. I had been fretting about keeping things secret from multiple groups with their own secrets but then I relaxed on it. If they revealed themselves to each other, they might not end up with the issues they thought they would have and all I could do without revealing one group to another was to warn them to be careful.

I owed the Frog, Snake, Harvey and a handful other Fairies for returning me to Real and restoring my health. King Surmium, had given me the clues I needed to become a consultant and make a lot more money. The Goblin, Agnes, was obviously working for King Surmium, but I didn’t owe her anything. I liked having her in the cottage, and girls left me alone when she was near so I liked having her around when shopping. I could manage a bag of feed a lot easier now, but she helped with that as well.

Queen Cypsela I had no idea about but she almost had to know King Surmium and be involved in his plots to some degree. I hadn’t asked, since that might give something away, but Queen Cypsela had to know that there was a Dwarven Professor and a group of farm animals who were doing research into physics and magic.

My current employer fortunately had no plans for me immediately and my lawyer business partners had nothing scheduled so at least that was simple.

Apart from Harvey who was trying to train me to be a fighting wizard, and a snooty if pretty wizard girl back in my home town, I didn’t know any wizards so there was no chance I would be fighting one.

As I congratulated myself on figuring out how to survive the full moon with minimal personal issues I checked my email. I started at the bottom.

From: Jason

“I was checking on the bill that was bothering you and it seems complicated and I fear the estate you bought might be a scam. Stay clear of them until we can get a better picture of what is going on.”

From: Employer

“Just a few questions. Nothing terribly complicated, or at least for you. A couple of clients were worried about their ----

From: Jason

“You didn’t answer your email, so I showed Jenny, Davis and Greg the transactions you were worried about. You didn’t answer your phone, so we decided to take a road trip and see if this property really exists and if you have gone missing. If you get this before we see you, please, answer your phone or call us.”

I pulled out my phone. I took it with me to Fairy and it had been without a charge for three weeks. I plugged it in but it would take a while before I could use it.

I scrolled up to the next set of emails.

From: June, my boss

“Josh, they are desperate. They really need you to call them and answer their questions. As soon as you ---”

From: Employer

“We checked the GPS on the company vehicle we issued you. Since you aren’t answering your phone, I sent Chester with a small crew to check on you and the vehicle. We really need a few answers ASAP.”

I was looking at my dead phone wondering if I could email anyone and stop this when Agnes appeared and sat down.

“Josh, I am glad you are sitting. I was exploring shadows and being brave when I heard a group at the gas station. Three wizards looking for a Fairyland heard that this estate was haunted. They are coming to check it out and plan to stay for the full moon.”

I heard a car in the distance and ran out to see another SUV like mine pull beside my SUV and stop and roll down the windows. As I ran down the stairs, Chester and three other men got out.

Chester looked at me and said to the men with him, “Looks like Joshua has gotten some time in the sun.”

I heard another car. I ran up close enough to Chester to talk. “Sorry my phone ran out of power and I couldn’t get a connection with my laptop.”

Chester cleared his throat when another SUV drove up. Chester turned and looked at it. His gesture was like he was ignoring me.

Two men and a woman got out of the SUV.

The man said, “Basic formation. We take care of this first so we can ask questions later.”

The other man knelt and slammed his palm against the ground. I felt a fairy gateway open and now we were still here but we were also in a Fairyland.

The lady cast a spell. I felt the pulse pass me and then I watched as my body fell to the ground. Chester and the other men with him all fell to the ground.

The wizard who had done the talking said, “Check their wallets. See who they are.”

The lady said, “We can’t keep them in a coma for the entire full moon.”

The wizard who had not yet talked pointed. “Wait who is that.”

Behind me, Agnes was slumped on the ground.

The first wizard said, “Well, well, well. A Goblin. Pretty too. What’s a Goblin sell for these days?”

I looked at the slumped form of Agnes and my body slumped on the ground. I got mad. Realizing I was out of my body and not yet a Fairy, I went into the first wizard. Since the only magic I could really do well and had practiced for the last three weeks was make gossamer, I made a mass of it in his sinuses and throat. I sailed into the lady and did it again. As I sailed into the third one I screamed. His eyes widened. He couldn’t see me but he could hear me.

Inside him I said, “You friends will soon choke out. If I don’t get a nice solution, you will too. Then I decide how long you can survive without air and if I even care.”

I peeked out above his head. The other two wizards were grasping at their throats.

The first man I had entered fell to his knees hard. It had to have hurt. The lady was still gesturing like she couldn’t swallow.

I slid back inside the man I hadn’t yet cut off air from. “Real quick, make your decision or you go down hard. I might even get creative with you.”

The man said, “I concede. You have defeated me and I owe you gifting. I will vouch for their defeat. We concede and we will not cross you again.”

I said, “That’s all very nice. But he was ready to sell a friend of mine. That is going to cost him.”

I went to the first man and started expanding a mass in his stomach. Then I went back inside the one man who was standing.

“Wake them up or bad things happen. Wake them all up.”

He said, “They are in a coma. I can dispel it, but it might take an hour. Usually just five minutes but these things take time. My comrades are choking.”

I said, “fine, dispel it.”

I felt him shift position. I slid back to the top of his head so I could see. He put his hand to the ground, I thought he was going to strike it again but he was bracing himself. He took out a large paint marker with his other hand and started drawing on the driveway.

I watched and saw the strokes he made and as it finished I felt myself pulled.

I snapped awake. My shoulder felt bruised from where I had hit. I stood and walked to the two wizards who were now on the ground clearly about to pass out. I asked, total surrender?”

They nodded desperately. I uncreated the gossamer I had made inside the woman. She lay there panting.

I looked down at the man. “Don’t like the thought of people being sold.” I thought about kicking him but I got rid of the gossamer inside his nose and mouth.

He lay there panting.

The wizard who was still standing said, “The Deaths allow us wizards to do as we wish with supernatural beings.”

I looked him up and down. “So ethics, common basic ethics are of no concern to you?”

The wizard said, “It’s a hard cruel world.”

The wizard on the ground said, “My stomach, there’s something wrong with it.”

I said, “Yes, it’s a hard cruel world. You’ll probably die from it. Starve to death or worse. Who knows. Sad really.”

I saw his hand glow and start to gesture. I stomped on his hand, hard. “Bad move. Really bad move.”

He said, “I was just trying to relieve the pain.”

Revolted at my own cruelty in response to his, I uncreated the mass in his stomach. “You should feel better. The three of you should all get in your car and just drive away. Don’t ever come back and don’t be sending anyone else out this way. Do you all understand?”

They nodded, the lady said, “We owe you gifts. We need to negotiate.”

I said, “Fine, just grant me the coma spell. That’s all I want.”

The standing wizard said, “That’s not how it works, we negotiate and--”

I looked at him. “Fine, we all negotiated and she is granting me the coma spell. Is that clear?”

She said, “Luke, he can do worse and I can’t even figure out or sense any of it. In a coma he took us out.”

I knelt and she kissed my forehead. I stood and helped her up. “You need to find nicer people to hang with.”

She said, “I tell myself that at least once a week.”

The three of them drove off.

I went to see how Agnes was. She was out of the road and on grass so she seemed okay. I put her knit cap back over her exposed pointed ear and turned when I heard a moan.”

Chester was getting up.

He looked at the three men he came with and then looked at me with a flash of fear.

I said, “I’m going to go in and email the answers to the questions you were asking. The process is simple and already described in the documentation. If you had clicked on the help button it would have explained what all the functions do.”

I went and checked on the other three men. As far as I could tell they were okay. I went in and sent emails to all the concerned parties.

I sent it to myself as well. Then I turned on my phone while it was still plugged in and charging and sent the message to their phones.

I walked back out. Agnes was gone. Chester and his men where in their SUV.

Through their open windows I could hear Chester’s voice. “Seriously, I was looking down at my body and I looked at Joshua. He was out of his body too. I can’t make sense of things but when I came to everything matched with what I saw out of my body. I think Joshua is a wizard.”

One of the men in the back seat said, “We all think he is a wizard. The programs he writes are probably two or three years ahead of the competition.”

Chester said, “It matches up but I don’t believe it, but I am certain he is a real wizard. Wait I got a message. It’s from Joshua. Oh, that’s embarrassing. I actually remember him explaining this last year.”

I looked at my key chain. The only relevant key anymore was the one to my SUV. I went to the window and handed Chester my keys.

“Can one of you use this to drive my SUV back? I don’t need it anymore.”

One of the men asked, “You can’t drive it?”

I considered putting him into a coma but the Fairyland gateway closed before the wizards drove off and I wasn’t going to be able to use the spell in Real.

Chester handed him the keys. “You drive it.”

#

As I watched them leave, Jack summoned me. “Josh, there’s some sort of ward up there and the chickens want to look for bugs. Can you check and get rid of it?”

I ran in and got a notepad. I copied the lines down as I remembered and then I went to the drive to look at what the wizard painted. I got it mostly right.

Jack summoned me again. “Now the House Fairies are complaining. If anything it’s worse.”

I had redone the lines separately so I had the marks down. I guessed that my sketch either intensified the effect or mine was better. My curves were neater but I am used to drawing curves from calculations and the estimate of the intersection often matters.

I tore up my first sketch of the ward and got a rock to start scraping away the paint. I had it mostly defaced when Jack and Randal came out of the stables to look.

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Randal said, “It’s cheats like that allow wizards to win against Fairies. I suppose it’s good since there are a lot of monstrous Fairies out there, but it seems unfair when wizards are almost always monstrous.”

Harvey said, “I was pretty good till I became a cat. Still better than these wizards. There are quite a few decent wizards, but the system rewards the worst of them and you don’t notice folk that don’t cause trouble.”

Randal said, “I don’t know that ward, probably can’t use it now that I am no longer human and mortal, but it looks like one of the angelic ones they use to deal with ghosts.”

I asked, “Deal with ghosts?”

Harvey said, “Never saw one of those wards but you hear about them. Some might force a ghost out or send it were they belong. Some can force lingering spirits to be bound to objects or obey commands. Or so the stories go. Anyone ever seen someone with bound spirits?”

Randal said, “I have but I don’t think the binding was angelic. For that matter a brass ring crafted with intent can capture a spirit unless the spirit chooses to go where nature intends it to go. So most of the spirit rings have spirits that would rather not face their just deserts or have a stronger goal in mind.

I knew a wizard who became possessed after a few years of using a spirit ring for information. You can’t trust those things. The wizard was strong but eventually a spirit with the will to, will find your weakness.”

xxx

I decided to get a marker pen like the wizard had. Maybe several. I also resolved to keep a notepad handy.

There was a feeling in the air. I was getting more acquainted with the feeling of gateways and other worlds. Something like that was happening.

Jack said, “I guess it’s time for the opening. Do you think it’ll be at the lake or the manor?”

Eloise ran up in a full gallop and kneeled. “Josh, get on. Queen Cypsela is about to make her grand entrance and I was warned she asked if you would be by the lake and watching.”

Jack said, “That means the lake, and if she asks, it is probably a command. Easy enough to humor the girl and she does a lot for us.”

I got on Eloise and she took off for the lake. I hadn’t explored this way so it was new to me. The slope behind the cottage went down to the lake and a boat house. Across and at another end of the lake was the mansion. As I watched the light around the mansion twinkled and the mansion returned to looking like it must have years and years ago. Water started pouring out of spouts and into the lake.

We galloped to a large flagstone walk by the lake and Eloise picked up speed. Her gait changed. Even as she ran hard she was a smoother ride than Jack.

As we neared the mansion, fish came up to the surface and started singing. I couldn’t make out what they were trying to sing and fortunately it wasn’t long. Then they went under and came back to spit water in the air. Again, it was an amazing and rare performance but not a very good one.

Eloise stopped a short way from the mansion. From the lake a long thin black ship with a female figurehead was approaching a pier that extended from an elaborate stairway leading up to the mansion.

Eloise shifted into a human woman and made an elegant and clearly practiced move turning as I fell from a horse back that was no longer there. She embraced me for a moment and turned away.

A small girl offered me a guitar. From behind I heard another guitar playing. I turned back and Jack was coming up beside me.

The small girl cleared her throat so I took the guitar from her and slung the strap over my shoulder.

Jack was playing a Flamenco piece we had played almost every night so I tested tuning and joined him.

As the ship got near the figurehead was discernible as a young girl as she arched her back and her balance shifted to where she was standing. She walked up the stair at the front of the ship and smiled.

She might have been twelve and maybe fourteen but she was the sort of beauty I would be running from in fear if she were a bit older.

She was in a long black gown and following her were several more even younger girls who started to move to the Flamenco music as they followed the girl that was once the figurehead of the ship and was now slowly dancing her way down the pier. She had castanets in her hands when a moment before her hands where empty.

Beside me a small girl sat on a gossamer wooden box and started beating a rhythm along with the tune Jack and I where playing.

The girl and her entourage stopped for a moment and turned to face Jack and me. She nodded and then looked back at the mansion and they started moving up the stairs.

After they entered the mansion, Jack started an ending to the tune and we did a dramatic last strum.

The girl stood and her box disappeared. “Hurry up, Queen Cypsela may have something dramatic planned inside.”

We hurried up the stairs and piano music started.

In the grand hall that was not there an hour before, a pair of young girls were playing a waltz on the piano, but as Queen Cypsela approached me the music changed to boogie-woogie.

Queen Cypsela said, “We’ll dance later, but we have guests about to arrive. Hurry.”

She took my hand and we ran up the stairs to the floor above and out the open door where a sedan could be seen coming up the drive.

She said, “Call me, Olive, since it’s a Cypsela. That was my real name but Olive was taken as a Fairyland name so I went with Cypsela. Try to keep up and just play along. That’s more fun anyway.”

The sedan stopped. It had tinted windows so until Jason, Jenny, Davis and Greg got out, I didn’t know who was coming. Queen Cypsela ran to the car. “You must be Mr. Bear’s friends. I’m Olive are you Mr. Bear’s friends?”

Jason took her offered hand. “Hello Olive, pleasure meeting you. This is Jenny, Davis and Greg. We just came out to see if Mr. Bear was doing okay.”

Olive looked back at me. Can they stay the night. Please, can they?”

I said, “Only if they insist. We don’t want to make people do things they don’t want to.”

Jason walked up the steps to me. “Good to see you looking so well. I didn’t know you played guitar.”

Olive ran up beside me. “Mr. Bear is full of surprises, you never know what he might do next. But he tells stories.”

Jenny asked, “What sort of stories?”

Olive looked up at me. “He told us that a beautiful Fairy queen gave him his guitar and insisted that she would be very vexed if he didn’t keep it and play it.” Olive covered her mouth with her hand, “He also said that he was Fairy gifted with a kiss on his forehead with the ability to play it. But we all know that can’t be true since he would probable run away screaming if a pretty girl tried to kiss him.”

Jenny looked at me and back at Olive, “How long have you known Joshua?”

Olive said, “Well he used to teach math to us at the other orphanage before we moved here. He gets so lost in programming sometimes. Did you know he had forgotten that he promised the previous headmaster that he would take care of the orphanage after she passed away?”

Jenny got a misty look. “Are you orphans?”

Olive nodded. “No living parents sadly. But we have Mr. Bear to take care of us.”

Olive took Jenny by the hand and led her into the mansion.

Jason said, “Seriously Joshua, you never looked better. How did you get into shape so fast?”

I said, “I haven’t been slaving away at the computer and I have been spending a lot of time outdoors. This place has been keeping me busy.”

Davis and Greg came up beside us, as Randal and Jack came out of the mansion.

Jason said, “We’ve been invited to stay the night. I can tell Jenny is going to want to and this is all too strange for me not to.”

Davis said, “I had to see this, but I need to get back before noon tomorrow and the drive is kind of long.”

Jason said, “Tell Olive we are sorry, our ride home has to be leaving fairly soon. How soon should we go, Davis?”

Davis said, “Finding this took longer than I thought it would. I should leave as soon as I can.

“It is good to see you are okay Josh. We figured you probably were, but you hear stories sometimes.”

I hid my relief that they couldn’t stay with a frown like I was disappointed.

Randal said, “Josh, you could take them back tomorrow afternoon in the Mustang.”

Jason asked, “You have a Mustang? What year?”

Randal said, “1969 Boss 9.”

Jason asked, “Really? A 429? I have to see it.”

I said, “If you have to go early--”

Jason said, “I need to ask Jenny.”

He took off in the direction Queen Cypsela lead Jenny.

Jack asked, “Can we at least talk you into some refreshments before you go?”

Davis said, “A bathroom would be great.”

Jack gestured. “Follow me.”

Davis and Greg followed Jack.

I watched them go. Randal asked, “Scared they might find out?”

I said, “What happens if they come back and it isn’t a full moon? The mansion will be gone.”

Randal said, “There is a foundation in the Fairyland for the top part of the mansion. It can be moved to the Fairyland or back here. Since you are going to be here Olive will probably leave it in Real. She takes it to Fairy when the estate is vacant.”

I asked, “And no one notices?”

Randal gave me a wink. “No one believes. It’s rare that anyone comes out here.”

I asked, “What if they come back and the place is empty apart from me? When it isn’t a full moon doesn’t Queen Cypsela and the rest of the Fairies have to go home?”

Randal said, “Most of then have to turn back into chickens, just as I have to turn back into a horse. Since she told you to call her Olive, call her Olive. Queen Cypsela doesn’t exactly trip on the tongue. If they visit and it isn’t the full moon then everyone is on a field trip and you stayed behind as the caretaker.”

Jason, Jenny, Davis and Greg all came back out with Jack and Olive.

Jack said, “Well, it is disappointing that none of you came prepared for a stay.”

Olive asked, “Mr. Bear, can we invite them back another time? Say about twenty days from now.”

I said, “We’ll see.”

#

With my lawyer friends gone we went back into the mansion.

Olive took my hand. “Jenny asked so many questions of you. Should I be jealous?”

I closed my eyes.

Olive said, “You really are scared of girls. You know that there are Fairies that can’t resist that sort of thing.”

I said, “I know. My first five days in Fairy were hell.”

Jack said, “Olive, you made out like a bandit on that one.”

Olive smiled up at Jack. “I know all four of them headed straight for the bathroom. I didn’t even plan it.”

I asked, “Having them go to the bathroom is a good thing?”

Jack said, “I never did explain Fairy economics to you.”

Olive put her hands on her cheeks like she was shocked. “After all that feed and all those groceries you took to your Fairyland?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah, now that I think about it, I feel a bit bad.”

I said, “The expense was worth it. I feel better than I have ever felt and I learned the flute and guitar. I’m looking forward to going back.”

Jack said, “Tell you what, I’ll pay for the groceries next time, after we figure out how to manage things.”

I said, “Since I am not buying a car, I have a bit of extra cash. I can’t let you do that.”

Jack shook his head. “Let’s go out to the lake and I’ll explain economics to you.”

#

We sat at on a stone bench near the lake.

Jack softly tapped on strings to play a sort of gentle environmental jazz as we talked. “As far as we can figure, Fairylands are pockets of space that want to have connections to Real. It takes energy for these pockets of space to exist. That energy bleeds to Real or it could bleed to a Fairyland large enough to be stable on it’s own.

“So a small Fairyland, might take a pound of energy a year. Larger ones take more. A human can provide about a pound and a half of energy a day to a Fairyland just by breathing. A Fairy might produce as much but usually they produce quite a bit less. There are other elements converted but carbon is the main thing consumed by Fairy.”

“So when you took food to my Fairyland, you made my Fairyland richer and more stable.”

I nodded. “I can live with that.”

Jack got up and walked to the waters edge. “You brought two hundred and fifty pounds of food and we consumed almost seventy-five pounds of that. A fifty pound bag of sweet feed might cost fifteen dollars but it will, after consumption, process, and eventual breakdown, give me close to fifty pounds I can make into gold. I am not sure what that is worth in Real these days, but it’s a lot more that fifteen dollars.”

I nodded. “After brokerage fees, last time I checked the spot price of gold, that would be over a million dollars. Take out taxes on a million depending on how you manage things you could have a million or seven hundred thousand you can spend freely.”

Jack sat on the flagstones and started taking off his boots. “You don’t seem excited or upset about that.”

I started taking off my shoes. “I’m a programmer. I deal with large numbers. I deal with clients that deal with a lot of money. A client may love the work I do, but at they end of the day, they still have the money and I still have to provide a service to them.”

Jack took his socks off and rolled his pants legs up. “You can summon without looking at a diagram, drawing patterns or saying anything more that a greeting to the person you are summoning. That means that potentially, you are in the Fairy peerage. There is a chance you might end up a Fairy king, but don’t get your hopes up.”

I got my socks off. “What is a peer? I know it as a computer term but it’s more British I think.

Jack put his feet in the water and lay back on the flagstones. “Peer means equal in Latin but some animals are more equal than others.

“Fair and Fairy don’t always go hand in hand. Okay, I know the term but I can’t quite pin it down. As a King of fairy it generally means beings who are not Fairy royals but making them angry is a bad idea. Since I have my own Fairyland, I am a king of Fairy but since it doesn’t have any Fairies and my Fairyland isn’t on the lists, most would call me a peer of Fairy.”

I sat beside Jack and dangled my feet in the water. “What makes a Fairy king?”

Jack said, “If you rule a Fairyland and you can maintain the rule of it, you are of course a king of Fairy. There are some that rule Fairylands that are not fully equipped with the powers needed to properly maintain a Fairyland, so it can get complicated. The powerful ones are feared by Fairy kings. We call them Dukes or Duchesses.

“To really be a Fairy King you are expected to be able to perform a lot of spells without any gestures or minimal conjuration. If you can do that and handle the basics, you might be called a true king of Fairy. If this stuff comes easy and you have no trouble combining things, then you might be called a true born king of Fairy.

“Usually the true born kings of Fairy really were born in Fairy so the name works. One of the powers that marks a true king of Fairy is the ability to turn the energy a Fairyland stores into real matter. Since I am a true king of Fairy, I can tell you that our visit to my Fairyland made me sixty-eight pounds richer. And there are still three and half bags of grain I haven’t touched.

I shrugged.

Jack said, “You have been a Fairy and you managed a few wizards all by yourself. In my mind that means your a peer of Fairy. I want to keep a good working relationship with you, for several reasons so how do you feel about getting half?”

I asked, “In the business world that would seem generous. Typically the one with the money keeps most of it.”

Jack sat up. “There are a few other contractual arrangements that have mostly held up over time. Fairies that get greedy, and a lot do, also tend to get their comeuppance but rarely soon enough.

“So if we are fair, but bias it towards the King of Fairy, then since we used my Fairyland, it, gets half so truth is I get half. If I enabled it by doing the creation of matter, I get half of the half remaining and since you obtained the prize, or in this case food, you are due half of the remaining with the rest going to shares for everyone involved. You and I are the only ones involved so we would get half each. That means you would get three eighth shares and I get five.

“There are other sharing systems. But if we break it down, you might have as much opportunity to be greedy as I do.

“The cost in Real for food is the smallest part, but as a Fairy, I could get into serious trouble for taking things from Real. Since you are mortal and consuming it, that issue goes away. Then we are converting it to Fairy fee and then into gold. If we ignore who converted the food, it still used my Fairyland and I was needed to convert it to gold. Then we get to the brokerage fees. I don’t have credentials in Real, so I need a fence to convert gold to spending money. In turn, the fence has to deal with swindlers, banks, gold brokers, taxes, and records or not depending on what we do.

“It is possible that you might have to justify what you spent money on and how you keep showing up with more gold. You might have to face robbers.

“After that, I will need your help buying things. Olive has an arrangement with some Daemons that manage real estate, but their fees are outrageous. There are reasons Olive is happy with the arrangement, but the last thing I want to do is use them to buy scientific equipment.”

I looked back to see Olive running down the hillside. In mid stride leaping down the hill she changed. She was now barefoot, wearing cutoff shorts and a halter top. She also looked my age. She sat beside me.

“Scared of me?”

I nodded. “Not in panic but yes.”

She laughed.

Jack said, “Looking like that, I’m a bit scared of you.”

Olive said, “You should be. Your my type. Josh here is just easy to tease and we need to get him over his fear of girls. I am hoping that knowing how bad wizards can get will help him face the girl wizards.”

Jack put his hand over the strings on the guitar silencing it. “I didn’t have chance to watch the entire feed but when the chickens complained of a ward we checked the monitors and there was a female wizard on the ground. She wasn’t in your league, Olive, but she wasn’t bad looking.”

Olive said, “I want to see! Josh, do you want to see the fight you were in?”

Jack got up. “I'd invite Josh to join us, I don’t have an issue with letting Josh in the secure area, but I can’t make that decision and neither can you.”

Olive got up. I continued looking at the lake. “I was there, I already saw it. You two go ahead.”

As they ran up the hill, I started tapping a slow tune on the guitar. I turned to see them running and shouted, “Thanks for the guitar! I love it.”

Olive turned back and bounced in place while blowing a kiss at me. Then she turned and continued running.

I saw Randal, Renate and Eloise in horse form galloping towards them. As they got close they turned to human form and then they were all over the hill and out of sight.

I couldn’t remember the name of the tune I was playing. It had words but they were not coming to mind. There was a splash out in the water. I looked and something large was coming my way.

I swung my legs out of the water and got up to back up when, about ten feet out from the edge a girl came up out of the water.

She had a beautiful face. I grabbed my socks and shoes and started running up the hill.

The girl caught up with me so I slowed, there was no point in running.

She said, “I thought I was a chicken.”

“Why do you work in chicken form?”

She took my hand. She was wearing a one piece swim suit and she was dripping wet. I shifted the guitar so she wouldn’t drip on it.

She let go of my hand. “Sorry, I didn’t think of the guitar. Since Fairy has a tendency to adjust itself, experimenting in Fairy can give us false readings. But since the moon and other factors can change things, we try to do most of our testing over long stretches of time. It’s complex and there is a strong difference between the waxing and waning moon. We keep all the records we can but unless there is a full moon and the Fairyland is overlapped around this lake, most of us are unable to be in human form in Real.

“So we are happy to have you here for several reasons. You can go shopping, that’s a big one. We need a human figurehead every now and then to maintain legal ownership of this place and we have come to a point where we have a lot of data, but since it changes with the moon and other factors, we are having the worst time trying to figure out what it all means.

I glance at her and glanced back away. “If you want me to do data entry, I really will run away in fear.”

She laughed. “We have the data in a data base. We even had a Fairy possess the computer to try to sort the data, but that didn’t work out and we had to restore from backups. We need someone magic, but not magic the way most of us are.”

I asked, “So your doing pure research then?”

She laughed for a moment. “I should change out of this, but first, does this swimsuit look good on me?”

I looked up at the tree line. “Do all Fairies tease?”

She said, “Let’s go to the party. Do you dance?”

“Not since I was little.”

“I’ll teach you, but all the fun dances are teasing.”

#

We danced and after a while we sat, worn out. Dancing is another exercise that I was unaccustomed to.

She said, “You seem to have gotten over your fear of girls.”

“No, I just had to focus on the dance moves and keep from running over anyone. Now I am too exhausted to run so there is no point in fear.”

Another girl came over with drinks. She squeezed into the space between me and my dance partner and handed me a drink. She kept hers and said to the girl I was dancing with, “Annette, there are more chickens here than roosters so you shouldn’t hog Josh.”

Annette got up. “I’m going for a drink, no Josh she brought that for you. I’ll see you later.”

I pulled back the drink I had offered to Annette and took a sip. There was wine in the punch, but it wasn’t strong. “Later Annette, thank you for teaching me to dance.”

The girl beside me said, “Call me Jody.”

#

Jack, Randal, Lord Mesocarp from Queen Cypsela’s Fairyland, two more Fairies from Cypsela who preferred to remain nameless, and I were outnumbered by the girls who wanted to dance. Jack and I took breaks from dancing to play music, but I was worn out before the party ended.