On the day of the picnic we skipped the reading lesson. Instead, Maroon and I helped the martial artists carry various supplies to the Misty Lake. The hulking men were getting their exercise, but they were also trying to one-up each other with their hauling ability. I was impressed with their willingness to compete for second place.

Meiling was with us and carrying an immense crate of vegetables and fruit on her back. The crate was actually eight smaller crates, each of which was four feet wide, but they’d been hastily tied and nailed together. She’d somehow attached backpack straps to this truck-sized cube, and was carrying it as though it were a couple of inconvenient textbooks. The crate had to have at least a few thousand pounds of fresh produce in it.

I had no idea where it had come from, but it was high-quality stuff. The apples and pears would have drawn humans, if I’d invited more than five of them (and the martial artists of course). Sasha was the only other human that might be there, but even she was hesitant to commit to attending a fairy party.

The martial artists were only doing it for ‘training,’ I felt. It would seem that only the fairies of Gensokyo appreciated a free meal. At least Arnold was happy to be there.

“What are these, chairs for ants?” asked Chris the Architect. He was a tall man with short brown hair and startlingly blue eyes. He was also carrying a box with dozens of doll-sized chairs in it.

“Fairies, actually!” said Maroon. She fluttered around the man. “Did you invite your aunts?”

“...what?”

“Aunts,” said Maroon. She glanced at me. “That’s birth-lady’s birth-lady’s other lady birthed, right?”

“Yes!” I said, after I’d thought about it for a moment. “Good job!”

I’d learned that fairies don't have family units like humans, since they were manifestations of nature. When Maroon had asked me about it I’d taught her some words for various family members and she’d memorized it all right away. It was good she’d had the success; I didn’t want her becoming demoralized by her repeated failure to read.

“I meant that the chairs are small,” said Chris.

“Some of the fairies are small,” said Maroon. “Not me, though! I’m almost as big as Cirno!”

“You are all tiny,” said Arnold, trying to loom over her. She flew a few feet higher in the air. “Cirno too.” He told her the story of how Cirno had surprised him, causing him to hit her with his ax. Maroon was shocked, and also jealous because he got to ‘play with Cirno’.

“She kept spitting on Wiki,” he said with a chuckle. “Cirno’s not bad once you get to know ‘er.”

“No hitting me with axes!” said Maroon, looking down at the tree-destroying tool. “I might actually die!” Arnold had acquired a leather strap with a button, and carried the ax on his back at all times.

“Understood.”

“Not me,” added Meiling. “My offer still stands.” She grunted and repositioned the crate, which groaned under the unusual strains. How did her feet not just sink into the ground? Was she pretending to walk while flying?

“I don’t want to hurt you,” said Arnold.

“A little pain never hurt anybody,” she responded. “Last time I let someone sneak by, Sakuya damn near lobotomized me. I can heal from knife wounds.”

“Technically, so can I,” said Arnold, making me wonder how he knew. “An ax wound is a lot worse,” he went on. I could only assume he was theorizing.

“Do you even know what an ax wound is like?” asked Chris, giving voice to my doubts.

“If a fairy can handle it, so can I!” said Meiling, as though Chris hadn’t spoken. She punched her hand. “Any time you want to bring it, Arnold, I’ll be ready.”

“Please wait patiently,” he said, showing remarkable restraint.

“Can’t you use the dull-side of the ax?” I suggested. The martial artists stared at me. “Well, I just thought Meiling could take a strong strike, if it weren’t bladed…”

“Brilliant,” said Meiling. She set the crate down with a thud. We were still on the road. When she stood up she wobbled a bit.

“Master?” asked one of the students.

“Stood up too fast,” she said, waving them off. “That box is really heavy. Anyway, let’s get this over with.”

“Yes, Master,” said Arnold, setting down his own basket. “Is the side of the road the most appropriate place?”

“Most battles occur on the road,” said Meiling. She stretched one leg, then the other. “We could not choose a better arena.”

Arnold pulled his ax off his back and hefted it. He gave a few test swings, blunt-end first as though it were a sledge instead of an ax.

“Feels a bit off, but I can work with it.” He lowered himself, and held it up like a baseball bat. Meiling herself was adopting a fighting stance.

After a moment, the fight began. The youkai stood stock still, not circling; she was just waiting for a blow to come her way. Arnold stepped left, then right, then forward. He swung surprisingly quickly, bringing the blunt end down as though he were driving a post into the ground.

Meiling caught the blunt end of the ax with her hand, lowering her arm. She slowed, then stopped it.

“An unnatural thing, full of hesitation,” she said, pushing him back. “Do it like you mean it.”

I hadn’t detected any hesitation, but Arnold nodded and resumed his circling. After a moment he wound up the swing, like a baseball player with a wide stance.

Arnold had cut down some trees, I realized, and he’d probably done it with enthusiasm. I felt my eyes widening, and my legs tensing; this blow would absolutely kill a human, if it landed.

Arnold swung again, from right to left, the ax’s mass pulling it far out and increasing the sweep of the swing. Meiling held up her arm to block.

“Tch–owww!” she said as she spun to let the blow go past. Meiling was clutching her forearm.

“Master!” said Arnold, dropping the head of the ax to the ground. She held up her hand.

“Bruised,” she said, testing her fingers. I noticed a red spot forming on her arm, under the skin. “It would appear that your ax knows no mercy, defying your own gentleness… but there was something there. Swing again, but this time against the air.”

The youkai leapt back, still in her fighting form. Arnold held up his ax.

“Not to hit, then?” he asked.

“Hit the air,” she said, dancing away. “You can do that?”

“I think so.” He swung, and nothing happened. “Did I hit it?”

“No,” she said, frowning. “Arnold. You are in tune with your emotions, more than any other student of mine. Hit the air. Swing like you mean it.”

He swung. “I still think I’m hitting the air,” he said.

“Let me motivate you further,” she said. “If you win, I will kiss you.”

There was a gasp from the martial artists. Arnold’s face turned bright red, and mine began to burn in sympathy. “I don’t–”

Meiling spun, sending a short weave of danmaku out. Arnold stepped left, then right; he was already getting better at dodging. The rest of us stepped back, and mostly dodged as well, except for one poor guy who ended up doing handstands after he was struck.

Meling charged forward, until she was close to Arnold. She said something I couldn’t hear, but his face only reddened further.

“That’s not what I–” he started, but Meiling did a backflip to gain some distance. She burst again. Several of the bullets struck Arnold directly.

“Swing your ax!” she commanded. “Stop dithering! This is danmaku, I know how you feel!”

“Fine!” he shouted, winding up a huge swing against nothing in particular. I hit the deck; if the ax slipped from his hands, any of us could be in danger. He pulled it back and wrung it forward, like he was trying to shatter concrete.

Arnold swung around in a circle, and this time a line of pink danmaku lept out; four or five bullets. He gasped. Meiling lifted her arms, turning sideways, and the spheres flew right past her, left and right. They were heart shaped.

“I thought so,” she said. “I was struck in more than one way.”

“Yes,” he said, pumping his fist. “Yes! I can do this! Hahahah!”

“Now we will work on control,” she said. “Swing again, but emotionally, not physically.”

Arnold swung the ax in a ridiculous way, from the lower left to upper right. Pink bullets shot out again, and Meiling was struck by one.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“There is that emotional control,” she called. “You are most excellent, my student.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Now let’s–”

Meiling spun through the air and sent her foot right across Arnold’s chest, kicking him to the ground.

“I–I concede,” he said, breathless.

“You did well,” said Meiling, offering him a hand. He took it, and got to his feet. “This one’s for free.”

Then she kissed him.

“Eww,” said Maroon.

–

We set up the tables and chairs by the lake, and unloaded the crates of fruit. Meiling spun a full-sized chair around and sat in it. She gave orders to her students with her legs crossed and the chair leaned back on one of its legs. She balanced by wiggling her foot.

We set up a spread of all kinds of fruit and vegetables. Arnold told me that he would like to take some home, if there were any extra, and I told him there wasn’t a provision forbidding it. I even grabbed a banana myself and stuffed it in my pants. My pockets had died with my jeans, so I didn’t have many options.

“How many fairies do you expect to show up?” Arnold asked me. He was gazing out over the lake, squinting to see through the fog.

“Oh, at least a dozen,” I said. “That’s about how many fairy maids we’ve sent off to spread the word.”

“Oh?” he asked.

“Yeah. And hopefully they’ll tell others. The idea is that if our picnic draws enough attention, news of the event will reach Cirno.”

“Is that them?” he asked, pointing at a dark patch in the sky.

“Er…” I said. It was the fairy maid Needles flying ahead of a cloud.

A cloud of fairies.

At least one hundred miniscule fey were following her, not one of which was larger than a cat, except for Needles herself. She waved.

“I found some friends!” she said. “They don’t get to eat human food very often.”

“I’ll go get another crate,” said Meiling, as she sprung to her feet. “I have a feeling we’ll need it.”

“Wait!” I said. “We also need to be escorted!”

“Maroon’s here,” she said. “You’ll be fine.”

Then the gate guard ran away at high speed, leaving us to watch as a cloud of fairies descended like locusts on the fruit we had brought. One of them cored and sliced an apple by slapping it, somehow, and eight fairies carried away the pieces. Another pair pulled a banana apart, and a third used a little sword to slice it into disks mid-air.

They laughed like mice while decimating the spread.

“They just have crates of fruit lying around,” said Arnold with a frown. “How much food is there in the Scarlet Devil Mansion?” The vegetables were also beginning to disappear.

Not enough, as it would turn out.

—

The tree branches were full of fairies. The air was full of fairies. The ground was swarming with fairies, skipping and dancing. Fairies swam the backstroke in the lake and shook themselves off like dogs; fairies played musical chairs while singing and bashing each other with the chairs; fairies ran to and fro during a game of hide-and-seek, in which they mostly hid behind other fairies.

Their tiny voices were like shoes squeaking on polished wood, or the chirping of fire alarms. I couldn’t understand the majority of them, especially since they were all shouting. All the humans had their ears covered.

Fairies outnumbered humans in Gensokyo, a thousand to one, I was beginning to realize. Maybe ten thousand to one. The party had stopped growing, but that might be because the fairy maids had abandoned their posts.

“I think that one’s a fairy for a tree,” said Maroon, pointing into the swarm. “Oh, that one too. And that one.”

“There are a lot of trees,” I conceded.

“Oh yeah!”

“What about her?” I asked as I pointed toward a dark gray fairy boxing against two others underneath a broken crate (the crate had broken when two dozen fairies went to search for overlooked food).

“No… I think she’s a fairy for a great stone,” said Maroon, frowning.

“A great stone?” I asked. “If every rock has a fairy, I’m surprised that more didn’t show up.” Also that I didn’t see them all the time.

“No, it has to be big enough to notice! Same for the trees!”

“A landmark?” asked Arnold

“Yeah!”

Far above, ten or twenty fairies broke out into a battle of danmaku. This had happened at least a dozen times already, so we all took cover, except for Maroon, who went up there to join in on one side or the other. She was the biggest, so far; she was the strongest, so far. Whatever side she joined would win.

(The other fairy maids had taken some food and flown away.)

“This is a clusterfuck,” said Arnold. He was holding up a pine branch, which was sufficient to block stray danmaku from the fairies. The bullets were the size of grains of rice. “Can I go home?”

“Not without an escort,” I said. “Aren’t you enjoying learning about the swarming behavior of fairies?” I’d been giving it some thought, while cowering and trying my best to block out the cacophony. The fairies probably spent most of their time hiding from threats, on account of their weakness. In the magical creature ecosystem fairies were like insects.

And like insects, they sometimes came out in force. A burst of danmaku came at me.

I grabbed a cushion to hold over my head. The small danmaku provided a twitchy, nervous compulsion to submit. It wasn’t for us, but it was still like prickly rain when it happened to hit us. A few tiny danmaku weren’t enough to enforce the compulsion.

“I wonder if this is how the other youkai feel about humans,” I said.

“Isn’t this fun!” shouted Maroon, as she flew around a tree and chased a rat-sized fey. “I’ve never seen so many fairies! I didn’t know there were so many around!”

“Yeah, me neither,” I said. “I guess that before, you were the smallest fish in the big fish pond.” Maroon looked at me with confusion, but then, so did Arnold. “How’s it feel to know you are powerful?”

“It’s amazing!” she crowed. “I’m the strongest, for once!” And she was.

The other fairy maids had all flown back to the Scarlet Devil Mansion, or who-knows-where (although not before grabbing armloads of fruit for themselves). Only Maroon had stayed behind, and only because we still needed an escort.

Another fight broke out just above us. Maroon halved the number of combatants with her red danmaku and laughter. The losers flew away, except for a few who swooped down toward the ground and attacked a martial artist.

“Back it up,” I shouted at them. The squealing cacophony of fairies receded from us for a moment. Most of the horde wasn’t causing too much trouble, honestly, but the one percent or so who were problematic were very problematic.

“Squeak,” said a fairy that flew right in front of my face. She was five inches tall, and she sounded like a whoopie cushion full of helium. She might have been green or blue. I couldn’t get a good look at her, because she moved too fast. “Squeak squeak squeak.”

“She says you’d better give her a grape, or else,” said Maroon fluttering down to me. “Oh. Her friend got a grape earlier.”

“Or else what?” My patience was wearing thin.

“She says she’ll pull your hair.”

“C’mon,” I said. “That’s not very nice.” Not very threatening, either, or so you’d think.

The fairy darted at my face and stuck her hand up my nostril, and with a tearing yank, she flew away.

“Aw fuck!” I said, grabbing my nose.

“She coulda gone for worse,” said Arnold. I had the absurd thought that if Reimu and Sanae often fought fairies like that, they’d never have to shave their armpits.

“We’re outta grapes!” called Maroon after the fey. She looked at me apologetically. “She won’t do it again. Probably.”

“I wish we could just send almost all of them away,” I said, touching my nose. No blood was coming out, at least.

“That’s what I’ve been doing!” said Maroon. “There’s just too many!”

“Ah, maybe we could help with that,” said Arnold. “Meiling has taught us physical danmaku.”

Suddenly, a wall of buzzing, shimmering fairies formed around us. The surface was a series of perfect spheres of twenty feet, centered on each of the humans. Only Maroon remained within.

I realized the fairies could detect intent, like the other types of youkai, or the intent to fight, at least. There were hundreds of tiny fists raised, and the microwave beep equivalent of jeers.

“Maybe this is what our Master wanted?” asked Chris. “She still hasn’t come back.”

“What happens if we lose?” I tried to say, but I was overridden by a collapsing swarm of fairies and danmaku.

I emitted a burst, reflexively, and then the fight was on. My burst caused the fairies to back up, from me at least. Maroon was also having luck dispersing them.

Chris the Architect swung wildly, missed, took a wall of danmaku to his face and began to belt out a song and undo his belt.

“Twinkle twinkle little star,” he practically screamed, “How I wonder what you are!” He was down to his skivvies in seconds.

Then he jumped in the lake. I was too busy blasting to pay much mind, but I did think it was odd.

–

“Is everyone accounted for?” I asked, less than five minutes later. We were regrouping.

“I think so,” said Arnold. He swatted at a fairy. The tiny youkai took off flying into the forest after the strike, uninjured. Then he started to count the swimmers and walkers.

“I’m a little teapot!” said Diego, before jumping into the lake.

“Another down,” I said. Of the twenty martial artists, only four were left on land, not including myself. The others had all jumped in the lake after singing children’s nursery rhymes, and sometimes taking off their clothes, sometimes not.

“The water’s not so bad once you get used to it!” called Chris. He was doing the backstroke. “Honestly, it was a nice thing for them to suggest!”

“Says you,” said Bruno, a very tall man who was standing behind me. “I can’t swim.”

“Why are they all jumping in the lake?” I asked Maroon. She gave me a quizzical look.

“Don’t you want to tell some people to jump in a lake? That’s the funniest thing ever!”

“Fair enough,” I said. I wiped my brow. The remainder of the fairies were dispersing. “I’m beat.”

“No, we won!”

“I meant metaphorically. That was a close fight.”

“If they knew who was going to win, they wouldn’t have started it,” said Maroon.

“You’re a jerk,” shouted a foot-tall fairy from nearby. She was big enough for her voice to be deep enough that I could comprehend what she was saying, but just barely.

“Yeah,” I said, hitting the stray fairy with a vector. She flew off. “This was a massive failure.”

“Eh?” asked Maroon.

“Cirno isn’t here,” I said. “That’s the whole reason we did this.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” offered Meiling. She set down another crate with a thud. It was only an eighth as big as the first one, but it did have more food inside.

“I suppose it was also good training.”

“No, I meant about Cirno,” she said, pointing up into the air. I looked up.

The ice fairy was watching us with her arms crossed. She had a sneer, but it rang false, like she’d practiced it in front of a mirror. Cirno was looking down on us, right between her toes.

“I wonder if someone told her to wear shorts under the dress, or if she figured that out herself,” said Arnold. I considered making a note for Wiki. He’d claimed that no youkai wore shorts, and it would be good to tell him he was wrong, but I’d also have to admit that I’d looked up Cirno’s skirt. He might not believe that it was an accident.

“I heard there was a fight!” declared the biggest and strongest fairy, so far. “I didn’t want to miss it!”

“I’m sorry!” said Maroon. “It’s already over.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said. “We’ve got a deal to offer you.”

“Oh?” The fairy drifted toward the ground. Maroon’s face reddened until it was the same color as her name. “What’s that?”

“I want to talk to you about reading,” I said. “Ask you how you learned it, maybe get some tips from you.”

“Oh ho ho, you recognize my greatness!” she said, pointing at her forehead.

“I suppose so. In exchange, you can have a lot of food,” I said, gesturing toward the crate.

“Okay…” she said. “Got any sake?”

“No.”

“Lame. I also wanna fight!”