Sarah tried to soothe Neesk again, ready to grab the little goblin if he tried to leap at the dryad. "Seriously, Neesk, it's okay," she said.

"Nobody tells me to leave but you," he said stubbornly, gripping Sarah's hair. "Don'ts trusts strangers. Stranger-danger!"

She could only blink; despite the rumored Queensguard, it seemed that Neesk had appointed himself her protector. The idea of being protected by something that weighed half a pound was almost ludicrous, until one noticed the red spark in his eyes and the sharpness of his teeth.

And yet, the way he spoke reminded her that some of the goblins had once been human children. Was Neesk one of those, remembering advice a parent or teacher had given him long ago? If so, it explained one of the reasons he'd attached himself to her.

"You need not leave, Neesk, only do not interrupt," Alix said gently. "I am tasked to teach Sarah magic, and it could go ill if she were distracted."

He glared at her grumpily, and said only, "Be careful."

Sarah started to apologize, but Alix shook her head slightly. "I take no offense, Sarah. Neesk has a point; I haven't known you that long. And oaths can be broken, but it is never lightly done. Regardless, I mean neither of you any harm. I'm content to prove that, over time." She gestured them to follow, and Sarah did, still petting Neesk. He settled quietly on her shoulder, his tail half-looped around her neck.

The place Alix brought them to was a little sheltered glade in the midst of the trees, with a large weeping willow at the center of it. As she approached, the willow's trailing branches moved aside on their own, and Alix ducked into the dim shelter at its trunk.

Sarah followed, and realized she could stand up inside. It was like a little room in the forest, the noise of the city dimmed even more than usual in the park. The leaves were thick enough that no one could see them here, even if someone did leave the paths to explore. The ground beneath their feet was soft and loamy, layered over with fallen leaves. "Nice," she said, turning around and looking up at the branches arching overhead.

"Neesk, I need you in the branches to keep a lookout," Alix said, and sat down on the ground near the willow's roots. "Sarah, sit here, with me."

The little goblin scampered easily up the trunk – and out of the immediate way, Sarah noticed. Alix really was pretty good at manipulation, and she needed to remember that, no matter how friendly the dryad was. Sarah sat down in front of her, and Alix held out her hands, so Sarah took them.

"Now, I'm going to try to give you enough of my magic to see the world as I see it," Alix said. "Without touching the Key to Umardelin, because I do not want to disturb the kingdom or its king. All you have to do is let me in."

Sarah nodded, and her eyes widened as green tendrils of magic crept up her arms from where Alix held her hands. It looked exactly like vines, questing along her skin, and she felt a faint buzzing sensation as those tendrils looped around her wrists and traced up her arms. Sarah tried to focus on letting that magic sink into her skin, but she was honestly a little too fascinated by it. This was New York City, Central Park, broad daylight, people going about their daily business a few hundred feet away … and fae magic was twining itself in pretty bracelets around her forearms.

"Hmm," Alix murmured, frowning. "You're heavily shielded. It's not his work, it's built into who you are. You don't give away much, you don't like to let people in. I'll bet that most of your life your lovers complained they never had your whole heart."

That stung, reminding her of Barton, and Alix saw the look on her face. The dryad shrugged. "It is who you are, Sarah. You are one who protects, not one who needs protecting. No one's damsel in distress – and no wonder he's so intent on making you his queen. Better that you rule at his side than over him, right?"

"He thinks I don't realize that," Sarah said with a grateful laugh at the change of topic.

"I could break your shields, but that's foolish," Alix continued. "A waste of my energy and yours. I could teach you to lower them, but that will take time, and time is of the essence. There is an old way of skipping under such shields … Sarah, do you trust me?"

She considered the question. Every instinct she had about people already liked Alix, and she was well on her way to considering her a friend, despite being told time and again never to trust the fae. In any case, Alix had sworn an oath. "Yes," she said.

"Then trust me," Alix said, and leaned forward to place a brief, chaste kiss to Sarah's lips. Sarah was totally surprised by that, but it made a kind of sense. What better way to slip past defenses embedded in skin than with a kiss?

Any further speculation vanished as a sharply green taste filled her mouth, and Alix's vision of the world slipped over her eyes.

Most people walking through a forest saw the animals first, the squirrels rushing to and fro, the birds calling in the trees, perhaps other people walking, maybe a butterfly or bumblebee flying past. They saw the plants and trees as a hazy green background, perhaps identifying a few species, but mostly ignoring the static elements in the scene.

Except the green world wasn't static, as Sarah now saw. The oak tree nearby shed its tannin-rich leaves, poisoning the ground against competitors. Every tree stretched its limbs to capture as much sunlight as possible, and stretched its roots too, fighting for water and nutrients in the soil. The grass and weeds were part of that same war, and each plant had its own strategy to grab as much as it could, reproduce, and move its offspring far away where they wouldn't compete with the parent plant. Nearby a fallen tree was eagerly devoured by fungi, turning back into loam. It was the animals that faded away, useful only as pollinators and seed distributors, and eventual sources of food.

Sarah could feel the sun pouring down into the willow tree, into her, every cell channeling and changing it into energy. She could feel the earth below her, endless fathoms of earth and clay and rock, rich with minerals and nutrients. Her roots wove into the soil and drank deeply of its strength, nourishing her entire body.

"There now," Alix said. "You and I and everything else in this world, we are bound to the earth. She holds us up, she feeds us, she clothes us, everything we are comes from her. And she will take what you cannot use and turn it into food for the plants. Your trash, your waste, and one day your flesh, she will convert it all into earth itself and feed it to the green world around you. This is what I mean by grounded, Sarah. And if you meet hostile magic, or magic too strong for you, she will take that as well. You need only reach out to her."

As she spoke, Sarah was trying to dissociate herself from the tree, to find that connection in herself – and stop feeling as though she had branches instead of arms. "Wow," was all she could manage to say.

Alix laughed gently. "That is an appropriate reaction. I'm pulling back my magic now. See if you can still touch the earth."

That taste – as if she'd plucked a fresh new leaf and bitten into it – faded, along with the keen awareness that was like sharing her soul with the trees. Sarah was herself again, the key warm against her throat, and she could hear Neesk clambering around in the tree above them. She let go of Alix's hands, and she had hands again, wasn't surprised to find them leafless.

Reassured, Sarah closed her eyes, took a breath, and reached for that other state of awareness again. She had to put her hands down, fallen leaves crunching slightly, but as soon as she physically touched the ground, she felt it again. The sun above, the earth below, supporting her effortlessly.

"Excellent," Alix said cheerfully. "Any time you work magic, ground yourself first. Just like electricity, in a way. You want a way for any excess charge to run harmlessly off you."

"I have a feeling that's going to be useful," Sarah said, and played with the connection a bit, trying to feel the earth without losing her sense of who and where she was.

After a few moments of that, during which Alix waited serenely, Sarah focused on the dryad again. "You said I'd have to learn to center and shield, too, right? But I'm already shielded."

"You're also the most centered person I've met, for having no prior training," Alix added. "Being centered is just being in the core of yourself, completely secure in who you are, soul and mind and body balanced. There are other methods to learn it, besides magic. Did you ever do meditation or yoga?"

"Both, in college," Sarah said. "I needed the stress relief. I couldn't get into the whole New Age culture, but the meditation especially was useful. As for knowing who I am, well, it's a little odd. When I was younger, I wanted to be an actress like my mother. I spent a lot of time training to be someone else."

"I've known some actors and performance artists who have no sense of self," Alix replied thoughtfully. "They seemed to be lost in their roles, turning themselves into chameleons, never knowing their own true colors. But most are fairly centered people, as if they learned who they are by learning who they aren't. As for you, Sarah, there's a core of steel in you. Just because you know how to be someone else, very convincingly, doesn't mean you've forgotten who you are. In fact I imagine you taught yourself to center largely to maintain your identity despite the acting you wanted to do, and the acting that life forces you to do."

Sarah gave a rueful little chuckle. "Yeah, that's true. I really hate having to play nice to the faces of people I know are abusing or neglecting their kids. But it doesn't get the case processed any faster, or help the kids at all, if I tell them what scumbags they are. So I pretend to be on their side, and they tell me more because I'm helpful. I always feel dirty, until I can bring the hammer down on them."

Alix cocked her head at that. "I hadn't considered your line of work. It must be terribly exhausting. Are there truly so many children in such dire situations?"

"There's too many, but that's not the whole of my job. Sometimes the kids are fine, but it's still ugly; divorce cases, usually. One parent will say the other abuses the child, just to get custody, and then we have to investigate. Especially if they say molestation is happening, we have to do a physical investigation, which means the child has to go to the hospital, be sedated, and be examined inside and out by a physician for signs of sexual abuse. Even if the parent admits they were lying, once that accusation is made, we have to take it seriously. Which sucks for everyone, but especially the child."

She shook herself slightly. "A lot of times it's just minor stuff, though. Sometimes it's a busybody neighbor trying to cause trouble, and you can tell in five minutes that the kids are fine. Sometimes there are families that are having issues, but they genuinely want to do the right thing. Sometimes it's just that they need services, like addiction recovery or mental health or even something like food stamps, and I get called in to help with that and also make sure the kids are handling it okay. Most people are pretty decent, and I'm lucky enough that I still get to see that, even after seeing the worst stuff."

"Good. It's usually different, for fae. Few of us have children without wanting them, or fail to treasure our children. There are some who are terrors – and some, like my kind, who aren't properly parents at all."

Sarah tilted her head curiously. "Jareth told me about fae not being able to have children easily. But what do you mean about dryads not being parents? What were your parents like?"

Alix chuckled. "I don't know. I don't remember. Dryads can live a very long time, like most fae, but we haven't got the best memories, usually. I can tell you all about the coldest winter of my life, when my tree lost half its branches to the weight of snow, but I can't tell you what year that was. Or how many years were between that and the summer where our grove was almost touched by a wildfire. I'm fairly certain the winter was earlier, and that's it." She shrugged. "Most fae children are precocious, and we even more so. I've been told that newborn dryads can walk within a day, and I believe it. My kind would not make for the most attentive mothers. And I remember seeing young dryads choosing their trees from among their mother's grove, so I must've done the same when I was small, but I don't remember that."

Sarah shook her head slightly. "I can't imagine not remembering anything about my childhood."

Alix leaned back, propping herself on her hands. "I can't imagine being as helpless as your human babies are. Such fragile little things."

"You're different now," Sarah pointed out. "You're obviously very intelligent, and you don't forget things. What changed?"

"I was exiled. Outside the safety of my grove, I had to adapt or die," Alix replied, and shut down that line of questioning by standing up and dusting off her hands. "I think for your next lesson we ought to start actually manipulating power. Can you come to the club in the evening? I'll let you into my power source and show you how to draw from it. And how to work with it, more subtly than explosions."

"Sure," Sarah replied. As she stood up, Neesk bounced down to land on her shoulder again, and she petted him. Alix stepped toward the willow's branches, which moved aside for her again, one of them trailing its slender leafy length across her arm.

That gave Sarah pause. She'd said her name came from the willow's scientific name. "Alix … this isn't your tree, is it?"

The dryad burst out laughing. "Forgive me, Sarah," she replied, through good-natured chuckles. "I do like you, but no one knows where my tree is. And I make certain it's very well-guarded, by a force who are inherently loyal."

"Perfectly understandable," Sarah replied. It had been a momentary thought; she wouldn't have quite believed that anyone as cautious and cagey as Alix kept her tree in the center of the city. "But how do you keep it guarded without anyone knowing where it is?"

Alix smiled. "Because the guards don't know which of the trees they're protecting is mine. They guard a piece of land, and it's in their best interest, too, since I let them live there. Not all fae are suited to the urban life. And of those unsuitable, some are quite unable to even function in the city."

"I should've known you'd have it all planned out," Sarah replied, with a little smile.

"I have to," Alix said with a shrug. "New York's urban fae community is a chess game with bloodshed always an option. And in terms of combat, dryads are one of the weaker fae races. We do not have offensive magic, or great strength, or any native talents useful in battle. To keep my place in the game, and protect my people, I must play five steps ahead of everyone else."

Sarah winced. "And here I am, just your average human, who basically tripped over her own feet and landed on a crown."

"No, I rather think you landed on a king," Alix replied with a smirk.

"That's not fair," Sarah protested, blushing a bit. She was acutely conscious of Neesk on her shoulder, trying not to say anything very untoward in front of him. She'd never found out just how old he was. "You have no idea how complicated it all was. I got a book from my mom for my birthday one year, my little brother was a huge pain, and bam, suddenly I'm the Goblin King's true love. Which neither of us took seriously at first, but then it happened."

Alix's perplexed look led to Sarah giving a heavy sigh, and telling her the condensed version of their story – skipping the content of those damned dreams, just saying that they'd seen each other. To her surprise, Neesk interjected, "An' then she came back, and made us all go 'splodey, but this time she didn't knocks down the city."

She stared at him a moment, and asked, startled, "Neesk, were you there the first time?"

"Yep!" he said happily. "An' when yous came back, I was first one to bites you. But kingy sez is okay now, 'cuz you sploded us, so fair's fair."

"And you lectured me about behaving," Alix said, with a chuckle.

"Is different!" Neesk protested. "Her royalestness wuz a runner and we's s'posed to fight runners, but she's queeny now so no biting, only pertecting."

Sarah sighed and leaned her head against him gently. "I can't be mad at you. You were only doing your job, like him."

"I does better job now," Neesk said proudly. "Bestest royal page ever."

"That you are," Sarah replied, petting him again. She turned to Alix again. "Anyway, I feel pretty entitled, sitting here with literally more power than I know what to do with. I understand why he wants me crowned separately from him, before anything else. If I took his ring and the crown together, everyone would think I earned it on my back." A pause, and she admitted despite how it galled, "There may be a little truth to that, even. Not that I slept with him for a crown, but that I got a crown because I'm sleeping with him."

"My troubles are not your fault," Alix reassured. "As for how you came to your crown, you are the Labyrinth's Champion first. Anyone with sense will think he seduced you to maintain his own crown. All know that Umardelin cannot be ruled by force alone, so the kingdom had to accept you. There will be still be some who think you bedded your way to your position, but you can hang them for it, if you choose."

Sarah gave a short laugh. "Yeah, no. Maybe if anyone talks shit about me, I'll sentence them to scrub the privies for a month or something. Poetic justice, no capital punishment. Jareth would just bog them." Neesk gave a wicked little chitter at the thought.

The look Alix turned on her was cynical. "Do not trust an enemy to clean your privies. Assassinations have been accomplished by climbing up them from the inside, and stabbing the unfortunate target in vulnerable regions. Which is to say, I see your point, Sarah. Idealism and reality have a difficult time meeting on even ground."

Sarah sighed. "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. If I even get to them first. God knows what Jareth will do. We do have oubliettes with skeletons in them."

"The problem of justice is one with which I've concerned myself, also," Alix replied. "For now it is sufficient to remove my protection from anyone who betrays me. I have a reputation in this city, and if I turn someone out, no one else will have them."

"What do you do with outsiders, though?" Sarah asked, genuinely interested. "I mean, you don't have a Bog of Stench in your backyard, and you said you're not a warrior."

"A handful of my people are good enough fighters, but we prefer to use more subtle methods." Alix grinned. "I have nearly all the dryad and dryad-like races in the region allied to me. If someone truly offends us, we settle upon them the Curse of Wood. Any tree or woody shrub or object made of the same, turns more and more hostile by degrees to the person so afflicted. Which sounds harmless, in this modern age, until you realize that paper is made of wood pulp."

"Oh, that's nasty," Sarah said, imagining endless paper cuts.

"The first time we used it, we were laughed at. When every tree he passed dropped a dead branch on his head, the fancy wood-grain dashboard of his car splintered and cut his arm, every door caught his fingers and every threshold tripped him, even tables slid into his path so he barked his shins, he demanded we take it off. I held out for an apology. Papers in the street invariably blew up to surround his head when he walked, particularly if they'd been used as sanitary tissue by homeless people. The handle of a knife broke while he used it and he nearly lopped off his own finger."

Sarah couldn't help laughing. "Oh, damn! I bet the bastard apologized eventually."

Alix smiled cruelly. "Spring began, and he found himself violently allergic to pollen. Every dogwood and crape myrtle in the city obliged by shaking their branches as he walked by, until he looked powdered. He came crawling to me for forgiveness, and I finally rescinded the curse. Of course, he hates me now, but they all know we have more patience than they, and will not hesitate to use our power if provoked. Only if provoked, however."

"I like the way you run things," Sarah said, offhandedly, and Alix gave her a slight bow of gratitude.

They meandered back to the paths, talking lightly, Neesk hanging onto Sarah's shirt for balance. "So when should we meet up again?" Sarah asked.

"As soon as you've got time in the evening, I'd like you to come by the club," Alix said. "We can start working on manipulating energy in a well-protected environment. And I think we ought to start, officially, with elemental magic. If you have an affinity for a particular element, working with it be much easier, and there are a decent number of practical uses for elemental magic."

"Sounds like fun," Sarah opined.

Alix gave her another shrewd look. "My own strength is earth magic, and Colleen of course is proficient with water. I've got people who know fire and air, as well, so we can test you with all of them."

"Thank you again, Alix," Sarah said. "I lucked out, meeting you."

"I think we were both in luck," Alix replied with a genuine smile, and they parted ways.