Whimsifinado v. Caudwell: Until they reach the age of majority at two hundred and fifty thousand, the Head Pixie holds legal rights to all pixies on the grounds that they are his offspring. Without his written consent, they may not enter into any legally-binding contracts, participate in the military, apply for outside work or schooling, seek medical care requiring surgeries, purchase processed sugar, and are to be fined and returned to Pixie World if caught wandering beyond its borders. Legal marriage to a non-Anti-Fairy or non-brownie alone after obtaining two hundred thousand years of age may emancipate them otherwise. Should the Head Pixie pass into dust, the Vice President takes on his role as Head and the same conditions shall be upheld with full legality, regardless of the lack of a biological founder/offspring bond.

With my wing out of commission, I had to stand to see above the steering wheel. The once-endless corn faded into browning cow pastures. Flappy Bob whined on and off until he stopped altogether, with his chubby thumb tucked behind his one front tooth. I hummed a few of my favorite Elvis songs for a time, but the tunes soon ran together with those I'd heard from my new-annual-project-who-would-hopefully-win-me-a-promotion Dolly Parton (She had a musical future ahead of her- I could sense it) and then became meaningless.

Stars twinkled above blue-tinted fields. Eventually the darkness forced my shades to return to their place on my collar. At some point my jacket slid off my injured wing. Seeing as there appeared little danger of dirt infecting the wound, I didn't bother fixing it.

I slid my hands from the rim of the steering wheel so they rested in the middle. My chin found that it fit snugly on the top. In the entire hour I drove, we passed maybe four other cars. They whizzed by our side, faster than Wilcox in his favorite rabbit form. Faster even than the fairies.

"Sanderson." H.P. slapped the back of my head. "You're drifting."

I pulled the truck back to the right side of the road, then massaged my eye sockets. "I'm really not sure if I can manage for much longer, sir."

Silence bathed the truck for an entire five minutes. The road was littered with stones and bumps. They jarred my chin, but I let it stay where I'd hooked it. Then, "I'll get the brick from the gas pedal. Go ahead and slow over on the side."

I was only too glad to accommodate, but my relief ebbed into concern when, after I had stopped, H.P. set the sleeping Flappy on the seat and started to climb through the truck's passenger window. "Sir?"

"This area rings familiar. Wait here while I check to see if my suspicions are true."

"Sir, we're coming onto will o' the wisp country. You shouldn't go out there alone- not without your starpiece. What if one of the damsels…"

"Then I'll invoke Kalysta's name and send them scattering. They still remember how we treated them during the Great Flood, I'm sure. In any case, we're too far southwest to have entered their territory, and I won't be gone long. I'm certain that we're almost there."

I licked some of the dryness from my lips, although having no saliva in my mouth meant that it didn't have much of an effect. "Almost where, sir?" I'd taken the long slide down the Bit Bridge maybe half a dozen times in my life, and I remembered it touching down beside our little Mushroom Rock, smack in the middle of the state in the middle of the country in the middle of North America. Unfortunately, the humans had been buzzing around the place as of late (Something about wanting to turn it into a state park?) and it had been some time since I'd had my knowledge of the area refreshed.

"We're almost to the African Safari."

This… this was Kansas. But I knew better than to argue. Besides, H.P. whirred away before I would have had much of a chance.

I left the headlamps on so he could find us again without too much trouble, then crawled across the seat and lay my head near Flappy Bob's. It looked as though it had been a long day for both of us. His white face was smudged with grime. In the dark, I couldn't tell if the red across his chin was clowny make-up, or human blood.

"What happened to your parents?" I murmured, shutting my eyes. "If you came from the circus train, how did you end up in the rocket capsule? Was it your bed? Did you fall, somehow?"

Imps or crickets chirped outside the window. I must have dozed off, because a moment later H.P. was shaking me by the shoulder.

"Hn? Tooth Fairy? Quarters? Where?"

"I wasn't mistaken, Sanderson. The African Safari is hardly three miles further. Come, we'll want to stop there. I promise that you'll find it a more welcome place to spend the night."

It's difficult to argue with a promise.

As soon as I shifted position, Flappy awoke and began to cry. I put my hand on one of his. "Sir-"

"I promise." H.P. took me by the crook of my arm and helped me further from the steering wheel. Still groggy, I held Flappy in my lap as the engine started up again. I leaned my head against the passenger door, watching the headlights sweep across open hills and dry turns of road… On, on, on…

"Here we are," and we stopped again, our front bumper barely a wing's breadth from a bruise-colored dumpster. It was full, and three more garbage bags stood like sentries at its side. Perhaps a raccoon had gotten into one of them and run off at our approach, because the slick plastic had been torn open and a few pieces of moldy bread had spilled into the parking lot, along with several broken corn chips. I found myself wondering if those would pierce through tires.

Then the headlights flicked off. That didn't help me identify our location any better. I squinted, craning my neck. Across the chain-link fence ahead of us were the words African Safari Mini Golf written on a cheerful red and white sign.

"Oh. The miniature golf course. Is this the one that you built, H.P.?"

"A replica. I did dismantle the original when the humans were first settling in the area long ago. But, yes, when the time seemed reasonable to reconstruct it, I set it up again to bring in human revenue. There's a former fairy godkid who runs the place now, if I am not mistaken." H.P. slid his eyes to my face and gave me that satisfied, half-lidded smile of his. Without another word, he slid from the truck. I stuffed the keys in my pocket, rolled the truck windows up, climbed down to the road, climbed back up to lock the doors, and followed on foot with the unhappy clown.

"It'll be much more enjoyable to pass the night in here than in the stuffy truck," he told me, floating above the entrance gate. I was forced to stop and press my nose through one of the gaps in the chains.

"Will it be?"

"Of course. It's golf. And it's closed down for the night, which guarantees us protection from humans until the place opens tomorrow at nine." H.P. realized my predicament about then. He hesitated for a moment, then swept down and pried the crying Flappy from my arms. It irritated me that his wailing grew softer when it was H.P.'s face he was looking at. But, then, there were reasons why he was the superior. I watched with vague uncertainty as they touched down on the opposite side of the gate. H.P. didn't so much as give the baby a second glance before he came back for me.

"H.P., I think the truck would be…"

"Nonsense, Sanderson. Come on. Up, up, as high on the gate as you can manage. I'll boost you the rest of the way."

I clunked my forehead against the metal. I was so drained. But H.P. was brimming with insistence, and he was the boss. He knew what he was doing. I wrapped my fingers through the links and began to hoist myself up. It wasn't quick going. More than once, my exhaustion and general lack of strength resulted in me losing my grip and tumbling back down. Flappy continued to wail. I was close to releasing the gate and calling it quits when H.P. took hold of my shoulders and flew me up to the top. I balanced there among the points, blinking unsteadily. Though I clung to the solid bar beneath me with all the strength I could manage, I almost toppled over.

"Oh, that certainly wasn't good for my back," he muttered, settling himself on my left. He straightened his tie. "You aren't nearly as small as you were two hundred fifty thousand years ago."

I stared across the golf course, with its tall black shapes rising up against a sea even blacker. "Was I much the same as I am now when I was that little, H.P.?"

"Flappy Bob needs attention," he observed. "Come on. Time we went down."

He didn't offer me any help as I started down, only to find that my sore fingers wouldn't hold me up. I hit solidly, staggered, and fell so far back that I crushed my wings. When my eyes rolled into focus, I found myself lying beside a gap torn through the bottom of the chain-links, a little larger than Flappy. That figured. If I'd been paying more attention earlier (and if I'd been willing to struggle in the mud to squeeze through a hole I might actually be too big for), then I may have saved myself a great deal of soreness. I considered shoving one of the nearby rocks in front of it, just to show the gap that I was annoyed by its arrogant existence, but then I didn't. Instead, I settled for flaring my nostrils out at it in a Just try to get back at me for this way and flopped to my stomach as H.P. fluttered down from the fence. He offered me his hand.

"On your feet again, Sanderson. No employee of mine will be caught sprawled in the dirt."

I took it. "I don't suppose you keep a backup starpiece stashed away in here, sir?"

"I did, once. But that was a few decades ago, and the place was slightly different then." He glanced around in distaste. "The humans are always trying to make 'improvements' to it. For sentimental reasons, I rarely allow that. Although some of the animals and landmarks have been improved. The Egyptian pyramids I particularly like. And, I do know where we may find a couple of clubs." With that, he flew off to investigate a nearby rosebush.

Before I joined him, I picked up Flappy and bounced him gently. It didn't stop his sobbing entirely, but it did seem to soothe him. I made shushing noises as we started along the concrete path towards a long shack (For renting out the balls and things, perhaps?) "Sir, I'm not sure if miniature golf courses necessarily satisfy the emotional needs of babies."

H.P., a rusty putter now at his side, turned me around by my chin, then placed a hand between my wings and steered me towards the first hole on the shack's left. "Certainly they do. Which one of us has fathered nymphs before?"

I covered Flappy's mouth with my palm. He bit, like a true pixie would. I pretended not to notice. "He's still crying, H.P."

"That means he's excited to be here," he insisted, lighting himself on the back of an iron rhinoceros. He spun his club once through his fingers. Then he nodded. "If you remember, this is the same miniature golf course where you were born. Right over there at the edge of the sand trap, about where the larger of those two decorative hippos lays on Hole 10. That's why I named you 'Sandy'. It's not nearly as, well, magical here as that little place I know up in Oregon, but it has its secrets and it serves its purpose."

I'd been to the course once before. Perhaps three or four times. I could remember picking my red ball up by hand and sticking it through a tube in the hill, back when Hawkins and Wilcox and Longwood and I were the only other pixies there were in the universe, and we lived with China. H.P. had snapped at me for that, if I recalled correctly- the cheating. He'd spent a lot of that day zipping about us, shoving clubs into our tiny hands, yanking us out of ponds, and grabbing the napes of our necks when we went for a second or third putt in a row. In the end, I think, he'd given up and let us press colorful balls into his eye sockets and the pockets of his suit. I cleared my throat.

"Do you…?"

My voice came out as a harsh rasp. I patted my dry tongue against my lips, then tried again. "Do you remember many stories about when I was as young as Flappy, boss?"

H.P. made the mistake of glancing my way before he pretended not to hear my question. Flapping his wings again, he went off to find a stray golf ball. That didn't surprise me. He much preferred to view us as his employees rather than children who all shared his identical genetic code. If he could choose, he likely would have stopped the asexual reproduction long ago. The last pixie born had been Verona, already past his four hundred and fortieth birthday and showing up a half dozen of his coworkers at the typewriter. But, H.P. had accepted his fate, and he'd already begun making arrangements for the next one of us; everyone had heard him testing the name "Finley" for decades…

Whimpering, Flappy poked his finger beneath my shades. I pushed his hand down. "No," I scolded, "we don't jab. And, you're a regular mess. Let's clean you up. I think the moonlight is reflecting off a water trap over there."

Water. Water. Water! I hadn't wanted to get my hopes up just in case I was wrong, but as I approached the small army of metal animals encircling the watering hole on Hole 8, I felt hope swell within me. I knelt between a hulking elephant and a slender zebra near the little wooden bridge. Hugging Flappy to me with one arm, bracing myself with the other, I drank until all the dirt and corn dust had washed from my mouth. It tasted like whipped cream. When I next licked my lips, actual wetness spread itself over the cracks. Then, dampening the end of my sleeve, I rinsed Flappy's face and arms until all the colors of his clown make-up swirled away into the pool.

"Would you look at that, Flappy." I turned him around and pointed to his reflection. "You have black hair just like I do. You're like a miniature Sanderson. This is a much better fit for you than that ginger spray in your puff, don't you think so?"

He broke into hot tears once more. I pulled him back from the water, shushing him with my palm across his mouth again. We listened for any sound of approaching human feet. No- just the metallic swat of H.P. swinging his club, and the truff, truff, truff, as his ball hit the grass and rolled over by the first hole.

Flappy sucked at his thumb with a sound like nuk nuk nuk nuk nuk nuk. My stomach clenched. I hadn't thought about it between fleeing from the humans and how parched my throat had been, but I hadn't eaten since H.P. and I had stopped at a diner somewhere in Colorado. Like an idiot, I'd turned up my nose to anything but my water and unsalted fries. Now I found myself wishing I'd grabbed a few ears of corn from Flappy's field.

Out of habit, I tried to flap my way over to H.P., but the tear in my wing wouldn't allow that and I overbalanced. I caught myself with one elbow the instant before Flappy's skull could slam into the dirt. His thumb popped from his mouth. Crying, again. I tightened my lips. That certainly was a trick human infants were fond of pulling for attention.

Take two. Clutching the baby, I approached H.P. on foot where he hovered at the bottom of a slope. His ball, soiled with grass-stains and mud, had wedged itself into a slight divot in the artificial turf four inches from the hole. H.P. stared at it with a face that radiated unadulterated disappointment. One hand was turned upwards, like How dare you?

"Where would you prefer we sleep, sir?"

He looked away from the offending ball. "Beg pardon?"

"Do you have any particular preference on where we sleep tonight? It is, after all, your course."

"You want to sleep." H.P. pronounced it without any sort of upwards inflection at the end, even though he had touched the left side of his glasses- that way he did on rare occasions when he ran up against something that puzzled him. "You realize, I hope, that there is golf here." Then he seemed to take in Flappy for the first time in a few minutes, up and down. "Won't he stop crying?"

I smothered Flappy's mouth in my shirt, which didn't have as much effect as I'd hoped it might. "I don't know what's agitating or has agitated him, sir. He's too young for real communication. I think he's still in pooferty."

"Typical. Well. See what you can do about him. It's about time you learned firsthand what I went through with you." There was a mumble at the end containing words I didn't quite catch.

"And…" Regretting the attempt instantly, I bit down on my bottom lip. H.P., readying his next swing, somehow found the time to shoot me a drawn-together glance.

"I don't much like fragmented sentences, Sanderson."

"I'm hungry, sir."

H.P. probably didn't hear me. Almost certainly, he didn't hear me. But that didn't change the fact that he knew, that he understood- that he actually reacted to my words. The Head Pixie was simply not the type of being one should or could keep secrets from. He stared at me like I had become the ball in the grass. "There is very little I can do about that at the moment."

I scuffed the toe of my shoe across the cement walkway. "I only bring it up, H.P., because, well, you are the boss…"

"Sanderson." A note of warning crept into his tone. "I won't have two traveling companions dissolve into an array of messy emotions. The clown I excuse on the grounds that he is an infant. You, however, know better than to pout."

Even as Flappy pulled at my cheeks, I tried very hard not to blink. It did no good. H.P. always knew when I blinked, and no pair of shiny shades would ever change that. As soon as I had, he removed his glasses and polished the lenses on the hem of his suit. My wings twitched. He didn't raise his eyes.

"You know, Sanderson, there was once a time when I was two fifty-three thousand, too."

Translation: In admitting my weakness, in failing to stand stalwart, I had crossed the unmentionable line, and I was to be punished. Dragons were natural storytellers, and I'd never met a one who would consider eating anybody who'd just offered to hear out a tale or three (H.P. said that's how he'd wriggled out of one's claws after this anti-cherub had lured him into a trap before I was born). Pixies were not the same. Oh pixies, raised upon the written word, were not. I craved relevance. Usefulness. H.P. had a lot of past, and I wasn't present in most of it. Stories that did not contain any mention of Sanderson simply bored me. And when you're capable of boring a pixie, well, it's obvious that you're overdue for a reevaluation of your life, isn't it?

"You know well that I spent the first few years of my life in Fairy World, in Ambrosine's company. You remember Ambrosine. I was treated as a fairy child, sent away to school, and bestowed with a starpiece - a little black and gold wand, insignificant and just like the others - of my own. Then, when I was something like four hundred and eighty-five thousand, at last independent and with my own godchild (Humans were greatly different back then from what they are now, actually, and we didn't grant their wishes so much as affectionately follow them about and keep them out of trouble) then, I somehow misplaced it. My starpiece, I mean. Lost it somewhere between La Brea and what are now the Rocky Mountains, I think; it may be there even now, miles below the soil. And thus began the next period of my life where I was magicless, and broke. Though it was shortly before you were born, I still considered myself to be young and arrogant. In no way, of course, would I return wriggling on my stomach to my father to plead for a free replacement, so I made my way eastward…"

I was beginning to understand why Flappy saw the need to cry. I'm not sure at which part I officially zoned out, but I think it was when the Anti-Fairies enacted one of their more famous raids on a huge will o' the wisp burrow system in present-day Tennessee. Nice people, will o' the wisps, aside from the paralyze-your-limbs-or-even-kill-you-if-you're-not-in-heat thing. I met a few particularly kind ones during my sabbatical as I was coming into my Elvis Presley phase. Elvis is neat. He'd make a better employee for Santa Claus than a few spritely sparklebottoms I could mention. And, Elvis wouldn't turn into a raging psycho around a unicorn. He might even like unicorns. Maybe someone should bring him a unicorn. Could we fit one of those into next quarter's budget?

"… a mere day here in Kansas, not half so far as Maine or California, and manage to make do without. These are the facts of life, and particularly among pixies, for such is the lot we were drawn. I presume you realize why I hold little, if any, sympathy."

Smoof; I hadn't been following. Shouldn't have gotten distracted with the saddle color of the unicorn. Then again, even when I did follow perfectly, I never understood a lot of H.P.'s decisions anyway. That was why he made such a great boss. Nonetheless, I had grasped the part that involved me not receiving food. I nodded.

"Good man. Off with you now."

I wandered away from the grass and towards the long shack that guarded the entire course from the center like a fat castle keep. It even had limp pennants along its roof. "Would you listen to him, Flappy? The boss doesn't much like discussing his own past, but he'll do it a thousand, or even two thousand times more than talk about mine. A century, Flappy! There are about a hundred years that I don't even remember! You could almost fit three thirty-seven-year plans into that amount of time and… Hello. What's… this?"

The sign on the side of the shack started glowing. In actuality, it had probably been glowing the entire time we'd been here, and I simply hadn't noticed it between H.P. picking me up and carrying me above the fence. After I removed my shades, I read aloud the pink neon words, "Snack Shack".

As I stood gaping, I had two thoughts at the same time. The first was a question of why the neon was lit if the golf course had been shut down for the night, because that didn't seem to be particularly cost-effective. The second: Food!

I was small. Choosing to ignore this fact, I fluttered my wings enough to rise about two millimeters off the ground. I held the clown above my head- my arms could stretch pretty far when I wanted them to.

"All right, Flappy. I need you to grasp the counter for me. Okay? Grasp. Counter."

A moment ago, his wailing had trickled into drool. He batted his hands around. "Come on, Flappy Bob," I murmured again, "Throw me a bone here. Or at least a nacho." With a furious collection of wingbeats and a tremendous shove, I lifted the baby above the countertop. His skin squeaked as it slid across polished granite.

"Perfect. Now, pull me up."

I could hear him making noises, but he didn't respond. Frowning just a tiny smidge, I moved a few paces back so I could get a better look at him. He just… he just sort of lay there on his side, grunting some and croaking out choppy little whines.

"Flappy." Again, I reached up my hands. "I can't hover, so you'll have to pull me up. Come on. I may be quite a bit taller than you, but I'm at least three pounds lighter. If a pixie just a few days out of the sac can follow basic instructions like this, I'm sure you can as well."

Flappy wouldn't do it. He wouldn't even try. Surrendering, I tried to grab the end of his blanket and drag him back into my arms. I couldn't reach. Even when I jumped.

Erm…

H.P. had slaughtered Holes 9, 10, and 11 and was studying the setup of the twelfth. "Michaels and Hirschi were both born under the elephant statue," he mused as I came up behind him.

I pointed back the way I had come. "H.P., I'm having some trouble getting Flappy off the counter of the snack bar."

He leaned down on one knee, peering into a white tube that cut a tunnel through a low rise. "Oh, are you now? How did he get up there?"

"I set him there. But now he won't come down."

"All right. Allow me just another hole - perhaps two - and I'll come take a look." Pushing himself back into the air, H.P. whipped his club. Crack! The ball bounced off the head of a decorative honey badger, skimmed down the neck of the taller giraffe, and rolled past the lioness and into the tunnel. He raced it down to the lower curl of turf by the acacias. I clapped a few times. It was one of his better holes-in-one.

Rubbing my wings so they began to chirp faintly like an imp's, I returned to the long shack. Flappy was sobbing again. His cries rang out jaggedly, like his mouth could only handle letting out so much noise at a time. That settled the question of the course being abandoned, then. Somehow he'd kicked his yellow and red blanket to the grass.

"Your feet are tiny," I observed as I scooped it up. "Also, I'm thinking that we really ought to find you a blanket that doesn't make you look half the fashion disaster of an anti-pixie. Not my most favorite people, them." Anti-Sanderson in particular rang to me as a nutcase… He'd overthrown the Head Anti-Pixie almost eighty thousand years ago and never once shown a sign of regret, even in his drunk and scribbled letters. I needed a new pen pal. Still, we'd had our month of enjoyable dancing and eating corn chips, before H.P. had banned me from all their raves…

The baby's words were indistinct - he was gargling, mostly - but I did catch the word 'corn' in there.

"That's right, Flappy. We did find you in a cornfield. Hmm… There has to be something around here I could climb on. I just need to look around." I looked around. No ladders stood in the open and at average pixie height, but there was a bronze-colored hyena on Hole 11, so maybe…

After I'd tied Flappy's blanket around my waist, I pushed the hyena closer to the counter. It was heavier than I'd hoped and didn't move easily. At the edge of the course, it clunked against the little rocks that fenced it in. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if it was worth dragging it up and over. I almost didn't manage to push it upright. The shack was a good six or so feet from where I stood at the edge of Hole 11, and when I climbed onto the hyena's back it didn't give me a large boost. But it might be, I thought, just enough for a creature who could fly. It was worth my time to try. The hyena wobbled beneath my feet. Flaring my wings, I sprang.

My forehead crashed into the edge of the counter. I thumped into the concrete and tumbled all the way over to a strip of actual grass before I stopped beneath a small tree; judging from all the tiny red and brown leaves I rolled through I thought it might have been a maple - the maple - with spidery branches that rested against the roof. My wrist stung from having twisted. No bother- all its pain would vanish in an hour or so. A little sooner if I had magic at my disposal, but, well.

I curled on my side and lay there a moment, listening to Flappy wail. His voice rose and fell like waves in a storm. It was almost pleasant to listen to for a few seconds, just because it was interesting. Pixie whimpers were lower pitched, and didn't have that stagger to them.

But finally I collected my shades, picked myself up, and turned around. Jumping from the hyena again was out of the question. I needed some other way to land on the counter. A step-stool would be ideal, but a crate would work, or maybe a lighter animal. Thinking I might give one of the thin gazelles a try, I clapped my hands once and started for Hole 15. Apart from the distant, constant whistle of H.P.'s wings, the entire place fell silent as soon as I stopped marching on the fallen maple leaves.

… Wait a minute.

I didn't stop walking or even slow down. The instant the thought clicked in my head, I turned on my toes and beelined back to the Snack Shack.

The maple tree stood precisely where I had left it. I placed one hand on the trunk and gazed up among the branches. Evidently the tree wasn't the same tree that had stood here before I was born, but it was likely a descendant, and a recent one, relatively speaking. A few splinters of smooth bark peeled away as I tried to dig my fingers in. My first attempt at hoisting myself up found me back on the ground in a matter of wingbeats. Chilly air whipped around my ears.

Shutting my eyes, I pinched my nose and rubbed along the bridge. Nothing in me wanted to climb. I just wanted to shut down and dream of waking in some sugarcoated paradise, with a gift basket set out just for me. But as long as Flappy screamed, I predicted I wouldn't be falling asleep. And if I could get up there, I ought to be able to lift the sliding metal panel and reach some of the alleged snacks within.

So, yes. I climbed. To my own surprise, I found it easier than climbing the chain-link fence. My fingers fit well in gaps of the bark, and they didn't grow sore from having too much pressure focused on too small an area. Maybe it was the refreshing sip of water I'd taken. Maybe it was having the neon for light, or just the shorter distance. Maybe climbing wood was another of those pixie-wasp instincts (Wood is just paper in its early stages, isn't it? Let's go with that idea). Or maybe I was spurred upward by my need to hush Flappy's crying.

I think it was probably the refreshing sip of water.

Still keeping my movements slow, I straddled one of the thinner branches just above the Snack Shack roof. A fair portion of the park was visible from here, from our truck and the dumpsters in the parking lot behind me all the way over to H.P. readying himself for Hole 15. The roof lay just below my feet. I studied the metal, arrayed in slippery rows and speckled with rust. Dropping down on it looked like a convenient way to send me sliding directly off the edge to the concrete below.

I swung my left foot over the other side of the branch. With an attempted flap, I tried to settle myself on the tin. My feet were out from under me in an instant. Still, when I sprawled my limbs between the ridges, I managed to halt my descent (or slow it, at any rate). My shirt untucked itself from my slacks, and my belly scraped along cold metal. Two flaps of serrated tin pinched my fingers. Beating my wings lifted my confidence (even if it was a useless gesture) quicker and quicker as I neared the lip of the roof. As predicted, when I reached the end I started to tip over, but my hands caught a grip on a white gutter that ran around the edge. Some of the brittle helicopter seeds had gathered inside it, and as I reached out for a better hold, a spotted green lizard ran straight past my probing hand. I pulled back, then smacked my own cheek and tried again.

Clinging to the gutter's rim, I lowered myself as far down as my arms would allow me to go. Flappy's crying jolted, like I'd caught his attention, but then he fell back into it. One of my knees smacked what I think was the neon letter H, and the toe of the other foot hit the metal divider with a resounding clang.

"Hang on, Flappy."

I looked up at the sky. The moon was waxing, and clouds skittered across it like ants on a trail. Well. No point in waiting. Taking care that I wouldn't crush Flappy, I dropped.

I almost didn't stick the landing. As it was, only the rapid beating of my wings kept me from slipping backwards off the ledge. I sat down. Flappy crawled across the counter towards me, his cries ebbing off altogether. I patted his head, but made no attempt to pick him up. Each muscle in my limbs strained in two directions. Every time I blinked, I had to do it twice to ensure my lids wouldn't stay shut with sleep. I repositioned myself against the metal divider and allowed Flappy Bob to entertain himself with the buttons on my suit coat.

"I want… to die right now."

I didn't, but I didn't want to do… anything. I rubbed my hands up and down Flappy's shoulders, all spiked with goosebumps. It occurred to me that I still had his blanket knotted around my waist, and I wrapped him up in it. Then, deciding that my hunger outweighed my exhaustion by too large of a margin not to try, I lay him aside, took hold of the handle on the Snack Shack's metal divider, and heaved upward with every ounce of pixie might.

It didn't budge.

After all the-

It didn't budge.

I tried to squirm my fingers beneath the lowest part, but the hatch didn't budge. A muffled scream slipped past my lips. Repositioning myself nearer the middle, I gave it another go. I'd come too far for the world to simply be unfair.

This time, giving it all I had, I lost my grip and crashed on my face. Flappy chuckled as I drew myself together again. I gave him an unblinking stare over the rims of my shades until he went quiet. Without magic, I was simply too weak to lift the divider. If I was still bleeding anywhere, I'd be draining steadily too. I pulled off my tie, folded up my wings, and tugged off my suit coat and mud-spattered shirt, but after a quick once-over revealed nothing but bruises and scars, I shrugged and put them back on.

Sighing through my nose, I sat Flappy up and stretched my arms above my head. "I may not be getting anything to eat tonight, but let my file show that I gave it a fair effort."

The baby, overbalanced by the weight of his own upper body, toppled backwards off the counter. A lifetime of practice kept me from wincing at the smack of skin and bones across solid concrete. I crawled over to the edge and poked my head over the lip.

"Flappy?"

He lay on his back among the puffy folds of his blanket, face pinched with betrayal. His chest heaved like a bellows. His mouth opened, strangled and soundless.

I set my hands on either side of me, pushed off the counter, and dropped down beside him as the first of what I suspected to be a long round of screeches broke the night. Then I fumbled to scoop him into my arms. "Stop it, Flappy. Tears have never healed anyone before. Unless human tears are magical and we've never found out about it. Is that what you're doing? Does some instinct tell you to? Do you know something we don't?" I brushed my finger across one of his larger tears and moved it around to the back of his head. He grabbed my hand and we wrestled over it for a moment before he managed to stick my finger in his mouth and bite down hard.

It was impossible not to laugh just a little at that. "You're practically a pixie already. All you really need is a suit and a tie, a little cap for your head, and some wings to float with."

But my smile slowly faded as he continued crying around my finger. He stared at me, pinkish eyes bright and blinking.

"Play is play, Flappy, but that's enough."

He didn't think it was enough.

"I said, that's enough. Stop it. Just- just… Stop. H.P. will cut your paycheck. He'll demote you to Head Closet Cleaner. Your lunch break will last no longer than five minutes. He'll disable the automatic magic approval functions of your starpiece and then reject all your requests. He could fire you from Headquarters entirely, and you'd have to find a job down the street in laundry services or dishwashing or bricklaying or grocery-fetching. Stop it! Aren't you concerned he'll be disappointed in you? Don't you care?"

Apparently, no. After replacing the baby on the ground, I kneeled over him. My wings folded against one another. Then they spread out again, folded, spread, and folded as I listened to him howl. I shoved my shades up my forehead so I could rub both palms around my brows.

"What do you want from me? Oh, go kiss a brownie."

His grasping fingers closed around my dangling tie. When he tugged, he almost yanked me into his face. Deciding that I could fight gravity best by picking him up once more, I did.

I was frustrated with myself just as much as the tiny baby. Finally I was old enough to be trusted holding a child in my arms completely unsupervised, and I could understand why H.P. didn't like them being around. They were needy when there was important business to be done. They made a bad situation worse. I couldn't imagine what we'd do to silence it if there were humans about like there had been back in the cornfield.

My shoulders twitched. I didn't like this anymore. I would never break down sobbing like Flappy, but I needed an outlet of my own regardless. I needed noise that fell into an orderly pattern. I needed a flowing melody.

Maybe…

H.P. had never sung me lullabies as a tiny nymph - not that I remembered - but I'd picked up the concept over the centuries. When I was having one of those craving periods where I needed to ping ideas into some random human's mind or risk inspiration backup, my instincts led me to stray near those who favored music. They, at least, appreciated my thought process. There had to be one… Somewhere… Something…

I pushed Flappy's head against my neck and traced one hand in circles over the place where his wings should have been. "Sandman's comin', yes he's comin', to sprinkle you with sand. He'll say 'one, two, three' and you'll be in cotton candy land."

He didn't stop crying, but he at least paused for a second to listen to me before he returned to it. I held him tighter, trying to make him feel the music vibrating from my throat, wracking my mind for another song.

"I'lllll be as strong as a mountain, or weeaaak as a willow tree… Any way you want me, well, that's how I will be. Shh… Shh… That's better. You're an Elvis fan too, aren't you? I knew you'd be. No- no, don't start this up again. Stop it, Flappy. I'lllll be as tame as a baby, or wild as the raging sea… Any way you want me, well, that's how I will be. In your hands, my heart is clay. To take and hold as you may. I'm what you make me; you've only to take me. And in your arms I will stay, hey, hey…"

I stopped myself before the final verse. Not because Flappy had fallen asleep against my chest. No, Flappy was still bucking and wailing like he expected to receive a bonus for a tantrum well done. I stopped because… Well, probably because…

… I didn't know why I'd stopped. So after hesitating for only a couple seconds more, I finished up the song. Flappy was no calmer by the time I was done, and I wasn't in the mood for holding the wriggling mass anymore. I returned him to the grass beside me and lay back, my fingers locked beneath my head.

"Stars are out," I said over the noise. "H.P. says only a few of them are real. All the rest are ancient Fairy warriors, over nine million years old. That's what he says. They're supposed to defend the galaxy from this great, mobile, endless sucking void called The Darkness. I don't really believe that. Pixies didn't exist back then. We have no witnesses, no records, no files, no primary sources at all. Even the ancient Fairy Council have all died off and were replaced with newly-elected officials time and time again. There remain no survivors."

Before the little clown had the chance to become one of the few mortals to learn the secrets of magical history, H.P. skimmed over to us, almost dropping his club as he stuffed the ball in his pocket. His expression tipped slightly into a frown when he saw Flappy was no longer on the counter of the snack bar. I pushed myself up to a sitting position.

"He won't stop crying, H.P."

H.P. handed me his golf club and took up the unhappy baby instead. "Is he trying to tell you he's hungry?"

Sure. I saw no reason to deny that. That was better than admitting I'd accidentally pushed him off the counter. Readjusting how my jacket hung over my injured wing, I said carefully, "What… what do babies eat?"

"Oh honestly, Sanderson. They'll try anything that fits in their mouth, really. What they need is milk."

"Like pixies," I hinted.

"Like pixies, like huldufólk, like fairies, like brownies, like humans, like every mammal in existence." He bounced Flappy in his arms and lay him sideways against his chest, nestled in the crook of his arm. The baby's weeping finally began to trickle down, even if it was only a little. He tugged on the lapel of H.P.'s suit. H.P. nodded. "We'll stop for milk and mushy food tomorrow when we're passing through Jetmore."

I rose to my feet. "Shouldn't…"

"Yes, Sanderson?"

"Er, should we consider going now? After all, he's upset. I've tried everything I could think of to soothe him, but nothing works."

H.P. shrugged. "There's no need to strain ourselves. He'll cry himself to sleep eventually, and we'll make sure he gets food when we stop for breakfast in the morning, and again for lunch if necessary. We'll make it home by evening, barring any unexpected misfortunes. It's one night. He'll live. I'm confident his parents keep him decently fed."

I studied the squirming clown, who for the moment seemed content to work at a mouthful of suit. "If you're sure, sir."

"I am. I do not think it would be worth our time and effort. However, if you find yourself so deeply concerned about his comfort, you have my permission to leave the golf course, take some of the money from the glovebox of the truck, and see what you can pull together for him. You might find a rest stop with a vending machine." Silence, and H.P. lifted an eyebrow. "You're hesitating."

Was I?

"Come with me, boss," I pleaded, cracking more and more as I went along. A tremble started in the base of my wings. "Flappy's hungry - I'm hungry - and I'm not very familiar with this area. We both know how difficult it is to purchase items from human stores when we're this small. We can find a heavy coat and make another pixie stack, with you on my head. And I don't… like being left alone. What if something comes up and I don't know what to do? What if a human shoots at me, or tries to catch me? Though I am exhausted, I can and will keep awake for food. I'll find some paper and fill out a schedule adjustment request- I've memorized both pages of the form, sir."

I received a curious look for my response. "Sanderson, you are over two hundred and fifty-three thousand years old. That's enough to both look after yourself and make your own decisions. I gave you permission. And I trust you."

The 't' word had entered the conversation. Phrased almost like a challenge. My eyes, which had darted to my twisting hands, shot back up to meet H.P.'s. It was an uncomfortable angle; I still wasn't used to being grounded.

Trust you. His words stung my ears. Sharper and swifter than any smack ever had. My stomach coiled into a figure eight around my fagiggly gland. If I left the golf course, I'd be both displaying weakness in succumbing to my nature, and going against his confident instructions. And if I stayed, I'd have to resign myself to a hungry night, and now I'd also be turning my nose up at his trust.

H.P. hovered there with the four buttons of his suit at my eye level. He actually looked amused to see me squirming under his gaze. After over two hundred millennia, he was for the very first time setting his eldest offspring to the ultimate test. But would an expression of independence be interpreted as a sign of self-sufficiency, of capability? Or… impudence and insubordination? Had he raised me so one day the bird might leave the nest, or did he expect the ant to provide for the colony forever? It was a mind game with no way out.

"I… I…"

He had been the first pixie brought into existence, so far as we had ever known, and I the second. There was no one I might look to as an example. Were we, his offspring, intended to remain part of his hive our entire lives like worker bees, or leave to begin our own colonies like wasps when we came of age?

Did he know the answer? Should my decision here, this September night at an inconspicuous mini golf course that had existed and been hidden and remodeled ever since distant times, prove either the success or failure of what had become his lifelong work? Would he record this moment in time as the ultimate betrayal, or the day I finally came of age? If I only knew what he expected, then I could meet him there.

My wings began to shuffle themselves. My toes twitched inside my scuffed black shoes.

I will not hesitate to replace you.

Flappy whimpered, loosened his gums from H.P.'s suit, and began to wail again for food and care. A tiny smile had appeared on my boss's lips as he gazed on me. He was a sadist; I carried the gene myself, but I so rarely became his plaything…

As I chewed on my upper lip, I remembered the diner so long ago in Colorado. I remembered how H.P. had rejected all my snack suggestions just before he'd wished we would run across a baby. I remembered the way I'd regretted not snatching something from Flappy's cornfield. I remembered the barricaded Snack Shack.

I remembered the furious way H.P. had looked at me when I'd stupidly charged back into danger in search of his hat. I remembered my small blue office, with its comforting four corners, floating desk, and my nameplate on the door. I remembered all the smug tells shooting out from Longwood's body the day he was named company vice president, even though he kept his face emotionless and made them applaud for me, and the humiliation that had slammed down like chain mail on my shoulders as I left that ceremony, once so foolishly sure that the position would be mine, just because H.P. had once told me at age 1,552 that I was to be his heir.

"Sanderson," H.P. said, "what do you think?"

I watched Flappy's legs kick against my boss's chest. He screeched, clawing for milk that H.P. could not provide. He wasn't the first, nor to be the last. Once upon a time, it had been me begging there. Before Pixies Incorporated - before Pixie World, in fact - and before H.P. had even gotten tangled up with Kalysta Ivorie and the other will o' the wisps, like Idona. Yes. Once upon a time, I had been starving and crying in H.P.'s arms too.

That was when I knew, with no regrets, what I ought to do. Straightening my shoulders, I adjusted my tie with one fist. Then, working slowly, I removed my coat from my wing again, reached into the inside pocket on the left where I normally would keep my starpiece, and drew out the keys to the truck.

Let my decision stand as a precedent for all pixies to come. As the firstborn and most developed, I felt confident in my discovering the answer to the question all of us sought as the seasons changed. There was no longer a niggling doubt in my mind. I knew exactly how we pixies were destined to act when we came of age.

"I see no reason we can't wait until morning, sir," I said, and held the ring of keys out to him.

Unlike trying to take matters under my own wings, obedience had never once run the risk of me being fired. I wasn't sure why I'd so nearly trusted my own inexperienced mind before I trusted my boss. I still don't have a clue. I'd been a nymph curled up in his arms once, even if I couldn't remember the first hundred years of my life, and I'd survived in good health. Every pixie had. The Head Pixie bore his title for a reason. He knew exactly what he was doing.

I blinked behind my shades.

H.P. slipped the keyring over his pointer finger, then placed his palm around the back of my head. I didn't move as he pressed my nose to his shoulder and gave me two soft pats with his hand. "Good boy. Now, go find a place to sleep. It's been a rough day for all three of us."

Flappy latched his fingers around my tie and tried to throttle me. I realized I wasn't hungry anymore.

H.P. took the little clown off somewhere to teach him the trick to getting at least a birdie on one of the cape holes, but I settled down beside the palm trees and Egyptian pyramids on Hole 10. Where else was I to go?

"Two hundred and fifty-three thousand years," I murmured, touching my finger to the capstone of the smallest one. "The pyramids didn't even exist back then."

Crossing my wings, crossing my arms, I lay down and reviewed the events of the day. H.P. had made some good decisions, I thought. I couldn't find a flaw in any of them.