Baby, You're a Rich Man

by FountainPenguin

H.P. pulled up with a harsh flap. I slammed into his wings. He turned around. "Flappy Bob," he repeated. A faint red began to creep over his neck. "Every name in the wide reachings of the universe exists, and they go with Flappy Bob." "Sir, my first name is Mister. You gave all of us the first name Mister." (Written March - June 2016)

4. Sparkletail v Whimsifinado

Sparkletail v. Whimsifinado: Pixies may manufacture and distribute starpieces for pixie use alone. Any Pixie-manufactured starpiece which finds itself in non-pixie hands shall be terminated immediately upon its first use; Pixies may, however, retain their jurisdiction over the magic lines surrounding the Big Wand for the clients they inherited from Twinkletuft, so long as such clients should wish to remain covered by them.

---

From where I'd fallen on my side, I struggled to lift my hand and touch the soft fabric of the coat. Had Eunice dropped it over me inside out on purpose? An old memory from her days as a fairy godkid?

It didn't really matter. I lay there with my cheek in the dirt, helpless as a Fairy under a butterfly net. Not that we pixies didn't share the netting curse, but… Hey, I've seen Anti-Fairies steer away from an entire collapsed mirror factory just because some plastic horseshoe or shamrock decoration is lying in front of the door, and our fairy cousins seem to have been shuffled a deck of anxiety issues when around large fish just like the dragonflies who share their superb vision and ability to fly backwards. We all have our quirks. As Eunice started up a distracted conversation with the patrons who must have crested the hill, I stuffed my cleaner fist inside my mouth and howled.

Hands closed around my middle and lifted me from the grass. I thrashed once, only to be rewarded with a warning squeeze. A drake said words and Eunice laughed at them, like she wasn't crushing all the energy from my body. My wings beat in a helpless manner. My scratching nails had no chance of piercing skin through the coat. As I drooped in her grip, folding up on myself automatically, I found myself wondering if Eunice committed murders with that same relaxed posture and light smile in her voice.

"Good luck getting under par past those elephants," she called after their departing forms, and another damsel answered, "We're hoping for a few holes in one today; have a good rest of the morning, Eunice!"

"You're a slippery bugger, aren't ya?" she muttered to me as she folded back the part of her coat that covered my head. I tried to jolt from her arms, but she still held me firm, and anyway, the reversed coat still covered my body from the neck down. "Hey. Hey, you're fine, Sanderson. Relax. Breathe. You can fight me all you want, but I have six and a half cats. I'm not going anywhere. Hey. Shh, shh…"

I glared up at her black eyes, embedded like olives among a scattering of crow's feet. Then I remembered she probably couldn't see me through my shades, and since I couldn't wriggle a hand out to tilt them down, I had to settle for shaking my head hard enough to send them flying off. They skidded over gravel and dirt in the walking path.

"Can we talk?" Eunice waited for a response that didn't come, then went on. "I'm fairly sure neither of us want to get yelled at by the Head Pixie, and both of us want to find your missing baby."

Those words made me blink. In my disgust at being treated like an animal, I'd entirely forgotten about Flappy Bob.

She seemed to notice this. "I know you don't like being restrained, and I don't want to force you through any unpleasant ordeal. You're in bad enough shape as it is. So, if you agree not to bite me after I untangle you, then I'll hold my arms very loosely. Just enough so that your wings keep hidden. We can leave the coat to cover them, but at least the rest of you will be free. If you don't squirm, someone might mistake you for a three-foot-tall decorative lawn gnome."

"We're pixies."

Eunice, never taking her eyes from mine, shifted her arms so she had one hand free, as though she thought I were in a position to shake. "Then do we have a deal?"

I stilled my wings as she drew me back into a scenario I was familiar with. That question was chocolate pudding to any pixie worth a quarter of a salt shaker. Forcing down the rippling urge to jump on it, I considered her proposal. It was reasonable enough, really… Flappy was out there. Worse humans than Eunice were out there. H.P. had asked me to stick beside her. I'd protested because every instinct told me not to put myself in a position that I couldn't escape from if the world should turn against me, and particularly when I lacked a way to channel magic. If Eunice's hold remained as loose as she was implying, then - theoretically - I would still have the option to flee.

I gave my wary assent, on the condition that her coat covered my wings right side out, and I could take two more handfuls of candy from the Snack Shack before H.P. and I made our final departure. She agreed with only a few seconds' hesitation. Half a moment later, and just before the next couple passed us on their way to Hole 16, I was curled up against the crook of her left arm, sort of perched on it rather than pinned like a brownie's bowtie to her chest. My fingers rested against the soft inside of her elbow, and Eunice draped the coat the correct way over my back. She'd retrieved my shades.

It still wasn't an ideal situation as far as I was concerned, but I chose to hold my tongue. Flappy had cried and hit me when I'd walked across the golf course with him. That hadn't done either one of us a favor.

"Sanderson," Eunice said as we examined the rosebushes lining the for-now-deserted Hole 15, "tell me about yourself."

"… About myself?"

She readjusted her grip on me (loose, as promised) so she could use the other hand to push dark strands of hair behind her round ear. "Sure. What do pixies do when they aren't running around miniature golf courses smack in the middle of Kansas? Where do you live and how have you avoided human notice? Or haven't you? What are you interested in? How long have you been doing that? What's your favorite snack food? Do you like Earth more or less now than a hundred or a thousand years ago? How was yesterday? What toppings would you prefer on a pizza if I were to make you one? That's what I mean by 'about yourself'."

A blank line appeared in my brain. No one had ever asked me questions like that before. Not even Hadrian at the shrine of the Tuatha Dé Danann the day Hawkins and I had been baptized. I pushed my shades further up my nose, feeling like they weren't there at all. "Why do you want to know?"

"Small talk."

"Is there also such a thing as tall talk?" Partly insulted (Not counting my cowlick, I am the shortest grown pixie by the width of my wing- oh, the price one pays for a nymphhood spent on milk and worms and acorns) and partly amused, "Are you saying that because I myself am small?"

Eunice crouched down beside the third rosebush, chuckling under her breath. "Is that just a humans' thing? I thought that if we were going to be working together for the better part of half an hour or so, maybe I should get to know you. 'Small talk' is simply a name given to light, casual conversation to encourage friendliness and reassure you that I intend you no harm. Without small talk… Well, I guess we'd only greet one another if we planned to discuss newsworthy events or important business deals."

Flashbacks of Wish Fixers, the copy machine, and Skylette swarmed in my brain. I happened to like discussing only important business deals.

"I work for Pixies Incorporated," I began, selecting my words carefully. Eunice gave up on the rosebush and advanced to an array of ferns along the path. As she moved, I scanned the surrounding rises for any sign of Flappy Bob. I didn't see him, but I caught a distant flash of wasp-like wings as H.P. darted from behind an iron-cast zebra decoration to a giraffe. One of the nearby humans started, but seemed to brush the sighting off.

My fingers had apparently found a bandage just beneath Eunice's sleeve and, considering it to be paper, begun to pluck at it before I'd realized what I was doing. I stopped. "It started just over two hundred thousand years ago. I'd left my nymph stage behind, but I didn't yet have my adult set of wings, and wouldn't for a long while. The company had simple origins. The Head Pixie was interested in gathering money so he might buy out the family business from his fa- his sire, and so he went about to various magical races - fairies, elves, selkies, brownies, anti-fairies, huldufólk, goblins, imps, gnomes, ishigaq, sprites, hobs, leprechauns, far darrig, trolls, mermaids, finfolk, harpies, barbegazi, druids, púca, swanee, cherubs, duende, will o' the wisps, you name the kind - he went about to anyone whom he could find and offered to help them struggle through the lengthy bundles of paperwork that tended to pile up on their dusty cabinet shelves."

"So many?"

That made me smile in a rueful way. "Magic-users, you see, are so used to getting what they want with a flick of the wrist that they simply haven't developed the proper patience to wrangle legal documents written on chesberry parchment or threedspiral papyrus, or one of the other magical plants that resists any attempt to alter the terms and conditions found therein. Oftentimes, deadlines are distant or unsettled at all. We tend to live long lives and few are ever in a rush."

"No deadlines," she mused. "Must be nice."

"Of course, as a result, so much of the work simply ends up unfinished by the time the contractor reappears to claim his dues. Then would come the panicked scrambles, the pawning, the money lending…" Briefly pausing at the sound of human voices from the hole over, I gave a shrug. "Riots and muggings and gangs were a daily hazard for those who wandered the streets of Fairy World in those times. And then the Anti-Fairies began waging war. Eastkal, the last prince of the fairies, was assassinated… Guarding the treasury, some insist, though I can't confirm that, even though I was… Well. The king surrendered all power to the Fairy Council after his death and went into hiding. Both before and after the war, we were kept busy. It was horrid chaos."

"I imagine it was." With the ferns examined, Eunice crossed towards one of the thicker beds of tulips. "Were they grateful for his help?"

"Very much so. Within a few short centuries, he was no longer poring over papers with his clients, but being poofed- er, shipped them. Of course he would complete the work and upon its return always urge the one who had given it to him to study it carefully, and they did for a time. Personally, however, I believe within a millennium or two, the idea that we might make a mistake in such a task became entirely laughable. It's incredible what slips by them, really, how few actually bother to ensure it's all correct… They give it to us, we give it back, they send it off to wherever it's meant to be, and they never face any unpleasant or unforeseen consequences. That's what they know, and it satisfies them."

"How did you come to work for the Head Pixie?"

I sunk into her coat instead of answering. A trio of humans, somewhere around Quincy's age, had arrived to try our hole. After Eunice finished checking the tulips, she crossed the tiny wooden bridge that led across a stream and to Hole 14. People milled around there too, but we didn't stay long; we'd watched H.P. give the place a quick check before he'd headed further north.

"When did you get involved, Sanderson?" Eunice prompted as we left in search of Hole 13. Before I continued, I plucked at the sleeves of her coat. It was warm; I was warm. Coming on to 11 or 11:30 in the morning, maybe, and still no sign of Flappy Bob. Not a clowny giggle.

"I was essentially born into the work. Filing papers, managing records, running messages, making copies, managing funds, drawing up explanations, taking complaints… There are the fairies. Chaotic, wild- a very limited sense of responsibility."

I realized too late that I might be prodding Eunice's childhood memories, and I hoped she wouldn't accuse me of exaggerating, or whatever lies about my kind that her godparent would have tried to leave her with. Still, I unfolded and refolded my wings, pulling the coat nearer to my neck at the next sign of approaching humans.

"Recently H.P. has been working to further expand the reaches of the company to an, er, even more global scale. However, the Fairies have taken to accusing us of running a monopoly. We haven't messed with any contracts or information in the actual paperwork, and haven't suffered any sort of market-crash-like scenario that involved us losing valuable records- nothing like that. We file everything in triplicate. Times are changing as the rising generation becomes more and more involved with paperwork, and they often question where we stand, as they were not there to see the company's humble origins. We're hoping Fl- that child we're looking for, will put an end to their arguing."

Nothing I said was untrue. The trouble with the Fairies had all begun when Elliot Twinkletuft lost his fortune to his damefriend's sticky fingers, and was pressured by some mob or rival to sell his wand-making business. He hadn't really known how to publicize the sale, and H.P. had been intrigued enough that he took it off his hands for a lofty price. We do that sort of thing; fairies are no less frivolous with their money than they are their magic, and we tend to end up the highest bid. Twinkletuft's rival had thrown a fit, but there was nothing he could do- all the legal documents were in order, and as usual we hadn't broken any laws.

Regardless, nervous protests broke out across Fairy World regarding Fairy wands being manufactured by the hands of another class of beings altogether, and the Council members had decided to get involved. A deal was struck; Twinkletuft's business would remain in Pixie hands, but only for Pixie use (Porter is the designer of the company, and seeing as he enjoys the work so much, H.P. allows him to put the place to use. This century's model was the ballpoint pen, and I found them a vast improvement over the quills and inkwells of the 1800s that required both hands).

However, H.P. had argued for a month that we pixies hadn't done anything wrong, and we were technically an offshoot of the fairies anyway as he himself was born one, genetic mutation notwithstanding. For all intents and purposes, we were simply fairies that chose to set our place of work in the Kansas skies. He'd gotten a scoffing slap on the wrist for having fought so hard and long to be recognized as a distinct race only to turn around and play the 'no different than you' card, but the Council had relented.

Though we remained forbidden to manufacture wands for Fairy use, we were allowed to keep Twinkletuft's patrons and the monthly payments associated with them. Nothing in this life is free, even magic, and someone has to be paid for being willing to attend to the Big Wand and untangle the magic lines that get all crossed and muddled by wands waving from multiple corners of the universe at the same time. I'd come to dread that job from day one when I ended up in the crossfire of a spell that sent diamonds and roses pouring from my mouth every time I tried to speak. First day! Thorns stabbing my cheeks! Jagged rocks tumbling down my throat! Jensen and Saddler, the latter having been turned into an armadillo, had to drag me out where the magical pool was thinner, and then we'd had to spend an hour deciphering the entire spell to its core before we could snap the defense code and pour reversal fluid over it. Who even wishes for something like that?

But, any Fairy who was upset by the idea of pixies monitoring their magic could return their starpieces (for a fee) and, if they were willing to poof over and sign the paperwork, as per usual, switch to a rival benefactor. Go on- Guess how many took up that offer when they found out they'd have to declare their distrust for us while we stared them down across the table.

We could neither approve nor reject wishes - that was to be the von Strangle bloodline's task alone, so long as the Fairy Elder held the deed to Fairy World - but we simply made it our duty to document the result of every wave of their wands. The fact that nothing got lost in our filing rooms was to be our saving grace. Each spell came at a price, yes, and Twinkletuft had done the smart thing and added the automatic payment feature into every wand he made.

It was easy, then, for us to hand-deliver the debits throughout the last week of every month. Long-lasting spells continue to drain funds every passing day, and as it turns out, even the prodigal fairies don't like to see their resources disappear unnecessarily. If a wish has not been undone, they'll know before too long. It saves them a great deal of money. And within the decade, thousands of them were flocking to us. No rival had the filing experience or the meticulous staff to compete. It turned out to be a blessing that we didn't spend resources manufacturing wands- eager clients bought them elsewhere and switched to us as managers of their magic lines. Thus, Pixie wealth cannonballed upward and we found ourselves in the comfortable position we did today.

All this I relayed to Eunice between periods I ducked beneath her coat as we made our way through Holes 12, 11, 18 when a drake voiced that he feared we were stalking him, 17, 10 across the stepping stones (several frustrated humans were trying to free their balls from the sand trap between the pyramids), and finally 9 near the front gate. That was about where I ran out of ways to distract myself from the fact that Flappy hadn't yet been found.

"It just amuses me," I said, repeating myself for perhaps the third time. "Everything goes through us nowadays. I mean, everything. Every business deal, every contract, every loan request, every shipping order, every delivery, every exchange that isn't simply from one neighbor to another. If it involves paperwork, it passes through Pixie hands and gets stored somewhere among our files. The only ones who don't bother with us are the mafia types, and that suits u-"

"Excuse me. I might have seen something rustle." Eunice knelt beside a few wide hippo sculptures basking on their sides near the oasis, but a fat magpie shot off before she had even set me down. Sigh. "Go on."

I scratched my shoulder. "I'd finished, really. In summary, I am H.P.'s eldest offspring. This is the work I've performed my entire life - all the work I've learned to love - and I can't imagine doing anything different, especially without him."

"So are you in training to be his successor? Is that why you're on this journey with him?"

"Yes," I said without hesitation. If I didn't tell her, Eunice would never find out that my highest position was head of the complaints department. In both senses of the word, it was my business; she didn't need to know.

"Well, I'm sure you'll make a fine one. Your father must be very proud of you."

"Who?"

"The Head Pixie?"

I nodded, untying and then retying my tie. "I usually call him 'boss'."

"I've kept my eyes out for him, but he must be good at hiding from humans. I know he intended to search the other side of the Snack Shack, but still, I haven't seen a trace since we parted ways. I'd hoped he might ping back to check on us." Pause. "That was weird. Come back to us, I meant."

I didn't reply.

"You don't suppose something could have happened to him, do you?"

Instead of answering, I pointed to the soft yellow bundle, spotted with red, that floated among the reeds lining the stream that ran through Hole 9. Like most of the holes featuring water, it had a decorative wooden bridge spanning its widest point. If I hadn't been at precisely the height of Eunice's chest, and she hadn't been standing the precise distance away, I might have missed seeing the cloth snagged between the rocks.

We waited for half a moment before the area cleared of humans. Then, without speaking either, Eunice stepped into the stream and waded (stepping, really) over to the bridge. I had to cling to her shoulder as she stretched out, swiping for the motionless blanket. When she pulled it free and lifted the soiled, dripping mass from the water, she closed her eyes and breathed out a long sigh.

"Empty."

My arms trembled around her neck as she readjusted her hold on me. "He didn't drown?"

"He at least didn't drown here."

It was something. Still, my stomach churned with enough misery to have turned the magic particles in my blood a deep emerald. If I'd only had my starpiece, I could have channeled enough energy from the air to activate my fagiggly gland, shift into a bloodhound, and track Flappy down by the scent. If I'd only been more patient and not handed him off to H.P. in the midst of his sobbing. If I'd only offered to watch him while H.P. finished his game of golf. If I'd only taken him back to the truck and gone off in search of food the way I'd almost wanted to. If I'd only stayed awake long enough to prevent him from crawling off. If I'd…

… If Flappy had been crying because he was hungry, then…

I lifted my head. The whole course was divided into two separate sets of nine holes each, with one passing on either side of the Snack Shack and then curving away in opposite directions, either north or south. Both began near the entrance gate. Giving a quick glance to see if some human caught sight of me but not putting the effort into noticing whether they did, I trotted along the concrete sidewalk and took hold of the chain-link fence that separated me from the parking lot. The truck stood exactly where H.P. and I had left it, mere inches from the dark purple dumpster. The three (well, two and a half) trash bags remained at its side. But the moldy bread slices and broken corn chips were gone.

"Sanderson?"

Ignoring Eunice, I searched along the bottom of the fence until I found the hole I had landed beside when I'd slipped from the top. The dirt around it had been scuffed up with tiny prints. Just yesterday morning, the thought of smearing dirt across my suit would have repulsed me, and I might have scampered back to Eunice and had her carry me through the open gate instead. But, bruised as I was from the lizallicopter attack (Stupid contract), and after a night of sleeping in coarse sand, and a morning of coating my hands with chocolate and sugary powder and then throwing up on myself, I didn't much care anymore. That was why I didn't wait to go around, you see, really. Dropping to my belly, I squirmed through the hole.

"Sanderson?" Eunice called again, a thread of hope running through her voice.

My wings caught. I stiffened, stuck fast with my left arm through the hole beside my head, and the right trapped on the side with my legs. Once more I tried to claw my way through, but that didn't work- in fact, I thought I heard the injured one tear further. Nor did it help that, as the thought of getting stuck sunk in, my wings began to flutter. I jolted backwards, but my head bashed against torn metal and held me in place. It wouldn't… It wouldn't fit? What was blocking-?

The cap! My stupid floating cap, bobbing after me on some stupid invisible cord, had wedged itself into the stupid hole between my stupid head and the stupid fence. If it had been a natural cap of soft fabric like those of the elves and the brownies, then maybe, maybe it would have loosened when I twisted my neck. But hidden under that cap was my splintered crown, identical to the one of mangled collagen and calcium H.P. had been born with, that would have declared me a legal fairy if he hadn't contracted that genetic "equiangular" mutation before he was born. Two of the crown's points must have wedged themselves around the chains through the cloth, and I couldn't- I couldn't- I tried-

"Snk! Heh heh heh. You look ridiculous. My fattest cat skitters his haunches in that exact way when he gets caught between the oven and the fridge."

I found that to be an ungrounded assumption. Anti-Fairies were the haughty cat-types who mocked mankind every twenty minutes of every day. Brownies, gnomes, and fairies looked up to humans because they were soft cowards, but we pixies considered them to be on equal level with us, the same as the leprechauns and the will o' the wisps and the elves. That's why it was so rude when humans chased us through cornfields and shot holes through our wings like a certain grubby child I could point fingers at.

Eunice's hands - I hoped they were Eunice's hands - fell on my back. My wings whipped hard against her skin, and she might have flinched (I don't know?) but she didn't draw away. "Sanderson," she said.

"Hey!" someone else said.

That time I felt her flinch. I lashed my legs, digging the toes of my once-shiny shoes into the dirt and shoving with all my strength. There had to be remnants of some sugar high in me somewhere, didn't there? I had eaten nearly that entire basket of candy myself. Once, Wilcox had gone into quarter form when we'd attempted to cheat a vending machine while H.P. was in the Faeheim hospital. He'd almost trapped himself inside with his wand out of reach, and it always gave me chills when he told the story in the dark. That was how I felt now. When my shades fell from my nose then, I nearly poked my eye out on the left arm. My shoulder scratched one of the broken chain links, drawing a blazing line of pink blood that ran along my neck and dripped onto the end of my tie. The scent of it stung my nose. A second kick- third- fourth- No use, no use!

"Animal control sedated that cat when he got stuck among the neighbor's new cabinets too far back to reach," Eunice mused, leaning a little further over me. To conceal me from the approaching human, maybe, but more likely to simply crush me. "Then we had to saw through to reach him. Last month, he scratched himself on this same fence and the wound got horribly infected."

She was telling me- She was telling me this now?

"I hope that's a cat or a rabbit and not a skunk," said the strange voice, accompanied by heavy feet crunching fallen leaves into cement. "You get stuck there, li'l fella? Let's see if we can't… Holy moley!"

Fingers ran along my head. Eunice's, I'm sure, studying my cap but hesitant to pull in case it should hurt me (it wouldn't, no more than dragging on the collar of her shirt would hurt her). I considered crying out for her to push on it hard, even if it temporarily ground my face into the dirt, but my teeth were clamped shut by grass and… W-well, er… panic.

"Uh… Mrs. Tuckfield, that's… that's not one of your cats. You shouldn't be touching-"

I didn't hear the rest of what he said, because all my focus was snapped up by the piercing sound of a baby's wail. Still on my side, I strained my neck so I could peer at the dumpster. "Get Flappy," I muttered, to either Eunice or myself. I spat mud from my lips.

"I thank you for your concern, Mr. Steamer, but I can handle this matter on my own. Don't let me distract you from enjoying your day. Come on, Sanderson," Eunice whispered then, not even hissing on the 'S' sound like she wasn't moving her lips. "Push…"

"Mrs. Tuckfield!" Her hands wrenched from my back. "We don't know what that thing is-"

"This is my miniature golf course and I wish you would let me attend to it, Mr. Steamer!"

"-but it looks like some kind of living lawn gnome or devilish spirit or mutated-"

"We're pixies."

The voice was calm, even, dull. Still, it cut through the noise of their argument, the clanking of the fence, and Flappy's crying, and froze my blood. I twisted my head upwards, and I could only assume that the humans did the same.

H.P. hovered over my head, black shoes level as though he were standing, rather than pointed downward. That was the posture he took whenever Caudwell floated, twitching, outside the door to Headquarters because the sound of rustling paper drove him too insane to consider coming inside to talk to anyone, and was my first indication that he would rather be anywhere but here. His arms were crossed over his chest. Not even in a threatening way. He was merely observing.

"I'm going to fetch my gun," Mr. Steamer whimpered.

"You're dreaming," Eunice muttered back. I heard her call to someone else that everything was all right.

"Mr. Steamer. Mr. Harold Steamer. Oh yes, I remember you. You were Archer's summer project a few years ago. Your dairy took a nasty spill, if you forgive me the pun, and he helped you get back on your feet. You moved onto publishing, didn't you? I must confess that I haven't been watching, but clearly you've been managing fine, if you can afford to spend a few hours here. Could I ask you to step away from my compatriot there beneath the fence? He doesn't like you whatsoever and you're giving him capture myopathy."

I suddenly remembered that I was stuck, and resumed the fruitless struggle to free my arm. Eunice crouched beside me again, I imagine, making little effort to suppress her snickers.

"I… I… Uh, I'm a Christian man, devil! You have no power over me!"

H.P. brought himself closer to the fence and set his fingers through the links. I heard Harold Steamer stumble back. "In that case, let me rephrase myself. Don't concern yourself with my assistant, be on your merry way, and speak of this encounter to no one if you value your place in heaven."

Simple enough instructions, but Harold Steamer chose to tear back to the gate and across the parking lot, hollering about grabbing his rifle. H.P. sighed.

"Never fails. Why all the guns, Eunice? I can see why we all do our utmost to prevent our starpieces from falling into human hands; your trigger fingers are a marvel in themselves. Well, there's no help for it." H.P. lowered himself to my level and held out his hand. "Give me the keys to the truck, Sanderson."

"… Sir?"

"Never mind. You're in no condition to cooperate. Eunice?" Briefly, he released the fence to push his slipping glasses back into place. "Check his pockets and get me the ring of keys."

"Uh… I don't think I can bring myself to, um, do a pat-down or anything-"

"H.P., Flappy's behind the dumpster."

"And he can stay there. Keys?"

Eunice wriggled her hand beneath my jacket. I tried to kick her off, unable to tear my gaze from H.P.'s stoic face. My tongue curled up hot and dry in my mouth.

"Do you plan to- plan to abandon me like you did in Flappy's cornfield, sir?"

He didn't blink. "Sanderson, you're looking too deeply into this."

"The Pixie race must survive before the individuals! That's what you always say!"

"Calm. Down!" H.P. smacked my forehead with the back of his hand. "You're siphoning up the energy field. I don't have time for this."

"I- I can't find the keys," Eunice stammered. "I'm sorry, I just-"

That made H.P. snap his fingers. "Right," he said, "Sanderson gave them to me." He checked his own jacket, then drew out his hand with a jingle. Without one more word, he spun around and zipped off. Ring in fist. Key in truck. Door open. Harold Steamer drew his rifle from the rear of his own mud-spattered pick-up. The barrel aimed haphazardly into the sky as he searched for bullets to stuff in it, probably.

I squeezed my eyelids shut. I'd thought often that I would surrender myself for H.P. and the company should it ever come down to it. He'd given me everything, including my life, and it seemed only fair. I'd thought it so much that I'd even believed it. But… But…

Eunice's fingers pressed hard between my wings. With her other hand she dragged on my feet. "We'll get you out," she promised, her voice hardly quavering. Her left hand wriggled through the chain links near my face. "This is my course and I won't let him shoot you. You're fine. I just need you to- Ow! Don't bite, I'm just trying to- Oh, no. No, no. He isn't."

'He', it took me a few seconds to realize, was H.P. Still spitting from Eunice's blood, I looked up. And instantly, I was scrambling harder.

H.P. had laid one careful hand on the barrel of the gun and, as Steamer stood there whimpering, pushed it back down to the bed of the truck. H.P.'s eyes were on his as he murmured soothing words. There were green bills in his other hand that he must have taken from our truck's glovebox. He was trying to offer a bribe for silence, so he didn't see Steamer's hand drawing the pocketknife from the back of his pants.

"Mr. Steamer!" Eunice snapped, abandoning me. "There is no place for that on my property! Harold, I warned you-"

The knife zipped up, swiping a gash across H.P.'s left cheek that spurted purple and knocking his glasses into the road. Sooner than it maybe should have, the familiar intertwined scents of melting butter, stinging peppermint, and sopping dog hair swam across the roof of my mouth until my eyes watered. The knife completed its upward slice and flashed back down for his neck. It connected before Eunice could grab his shoulders and H.P. could wrench away, the blood shifting from purple into pink.

Everything dropped away beneath my being, and I was floating. I clawed at the dirt until my fingernails turned black and clawed a little longer until they tore and bled and I could do nothing! No escape- never escape- no use screaming- may as well be dead- I lay there gasping until Eunice's husband had been summoned to interfere. At long last, when I had stopped watching and buried my face in my sleeve, she crept back to me with H.P. bundled in her jacket.

"He's fine," she reassured me, setting him down so he could squirm out and shake his wings. "He's all fine- the cheek cut is a little deep, but he's not severely hurt. Shh, shh, don't panic, Sanderson, he's fine, you're both going to be fine…"

"He knows; you don't have to bother telling him. He tends to overreact about these sorts of things," H.P. said, patting his face and flicking pink droplets away with his fingertips. "Too easily he forgets how we're immortal. It's fortunate we are- See that scrape on the back of his neck? It has even more red than green leaking out, which you don't see often. Quite a bit of it around here is red, in fact, which means it was carrying too much adrenaline to his brain for too long. It seems as though capture myopathy has taken over his system. If he were mortal, he'd be dead right now." He sat back on his knees. "But, fortunately, this fence problem is easily fixed. The nymphs are often squeezing themselves between the filing cabinets and finding themselves unable to withdraw their wings and pull back. All you need to do, Sanderson, is relax."

Pressing my lids tight to my eyeballs, I shook my head.

"Just breathe, Sanderson."

H.P. ruffled my hair. "You can't stop a magical being from hyperventilating that way, because we don't need to breathe. We can sigh, yes, and speak, yes, but the concept of breathing is one that's difficult to grasp. It simply isn't an instinct for us in the first place, which makes stopping the gasping that much harder. Technically, what you see him doing here is, he's struggling to draw every fleck of loose magic in the area towards him. Hence why I'm beginning to lose my power to hover. We take in magic through our pores, drinking through the magical lines that connect us to the energy field."

"Hm. You must be excellent swimmers if you don't need air, then."

"Actually, no." H.P. gave up his attempt to stay aloft and settled himself in the grass. "Apart from mermaids, sea serpents, and selkies, you'll almost never catch a magical being in the water. Especially fairies. Their wings resemble those of dragonflies, meaning that they scrunch when wet and they cannot fly (So only a fairy who hadn't mentally progressed from the nymph stage, I think, would willing choose to submerge themselves- and they all tend to be squeamish around large fish too). What kills us underwater isn't lack of your oxygen, but lack of magic; lakes and rainstorms and such highly distort the energy field all around us, as well as the lines we use to take it in, and unless the water has already become fairly saturated with a magical sort of purple dust, then too easily and too often, magical creatures drown. It happens, if every pore is submerged for a significant amount of time. Perhaps half an hour, sometimes more depending on the size." He snapped his fingers twice in front of my nose. "Sanderson, enough is enough. My patience is running thin. I need you to get a hold of yourself. You know my feelings about emotions."

I opened one eye and attempted to use my tongue, only to droop my wings and flop my head down again, because speaking wasn't a real option. My throat was too tight. My face was too hot. My eyes stung too much.

H.P. put a hand to one hip and looked me up and down. "I didn't exactly want to risk pushing you back into capture myopathy, but we can't stay here much longer. Someone else is bound to be curious. Eunice, drop your coat over him inside out. It's the pixie equivalent of taking a cat by the scruff, turning a leprechaun upside down, or knocking on wood within earshot of an Anti-Fairy, and will physically and mentally shut him down for a moment. Wrenching off anyone's hat would have the same effect, too, but, well, his appears to be stuck."

"Huh," Eunice said. I heard the rustle of fabric. "Don't let her smother me!" I choked out at last, but I was too late. She covered my legs with her coat at the same time H.P. lay his over my face, and I fell silent.

"Now for this fence. Do you keep wire cutters on hand somewhere?"

"There are some garden shears back at the golf cart shed."

"Mm… I suppose those will have to do. We can try the iron crocodile jaws if they don't come through for us. Go and fetch them, please."

Eunice's footsteps retreated. All was silent. A crunch of grass. I hissed in and out through my teeth. Flappy sobbed at the edge of my hearing.

"Sir?" I said, angling my head in that direction.

"Yes, I had forgotten he was there. I suppose I should grab-"

"Don't leave me again!"

"… Sanderson, the dumpster is hardly twenty feet away."

My fingers curled into one of the sleeves of his coat. I pressed it to my nose. It smelled warm, like ink, with the vaguest undertones of orange and cinnamon from the Colorado diner. The gray photograph of Flappy's parents was tucked in one of the pockets, too. "Don't leave."

I heard him sigh. His finger scratched me above the ear through the cloth. "Your magic lines are disconnecting and reconnecting. You're being ridiculous. This entire situation is ridiculous. I feel as though troubles such as this are quite common on our trips down to Earth, don't you? Wasn't it last time that you locked yourself in a refrigerator? That's right, and you banged around in there until shards of glass from every broken jar were wedged in your hands and the bubblegum-pink blood was pooling at your feet. How did we bandage that, do you remember? Tch… And yet, somehow I always find myself hauling you along when I leave Pixie World. I've come home to find the lower three floors of Headquarters torn apart by your nervous fingers too many times to justify going anywhere alone. I suppose I have myself to blame. I must have handled you too much as a child, Sanderson, and that's what brought on this desperate need for attention. But, well. You were the rough draft, and we all benefited from what I learned by experimenting with you."

"What… what was I like back when you first- you first started to… started to… How did you treat me as a- as a nymph? A-after I was weaned and we left Kalysta? After age two?"

"Hmm. You weren't much different from a gosling, really. You had to be everywhere with me - everywhere - or you would turn to crying and scratching at things as a safety behavior. Then you realized that when you damaged my possessions I would reappear to stop you, and my life was ruined from then on. I believed such actions were normal, especially as you weren't presented with your starpiece until so late, and thought the magic deprivation stunted your physical development. I was younger and less experienced back then, and I didn't realize normal fairy nymphs were meant to outgrow such need for attachment by the age of-"

"Here," Eunice burst out, gasping the words. "Sh- shears."

I began to squirm again, but H.P. took my hands and ran his thumbs in circles along my palms. Snip, snip, went the metal. Sharp pieces rained on the back of my neck.

"There we go. Take your time, Eunice. Easy… Easy. I'm here. That's the way we do it, Sanderson. You're functioning fine. Drink through those magic lines. Keep them steady. Keep them stable. It'll all be over soon. I'll be right here until it is. I'm not going anywhere."

Minutes dragged on, but I could feel it when my cap lifted into its usual position above my head. My shoulders felt twice as light. I bunched my muscles. The instant those coats were off me, I scrambled several paces across the grass until I reached the blacktop of the parking lot, hesitated, then sat down and flapped out my wings. H.P. followed me, softly clicking his tongue. He readjusted my shades.

"I apologize for ruining your fence," I mumbled, turning back around.

"Don't be." Eunice placed her hands on her waist and nodded once in a satisfied manner. "I think I'll keep the hole. All pixies should be welcome here, don't you agree?"

"You're a good damsel, Eunice Tuckfield. Sanderson- Oh, right, I suppose we really ought to- Sander-!"

My ears pricked at the next high warble in Flappy's voice. H.P. and I circled the dumpster on opposite sides and reached the child at almost the same moment. I scooped Flappy into my arms, realizing too late that I should have waited for H.P. to take the lead. Looking back on it, I still could have handed Flappy over, but instead my arms moved towards my own body rather than away. I didn't want any risk of him squirming off again. Then H.P. was there, wedging his fingers between Flappy and me. He must have pulled up too fast, because for a brief moment his wings enveloped all three of us in a tattered, translucent umbrella.

"It's ridiculous," he muttered twice in a row, keeping his wings where they were. "With pixie nymphs, you can predict where they'll hide- open spaces where their wings are free, heaps of paper to burrow in, anywhere there's a supply of sugar. And you can always cut your skin and they'll swarm to you for the pheromones. But human babies are entirely unpredictable and I don't like them at all."

Holding Flappy quickly wasn't enough for me, and I reached out for H.P. He lay a finger on one wrist and pushed it down.

"No hugs," he said in his firm way. "Remember the deal we made when you were five hundred?"

I withdrew my arms, my wings stinging from the twist I'd bartered not to take. "Sir, Flappy came out here- I think he came to the dumpster because he was hungry, boss."

"Possibly," H.P. said, disinterested. He moved back as Eunice came around the fence through the gate, sliding her arms through her jacket sleeves, and crouched down beside us.

"So this is the little guy who caused us so much trouble. What's your name, skipper?"

"Finley," I said, not wanting to explain 'Flappy Bob'. H.P. shot me a sour sideways glance.

"You have such gorgeous purple-blue eyes. I feel like I've seen them somewhere before, peeking out at me. You're pretty big for a baby pixie. Are they all as round as you…?"

"Put Finley in the truck and start it up for me, would you, Sanderson?" H.P. interrupted, pushing his arm between us. "It's been a long two days for both of you and I want you to lie down. You'll find the keys are already there."

"Yes, sir."

"And you," Eunice said, leveling a finger at H.P.'s nose, "can stay right here for one more minute. You're still bleeding. I grabbed something for that while I was in the shed." She drew a thin strip of white from the pocket of her jacket and tore open the paper. It wasn't simply a bandage- it was a Band-Aid, pale green, dotted with Tasmanian Devils and Tweety Birds. It was Bell who had made Band-Aids his annual project in 1920, and he might have won first prize for Best Inspiration Given if he hadn't been running up against Madigan and some sort of voting rights law thing. H.P. rolled his eyes to the sky and let them stay there as Eunice patted it and one more across his cheek and a third along his neck.

"Thank you," he said when she had finished. "Eunice Tuckfield, you truly are a good damsel. If you worked for me, I'd give you a promotion and double your break period."

She smiled. "Well, I might wish I- Er… I might have liked to be born a pixie too. Thank you for your kind words. You're welcome here any time. It's your golf course, after all, perhaps more than it is ours."

"It is, actually. Many of those decorations I sculpted myself from wood before recreating them with iron. Most ponds I dug by hand. A friend I once had planted an ancestor of that maple tree near your Snack Shack. Eventually I sold the thing to one of the owners who came before you; it was too small a place to do anything practical with, and too near will o' the wisp country for me to feel comfortable staying for terribly long on my own, no matter how cheap it made the mortgage…"

As she got to her feet, she said, "Well, I'll take good care of it for you, and as long as I'm living, I'll ensure that Quincy follows suit."

"See that you do. And Eunice?"

She turned. H.P. placed one fist to his waist and smiled a grim smile.

"Lose the windmills."

She blinked, but nodded. The two waved farewell, and H.P. glanced back at me. "Didn't I tell you to put Flappy in the truck?"

"What? Oh. Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

He rubbed the pink Yosemite Sam Band-Aid along his neck. "I'll be with you in one more moment. There's something I'd like to check on first."

I considered asking, then didn't. H.P. disappeared back over the fence, sticking near a tree some ways down for cover. As he had requested, I lay Flappy down on the soft seat, where he instantly fell asleep, and then rolled down the passenger-side window and rested my chin and fingertips on the slit where the glass had withdrawn.

"We're all set to leave, H.P.," I called through the fence after a couple minutes had gone by. Perhaps he hadn't heard me above the babble of the humans. Rubbing Flappy's hair, I used my foot to turn up the radio.

Several more minutes passed in this way. It was seven songs' worth.

"H.P.!" I shouted again. When he still didn't answer, I checked the parking lot for humans, slid down from the truck, went over to the gate, and took hold of the links in the fence. H.P. floated near a bush on the other side, gazing across the course as cheerful, gabbling families of three or four children each all clustered around the holes with chunky clubs and colorful balls in hand. Thwack!s rang out from every direction.

I cleared my throat. "H.P.?"

"The perfect place for a lone pixie to make his own," he murmured without turning around. "It was the first thing I put together when I came back from Great Sidhe after that series of silly contests with Pip, five hundred years before you were born. From the outside, anyone would think it some eccentric's private collection of decorative animals. I reclaimed the land after we left the cherubs, and finally opened it to human business when the time was right, if you recall. Then of course later on I sold the place, but I don't think I've ever said why I went with the African Safari theme. It's simple, really." His voice tilted very, very slightly upward, like he was considering a smile. "If anyone who didn't own it, didn't pay their entrance fee, or didn't share my genetics should enter in, all the animals are programmed to swarm."

I flashed back to Flappy's cornfield. "Swarm? Like… like pixies, how when one of us gets hurt, it automatically triggers our 'Everyone nearby, please rush to my aid' pheromones? Sir?"

"Much like it. They're iron-cast - I didn't want to waste unnecessary magic on bringing them completely to life - but their main intent was to be a noisy distraction so someone who was caught or possibly asleep might have the chance to slip away. It's pleasant fortune I added the rule centuries later that children five and under might enter free, or we may have had a tiny problem to deal with once Flappy crossed the premises. Of course I could manage to come up with a better system now, but that was long ago."

Then, shrugging harder than anyone should ever really have the need to shrug, he faced me and nodded. A moment later, he had come over the fence and down beside me again. "I presume Flappy's in the car now."

"Yes, sir."

"Then we're off. You'll drive, I trust."

I nodded. He settled himself in the passenger seat, holding the brick that would go carefully on the gas pedal, and scanned the course with his eyes one final time.

"I did like Eunice. Perhaps when I next pop in to Fairy World, I'll see if I can't get her on the list of former godchildren deserving of having their memories returned. She's the type who could keep a secret, and she might prove to be a good ally someday." He looked down at Flappy. "If we could raise you to be like her, that would help us tremendously, I think."

After I had nosed my way out of the parking lot and turned back onto the wide dirt road, we hit a bump and Flappy woke up, slamming his brow against H.P.'s knee. His whimpers spun away into a whine.

"Why do babies cry so much?" I grumbled. "Did I ever cry that much as a nymph?"

"Pixies bite to defend themselves, but crying is the defensive behavior among humans, even down to their babies. It's meant to be a signal to their fellows that something has hurt them and they could use assistance. That's why, even in the early stages of the expression, their faces turn puffy and red and their throats close over, forcing them to make loud choking sounds as they try to speak. Again, it's very similar to our swarming instinct once any trace of pixie blood is in the air, simply by sound as opposed to scent. Humans have a poor sense of smell, but they're better with their eyes and ears."

"Oh."

We drove on for another three minutes, listening to The Righteous Brothers sing "Just Once In My Life", and then H.P. looked at me sideways. "Did you thank Eunice for searching the course with you?"

I thought about it. If I said I hadn't, then H.P. would give me the lecture about how we always wanted to leave those with whom we interacted with a good impression. As he did so, he'd probably tell me to turn the truck around. I'd have to look Eunice in the eyes and listen to a reply spring from the same mouth that had laughed at me when I'd been stuck. At minimum, it would take another half an hour before we reached Jetmore.

"Yes," I said, and stood taller on the seat.