Ivorie v. Goldenglow: Concerning the hot debate of the tax on drakes kept by will o' the wisp damsels, the Fairy Council ruled in favor of Goldenglow by citing Epipole v. Fairy World- that a wisp keeping drakes for her harem qualifies as natural, biological behavioral instinct and is to not to be imposed upon by political law. The tax tied into non-wisp drakes shall be dropped entirely, in addition to the one placed upon each post-instar drake after four.

I was a simple being with simple wants. If I had a warm bed, some music to sing, and I was permitted to spend my days dogging H.P.'s heels, then I was about the chirpiest little pixie you might run across. In a completely poker-faced way, of course. And, I enjoyed being around to see H.P.'s temples throb and his jaw work as he tested each word in his brain before he blanketed it with his voice. Seeing him furious just reminded me that he was… normal. If he'd originated from a similar humble state to mine and risen into such a lofty position, then I possibly could too someday. He was permitted the occasional slip-up without losing his godly status in my mind. In a strange way, it only made him greater.

Above the Oklahoma skies along the outskirts of some cloudland town whose name I could never remember, possibly because it seemed to change by mayor every few years, we gathered our particles together outside the open double doors of Ivory Wand & Comet Blood. Casually cheery and vaguely flirtatious voices, the soft beat of music like a tapping finger, and the cool scents of sugary sweetness spilled into the road. We owned the place, or half of it (we reaped the most tax benefits that way), and they even had a little sign hung in the window to announce it. Of course we had a cute little soda bar of our own called The Anthill back in Pixie World, but somehow it's more amusing to rub the fact that we're practically guests of honor in this corner of Fairy World into everybody's pinched little faces.

They didn't bother to ID me as the two of us came in. Even if I had been underage for processed sugar consumption en mass, so long as the Head Pixie was here I was allowed anything my little pale tongue desired. Even the Mountain Dew. Maybe I'd snag a Fun Dip to go at while I kicked back and watched him tear Longwood to shreds for shirking his vice president duties.

One pixie - I think McAdams - was taking his shift behind the counter, scribbling orders and counting precise change, while a selkie stacked sodaglasses in a tower behind him. A nervous imp damsel brought out the requested drinks and blushed to the stalks of her antennae each time a drake so much as smiled her way. Then she didn't know how to react when I studied her in typical disinterested pixie fashion. McAdams evidently sensed us as we trailed past the barstools, and the point snapped off his pencil. His eyes shot to his right before they landed on H.P. again.

No surprise that Longwood's search party had chosen to crowd around a table over there. The entrance to the bar was covered in pretty Fairy niceties, whereas the far side carried much less impressive decor. The building was split down the middle, with aching color splashed up front so you could get it out of the way while pleasant dull gray paint and paintings of rural Kansas and golf courses trailed all along the opposite wall. That was where we found the eight of them, perched on their hovering chairs, aimlessly chatting and sipping sodas while they stripped so many candy bars naked, it'd make a mother shield her nymph's mouth and zip hastily off.

A hush fell over the bar as we floated and/or walked towards them. Not the whole place, mind, but voices here and there began to drop like popcorn as nosy curiosity set in. H.P. raised his hand above his head and snapped his fingers, twice. Every pixie had had the double snap command ingrained in his mind since breaking out of his Terrible Twos or so. Instantly, all of them were out of their chairs and whirring their wings. Faust knocked the entire table sideways in the process with his large body and awkward limbs. No pixie really flinched or turned around when glasses crashed five feet below, but a couple of eyebrows lifted by a hair. Splinters flew and liquid soaked in puddles between the hairline tile grout. A few more voices died behind me, with the exceptions being several particularly loud tables in the air to the left, where the two clashing gray and rainbow designs met in the bar's middle.

H.P. folded his arms. "Where is Longwood?"

The pixies exchanged uncertain glances behind their shades. Still fighting a valiant battle to contain my mirth at the thought of Longwood receiving his long-overdue chewing-out, I studied each face with care. I was impressed. It took a certain skill to organize a search party this distractible and useless. Throwing Wolfram, Kaufman, Matheson, Carmichael, and Cinna - the five most stubborn, ambitious pixies there had ever been - together, and then bringing tactless Bayard, clumsy Faust, and timid little Rosencrantz? Not our beloved vice president's wisest idea if he were going to feign innocence to the boss's face.

"Where is Longwood?" H.P. repeated, this time bringing out the snapping fingers again. "I have proof that his starpiece is here, and none of you is as good as you think you are at hiding your guilt."

As one, they raised their fingers towards the restrooms, tucked in a tunnel behind the soda bar itself. Ignoring McAdams's cautious greeting, H.P. stormed past the counter with whipping wings, bristled down the corridor, and shoved the door open with his shiny black shoe. To my crushing disappointment, we were too late to catch Longwood red-handed. Figuratively, at least- the rapid friction was wearing at them as he pressed his thin stomach to the sink, studying his own face in the mirror. His wings were hidden beneath his suit. He turned his head as we came in. The small star on the end of his cap let out a faint jingling noise.

"Sir," he said, ducking his head. "Sanderson." I didn't get a nod. "I see you've been reunited. You look frustrated, boss. What would you like me to do to help?"

My eyes narrowed. H.P. set one fist to his hip. "Who else is here? You know you aren't permitted to go anywhere beyond the boundaries of Pixie World without a constant companion. A pixie companion."

With a scattered purple ping, Wilcox materialized a foot away. "I was with him, sir. I was a literal fly on the wall."

My eyes narrowed a shred further. Clever. Very clever. There never was any way to know what went on in Wilcox's mind or why he chose this or that form to take while satisfying his fagigglyne addiction. He was always open for suggestions. Why not a fly, Longwood might have said. No one minds making a drooling fool of himself in front of a fly.

"You're tingle-fritzy," was H.P.'s next attempt at drawing a confession. He made a motion with his other hand to indicate the way the surrounding magical field bristled with soft static electricity. When I mentally stretched out and allowed my eyes to slip into that same field, I saw for myself that he was precisely that. Clouds centered themselves around all magical beings, and Longwood's glowed with neutral purple. All scattered, like he'd recently lost control of his thoughts or emotions. And quite possibly his lips. I could count all nineteen violet magic lines waving lazily above his head, hooked into the core of his soul to keep both him and the Anti-Longwood from asphyxiating due to lack of magic flowing to the brain. Three lines planted in him by H.P. at birth. One more for each eleven millennia he had been alive.

Six cords were missing, having been awkwardly shoved into the twins when the double dose of magic drainage had knocked H.P. out of commission. Longwood had hesitated because the sight of blood and forehead chamber guts and nymph-goop made him weaker at the knees than any pretty damsel ever could. Both had almost turned to dust in his arms. It'd taken him six minutes just to put his mouth on their amniotic sacs and bite. Eight more to tie down Mullins with his clumsy-ox fingers. Tolbert was even further gone, and the unhealthiest one of all of us even now; identical in every other way, you could always tell the two apart by his near-chronic panting. I'd have saved them both in forty-five seconds or your money back. I knew how. Had since I was thirty-thousand.

"It's the soda, sir. I had a little much of it and a few too many M&Ms, and did order a glass of water before Wilcox and I came in here for a restroom break. If you should like to, you're welcome to see for yourself. I left it on the table." He tilted his head. "Although, I did hear a rustle of movement and Faust apologizing for smashing something. I take it the table flipped over?"

I could no longer see anything, my eyes were so narrow.

"Why are you wearing that ridiculously fluffy coat? It doesn't have slots for your wings."

"It's waterproof and it was going to rain, sir. It helps to keep my magic lines stable."

H.P. unclicked his starpiece and swiped a beam of white up and down Longwood's form. The scan brought up the number 96 before dissipating like mist. "There's four percent selkie splashed over all the magic in your system. Thematic chart says your lips and hands are especially thick with it. Explanation."

"A selkie barmaid handled my soda and my candy before I tore off the wrappers. I have traces of her magic all over my fingers and then got my fingers all over my face, the candy itself, and my mouth, sir. I said as much to Wolfram before I started eating; you can ask. I hope you recognize that I know I have a job to do, H.P., and wouldn't sneak smooches on work hours, if that's what this is about."

'Anymore', he meant. He'd gotten a pretty fierce wing-twisting a decade ago.

"Longwood, do you know where Jetmore is?"

"Midwestern Kansas, sir."

"Then why are you here? I asked you to organize a search party and hunt for Sanderson in that area."

He pushed the bridge of his shades up with his pinky. I didn't miss the sweat glistening on his brow and along his palm. "It's sunset, H.P. Our party has been scouting for the last two days with hardly half an hour of sleep each, and with morale fading, I thought we might take a break to boost everyone's spirits. We didn't want to quit our search for lunch, as we thought Sanderson might still be on the move then and we couldn't risk missing him. However, with evening coming on, we thought he might stop and bed down in a hidden location, away from wisp or human eyes. We couldn't split up- Even out of season, will o' the wisp territory isn't safe for drakes to travel alone, and particularly with the rains coming on. We were all growing sleepy and I calculated that we may not last another night awake. Not without a sugar boost. Regulated, mind you. No one sugared themselves under the table. Faust only eats grilled cheese here anyway. The plan was to head out again and bring our search a little nearer the Bridge, but I can see for myself that will no longer be necessary."

After a short stare-down, H.P. relented with a nod. "That lines up. You have my apology for leaping to conclusions. However, if you're finished here, then with you being company vice president I would rather you returned to Pixie World as soon as possible while I'm away from it. You may as well take the others when you go, if they really are that tired. Ensure they get off to bed."

Back by the table, and behind H.P.'s semicircle of sight, Longwood tilted his nose up at me an entire wing's breadth. I fumed in expressionless silence as he and the rest of the ex-search party gathered together their dropped chocolates, paid their bill, and pinged back to Headquarters.

"That's Naelita's coat he's wearing under his shirt again, sir," I stated, teeth grinding. "You can tell it by the bulge around his collar and how you can only see the very tips of his flattened wings dangling beneath it."

"So long as he still follows dress code on his outermost layers, he's allowed to, Sanderson." H.P. leaned his arm against the soda bar. "Has everything been going well since you punched in, McAdams?"

"Yes, sir."

"H.P., why would he wear a selkie's sealskin knowing he'd be unable to fly during a missing pixie recovery operation in the middle of will o' the wisp country when they surface in the rain? Sir, the restroom reeked of her seaweed and salt magic. He was tingle-fritzy. You ought to check the memory chip in his starpiece."

"That is my policy, and I intend to. However, I did notice that he left his pen on the table while he was in there, so I'm doubtful it will contain any incriminating evidence against him. He's meticulously efficient about hiding his tracks these days, even when he isn't expecting to be called out. It's one reason he'll make a fine Head Pixie should he ever have to don my cap."

"You don't actually believe he went in there just to use it for its intended purpose, do you, sir?"

H.P. turned his head, eyes dull and uninterested, and not necessarily in the pleasant way. "If I'm impressed enough with your ability to draw together a cover story, or if there's not enough solid evidence that I could in theory take one of you to court on it and win with no real effort on my part, I do not punish."

"Yes, but- but aren't you concerned? Say it wasn't Naelita! It could have been the barmaid! Sir, no one kisses a pixie because they like him. We're beneath them. They do it for the magic boost, the clearheadedness to wipe away the possibility of a hangover once they've sugared up, the calm when they're anxious, that rush of calculative thinking that floods their brain before they go on to take their standardized school tests or whatever else. We're little more than performance-improvement drugs to them- steroids who also happen to be able to spout off a few million years of laws and court cases and pick out hacking viruses from the magic lines before the wand is waved. And you know Longwood babbles company secrets when he's in his little zone as it is. Always has, always will. What about that time we had to change every major password in both Pixies Inc. and Wish Fixers? I wouldn't do that, sir. Not any of it. He's unstable, sir, and really not fit to wear the vice president cap."

"I'd take his flaws over yours, Sanderson. Do you want me to fuse your hand to his again until the squabbling stops? No? Now, I'm going to ping down a short ways east of Jetmore. Lead me to where you left Flappy Bob."

I puffed upwards at my cowlick, adjusted my tie, and allowed him to disintegrate me. After several seconds, we rematerialized back where we'd been standing beneath the floating table.

"Sir?"

H.P. frowned at his starpiece. He shook it by his ear and tried again. Once more, our particles zipped down to the Kansas area, struggled to reform, and the emergency safety measure kicked us back to the bar. "Something's interfering with it," he muttered, then locked eyes with me. We said it together: "The rain."

Weather like rain and snow and hurricanes scattered the magical energy field. When it got really bad, it wasn't safe for us to even stand out there, lest we risk asphyxiation either because our magic lines would lose connection, or they'd keep connection and we'd taste too much unfiltered, raw magic dripping with pollution. Sometimes the presence of lightning under the clouds beneath our feet was dangerous, just from the static electricity that sent our lines fritzing.

"We have little choice but to take the long way." H.P. closed his eyes. I could see the balls, glowing lavender, moving left and then right behind his lids. "Let me see… Where's a clear, dry spot I might set us down? Definitely not… Try a few hills over… Has to be something closer… Too near the state road… That's a will o' the wisp burrow… Got one. Pool of magic, right there. The lip of the barn roof's keeping it stable beneath. We'll be outside. If there should chance to be humans about, prepare to run."

Ping!

The air had cooled all across the Jetmore hills. The same prairie, the same fields, the same dips and rises and little rocks and valleys. The sun was barely a slip on the horizon, visible only because the clouds there were a lighter gray than the smoky black further east. And north. Oh, northeast's a word (Do you ever realize your mistakes?) Dark coils were spreading south like Yugopotamian tentacles.

H.P. had indeed deposited us beneath a jutting barn roof. We stayed for a mere moment, just gathering our bearings and watching and listening before we folded our wings above our heads. It wasn't as though they'd do us any good where flight was concerned- not when the energy field was this distorted. We plunged into the torrent.

I tasted the difference in magic instantly. One wingbeat I had twenty-five straws. Next, I was down to eleven. Eight. Sixteen. Fourteen. Nine. Stinging sheets of water soaked the membranes of my wings, my clothes, all the way through to my underwear. H.P. didn't need to warn me that we couldn't stay long. In an absolutely worst-case scenario, if we found ourselves trapped in a place where the energy field didn't touch any of our lines at all (For example, a total deadzone like Rio de Janeiro, permanently rooted beneath Anti-Pixie Isle where H.P. had sealed them from all but a few stray shreds of magic during the War of the Angels), we could survive almost twenty minutes just on the particles that oozed through our blood. Should the storm turn more dangerous, we would have to leave for the Bridge, with or without Flappy Bob.

"Sanderson?"

"Sir?"

"When you blossom into full maturity, please let me take care of your offspring for you."

I swallowed a lump in my throat made up mostly of rainwater. Flappy wasn't going to be happy to see me.

We splashed about for half an hour until I recognized one of the sorghum fields by its paint-splattered brown fence. I pointed north and we went. My shades became useless fast. I clipped them on my collar, hoping that of any clothing or decoration on my body I lost, it wouldn't be them.

"There, sir!" I shouted. "That's the wrapper of the bread I left behind! There's the sagebrush. He's got to be around here somewhere."

Turning leaves, stomping through puddles- Nothing, nothing, nothing! H.P. sat back, one leg still on the ground, the other propped with his arm resting across the knee. "Sanderson," he said, "are you sure?"

I pressed my fingers to my mouth. I couldn't hear his voice, the rain, my thoughts. Only Flappy's screaming as I'd abandoned him. Nymph Sanderson screaming uselessly in a blizzard for either his favorite caretaker or the will o' the wisps he'd left behind to rush to his aid. Scratchy pooferty voice. Numb hands. Blue lips.

"Sanderson. What, Sanderson?"

Biting my lower lip, I raised my eyes. "H.P., about when you left Kalysta's burrow… In the snowstorm, did you walk on because you couldn't hear me yelling for you to slow down? Or did you know you'd left me, and choose to ignore it because now that you'd used me to escape, you didn't need me anymore?"

He stared at me, absolutely thrown off his guard, as the wind ruffled his white hair and his soft gray hat. "You're asking that now?"

"Could you hear me, sir? When I shouted for you to come back?"

"That doesn't matter. I don't remember. I returned for you in the end, didn't I? Don't underestimate your own usefulness, Sanderson." He took my sleeve and pulled me to the next clump of sagebrush. "How are your lines?"

"They've evened out around seven."

"When you're old like me, you'll have a nice solid rope of them to cling to. What's this?" He picked up a straw hat caught on a stone. After a few seconds of study, he shrugged and wedged it between my head and pointed cap. It flew off. "This looks like a human thing. Perhaps they took him back to town."

"Shush, sir."

"Pardon?"

I curled my hand against my ear. "Do you hear that, H.P.?"

"I don't hear a lot of things. Is it-?"

"Whistling." Abandoning the sagebrush, I crested the next hill, and then a second one. At the top, I sunk my fingers into my hair.

The will o' the wisp damsels had Flappy. They had my supplies. They had my whistle.

H.P. whistled too, soft and low. He turned around and squished back down the soaked hill. "Nope."

"Sir, we can't leave him."

"We don't have a lot of choice. I shouldn't have healed your scrapes and cleaned up your blood- we'll have a much more difficult time ducking behind O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc. than we otherwise would have. We're drakes, we're in their territory, our wings are too wet and the energy field too scattered to fly in, and" - he clicked his star-capped ballpoint pen - "we can't ping out of here. Not unless we find a spot where we can each pick up closer to our full number of lines. Nor can we ping money in for a bribe. They might take him into their burrows, and that's it. That's the way the story ends. We'll be fortunate to get home without stumbling across another clot of wisps. Why do you think I was able to afford these cloudlands for Pixie World in the first place?"

I scratched the cuts up and down my arms, mostly scars left from when he'd used his magic in his office. "You went back for me, H.P. You just said. And I'm only a pixie drone, unskilled and replaceable. He's a human brimming with magic wishes."

"Kalysta Ivorie is sitting down there with all her daughters and dinner party friends," he said, crossing his arms. "I didn't mind sitting next to her in the crowded courtroom two or three times, but that was my playing field and this is hers. You're a smoof if you believe I'm about to stroll into their midst. I escaped her burrow by using you to exploit a technicality. They won't let it happen again. Court cases prevent it from happening again. A clown with the cringe-worthy name of Flappy Bob attached to him isn't worth that much."

Again, I held his eyes. Our eyes. "What if it were me, sir?"

"That's…" He hesitated. "That's entirely different. He's a human, and you're a pixie. There are billions of them. There are only five hundred and five of you. Five hundred and three. You're too rare and useful to throw away. I'd rather we sought out another human baby."

I looked at him. I looked at the will o' the wisps passing Flappy about and arguing over whether or not humans would die if they fed on the nursing milk of magical beings. I looked at him again. "You may as well decide how much you want to dock my paycheck, sir."

His mouth tightened into a grim line. He snapped his fingers twice and pointed at the grass beside him. Out of instinct, I moved towards the spot.

Pause.

Yes, I continued walking forward. Always forward. It wasn't my place to disobey. H.P. held out his arms, palms upturned, like he used to do- and suddenly I was a nymph again, and he wanted to reward me for my good behavior with a hug. I was a nymph again, asphyxiating in the snowstorm and pleading for the return of someone whose love and affection I didn't deserve. Someone who almost didn't turn around.

I took a tiny step backwards.

"Do you want your wings twisted, Sanderson? Sanderson-!"

Shoving my shades over my eyes, I took off down the hill, biting and tearing at my skin and doing my utmost to make myself appear the picture of pixie dejection. The blue-haired will o' the wisp who had the whistle in her mouth broke off as I came gallumping into their circle. Pinwheeling my wings and arms, I skidded to a halt. Mud and grass squicked and slid beneath my shoes. I recognized most of the faces from the time they'd sought solace in Pixie World during the Great Flood.

Idona put her hand in the air. "Friendly reminder that I have dibs."

Canary leaned back, heavy-lidded. "You don't want him, sis. He can't be too bright. Hey, drake. What's a little pixie like you doing out in a big storm like this? You're a bit far from the lip of your territory."

"I came for that human baby," I said, leveling my finger at Flappy Bob, in Veruka's lap. Her dress had slipped from her shoulder and was showing a dark, round breast- Longwood would have been doing flips. "He's mine. I fed him. I protected him. I carried him. I looked after him. I've been searching for him. I need him. Take whatever money I have- my wallet's still in my pocket here."

"Some looking after," the blue-haired wisp snorted. "We found him crawling and rolling over the hills with none of y'all in sight, sobbing his itty-bitty head off and eating ladybugs."

Gabbi and Coral muttered their agreement. Idona patted her lap for me to sit on her knee, next to little red-winged Kerani, sucking the end of her golden braid.

"Well… he's mine. And I want him back. This is a Pixie matter. Under Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle, you're not allowed to interfere on the grounds that you fall under the Fairy class and I'm a pixie and a neutral party, permitted to interact with humans if I wish."

Veruka leaned forward. "But the Fairy Council can't see us through the rain. Can they?"

My stomach tanked into the swamp water I could smell in her magic cloud. My wings, which had gone back around my head, slid to my knees. I scooted my shades down my nose and turned my pleading eyes towards Kalysta, white-haired and black-winged and both freckled with each other's color, sitting on Idona's right. She hadn't spoken yet, simply studied the two tufts she'd licked in my hair when I was only a day or so old. Will o' the wisp saliva tends to stick to the scalp. Six of us could tell you it.

"Y-you gave me milk when I otherwise would have died. Won't you let me take the baby so I can care for him? I can pay you. Can you break a fifty? Wait." I patted my pockets. "Oh, drat. My wallet's still empty from Vegas."

"Where's your daddy, Sandy?"

"What?" I asked, taken aback by the unfamiliar word.

"Where's the Head Pixie?"

I kept my eyes focused on hers. But. But for one instant, they darted up to the top of the hill where I had charged down. H.P. wasn't there to watch me, but Kalysta didn't need to see him to believe that he was there. She got to her feet and began wandering up the hill.

"No!" Rushing forward in the attempt to grab her dress, I tripped and Idona caught my arm. "H.P.! H.P., she's coming! She's coming! Idona- Idona, anything you want. What do you like? Money? Flowers? Every damsel likes flowers. Discounts? Kisses? I'll give you a thousand kisses. Better than Longwood's kisses. She's your mother- make her stop. Take me and leave him. Leave him!"

"Well, if you insist." Pulling me down on her knee, Idona craned her neck. "Mom, Sanderson wants to stay. Can I keep him?"

"Ask him if he has sprites. Or Wilcoxes."

I sat still. Perfectly, perfectly still as Kerani jumped up to accept a bite of some treat from Coral. Still as a wraith waiting to strike as I watched Kalysta stand at the top of the rise, surveying the area for any sign of my boss. She held her hands clasped behind her back, and just rocked between her heels and toes. Rocked and rocked as the drizzle sprinkled down.

She turned her head. "How many pixies are out here tonight?"

"Just-" I cleared the squeak from my throat in my fist. "Just me. And H.P."

"Is that so? I'd have expected Longwood, at least."

Cringes rattled around the circle at the mention of his name.

"No. I'm all alone now. Take anything you want from me. Erm." I looked around the circle of curious damsels. "Any of you. I guess. Is that how your social system works? Whatever I have to do."

Kalysta made like she was rolling her eyes as she started back down the hill. "Sanderson, sweetheart, you're selling yourself too high. You're not much of a catch. No one's really interested in pixies if your species is incapable of breeding with ours. Only the brownies are lower on the ladder. And, y'all bite. I still have those scars on my breasts from when you were a nymph."

My eyes slid between her face and the hill beyond. "Then can I… go?"

Idona tilted up my chin with the tip of her pinkie. "Not yet."

I nodded as best I could, her fingernail point biting into my throat. I needed Flappy Bob. That wasn't much of a question. I wouldn't be abandoning him again, or H.P. would never forgive me for disobeying his snapping fingers. Not if my risk-seeking behavior didn't bring him a reward.

Swallowing past her nail, I pretended I was here on H.P.'s orders, not by my own reckless choice. The Head Pixie simply didn't make poor decisions. If the Head Pixie told you to entertain a will o' the wisp, you didn't blink and you entertained the will o' the wisp with all the kissing and nipping that she purred for. Longwood faced down a record eight in a row once, even if he did almost pass out at the end, and that was in the time of year when their throat sacs were brimming with paralyzing venom. In their off-season, it would be easy to handle just one.

There's an old wives' tale about how brownies never make the first move and they'd drive themselves into extinction if they weren't helped along. A little brownie blood runs along H.P.'s line too, and perhaps that's partly why we're looked down upon. Even Longwood and Hamilton never pursue, and have to be coaxed away from their chairs. I've had the occasional damsel try their charms on me, when they're not smart enough to understand that I don't need them to continue my species and literally have no use for them, unless I'm in the market for a soprano…

When you're a pixie, you take the chin-tickles and the ear scratches and the shoulder massages and the cuddling and the teeth clicking and the hair preening and the nose bumping and the crown knocking and the wing brushing, even though it's all pointless, even though pixies don't fall in love, even though we aren't capable of reproducing beyond the asexual system the Pixalchia bacterium left us with once it rerouted our fallopian tubes. You pretend it isn't raining. You know your place. You defer the lead. You follow instructions. You don't ask questions. You never hesitate. You take no interest in whatever else is going on around you. You don't stop for anything. You keep your eyes open and wait with ingrained patience until you get the signal to either push on or cut back, rinse and repeat a step in the process or abandon it altogether. Your goal is to find the pattern. Break the code. File it away. Learn the script. Fine-tune your abilities. Obey the holy law that the customer ought to think they're always right. Achieve the meticulous perfection that's expected of your race. That's perhaps the way Mother Nature intended.

Idona wouldn't have made a very good pixie. She shrugged my arms from her neck and nudged me back down into her lap much sooner than I'd expected - almost offensively soon - and pulled a face. "I knew I'd had someone kiss me exactly like this before. You really did read a manual, didn't you?"

"Yes. Longwood gave it to me. It was surprisingly interesting and we had a lovely discussion about it over bagels the following morning." I wiped wet strands of hair from my forehead and blinked up at the rain clouds. "Does this mean we're done, or would you like me to continue?"

She beckoned me back towards her soft mouth with her finger. "Typical. There's an entire race of bachelor drakes next door to me, and y'all are all taught the same sad way. And y'all practice on each other too, I'll bet. Come on, take-forever day. Pick it up. Mom's right- y'all chew on everything when you're bored. Sore lips and split ends all nibbled in my hair now, yeesh." Idona made another applause-worthy attempt to rivet my attention on her and the task at hand, only to bow out after a few more minutes- frustrated to the dimples, it seemed by her eyes, with herself. Grimacing, she rubbed the place on her neck where I'd fastened my teeth in hardest. "That's enough for today. Maybe tomorrow."

I shifted my knees against her lap, wings twitching. "I was under the impression that I'd leave with Flappy tonight. The baby. Preferably the instant you let go of my tie and returned my shades."

Idona's deep pink eyes, pink like the top of her mother's dress before it faded into purples and blues, pink like Jardine's azaleas on Longwood's half of the balcony against my crocuses, turned pitying. "You'd think a pixie nursed by a wisp would know that's not how we do it in our country. Maybe up in the cloudlands, but not down here with our burrows warm and dry."

Biology. That was the problem with her kind- they made calls by relying on their gut rather than their brain and never listened to reason, and disregarded everybody else's biology if it didn't suit them. I was not their equal. My soul had ever been a commodity to be traded underground for H.P.'s return to the surface. I was a drake promised to a will o' the wisp damsel since day two of my existence. Bred to do their bidding. Unskilled and replaceable. I may as well have been attempting to talk a waterfall into shooting up backwards.

With a sound that had no legible onomatopoeia, I buried my face in my arms. I didn't even blame H.P. for not wanting to save such a smoofing idiot. Better to cut ties now before my stupidity seeped into the generation of pixies I would one day reproduce myself. Better to keep the weakness from our race so we might ensure their survival.

"You were really about to leave without trying my pie?" Canary asked, genuinely horrified. She took a tin that had been sitting beside her and passed it along the circle until it reached me. "Eat that. Seriously, those things go right to your thighs, and you can afford more meat on your bones."

Refusing to ask if the pie was made of anyone I'd grown up with back in Kalysta's burrow, I took it and stood so Idona was forced to drop the hand that had been rubbing between my wings. After I'd replaced my shades and straightened my tie with thumb and forefinger, I studied each of their faces. "The human baby needs to get back to Pixie World by midnight. That's the deal." And if I'd been in a better state of mind at the time, I'd have assured myself of their consent beforehand. Do the whole pixie-spit-handshakes-are-binding-because-we-chew-on-magical-paper trick.

"And… why do we want to agree to that?"

"I give kisses."

"We have drakes in our burrows to give us kisses. And they aren't so painfully methodical and slow about it."

Three of them hissed Longwood's name like a curse or plague. If the unease hadn't been settling around my shoulders, I'd have taken the opportunity to bask in it. I re-evaluated the pie as a threat, not an offering.

"I… give… money."

"We live underground. What we need for food is satisfying enough."

"I give… singing lessons? And I clean up nicely? And I can do all your tax forms and mortgages?"

"That first one I'm interested in," Veruka said. She pointed at her lap. "But you Pixies wouldn't pay a lick of attention to this baby if there weren't something special about him. Give us a swell reason to hand him over to you now."

"I want him."

Shaking heads and disappointed eyes. Eyes that had had such expectations for me, considering what my race was famous for. I massaged my mouth and started to pace. Hmm. Swell reasons besides Anti-Cosma v. Adelinda von Strangle. A useful court case, that, unless they blatantly disregarded it knowing they wouldn't be punished if they weren't caught in the act. H.P. would have a difficult time using it in the courtroom if he weren't here to act as a witness. Under Luna v. Fairy Court, drone memories were too easy to manipulate with magic and did not qualify as legal evidence.

They certainly wouldn't listen to Whimsifinado v. Caudwell, especially since I was a few centuries over age of majority and they'd know it didn't technically apply to me anyway if they counted my twenty-five magic lines and tie-spots, subtracted the three I'd been given at birth, and proved my age. And, if they escorted me back to the Bridge, it could put the rest of my co-workers in danger.

I couldn't trade Longwood's captivity for my freedom. Clearly, he'd earned his reputation. Think, think, think. How pathetic a pixie do you have to be if you can't draw up a loophole in a situation like this? One not worth saving, anyway.

Obviously they didn't care about the way H.P. had dived beneath the cloudline to rescue nine of them from the Great Flood when elsewhere something like three quarters of their entire species had drowned. Will o' the wisps, even the ones who choose to settle in the cloudlands with a steady job and only a single mate, are notoriously difficult to make deals with. They lead on everyone. That's their nature, like mine is to obey the one who birthed me.

Think, think, think.

Unless there was some really interesting royal Yugopotamian couple preparing to fertilize the next prince or princess, mine and Idona's faces were undoubtedly all over the monitors back at the Eros Nest. Pixies did not display mate-seeking behavior regularly, and it fascinated Cupid and his brothers because - huge surprise - we exhibit the exact same nibbling and paper-tearing hand motions and wing flaring that we show when we're backed into a corner fearing for our lives.

But Cupid, Lucius, and Apuleius wouldn't be any help to me. According to the holy vows they'd taken, they were required to shoot their invisible arrows whenever passion led to the slightest action. Take our vitals. Document the results. File it all in the records even we weren't allowed to touch. Already I expected to wake up tomorrow with a sore spot on the back of my neck or, if I were really unfortunate, in the place I used to sit on chairs. They were not permitted to interfere with nature, only wave about Aphrodite Protocol to set things "right" should someone else interfere with nature. They'd certainly be a lot happier if Idona did take me underground and drag me through her petty whims than if I wriggled off the hook. I'd be lucky if they didn't show up to claim that she legally owned my soul thanks to that old betrothal.

Think, think, think.

I could bite my skin all I wanted, but H.P. wasn't coming for me. Not with that look I'd seen scrawled like wrinkles across his usual careful features. Not with that trembling lower lip and vibrating fingers. He'd given me to Idona in an attempt to spare himself over two hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Nothing had changed. Very few things change in Pixie World. We act and improve only when it's safe. Never take risks that could inconvenience or outright damage us. Our survival as a species must be placed above company wealth.

Think, think, think.

But will o' the wisp burrows tended to be near-total deadzones like Rio. Epipole v. Fairy World prevented outside interference on the legal end of things. Any magical being short of a genie who attempted to ping me out would face a wand-drooping or equivalent backlash sting, followed by the full-scale legal wrath of Aphrodite Protocol if the Eros Triplets got wind of it.

H.P. would have thought of something. Think, think, think. Was I his little clone or wasn't I?

I caught Idona's eye the next time I paced her way. She hugged her knee and smiled a close-lipped smile. Well… Pixie-kissers are difficult to find, even if it was apparently as genetic as brownie-kissing. I could offer myself for Flappy's safe return to Pixie World. Maybe… she'd let me teach her the Pixie way of doing things, and it wouldn't be so bad to be trapped underground without the opportunity to see H.P.'s wrinkled brow smooth every morning and evening and afternoon break period when he took his coffee and pinched the papers he drew from his wire basket between thumb and forefinger. Never see him again at all, should he turn to dust before Idona had enough of me.

Don't think about that, I scolded myself, covering my panting mouth with the fingers that didn't hold the pie and turning my attention to the bushy stormclouds. The blood had never stopped leaking from my skin. It had spread to my hands and now gotten into my mouth and hair and it ran in trickles down my face. Miserable green blood, dripping. Dripping in the rain.

I blinked down at my bloodied left hand. All that blood. All those scrapes and bruises on my arm, spotting the underside of my sleeve with glistening amethyst and emerald.

And then. And then I had a thought. And then my core gave off a wave of Pixie magic. And then that burst of oatmeal-and-scrambled-egg-flavored inspiration lit all the particles in my blood, including a few faint sparkles in my hand. And then. And then! Then I snapped my fingers twice and turned around, index level with Idona's eyes.

"You ought to let me go because," I said, growing braver now as I looked about their faces, "I'm a pixie losing magic lines fast in this storm, and particularly when my blood is leaking in the air and I've at last gotten tingle-fritzy, like so. I've been out here for almost an hour, and the rain's worsened in that time. I'd say I'm maybe… twenty down. Leveling out at about five, hence the panting. You can feel it yourselves, can't you? Much longer here and I'm going to asphyxiate. Do you head up to Fairy World much, or did you never hear about O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc.?"

Rippling shoulders. Wings drawing in tight. "Smoof," the blue-haired damsel muttered.

None of them were smirking anymore. Most wouldn't even look at me, except one small damsel with dark skin and buttery wings like Gabbi and Veruka, her face painted with sheer terror. Arella, I think her name was? She couldn't have been much older than Rosencrantz, and yet she told me everything I needed to know. The will o' the wisps had taught their offspring well. Now that I'd spoken it aloud, she remembered the court case, remembered the campfire story. Perhaps Veruka had told it to her at the dinner table to urge her to eat her vegetables: "The pixies will getcha if you don't". Haunting images swam in her brown eyes. She was afraid of me. Of all of us.

I reveled in that power, taking very slow steps towards her. She leaned backwards with a whimper as I hooked my fingertip in the butterfly necklace that clung to her throat. Not that I could have killed her outright with what wriggled in my DNA, snuggled up there in my head in the place my fallopian tubes had been rerouted. No, no. I'd need a bit of time. The other damsels knew it, which was why they didn't spring forward like cuckoo clocks to stop me.

But I adored the way Arella bit her lip, squeezed her shoulders, twitched her wings. This was what it must feel like to be Head Pixie. This was ultimate power. Somehow it was more delicious than bristled toast without jam. Perhaps I could have planted my foot in her stomach and eased her into the grass, just staring expressionless and emotionless down at her as she squirmed, and suddenly she'd break into pleading for me to have my pick of the will o' the wisps to give me what I wanted. Flowers, discounts, kisses- like they could force me to return the power pendulum that way. Licking my lips, I dragged her necklace slightly closer, until she sniveled.

Pulling my finger back, I held the pie tin behind me and I walked a long, slow loop around the inside of their circle. "Veruka Farnfell. Tell me, why do pixies fall so low on the social ladder?"

"What? Okay. Um. Well. Because the social ladder is based on territorial and mating behavior for the betrothal and inheritance laws in ancient times? The naturally-defenseless fairies at the top, and the venomous brownies at the bottom. Y'all got some brownie ancestry and it shows in the way y'all bite, even if the poison didn't carry over."

"Oh, I heard plenty an Anti-Fairy during the war say it does. But if pixies don't have a poisoned bite, as you so claim, or even so much as the watered-down version of limb-locking venom like your people do in season, why did the cherubs rank us on this end of the spectrum? Don't be shy as a brownie, now. Any reason you can think of at all?"

The dark wisp mumbled something into Flappy's blanket that I couldn't hear above the patient rain and his cooing. She put her hand on Arella's knee.

"Beg your pardon?"

"To encourage all the damsels to keep away from y'all."

I made an aimless gesture with the pie tin, stepping in a backwards circle on my heels so I could peer at all their faces one by one. "Why would anyone want to raise us to keep our hands off the damsels? Are we… vicious? Are we… ugly? Do we… disappoint, Idona?"

"Unfortunately."

Pause. "That was supposed to be rhetorical."

"Sorry. Just trying to help."

Veruka groaned behind her teeth. She was done with this conversation, done with me, and clearly wished I'd stop milking it and just take the clown and go. "It's in case y'all die. In our beds, holding our nymphs, while handling our food- domestic activities. Or worse, out in public places like the market. Y'all are supposed to stay as quarantined as possible in Pixie World."

"Ah, yes. Eros v. Longwood. That is correct." I broke off a bit of wet pumpkin pie and put it in my mouth. Squish. Squish. The smell of soaked grass. "Kalysta Ivorie. Yes, you, ma'am. H.P. told me once you were interested in biology, being a writer? We all know you're the stickyfingers who swiped one of the only three copies of Origin of the Pixies when you left us after the Flood. What are the two ways the Pixalchia bacteria can be transferred from my kind to any other member of the Seelie Court?"

Her thin lips tightened. "That's the one that turned your Head Pixie's reproductive system asexual, isn't it? The Wolbachia he picked up when he killed the wasp colony all those centuries before you were born? Firstly it's genetic. Embedded in parent, passed to each genetically-identical offspring. Otherwise, it spreads through contact with your lifedust. Baby pixie dies while nursing? Too bad. Mother's dead- damsels don't give birth like the drakes do, and the bacteria won't survive in her reproductive system. Just self-destructs. Takes the host down with it. Her own child was a damsel sleeping in her arms at the time? Ding. Dust-spattered clothes get washed in the drinking water? Ding. Ding. Ding. All the way down the line. You could wipe out fifty-six leprechaun damsels that way before the week was out. Not counting daddy drowning himself, or all the other drakes that Cupid chased after under Aphrodite Protocol for the Eros menagerie. And the Fairy Council beat their gavels and let your Head Pixie slip off the hook one hundred percent scot-free."

I nodded with each ding and ran my fingers through my cowlick. "This wind could spread my dust all over Kansas. It'd settle on the grass and in the dirt, spread so thin that you'd never be able to spot it until too late. Take me to your burrows and I'll do my best to infect your food and water supply, or at least every piece of clothing and the floor. Pluck out your own lines and plant them into my soul to stop me, Idona, and I'll tear them all out while you're sleeping. Allow myself to asphyxiate. Or I'll do it the next time we're smooching and such. How long does it take the bacteria to realize it's in a reproductive system where it cannot survive if it's been deposited directly into the location, I wonder? Perhaps you'd go down the instant after I did. I've heard it burns the damsels up like winter fire."

Kalysta leaned her cheek to her palm, gazing at me with disgu… No, it was definitely pride. She said, "You gain nothing in doing so, and lose everything. It's illogical. I thought that wasn't the Pixie way. So why? On behalf of your Daddy? Is that why you're really here- Daddy's li'l ticking time-bomb, sent to reap his belated revenge? Kill me with the adorable drake I sacrificed my own son to nurse? That's not very sporting of you."

Faintly panting from the little magic I was taking in, I glanced towards Flappy, who had damp remnants of pie across his face like clown make-up and was making another attempt to suckle from Veruka. Evidently she'd forgotten her insistence that her milk was poison to him, because her glowering eyes were locked on mine as I said, "I want him back. I don't think it's so illogical to strike up a deal that satisfies both parties."

"Then you'd better think up a new plan quick," Kalysta said without drawing her hand from her chin. "You can't do it, Sanderson. Removing lines to plant them into a nymph is a father's post-birthing instinct, and I'm willing to stake my favorite dress on you either not knowing how, or caving out of self-preservation. Possibly sheer cowardice. Whichever comes first. I read the book, hon. I've read it five hundred times. It's not in you to kill yourself. It's not what the Head Pixie would want."

… It probably wasn't. Was that… okay?

Reaching above my head, I allowed my mind to slip into the energy field again. I fingered each thread I could find, all of them scattered and tingle-fritzy. Only six were connected to the field. There wasn't enough of a foundation for the others to latch in. Taking one, I looped the soft, invisible cord of heat and magic around my finger. Water ran down my sleeve and pattered with the blood against my armpit.

"You forget, perhaps, that my kind are drones, unskilled and replaceable. My race must survive - their plans must succeed - before any individual. I am the firstborn of the Pixies. With exception only of Longwood, Mullins, and Tolbert, I have been there to witness each and every one of them come into life. Yes, I think I've watched the Head Pixie do it enough times to figure it out. Yes, I think I idolized him enough in my youth to mimic without understanding the meaning behind the action. Pixies, you understand, are quite good at playing Follow the Leader." I pushed open my forehead dome, pretending that my face didn't flush when Idona and several of the others pricked up with interest, pretending that I didn't feel the rain soaking my soft inner flesh and my sealed bubble of identical pixie eggs and the beating core of my soul. "Don't you do it like… this?"

Yelps flew up around the circle of damsels as I severed the line's connection. A twist, a slash of my hand, a burst of magic from my fingertips that I normally would have used to hover with my undersized wings… The line sat in my palm, limp and gasping. I stumbled a step as the backlash hit me, like a rapid knife swipe from belly button to chin. For a wingbeat there, my practiced straight face dissolved in a panicked wince. My knees hit the soaked grass. I thought I'd accidentally cut them all and in some impossible way died in a snap.

With unfocused eyes, I stared at the line in my fist, then brought it back to my forehead. After several seconds of wriggling, the line latched on, springing up like peacock feathers as it hunted in the storm for a satisfying spot to connect to the energy field. Then I stood up again, one hand behind my back and the fingers of the other splayed across my chest as I fought to clear my throat.

"Mhm. Mhm. You may want to hand me the baby. I'll be on my way after that. Because if I go down into that burrow system, I absolutely swear that I will personally ensure I don't come out again. Do we have a deal?"

Kalysta smiled as she stared at me, and broke into light golf claps. "Determined and unwavering and analytical. That's my little milknymph. Fergus raised you well. That's the Pixie way."

Idona shrugged, her eyes wandering in the direction of Kerani, who had gone off quite some time ago to hunt for pretty stones along the neighboring hills with Gabbi and Coral. "Sure, I'll allow it. Until my Kiss of Frost chemicals come back with the season and I can paralyze you whenever I'm not going to be around to watch. But, sure. This is why I'm a pixie-kisser, and not ashamed to say so. Y'all are so darn good at your debates. Hear, hear. Can we give him a medal?"

There were a few murmurs around the circle. I handed Veruka the pie tin, and after she made a few expressions not unlike Idona's just after our kissing session, she handed me Flappy Bob and his anti-pixie jacket of a blanket with a "Go croak in your own territory". He'd taken a liking to her, I suppose, because he exploded into tears when he saw it was me cradling him in my arms again.

"Shh… There. Good." I held him to my chest and allowed myself to almost smile. Then, I simply twisted on my heel and sauntered away, humming "You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog" all the way up the hill.

After a few ups and downs and slurping mud, Flappy squinted against the beating rain and attempted to cover his eye using his palm. I blanketed him with one wing as I scanned our surroundings. "Hold on, Flappy. Almost done. Almost home."

Taking my upper arm in my teeth, I bit into my skin and twisted until the purple blood began to flow. Once those pixie pheromones had been out in the air for maybe four minutes, H.P. came walking cautiously up from a neighboring eastern rise. He lifted his brows as he reached for the left side of his glasses.

"They let you go."

I nodded.

"Idona ransacked Pixies Inc. in her attempt to claim you during the Great Flood- all that spouting about how you were the only one who ever liked her for her, not simply because you were presented to her and it was your duty as a future drake in her burrow. Wasn't she down there?"

I nodded again.

"That doesn't make sense." Now he looked seriously ticked. He took me by the cheeks and studied my face from several angles. "Who wants to be the drake too unattractive for the will o' the wisps? You look perfectly fine. I might even call you handsome. You're young and strong and healthy. Logically, they should be all over you. The rain and their tunnels have made them blind. You have very nice lavender eyes. Apart from the equiangular mutation setting that straight edge to your cheeks and chin, what's wrong with your physical features? How dare they!"

"I'm not worth it, sir."

"That's why? No, they're not allowed to tell us that. Smoofing damsels." Flipping me around, he took my wings at the knobs and twisted them both inward in a single, swift jerk. A sharp cough or gasp flew from between my lips. He did it a second time while I bit down on the end of my tie. "And that's for ignoring my snapping fingers and running off like that. Will o' the wisps- it had to be will o' the wisps. Why couldn't it have been leprechau-"

Before he could launch into the rant I could see him rounding up for, lightning ripped the sky in thirds. H.P. and I rotated our eyes upward and stared at it together for approximately two and a quarter seconds.

Then we bolted for the Bridge.