A/N - This chapter parallels the Frayed Knots chapter "Frost Bite"

(Posted February 14, 2017)

Allowances

Winter of the Clinging Leaf - Summer of the Unmelted Snowflake

I'm no great believer in luck and fate, and have never pretended to be. The Anti-Fairies would pin their zodiac charts to the wall and run colored strings between the years and elements, crowing about "blue luck" and "green luck" and how everything is predictable through the use of complicated formulas and measurements using scientific systems that get merely skimmed over in Seelie schools. They willingly bind themselves like hopeful slaves to the positions of planets and stars, often allowing the old practices of magic to choose who and when they marry. Any positive results are merely correlations, of course, but one does find himself straying to the zodiac section of the newspaper most every time it comes around and skimming his eyes down the list of seven elements. Coincidentally, Clinging Leaf was supposed to be a good year for Soils like me.

Hawkins was a Breath year, and I a Soil as aforementioned. And I will say one thing for the Anti-Fairies: that they got the see-sawing rockiness between the two quite right. Most days Hawkins was a happy sort, content to do what I asked and greet me with a nod and a "Good morning" whenever our paths crossed in the kitchen. But he was not… so devoted to me as, say, Sanderson was.

Because no matter if he'd been with me five hundred and fifty years, Hawkins would always be Hawkins. He itched for adventure. Staying cooped in here while there was a world out there was not among his list of pleasantries. Wilcox's dream weekend would be one without schoolwork, spent with him stretched lazily across the pristine couch in any form he wished, doing absolutely nothing but relax and maybe request that China bring him a snack. Sanderson had lost interest in drawing several centuries ago, but he would be there kneeling at the coffee table nearby, surrounded by scribbled notes and rhyming words, trying to piece together song after song (Did he never run out?) He was amusing to watch, when he would let out a huff and push his fingers through his hair so that even when he took them away and went back to work with his quill clenched in his left hand, the black tufts - like stone spires - stuck up all in a mess. A mess I would often remind him to fix by leaning over from my chair and tapping him with a stack of papers of my own. Even in our own home, sloppiness was not acceptable in case one should be spotted through the windows. Presentation matters.

But Hawkins would never be found there with them. Not in his free time. On a shelf among How-Tos and Tax Deductions For Morons, he was the sole action thriller. He always trotted, never walked. He delighted in perching on the highest point of the roof to watch the stars and play with his magic until I marched out to haul him back to bed. And he begged me regularly to take him to meet Sanders, until in a moment of weakness I snapped and told him the truth as I knew it to be. That wounded him sorely.

Which is why it shouldn't have been surprising how many times he ran away.

I considered it an attention-grabbing ploy, so I always did the reasonable thing and sent the authorities after him rather than tracking him down myself. They'd catch him two towns over and poof back with him struggling and biting, a small pack containing maps and coins and food swinging from his shoulder. Or he'd leave for a holiday weekend getaway into the woods with his friends without telling any of us (or sometimes them) beforehand.

I'd grown weary of the games he played after a few years, and had taken to giving him up to four days of a head start whenever he disappeared. There were only a finite number of places he could go, after all. Until, not long following my marriage to China, he disappeared for two weeks, and the Keepers came back to me with empty hands and heavy shrugs.

"Oh, you've got to be-" I practically slammed the door on them after they'd turned away, and kept my back plastered to it for a moment. When China came downstairs, her dark skin glistening with moisturizing cream, she picked the details and answers from my pale face and sweaty hair.

"No luck, then."

"Oh dust, they can't find him. It's the middle of winter and they can't find him. The fact that it doesn't snow in the cloudlands is no excuse- I should go. He's a drone, he can't go into diapause, if it's too cold then he could legitimately…"

Sanderson was packed for the trip in three minutes, still unrolling the hem of his red sweater as he raced down the stairs. As I pushed the final button through the top of my lavender coat, China crouched to give him a squeeze. "You boys travel safe. Wilcox and I will have cookies ready by the time you come back. I'll keep a couple on the side with real sugar, just for you, Fergus."

I took her shoulder and gave her a quick peck on the lips. "I'll find him. I promise."

The Keepers had exhausted some of the more obvious and nearby places, everywhere between here and the Academy. It was becoming more and more obvious that Hawkins was no longer within the borders of the Central Star Region, particularly since I'd checked under his bed and found his baptism medal mysteriously missing. And so, while the Keepers in the neighboring High North Region took up their reins, Sanderson and I elected for a different approach. I poofed us both to the boundaries that surrounded Mount Olympus (I didn't dare fly across the ocean, and the trams couldn't run through the Lower East Region of the Anti-Fairies there either).

After several painful hours of arguing my way past Anti-Alin, holder of the Seat of Sky on Anti-Elina's camarilla court, and filling out forms that were hardly legible and at times outright contradicted themselves (I hardly cared- a few I barely glanced at before signing), I was in. With permission, Sanderson and I turned our course. We left the High South Region for the Lower East, but this time, able to travel through Anti-Fairy World rather than being forced beneath cloudlevel. There was someone I needed to pay a visit to anyway.

"It's a little bigger here than when we last came by. Looks as though each of the four of them has his own little house now. Cute. A few more, add a couple of market stalls and a Welcome to Cloudcuckooland sign, and they could start a small pink town."

"There's Anti-Sanderson," Sanderson said in a voice without inflection. The green anti-fairy was sitting out on his front steps, peeling off candy wrappers and letting them gather by his bare clawed feet among the crushed soda cans. A few trickles of sugary liquid wove like worms through the cinders and ashes that made up Hy-Brasil's soil.

"Anti-Sanderson," I called, and he looked up and smiled and beckoned us. I floated over. "You're hitting it heavy fairly early in the afternoon, aren't you?"

"Nah, lemonpop, today's a lighter day for me."

"You'll stunt your magic that way."

Anti-Sanderson shrugged and unwrapped a piece of taffy. Tucking it in his mouth, he said, "Why're you here? Daddy's not well. You haven't been messing with my daddy, have you?"

"Not directly. Is he as sugar-drunk right now as you are? Never mind- there's Anti-Hawkins at the door to the big violet house. He's in there, isn't he? I want to talk to him. Take it easy on that sugar," I added as I left, pointing one finger. "Don't wave your wand if you can't float in a straight line."

"Sure thing, candy cane."

Sanderson tugged on my sleeve and whispered, "Is he supposed to have processed sugar, sir? He's only 1,050."

"Nope. Absolutely nope. I don't like this. There's litter everywhere, and all of it is nothing I'd allow any of you to touch until you had at least a few millennia under your belt. Don't eat anything as long as we're here. You have crackers in your backpack and I brought bread. That should be enough."

"Salutations," Anti-Hawkins said smoothly as we approached. Unlike Anti-Sanderson, he'd actually buttoned his horrible yellow and red spotted jacket as opposed to letting it hang. Although he wore the same clothes that clashed with his green fur, he seemed to fill them better, put off a more refined air with his low eyelids- he'd even combed back his hair. "I rather suspected you'd arrive sooner or later to confess. You have some explaining to do, and you may wish to brace yourself before you enter. I make no promises that the sight you'll find is by any means a pretty one."

"Save it. Nothing can shock me after the blatant disregard I've seen for nature and trash bins in your corner of Plane 4 thus far." I reached past him for the door. Because it was only hanging by the one hinge, I barely had to touch it before it swung enough that I could see through it into the keeping room. As my eyes trailed to the right, I said, "Oh".

Anti-Hawkins lifted one yellow eyebrow. "Indeed. 'Oh'."

He lay across the couch like a deathbed. Bundled in kelpie-print blankets and propped up by red and black cushions. Clearly he'd given up on licorice and other candies, and moved on to spooning swollen globs of half-melted chocolate ice cream into his mouth. Small Anti-Wilcox lay snuggled up beside him, dabbing his sire's mouth with paper towels whenever it got too messy and began to drip.

"How long has he been like this?" I murmured out of the side of my mouth. Anti-Hawkins flicked an ear and shrugged.

"There are times when it seems like forever. Actually, it's been almost fifty years."

The couch had been positioned at a tilt, so its back faced the doorway to the kitchen. The curtain rod had been jarred out of position. It sliced like an arrow, with tangles of beads on strings gathered in an enormous heap that most would have to jump or climb over. I took a position nearby, noting with vague unease that I didn't see any baskets of burned cookies like the ones that had frequented the place on my last visit here.

"Go 'way," Anti-Fergus managed around his spoon. He had to shift a considerable amount, knocking one of his pillows to the ground, in order to roll over and blink up at me. His brown wings lay crumpled beneath him, twisted at bizarre angles. "Ah'm not presentable and yer gonna punish me fer it again. S-s'all karma 'cuz I told mah dad to git out a' my life an' soak his head in an acid pool."

I leaned against the back of the couch with my arms folded. Sanderson kept his hand to his wand. "Anti-Fergus, you're very sugar-drunk."

He let his head flop to the other side. Because he wasn't wearing his orange and purple goggles, I could make out how filmy his red eyes were. His hands shook with unhealthy jitters. "What does it all matter? S'long as yer blood's pumpin', I kin't die."

"What? What would you want to die for?"

First, nothing. Anti-Wilcox scraped gently at his sire's messy goatee, ignoring the blotches of ice cream that landed on his own chest. Then Anti-Fergus lurched up and grabbed the two flares of my shirt collar. The ends of his mustache twitched in my face. When he spoke, he spit. "Yew did this ta me. Yew had t'do it, din't ya? Yew jist had a' give up on life, give up on dreams, on hope, on her. Hic."

I kept my expression as straight as I could manage. "On the Wisp-Kalysta? Yes actually, I did."

"Noooo. No. Sh-she was a goddess. My goddess. No- the goddess. Make her come back, puhlease!"

I unhinged his fingers from my jacket and dusted myself off. "I'm sorry, Anti-Fergus. I won't do that for you. If only one of us can be happy, then I'm going to make sure it's me. I'm the Seelie counterpart. If I were the Dame Fergus, I'd point out all the reasons why I represent 'choice' among the three aspects of the soul, or being, or something. It's my birthright."

"Are yew happy?" was his instantaneous question.

"With China Mayfleet Prime as my wife, I presume?" I lined my knuckles all in a row along the back of the couch as Sanderson looked up at me. As I fiddled with the leather band around the middle finger of my right hand, I chose my answer with care. "I find that every person you meet will have tics and faults that crawl under your skin if you let your focus be drawn there. It's when you're occupied with other thoughts, all the strengths, that you forget any flaws. My thoughts on China's nature are… admittedly complicated. We have our fair share of differing opinions. I sweat to imagine how election day will go when Lau Rell names a new mayor. However, she's been super. She has a kind heart, she's offered us shelter, and her family aren't unbearable. It's enough. We respect one another enough to compromise in areas where we disagree."

"Lucky stiff," he laughed, his laugh coming out like a sob. When he next shuffled his wings, I could see the four small holes bored through the skin of it near his body, in the plagiopatagium area. The same pattern, with holes rather than notches, that I displayed along my costas now. The gaps had torn some, as though picking at them were one of his nervous habits. The taller slit on the right wing had a sock draped all the way through.

"I'm not sure I'd say that." I swept my eyes around the room. My grip tightened on the sofa's back, beaten fabric crinkling. "I came here hoping to ask a question, Anti-Fergus. Hawkins has run off. Has he paid a visit here?"

"Hic. Not a sight of him. Jist my Cecil, out on th' porch. He's always out on that there porch."

"I mean no offense in keeping my distance, Father," Anti-Hawkins replied stiffly.

"Not verbally ya don't."

I turned to Sanderson. "Hawkins isn't here. We should go."

"What color of magic did yew and th' Wisp-Kalysta use to fertilize yer eggs?" Anti-Fergus called after me as I picked my way to the door past broken chairs and plastic ceiling decorations that bobbed low on rusted springs.

"I can't say for certain. I was trying not to notice."

Anti-Fergus's lip curled up in a sneer on one side. "Yew were s'posed ta use yella'."

"Then we used yellow," was my patient reply. I held his gaze, keeping my hand against the sagging door and trying to ignore the way Sanderson hovered at my shoulder with a puzzled lilt to his head.

"Ah'm just sayin'," he said then with a grunt, slowly sinking back into his pillows and blankets, "Ah hope fer both our sons' sakes that it were yella'. Anti-Fairies is always made of purple. Purple magic cancels wit' the death of the one who used it."

My fingernails scraped the wood. "Yes, I went to school. I know this. You shouldn't worry. I'm certain we used yellow. I remember it now. Yellow is easy to channel when you're tingle-fritzy, which is why using magic under the influence of processed sugar is such an offense. Yellow sticks forever. Don't you worry about a thing."

We moved on. There was no sign of Hawkins elsewhere in the Barrenglades, and soon enough we were contacted by several other members of the camarilla court that we either needed to find a place to stay the night, or we needed to move out. With the assurance that they would keep their eyes open for Hawkins - tracking runaways is much easier when one with pale skin passes through a land of blue fur - I reluctantly returned to Lau Rell to drop Sanderson off at home.

"Can't I come to Earth with you?" he whined. "I'm older now."

"No. You can stay here with Wilcox and China. I can cover more ground on my own. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," he sulked, and went upstairs to change from his cinder-strewn sweater and take a shower.

I was draining funds horribly, digging into the savings I'd been keeping for Wish Fixers, but that was a problem I'd have to combat at a later date. With China's warm selkie coat in hand and a cookie in my mouth, I poofed to Notch Town. It took a few tries before I managed to locate an area not too windy that my starpiece couldn't function, but fortunately I recognized the location once my particles reformed. I wasn't far off the mark. Hunching my neck, I slogged out through the drifts. The snow wasn't coming down too heavily, and I could fly in bursts from clumps of trees and rocks to others.

"This strikes a chord too close to home," I muttered, bundling my arms in my jacket sleeves. China's coat dangled from my arm. I left it there. I wasn't ready quite yet to trade speed and flight for warmth.

Nephel hadn't seen him. I downed two bowls of the offered soup, but refused his request I stay the night. "Snow," I said by way of explanation, already halfway to the door. I'd never even removed my lavender coat, or bothered to shake the lingering flakes from the folds of my floppy hat.

He grabbed my shoulder. "I'll come with you. He's still my Hawky-boy too. But are you really sure he's out there? Is there anywhere he could have gone? Does he know a place?"

I stared at him, not registering the words for upwards of a minute. And then I swore. "Stay here. I'll go alone."

"I'm coming-"

"Stay here, Nephel. Please. You don't have wings. Do this for me."

He set his jaw, pouting like he was a nymph again with his buck teeth jabbing out. I made him lock all the coats in the hallway closet, then quietly dropped the key in a glass of water and stuck it out on the doorstep. By the time he realized where it was, it would be frozen and take him even longer to claw out. I wanted him to stay out of this.

Dust, it had been so long since I'd flown these skies. I left Nephel's house and launched myself into the air at a full run. Beads of sweat ran down my spine. It took mere minutes to remember how foolish it would be to try flying all the way from here to my old hole with the wind against me, so I whipped out my wand and poofed myself there instead. Another few hundred lagelyn down.

I landed with a fwump on an old bed. Fortunately, not on a sleeping someone- just rumpled blankets and moth-eaten pillows. No one lived here now, or not permanently according to Nephel, but since Ambrosine had offered to fix me up in his home with a bed and furniture, I'd left my hole mostly the way it had always been, along with a few tablet-scrawled notices on the table confirming to travelers that they were welcome to stay, but care of the place would be appreciated.

When I lit my wand, my hole wasn't in as good a condition as I'd hoped. Dirty dishes filled the sink. Wood shavings and sticks leaned haphazardly against the walls. Clumps of sticky food clung to the seat of one rickety chair. A leak had sprung up in the back corner, trickling into a bucket. It wasn't warm.

I searched the hole fast, knowing as I did so that it was probably pointless, probably too late. After two minutes of poking about, I flipped up a corner of the fallen bedsheets and discovered a dirty white cloth shopping bag, just sitting there slumped over.

They were Hawkins's things. Quills, ink bottles, lantern oil, a replacement star-shaped cap of rosewater, and plastic packages that once may have held food had all been abandoned and spilled in the dirt, like there had been a struggle from which he hadn't returned.

I wrapped my hands behind my neck, a strained chirp sticking in my throat. "No, no. I knew it - I felt it in my lines - but I didn't want to believe it. This can't be happening. Not again. Oh dust, not again."

They had him. It was the only reason he'd ever go out into a snowstorm, if they'd carried him kicking and screaming towards the Mid-Northern Reaches. Was that it? Had they taken him? Was I right? Would I ever know? Oh, gods…

I would not go back to the will o' the wisps. I couldn't crawl back to Kalysta begging for her help. Never, never, never. I valued my freedom too much.

I balanced the bag on my knees, watching the pale glow of my starpiece glint off its twin metal latches. My wings rippled, folding and unfolding as I curled my toes into my socks and chewed on my lower lip.

Strange, what a mental condition can do to you, because I wasn't about to let those will o' the wisps wrap their cold fingers around Hawkins's neck. Was I playing favorites? Any other fairy child out there could have been snapped up, and I'd have acknowledged maybe a fleeting wince, a tact "I'm sorry for your loss" to the parents before I simply moved on with my life because it didn't affect me. But when it came to my three charges, the thought sickened and outraged me beyond compare, like Kalysta had slashed a knife through my insides and carved me up like a valravn dinner herself. A selfish thought, I know, but one I find I must admit to having.

I couldn't help if my obsessiveness for order was kicking in. Fairies lived in the cloudlands. Elves lived on the surface. Will o' the wisps lived in their burrows. The trolls lived even deeper. That's how things were supposed to be organized. And I couldn't accept that this one - just one! - little detail was out of place. Fairies didn't belong underground.

Definitely obsessive compulsiveness. I blame the mental condition entirely- it always did tend to flare up at this time of year, when the flowers disappeared and blizzards knocked down the trees. Obsessiveness was what drove me on, because for no other reason would I ever, ever return to that place I despised, where I'd lost my innocence, faith, hope, and any positive outlook I may have once had on life. Kalysta herself would tell me (in no small rant) that going back there was completely out of character for me, even with my wand in hand. People don't just change like that, and especially in only a thousand years' time. It's a cop-out, a plot device, poor writing that you could make a drinking game out of…

But when you're obsessive compulsive, sometimes you do inexplicable things anyway.

So I took up my satchel again. Hawkins's too, in case I never came back. I smoothed down the front of my pale jacket, with its usual wrinkles that never stayed flat. Adjusted my enormous hat. The dangling star charm jingled against the back of my neck. I made sure China's selkie coat was still on hand. Then I took one last look around this hole that was so familiar to me, yet slightly foreign, and so very dark and small. And then, with my arm shaking, I reached for the cold metal handle of the chesberry door.

The wood jolted before my hand came in contact with it. When it swung inward, two bewildered eyes locked on mine like lavender candles. A short figure, with curly black hair, and bundled in a knitted hat and scarf and coat. He'd probably have gone for his wand if it weren't for the large gray crockeroo dangling from his shoulder, buckling his knees.

"O-oh. I guess I'm grounded, huh?"

I grabbed him by the scarf and dragged him inside. After I threw the door shut, I slammed him and the crockeroo against it. His head hit with a solid thud, his eyes rolled in their sockets, but I never once let go of his front.

"Until you turn six thousand! I'm very disappointed in you." And then, not sparing him the chance to open his mouth or blink, I poofed us straight back to China's house with a shrill chirping noise, at the bottom of the glass stairs. There went most of the rest of my Wish Fixers savings. Though my debts to Ambrosine were paid off, I'd have to start the actual funds from the bottom again. I was too furious to care. I gave Hawkins a shake by the pale green scarf. "What possessed-"

"I don't know, okay?" he exploded. Letting the dead crockeroo and several clumps of snow plummet from his shoulder, he plugged both his ears. "I just- I just- I try so hard, too, but you forget about me! You're always paying attention to Wilcox because of his problems! And- and Sanderson because he's always around bothering you. All the rest of the time you used to spend on me, you j-just spend with China! But I stay out of the way, and I act good, and you don't buy me things like you buy them, or anything like that. Maybe I just want attention, or maybe- maybe I get bored being the happy one all the time! Maybe I like to dream that I matter too."

"Hawkins." The name was bitter between my tight, frozen teeth. "You are five hundred and fifty-four years old next month, and a drone. You absolutely did not have my permission to leave the house like that. Earth? In winter? Really?"

He flushed a light blue in the cheeks, still scraping at the dark blood on the underside of his forearm left by the crockeroo he'd killed- the mustelid stank like an Atlantis sewer system. "I was doing fine without you. I was raised by western elves, you know. I know how to hunt and fight off the animals, I know that drones can't go into diapause, I know how to stay warm and be careful- I knew what I was doing. I had my coat."

"And you expect me to believe Nephel would have just let you out in this weather to frolic for a month among the snowdrifts. Try again, buster."

"Well, then maybe I should go back and live with those guys! They were my fake family, but at least they told me that from the start and didn't ever pretend to be real!"

As the words left his mouth, Hawkins slapped his right hand over it. I raised one eyebrow. When I crouched down on my knee and took off my glasses, he took a small step back. His wings went down.

"I just… I didn't…"

I kept my eyes on my glasses as I bounced them against my leg. Then I lifted another finger and beckoned him closer. "Come here, Hawkins."

He swallowed audibly, but he came. I folded the arms of my glasses up.

"I don't believe I ever once implied an intention to make us a family. If I remember correctly, from the very beginning, I made clear that you and I, and all of us, are merely coworkers who work for the same company and live in the same house. That is all. Our relationships are ones of business and acquaintances. We are roommates more than we are, as you put it, 'family'. Didn't I mention this? I'm almost certain I mentioned this." As he moved his thumb into his mouth, I looked up and finished with, "I don't appreciate being called a liar, Hawkins. Am I a liar?"

"No, Mr. Fergus, sir."

At that slight lull in our conversation, China slipped from the kitchen and fell upon Hawkins, ruffling the white pom-pom of his toque, which looked like it'd been chewed through. "Oh, thank the dust from smoke to vapor! You're safe."

"Yes, so he is. And I've decided that he's grounded until he's five thousand."

Hawkins glanced up at me. China studied the coat still draped over my arm - the one I'd planned to wrap Hawkins in should I have found him lying blue in the snow - before she clasped her hands in front of her apron pocket and put on a smile.

"We made cookies. They're all out and ready for a swipe of frosting, just in case any of you are ready to try frosting. You need to try it once. It's fun. You'll like it."

Nodding, Hawkins took hold of her forearm and wrapped both of his around it. He leaned his face against her shoulder. "S-sorry. I'm sorry that I ran away…"

"Baby, it's cold outside," she said in her cheerful manner. A frown crept across her dark lips. "Oh, biscuit, you've lost weight. Let's fix that and plop you into a warm bath straight after you eat. Did you catch this crockeroo all by yourself? There you go- can you carry it? We'll take that to the kitchen."

"You're too soft on him, China," I muttered under my lines as I stood.

Apparently she heard me. She nudged me in the chest with her soft elbow and a smirk. "Hey, you've got the soft belly, I've got the gentle touch. I think it's a fair trade." Then she curled one arm behind my neck and pulled my face down for a kiss over her shoulder. "You're amazing, snapper. I can't believe you found our boy so fast. And to think those Keepers have been looking for weeks."

I rubbed self-consciously at the spot she'd put her mouth as she pulled away. "You, um… just have to know where to look."

Before Hawkins made it through the kitchen archway, he cracked. Suddenly he grabbed China's arm tighter, and his wings began to whirr. "It wasn't an accident! I didn't- I didn't just decide to run away one day. I've wanted to do it for a long time. I don't know, and it was probably dumb, but I didn't want to go back because I thought you'd be mad at me. It's just- it's not fair! Of all the people in this house I could have been, I had to be born as Hawkins. It's the hardest and the worst!"

"Well, that's a smoofing li'l lie, buddy."

All three of us glanced up the stairs to find Wilcox and Sanderson at the top, the former descending in hops with his arms crossed. But his eyes weren't on Hawkins. His eyes were on me. He ground his teeth.

"I've been wanting to say this for weeks now, boss. Take Sanderson. You always favor him because he's the oldest, and you like Hawkins because he works fast, and you don't like me because my health condition's expensive."

"Are you kidding?" That was Sanderson, coming down more slowly, his soft hand skimming along the banister. "You two are living the easy life here. You wouldn't have survived what I grew up with, being the guinea pig. Even Hawkins didn't have to listen to all the adults in the house yelling all the time."

Hawkins shook off China's nervous grip and slammed his foot down. "You guys don't get it. Everyone listens to Sanderson because he's the firstborn. He's the one all the visitors want to shake hands with when they come to do business deals. And Wilcox, Mr. Fergus helps you with your homework all the time. Where does that leave me? I'm the invisible one here. Middle children get no- no respect."

"You absolute little snatter!" Wilcox, keeping his arms folded, threw his head back and laughed in a dry manner. "You think it's cute to be the kid the boss here wishes he'd never had?"

I jerked one of his wings and added a scolding about language before I planted my hands on either chest and pushed he and Hawkins apart. "Alright. Clearly, we're all overdue for a little chat."

"To be totally fair," Sanderson breathed in Wilcox's ear, "there are days when I think he wishes he didn't have any of us."

Letting that one go, I said, "I can see you all think I have a secret favorite in this household. And I do. It's me. I'm my favorite. Now, here's how we're going to do things… I'm going to let you keep your paychecks now. You'll all start with identical amounts each month. When you do more work or perform better, your paycheck will increase. Disappoint me, and it will be cut. That money is yours to do whatever you wish with, no questions asked on my part: Whether it be spent on music lessons or snacks or trips to the theater or, yes, even shapeshifting."

I had the attention of all three of them now. China too. I raised a finger.

"My one stipulation is that I won't have it splurged on soda and candy. If you want more than a handful of sugar a week, you must get my permission beforehand. You're all still underage for excess amounts. Apart from that, how it's spent is your own decision to make and I won't interfere. I will give you no individual presents from this point forward, only this money. That, I think, is fair. Do you agree?"

They all did, and muttered their apologies before they slunk off to the kitchen for cookies. The system worked like it had been charmed. Though I did have to bite my tongue each month afterwards when they pressed around my desk and I signed the checks off to them, I reminded myself that they were my dedicated employees who performed services for me, and I had no real right to any money they worked to earn.

Still, there was one argument that I had not anticipated.

"Are you going to write me all the paychecks I would have earned for working for you even before Hawkins and Wilcox came around?"

I paused. "What?"

Sanderson stuck his left fist, clenching his fresh check, to his hip as I replaced the stopper in my ink bottle. "I've worked under you far longer than either of them. That has to get me something. I deserve more money than they do. At least, they deserve less."

I groaned. This story rang familiar, somehow. Like two old stories intertwined. "Sanderson, you're the firstborn of a firstborn. The firstborn always gets the most magic. It isn't as though you aren't favored enough. I've selected you as my heir. All I own, whatever isn't given to China, will fall into your hands someday. That's what all your hard work has been going towards."

His shoulders relaxed, even if his face didn't entirely soften. "Of course, sir. My apologies. I forgot."

"Don't forget again," I said, gazing across the entrance hall as China pulled shut her office door and started for the stairs.

Sanderson rubbed his knuckles with his right hand. "I won't. I promise."

And he didn't.

Those were my little drakes, and as infuriating as they could be to deal with, at times I wished for them back when my only alternative was spending quality time with the one damsel in the house. Having a… relationship with China, I quickly found, was a vastly different experience from what I'd been used to in the past, and because it's my book, I can say what I want about it. On those occasional days when we shared a bed for the night, she would wait for me beneath the blankets for up to two hours before I came home from the office. Already unclothed and with her black hair down from its usual prim bun, and usually with a novel or her blueprints in her hands as I changed out of my suit and hesitated over my pajamas on their shelf. I found it somewhat interesting. Kalysta had always insisted on having me undress her slowly, from top to bottom, lots of soft kisses, lots of talking of the past or the future or - dust - the present…

China's opinion was different. She liked it best when I floated into my room after a long day at the office, noticed her, er, pleasant surprise, and didn't say a word. She craved smoothness, casualness, perfect flow, idealistic and at time unrealistic expectations… Kalysta had been sharp and demanding, spicy and hot- a whirlwind of movement and instructions that left me dizzy. With China, things were calm and deliberate. I did find her ways more pleasing, not in the least because she never threatened to lock up my coffee if she came away unsatisfied, and yet…

… just as with Kalysta, she had to have her way. I could have done with fewer nights spent in one another's arms, but she couldn't. Oh, she couldn't, and had absolutely no shame in letting me hear as much while I hovered with my back near the wall and my tongue curled up in my cheek. Even before our marriage she'd asked it of me, springing the request on me regularly after our first month when I was finally feeling settled and content. And of course, I had nowhere else to go. I would not subject my young companions to grovel hungry and cold in the streets. Sanderson and Hawkins were too small. It wouldn't have been fair.

China wasn't Kalysta. I could name a thousand things that rendered her superior. But I had to pay my rent if I was to be staying in her house and using her things, she was so nice to me, so cheerful and compliant despite her race and fate, I owed her this, et cetera, et cetera.

Not that she said such things exactly that way, not that she ever threatened to throw us to the cloudy curb, because she didn't, never once, and that was the thing. She made only the most casual remarks- those little 'But, that's the unfortunate fate of being a selkie' comments in passing and left me to fret about the missing pieces, and make decisions entirely of my own will. Yes, China. Anything you want, China. Just the way you like it, China. So long as you let us stay with you, China. Dust, sometimes I felt like the selkie here. I suppose I deserved it.

There was only so much I could do with her coat. I couldn't use it to change her thoughts or what she seemed to feel. Physically, morally, it didn't matter- I couldn't use my control to make her give up what little she had left. I learned that I did have an emotion after all: Guilt. Deep. Cold. Guilt.

It could be a struggle to please her. I had to do everything so precisely that sometimes I wondered if I had left a will o' the wisp's burrow only to fall into hers. If one little thing spoiled China's mood, that was the deal-breaker for her for the rest of the night, and she'd be sour for days, and wouldn't make pancakes or even cereal in the morning. I'd have to get my fairies fed if I wanted to get them out the door on time, which was fine, because it wasn't as though I needed her to perform a very simple task for offspring that weren't at all her own, but it wasn't always fine somehow either. Damsels… Dust, they're not for me. They're really not for any of you. Have your brief affairs if one thing leads to another, but I would advise against pair bonding for much longer than that. That's the world of emotion. Pixies do not belong in that untamed landscape. One other feeling we perhaps are capable of is, yes, hurt.

China suggested we try for a nymph when my cycle came around approximately four hundred and forty years after our marriage. As I neared the last weeks of my fertile period, the egg finally took root. To a deep, stringy corner of my forehead chamber, of course (King Nuada knew why). Its mother was thrilled; she had wanted one with me so badly despite my patient explanations that my egg tube didn't connect to my uterus - she pointed out the existence of the blood for her argument - and so it stunned me into numbness when one day while in the bath, I absentmindedly reached into my dome to wipe around its edges, and brushed against the new amniotic sac.

After some debate, I elected not to visit Dr. Ranen, or anyone. Yes, I knew my signs and my body, and I also knew what all the examinations would say: Impossible. No, I'd done my time of being poked at and scrutinized. There were some matters that even I preferred to keep private, glutton for the attention of my peers I may be.

But there was no doubt in my mind that I was expecting again. And for the first time… I didn't terribly mind it. There was a warm home, there was food, there was a mother who could provide milk, there was a source of income and a sense of stability. I was ready.

"Honestly," I said, watching China sweep the floor of my room, "I'm thinking this one might be a damsel. I can feel it. After three drakes I'm overdue, and now it's finally time. I wish I had a damseline name picked out. I used to have one, but I made the mistake of telling and someone stole it."

"We'll think about it once we know its sex for sure. Aren't you satisfied with that bed yet? You've torn it apart half a dozen times just since we've come in here."

I looked down at the purple blanket in my hands, then stuffed it back in the cardboard box and fluffed up a small cushion. "We're almost through with the second month. I tend to go broody around this time. Next week I'll probably refuse to get out of bed until noon, and if it gets really bad I might even try to sleep in the box. Don't let me sleep in the box. I'm too big."

She chuckled and swept the grit beneath the rug. "I won't."

The nymph was born in the usual manner, if earlier than expected, and it woke me from sleep. China had wanted to be there to see if the birthing process really occurred the way I'd always told her, so I nudged her awake and she helped me to the bathroom to watch as I opened my dome and withdrew the wriggling blob in its pink amniotic sac. The sac I quickly split with my teeth; the nymph plopped into my lap with a burst of water and a draining rush of magic that left me gasping through my mouth. But I was getting better at managing the backlash and didn't even fall over.

"Another drake," I said after I'd picked it up, thoroughly disappointed.

"Odd shape, isn't he? Fairies have round exoskeletons and selkie nymphs are sort of seashell-shaped, but he seems to be a hexagon. And… Well, would you look at that. His crown isn't coral." China shifted her bright eyes up to meet mine. "His mother's not a selkie, hon. Nice try."

I didn't even have the chance to duck before her webbed palm slapped my cheek. Then she was off her knees, down the hall, and sliding down the stairway banister on her stomach. Abandoning the nymph in the bathtub, I flew after her, a little lopsided, clutching my head with my left hand.

"China, hold on- Don't lose control of yourself! I might have an explanation!"

Still clothed only in her underthings from the night before, she spun around as she wrenched the front door open. Spring wind whipped into the foyer, ruffling stacks of her blueprints and my files. "Then I want to hear it, and I'm expecting a masterpiece. I put up with you having your other children mothered by other damsels because that was before we were really together, but now that we're married? That's just an outright insult!"

I took off my cohuleen druith and held it in front of my chest, painfully aware of how exposed I was, on multiple levels. "China, settle your lines. I- I would never cheat on you. You're my wife. We have legal papers."

"I have to draw the line here somewhere, Fergus! I might be just a poor, dumb selkie with my coat in your hands, but I won't float here and let myself be used this way! Those days when you act all shy about the entire act- Dust, I believed you like a smoof. I thought your hesitance was general. I didn't realize your problem lay with me!"

I would have liked to have my glasses on hand. I swore I saw a shift in the red curtains of the neighbors' window across the path, but I couldn't tell for certain if they were watching from here. "China," I warned, tightening my fingers in the fabric of my hat.

"And like Darkness you're getting another of those sugary Wednesday nights out with the guys that you seem to enjoy so much. Is that where you did it? You and some snatter of a damsel, clothes off beneath the stairwell, or maybe the tram ride home with the empty bottles of soda rolling and clinking in the little car around you as it swayed on its cables? I'd forgotten that I have a better chance of finding an orange genie than landing a faithful gyne."

I waited with a calm face, without really moving, before I let myself speak again. She had a perfectly valid reason to be upset, and I knew I was right, so I didn't force my explanations on her until she was ready to hear them. China watched me, swallowed, and, not looking, carefully clicked the door shut behind her.

"Sorry," she muttered to her feet. "I don't actually want to fight."

"Sit down," I said as I replaced my hat. I took my coat and hers (not her selkie one, but the sweeping black one she wore for outings) from the rack by the door. After we had dressed ourselves with them, then I took her wrist and led her over to the couch as best as my unstable, dizzy, limping self could manage. "Here. We need to talk, China. Maybe I should have told you this before. I wasn't sure it was important or even true."

"Everything's important when we're married," she snapped, hairs bristling.

"Yes, I see. Now. The thing is, well… Oh, dust, where do I start?" My hands traced through my thick hair. "This. I don't even know who mothered the others. Sanderson, Hawkins, Wilcox… any of the three of them. Not for certain."

Slowly, her face grew less flushed, her muscles less tense. She used the underside of her wrist to push a dark curl of hair away from her ruby eyes. "You don't remember. I thought you said they were baptized."

"They were. I used your name."

"And the acolytes let you do that? Didn't you have to tell them I was a selkie? Wouldn't they know it was untrue from the crowns?"

I nibbled on my upper lip. "The one I spoke with let me go through with it because I pushed him to. You do remember when I told you about the year I spent in the will o' the wisp's burrow, don't you? I tried her name first, but he refused to baptize Sanderson on the grounds that his wings didn't match, which of course makes sense given that he was born before I even met her. I attempted a cherub then, but-"

"But cherub wings always carry the dominant gene."

"Exactly. I again argued for the will o' the wisp, until I remembered your coat, and gave him your name. I imagine he was allowed to accept it on the grounds that you could be a crossbreed (Don't give me that look- I know you aren't). But I think… I think that after Sanderson, that will o' the wisp damsel gave me enough sperm to fertilize several of my eggs while I was trapped down there with her. I can promise you, China, that there have been no damsels since. Not when Hawkins was born. Not when Wilcox was born. You're my first since I left her, and up to now you've been my last as well."

When I glanced up, I saw that the selkie had scrunched her nose. She shook her head and swung herself off the couch. "You're going to need a better story than that, chief. You said yourself that the wings don't match, and sperm dies anyway. Take some time to think it through. I need a little fresh air."

"You'll be back here by tonight," I called after her as she opened the door again. "I have your coat. Somewhere."

"Alright, that's fine."

"And don't get into any sugar!"

"Slightly less fine, but okay. You're the boss. I won't."

This time when the door shut, it fell closed behind her. I leaned my forehead against my palm, and my elbow against the back of the couch. For a brief moment I stayed there, just trying to recover my energy, and finally I dragged myself back upstairs to look after the nymph. He needed lines. Not really in the mood for shrinking clothes with magic when it was finished, I returned to my wintery room, covered him in my gray blankets, and simply curled myself beside him.

The other three came in later to see if he'd really been born. Hawkins begged to hold him, claiming that he'd never had the chance before, which I realized then that he hadn't. Wilcox melted instantly at the sight of the innocent child. When Sanderson was asked, he muttered something about, "Once you've held two, you've held them all," and wandered off to sulk on his own.

"Were you fighting with China?" Wilcox asked, tickling the nymph's feet with his whiskers. He'd shifted himself into a purple cat for the occasion. I turned my face towards him, still hugging my pillow. "We heard yelling," he explained. "We hid at the top of the stairs."

"Did you now? Smoof… China doesn't think she's the mother of the nymph."

"That's dumb. You're married. I'm pretty sure she has to be the mom."

"She'll be back later. She's simply blowing off steam."

Wilcox leaned his head back against my shoulder. "China isn't my mother though, is she? My biology teacher says fairies only fall in love once. So I was wondering, did you love my mother, or do you love China?"

"Regardless of whom I love or have loved, the fact is that you ought to have different mothers, so it baffles me that you all look identical."

He mulled over that. "Maybe none of us have a mom and you're asexual, like a tree."

"What does 'asexual' mean?" I muttered into my pillow, hating myself for having to ask him and yet too tired to care.

"It means 'not sexual'. Trees don't get married, but they still make seeds, and then new trees grow from those seeds after they're planted, you know? We learned about this stuff in school. I'll show you." Wilcox gave me back the nymph and bounded off the bed and down the hall. After several minutes, he returned (in fairy form) with a paper textbook. Clay tablets were not the standard these days, evidently. Setting himself against my stomach, he licked his finger and opened it.

"Let me find… Here we go. Okay, so this section doesn't talk about seeds, but it talks about cutting off and then planting branches and stems and stuff. See, it reminded me of us, so I even highlighted it. 'Vegetative reproduction: New plants are reproduced that are genetically identical clones of the parent'." He looked up. "That sounds a lot like you, doesn't it, sir? I mean, we all look a lot alike, and we're all drakes like you."

I made the attempt to push him from the bed with my foot. "No. I'm not a tree. Trees are plants, and we are mobile beings who can think and be proactive. The sperm of a damsel and the egg of a drake are required to create a nymph. That's the way it always works. There's no such thing as a Fairy subspecies that reproduces asexually. Why are they teaching you this in school?"

Wilcox shrugged and closed the text. "Everybody wants to get paid, so they'll find something to teach, even if it's useless junk that only one of us in the whole class will use when we grow up."

That at last coaxed a soft chuckle out of me. I rubbed his hair with my wing. "Well, aren't you just a little cynic?"

He smiled back as he got off the bed again. "If we're genetically identical, whose fault is that?"

I made lunch with Sanderson, and China came back with a single purple orchid while we were eating. "I'm sorry I hit you," she said, laying it beside my cereal bowl.

"I understand that you were upset. I may have acted out of line as well." I slid the flower into place behind my right ear. "Can you nurse the nymph?"

She gave me a blank look. "I'm not lactating. None of your hormones got passed into me when we shared our lines. He's not my child."

I rubbed my face with both palms. I had no explanation for that. "Um. We can… induce it, can't we?"

"That'll take at least two weeks, and maybe a month. If I would've known in advance, I could've been ready. He needs a milkmother." China got up again. "I have damsel friends. Let me ask around."

I nodded and she went. "Is he going to die if he doesn't get milk, sir?" Sanderson asked.

"He has a few days, but yes. Nymphs need nursing milk for the hormones. We haven't found a way to non-magically reproduce them yet. After the first month, he can be taken off it and live as long as he gets a milk substitute, but he won't take in enough buohyrine to float or fagigglyne to shapeshift, or the other chemicals that form magic particles in the blood so magic can be channeled. That's how they do it sometimes in will o' the wisp country now, except they didn't have milk substitutes back then and nursed them to the regular weaning time still…"

"Let's make sure he can shapeshift," said Wilcox, patting the nymph's head with his rabbit paw.

"I don't want him to die," Sanderson announced after a moment, like he'd had to struggle to come to this conclusion.

"Wait," Hawkins said then. "Couldn't Wilcox just change into something that could give milk?"

"Technically, no. Damsels have to be in their natural state to nurse, or the milk gets touched by magic as it passes from the breast to the teat, and it loses all nutrients. And, Wilcox is too young for milk anyway."

"Even if I were a mother cat and the nymph were a kitten?"

"Afraid so."

China came back with an imp damsel whose mate was scheduled to give birth any day now. I was thankful she'd remembered to seek out someone with wings and therefore the necessary buohyrine without me saying so. As we found ourselves in the Spring of the Tall Cedar, I named the nymph Longwood before I passed him off.

That night, as I knelt in my robe beside Longwood's box, watching him twitch his leaf-like wings now that the flight casings had been shed, China lay her hand on my shoulder.

"Answer me honestly, Fergus. Did you take a brownie over me?"

"Of course not, China. How could you think that? I have you. I don't have any reason to mate with anyone else."

She rubbed her shoulder. "The wings, though. The color is too deep to be elfish. Brownies would be the closest match, wouldn't they? And it might explain the square shape…"

I stood to meet her, taking her dark hand. "I didn't mate with a brownie. What drake would, when he could have you? You're so pretty."

China studied the sleeping nymph. "All right, Fergus. I trust you. You have the coat. But, maybe someday we could try for another? Not yet, but…"

I kissed her wrist. "One day, once he's weaned. I promise. I do want that little damsel before I retire. We can make it through this if we complement one another and work together."

She took one of my wings by the costa and stretched it out. "Yours are the same," she murmured. "They don't seem to look like the mother's at all. I know it's a testy subject, but could your mother be a brownie?"

"Solara was a fairy. That's what Ambrosine always told me, and the crown proves it, broken as it may have been. The long nose always skips a generation, anyway, and none of my offspring show it."

"That's true… Still." She stood over the box, arms folded, then shook her head. "I suppose I could make a little pointy gray hat for him. It will keep people from asking questions, if the wings don't draw any up. We'll make it a thing. Let's bring those back, all four of them. They can match your cohuleen druith. I'll even embroider a stripe across its lower half, with their names sewn on like a decoration. It'll be adorable."

I placed my hands to her waist and drew her nearer. This time, I kissed her lips instead of her hand. "Mm. Like our wedding. I'd like that."

The following week they each had one, snugly settled over their splintered crowns. "It itches," Hawkins said once, cricking his neck as though his lines were suffering interference, and Wilcox said, "The other kids laughed at me and said I had horrible taste in hats, so I turned into a dragon and destroyed the southern half of the cafeteria, because they're trash and their opinions are trash too. I'm not even going to make up an excuse about how sorry I am. My mom made this for me and I'm proud of her. Here's the bill, boss. Just as a word of warning, you might want to double how much you pay, because if they mock me tomorrow then I'm doing it again."

I let it go.

That winter was ferocious. We felt it up in Fairy World. Wilcox and Hawkins woke me up together, thinking perhaps that if they joined forces I wouldn't punish them both. "Look," Hawkins shouted, "look outside, sir! There's snow! Real snow!"

"You're dreaming. Go back to sleep."

He dragged me by the hands towards the curtained window. The glass had fogged and I actually needed to rub a clear spot to match the one he had already scrubbed away. I squinted.

"That's not possible. We're above the cloudline on a separate plane of existence."

But apparently it was. China zipped downstairs to join us for hot chocolate ten minutes later, still tying a pink and green scarf about her neck and with her grin stretching between her small ears. While Hawkins scrambled to find his warmest clothes, she told me the theory bouncing around the town was that whirling winds in the clouds below had spat actual snow up into our zone layer, higher and higher until it settled over all of Lau Rell.

"That's what we get for living only a single plane above Earth," she chuckled, scrubbing down Sanderson's cowlick and trying to coax a smile from his frozen features. "Shall we go sledding? Hawky?"

He lifted his arms above his head. "Yes'm. Then I want to push the snow together and make something. It should stick, right? I don't know what I'll build yet, but I think maybe a stapler. And then Sanderson can climb on top and pretend to staple me. Then can we put a copy of that moment on the wall? Please?"

"What?" Sanderson wrapped the purple blanket more tightly around his shoulders and shuddered. "Freeze your own wings off. I'm staying right here."

"Don't take Hawkins outside," I said without looking up from my mug.

China frowned. "Are you sure? I'll watch him close. It will be easy, especially if Sanderson, Wilcox, and Longwood stay with you."

"Don't take him out. He's a drone. I want him to stay in until the snow has melted."

"But the other kids are playing in it! They have sleds and hats."

"Then that's the life of the other kids. You had your chance to play four hundred and fifty years ago when you ran away. Stay in here because I'm your caretaker and I asked you to. If I catch you sneaking out, I'll twist your wings."

He looked down at his bare feet. "Yes, sir."

"That's all right," China said, shrugging it off like a sealskin coat. "There are other nice things we can do inside on a day like this. Fergus, do I have your permission to break out the usual Krisday traditions? Dust, it's been centuries since we actually had a nice celebration for it. Whyever did we stop that, do you remember?"

I glanced up at the window, then took my spoon out of my hot chocolate and swallowed a sip. "Go ahead, as long as they stay in here and the snow stays out there. Make sure they all keep warm. I don't want to see any of them shivering and gasping."

While I attended to Longwood, China kept the older three busy with red and green and white decorations from her closet, elf-shaped cookies made of gingerbread, and nonsensical songs I only vaguely remembered from my nymphhood. Hawkins passed the moments in between on his knees with his nose pressed against the window, and little but finger snaps could draw him away.

"You should ask Santa for more money," Sanderson suggested later as he watched me count up our assets and devise a budget for the upcoming season.

"Mr. Kringle hands out presents using Fairy magic. Giving money that way would be counterfeit, though I think he's allowed to offer gift cards. Not that that helps us any." I licked my finger and flipped to another paper. "I dread this time of year. We Fairies transfer most of our magic lines up to the North Pole. That alone distorts the energy field some, and taxes spike. Besides that, if there's an emergency, it's difficult to get anyone organized to fix the problem."

"So we have to give our magic up too?"

"Unfortunately, yes. In previous years I've taken all your wands up with me while you were asleep. If the snow disappears before the Eve of Krisday, you can come with me this time. We're further from Faeheim now and it's a long, slow trip back, unless we want to join the throngs and stay there until midnight."

"Oh, can we? There will be caroling, won't there be?"

I studied him until he shrank back. "I think you should be grateful I'm letting you come at all. I expect you won't complain?"

He smiled thinly. "I don't like complaints, sir."

The next person who checked up on me was China, with Longwood set to her hip and chewing on the cork of an old ink bottle. She took away the papers I was poring over and set them on the other side of my dim lamp. "Hey," she said. "The Shufflewings have a cozy fire burning over at their place, and Hawkins tattled on you- said you've lost your faith in Kris Kringle. I've baked all those cookies and I want us to pay them a family visit."

I picked up my papers again and adjusted my glasses with the end of my quill. "Fine. But I won't promise to be cheery. This holiday always leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Kris Kringle has never brought me anything since I was a nymph, and never anything for mine either. Admittedly he was an affectionate hero of mine once upon a time, with that efficient delivery system and organized naughty and nice list of his, but I suppose even he plays favorites."

China tilted her head. "Did you stop writing him letters?"

"What?"

"Oh, silly bother." She eased the inkwell out of Longwood's chubby fingers and handed him one of her bracelets instead. "See, you're supposed to write a letter and burn it in the fireplace you want him to deliver your presents through. That's how it works. I guess I just thought that since we don't have a fireplace, you burned yours somewhere else. I always do mine at work. I never even asked if you guys wanted to come with me. Bad parenting move. We're not very festive around this place, are we? The curse of being hundreds of millennia old. Did I ever mention I'm still learning the ropes to this mom thing?"

I squinted. "Fair enough. Let's write some letters."

So we did. Sanderson wanted a voice-recording device of some sort, Hawkins asked for a rainbow of new paints, and Wilcox wrote for a box set of books he was interested in. Longwood decorated his note in ink scribbles and fingerprints. As for me, I tilted my paper back and forth on the my knee as I sat on the Shufflewings' yale leather couch, balancing a mug of cocoa in my free hand. Did I even want anything besides money?

Then I snapped my fingers. I knew exactly what to ask for. Taking a quill from Longwood before he could stick it in his mouth, I scribbled, To Kris Kringle, or whom it may concern- Some time ago I took a coat and boots and bread from an imp who gave me aid during a snowstorm. Her name was Shelly Marmot (spelling may vary) and when I last knew her, she resided on Earth in the Mid-Northern Reaches, beneath an elder tree. Please deliver replacements of the highest quality to her, though she does not have a chimney.

I folded my letter, then stopped and pressed it open again. In that same area, you may find the burrow of a will o' the wisp named Kalysta Ivorie. She has no chimney either, but she gave me shelter for a year. If it's possible, I would very much appreciate it if you could give her nymphs and maybe her drakes whatever you are able to. As for Kalysta, she would like a ladder permanently fused into the wall of her private waste cave.

Sanderson and I made our trip up to Faeheim to visit the Big Wand, and I picked up a box of chocolates for Hawkins and Wilcox to split, to soothe any ruffled feelings they might have had about the two of us sneaking away without inviting them. If the risk of losing them in the enormous crowds wasn't so great, I'd have been tempted to make a whole trip of it. But they were too small. There were too many tromping feet, even among creatures with wings. I didn't want to take more sideways glances about babies than I had to. And two of the Eroses would be there. I didn't want them to get their hands on my progeny. Having merely Sanderson to watch kept me on edge as it was.

The trams were stuffed as everyone dispersed following the ceremony. Sanderson and I made the return journey to Lau Rell by wing. Or rather, I did. True to his word, despite the cold he never complained, but he did fly himself to the point of exhaustion. Left with little choice, I scooped him to my shoulder and struggled on through the cold with merely my own voice for company.

When Krisday came, we all got what we'd asked for, as near as I could tell. Even Longwood had been given a black and white scarf with a design that seemed to match his ink blotches. He chewed on the end without mercy (Still has it tucked on the highest shelf of his closet to this day, if I'm not mistaken- a ratty, disgusting thing). Sanderson demanded I take him to go caroling with his friends, China reminded me how to use mistletoe to keep the Anti-Fairies away, Wilcox discovered that penguins exist and studied every bit of their anatomy, and I allowed Hawkins two hours out in the snow before he soaked himself silly and decided, shivering in the tub, that perhaps I'd been right to forbid it, because above the clouds the temperature was much colder than anything he remembered from when he'd lived with the elves below. It was a successful time of year all in all.

Of course the cheeriness wouldn't last. Longwood turned out to be a late shedder. When he finally did shake off the scraps of his awkward exoskeleton and proudly buzz his wings, I actually felt a note of alarm swelling up in my throat.

Because he had freckles. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them, all over his face and arms. All of them so ghostly pale, it took me several minutes of watching him feel his way around the kitchen before I even noticed they were there.

"We raised a gyne," I later told China, who sat alone among her pillows, a board braced against her knees so she could still ink out various floorplans until she fell asleep. As for me, I stood with my back plastered to the door, staring at the pink and budding trees painted along the walls of her room and shaking my head. "We raised a gyne. How could this happen?"

"No one knows. Gynes just crop up. Personally, I think it has to do with diet."

"I seriously doubt that. All he ever eats is kitnut butter and jelly sandwiches." I covered my ears, throwing my utmost strength into preventing my wings from fluttering forward. "I can't do this, China. We can't have another gyne in this house."

She set aside her quill and drawings. Taking my water cup from the bedside table, she walked over and stood beside me. "Keep those magic lines straight, Fergus. That's it. Don't gasp. Everything is going to work out."

"You're not a gyne yourself- damsels can't be. You don't understand."

"I know enough to see that it's bothering you."

My fingers shook against the glass. Droplets spattered down my gray pajamas. "I can't do this. I can't. I can't. He's a gyne. Did you see his freckles? He's a gyne."

China smiled in a familiar, tired way. "So are you, but I'm not freaking out. I think I won the lottery. You're both lookers, aren't you? My pretty freckle-faced drakes."

"That's exactly the problem," I pointed out as I gave her back the empty cup. "The gynes always kill each other, China. When they have to closely interact within the same social group, they do. They do among the insects and they do among the Fairykind. I've killed, China. I've killed seventeen gynes in my lifetime. China- China, I can smell him from here, down the hall."

"He's just a nymph. We don't kill our nymphs. Say it with me, Fergus- we don't kill our nymphs. We're better than the huldufólk."

My hands went to my nose. "Oh my smoof, I want to kill him. I want to do it with fire. I can smell the smoke- his dust is a beautiful shimmering lavender cascading between my fingers. His blood, while it lasts, tastes like warm maple syrup. Syrup comes from trees. He's a tree- he's called Longwood- I don't want a tree in the house, China."

She never stopped looking me in the eyes. "It's okay, Fergus. I'm sure all gynes feel like this. Just focus on your lines and stay with me."

"Dangit!" I slammed my fist against the wall. It dragged downwards with a squeal. "I can't live this way! What if one of these days I decide to kill him?"

China took my arm and held it vertically, pressing both of her thumbs against my palm. As I watched, she made circular motions, over and over, in a simple, boring way. I withdrew my panting tongue and closed my mouth as I watched her repeat the pattern.

"We'll adjust," she promised. "Do you know that riddle, about the alux trying to cross the river with the fox, the chicken, and the sack of grain? She has to do it very particularly to make sure they don't eat each other? That's what we're going to do. Sanderson and Hawkins are yours, but Wilcox and Longwood are mine. Is it going to hurt your feelings if I say that they always liked me better anyway?"

My chin came down against my chest. "No. It's true."

"Well, they've always liked me better anyway. We'll keep him away from you. Just don't let yourself be alone with him, and whenever he's around, focus on whoever else is in the room with you. I'll make sure he gets all the care that he needs- enough from both of us, and you won't hear a peep of complaint out of me. It's not really my thing."

"I'll do it," I told her quietly. "Even if you stay with me, I'll do it when you fall asleep. I'll sneak out and smother him in his own pillow."

"You can't do that," she told me patiently. "He takes in magic through his pores. All his pores."

"Then I'll drown him."

China's brows went up. "Oh you will, will you? What in? There are no bathtubs here anymore. Only showers. No buckets. A magically-formed bucket would leak magic into the water, and then he still couldn't drown."

I set my jaw. "I'll run away with him to Earth and find a lake."

"That might work. But, you cannot. He's under a year old. True Love Clause applies- he can't be taken from someone who's fallen in love with him, only given freely."

"Then I'll roast him in the new fireplace. It's been here two months- about time we broke it in."

"You hate the fire because it snaps and crackles and flings sparks like fireworks at you while you're sitting in your chair, and because you've watched Hawkins burn your important paperwork stuff way too many times."

I looked around, growing more desperate now. My fingers clenched around hers. "I'll slit his throat at the windpipe."

"First thing I did when you and the kids moved in was ensure I only had magical silverware so they couldn't hurt themselves."

"I'll turn him into a spider and step on him."

A spurt of laughter bubbled up from her throat. "With your choppy magic? Let me know how that works out. I'll just get one of the boys to magic-touch all the furniture and our shoes, all the way down to our washroom paper. Sandy will do it for me- he's such a meticulous boy. And that will be so awfully expensive for you."

"Don't mock me, Mayfleet," I growled back. "I'll drop him off a cliff."

"Wings, boss."

"I'll put him in the oven, and tip the entire oven over so the door is against the ground and then sit on the back of it so you can't get him out. You don't have a wand."

She shrugged. "Magic oven."

I stopped. "We have a magic oven? We can't have a magic oven." Then I turned my head crossly away. "That's why I'm always still hungry when I eat the food that comes out of there. It gets magic-touched and tasteless."

"Which is why I keep scolding you for using it. It's for when my mom comes over- I'm sure you've noticed from the times we've visited her, but her regular cooking is actually worse than dusty magic-touched bits and scraps. Are there any other ways you're going to try killing him? It was just getting good."

I shook her arm off and folded both of mine. "No. In light of new information, I have determined that killing him is too much effort. He can stay. In all likelihood I'm raising my own murderer, but he can stay."

China braced one webbed hand against the door. "Well, you can be strong, right, Fergus? What you were born with matters sometimes, I guess a lot of the time, but you can beat it when it itches at you like this. There are probably lots of gynes who don't kill their gyne offspring, maybe. Please don't ask me to name any, because I can only think of dead ones."

I blew out a stream of warm air. "All right. I can be strong for you."

The selkie raised her brows. "Hey, not for me. Be strong for yourself. At the very least, be strong for the self you want to be. And, well, for him too. Just remember: Longwood is only what you were back when you were small."

"Young, you mean. I was always heavily-built. Definitely not small." I stiffened. "He's coming. Oh my smoof, China- he's coming up the hall. He reeks like- like himself. I can't do this."

She sent me to her bed and, once I was wrapped in green and pink blankets and she'd pulled on her robe, opened the door and went out to see what had coaxed him from his room. I waited, my cheek mashed to the pillow, until she finally came back without him.

From then on, China and I had a rule. When Longwood was around, I placed both my hands on the nearest flat surface, like a table or a vase or a wall, and ensured that they stayed there. If he needed help with something that required me to remove my hands, I verbally directed him to one of the others. It worked. For how long would it be enough? I preferred not to think about it. Sanderson demanded to know once why Longwood had freckles like mine while he himself didn't, and we simply told him that he was born with them, and left it at that.

When Longwood was four hundred, we took both he and Wilcox to be baptized. The latter had an easier time with it than the former did- Dame Longwood turned out to be a nervous wreck who clung to Dame Wilcox's wrist and refused to meet anyone's gaze. She showed the Refract version of gyne freckles or Anti-Fairy black fur stripes too- a pair of long, glistening plumes that sprouted from above her ears and curled over her shoulders halfway down her back like a bird of paradise. That's what they called their gynes, plumes. Longwood lifted her chin and told her in his soft, thoughtful way that it was okay, and he would kiss her first if it might help soothe her anxiety. It seemed to.

Wilcox eventually finished his schooling with grades I could accept, and as each year for dozens flickered into the next, they joined us in our filing work. That became especially difficult for me. Now Longwood was around more, actively participating in every task not far from my elbow, always having questions that needed to be answered, and it was hard for him to understand why I always had to send him away. Even having him stand on the other side of my office door, on the far side of my desk, my ankles crossed quietly around the leg of my chair in the hopes that untangling them would slow me down and give him the chance to run, made my entire arm shake and the ink smear over every page.

Praxis's comments about drowning haunted me each passing day without fail. It only grew worse when he was four hundred ninety-seven and my egg cycle returned, and I started to wonder if my grandsire wasn't quite as cruel as I'd always made him out to be. Most days, I dwelt bitterly over the inflections of a voice that I hazily remembered from my nymphhood, and I stopped blaming him for everything he'd ever said.

I took a holiday from my work, locking myself for sixteen months in my room, eating what China brought me, and almost never leaving except to use the washroom and assure Sanderson that I was still around. Those were tough times for all of us. And Longwood, naive Longwood, would slide notes for me under the door, and try to talk to me through it, until China could distract him with yet another cooking project, yet another card game. Because you don't tell such a young drake that every time he speaks, you daydream those words will be his last. That when you need a pick-me-up, you imagine closing your hand around his neck and giving him a curious squeeze until his eyes burst from their sockets. That if the room weren't magically locked from the other side, and you stripped of your starpiece, those dents in the wood wouldn't have stopped at the door.

The cycle brought another addition with it. A gift, or a curse- at times it was unclear. He was a tiny drake. Another son, unfortunately, but I would accept him the same way I accepted all the others. He was gentle in my hands, and I knew from the start he'd be gentle still as he grew. I named him Caudwell without thinking, because something about how he scrunched his little round nose and the way his hair fell around his ears reminded me so much of my old friend Irica from millennia long ago. He was the only nymph so far to share Ambrosine's signature cowlick curling upwards from the back.

Then I looked up at China, who stood frozen in my bedroom doorway. "I-"

"His crown," she said bluntly.

"I swear I didn't-"

She excused herself, politely locked herself in the washroom down the hall, and began to cry.

And for a moment, I let her. Caudwell needed his lines, and Longwood was out there somewhere, and I needed to recover from the magic I'd lost to him and his distant counterparts. With my largest pillow squished against the headboard, I held the hexagonal nymph close to my chest so the single tuft of black hair on his head brushed my lips, and I drank her pain, and wished I could take it all for myself.

But I couldn't let my wife hide forever, any more than I could hide myself. Still cradling the cooing baby to my neck, I dragged my sore self down the hall and rested my cheek against the door. It was painted like the summer night sky. I lifted the backs of my knuckles and knocked three slow times. "China?"

No response, but I knew she was listening. I shut my eyes and shook.

"China. China, China… I know how this looks from your angle. I know. But you have to believe me. I'm sorry I can't give you a nymph. I tried. It's no use. Something's wrong with me. Something the doctors can't either explain or fix. I have a biological problem. I'm just not a real fairy. I'm… I'm only a broken one."

"It's no excuse."

"I know," I whispered. "But this changes nothing between us. I'm your husband, you're my wife…"

The door flew open as I was in the process of sliding down the opposite wall. China turned crisply on her heels, chin high. "If I'm not the mother, who is, Fergus? Who is?"

"Maybe the wisp-" I sputtered, straightening fast.

She snapped, "You can't store sperm. Sperm dies. And I'm not lactating. I know perfectly well he isn't mine."

"No. Think through this logically, China. I've been out of commission this entire time. I've tucked myself away in my room, all on my own, and you alone have paid visits to me. Surely you'd know if some other damsel's imprint had tainted the area?"

"I'd like to have half as much faith in my abilities as you're trying to put in them."

"But-"

China took me by the collar of my dirty pajamas and pulled my face down so our foreheads bumped. The effervescence leaking from her mouth and hand smelled of frying fish. "Look your reflection in the eyes tonight, Fergus, and realize that things will always be different now. Because I will never trust you again."

I blinked. I blinked again. In my hands Caudwell, startled by the sudden movements and sharp words, began to wail. "Ch-China, that's… not fair. I didn't cheat on you. I don't lie. I never lie! Listen to me. Please… Please, just hear my side for the fiftieth time. You'll change your mind. I swear it on my lines, I didn't do it."

"But you got caught," she pointed out as she released me, her fingers twirling away with that signature flick of hers, "and I'm hurt. That looks like solid evidence from where I'm floating. It stands to reason that you'll have to be punished."

I took her wrist and pressed her webbed palm to my face. My wings trembled, the apexes brushing the backs of my ankles. As she watched me crossly, I clutched her dark arm and sank down to my knees. "China, give me another chance. One more. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It won't happen again, I promise."

She took her wrist back and held it in her other hand. When she looked away, it was with wetness glistening on her cheeks. She bit her lip.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm sorry too, hon. You can make it up to me some night when you aren't feeling so hurt and sore. Bring your A-game. Starting now, I need a few days to think."

So I sat there on my knees with the crying nymph kicking and clawing at my chest as China wiped her eyes with her thumb and walked away, her socks shooting up sparks of static as they skimmed the carpet, and I had another thought about my grandfather Praxis that up until that morning, I'd never dared spell out the words for.

I wished Ambrosine wouldn't have stopped him.

Text to Life: The joke about Longwood's jelly addiction, of course, is that worker insects are in charge of feeding the larvae in an insect colony. The larvae who eat more "royal jelly" become gynes while the ones who don't eat enough become drones (This came up in Chapter 13 as well when Ambrosine told H.P. how his business teacher at the Academy would always feed little Fergus a few bites of jelly throughout his lectures).

Text to Text: Additionally, shout-out to BookwormGal for lending me her idea about Santa not knowing where you are or what to give you if you don't write him a letter. It solved a plot-hole I'd been fretting over for ages, and this chapter wouldn't entirely exist without her. Although on the other hand, without that idea you totally would have gotten to see H.P. and Sanderson celebrating Krisday in Kalysta's burrow, so take that as you will. Please check out her radical 'fics if you haven't yet!