Origin of the Pixies

by FountainPenguin

"I wasn't finished." Setting my glasses down on Cupid's stack of translations, I leaned back on my rusty stool. "The Wolbachia pipientis bacteria changes the entire reproductive system of the host insect. Those who've caught it don't just lose the ability to reproduce with other species. They gain the ability to reproduce parthenogenetically." (Written March 2016 - Ongoing)

21. How to Yoo-Doo

(Posted March 3, 2017)

How to Yoo-Doo

Winter of the Last Hippocampus - Spring of the Dipping Moon

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Venus Serafina Eros was glorious in the rosy lights of the control room. I've never been the sort to crave kisses enough to seek them out myself, but I've also never been opposed to them, and as I knelt there on the floor with my arms around Madigan's stomach and Sanderson clinging to my elbow, I wanted to sweep her off her feet and swing her around so badly. Why not? Sparkle did it. And I was beginning to realize, at her approach, that she really wasn't as tall as she had appeared to be when bearing down with her bow and arrow. In actuality she was shorter than I was and would fit well in my arms if we danced.

Oh, perhaps it was the braid- I might have some trace of Ambrosine in me after all. It could also be the bragging rights. After all, who wouldn't wish to boast to Kiiloëi that they had spent a night with the universe-renowned love goddess, the queen supreme, the empress of… Well, perhaps I'd better not go there. Of course, once I rose to power my pool of potential damsels widened considerably, but I don't see why all the related details are relevant to this text, so we won't be delving into that (Yet Venus remains outside my grasp even now, no matter what presents I shower with. Pity, really).

Inviting as she was to trail my eyes across, I wished we met under better circumstances. I was not particularly fond of the way she bore down on me with that steely ice blue gaze (lovely and strict as I found her irises to be). Although she floated rather than walked, her wings made the equivalent sound of clipping high heels on marble floor as she approached, as if the hundred or so arrows still aimed at me and the two little fairies from whom I hadn't been separated hardly registered as blips on her radar; they weren't directed at her, so I suppose they didn't. Chin high, shoulders up, back straight. Her pink business suit and long red skirt left everything to the imagination, her mouth formed a bitter straight line at a tilt like a backslash, the rosy gleam of the flickering monitors rippled over her like light filtering through a set of half-closed blinds with every step (Dear Nuada, she was my dreams personified, and I found myself squeezing Madigan tighter and pressing my tongue into my cheek when she finally stopped just in front of me).

Venus had asked us not to speak, so I didn't respond when she drawled my full name again as though she were encountering me for the first time. She peered down over her heavily-powdered cheeks at I who knelt on the ground, resisting the urge to kiss the toes of her polished black shoes. Damsel pheromones carried limited command over gynes, but hers filled my jaws and nose nonetheless.

Her arm flew out to the side. She pointed at Dr. Ranen without turning around to look at him and motioned him forward with a few impatient circles of her wrist. The way he approached, antennae bobbing, made his hastiness and reluctance simultaneously clear, but he stood himself on the floor beside her. He accidentally met my gaze, but not for long.

"Your full report, good doctor."

Dr. Ranen started in with his usual babbling, telling his observations of the inside of our forehead chambers and the nature of the tubes down our spines in a manner that suggested he'd given her the gist before (presumably in a letter, making him a backstabber in both senses of the word) and was merely filling in details. As they spoke, I slid one arm behind Sanderson's neck and brought my hand up to the other side in order to shield his peripheral vision from a few screens on his right.

"… but we've never known what to do with this information, and how to confirm any hypotheses, or even know what hypotheses to make," Dr. Ranen finished. He was doing the hand-wringing thing again, making a motion with two fingers up and down the middle of the other hand as though he were playing with a wedding ring. "I haven't been in the field for all that long, really - just a hundred thousand years next week - but of course, as I told you before, I did all that external research, and there has simply never been a case like this before documented in the medical books from here across the cosmos…"

"Hmm…" Again, Venus looked me up and down while I averted my eyes so she didn't think I was doing the same to her. She tapped her chin with a broken nail. "Someone's body here is playing by a more primordial set of rules. I for one still hold to my belief that when we start looking around inside of you, we'll find we're a bit lacking in sperm. But, your reproductive system seems to have taken care of that minor detail on its own, hasn't it? Genetically-identical offspring, of course- it explains everything."

This time, Dr. Ranen and I did glance at one another and hold. I flashed back to Wilcox's textbook, with the trees and the vegetative reproduction. My fingers tightened, pinching Madigan until he squealed. At Charite's signal, I set him down and climbed to my feet (with Sanderson just behind). "Are you saying what I think you're… Is that possible?"

"There are ways one can test such things scientifically. But yes, from my standpoint, you do appear to be the sole parent of your offspring; sire without dam." Venus called for one of the cherubs to search out a Fergus Whimsifinado from the Winter of the Fallen Mountain, and a few minutes later he poofed back with a bin. It bulged with files, but I only studied them for a second, because Venus picked up a soft object lying on top of them - a soft object with a little gray hat sewn onto its head, as were its oval-shaped glasses - and drew my attention back to her. "Sanderson, do you know what this is?"

He nibbled on his lower lip. "Is that a yoo-doo doll? Uh, Mr. Fergus's yoo-doo doll? Wilcox told me he learned about those in school. There's, um, only one of each being in existence, except of the Unseelie Court, who share their counterpart's dolls. These dolls, once their fabric is bathed in Kiiloëi's water, become a perfect likeness of the being, and what's done to the doll happens to that being too. And…" His eyes moved around the chamber. "They're all… here. Somewhere in the Nest, in storage."

"Yes. Now, we're going to perform an experiment. I'm going to lightly twist a part of this doll. Please signal if you feel it."

She tugged on the hair sticking out from behind the doll's hat. Sanderson and I both raised our hands, and glanced at one another.

"That doesn't prove anything," I said. "We could see you."

"Very well." Venus turned her back, and ordered Sanderson and I to face away from one another. She waited for almost a full minute before pulling on my right foot, then tickled beneath my left arm. I lifted my hand again. When I glanced back, Sanderson had his up as well.

Venus put the doll (gently) against her hip. "Sanderson, I did two things just now. What was the first one?"

"You moved the doll's leg, like you wanted to take off my shoe. This one."

"And then?" she asked, looking to me.

"My… left arm, underneath. No, no, I still won't believe it. He's cheating. He looked. He guessed."

Shaking her head, Venus tossed the doll across the room to Charite, by the right-hand wall. A split-second later, Sanderson and I were both in the air. We flew sideways without beating our wings, slammed into one of the monitors (Sanderson into me), and slid down. One of the cherubs, fortunately, had the brains to drop his bow and catch Madigan instead, so at least I had one charge who wouldn't be suffering from a bruised head or wing.

I wriggled out from under my firstborn. "But- but that doesn't make sense! How can my doll affect him? His DNA couldn't be a match… unless…" I pressed my brows together. "Time travel. I'm really… Ambrosine? Oh dust, I'm Ambrosine! I'm smoofing Ambrosine! That's why I never met my mother! She doesn't really exist!"

Venus sighed. "Time travel is not the reason. Your father has the anax wings of a full-blooded fairy, direct muscular structure included. Very different from yours. And anyhow, the arrow we scraped your forehead with wouldn't have brought up your mother's DNA."

"Oh. Right." Embarrassed, I shuffled my wings. And his eyes were dark blue, his face round, his ears pointed at the tips. And Praxis existed. Still, it would have been a fascinating plot twist.

"Of course," she continued as her sister placed the yoo-doo doll delicately in her outstretched palm, "as you can clearly see, such an unusual development must be studied in detail. Identical twins or triplets being matched to the same yoo-doo doll is of course an event I see on a regular basis. But witnessing this across generations is highly unusual." And then, while I was still processing her words, she strode past me and continued into the hall beyond. "If you would please, the four of you - yes, Dr. Ranen, I'm including you in this - follow after me, I will show you to your chambers for the foreseeable future. I anticipate you being here for at least a few hundred years."

"Our…" My wings went stiff. I cupped one hand to my mouth. "No. Your menagerie? No. Absolutely not!" I addressed Charite first and then, when she didn't show expression, whipped around with my long wings sweeping out behind me like a cape. "If no one else, I am over age of majority, and I hold the legal ability to speak on behalf of my offspring. You can't make us stay here. I have rights."

My legs jerked into action of their own accord. Sanderson, moving as stiffly as I was, walked down the hallway beside me. "The Aphrodite Protocol trumps all," Venus said, never slowing, never checking back over her slim shoulder. "You will be compensated."

I gave up struggling against the hold of the doll a minute or so in, grateful, at least, that I was able to peer over my shoulder and ensure Madigan hadn't been left behind in the dark. He nestled now in Dr. Ranen's arms. Fussy and twitching, but quiet. In the control room behind, I heard voices and rustling fabric. Cherubs lowered their bows. This job for them was done, and now they would be pausing for coffee breaks, or leaving the facility to head home altogether.

We turned another corner at the end of the hall, and Venus used a shoulder and wing to push open a door labeled Employee Access Only. Doll or no doll urging me onward, I had to stop and stare for a beat. Windows spread down the length of this new hall, which opened like a gaping whale's mouth and stretched both high and low for many levels. Above gleamed brightness and sunshine, and far below drawled with deep and dark. I heard water sloshing. Many of the rooms had metal landings positioned outside their long windows, connected by bridges and walkways, but other "chambers" seemed to be accessible by flight alone. As we abandoned the smaller hallway for this great room, the metal clanged beneath my heels. I lingered as long as I could near one window to my right that had a plaque hanging beside it reading 'Kobolds'. Sure enough, four or five drakes with brown faces, colored top hats, and ladybird wings were whistling and clapping in time with the two damsels who spun around and around in their circle.

"Every species across the universe is represented here in the Eros Nest," Venus told me as though she'd read my thoughts. She had to tilt back her head in order to peer up at me, even though the rest of her hair remained drawn back in its usual braid. "Some of them are prisoners relocated from Abracatraz, while some are volunteers who were homeless or starving or who simply wished to bow out of the rat race. Many are simple animals, but all are here and sheltered and cared for."

"What are they, sir?" Sanderson asked, pointing through another window down the hall. Venus had let up on the yanking routine, so he was able to take a long look. "They're weird."

The enclosure he was examining appeared barren and bleak, strewn with pebbles and sand. Water flowed in an endless cycle from a high point among some boulders, then disappeared through a crack in the wall. I leaned in, and my hypothesis proved correct when I spotted a green tentacle curling away into a crevice. "I'd rather you didn't call the Yugopotamians weird. They're Great Dawners who fought alongside our ancestors the Aos Sí in ancient times, remember?"

He pressed his mouth to the glass, leaving an irritating smudge. "Oh, is that how they look? I always thought they'd be more… Fairy-like. Are the king and queen in here?"

"No. They'll be back on their home planet of Yugopotamia. The Eroses just enjoy nosing into everybody's private business."

Sanderson's face fell. "I wanted to see the new prince or princess. Then in another two hundred thousand years or something, when he's the king or queen, I could tell everyone I knew him when he was small. Or she."

"You may as well change your future plans. Yugopotamians live incredibly short lifespans compared to us- something like a hundred and fifty, two hundred years. I believe some of them get up to a two hundred and twenty, though that isn't particularly common. Just in the space between you and Hawkins, they'd have gone through perhaps as many as three prince or princesses for their kings and queens."

"Oh. That's sad."

"This way, please," Venus called. I wiped the smudge away with my sleeve as best I could, and we abandoned the sight and floated after her. I allowed Sanderson to move ahead, thoughtfully zigzagging between the exhibits we passed. "What about them?" he constantly badgered me, gesturing to something like wolves with pelts (literally, always) the same deep blue as the night sky, and through my yawn I might say, "Them? Those are foops". When Dr. Ranen began to pick up the pace, I held out my arms in request to take Madigan back. At least when I was holding something warm against my chest, it helped to take my mind a bit off this dreadful parade. I just had to hope Venus didn't begin to play with the doll's hands. After what she'd done to Wilcox with no regrets, I wasn't keen to see what she might do to a nymph. Especially indirectly.

It took five minutes, but she finally found the place she was looking for. With us in tow, Venus flew three levels up and lighted on a metal landing. Beyond the windows, three great white birch trees decorated with more platforms, vines, and treehouses took up most of the area, though a waterfall and stream glittered near the opposite wall and boulders were strewn in a haphazard manner. Fresh green grass spread along the ground, fading to sand near the water's edge. The ceiling was painted red-blue like the coming sunset. Sanderson went rigid.

"Is this where we're staying?"

"Does it fit your needs?"

"It's beautiful. Like a royal castle courtyard."

I narrowed my eyes as Venus opened the door and guided us through. "Each of those treehouses contains two beds with pillows and sheets like what you are all probably used to," she said. "Of course, you are also welcome to sleep anywhere in the branches or the ground if you'd really rather. The waste cave is to the left over there, and on the right back in the corner is the thermal cave, always heated for if you get cold. If you like you may swim or bathe beneath the waterfall, though there are also private and more modern showers through the crevice in the rock beneath it. You'll receive three meals a day; breakfast and lunch you may request, but your evening meal will adhere to a strict diet for health purposes and is mandatory. Understandably, you will be prohibited from all access to wands, potions, and spellbooks. If you ever find yourself in some sort of emergency, press that red button up on the wall there above the door. Are there any questions?"

"Are those trees fake?" I asked.

"They are. There's no wind or wild storms in there to strengthen their roots and trunks, so real ones cannot survive. However, most everything else is as natural as can be."

"Natural," I repeated, brushing my hand across the grass. Sanderson had found a boulder to perch on from which he could survey his new empire. I'd set Madigan down and he now stood at its base, whining incoherently for a boost. I snapped my fingers to get them both to follow me (and Dr. Ranen after them) as Venus left us. We first examined the running water - cold and, just like Kalysta's burrow, too shallow to drown in - and then headed to the thermal cave in the back.

As it turned out, we weren't alone. Two figures clung upside-down to some sort of fixture along the roof of the cave, their leathery wings snuggled around awful clashing fabric - one cape, one jacket - which dangled by their ears. I stopped beating my own wings enough that my shoes brushed the uneven rocky floor. "Anti-Fergus! And Anti-Sanderson!"

They opened their eyelids to cracks. "Fairy-Fergus?" murmured the larger one.

"You're back," Anti-Sanderson said when he spotted Dr. Ranen.

"It's me." I glanced around as Anti-Sanderson released his perch and landed alongside us. "Are there any more of you?"

Anti-Fergus rubbed his hand against his forehead. "One, soon. To match your little skipper there."

"Of course. Anti-Madigan."

"But," he said, tilting his head, "he don't sound or look much like a selkie cross, either. That's not their crown."

I pressed my lips together as Dr. Ranen glanced my way. "The cherubs are looking for answers. Venus has suspicions."

"Fairy-Fergus." A warning note crept into his voice. "I don't much like Anti-China. Make her back off."

Finally deciding to ignore the doctor completely in favor of the question that had been burning on my tongue for fifteen minutes now, I set my hands to my waist. "Why didn't you ever tell me you snogged Venus Eros? If I'd been you, I'd have boasted to high beyond."

He rubbed his eyes and gave me a bewildered look. "What?"

"Venus Eros! Venus Eros, arguably the most famous and definitely most alluring Fairy in existence since Ilisa Maddington herself. She's fierce, independent, unemotional, and I want to hear this story immediately. What does she kiss like?"

"I don't r'member doin' that. Did she tell yew that happened? Ah reckon Ah'd 'member if that happened."

"Oh. Right. The honey-lock sync doesn't work without mating." I made as though stomping my foot while I hovered. Imagine the headlines: Bizarre Green Anti-Fairy Pursues Triplet of the Morning.

Dr. Ranen's antennae flattened like the ears of a crockeroo. "Wait," Anti-Fergus said, reasoning this through. "If yew t'ought I got the primary counterpart, does that mean yew tried ta-?"

Abandoning the thermal cave, I skimmed back to the door of the enclosure and patted its edges with my hands. The only handle was on the outside, and even my nails couldn't fit through the gaps near the frames. Sanderson joined me after a few minutes.

"I've started to feel… strange ever since we walked in here, sir," he admitted. "Very cold up and down my skin, but not… cold."

"Ah. Prickly? Like you want to itch, but scratching your skin has as little effect as though you were made of ice? The sensation burns quite strongly along your forearms and lower legs, but across your shoulders especially, as though that's the place the ice is thickest and impenetrable?"

He nodded. I rose a little higher in the air, still rubbing the pads of my fingers along the window seams as my teeth tightened more and more. "The good news is, you aren't sick. So far. But that sounds like the Finella reflex to me. I feel it too, though you're the firstborn of a firstborn, while Ambrosine was third in his family. Your senses are stronger than mine."

"I haven't heard of the Finella reflex, sir."

"She was a coworker of the famous Rhoswen of the ancient days. Hasn't this come up? Oh, never mind. It's sometimes called 'cold shoulder syndrome'." I waved a hand vaguely behind me to indicate the thermal cave. "It's the instinct genetically wired in members of the Seelie Court to spread goodness and destroy evil. Put another way, your biological need to kill Anti-Sanderson is acting up now that you're in his presence."

Sanderson hovered for a moment without moving. "Is that possible? Killing an Anti-Fairy?"

I brought my cheek to the upper part of the door, searching out even the smallest gaps in the room design. Our wands had been confiscated, of course, and with them our ability to shapeshift, but if I could just find some sign that escape was even possible… "Not without killing yourself," I said back to him, "but the instinct won't push you that far. Anti-Fairies hold the power of regeneration, and would just reform if you hurt them in a way that might kill a Seelie. Takes them minutes, or hours. They always come back. They don't have a choice. Just try to ignore it. Fortunately, you should be able to; we stand mostly on neutral ground, where your pheromones have not been laid down as thickly as his. If we were back at Wish Fixers and he strolled in through the front door, that might be a more aggressive story. It's a game of magnets. Horrid, angry magnets."

"What's your ruling on me killing him, then? If he'll regenerate."

"I don't care much what you do here so long as it has no adverse effects on me," I growled. Sanderson pricked to attention and floated to my side, but though we pressed and scratched and pulled, the door refused to pop open.

"Aphrodite Protocol or not, there has to be a law against this," I snarled to myself, tearing up clumps of grass.

"Are you well, sir? You seem-"

I rounded on him. "If you've ever wondered why I never brought you to the zoo, this is what it's like. We're prisoners- don't you get it? We're nothing to them. Not as sentients. We're only checkmarks on their list."

He lowered his gaze. "Is Wilcox going to be all right?"

My wings drooped. I rubbed my temples with my thumbs. "Assuming that Venus really did keep to her promise of instructing her assistants to share magic with him to prevent asphyxiation, then yes. He should recover in a few days and they'll take him back to Wish Fixers. I imagine he can tell the others what happened then."

I started to turn back to the door, but as I did so, Sanderson took his teeth from his lip and whispered, "Why did you lie to me forever, sir?"

"Hm?"

"You told me I wasn't your son. You always said I was… Sanders' son."

I removed my glasses and held them in my lap without breaking eye contact. "Sanderson, as far as I'm concerned, you are Sanders' son. If anyone ever asks, I expect you to say as much. You may even tell them how proud the drake who bears that name is of you, and how he would sell his wings if it meant he didn't have to lose you. That is your Sanders, you may say. Anything you want. I don't care. But you are not Fergus' son, have never been Fergus' son, nor will Fergus ever claim you as such."

He studied me, shoulders slumping, then shook his head. "According to Venus Eros, that's not quite true. You're my father, sir, however much you try to deny it."

"'Father' implies affection incorrectly. I am your sire. I father nymphs, and I raised you because you exist. But I'm not your father. I'm not your daddy, nor anyone's daddy. I'm your employer who expects to be treated as such in a professional manner." The glasses went back on my face. I pushed them up my nose with one finger and turned my back. "You are attached to me, Sanderson, but you believe in an idea that does not exist. I feel nothing for you. Our relationship is strictly professional, and you need to understand that. You apparently being… a younger version of myself changes nothing. You can't force me to love you, no matter what the size of your bribe."

The grass crunched. Sanderson walked in a careful circle around to my front, his arms crossed, and peered at me hard.

"Fine," he said as his lower lip began to tremble again. His right fingers closed over the knuckles of his left hand. "Th-then you can't force me to change my feelings, either. You're… You're… You're the entirety of my universe, sir. There's no one I would prefer to be around more- no employer, no coworker, no damsel. You're to me what I think fagigglyne is to Wilcox. You don't hear the music in my ears when I see you knotting your tie across the breakfast table as your eyes skim across the words of some project from yesterday that you fell asleep before finishing. Maybe you're never going to understand how it feels to just… look at you, sir, to just… just respect you and everything I've seen you push through. Even before what Venus told us today, I've somehow always… When I look at you…"

He tilted his head. "I think, 'That's me someday'. I see everything I want to be when I'm older, just barely out of my grasp. You always know how to solve problems and you always make the right choices. You make me not want to be just plain Sanderson anymore. You make me want to be the greatest Sanderson ever. When you're here, I remember that it's possible to reach my goals. Suddenly I can do anything. I don't need you to be one of those fathers who takes us to the zoo or teaches us how to play saucerbee, sir. That doesn't matter to me. I just need you to be a stable force like a mountain that I can look towards when I'm growing concerned, at times like this, s-so I remember that… it's all going to be okay. I just need you to never abandon me. That's, erm… That's how I feel, sir. A-and you can try to pay me to change, but I won't, because I just can't."

We stared at one another in absolute silence, absolute stillness. I watched his face turn pinker with every few passing seconds. His wings twitched forward near either side of his waist. Finally I said, "You forget, perhaps, that the winter of my birth occurred in the Year of the Fallen Mountain. They're not as stable as you seem to believe they are. You're a smoof if you believe wasting your time and energy on someone who will never return your affections is going to change something between us. Nonetheless, I accept your statement of loyalty. Go examine those treehouses, and then later I want you to shower before you get off to bed."

"Yes, sir."

As he left, I massaged my brow. What was I to do with him?

As Venus had promised, the rocks beneath the waterfall concealed a cave where we could all shower. Once I'd come out, still rubbing Madigan down with his towel (and Dr. Ranen with us, since he'd looked the nymph over to make up as best he could for the appointment we'd missed yesterday), I intercepted Anti-Sanderson and sent my Sanderson in instead. As the green anti-fairy scrunched his offended nose at me, I demanded, "What is Anti-Fergus to you, Ennet?"

"What's he to me, eh?" He squished his lips between thumb and middle claw. "Well, he's my pop. He gave birth ta my lifesmoke before Dame Sandy and I went hunting for Sandy Prime. Y'know, to absorb his core and stuff three months afte' he got himself born, like we do. Took us like three days. One of 'em my smoke and her vapo' just spent the whole time zipping in circles 'round and 'round above what we somehow knew was the right place, though I didn't get that you were unde'ground 'til a few days after she did. Weren't easy ta find you in the Wisp-Kalysta's bu'row. Dunno if anyone's smoke has eve' gone that long. Think it maybe messed me up in th' head. But, Anti-Fergus built me a pretty pink house in our cheery little corne' of Anti-Fairy World, an' he lets me eat all the candy I want. I like 'im fine. Why?"

I trailed away without answering.

We familiarized ourselves with our prison for a few more hours, mostly in the twilight, until sudden thunder crackled overhead. We all stared upwards in pure shock when the sprinkler system switched on and rain pelted downwards. I took up Madigan and scrambled for the thermal cave as the water began to soak into my wings. Sanderson followed, and after a few minutes, Dr. Ranen and the two anti-fairies joined us. "Why would the cherubs do that, sir?" Sanderson asked, lying down on his stomach beside me. He propped his folded arms beneath his head. "We don't need rain to survive or anything. Isn't it expensive and pointless?"

I watched the pitter-patter of the droplets shift into a thick sheet. "They're simulating the conditions of the environment, like they would for any wild animal."

The rain didn't stop the remainder of the night, so we bundled up in our clothes and managed as best we could. When I strayed too close to the rear of the thermal cave, I could hear the storm raging in the neighboring enclosure, too.

As the lights came on in the morning, Ludell brought me a pair of visitors. He called my name in a low murmur, stirring me back into the open. My wings had dried enough to let me fly, fortunately, so I avoided the unpleasant sensation of squishing through the damp grass. Sanderson remained sleeping, but Dr. Ranen was awake and trailed curiously after me. When I landed, I flattened my palms to the window.

"Ambrosine- Thank King Nuada's memory! And… Emery. Ambrosine, you have to get me out of here."

He touched his fingertips to mine, two inches apart. "Oh, I would if I could, Fergus. In a wingbeat. But I can't challenge the Aphrodite Protocol head-on, and I won't attempt to break you out and risk them robbing me of my ability to love even myself, or shooting me with inrita like they did to Wilcox. He's bedridden and he gasps every several seconds as though he needs the air to live, but the blackness is already starting to fade from his skin. I don't imagine they told you that."

"They didn't." I searched his face, hands squeaking on glass. Then I turned my attention to Emery (who distractedly refocused her attention on me instead of the enclosure beyond my shoulder). "There has to be something."

"I'm literally only here because Dad promised he'd take me out to lunch on our way home."

He smiled wryly without acknowledging her comment. "I sure wish I knew a Fairy who'd gone to law school. I'm going to try suing you out."

I stared at him. "You think you can win against Aphrodite Protocol?"

"No. No, I don't." He mimed ruffling my hair and kissed the glass between his lips and my forehead. "But that yoo-doo game they've been playing on the rest of your brood - Wilcox especially in his condition - might give me a leg up, and I'm not going to sit on my thumbs and let you think I didn't try. Emery and I'll look after the kids, completely free of charge. No matter how long it takes. They're my little Fergus grandnymphs, and I like them so much."

My shoulders quivered. "I can't stay here. Not… not for a few hundred years. Dad…"

"I'll bring them if you'd like me to. I'll try to visit every week."

"Oh, I know I will." Emery tapped her finger against the window. "Psst. Can you give me the name of that cute imp behind you? Maybe a scry bowl serial number? I mean, since you're already in there with him and all."

I kept there to the glass, fingers pressed and head bowed. We talked for a time. What about, it doesn't matter. Eventually they had to go. Anti-Fergus flapped over and rested his hand upon my shoulder when Ludell floated with my father and half-sister away down the hall. As I removed my glasses and pinched my nose, he continued to hover there, solid and stable.

Dr. Ranen linked his fingers together and cleared his throat when I slowly turned around at last. "My first name is Logan. If… anyone was wondering."

"Forget it. My father would never let his daughter marry a drake who was bald."

There had to be some way out. I'd talked a dragon out of eating me, tricked a will o' the wisp into releasing me from her burrow, married a selkie until I had the money to buy out my father, and I wasn't about to roll over belly-up for anyone now. Sanderson was still asleep with his folded arms tucked under his head, but his counterpart and mine weren't, so I recruited them and Logan to help me take inventory of our resources. We had six beds with pillows and sheets, a log that appeared free of bugs, and about twenty fist-sized rocks among three great boulders that all of us together weren't likely to shift.

And apart from the grass and fake trees, that was it. "At least a few hundred years", Venus had said. Aphrodite Protocol, Aphrodite Protocol, Aphrodite- Did she ever try to back her decision up with anything besides "because I said so"? While Anti-Fergus and Anti-Sanderson poked around the streambed, I stood nearby with my arms around Madigan, trying to remember exactly what she'd said. Vegetative reproduction, Wilcox's trees… My mind trundled about in a circle of dirty water until it blurred itself to nothing.

"She suggested that if we looked inside me, we'd find no damsel's sperm," I muttered. Turning Madigan over, I studied his hexagonal face. He chirped and reached for my tie (we'd never been brought a change of clothes). "Genetically identical. No dam. Their sire's genetics alone. Imagine that."

I held Madigan. I held him for a long time, cradling him in the crook of my arm and resting a hand on his stomach.

And I knew. I knew Venus was no liar. I knew that face gazing up at me in rapture was the same face that had blinked up at Ambrosine four hundred ninety four thousand five hundred and thirty-three years ago. Because it was Sanderson's face, and Hawkins's face, and Wilcox's and Longwood's and Caudwell's and Bayard's.

I held him to my shoulder, wrapping him in my arms, and I shook my head and stood. Very numb, of course.

"Oh, Cairbre and the Dagda. Why me? Why me?"

There had been so many hints, and I'd blown them all off. The broken crowns, always there even when China's one of coral ought to have taken precedence. The fact that Sanderson, firstborn of a firstborn, had the two layers of extra magic wrapped around his core from mother and father, both of them as pale purple-pink as mine. The fact that the pigmentation produced by his fagiggly gland was the same lavender- that one ought to have been a major tip-off. Rare enough was it for a nymph to lean towards his sire's fagiggly color, let alone share it exactly, but I'd simply denied, simply hadn't understood… The square faces, dusty purple-gray eyes, ink-black hair…

Madigan squirmed against me. I crouched on one knee to let him go. He walked a few steps towards the rock where Logan sat, wavered on one plump leg, and plopped down in the damp grass. As he began to pull up the blades, I wondered if Venus would be providing us with clean napcloths for him, or leaving me to bathe him in the stream. Perhaps if I'd trusted her more, I could pawn him off on her for a time.

"A few hundred years", she'd said, the phrase jumping as casually from her tongue as a "How are you?".

My eye twitched. These metal walls broken up by dirty windows where any passersby could come to leer at us were no home for an impressionable nymph.

"Break us out a' here?" Anti-Fergus repeated in my ear after I'd whispered it first in his.

"Shh. Do you want the Triplets to hear you?" I began to float from one end of the largest treehouse to the other and back again. "You can't tell me you want to see your Madigan grow up in this Darkness hole."

"In a sterile, well-provisioned enviro'ment where medicines ain't far off an' good people who want him ta have a good life are watchin' over him like bats an' I know my dad can't never get ta him?"

I hesitated. Anti-Sanderson, lying "on" the nearest bed with his feet in the air and his head on the floor, suddenly sat straight up. Anti-Fergus curled his lip.

"Yew ain't the only one you gotta think about anymore, Fairy-Fergus. Check yer privilege."

I stopped my pacing and stared up at the hard roof. "I wish I knew if they can see us even when we're here inside the treehouses. I don't feel any globs of scrying magic tucked away in the corners, but I don't want to discuss my plans out loud if they can."

Anti-Sanderson scratched his chin. "Well… I can think of one way we'll know. Bet those heartthrobs drink it up."

"How so?"

He unbuttoned his red and yellow jacket, threw it down at my feet, then went over and lay beside Sanderson on the other bed. As Sanderson rolled over, blinking in bewilderment, Anti-Sanderson put one clawed finger to his lips and used the other to bring Sanderson's mouth nearer to his own.

Before they could touch further, all five of us were slammed into the opposite wall. "The yoo-doo doll," I grunted as we slid down. "We'll never pull the satyr fluff over their eyes so long as they have that."

Beside my twisted arm, Madigan began to whimper. Anti-Sanderson stamped his foot and flung his hands into the air as he heaved himself up. Brown wings rustled. "Ay, send me an anti-damsel if it grosses you cherubs out to see me flirting with a Seelie. Anti-Idona, maybe. I awful miss her. You can't cut me cold turkey like this." He paused. "Although admitt'dly, cold turkey does sound super delish."

"Put yer shirt back on, loverboy," Anti-Fergus said, tossing over his jacket. "Not only are you a decade shy of three thousan', but there's another minor 'sides you two present."

Madigan was now busy gnawing on the wooden floor where he'd fallen face-first after dropping from the wall. I picked him up and set him straight, and he went tottering off to the nearest chair and drummed it with his palms. Sanderson sat up, rubbing his eyes.

"You can't have had a damsel," he told his counterpart. "I haven't had any yet."

"I can do anything I want when I want to, lollipop. I just can't have pups with them and I have to mate with the anti-damsels when you take their primaries. Not a lot of choice there, quoth the universe- not any more than me hunting down your core when I was just lifesmoke. Like…" He leaned back. "Like, imagine that some damsel you din't know too well suddenly got really, really super good-lookin' and smelled like graham cracke's. It's instinct. But outside a' that, I can kiss anyone I wanna do like that, and one day when I'm older I can e'en sleep with 'em too. That's what you do, right, Pop?"

Anti-Fergus twitched his hands and didn't turn around.

"Well, I hope so. Ennet needs his bedtime snuggles. Just not from his daddy. Geez, you're so clingy, Pops."

"Why would you want to mate if you can't have nymphs?" Sanderson asked, wrinkling his nose. "I mean, that's dangerous, isn't it?"

"Only for Seelie, if you don't channel yellow," I muttered. "And not as much nowadays as it used to be."

"And it's just weird."

"I dunno. I just wanna show off in front of my brothe's. It's tough gettin' the damsels to like us 'cuz we're green instead a' blue, and the only time I've gotten a really good kiss was with this one anti-brownie who wo'e glasses." Anti-Sanderson ran his tongue across his fangs. "I like 'em when they wriggle after you pin 'em down against the couch and their squeals turn to chirps when they're all cheery-like."

"That ain't never happened," Anti-Fergus muttered.

"Aw, Pops, not in front a' Sandy Prime! How would you know anyway? You don't eve' leave your house 'less you're goin' out to find Anti-China."

Sanderson rolled his eyes. "Brownie-kisser. To think I actually believed you were getting with real damsels."

"What's wrong with brownies?"

"Brownies are the exact opposite of 'showing off'. Anyone can get a brownie because half the time they're too polite to say no, and the other half they're just too stupid, and there are lots of them without mates because no one wants to risk their poisoned lick except maybe other brownies who are immune, and they barely even kiss right or anything." He paused. "That's, um… that's what Wilcox said his school friends told him one time. Me and him wouldn't know, obviously."

"'He and I'," I corrected.

The look of frustration that flashed across Anti-Sanderson's face is one I won't forget. I glanced Madigan's way again and shifted the subject. "Anti-Fergus, did you ever meet your mother?"

He moved his eyes between me and Anti-Sanderson a few times. "Erm. Uh. Well. It's been a long time, but I sure think her name was Anti-Solara, and she were a full-blooded anti-fairy. I ended up runnin' off from home when I was still young, so I'm 'fraid I can't tell ya too much 'bout her personality. Ennet's right. The blueies don't like us oddball greens."

Later that morning, we found two cherubs waiting for us on the other side of the long main window to the right of the door. As each of us strayed from the treehouse, they tapped the glass and summoned us over to request our breakfast. Anti-Sanderson ordered turkey, Sanderson went with oatmeal, Logan had some sort of salad, and Anti-Fergus asked for steak.

"Flaky crackers," I said when it was my turn. "I want stacks of them. And coffee."

They came alongside the damsel who was to feed Madigan. I passed him over and waited for Anti-Fergus to finish with his plate. When he had, I licked it completely clean before rubbing it dry with my sleeve. Then I took my crackers one by one and brushed all their salt down onto it. Perhaps the cherubs were watching through their screens, but if so they didn't stop me. When I had a small but decent heap of salt, I tossed the plate over my shoulder face-down. It thumped in the grass.

In an instant, Anti-Fergus and Anti-Sanderson came running over from the far side of the prison. "You rang?" the latter asked.

"Oh." Attempting to keep my disappointment from flooding my face, I picked up the plate again. "I was trying to summon the nearest Anti-Fairy in the hopes of aid. Somehow I forgot you qualified."

Anti-Sanderson looked around for some bad luck to cause me for my spilled salt, then punched me in the gut and darted off. He hid himself in a treehouse or behind some plants somewhere. I didn't bother searching him out for revenge, but he stayed away for a good half hour. Then he was the first one to the windows when the cherubs came to take back our dishes.

"Hey, so can I get a couple a' damsels in here to play with or what? I've been here two days and I'm already bored."

The blue-haired drake shook his head in Anti-Sanderson's direction. "You are all forbidden from copulating or performing any sort of close-contact foreplay activities that would lead up to copulation until we can determine if you really do reproduce parthenogenetically. And, you're only 3,000."

"Genetics what now?" he asked, scrunching his brow.

"The Eroses are keeping you here to see if you're capable of asexual reproduction. So far, that's the leading theory on the table for why you all share identical genetics."

"Like a tree," I murmured as the clean and fed Madigan was returned to my arms.

"In some respects. We're fairly confident in the idea, but we'd like to get an answer as to how and why."

That made Anti-Sanderson fold his arms. "I'm not a smoofing idiot. Along with bein' underage, I know I can't repr'aduce unless Sandy Prime does his thing first. Why can't I have a little fun if I want to?"

"Honey, asexual or not, pseudocopulation can stimulate your eggs into waking," said the cherub without changing the tone of his voice, and as though he were going over the basics of mathematics with a very small and rowdy child. "After which, if they don't have a host to lock onto, they will kill themselves. Blackened anti-eggs lead to children who are technically dead, same as if an anti-damsel - er, well, I guess you - ate too much sugar during pregnancy."

"I don't care. I had this anti-brownie friend at the hospital where everyone was cutting me up who was a black egg. I know how it goes. I can handle a 'dead child' if it means I got to have a good night with a damsel. When I'm older anyway, if you let us stay so long without throwin' us out- can I jist get a kiss now?"

The cherub didn't even blink at Anti-Sanderson's stubborn words. "Uh-huh. I don't think so. Well, regardless, the black-egg condition would be severely painful for your offspring and we're trying to avoid it. As for your Seelie counterparts, we're testing the timing theory. If the theory proves itself false, then we'll let your primaries pick out all the damsels they want, and we'll see what happens. Anti-Fairy or not, at the moment you're an anomaly and we're trying to limit our variables."

"Timing theory?" I prompted when he turned away without going on. He glanced back at me.

"We made a house call last night. Every one of your offspring is almost exactly five hundred years apart, aren't they? Add or subtract some here and there. You've had one each time you've hit peak point in your cycle for the last three millennia."

Had I? I had noticed before, perhaps, but never really considered it in any great detail… If I'd been looking for a pattern then I surely would have caught it, but since I'd simply assumed that damsels and drakes were required to mate before nymphs could be produced…

He and the second cherub began floating off. I pounded my fists against the window. "Hold on! Madigan is only four months old! You can't really hold us up in here for five hundred years."

"Aphrodite Protocol," said the damsel. As she looked me over, her eyes took on a hint of pity. "I know it's a pain for you, but this is for the benefit of all Fairykind, Seelie and Unseelie alike. If you're the holotype of a budding new race, that's something we need to know. It won't last forever."

"There has to be a better way. I'll swear off damsels out there- I'm not even a big fan of damsels. There's no reason to lock me up."

The blue-haired cherub again: "We don't keep track of births, only copulations and fertilizations. Evidence suggests that you slipped through the cracks by reproducing with yourself without copulation, because for the last three thousand years, our system didn't even know your offspring existed. It can't recognize them as individuals- None of them even has a universal ID code of their own. They were entirely skipped over. Zero legal records. Only their fingerprints tell them apart. If our technology is unable to pick them up, we can't just take risks. You will stay here, in a controlled environment, under our careful gazes… It's only five hundred years."

Anti-Fergus, who had recently come over with Logan behind, twirled two sticks between his fingers like wands before shoving them in the waistband of his pants. "Yew pucks can't keep watchin' us all the time. Sooner or later, yer gonna slip up, and I'mma blow you through when that happens."

He got a deadpan look for that from the both of them.

"Right. Cherubs. Guess ya can keep watchin' us purty easy. My bad."

The damsel looked to me again. "If you didn't know, the dwarves are an all-male species. They breed with damsels of other races, and there's no such thing as a 'full' dwarf these days. You may be the same. Another mutation in the genepool, something like the Cosma mutation. That's what Dm. Charite thinks."

I rubbed my chin. "The dwarves are considered a separate race, aren't they?"

She nodded and clicked her heels together. "Like cherubs, they don't have a natural cap above their heads. Their repeating behaviors match no other species either. When wings crop up then their genes render them different than the other races'. And their nymphs are shaped a specific way unique to them- that same pointed shape they cut their gems into, flat along the top. The will o' the wisps broke off from the fairies when they began developing moth and butterfly wings, and the same thing happened for brownies when the first soft hats began to appear. Mutations. Blips. Maybe you're next."

"Maybe," I murmured, and let them take the dishes away. Still, I paced back and forth by the door. A mutation I could accept. I was squarish and broken-crowned since birth. But no species had ever branched from the fairy tree by turning "parthenogenetic" before. I wasn't sure what to think of that.

Anti-Sanderson threw his black crown on the ground and smashed it into the dirt with his shoe. "I don't care what those cherubs said. I can do whatever I want. Ayo, Sandy Prime! How much you wanna bet I can plant a hickey on you before they drag us apart?"

Sanderson backed away as Anti-Sanderson started towards him, and then in the same instant they both broke into running. "Knock it off," I called, but after a good two minutes of running circles around one of the fake trees, Anti-Sanderson caught a branch and used the momentum of his swing to shove Sanderson backwards to the dirt as he came around. He grabbed his counterpart by the tie. That was as far as he got before we were all flung about four feet to the left. As Sanderson scampered to my side, Anti-Sanderson pushed himself up on his elbows and laughed.

"See, that's fun. Do you think I'll give out before they do? I think not. Come on, Sanderson. Round two."

"Go kiss a brownie," Sanderson snapped back, clinging to my arm. His wings skipped wildly. "We're way too young for this. I'm Seelie and you're Unseelie. Rhoswen syndrome is gross. We're related. I don't even like you. And your spit is acid."

I pushed him behind my back and flapped my wings at Anti-Sanderson as he came prancing up. "He wants you to let him alone."

So Anti-Sanderson shrugged and wandered off, but I couldn't be within a wingspan of Sanderson all the time, and every few hours he'd be back to chasing him again. Whenever he came close, the cherubs would twist or pull or shake or outright throw the yoo-doo doll to send us all flying apart. I could only imagine the chaos Ambrosine had to deal with back at Wish Fixers three or four times a day.

Anti-Sanderson reveled in it. Finally, after a month and a half of near-misses and tickle-fights, one of the Eroses himself came to put his foot down on the matter. Ludell knocked on the window for about twenty seconds before he turned around.

"Anti-Sanderson, if you keep this up, you will be moved to solitary confinement to prevent you from interfering with our research."

He examined Sanderson, pinned anxiously beneath him with a foot in his stomach, then pulled his leathery wings in tight and skulked away. "I was only playing, honeybunch. It's boring in here. Can we get some new games? Maybe anothe' pack of cards? Maddie chews on everything and sooner or later we'll entirely exhaust Truth or Dare and Neve' Have I Eve'."

Madigan was, indeed, in the process of nibbling holes in Anti-Fergus's jacket while he slept. Only that morning had a cloud of magic, all gray and black, come swirling out of his forehead and enveloped the little fairy. It had swept into his mouth as I held him, sought out the deepest core of his being and personality, and plucked up a few other stray traits that Madigan would no longer possess. Then it had returned to its sire's side and culminated into the green pup who now sat sucking his own big toe. We'd been told he'd get clothes. We just didn't know when. I'd already begged my counterpart to forgo the hideous red-spotted yellow suit, but he wouldn't listen to me. And, unfortunately, the cherubs respected parent-child bonds before my opinion. Even if it was for the kid's own good.

Ludell beckoned me to the door with his hand. "Venus just got off her shift, and then she wants to talk to you about your biology."

"May I come?" Sanderson asked, springing to his feet.

"I'd also like to," echoed Anti-Sanderson as he batted his blond eyelashes.

"Fine. You can all come. Wait a few moments while I get more escorts. But Anti-Fergus stays here with those two babies."

As soon as he left, Anti-Sanderson grabbed my arm and drew me closer. "Thought he might go for reinforcements. Here's the plan, turkeys. When he opens the door, I'll say 'Lead the way', and that's our signal to jump him and bolt."

"I thought you and your father kissed the ground the cherubs floated above."

He shot me a pouting look. "Ay, your Sandy may not mind a life a' bein' cooped up in a cruddy office all day, but I've got dreams, honeypie, and I gotta be free. I can't stand fo' this."

I glanced over my shoulder to see my Madigan halfway on top of Anti-Fergus's chest, which rose and fell with his snoring. I had some doubts, but it wasn't as though he could drown in water he couldn't submerge himself in, and even if it did reach above his head in certain places, he knew to stand up and crawl away. He was five months now, and not an idiot.

Still…

"No go," I told Anti-Sanderson.

"Huh?"

"It does us no good if we fight our way out and these three are left behind. We either all leave together, or none at all."

Anti-Sanderson stared at me. "Who are you, cheese roll? That doesn't sound out a' characte' for you? Not even a li'l?"

I shook my head and uncrossed my arms. "You misunderstand. I've been haunted by this curse of bearing genetically-identical offspring for millennia. While I may disapprove of their methods, I do want answers and I'm not leaving the Eros Triplets until I get some. And aside from that, I haven't a clue if they're the type to take their anger out on Madigan if I should act disobedient. He's not even out of his exoskeleton. He still hasn't come into full immortality- it would be so easy for them to end his life. Slit! And with him, that of your brother. Is that what you want?"

Anti-Sanderson refused to look at me. I grabbed him by one side of his jacket collar and gave him a shake. "Is that what you want?"

He shoved me off. "Geez, no! I mean, if this were befo'e Lukey had been born, then sure, I won't pretend I'd stick around. I'm Unseelie first, and terr'able friend second. It's just…" He ran his claws through his yellow hair and then kicked Sanderson's ankle, hard. "I was just tryin' to act helpful, Uncle Fergie."

"Don't call me that. And don't speak of escape again unless you've managed to formulate a plan to get us all out of here together." I adjusted the tight-fitting violet shirt I'd pulled on for the day, trying in vain - as I always did - to smooth out stretch marks and wrinkles. Then I cracked my knuckles, and placed one hand on Sanderson's shoulder, and one on his counterpart's. "Now. We will be on our best behavior. In and out, adhering to the rules, doing as we're told, respecting authority, and no one gets hurt."

"Yes, sir."

"Aw, that's no fun. Maybe I won't go at all."

I nodded through the window and down the hallway. "Think fast, then. Here come our little feathered friends."

Still seething quietly through his yellowed fangs, Anti-Sanderson stuffed his fists in his jacket pockets and trailed after us. Thankfully, rather than taking us back to the dim control room, our escort walked us instead to a neighboring office with a wide door designed after the famous double heart insignia. The inside was pink, but it was a pink tinted at just the right shade that it was nearly lavender. The room was small- not at all where I'd expect the most famous damsel in this quadrant of the known universe to settle in to work.

But, I reflected as my eyes wandered over the bare walls, clean desk, and four uninviting squishy bean bag chairs which lacked proper back support, Venus perhaps didn't spend all that much time in it. She pushed through an eight-hour shift nonstop every day, and of course required time to eat and sleep, for even she was Seelie. What time remained, if I remembered correctly, she perhaps preferred to spend making rounds throughout the menagerie, or visiting the research labs, or training the heirs to the Eros Nest. Venus did not complete paperwork herself; she had underlings to fill that out for her. She was a holy figurehead, and certainly never found herself lacking in things to do.

"Sit," she said shortly when we filed in, closely followed by our escort. She did not stand and greet us with a handshake as I might have done in her position, though I was gratified, at least, that she did bother to look up. Again if that had been me in her throne-like chair with its high, ornate back, I likely would have been working until it was implausible to do so. Skimming papers and crossing out words with bleeding ink until my audience grew restless and I let the game drop.

But Venus had nothing on that shiny chesberry desk. She sat there, fingers knit, with her chin balanced on top of them. Her blue eyes followed us as we, with varying degrees of willingness, dropped or threw ourselves into our plush seats. The desk then became much too high for my liking. Clever way to make up for what she herself lacked in height. I adjusted my position a few times, regretting the tight shirt. I missed the authority of my gray suit and tie.

"Where are the others?" she snipped then.

Ludell blinked at his elder sister. "Which ones did you want?"

"All the paratypes you can get your hands on and the Unseelie counterparts. Take them all to the ballroom where I'm giving my presentation. And for Aengus's sake, don't dilly-dally. The research ambassador committee are finishing up their breakfast and they expect to see them soon."

"Y-yes, Venus." He left, wiping his forehead. Venus flicked a signal with one finger for our guards to hover in the back of the room. From the sound they made as they passed us, I had a sneaking suspicion that they were loading their bows. Sanderson glanced sideways at me, but I didn't turn around. Instead, I kept my gaze locked on the sole damsel in the room.

"I approve of your office, good dame. You have fine taste."

She didn't blink. "The results are in from that test we ran on you in the lab last week."

Doesn't anyone small talk anymore? was what I wanted to ask, but instead I said, "I presume your wise hypotheses were correct, surely."

"Oh, choke," Anti-Sanderson muttered. Following the phrase 'Unseelie counterparts', he'd pulled his knees near his chin and tightened his arms around his chest. The claws on his bare feet kneaded the corduroy of his bean bag.

"In a sense, yes." Venus took her chin from her fingers. The hands went down to her desk. Still folded and far across the surface- not with the rough pads of her fingertips barely clinging to the edge, like I might have done. She straightened her wings with a rustle of stork-like feathers. "When Dr. Ranen first came forward with the information that he presented to us about your procreating despite the apparently-disconnected structure of your reproductive system, I was not sure what to think. And that upset me very much, as I consider myself an expert on the subject of reproduction."

"You'll have to share some of your research with me sometime."

"I am about to now," was her reply, though I didn't think we were really on the same track of thinking here. Once more, Venus brought her small hands together and inhaled through her nose. Loose flakes of magic glittered at her nostrils. "After reflecting on the research we obtained from our lab study, Charite, Ludell, and myself have concluded that you are indeed a cryptic fae. I've pulled up all the records we've filed for you throughout your life. Not his, of course," she said with a scornful glance at Sanderson, "but nonetheless. I believe it's time we spoke seriously about identifying you as the holotype of a new and unique species under the Faedivus genus."

I sat, stupefied, with one hand in my lap and the other crooked at an awkward angle behind me on a tough lump of denim bean bag. I remember every detail without the aid of time keys: the white beads trickling out from a tear near my thumb, the jump of the cherub just behind me, the whizz of a misfired arrow past my cheek before embedding itself in the leg of Venus's desk, the fumbled apology, muttered forgiveness, the pursing of my thin lips as I sought words that flew away, the serendipitous clash in my ears of blood cold and hot. Anti-Sanderson stuck two claws in his mouth and let out a whistle that made Sanderson twitch the tip of one wing.

"Are you for real?" I asked when my voice came back to me. Sure, those other cherubs of hers had first planted the idea in my head weeks ago, but I hadn't truly believed…

Venus fixed me with a tight look that emphasized the wrinkles and bags around her eyes, despite the smears of make-up dabbed around them. "The first rule you must learn if we are to work together is, I'm never not 'for real', Fergusius Whimsifinado."

Anti-Sanderson snickered. "Your full name is 'Fergusius'?"

Without getting up from her elegant seat, Venus turned over her palm and put out a finger as though she were placing its nail beneath my chin, and pressing two others into my squarish cheeks. "To classify a new species, one must prove beyond any shadow of doubt that the assumed new species is indeed unique from every other one already documented in the known universe. Such differences may be as obvious as body structure and behaviors, or as subtle as the arrangement of teeth or the makeup of saliva. In your case, fortunately, we are dealing more with the former."

"But… a new… species…" Pieces, little pieces, of all that I had ever believed were beginning to crumble in my hands and spin around my head.

"A young fairy drake born with square wings, square features, and a reproductive system all his own. Curious, isn't it? Hm? I might even dare to suggest that with his clumsy magic, he pings instead of poofs. You, honey, are an anomaly. I've built my life on studying anomalies. And that's what I've invited the research ambassadors here for. We're putting you in the universal files today. Come here."

With my mind reeling over everything she'd said, it took a moment to realize she was still addressing me. Venus motioned with her hand and made a light kissing sound, almost as though she were calling to a disobedient cù sith. Insulted, I remained unmoving a second longer than necessary. But when she withdrew a crisp sheet of parchment from her drawer, the allure of the ink brought me to my feet at last. I took it when she held it out and began to read.

"Would you look at that, Sanderson. When I woke up, I was calling myself a fairy. Yet here I am now, and we have a real scientific classification of our own. 'Faedivus quadratum'." Though I'd dropped out of the law program when I'd left the Academy behind, even I knew enough Milesian to understand that. I glanced up. "You named us 'square fairies'."

"Oh? What was your suggestion?"

Shaking my head, I skimmed down the rest of the document. That wasn't the point. I'd wanted to pick it. Venus and Charite had taken my measurements a week ago when they'd called me down to the lab. Height, 3.8 ws. Weight, 164'4 fp. Wingspan, 3.3 ws. I noticed, unhappily, that the section labeled 'sexual behavior' had been filled in as well.

"All right," I said, returning the paper to Venus's vaguely outstretched hand (Vaguely, as her elbow and second arm remained on the desk as they were). "But we can't just float about introducing ourselves as a race called 'square fairies'. That's uninspiring. Do I at least have the honor of picking our common name? Because I have just the one."

Venus nodded. "That is the tradition, so I was hoping you would. And it's…?"

"The Spriggish."

From the ripple in the energy field behind me, I sensed Anti-Sanderson cock his head. "Aw, no. Don't tell me this is going to be a thing like with the huldufólk, always havin' to stick the 'the' everywhere."

"I like it," Sanderson said. "Because we're a sprig from the Fairy tree?"

"It's dumb."

"It's good!"

"You're just saying that 'cuz your daddy made it up!"

"So? Mr. Fergus is good at naming things."

"Yeah, and that must why your dad named you Mister and mine called me Ennet."

Venus just raised a single eyebrow. I wondered if she'd ever heard the term 'sprigsy' before, and remembered with a guilty flash who had taught me that word.

"Yes, well…" I ran my fingers through my hair. "Saying it out loud for the first time, it doesn't ring quite the way I exactly wanted it to. Ah. I did have another option I was considering that's a sort of tweaked version. I was thinking, well… I thought 'pixies'. We're pixies. There's an 'x' in it. And it ends with an 's'. P-i-x-i-e-s."

Anti-Sanderson ran the word a few times over his tongue before he nodded. "Anti-Sanderson the anti-pixie. I like that bette', butterscotch."

"I'm glad someone does," I muttered.

After taking a quill and an ink bottle from another drawer, Venus jotted down the common species name I had given her. I watched it come into existence upside-down, and silently let it wash across my tongue. Pixies. From that very moment onward, I was not a 'square fairy', whatever my binomial nomenclature may be. I was a pixie.

The stopper went back into the ink bottle. Then Venus pulled from her drawer a bit of soft clay (pink, of course, like everything else she seemed to own- talk about a boring color scheme) shaped like a ball, and a bit of soft clay shaped a bit like a tadpole. "Your contribution is appreciated. With that out of our way, we're going to talk about the wands and the wings."

"Oh no," I said.

"Oh yes," she said, and a very small smile crept over her lips. I couldn't believe this. I was getting The Talk from Venus flipping Eros herself. I still wish sometimes that I could pluck that image from the timestream and swing by the Nest to get her autograph. Behind me, Sanderson and Anti-Sanderson continued to argue about their names, but more quietly now as they both tried to listen in while coming off as though they weren't. I stayed standing near her desk, fidgeting with the hem of my tight shirt.

"Egg," said Venus, tossing the ball to me. I caught it, and she threw the tadpole. "Sperm. The first is produced by those with two Z sex chromosomes. The second by those with a Z and W. Each gamete transmits fifty-four chromosomes with the goal of producing a zygote with one hundred and eight."

"All the Seelie Court do. Anti-Fairies have ninety-four, the Refracted one hundred and twelve."

"Correct, although I would prefer it if you made no attempt to tell me how to do my job. Now. Among the insects on Earth, it isn't uncommon for the one who lays eggs to produce 'haploid' offspring. These would be, to boil it down to very simple terms, drones. Said drones can at times be born of a ZZ-chromosome insect without the need for a mate. This is known fact. However, such a thing has always been thought to be impossible among the Fairykind due to our different body structures; we share only a third of our DNA with that of insects, one third with the generic Alien-type genome, and one-third with the Unwinged Angels."

(A sobering thought, that last one.)

"As I'm fairly confident you're aware, we require contact of sperm and egg to create the only type of nymph cells that will survive to term for us: diploid." Venus rubbed her cheek. "But you… you're very interesting, Fergus. Through some fluke of logic, it would seem that you've broken nature's code and figured out how to make all of your eggs diploid all by yourself."

I squeezed the clay sperm between my hands, dreading her follow-up. "Which means?"

"The results are inconclusive at this time, and will be until we witness you give birth, but evidence thus far would suggest that you don't need the sperm of a damsel in order to fertilize your eggs. In a sense, one might insist that you are supplying your eggs with your own sperm."

Sanderson whispered something, which his counterpart replied to. "Oh, fabulous," I said, and pinched my temples as I leaned a hand against her desk. "That is exactly what I wanted to hear first thing after breakfast. Really."

"That statement is less than accurate," Venus reassured me. "Our analyses consistently turned up no trace of sperm in your system. We don't yet have answers, and our leads are vague. There simply aren't good records of such things in the universe, even among my people. It will take time. But regardless of the cause, given the results we took in the lab, I can essentially confirm with 95% confidence that you appear to be the sole parent of your species. Turning your own haploid gametes into diploid zygotes is simply how your kind appear to reproduce."

"I'll be a sprite's uncle. Is there a word for that?"

"It's called arrhenotokous parthenogenesis."

"In Snobbish, please?"

She smiled as she gazed up at me, her chin propped on her knuckles now. "Asexual reproduction."

Wilcox's tree analogy, again.

Venus held up her other hand for me to return her bits of clay (which left me wondering why she'd tossed them to me at all). While she packed them away, she said casually, "And of course, as the ambassador of your species now, you'll eventually be expected to attend the Council meetings…"

"The Council meetings?" I snapped my wandering gaze from the ceiling back down to Venus. The effervescence caught in my throat- my lines rattled throughout my core- "The ones where the Fairy Council announces changes to Da Rules, cloudland trade policies, and important Fairy World business and such? I get to sit in on the Council meetings? At the great table with the other thirty or so race ambassadors?"

"Unless I'm mistaken, I believe that by default, you are head of the pixies."

I rubbed my cheek. "'Head Pixie', hm? … I like that. I really do. It's not so pompous a title as 'King' or 'Duke', anyway; I don't imagine my father should let me live it down if I showed up on his doorstep announcing that I'd named myself King Fergus… I may just have to stick with that honorary title."

Anti-Sanderson, who had gotten up at the word "Snobbish" and wandered over to the empty bookshelf, now turned back to us and bounced on his toes. "Ooh, can I elect myself ta be the ambassado' to us anti-pixies? Bet my daddy'd be okay with it. He's not really cut out for politics stuff. It's this guy's fault." He nodded to me.

"You misunderstand," Venus said with a shake of her head. "You are both still classified as Fairykind. Anti-pixies are considered Anti-Fairies, and therefore the High Count and Countess will attend the meetings as your representative."

He made a face and stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets. "Well, one day I'll sit on the Council. Pop's gonna leave me his hat when he dies."

"King Nuada spare us," Sanderson muttered.

"And yet…" My hands began to shake. My wings began to thrum. "I'm a… Somehow in paving the way to a new species, I'll finally get to…" I snorted to myself. "It's such an honor, it almost doesn't seem fair. I didn't really do anything to work for it."

"You bore the nymphs. You haven't allowed a single one to perish under your hand as of yet. That isn't 'nothing'."

"I suppose it isn't," I agreed as I lightly folded my arms. "It's about time I received a thank-you award."

"If a seat on the Council is all you want out of life, then you are easily satisfied." Venus, as she rose to her feet, twirled her parchment up into a tube. She had blown on it a few times, and evidently considered it dry enough not to smear. I had my doubts, but didn't voice them. "Come on then," she said, unfurling her feathered wings. Beautiful feathered wings. "I want to point something out to you before my presentation."

Anti-Sanderson skipped along in front of our group, as he tended to even when he didn't know where he was going. Venus pulled him back the first time, but it didn't keep him down for long. Personally, I was more than content with being behind her, Sanderson beside me, until we turned a corner and all at once, around a bend in the other direction, I felt a sort of shimmer. An unfamiliar, powerful aura that crawled against my face. Or… "unfamiliar" may not have been the correct word. Vaguely, I recognized the taste of it. But where I knew it from, I couldn't place it.

But the first one I did know. Yes, I was rather sure of it. I paused. Sanderson skimmed a few wingbeats further along before he realized I wasn't within arm's length anymore. All I could do for a moment was stare down that other, shorter hall that led to a set of washrooms.

"Come along, Fergus," Venus urged from behind me.

"Longwood?"

No answer, but I heard the unmistakable beat of a wing, the scuff of a hand or shoulder against the wall as someone shifted behind another corner. I hovered for a second, then started forward. The shift happened again, and the attraction signals and imprint stung stronger against my tongue. But before I had the opportunity to peek around the corner, Venus grabbed my wrist and yanked my attention forward again. Her other hand clenched Sanderson's elbow.

"I said, 'Come along'."

"… Right."

So we left that little hallway, and Longwood - if I hadn't made a bizarre error - disappeared in what, from the sound and my hasty glance back, was a cloud of smoke. It wasn't a poof. And, since shortly after this meeting I began to refer to pixie magic as a ping, I ought to clarify that it wasn't a ping either, but a more ancient power that I didn't quite recognize. The ripple effect left a thick taste in my mouth like glacial ice. All-consuming, canyon-carving, planet-conquering, time-stopping, world-changing glacial ice.

After two more pink hallways, each steadily wider than the last, we reached one decked out with a row of floor-to-ceiling portraits flanking us on either side. Thirty-four of them, I idly calculated at first glance. I attempted to walk onward, but before I made it far, Venus caught me and turned me around by the shoulders.

"Do you know who this is, Fergus?"

The portrait she'd stopped me in front of depicted a young, beaming damsel with lightning-blue eyes. A set of brilliant orange and black wings were flared behind her. She had both hands to her hips, a playful tilt to her head, and perhaps the whitest skin that I had seen in centuries. And ginger freckles. Eighteen of them. Against the dark brown curtain behind her, she appeared so ghostly pale that I half expected her to float straight out from the painting and offer me a curtsy. Or, knowing her, it would be a direct smooch to the lips and a pinch behind the wings.

"The first will o' the wisp, Ilisa Maddington. I recognize her by the long pegasustail." Kalysta had told me once that she was descended from Ilisa's ninth son, and the third to carry her gene mutation, Leander. Of course, three-quarters of the wisps I've ever spoken to have claimed connections to "beautiful Leander, the soft-spoken porcelain child" who redefined the entire scry bowl communication system the year before Ambrosine was born, so take that with a grain of dust.

[Editor's note: Canary, Ariette, Idona, Odessa, Jade, Tira, Shy, Brush, Santhine, Nera, Havilah, Peridot ~ Kalysta ~ Sonata ~ Roderra ~ Skyleene ~ Leander ~ Ilisa]

[Author's note: Source?]

[Editor's note: Your mom needs a source.]

"Very good!" Venus's fingers squeezed into my muscles, sending a shiver down my costas. "The Faedivus lepidoptera holotype, in fact. Fertilized in the Spring of the Rising Butterfly. She was a mutation just like you, you know."

"Not just like me," I muttered.

"Pardon?" Venus asked, a warning note threading through her tone.

At first, I didn't respond. My fingers moved out slowly, hovering, and touched the lower frame of Ilisa's portrait. I caressed a stylized orchid with my thumb. "I don't know what you want me to say. I assumed we were casting the same spell here. I won't pretend Maddington isn't physically alluring- even I have some sense that tells me that. Her face is symmetrical, her eyes wide and blue, brimming with lush lashes. That red-gold hair spinning down her back. I know certain features are accentuated and exaggerated here, but even disregarding that, she's a lovely bug. Taking into account the fact that there wasn't much of any will o' the wisp culture in those days, I won't pretend I wouldn't have been interested in spending a night or two with her myself."

Withdrawing my fingers, I simply tilted back my head and stared up at the great portrait towering above me. Venus released my shoulders. My wings unfolded, then tightened up again. Sanderson and Anti-Sanderson exchanged glances and perhaps a muttered word. And I just stood there, my hand lifted in midair with nothing to touch, my throat closing over until my windpipe almost strained.

"Maddington was healthy, dainty… blessed in certain areas that contribute to her beauty, and trained herself to wield a tongue that could charm the sugar off a candy cane. She had drakes drooling over her practically from the day she was out of puberty, if not before. 1,319,234. That's how many times Maddington's sperm is confirmed to have come in contact with drakian eggs during her lifetime- if I remember correctly, our upper school textbooks cited your family's research in confirmation to that. And given how small the Fairy population was in her day, I daresay she slept with over three quarters of the drakes in the known universe. My father was one of them. His first time with a damsel, he with nineteen lines to his core and she over twice his age. My grandsire Praxis, unless I'm mistaken, had his turn with her too at some point. My milkmother's husband slept with her at least three times. Maddington sold her body and the payoff was huge. She was literally crowned Miss Universe in some pageant during her career. I am nothing like her."

"I fail to see your point."

"Look at me." I snorted as I spun back around. "While I'm sure some drakes would disagree, it's so incredibly fortunate that her mutation and mine hadn't been reversed and left her the one to bear the genetic clones. Otherwise, my species shouldn't have continued at all, unique lepidoptera wings and bragging rights notwithstanding. Mutated, square, awkward, dull, overweight, a school dropout, an embezzler, a cheat- I'm disgusting. Everyone realizes it sooner or later and reacts accordingly. Everyone. My mother left when I was a nymph, I watched my friend Sparkle commit cold-blooded murder, I've never gotten along with my sister, and my father has essentially disowned me. And even if he offered to watch my offspring while I'm locked up here, it will still take a lot of time and healing before I can act like that never happened and try to move on. I am tired of people saying that they like me, because it's never true. Or perhaps it is for one moment, but once they get close to me, attempt to open me up, they change their minds. Always. Really. It's the only point on which I believe in the idea that ignorance is bliss. Affection is mere words, words, words, without anyone ever bothering to show me that they truly care. My ex-wife didn't even love me."

Venus tilted her head. "Did you attempt to procreate with her?"

"What?" I asked, taken aback and, perhaps, a tad flustered by the question. Anti-Sanderson pricked up his ears.

"Although in hindsight the action of copulation would appear to be pointless, I asked if you and your selkie had attempted to reproduce. I am the Triplet of the Morning. My shift runs from midnight to eight, and I don't remember seeing you on my screens more than perhaps once or twice."

"We… tried for a nymph on multiple occasions. It doesn't appear that we succeeded."

"That is irrelevant given your situation." Venus placed her hand on my shoulder again. "I would suggest you put these deprecating thoughts out of your head, Fergus, as they are only going to distress you. She is a damsel, you are a drake. If you came together with the intention of contributing new life to the universe, then nothing else matters. You did your best to achieve your purpose. The fact that you followed your instructions and were physically unable to conceive due to powers beyond your control is not your fault. Like Maddington and Braddocki before you, through your mutation you brought us a new species. That is worth something too. You aren't so broken after all."

Hm. Of course, I suppose she's right. She's Venus Eros, and has the authority to speak on such matters. As a being capable of reproducing on my own, without the contact of a damsel, it just made sense. What is marriage but a way to encourage reproduction? And if I reproduced on an automatic schedule ingrained in my biology, then I certainly didn't need marriage. I didn't need anyone at all.

"I'd go to bed with her," Anti-Sanderson offered. "If I were older, I mean. I don't care if she's Seelie. If she and me are both a' us mutations, I think we could find some common ground. With hair that colo', she must be warm, and I'll bet she gives some great cuddles. Maybe even a kiss if I were a lucky crockeroo."

Ignoring him, Venus flicked her eyes over me. "You seem upset that Maddington was given the power and opportunity that allowed her to play the field. It was necessary, of course. My grandfather was determined to ensure her beauty and species thrived, just as his great-grandmother continued the brownie line. Perhaps it will help you to know that the eventual genetic mixes among siblings appear to be at least partly why the wisp drakes turned out the way they did."

The thought of one of my little drakes taking one of my own little damsels as a mate briefly crossed my mind. I tightened my lips. "I suppose it does."

A shrug. "If we did not have cause to suspect you capable of reproducing independently of a mate, then we would set you to a schedule similar to the one my ancestors put Maddington on, calling for healthy damsels to volunteer and do what we consider necessary. Drafting under authority of Aphrodite Protocol would always be an option too. And no matter how unpleasant you think you are, you would be surprised what some folk would do for money. If - dust forbid - we truly found no one to accept you, then Charite and I would bed you ourselves. Eventually your drakes would come of age to continue your species as well. We would make it work. It's our sacred duty to make it work."

I twiddled my thumbs. "I think when you perform an experiment, you're supposed to try and eliminate all your variables, so for the sake of science, it might be useful if you-"

"Your selkie seems to have done that for us." Short.

Ah.

Venus slid her arm behind my neck and eased me closer. "Do you know, Fergus, the names of my ancestors who discovered and documented the mutations of the first will o' the wisp, the first brownie? Respectively."

"Euan and Sharita Eros," was my unhesitating answer.

"Precisely. And it certainly didn't take you very long, did it?" The arm withdrew. "Windshine Whimsifinado. Your great-great grandmother, if I am not mistaken. She wore the Purple Robe once upon a time. Names carry power, you know. Fame, fortune… Everlasting memories…"

I kept my tone level and looked her in the eyes when I said, "Precisely what are you getting at, dame?"

"I am arguably - or not so arguably - the most famous Fairykind known to the universe, but it's not enough." Her fists clenched as she pulled out the lower portion of her braid and retied it with rapid skill. "Countless members of my family have wielded the title Triplet of the Morning, and all too few are remembered by the general public after they have said their last good-byes. Their names have been marked down in our records here at the Nest, but are they taught in the history books? Are they discussed beyond their deaths? Oh, no no no."

Yep, I thought, some all-powerful cherub. She couldn't even get us real trees.

"Ha. I merely brought you here to this hallway, Whimsifinado, to both remind you that you are in good hands where my family line is concerned, and to give warning that you had better prepare yourself for a long and intimate partnership."

With that, Venus squeezed my cheeks together, pulling my face down towards hers. Beads of sweat gathered near my ears and along my lips when our eyelashes brushed. Her nose pressed against mine, blue eyes blazing like warm acid pools. That close to her, I couldn't help but pick up her direct personal imprint in the energy field- not simply the attraction signals that pulsed from her body and carried for a distance. They boiled and steamed with a stronger hum of raw, ancient magic than I remembered tasting since that time I had taken Charite's arrow one evening in Mistleville so very long ago. When Venus spoke again, it was in a whisper.

"Because I am going to study the oils and the blood and the bones and the dust straight out of you. You are going to make me a very famous Eros."

Then she planted a slow, drawn kiss on my forehead. It was not a nice kiss. There were twelve different Seelie dominance signals, all delivered to the face as opposed to the submissive ones along the neck. Although a simple dab of tongue to the forehead ought to translate roughly as "It is my view that we are more or less equals, but formalities are formalities", somehow Venus's kiss came off as something darker. Like the most dominant signal of all: the thick, quick lick from chin to forehead.

"Do I get a smoochie too?" Anti-Sanderson asked as she began to draw away. A good thing that he spoke up, because I was just floating there stupidly with my mouth groping for a snappy reply and finding none. He'd pushed back his blond cowlicks to show off his furry green forehead, which was balding in patches to reveal the tiny, soft rows of scales that made up his skin beneath.

"Oh, poppet…" Venus paused beside him, feathered wings slowly flapping, and stroked his cheek and chin with the back of her hand. "You'll be wishing you hadn't asked that once the ambassadors get through with you today. I heard recently from your grandfather that, well, 'anti-pixie' kisses carry quite the zip, and we've been dying to land and document the proof."

All at once, Anti-Sanderson became very quiet. He reached behind him for the wall. Once he found it, he curled in his wings and toes. "Oh, golly gee," he managed. "D-Dm. Venus, you don't mean… Oh smoke, no. No! Not Alapin especially, but no! Not any of 'em!" Lunging forward, he latched his claws into the sleeve of her suit. His eyes rolled about in his sockets. Trails of slobber dribbled from his fangs. He wiped his mouth with his elbow in a quick flash and squinted up at her. "Hey, V- V, take me! Leave my brothe's out a' this- I'll do it all! Kiss anyone you want and I won't complain 'bout it, for shure! I'm the oldest a-and it oughta be my job! Oh, dust and smoke and vapo', please, no, no, no… They're not old enough, not s-strong enough again yet…"

This time, I said it for her as I walked past, with my hat balanced on one hand as I pretended to brush off imaginary dust. "Aphrodite Protocol, punk. You will be compensated."

"No," mused Venus as she took Anti-Sanderson by the shaking wrist and my Sanderson by his elbow again, "I don't remember promising that this time around at all."

---

A/N: Text to Show - Spoiler alert: Dr. Ranen and Emery totally end up together, which is 90% of the reason behind Emery's existence. There's a square kid with lavender eyes in "School of Crock" during the scene when Crocker first arrives at Spellementary School who wears a yellow pixie hat with a purple swirl on it. I named him Chrysanthemum ("Zan" for short). He's a few years older than Poof and thus far he's H.P.'s only nephew, and spoiled to kingdom come. Emery will get an "honorary pixie hat" just like his at some point, and I guess we can let Logan have one too.