Frederick

I did not know what hit me; one moment I was stomping out of the Great Hall, the next I had landed in the castle moat.

I hauled myself up and shook off the water. My clothes are enchanted to keep out water and dirt, but my fur is not. God, I am going to need a bath after that.

I marched to the castle gates, muttering profanities under my breath.

The gate was closed. Two footmen with polearms blocked my way.

“Please step aside, sirs,” I growled. “I wish to give your mistress a piece of my mind and take a bath.”

“Noh, Monsieur Mountainheart,” said one of the footmen. “We have strict orders not to let you in and to throw you in ze moat again if you try to force your way through the gate. Until you… chill out… as Her Majesty put it, you will have to wait out here.”

“Chill out”—she really had them say that. God, I hate fey humor.

Undeterred, I stepped back, surged forth at the door, intending to break it down. The moment my elbow should have made contact with the door, I found myself in midair, falling back into the moat.

I climbed back out and stared up at the castle, growling because I was dripping wet and stuck outside without a way to clean my fur or get the answers I sought.

Then my stomach echoed my growl even louder. Maybe I should heed my angel’s advice, if only to put one or two of those bratwursts in my belly.

Oh well, surely someone in this town sells cooked food, and I still have my coin pouch. I am pretty sure the royal train carriage is still at the station.

A good walk may help me think of another way to get the answers out of Lady Fionnuala, and I may buy something nice for Aoibheann and the children too.

I sauntered down the main street to the train station, admiring the whites, creams, and primary colors around me. Golly, this town is spotless; not even Crown Heights back in Sliberberg is this clean.

I eventually spotted a man at a stand selling hot, freshly made meat pasties and sauntered up to him. “Monsieur, how many meat pasties can I buy with this much money?” I asked, holding up a shiny guldenmark. He gave me a blank look and filled a bag with a dozen pasties. “Wow, things are expensive in Slanach Town,” I said. “Thank you,” I said as I walked away. He did not reply, nor did he say a single word in that brief exchange.

I sat down on a nearby bench and started to eat my lunch. As I ate, I watched the people passing through the square in front of the castle. I scoffed down one pastie as people shuffled by quietly with shopping baskets and sacks of goods. Huh, strange, I thought, as I tore into a second pastie. Then a third and a fourth, and I barely heard a peep from the men and women on the street.

Then again, there was some noise coming from the street—from the kids. When a kid was with a parent, the children led the way. Every such group went to one of three locations along that main street to the station: the bakery, the sweets shoppe, and the toymakers’ shop, and all came out with the parent’s arm loaded with sweets and toys. And the things the kids were saying—my Rêvevian is merely okay, but I could tell the kids saw themselves as in charge and talked to their parents like they were servants.

I should have a word with Fionnuala about how bratty the children in this town are.

After lunch, I wandered about to see the sights, and my unease kept growing. Everywhere I went, the adults were blank-faced, glassy-eyed, and lethargic, going about their business like marionettes on limp strings. I tried to strike up conversations with a few important-looking people, but they ignored me.

At first, I thought it might have been my dirty, unbrushed fur, my musty smell, or the fact that I am a 7-foot-tall wolf man, but no. When I seized an older, lordly-looking fellow by the shoulders and ordered him to say something, anything, he just stared, vacant-eyed, at me until I let him go.

Practically every big street I wandered down had a toymaker’s shop and at least one bakery, ice cream parlor, flowershop, or sweets shop. I could not find a pub or inn anywhere.

Out of curiosity, and the hope of buying my way back into my family’s good grace, I stuck my head into one of the toy shops and balked at the prices. 10 silver coins for a simple teddy bear? Not even the Gleamsparks would sell their masterpiece toys for that price. I still bought a sack of stuffed animals for my daughters, a company of wooden knights for Tristan, and some overpriced roses for my wife for the price of two guldenmarks. Haggling with the toymaker and the flower shop owner was the only conversation I had had since leaving the castle, brief as it was. Worryingly, he didn’t seem to notice my haggard appearance, the smell of moat water clinging to my fur, or that I wasn’t human.

As I wandered on, I noticed something even more troubling. The only signs of life I saw were the children and the adults who served them. Little boys and girls ran roughshod over everyone as if they owned this town. Playgrounds full of kids were everywhere, and every corner seemed to have a pageant wagon puppet show, bard, juggler, or some other entertainment for children.

You know what I did not see at all in town? Dwarves, elves, fey, or any other non-human race. Nor did I see any adolescents. It seemed the only people in town were these doll-like adults being led by their children.

Eventually, I could no longer take the strangeness or the grime in my fur and marched back to the train station. To my relief, the royal carriage was still there, and one of the Locomotive dragons was enjoying her midday meal on a siding next to it; the cream-colored one. I can never remember ladies’ names. She was clearly enjoying her meal, from her smile and English comments.

“Hello there,” I said, sauntering up.

“Allo, your lordship,” she said sweetly. “Mighty fine weather we are havin’?”

“Yes,” I said. I wondered if it was appropriate to ask this of a random semistranger, but I needed answers. “You have traveled many times through this kingdom, Mrs. …”

“Mary, and right you are, Your Lordship; there is nary a town along the tracks in the Reves I have not visited.”

“Are the people in the other towns as strange as the ones in Slanach?” I asked.

“Strange how, your lordship,” asked Mary with a tilt of her head.

“Like the lanterns are on in the heads of the adults, but nobody is home.”

“Well, the children are all right; those darlings always want to climb all over me like I was some sort of jungle gym, but I have heard nary a peep out of the grown-ups; they just stand around on the platform without a word, waiting for the train to leave.”

I looked down; that wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. I had prayed it was just this town where the children were in charge, but now I wished I had kept my temper so I could have stayed in the castle and not seen anything in town.

I shuffled off towards the carriage.

“It was nice talking to you, Mrs. Mary,” I said under my breath.

She bowed her head and said sweetly, “Good day, your lordship.”

If I needed a bath before, I certainly would wish to take one now, but there was not enough soap in the world to wash away the uneasy feeling that I had seen something deeply wrong.

Aoibheann

“And so I had the wind blow Miss Juna Kreis’s parasol to the feet of Sir Valentin Vollenweider,” I said. “Their eyes met, and you could feel the sudden click of finding the right one. They have been courting sweetly for the last few weeks.”

Aunty Fifi started clapping. “Oh, wonderful, simply wonderful, rosebud,” she said with a radiant smile. “You are growing into your domain quickly, and your dominion is shaping up nicely.” She meant New Mountainheart, my new divine dominion. These days, I spent my free time arranging little miracles: a chance meeting here, a lost slipper there, a fortunate inheritance when someone needed it most. But for some reason, it doesn’t feel right…maybe because Fredy Pooh doesn’t know.

I sigh and turn my attention to the children. After lunch, we went to the garden terrace, where Tristan, Lillabella, Marigold, and Whimsy played among the flowers.

“What’s wrong, my little rosebud?” Aunty Fifi asked, setting down her teacup.

“Is this right?” I asked. “Changing people’s lives without their noticing or asking permission? Even if it makes them happy, I feel terrible when I make them forget something tragic or make a miser lose everything.”

“Oh darling, it is perfectly okay to make people happy,” she said as she swooped over and hugged me. “If a few people get a little hurt while more people are happy, then it is good. Just like when you were still the Genius Loci of the Valley of New Mountainheart, you didn’t ask for permission or take credit.”

She stroked my fur and hair as she used to when I was a little girl. She was right; I used to do this all the time before last year.

“Moreover, this is important training for you,” she said. “When the time comes for Grand Undertaking proper to commence, your powers of Retconn, Deus Ex Machina, and Plot Armor will be vital for our victory. And if the devices fail and Faolan threatens to break free, it will be up to you to seal Faolan back into the cell of cold iron.”

She has told me this all before.

“These silly-seeming things I have you do are building your domain around you and speeding you toward your final ascension. It took me until I was nine Faerie years old to ascend. Think about that: that is 1 million Domhannau years. You will do it before you are even 7 Faerie days old.”

She has not told me that before; it made me feel a little better.

“But what about Freddy Pooh,” I cried. “Surely we can let him in on our little secret.”

“No, Rosebud,” she said, shaking her head, “I have seen the future; nothing good comes from telling Frederick about your special nature before the time is right.”

“But what about devices?” I asked. “Fredrick does have a point; the people are scared. Surely there is something that we can do to prevent what happened from happening again?”

Aunty Fifi smiled. “It has been taken care of,” she said. “The artificers are modifying the devices so they will vent the output from the wyrd to the possibuilum reactors directly into the atmosphere.”

“When there is a dangerous build-up of wyrd?”

“No, all the time,” she said candidly.

I stopped hugging her and gave her an “are you serious” look.

She giggled. “We only need full power of the reactor once the undertaking is underway; we can vent most of the purified magic into the land, sea, and air.”

My mind raced; dumping faerie magic on that scale into the world would cause …interesting changes.

“Is that not wonderful?” she said. “We can turn the entire Silver Highlands and beyond into a reflection of the Valley of New Mountainheart, and turning the barren downs into fertile farmlands would probably stop all those silly civil wars the Lyonesses are always having.”

That was the least of what I was thinking could happen

“And it will increase the size of your proto-dominion.”

“Really?” I asked. I did not think it would do that.

A footman came in. “Madam Fifi and guest, ze scruffy wolfman prince is back at the gates; he seems to be less agitated, and he has a bouquet and several parcels from one of ze toymakers.”

“You may let him in, Jaque,” Aunty Fifi said. She helped me to my feet. “Well, I think you should rush joyfully to Fredrick with the good news about the accidents and all the free magic the world will now have.”

I did just that, lifting my dress as I ran off to meet Freddy Pooh.

My insides still felt twisted up with cold iron hooks at the thought of keeping things from him.