Magic in the Key of Joy (A Wylde & Cray Adventure) UIC2022

Chapter 6: Cray Zieh, But True

The problem with bureaucratic Fae is that they live for paperwork. Like our magic, our systems of governance are neat, tidy, orderly and absolutely unnecessary. Everything is triplicated, and triplicated again, in spite of the fact that every Fae knows it could all be over with the wave of a wand, or even a hand. Beauregard, my 15th ex-boyfriend, correctly thinks that it was created to slow things down so that we are forced to think before we act.

Fairies, pixies, elves, gnomes, wisps, and all other air-sensitive Fae tend to be flighty and impulsive (how's that for stereotyping?) Since this type is the most populous, the Sapien system of paperwork was adopted. No one but the dwarves who work the files know where the paperwork ends up. Once it's filed, it's usually there forever. Which explains the length and breadth of its storage facility – about 10 of your Sapien football fields, all underground.

Even with orders from the loftiest of higher ups, it took 2 hours before I could bring the Shadow Cleaners to remove any lingering silhouettes, stray dust devils, and taint of umbra from what was going to become Elysian Fields Travel. It was, in fact, a place for the Fae to breath in the restorative solidity of the Sapien plane. Without regular retreats to such 'travel agencies' around the world, the Fae would begin to fade. Right about now is when many of you ask 'Why?' I will teach you as I would our children.

Eons ago, there was one complete world. All of us who walk upright are descended from the original Homo Habilis. Homo Sapiens are one line descended from Habilis, and Homo Elfo (along with Homo Magia) are descended from the Denisovans. Sapiens reproduced often and spread like ants across the world. We reproduced slowly and kept to our small enclaves. You Sapiens eventually hunted us down, thinking we were either a threat or that you could steal our powers for your own use.

There was a great meeting of Magia and Elfo, at which some decided to live among Sapiens, breeding themselves into that line and thus out of existence. Some others chose to live in places that Sapiens never went – barren deserts, deep underground, or high in cold mountaintops - even in the clouds. This was the time of the Schism. A few centuries passed, and man came for us even in our hard-to-reach places, and in desperation, the three lines of Homo Habilis were sundered from one plane into two. The plane of Homo Elfo and Magia was painfully thin, because the magic required for the Sundering was immense, and the sheer number and weight of Sapiens was so vast that it kept most of the vitality of life inside it. The world is divided, and therefore the Sundering weakens us all.

The Fae must recharge themselves with this vitality, or they will fade into oblivion. My department seeks out spaces where these Fae can go and be safe from Sapien eyes and curiosity, and the Shadow (or the Sluagh.) "What's the Shadow?" you want to ask, "And why does it attack the Fae?"

Just as there are good and bad humans, there are good and bad Fae. Bad Fae desire to reclaim the Sapiens' plane and take it all for themselves. They want to punish the Sapiens for taking their freedom and their homes from them. ('They should be punished, Uncle Cray!' I hear my nephew say) Do you punish a Siren for singing your father to his doom? Do you hurt a fairy for stealing your sweets? It is in their nature to do what they do. There is Shadow in many Sapiens, just as I believe there may be Light in many Shadows.

(My nephew surprised with his next question that day. 'How do the Sapiens recharge?' I could not answer him, neither then nor now. Such a wise question, to have come from a simple child – I make a mental note to ask Baelena. Maybe, if I gather my courage, I will find a way to ask that green-eyed Fatebender.)

I use my cellphone to hire our 'remodeling service" to start on the renovation. Thinking about Baelena makes me think about Sunny, and I realize he has not kept his promise to contact me this morning. I mind-call him and get nothing! I focus on his aura signature, fold the space around it and jump. I land in what seems to be a storage closet, its door partway open.

I hear voices, one of which belongs to the Fatebender.

"Officer Constantine, the room was....it was like this when we entered, wasn't it, everyone? I think Marine Biology 201 uses this room sometimes."

Suddenly, the reek of high-level magics hits my sixth sense like a massive avalanche of pressure. Luckily, there was a sturdy shelf to hold onto. A slight tremor shakes the building. I peer out from behind the door – and it looks as if the room had been suddenly submerged into an ocean, and then yanked free.

"Earthquake!" shouts a female student with multiple piercings and shocking pink hair.

"Everyone under a table, or a desk, or a door frame!" yells Green Eyes, who sees me in this closet. In seconds, he's yanked me out and shoves me under a desk. He's got his muscled left arm around me, and looks at me with an intensity that would have any ordinary Sidhe calling up their strongest defensive shields – but all I want to do is just melt.

His face comes in closer, and the tremors increase. He's – by the One Tree, he's going to kiss me! Then the shelves in the closet fall, shattering the mood. The Fatebender looks at me and says, deadly serious:

"Mother Nature is going to catch such hell from me, for totally ruining our Rodgers & Hammerstein moment there. And don't you even think about folding space, or whatever it is that you do, and leaving me again - at least not until you explain everything, and we kiss."

He infuriatingly winks at me. "And not necessarily in that order."