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I should not have bitten the Dominus of Chicago. I really shouldn’t have. But I dare you to put yourself in my pseudopodia, and not also fall to urge to chomp down.
Picture it: You’re curled up in the ventilation below the Dominus’s chair - Chicago is a notoriously safe city even outside the enclave - ignoring all the various phantom aches and the unceasing hunger that never truly went away - not even after you ate a fully grow Argonet yesterday. And a healthy variety of other malicious malificaria you found skulking around.
You lay there miserable, contemplating bed because you had to wake at a godforsaken hour and listening to them badmouth two people who have done so much good without asking anything in return. They hadn’t needed to pay a thing or lift a finger to have half their enclave gilded with shining gold, but they are still upset at Galadriel Higgins for calling out the selfish behavior of their predecessors. And then they defend those predecessors - including the one who ensured you got put through hell. An ankle shifts temptingly above your head.
So I bit him.
He shrieked in a very satisfying manner. As I oozed away, I heard the complaining echoing through the vents - something about how they had thought that the ‘damn slime infestation was dealt with!” about six months ago. Around the time I bit him at the Christmas party.
Perhaps I should start from the beginning dear reader. Back at the reason - slime related ‘hallucinations’ aside - that Chicago Enclave is a nobody in the magical world no matter how important or pivotal the mundane side of the city becomes. Chicago is a cautionary tale, one of the lessons that gets drilled into the heads of everyone who learns the Living Stone construction spells - in fact, its number three: (1) Have bait in a convenient place to ditch the mawmouth because its faster than you; (2) No, we’re serious, it is faster than you; and (3) The story of Chicago’s complete failure to properly get their mawmouth’s core under compulsion. How, instead emerging restless, hungry and pouring out mana to fuel the rapidly growing expansion, the mana flow had almost instantly slowed to a trickle, the expansion had stagnated, and the mawmouth had fled screaming into the depths of Lake Michigan.
The only part that went right was the mawmouth was never seen again. The enclave got about a third of the space they had predicted, and while the expansion did stay up, the entire foundation was too unstable to ever expand again.
In my opinion, I deserve a medal for how successful the sabotage was considering what little time I had to do it. And it only took a decade or so for me to stop screaming and try to make the best of things.
I haven’t changed much in the last hundred years. I was born with a volume of about 3 cubic feet, and I have maintained my trim size since. That’s teenie tiny as mawmouths go. Unlike most mal’s, we don’t gain size by getting older. We either put on bulk by converting surplus mana to mass - and no maw mouth has surplus mana - or by eating people. Thank the lord, I have never been so overcome by my hunger - the biting is all spite - that eating a person has ever seemed like a good option: tiny I have stayed. Hence, the Chicago enclave’s reoccurring issues with ‘juvenile iridescent slimes’.
Despite being an ageless, neigh invulnerable, perpetually hungry blob monster things aren’t honestly all that bad! The pain is now the mild chronic type with the occasional stab of phantom limb pain: the acute pain ended when my physical brain failed. I am constantly hungry, but not more than if I had been fasting. There is the occasional nightmare where I’m back in that crucible, but... well I’m not over it because that’s not how trauma works... but I am handling it all very well - teletherapy has been a gift. And if you ever are overcome by the need to scream, I can highly recommend the bottom of Lake Michigan.
But with the advent of the modern world, I’ve found enough perks that honestly? Some of the time I genuinely enjoy my new existence. Grad students are a problem, but you have to love their enthusiasm at thinking I’m some exciting new variety of slime mold. Magic is long beyond me now. I am perpetually out of mana, I can still participate in many of the non-magical hobbies I had - I sew, I read, I keep snakes. I’ve even picked up a few new hobbies: by which I mean cheating in Hardcore Minecraft and building fancy things with Redstone. It is delightfully like complicated artifice. I upload tutorials as Prufread on YouTube. If I ever have helped you, you are most welcome.
However, the most gratifying thing has to be using my new status as an apex predator to protect the wizards of Chicago. Malificaria come to my city thinking it will be a wonderful place to set up their own territory; as far as they can smell there isn't anything big living here- just the usual pest malificaria and an enclave ripe for the picking. And then they turn around to find me, metaphorical fork and knife in hand.
My presence in Chicago has pretty much been good for everyone involved. Since I started eating all the malificaria, our wizards have faced the same amount of mal related danger as mundanes: no indies falling asleep on the bus, no kids getting eaten from an unexpected magic growth spurt. A couple of the indie parents had even decided that the 1:4 general odds of getting their child back from the Scholomance was simply not worth it and kept them home. So far all these ‘homeschoolers’ have survived. All 7 of them.
Which sounds wonderful! Fantastic even. If only the mundane advertising board could use that information, because it was terrible for the enclave. It completely upended the usual bargaining position. Being able to access the Void is nice, but the real draw enclaves always have held is the protection - or at least the promise of protection - that an enclave provided. Without mals breathing down their necks, and with growing evidence that the homeschooled kids actually had better odds than the Scholomance kids, the indie wizards have been remarkably less willing to put up with enclaver’s nonsense.
It almost makes all the whining the Council does understandable - if not a jolt less ungrateful. London needed a mawmouth going on a rampage to open up the leisure areas of the enclave to the general public. Chicago did that fifty years ago, so they could offer discounts on admission as a benefit of working for the enclave.
I dropped into mundane Chicago with one of the subway accessible commuter entrances. At this time of night, the platform was mostly empty, and while the handful of commuters were distracted, I did a quick check for any scientist - especially mycologists- then plopped down from the ceiling and pushed through a loose wall panel. Heading down down to Undertown.
Between you and me, lair is a tad extreme of a description for the little hollow at the end of one tunnel that I had expanded, and dried out, and sectioned off with a folding wooden divider. Beyond panels carved to look like the tree of life, the little grotto I’d created was filled with soft lighting, cozy piles of cushions and little shiny hanging decorations I’ve made or found around the enclave.
Ok. Stolen from the enclave. But I am paying their damn rent - metaphysically at least - I deserve some pretty things. And nice computer hardware. And internet access. And cookie tins filled with sewing supplies. And the occasional half finished piece of artifice that nobody really should be trying to build anyway. That’s really a win for everyone; they don't blew the enclave up, and I get a snack that doesn't try and bite back.
What's Undertown? Its Chicago Below: a sprawling maze of tunnels and roadways that modern Chicago is built on top of. The mundane parts are the largest section: mostly leftovers from the subway construction that never got filled in, maintenance tunnels that don’t appear on any map, and streets and buildings that sunk into the swamp that once bordered Lake Michigan. Then the residents: fugitives, mals, worse, expanded it. Dug out tunnels and rooms. Turned it from that sprawling mess into a true labyrinth: complete with any number of monsters lurking in its halls.
Even the mundanes keep clear. More for fear of getting lost than what could possibly be lurking in the dark, but once you're off that handful of reasonable accessible maintenance paths, the centuries of intent gets to even the most stubborn of mundanes. And then the residents can get also get them. Meanwhile the wizards won’t even consider stepping foot in Undertown with anything less than a proper shield holder and at least two others as backup. Even a fully prepared expeditionary force of combat focused wizards with state of the art artifice wouldn’t dare go deep enough to encounter my little hidey hole.
I said Chicago was pretty much maw free? Oh sweet child there are worse things than mals lurking in the dark under the world. Things older than humanity, things that don’t bother checking under their beds for me. Admittedly the Unseelie Court throws some raging parties, but they still think violence is a bit like garlic: it goes with everything.
Safely home, I cuddled into my stash of illicitly acquired pillows, and updated my co-conspirator on what I’d learned while spying on that day’s council session.
Nobody tells Alexander anything. Even though he’s the grandson of a council member, and the great grandson of a former Dominus. Even though he’s devoted himself to repairing those shaky foundations. You know, the public reason Chicago is going nowhere fast?
Its the very fact he’s trying to fix the foundations that’s causing the information embargo. Not that Chicago lacks people to tell Alexander if he was ever put under compulsion. Its also not that Alexander is opposed to going under compulsion if it means helping the enclave he loves. Its that Alexander's great grandfather is directly responsible for me, and he'd like his great grandson to keep speaking to him.
While it had lost Theodore the Dominus position, it was also generally understood that it also wasn’t really his fault: everyone knew the culprit was ‘that crazy rouge indie artificer’ (i.e. Me) he’d been forced to hire. They may have been out of power, but they still had influence. So, unless Alexander puts together Enclave + Mawmouth = Yikes himself? Nobody will be offering him that information.
Even I couldn’t tell him. I was under the same compulsion as anyone who gets to learn the dirty secret: even if my lack of consent meant it bound me more loosely than the rest. I could give him hints, but until he put them together in the dark he would remain. Maybe it was better that way. Some wizards have sworn off magic forever upon learning the truth. I knew he could figure it out though. Alexander had correctly deduced I was both a wizard (my approach to Redstone), and a Chicago native (Go Cubs).
No luck. I informed him over Discord. The Council has expressed a distinct lack of interest in approaching Miss. Higgins’s family to fix the unstable parts of the foundation.
Then, before he finished whatever he was typing I added Then the Dominus started shouting about getting bitten by a slime. You know that iridescent one that every malificaria expert says doesn’t exist.
The three dancing little dots the signified his response froze for a second, and then resumed. With a fury this time.
Hes the third dominus to have that delusion
Thinking it might be related to the foundation issues
Actually
He continued unaware of how right he was
Why dont we just see if Galadriel can come in incognito during visiting hours?
She fixed beijing and the scholomance
Maybe she will just recognise whatever went wonky withe the underlying architeture
The Underlying Architecture though that was a great idea.
Now that is a wonderful idea! If they tried to stop her it would make the entire Council look like they’re hiding something. Especially after everything that happened last year.
Although I dont know any way to contact her and there was the rub. How to get hold of Miss Higgins without alerting the Council. Its not like we knew her cellphone number or if she even had one. More official options would be hard to pursue without the Council’s permission.
I have an idea. I finally volunteered - I hate burning favors. But you’re going to have to meet me in Undertown. And bring a medium sized basket.
One with a lid.
What?!?1 undertown is way to dangerous
Don’t worry! Nothing lives in that stretch. I lied It’ll be completely safe! Besides, it so close to the surface that it barely counts as Undertown anyway! Its a five minute walk from Monroe. The old Morrison Hotel ballroom.
aboslutley not
*absolutely
Look. I cajoled You don’t have anything to trade with my contact. And, with how she’ll help its not like I can just pick it up for you.
The three dancing little dots had a strangely sulky air too them. Finally:
And the basket?
Best to explain in person, A thought occurred to me Oh, and bring your passport. We’ll need it to get back through customs.
A few days later, Alexander made a short, uneventful trip through the shallowest tunnels of Undertown. He slipped behind a loose panel in a non-public area of the Monroe subway station, and walked undisturbed to the large empty ballroom that had sunk into the muck of Chicago when the original Morrison Hotel was demolished.
There wasn’t anyone willing to try and poach someone I was stalking. The only flickers of life I saw from the other residents was final glint of Grey Malkin’s eyes and wide smile vanishing into the shadows, and Gogoth considering something until he caught my eye.
Alexander saw none of this. All the posturing and violations of Lewis Carroll's copyright happened behind his back. He was perceptive enough to notice something was off, but not quite fast enough on the flashlight to catch us in the act. He was accurate enough to sweep the beam over me twice even if he didn’t notice me.
I will not have this be considered a mark against him. I am very good at hiding. My utter lack of internal structure means my options for hiding and infiltration are endless: I can flatten my body out as thin as a digester, and like the clever octopus, I can fit my entire body through any opening big enough for my mouth and camouflage myself. Admittedly that last one doesn’t work on mycologists, but mundane trained to use their first sight are better at seeing things than even wizards.
While I went completely unnoticed, Alexander noticed my contact instantly. Its hard to miss Mehb. She always draws the eye for one reason or another. Even when Mehb doesn’t look a hair out of place, she always feels just a little out of place; like the Good Lord drew her in a slightly different style than the rest of us. Today, though, she did look very out of place: a tall woman with jeans and a half shredded Alice in Wonderland t-shirt and messy pale blonde curls standing in the dimly lit remains of a grand ballroom.
That was the first glance. Give it a second and her unnervingly perfect features stood out . You’d might notice the fact her pupils were just a little too thin and catlike to be normal. How, when Alexander’s flashlight swept over her, those pale curls glinted silver in the exact way the golden gilding on the walls and columns glinted. And then you’d realize that maybe it wasn’t a woman standing in front of you, but some casually dressed goddess, before Mehb ruined the mystique by pointily popping her chewing gum.
Alexander continued staring at her like an absolute idiot. Eventually he regained control over his voice.
“Are you Prudence?” He asked hopefully. He’s wanted to meet in person for a while. An offline meeting would certainly help with making sure we both are on the same page and could experiment with ways to fix the boundaries. I’d been rather firm in my no, and he hadn’t brought it up. Meanwhile, I know what he looks like, because Every Breath You Take is my theme song.
This is a lie. Its Nothing Can Stop the Smooze. How could I not identify with a giant slime with untold numbers of eyes and mouths?
“Nope,” she accentuated the popping sound of the ‘p’ by popping her chewing up again. Unlike Alexander, she was not fooled for a moment by my impression of a flagstone. Her eyes locked directly onto me.
“This has to be handled delicately or he’ll panic” I admitted before rapidly inching across the floor to hide myself behind a column. Alexander’s head and flashlight whipped around in the direction of my voice - following just behind my retreating form.
“That’s not going to happen Prue,” Alexander promised before he put the large basket down. He swept in a slow circle, the beam about where an average human’s head would be. “I can’t even imagine why you would think that is something that could happen.”
“Oh, I can think of a good one,” Mebh muttered low enough that I don’t think Alexander heard. Then she raised her voice so both of us would clearly hear her. ”Stars and Stone Prue, no wizard alive is going to see you and not panic. Ooze your way out from behind that pillar so we can get the inevitable freak-out over with, and I can be fashionably late to what is supposed to be one ragger of a party.”
Sometimes, you must yield to a higher power. Especially when you need that higher power to not be lawyer about a request you’ve made. I emerged.
Alexander’s body panicked before his mind even properly registered me. He was halfway to the door before the shriek of “Mawmouth!” left his mouth. Fortunately, I am faster than him. I parked myself in the door -and he took a sharp turn to the left. I let him flail around the ballroom until Mebh got annoyed - well, more annoyed than she usually is - and grabbed him by the collar.
That, along with Alexander’s momentum was enough. His feet shot forward while his torso remained behind and he hit the ground with a painful sounding thump. Mehb pinned him with a foot on his torso. She wasn’t pressing down hard enough to hurt him, but Alexander wouldn’t be going anywhere without her removing it.
“I’m not going to eat you,” I promised as I approached him. “I’ve been a mawmouth for as long as you’ve known me. And I’ve never eaten anyone. I don’t even like scaring people!” I added.
Mehb snorted.
“I usually don’t like scaring people” I amended.
My reassurances did not help. What finally got Alexander to calm down was that nothing was trying to knaw its way through his shield. After a few minutes of the only mana expense being the minimum need to actually keep his shield up, he opened his eyes slowly, then after a moment sat up. He looked at me - collapsed into a shimmery pool by his head - and actually managed to meet my gaze. After a moment his face went from the deeply warry, to blank, to utter confusion.
“Why are your eyes so sparkly?” Then he did a visible double take, “Is? - Are you wearing a bow?” He sounded so incredulous that I’d like accessories.
I straightened the admittedly rather pink and frilly ribbon stuck on a few inches behind my left eye. “It makes me look cute! And it helps everyone remember I’m a lady.” I started to answer, but -
“She wears the bow for the same reason that new parents stick one on their bald infant- so people stop assuming its a boy.” Mehb cut me off, removing her foot. “Meanwhile, the reason she looks like a cartoon character is because she thought would make her less terrifying. Clearly she wasted that favor.” Mehb was clearly still upset about being late for tonight’s revel in honor of the a midsummer full moon. Not that any of the sidhe need an excuse to party.
Finally convinced he wasn’t about to horribly die, Alexander sat up and gave me a more critical look. “The last three Dominuses have had a shared delusion that an iridescent slime keeps biting them.” It wasn’t a question.
“If they don’t want to be bitten, they should stop doing stupid things.”
Alexander paid little attention to my explanation. “You’ve been biting Domini for just shy of a hundred years.” he trailed off as he kept thinking. “Wait Prudence, over a 100 years old, skilled artificer, interested in the foundations - You’re that rouge artificer who sabotaged the foundations! What did we ever do to deserve that!?”
“What did you do!” I bristled elegantly, “What didn’t you do! I deserve a metal for restraint because all I sabotaged was the new expansion. The only people who’d have gotten hurt were -” and then my mouth sealed itself shut as that thrice cursed compulsion kicked in.
“Great.” Mehb sighed, popping another piece of bubblegum into her mouth. “Now you’ve got her all puffed up like a pufferfish about it. I foresee many bitten ankles in the Dominus’s future.” Suddenly her eyes started glittering maliciously, “She’s right that the enclave absolutely brought the sabotage on themselves. Although I wouldn’t be so quick to award yourself that metal Prudy. If you’d done it properly you’d would just be dead, not squishy.”
“I was doing it on the fly” I grumbled. “And it mostly worked - the enclave can’t strip me of all the mana I generate.”
Alexander suddenly went very still and quiet.
I let him stew behind me as I turned around to look at Mehb. “Can you get place us in contact with Gwen Higgins? We wanna talk to her daughter, and I know she’s got some friends on your side of the Veil.”
“My sister.” Mebh admitted. “Who is still exhausted after helping to quiet both Patients and Fortitude, and who will be very annoyed - with me - if Gwen has to deal with another one of you in less than two years.”
“Totally not the same situation!” I argued. “I’m only providing upkeep for myself, and I have decades of practice controlling my hunger. Also, I’m not a teenage boy who keeps mixing up his appetite and carnal desires.”
“Be that as it may, you still bit Lili the last time I brought you across the Veil, and she’s the sister I’m talking about.”
I poked at the basket with pseudopodia. “I’m betting she’ll overlook me if I’m safely contained in here. And if she does notice us, I’ll just offer my services eating magical messes.” It was a fool’s offer. Liliana only ever wanted one thing as payment. She’d want me -
“You’d be on call to babysit the twin terrors for a decade,” Mebh concurred.
The details straightened out, I flowed up and over the lip of the basket and pulled the lid down over my head. One tendril slipped out and pulled on the still frozen Alexander’s shirt sleeve. “Come on, if we make Mebh miss her party entirely she’s going to spend the rest of your life hiding your Tupperware lids and right socks.”
It took a little more tugging, but he stood and even picked me up without prompting. The bargain was shook on, and we stepped sideways through the Veil.
People call the other side of the Veil many things. I personally use the Nevernever - picked it up from this indie who actually lists himself as a wizard in the yellow pages. I’m pretty sure most of his clients think he’s like a PI with a theme, but if it works for him, it works for him.
I lifted the lid of my basket too look at all the pretty scenery. The Nevernever is pretty. And terrifying. Often at the same time - the Nevernever is very good at being both awesome and awful.
We had stepped out of the ballroom, and into a swamp. But not a nasty mucky swamp: a fairytale swamp. With twinkling willow the wisps and motes of light drifting through the air, and huge old gnarled trees overhanging with thick ribbons of moss and vines. Below Mehb’s feet the wooden boardwalk had greyed with age and stretched before and behind us, quickly being obscured by the fog. A low fog swirled around up around her legs, flowing back into the ballroom through the tear Mebh had created. It carried points and wisps of light that flickered out as they crossed into the mundane world. The fog utterly dispersed by the time it hit were Alexander was standing, peering through the tear warily.
“Are we walking to Wales?” The disbelief got had gotten him to finally speak.
“Of course, space works different over yonder,” Mehb stated like that explained anything. “Shouldn’t take us more than an hour or so.”
I rolled my eyes. I swear being obtuse is an addiction for fae. “The Nevernever is so vast that most of it isn’t even directly accessible from Earth. We aren’t compressing space: if we walk 100 feet in the Nevernever we will not arrive somewhere 1,000 feet on Earth in the direction we were walking. We’d arrive somewhere that emotionally resonates with what the Nevernever is like 100 feet from where we started. Even if that place is on the other side of the globe from our original position.”
He mulled that over for a minute. “So its a short hike between here and a place that resonates with Gwen Higgin’s home?”
“Effectively.” Mehb cut in before I could explain how it was only a short hike because Chicago was a traveling hub. Usually we’d be in and out of the Nevernever much more.
But we were burning moonlight, and Mehb didn’t have time for that. “Now will you come on?” Without actually waiting for Alexander to follow, Mebh started making her way down the boardwalk.
Eyes flickered in the dark spaces between the trees: disappointed that Alexander had caught up with Mebh. But for as interested in us as the owners of those eyes were, our little traveling party was left undisturbed. The residents of the Nevernever are about as willing to tangle with a mawmouth as those on Earth. And while not everything was scared of me, the ones that weren’t certainly were warry of Mebh. We did have a few scavenger types following us hopefully - maybe Alexander would randomly fall dead. I raised the lid of the basket and hissed at one spidery fae beast who was just a little braver or stupider than its peers.
Alexander stayed silent as we left the swamp behind for a vast glittering desert with strange pyramids of glass then through an old lava tube, that transitioned into a tunnel of ice through which the red glow of volcanic activity could be seen.
Finally, after we stepped out of the side of a truly enormous mountain and into a great green prairie occasionally sprinkled with tiny clusters of blue flowers, Alexander spoke, “Prue was the fact you sabotaged the foundation artifice the reason you aren’t you like every other mawmouth?”
It took some clever phrasing to convince the compulsion we were all just talking about information we all already knew. Addressing the back of Mehb’s head instead of Alexander helped.
“Yes, if I hadn’t the free will to do that sabotage I’d be as mindless as all the others,” I moved the baskets lid more so I could meet his eye. “Thankfully, Chicago didn’t get me properly under compulsion. That’s the problem with using a physical contract - magic is 70% intent, and the language of the contract invariably becomes entwined with that. Chicago signed off on a document I’d signed and edited without checking it. My consent to the compulsion become contingent on them not breaking the edited contact. I still don’t think they’ve actually read the new version.”
I shrugged moving the basket’s lid up and down “But the artifice still mostly worked instead of - well, I’m very loosely connected to the enclave. Which means that instead of draining all the mana my...condition... generates the enclave can only grab the bare minimum. So I have enough to form a virtual brain, and “
“and the chunk of the enclave tied to you would feel shaky because its running on a shoestring budget.” Alexander finished. Foundations and enclave internal resonance are his bailiwick. “They wouldn’t even be able to expand again - with the way enclave segments interact with each other, the segment tied to you wouldn’t be able to handle the stress.”
I nodded in agreement, than added “I’ve also never eaten someone. So I’m the only mind in here.” I continued. General facts about mawmouths are not covered by compulsion. “Even if Clark got to keep all the mana they generated, they wouldn’t be sane - there are just too many minds to keep all together: mana generation is linear, but mana needed is exponential.”
“Clark?”
“Well I didn’t want to call them ‘Chicago Initial Mawmouth’! Hence, Clark - for the Cubs. Got eaten by Patience two or three years ago.”
Ahead of us, Mebh snorted. “Not that you would want to waste the mana. Its not like there would be a dominate person, every decision would have to be a decision by committee. Imagine Patience - thousands of minds, most of them type A’s. It would make an Ent Moot look efficient.”
Then she had us take a sharp right around a rock and we stepped from a prairie to a flower forest. Sunlight filtered down through thinning canopy of leaves. We stood there for moment to take in the sight of a true, proper fairy garden.
The flowers were unlike anything on Earth - as is so often the case here. More perfectly shaped, more beautifully scented. Some glittered like they were carved from jewels, some glinted as though they were metal. Butterflies and bees with wings as delicate and intricate as any mechanical creature flitted between flowers. A well kept stone path wound its way between the trees, splitting off into little garden paths to let someone lose themselves in strolling. London paled in comparison, revealed for the sad shallow little copy it was.
I’m sorry that isn't quite fair. London's gardens are very beautiful. The difference is like trying to compare the nice piece of steak your friend purchased from the local butcher and made themselves, and having a perfect cut of A5 Kobe beef prepared by a master chef in a state of the art kitchen - yes I am hungry why do you ask?
Delicious comparisons aside, the magnitude of difference isn't just about skill, but also about restrictions and resources: talented they may be, but London’s artificers didn't have centuries to hone their skill, they don't have effectively unlimited mana or space, and the fae’s magic doesn’t struggle or fail when confronted with human skepticism. You could drop 100 of the most ardent magic deniers in that garden and it wouldn’t so much as wilt a single petal. Mehb tried to explain it once - some metaphor about how the fae are magic in the same way a fish is wet - but it all went way over my head.
Alexander shifted in an attempt to check his watch. It was for naught - an analogue watch would be spinning randomly backwards and forwards. Any electronic timekeepers would be changing in an unrecognizable pattern.
“Almost there.” I promised Alexander. “We’re entering Liliana’s botanical gardens, and those overlap with the Radiant Mind Commune.”
“10 minutes if Lili lets you two through without extracting a toll of some kind,” Mehb estimated. “45 if she wants something.”
Liliana absolutely noticed us. She didn’t appear in a burst of radiant sunshine and accompanied by a chorus of angelic singers - dramatic entrances are another fae addiction - but it was rather obvious she’d noticed when several small bird-shaped things landed on the basket and started violently pecking at it. One even got in and went straight for my eyes - did you know magic has a flavor depending on who cast it? Liliana’s magic tastes of sunshine and rose honey. But she didn’t stop us from progressing or demand a favor in exchange for letting us pass. So clearly, my plan worked perfectly.
Then Alexander suddenly stopped and gasped. I pushed up the lid of the basket and -
“God’s blood,” I swore. “No wonder Liliana is upset.”
Nobody could have predicted the Nevernever side of the Radiant Mind Commune: They’re hippies. They’re hippies who have a member on buddy buddy terms with the Princess of Flowers. The exact crossover point is supposed to be in the exhibit on night blooming flowers.
But what met my eyes wasn’t the whimsical little grotto with clusters of glowing mushrooms. There was no gentle stream with its archetypal bridge leading out into a twilight forest showcasing the dreamlike luminescent flowers and flickering with fireflies and other odd equally luminesce wildlife. No, a terrible fire had raged here: the grotto was baren with huge scorch marks burned across the stone and far up the walls. Their shape and direction indicated the fire had started somewhere out in what had been forest.
Warily, we step across the blackened foundations of that little bridge: the stream long since boiled dry. The forest was a wasteland of charred stumps. A chill dry wind blew in, mournfully picking up the ash and dust coating everything and whirling it past us in little twisters and eddies.
Somehow, the worst part was not the destruction itself - the Nevernever is full as it is of horrific and awful sights - but a horrible uncanny feeling: while the destruction might have looked like an out of control fire, whatever had caused it had done something besides destroy. Something was missing. Something was not right.
“Why do I feel so empty?” Alexander asked shivering. Clearly he could sense the imbalance too.
“This place is unique,” Mehb might have sounded a little irreverent but she certainly wasn’t laughing. “There is absolutely no magic here. Suffering - Patience and Fortitude together - devoured it all. It quieted the demands, but it could not ever truly state them. Because nothing can ever truly sate a mawmouth: they were designed to be eternally hungry.” Now she just sounded melancholy. She placed a hand tenderly on one of the stumps.
When she spoke again it was with more cheer and a little hope. “But magic is life, and while Suffering ate the magic, they left the living creatures untouched. It may take a generation, it may take careful care and management but the magic will come back.”
The air beside her shimmered, creating rift similar to the one we had stepped through back in Chicago. Through it, I could see part of a dilapidated cabin long surrendered to age and the elements.
Mehb sounded even more like her normal slightly abrasive self as she unceremoniously dumped us out of the Nevernever into that crumbling cabin. “Welcome to Wales. Also, if you let Galadriel blow Prue up I will be very cross with you Alexander- I almost like her.”
The cabin was almost as dilapidated as I’d guessed. A thick coating of dust and forest debris covered everything with the exception of several sets of footprints where the coating had yet to reform after being distrubed: one set of bare feet that seemed to come from and lead to nowhere, two sets that lead in and out of the cabin once, and a third set that had been here several times and likely belonged to whoever had replaced the mantle and covered it in small offerings: Loaves of bread, milk, honey, and other similar things that would attract and delight the local dewdrop fairies.
It was quiet here too, but not the unnatural stillness of Suffering’s destruction. Just the quiet of a world holding its breath in anticipation of dawn. Alexander walked, while I tried to get the service working on his cellphone.
Seeing as how there was a faint trail, and Alexander and I both claim to be competent adults, I would like to tell you we quickly found out way out of the woods and to the Commune and civilization in general with all speed. Unfortunately, Alexander and I are apparently useless outside of Chicago and its suburbs. We got so lost that our circular path took us past the cabin three times before we actually spotted the faint trail leading out. It took even more walking, but finally we emerged onto a little hill looking down on a collection of yurts.
Alex staggered to a stop, and put me down rather roughly. I oozed out of my basket. The sun was properly up now, and I spread out to bask in the rays.
He collapsed down on the hillside next to me and fixed his service issue - thanks to the hour or so I spend fussing with it. The morning calm was quickly broken by an onslaught of rapid pinging from his phone loading in the approximately 6 million messages from his parents and family demanding to know where he was. Most of from his increasingly panicked mother. Why was he not answering? Why couldn’t she see him on google maps? Where was he? It had been hours since he’d connected to the internet.
His eyes went wide when he saw the date and time. “Prue, why has it been almost 36 hours since we left?”
I took a second to stretch as far as I could before sucking back into a more reasonable throw rug size.
“Time is even weirder than space in the Nevernever. There is a reason for all those old stories of people who were swept away dancing for a night, and came home to find it had been days, decades or centuries.” I offered, “We’ll never know for sure, but my best guesses are either we hit a time flux in the Nevernever, or maybe Liliana was feeling petty and slowed us down as we were passing through her territory.”
He called his mother while I took the opportunity to enjoy the sun. As I half listened to her demands to know how exactly he ended up in Wales?! - Google maps had, apparently updated his location - I watched the Commune begin to wake up.
On the edge facing us, there was one yurt with a mostly regrown scar in the grass. In the early morning light, I could see three dark shapes moving by the entrance, leaving the shelter and purposely - if slowly - heading our way. As they approached, they resolved into a plump blonde woman with golden hair just beginning to grey, a tall silver haired boy only just starting to really put on muscle, and a wiry girl with dark hair and skin who radiated the kind of power I usually associated with the Fae Queens.
I thought about it for a moment, and then crawled back into the basket. Probably best not to startle any wizard who could casually cast a la morte.