Chapter Text
Techno would like it on the record that he was not the odd one here.
Nope, everyone else was over complicating everything, and for some reason expected him to just play along when they wouldn't even tell him the rules! Techno liked rules, even if he didn't often follow them. They were a good guideline to how he should act, and how best to cover his tracks when he decided one of the rules was stupid.
His mother often told him that rules weren't for him to decide, but he was fairly sure she was wrong. People told her all her life that women weren't supposed to be engineers, and yet every morning she went off to work in her old truck to hunch over stubborn plane engines and ignore the old men who commented on the oil stains on her work pants. Techno was sure she felt just the same as he did, and that she was only scolding him to follow some grown up rule he didn't understand yet.
But no matter the truth that Techno knew, everyone else was still under rather the wrong impression.
So when the Green Wind turned up at his window on a long, still Tuesday morning, Techno didn't hesitate to open it, staring curiously at the great leopard on which he rode.
"Hello." he said politely, because his mother had always taught him to be polite to things he didn't understand, and today he rather thought it might be wise to listen to that rule, "May I help you?"
"Probably not," shrugged the Green Wind, peering at him with eyes that seemed too old for his face, and too young for the white streaks that ran through his hair, "I could assist you, however. Probably. Well, assist is a strong word, but if boredom is your greatest struggle, then it would probably fit."
Techno had read about this in his books. Fae creatures coming to take children away, to show them marvellous and terrible things even his books weren't quite sure on.
"Are you here to take me to Fairyland?" he enquired, tilting his head, "And is that a leopard?"
The Green Wind seemed to perk up at that, "To answer you backwards: she most certainly is, her name is Sally and she bites, so be careful not to pull at her fur. And I could, if you wanted to. Not all the way I'm afraid - the Marquess is fairly un-fond of me at the moment, I can't imagine why - but certainly close enough."
He stretched his hand through the window, and smiled. The smile was rather sharp, but Techno didn't mind. Sharp things weren't always bad, you just had to be careful with them. As he stepped up and over the sink, Techno didn't notice the buckle of his shoe come undone, tumble back down the floor. It certainly did, and stared mournfully at it's retreating twin, crying a silent song of leather and metal that went unheard.
"Whose the Marquess?" he asked, settling onto the saddle beside the Green Wind. "How can she keep you out of Fairyland?"
Green hummed, as Sally bounded up from the windowsill and into the sky. Techno was fairly certain that the sky was supposed to be freezing, and that clouds were made of water and not cotton wool, but the chill never came, and he certainly wasn't damp. He supposed the Green Wind must also not like listening to the rules.
"The Marquess," he said, "Is the ruler of Fairyland. She can keep me out because as the ruler, she makes the rules. My application has been in a while, but until my diplomatic immunity is reinstated, I'd rather not risk being executed or worse: ticketed."
"Does she execute a lot of people? She sounds a rather terrible ruler." Techno frowned.
"Possibly and potentially. She is quite terrible, but all children are terrible. She at least has a splendid hat."
"I'm not terrible," Techno pointed out, and both Green and Sally laughed.
"Of course you are! You're a child - and worse, a human child. You humans are terrible creatures, that's why I invested in stopping being one."
Sally made an unimpressed sound. It was really quite surprising how clear a leopard could communicate.
Green huffed, "Fine, it was unintentional. But I do prefer it. I have my cat and I have the wind, and they sing to me, Techno."
"How do you know my name?"
"I know a lot of things. I could share some of those with you, if you'd like."
Techno thought about it a moment. The answer seemed rather obvious, "Tell me the rules," he said, "The rules of Fairyland. I've never heard of the Marquess, so maybe they've changed from my storybooks. Please." he tacked the last on the end, more of a defence then anything else. He was not terrible.
"Finally! Reasonable questions! You wouldn't believe how many people try to ask me who I really am, or whether any of this is real, or why I chose them of all people. Rule one, no iron. Customs are terribly nosy, they'll almost certainly find any war axes you try to smuggle through. Rule two, alchemy may only be practised by those born on a Tuesday-"
"I was born on a Tuesday!"
"Well how fortunate! Do try not to turn yourself into gold, I'm afraid once you're through the border I won't be able to assist you. Third, aviary locomotion is permitted only by means of Leopard or licensed Ragwort Stalk. If you find yourself not in possession of one of these, kindly confine yourself to the ground. Fourth, all traffic travels widdershins. Fifth, rubbish takeaway occurs on second Fridays. Sixth, all changelings are required to wear identifying footwear. Seventh, and most important, you may in no fashion cross the borders of the Worsted Wood, or you will either perish most painfully or be forced to sit through a very tedious tea service with several spinster hamadryads. These laws are sacrosanct, except for visiting dignitaries and spriggans. Do you understand?”
Techno blinked. Those were rather more rules than he'd anticipated. "I think so? What happens if I eat Fairyfood? I read in my storybooks you're not supposed to."
The Green Wind laughed, tossing his head back, "Then you'll prevent yourself from the rather nasty business of starving to death! You will also trigger a binding contract to return at least once a year in accordance with seasonal myth cycles, but I wouldn't worry too much about that. Eat what you like, and eat plenty of it, because your life is on a deadline and mine is not. Now do hold on, we're about to pass through some turbulence!"
Techno had barely a second to register the bank of clouds ahead, before they plunged face first into it. The noise was tremendous, the rumble of a thousand thunderstorms, a billion raindrops striking the earth, every gale that had ever existed tearing through them. He pressed close to Sally's fur, and listened to her heartbeat. Let her warmth hold back the chill, and tried not to pull too terribly on her fur.
When they broke through the other side, something was different. It didn't look different - the sky was the palest blue, and the clouds wispy, the ground disappeared beneath them - but it felt so. Like how Techno could feel what rules he was supposed to listen to, and which were to be ignored.
"Green?" he asked, peering down into the abyss, "Are we in Fairyland?"
The Wind laughed, "Oh you're good! Not quite, but we're close."
"But how? We've been flying in a straight line - surely we should've just come round in a circle?"
"We would have, if the earth was round," the Wind allowed, "Fortunately for me: it isn't."
"I'm pretty sure it is."
"You can be sure as you like, nothing changes. The Earth is a fickle creature, she warps and twists as she wishes. Fairyland presses up close, squirms into every hollow left as your planet ebbs and flows. To jump between, all we did was find a little pocket where she had not yet filled, and pushed through! It's the easiest way, for a Wind at least. There are many places where the world becomes thins, but this is quite the most pleasant I think you'll find."
"Where are we now, then? If we're not on Earth and not in Fairyland?"
"We're in my home now, Westerly, the city of the Winds. My family and I live here together, in something approaching harmony if harmony was another word for chaos."
"So it isn't harmony at all?"
"That's what I said, please keep up."
Techno huffed, and peered down again. This time, his gaze caught something other than the void. "I think I've lost one of my shoes."
"You think or you have? You'll need to be precise if you want to get anywhere here."
"I have. It's very cold."
"Hmm, you have. How careless of you! Here, try this."
In a smooth motion, the Green Wind shrugged off his long trench coat, and settled it around Techno's shoulders. It seemed to wiggle for a moment, malcontent at being removed from it's rightful owner, before remember it's manners and sucking in some seams to fit his shoulders a little better. The end would trail on the ground, but Techno got the feeling it prefered to. On the lapel, something seemed to be moving. Burrowing out of the fabric, until it gleamed on the surface, a tiny key broach that seemed to say 'look how marvellous I am! look what treasures I can bring!'.
"Thank you," he finally remembered to say, not a very good look for someone who'd claimed un-terrible-ness. "Won't you be cold though?"
"Hardly. Do take a little better care of it than your shoe, though. It's for the best, perhaps - Fairyland require a sacrifice to enter, after all - but I will rather need it back at some point. Are you quite ready?"
"Ready for what?"
Green huffed, "What did I say about keeping up? We're approaching the gates, and we're both going to need to be on our best behaviour!"
"What gates?"
"Those!"
Techno's eyes widened, as two impossibly tall pillars appeared in the distance.
"What are they?"
"Longitude and Latitude! They keep those without the keys out."
"I thought those were lines on a map?"
"You also thought the earth was round, so forgive me if my faith in you is shaky. Would you like to know the key? Or shall I dive down to Westerly proper and give you a tour? It would be a mighty adventure still, even if Blue would likely nab your other shoe."
"No thank you," Techno said, his manners finally fully returned, "I'd like to go to Fairyland."
"Good. There's less one key than several that jangle together, on bundled up on a very busy ring. One of the pieces is a girl hopping widdershins on one foot, nine revolutions. One is wear motley colours. One is clap hand over one eye. One is give something up. One is have a feline in attendance.”
“But that’s easy!”
“Mostly easy. But Fairyland is an old place, and old things have strange hungers. One of the last pieces is: There must be blood. The other is: Tell a lie.”
Techno tried to keep all of those in his mind as Sally descended towards the base of the gates. His stomach swooped as they fell, and his ears ached as Green whooped and cheered. Of course a Wind would like falling, breezes never hit the ground, did they?
It felt silly, to clap one hand over his eye and begin to hop what he hoped was widdershins around Sally. She watched him go, emerald eyes gleaming with humour and he scowled. Once he'd counted nine, he fumbled chilled fingers for the little key that had sprouted on Green's coat lapel, and pressed the pin sharply into his finger. It hurt, but blood welled, and dripped onto the stones below. After a moment, he set the key beside the splattered drops, and took a deep breath,
"I want to go home." Techno lied softly.
He gasped, as Latitude and Longitude began to move. Great pillars shifting in a way no engineer could ever pull off, spinning and bent and turning like the cogs in some awful machine, folding further and further down, until all that was left in the gaping space was a gap just large enough for a leopard, and a small door.
"Well done," Green said quietly, holding his hand back out so Techno could clamber aboard once more. "Are you ready to go?"
Techno nodded, eyes still wide as they started once more forward.
And behind them, gone just unnoticed, the tiny key he'd left abandoned on the stone swooped up and in behind them, quiet as you like.
-0-0-0-0-0-
The space between worlds was rather more cluttered than one might think. Like the closet in your grandparents house that is filled by a thousand things they could not possibly need, yet couldn't bring themselves to throw out. A lifetime of accumulated stuff, porcelain and plates and old dusty pictures, an abandoned dust cloth, several grandfather clocks that tick out of time, a billion books you could swear had never gone into print.
Strange enough for a grown person to keep all that junk in their house, but stranger still for a world. Or perhaps it was not strange at all, and was just yet another grown up rule Techno didn't yet understand. Perhaps it was mandated to have a rubber duck collection, lined up neat in a row, and some man with a fancy hat would come to your door and tell you off otherwise.
"Mr Wind?" Techno said, as they padded through this endless closet of Things, "You called me clever earlier, for asking you about the rules."
"I do in fact recall that, I'm old not senile."
"Will you think less of me if I do ask those questions? Just some of them?"
"Hardly, you've rather earned the right to be obsolete. I cannot promise I'll answer, but you may ask away as you desire."
"Why did you take me? Do you take many people? Are they all from my town? Why are you being so nice to me?"
"One, you were bored. Two, I'm rather too busy for that. Three, see above. Four, so you will like be and not be afraid."
Techno scowled. "You're not telling me the truth. I thought Fairies couldn't lie?"
"They cannot, but fortunately I am not a Fairy. They're truthful enough, for what they are. I can try again if you'd like: one, I was lonely. Two, I've been known to whisk away a child or three. I'm a Wind, it's our nature to pull things up with us and take them away. Three, no. It takes a certain sort of person to reach Fairyland, let alone have any sort of a good time there. Four, stealing children works rather less well when they're afraid of. I let you ride my leopard, and gave you my coat, and smiled and called you all sorts of lovely things so you wouldn't demand I reunite you with your missing shoe."
There was other people now, in the Closet between worlds. Techno could see some queue ahead, and soon enough the three of them had joined it. He slid off Sally's back, and pat her in thanks.
He frowned, "You said I was terrible. Did you take me because I was terrible or despite of it?"
"One, there is a department entirely devoted to spiriting children off to Fairyland, and I have a quota. The Winter here comes cold, and we need stories of a certain kind to keep the axles of the universe from freezing over. Two, see above. Three, I am the most interesting thing most children who live in the middle of nowhere have ever seen. It's rather harder to coax the rich and spoiled out to go somewhere their money means nothing. Four, I'm not being nice to you at all. I've called you terrible, I've lied to you and lied about lying. I threatened to take you home without the adventure I promised. Fairyland is an awful, awful place for those who expect the rules to work in their favour.
"Green!"
"Techno!"
Techno glared at the Wind, and folded his arms. "You know that's not what I meant. I… in the storybooks, when someone comes to sweep away someone to Fairyland, it's because they're special. They can fight, or they're good at riddles, or they're brave, and I could be all those things, but I don't know if I will be. Maybe you picked me by accident, and you meant to fly up to someone else's kitchen window."
Sally turned her massive head, and pressed into Techno's chest, her purr rumbling through his chest.
"We came for you," she growled, "I'm good at directions. He's not, but Winds don't need to be. They end up where they're needed, if not wanted."
Techno wiped harshly at his eyes with the sleeve of Green's trench coat and tried not to sniff. His mother never cried, even when the bills piled up on the kitchen table and their dinners got smaller.
The Green Wind seemed like he wanted to say something, but before he could, a great bellowing cry came from behind them. Somehow they'd managed to make it all the way to the front of the queue without noticing, and now stood beneath a mighty iron gargoyle, perched atop the desk menacingly.
Techno swallowed hard. He'd rather expected Fairyland to have less paperwork, but he supposed it was made mostly of grown ups, and grown ups loved their paperwork.
"PAPERS!" the gargoyle bellowed, and Techno shot a nervous look at Green. He didn't have papers on him, not even drawing paper.
"Jack! Get out of that thing and talk to me properly!" Green bellowed back, noticeably quieter.
The gargoyle paused, "NO!"
"You're not impressing anyone. Look, a human child and even he doesn't care, and you know how terrible human children are."
Techno did his best to look unimpressed, even though his legs were shaking a little.
The gargoyle glanced at them, great head tilting up and down, and then it went.. still.
"I don't know why you're even here," grumbled a much quieter voice, as someone around Techno's height clambered out of the gargoyle and up onto the podium, "You're not even allowed into Fairyland, you're still greenlisted."
"I'm on the waiting list! And I'm not here for me anyway. Techno here is going to Fairyland, and I thought it rude to just shove him through the cracks. Don't scowl at me like that, Jack, it wasn't my fault your country exploded!"
Well that didn't sound good. The man scowled harder.
"Yeah well tell that to the crater that used to be my home. You still need papers." he flicked a glance down, "And both shoes."
"Why do I need both shoes? One shoe is very fine, I think." Techno said, offended more on the principle than any real enjoyment of his footwear situation.
"It's just not right," Jack shook his head, "The point of a queue is for me to tell you how awful you are when you get to the front."
"I'm pretty sure it's not."
"Whose queue is it now? Is it yours? I didn't think so. Why should I let you in at all? No papers, no shoes, no manners. All children are terrible."
Techno was getting a little sick of being called that.
Jack seemed to be staring at the Green Wind now, who shuffled almost sheepishly.
"You know well,Jack." he said quietly, like he was hoping Techno might not hear, "The Ravished don't need papers. It's in the handbook and everything. The Persephone clause."
Techno's ears perked up at that - he knew that story! It was in the huge book of Greek Mythology that he had to lie down on the floor to read, too heavy to balance on his lap. What did that have to do with him, though? Maybe he ought to avoid pomegranates for the moment…
Jack raised an eyebrow. He seemed even less impressed by this. somehow.
"Fine, if you're going to be difficult about it. You have to stay out, though. I don't like you nearly enough to mess with the greenlist. Have you done the thing yet? I might have some ointment left over if not."
"What thing?" Techno asked, slightly alarmed, He didn't like the sound of ointment.
Green clapped his shoulder, "Nothing to worry about - just a little help to make your trip more fun. Fairyland runs on glamours, and humans don't come with the pre-built ability to see them. Just a little medicine so you don't spend the next week walking through a wasteland!"
"Surely it wouldn't matter either way? If it's not real anyway then I should probably just see what's actually there."
"Who said it's not real? Reality is a fickle thing, she and Fairyland have been on and off for centuries. This is where we part, I suppose. I've taken you as far as I can. Put in a good word with the embassy if you find yourself there - remember the rules I told you, don't go swimming for an hour after eating, and never tell anyone your true name."
"My true name?"
Green winked, "Don't worry about it. Everything will turn out how it needs to. Do you have any last questions?"
"Who are you really?"
Green flicked his nose. "You can call me Wilbur, but only in front of Sally. I've got a reputation to keep up. Now go on, before Jack starts being difficult again. Close your eyes, Techno."
Techno's eyelids fluttered dutifully closed. A breeze washed over him, cool and gentle, ruffling his hair. Something heavy settled in his pocket, held carefully by the trench coat still wrapped around his shoulders, and when he opened his eyes, the Green Wind was gone.
Jack huffed, glaring at the spot where he'd just stood. "Good riddance. You're better off without him, if you like your country whole. Awful people, the Winds."
He clambered back behind the podium and retrieved a worn leather notebook. He began to read aloud, things Techno didn't understand, but tried to remember in case they were important.
“Temporary Visa Type: Pomegranate. Housing Allotment: None. Alien Registry Category: Human, Ravished, non-changeling. Size: Medium. Age: Twelve. Privileges: None, or As Many As You Can Catch. Anything to declare?”
Techno shook his head. Jack rolled his eyes.
“Customs Declaration: one shoe, black. One pair of pants, blue. One shirt, ruffled. One trench coat, not yours. Honestly, you'd think he'd prepare you a little better before hurling you into the abyss. How sensitive are your eyes?"
Before Techno had a chance to reply, Jack had unscrewed the cap of a round container, filled with a vaguely golden jelly. He opened his mouth to ask what that was, but no sound came out before a wad of the jelly had been flung straight into his eyes.
It stung, and smell vaguely of too-ripe apples. Techno lifted his hands to his eyes, desperately trying to wipe it out. As he did so, a hand landed solidly on the centre of his back and shoved.
When Techno opened his eyes again, still clouded with jelly, he was falling.
Not onto the floor of the Closet between worlds, like you might expect, but out of the sky and into the ocean.
At least it would help wash the jelly off.