“Just a little selective sprite bondage,” Robin joked, leaning on a pencil like a cane. “I’m researching the mythology of magic in your world, nosy.” They sighed. “I seem to be drowning in new age nonsense and sleight-of-hand. How is so much of your so-called knowledge this contradictory?”
“You have to understand what you’re searching for,” Gwen said, shuffling to the kitchen to find a bowl of cereal. “It’s all run by machine logic, you’re only going to get results as good as you put in. Filter your search to legitimate sites, or use more specific keywords. Magic as a search word is just too broad.”
She came back with her cereal bowl to find Robin painstakingly typing on the keyboard by reaching each letter with the pencil. She’d never considered how challenging it would be to be smaller than an American Girl doll.
“Are the things in your old world sized to you?” she asked curiously.
Robin shot her a quick look. “In my world, I am normal-sized. The magic here is like running on a used up battery, and being magic is…all I am. My knights’ human forms will not be affected in this world, but their mythic form is similarly diminished.”
Gwen felt bad for the sorrow in their little dark eyes and sat down in her swivel chair at the desk. “Tell me more about your world,” she said. “Maybe I can help you narrow down your computer search.”
Robin moved to the side, dragged the case to Gwen’s earphones with them, and settled cross-legged to watch, stealing a dehydrated marshmallow from her cereal first. Gwen briefly threatened them with her spoon.
“Let’s search for portals. Veils to the fairy world. Maybe faery with an A-E. You said that there seemed to be a distinct break at the new year. Let’s see what we can find about that.”
“Not a fairy,” Robin muttered.
“Well a search for fable land is going to take you in very different directions,” Gwen pointed out. “And whatever you do, don’t put infantasy.Oh look, smutty vampire romance named Broken Crown. Let’s filter out fiction and erotica.”
Robin told her tales as they fed her keywords and made suggestions for her searches, impossible stories about noble knights and desperate battles in a world with winged foxes and groves of trees hung in crystals. They lamented their part in the downfall of their world, and told harrowing stories of the dark power that had followed them and what it did to people.
“I hope you never have to see the people that you love looking at you from angry, empty eyes,” Robin said mournfully.
“Have youmetmy Aunt Ruby?”
Robin’s tired look suggested that Gwen’s joke had fallen flat.
It took half a bowl of cereal and ignoring a phone call from her mother to find anything useful and that was barely deserving of the title.
“Several cultures agree that the end of the year is a time when boundaries are weakest and magic is wildest. I’m not paying good money for access to an academic paper titled ‘The Spirit Veil as it relates to the Modern Christian Calendar,’ but the summary is promising, and the fact that someone dredged a scholarly paper out of the topic says that there’s enough source material to support the idea.”
Robin paced Gwen’s desktop, their wings rippling behind them. They had raided the bowl of Halloween candy and opened a package of mini Swedish Fish. “That matches with what I observed before. That means our time is getting short.” They narrowed their eyes at Gwen. “I’m going to try casting a clarity spell. I want you to stay very still and don’t sneeze.”
“Sneeze?”
“It would startle me. I don’t have much power here and I need to conserve my limited resources for a battle with a bleak. The last thing I want to do is waste this attempt. I would…appreciate your assistance.”
They wereproud, Gwen recognized, and she had a moment of pity for them. They didn’t like to admit that they had to ration their magic and they resented that they needed help.
“As long as not-sneezing is all I have to do…?”
“I still suspect that there is some reason you were dowsed instead of Henrik. I would like to use you as an anchor for my casting.”
Gwen set aside superstitious misgivings about being used for witchcraft and spread her hands. “Give me your best shot, Tinker Bell.”
Robin didn’t gesture or draw any symbols, but Gwen suddenly felt like her chair had gone electric. She was glad for the warning not to sneeze, because it was an all-body tickle, and it took all of her self-discipline not to leap to her feet.
As quickly as it had started, it stopped, sputtering out like a candle out of wax or wick.
Robin looked wiped, and Gwen wondered if they weren’t a little shorter, or if they were just hunched in unhappily on themselves.
“That was it?” she said. “I expected more.”
“That’s what she said,” Robin quipped, but they said it distantly, like they were still shaken by whatever had happened at their end.
“Did it work?” Gwen asked reluctantly.
Robin raised their chin, and whatever color their eyes were, it was the exact shade of sorrow, with a little dash of new hope and urgency.
