“No, I’m not sure!” he snapped. “I’m not sure of anything. And it doesn’t help when you put the fate of the world on my shoulders and no one tells me the basics. It would have helped to know that there are two different Fairylands.”
All around him, wolves and people straightened up in confusion. He saw looks shoot back and forth between them, but it was the wolf—now man—with the whispery voice who said what everyone else seemed to be thinking.
“There are two Fairylands?”
“Yes,” Bruce huffed. “That’s what Erin Rodger-Dodger said. That they made Earth Fairyland, but they want to go to Fairy Fairyland.” He struggled to put meaning to what he’d seen before going wolf. “The pixies are Earth fairies, right? They take our thoughts and make moons and stuff. And Bitter you-know-who, the fairy prince, is from Fairy Fairyland. He doesn’t have anything to do with what the pixies make.”
He took a deep breath. “So there are two Fairylands, and nobody told me.” It was a lame way to end his statement. The truth of the matter was that he’d been tasked with finding the demon, and he’d failed spectacularly. Except when he looked around, everyone was looking at him with shock and a little bit of excitement in their eyes.
“What?” Bruce asked. “What did I say?”
“We didn’t know,” Wulfric said, his voice low and his expression thoughtful. “Fairyland is so complicated. I assumed that the pixies created another part of it, another realm, so to speak, in a vast land.”
“No,” Bruce said. “It’s an entirely different place. Or dimension. That’s what Erin said.”
“Created from our thoughts,” Laddin said in a bright voice. “It makes sense. The pixies use our thoughts to create Earth Fairyland, whereas Fairy Fairyland is—”
“Created from fairy thoughts,” Josh said. “It’s like the difference between Windows and Mac OS. The end products may look similar, but they’re not the same at all.”
Stratos nodded. “And they don’t play well with each other.”
Okay. So this was interesting, but it didn’t solve the problem. They still didn’t know where the demon was. Unless….
Bruce exhaled loudly, the realization hitting him broadside. Then he asked a question to everyone and no one in particular. “You guys searched everywhere for the demon, right? But who searched Fairyland?”
The man with the whisper voice answered. “A Fairy Queen.”
“She could search Fairy Fairyland, but what about Earth Fairyland?”
Silence.
Bruce groaned. “Nobody asked a pixie?”
Nero shook his head. “They’re not exactly easy to pin down.”
“Find, pin down, or talk to,” Yordan agreed. “In fact, they don’t often talk to anyone except you, Sir Farts-a-Lot.”
“He’s Windy Wolf to the fireworks fairies,” Laddin said.
Lady Kinstead smiled, and the expression was half-mad even as her touch across his cheek was tender. “So, young one, what do we do? How do we save the world?”
“We need to ask the pixies,” he answered. “Either the regular fairies or the cheese ones.”
Laddin pushed to his feet and looked around. “We’re not near the tree where the cheese ones hang out. And the fairy circle was….”
Josh was looking down at his iWatch. “We’re on the far side of the lake. Ground zero is over there.” He waved to the east where, sure enough, Bruce could see the black edge of the lake and the dead trees that surrounded it.
It didn’t matter. Bruce was pretty sure he could call them. After all, some things worked the same whether it was on a Mac or a PC. Clicking worked the same. So, calling out fairy names three times should bring them in an instant.
Then he glanced around at the nearly two dozen people and wolves sprawled on the ground. “I suggest all of you back away.”
Most of them did. Wulfric was especially spry as he bounded to his feet and backed about fifty yards away. “I’ll just confuse the issue,” he said as he moved.
“As will I,” echoed his mother as she joined him.
Josh pointed to a hedge that bordered a road. “I’ve got a support car coming with clothes from there.”
“We’re backing up,” Whisper Guy said. “But we’re not leaving you.”
