Page 10

Leopold

W hen Leopold had been eleven years old, some do-gooder group had schlepped him and a busload of other foster kids to a C-list theme park for the day, apparently believing that a tomato-themed Ferris wheel would somehow make up for not having parents.

It wasn’t really a fun experience. Rides kept breaking down while Leopold was waiting in line for them and once, memorably, while he was riding a roller coaster called the Zucchini Spiral.

The employees had to call in a rescue crew for that one.

Eventually Leopold had wandered off from his group and found a quiet corner of the park where food wrappers and deflated balloons sat in sad little piles along the curb and a boarded-up hut bore a sign promising that an unspecified new attraction was coming soon.

There was a single operational ride in that section—the Great Asparagus Escape—and it had no line.

Intrigued, Leopold had checked it out.

A short path set up the storyline, which involved joining asparagus spears in an attempt to avoid a beast that spat Hollandaise sauce. An incredibly bored-looking teenager strapped Leopold into a seat that was suspended by chains from the top of a tall green stalk.

Gears ground and the seat—and Leopold—ratcheted upward in a series of jerks.

Leopold would have enjoyed the view if his stomach hadn’t started feeling queasy, a situation that didn’t improve when the seat began swinging wildly back and forth.

Pretty soon it was all Leopold could do to avoid puking up the greasy burger he’d been served for lunch, and the recorded sound of the Hollandaise beast sloshing and bubbling hadn’t helped either.

When the ride finally ended, Leopold had staggered right into the search party tasked with looking for him. He’d promptly thrown up on the Head Do-Gooder’s shoes.

He’d blissfully pushed that entire incident out of his mind, but it came back to him now as he swayed and lurched through the forest on Fromlith’s giant shoulder. Closing his eyes didn’t help, and neither did clutching at Fromlith’s hair, which had the texture of shag carpeting.

“Why do you look like that?” demanded Crispin.

“’Cause you turned me into a deer.” He was annoyed at having to explain himself when Crispin was so clearly to blame.

“I did not. This wasn’t my fault. And anyway, that wasn’t what I meant. You appear… distressed.”

“Motion sick,” said Leopold through gritted teeth.

“Ah.” Crispin was silent for a few moments and then cleared his throat. “The fae don’t experience motion sickness.”

“Bully for you.” He turned away, pretending to examine the passing foliage. Squirrels—or squirrel-like things—leapt through the branches like little acrobats. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly.

Fromlith had seemed to ignore the entire conversation, and didn’t appear at all alarmed to have a nauseated deer-thing perched on one shoulder.

In fact, he was humming off-key and glancing around while he walked, as if he were enjoying a pleasant stroll.

Occasionally he stopped to admire a plant, or to point at creatures that resembled enormous butterflies but probably sucked people’s blood or dined on brains.

The stopping and starting wasn’t helping Leopold’s stomach, but it seemed fairly rude to point that out.

“Do you want a distraction?” Crispin asked after a while.

Leopold considered before giving a tentative nod. “Maybe.”

“Well, we could talk about our families, if you wanted.”

That was when Leopold remembered that Fromlith had mentioned Crispin’s mother and had seemed impressed by her. “Fine. You start. Who are your parents?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly who my father is. There are several possible candidates, and they all helped Mother raise me. All very fine fae.” Crispin said this with more than a hint of pride.

If he squinted, Leopold could almost see his tweedy garments. “Ah. So your mom is a free spirit? That’s cool.” He’d always sort of admired people who could manage multiple relationships, especially considering he’d never been able to handle even one.

“My mother is the Mother of Fae.”

Leopold heard the capital letters and understood that it was a title, although he didn’t know what it meant. “Is that, uh, like the Mother of Dragons?”

Crispin sputtered, but before he could say anything, Fromlith chimed in. “A pod of dragons lives down the road from my sister. Nice neighbors, but sometimes they accidentally set the hedges on fire. Drives up insurance rates something crazy.”

And that got Leopold musing about risks and coverage for various creatures, which was almost interesting enough to take his mind off being sick. But he wanted to know more about Crispin’s parentage. “So, the Mother of Fae?”

“She is a… well, I don’t think you quite have a term for it. A queen? A goddess? Something along those lines.”

“Sounds important.”

“She is. And because of that, she had very little time for me and my brother when we were young, but we knew she loved us, and our fathers took good care of us.”

A somewhat unorthodox family structure, but Leopold allowed that maybe it was more common among fae than among humans. In any case, he felt a little envious. It must have been nice to be surrounded by a lot of caring adults. “A brother?”

“Aspin.” Crispin sighed, and Leopold could hear years of sadness and disappointment in his tone.

“He’s a hunter. Mother hoped I would be as well, and she wasn’t entirely pleased when I chose to be a desk fae instead.

” Another sigh, this time vigorous enough to tickle Fromlith’s ear and make him twitch a little, causing an extra lurch in Leopold’s stomach.

Leopold had never chosen a career. He’d simply grabbed whatever jobs he could find and held on to them as long as he could, which usually wasn’t very long at all.

He’d never really given any thought to what he wanted to do.

Especially because he knew he’d only screw things up if he tried. “Do you like being a desk fae?”

Although Leopold couldn’t see Crispin well on Fromlith’s opposite shoulder, he had the sense that Crispin puffed himself up a bit.

“I do! It’s a little like hunting, in fact, except I don’t have to kill anything, and it’s entirely satisfying to collect items that I know are important and to file excellent reports.

My perfecality score is always at the top of the ranks.

Until now, that is.” And yep, there came another of those sighs.

They continued onward up a gentle slope to a meadow of lilac-hued grass.

It smelled nice, and if Leopold had possessed any confidence that he’d be able to keep the stuff down, he’d have asked to stop and have a snack.

But since he still didn’t feel well, he contented himself with gazing wistfully at the waving fronds.

Ironic to be in a place where he was surrounded by delicious free food but unable to eat any.

“How about you?” Crispin interrupted Leopold’s thoughts. “You mentioned something about your parents earlier, I believe.”

“They’re dead.” Leopold said this flatly.

It had been years since he’d felt any emotion over the loss.

“Freak accident when I was a kid. Camel attack.” He’d been there but had luckily been distracted by some goats and so didn’t actually see them die.

Saying it out loud reminded him how truly weird it was.

“I’m so sorry. Brothers or sisters?”

“Nope. I was adopted. Not a clue who my bio family was. My parents never said, and the paperwork was lost at some point. Anyway, they didn’t have any other kids.” He’d been more than enough, probably. He’d been a handful.

“Wh-what happened to you after your parents passed away? It must have been so awful.” Crispin’s voice was thick with sympathy, the kind Leopold usually hated. But coming from the fae, it sounded sincere.

Leopold hadn’t expected that. “Foster care. Kinda got bounced around until I grew up.” None of his foster parents had been terrible by any means.

But none had been willing or able to keep him either, because not long after he’d settle into a new house, disasters would start to happen.

He once overheard a social worker referring to him as Bad-Luck Lane.

But feeling sorry for himself was even worse than feeling pukey, so Leopold was almost relieved when he spied something gray and amorphous skulking through the trees nearby. “Um, Fromlith?”

“Yeah, I saw it. Don’t worry. I’ll roar if it comes too close.”

The last time Fromlith roared, Leopold had temporarily blacked out, and he wasn’t eager to repeat that. He clutched the giant’s hair more tightly. “Do you know what it is? And why it’s chasing us?”

“Nope. I’ve never seen anything like it. But it smells weird. Like the time Aunt Brogrog got tipsy and decided to make scallion-pickle cupcakes.”

Leopold’s stomach was displeased by that concept and made its displeasure known with another queasy lurch. He shut his eyes tight and tried not to think about bad baking, bad gray monster clouds, bad memories, or any of the day’s other unpleasantries.

He might have actually dozed off a little bit.

Aside from messing things up, he possessed one additional superpower, which was the ability to nap anywhere under nearly any circumstances.

He’d probably developed the knack when he was a little kid, because no matter where he and his parents had lived, they’d always ended up with noisy neighbors.

Or maybe he’d picked it up while in foster care, when, depending on his circumstances, he’d sometimes slept on narrow institutional cots, in unfamiliar cars, or even in office chairs.