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Leopold

W ings.

Enormous and white, glittering as if set with millions of tiny diamonds, as delicate-looking and translucent as gossamer silk yet somehow tremendously strong.

“Ooh.” Leopold reached out to touch, because who wouldn’t want to touch them, who wouldn’t want to stroke and see whether they were as soft as they looked, whether they would caress his skin and?—

“Hey! No grabbing!” Crispin stepped back angrily.

Leopold blinked and realized they weren’t in the Pond of Disappointment.

In fact, they weren’t even damp. Instead, they stood in a vast meadow of green grass that he felt no desire to munch on.

Overhead in the twilit sky hung three moons of varying sizes.

He wondered idly if any were made of cheese.

Crispin was gazing around too and looked disappointed. “This isn’t the Hall of Mirrors.” That seemed fairly obvious due the absence of both hall and mirrors . Maybe the pond water had gotten to him.

“Then where the hell are we? Did you really expect everything to work right when we were at a frigging disappointment pond? What was the deal with that Chaos Cloud thing and why is it trying to get us? How are you gonna get me home? How can I—” Leopold stopped as a revelation hit him. “Dude. You have wings .”

The fur, antlers, long muzzle, and hoofs were gone, and now Crispin looked pretty much like a regular person with fairly pointy ears. He wore a sleeveless knitted bodysuit that ended at the knees. It had navy and white stripes and reminded Leopold of a Victorian bathing costume.

Crispin was slowly waving his wings, which were almost as big as he was. “Leo,” he said sternly, “will you kindly try to focus?”

“But… wings.”

“Yes, of course. You have them too.”

“I…. What?” Leopold craned his neck to look behind him, and sure enough, a pair of wings had sprouted from his back as well.

They weren’t the feathery kind like birds have, but were instead diaphanous and double-lobed like a butterfly’s.

And he could flutter them, which felt amazing, sort of like a really good back stretch. “I have wings!”

Leopold was also wearing a close-fitting bathing-costume thing, only his was made of spandex—or something like it—patterned with random splotches in 1980s neon hues.

It could have been sort of embarrassing because his body had none of Crispin’s slim strength and because the tight fabric left very little to the imagination, but he had wings , godsdammit, and that was awesome.

Crispin rolled his eyes. “Of course we do. This is Phaxsi and we have taken the form of awaannisa, who live here. What’s more important is that we’re not where we’re supposed to be—the Hall of Mirrors.

And now in addition to being stranded, we have a major problem on our hands. And my perfecality score?—”

“Is suffering. Yeah, I got that.” Leopold had never held a job that included anything like a perfecality score. Which was probably fortunate, because his score would have been somewhere in the deep negatives. Still, he could understand Crispin’s distress.

However, Leopold was certain that his own distress was deeper and more important, given that he’d been collected against his will and whisked off to two different and very weird worlds.

Except on this world he had wings.

He fluttered them a few more times because it felt so damned good, and then, just when he was wondering if he could fly, he did . His trajectory was shaky, he rose only a few feet, and he promptly crashed onto his back in the soft grass. But he’d flown , and that was amazing.

Lying immobile on the ground, the three moons glimmering far overhead, Leopold smiled.

“I’ve never flown before. One time I had a few extra bucks and the airline was having a crazy cheap sale, so I booked a ticket to Phoenix.

Just to see what it was like to go up in the air.

But the plane was super late getting in because of a freak storm somewhere in the Midwest, and then after we boarded they found out that something was broken and they made us get off again.

They finally ended up canceling the flight, so I just went back home. It sucked.”

Crispin had wandered over during the monologue and was staring down at him. “You didn’t try again?”

“Nah. They wouldn’t honor the sale price anymore and… well, what was the point? Something else probably would’ve gone wrong anyway. It always does.”

That was self-pity, so he shut his mouth. Unless a guy had a guitar and a decent singing voice, nobody wanted to listen to him whine about how the world done did him wrong .

“I’ve never been in an aeroplane either,” said Crispin, sitting beside him and folding his wings neatly.

“Do you even have them where you live?” It didn’t seem very fae-like.

“No, but I’ve visited your world a few times before.

Once I collected a boot—just one, covered in sparkly silver rhinestones—and once it was an egg, and the other times…

well, I’d have to refer to my notes. Anyway, none of those trips involved aviation, but I do find the concept quite interesting.

You people claim not to believe in magic, yet you pay money to be locked inside a large metal tube and hurtled through the sky. ”

Leopold sat up and blinked at him. “Airplanes aren’t magic. They fly ‘cause of… um… drag? Lift? The air goes over the wing and under the wing and um….” He made some gestures with his hand, but those didn’t help; he blew a raspberry instead. “Fine, maybe it is magic.”

Crispin nodded as if his point had been made. “I’d enjoy the opportunity to try an aeroplane, I think. Perhaps on a future mission. Assuming I’m ever assigned to anything again after this debacle.”

“You could get a different job. I’ve been fired so many times I’ve lost count, but I always find something else eventually.”

Leopold had meant to be consoling, but Crispin’s lips thinned. “There are no other jobs. Not for me. I am a desk fae.” And then he pulled out his phone and essentially begged Thea to beam them up, but she remained silent.

After a while, Leopold got to his feet and made another attempt at flying.

It was glorious for about three seconds, at which point he crash-landed again.

And again. He was getting bruised, but he figured it was worth it for those three seconds of joy.

Crispin just watched, frowning, and didn’t use his own wings.

On his ninth or tenth try, Leopold managed to stay aloft long enough to do a barrel roll but then landed with enough force to knock the wind from his lungs.

Once he could breathe again, he decided to take a break from flying.

He sat beside Crispin, who was staring at his blank, cracked phone screen.

“Nothing helpful from Thea?” Leopold asked.

“Not a word.”

“Should we try to find another pond? Or something else reflective?”

Crispin shrugged. “Perhaps. But I don’t know where anything is in this place, and I’m not keen on wandering randomly.” He looked forlornly around them at the bright grass that stretched to the horizon, decorated here and there with flowers of various types, colors, and sizes.

Leopold followed his gaze. In the distance there was a brown smudge—mountains, maybe? Or given his luck, a giant steaming pile of?—

Entirely out of the blue, Thea began playing a country song, which made Crispin yelp with surprise. He seemed to have learned from his prior mistakes, however, and this time managed to keep a grip on the phone.

“Hey, I know this one,” said Leopold, surprised.

“One of my foster mothers was a Dolly Parton fan.” She used to sing along while she cooked dinner, and she hadn’t minded if Leopold, who was eleven, warbled along with her.

But one day a fire had started in the kitchen and, although luckily nobody was hurt, the house was destroyed.

Leopold had been shifted to a different foster family.

Oblivious to this bit of personal history, Crispin was listening to the lyrics. “She’s singing about silver and gold.”

“Those are reflective.”

“Yes, but I don’t have any on me. Do you?”

Leopold patted his weird bathing suit thing, but it didn’t even have pockets. “Nope.”

“Then….” Crispin brightened. “The Temple of the Moons! There are several on Phaxsi, as I recall, and they are plated in precious metals. I wonder where the nearest one is.” He looked around as if expecting a shiny building to materialize. It didn’t.

Thea stopped singing and refused to provide any additional information, although she did hiccup now and then. Crispin wandered for a bit but found nothing.

“You know,” Leopold eventually pointed out, “you’d get a better view from the air. I’d look myself but I can’t get much elevation. I bet you could, though.”

Crispin frowned and flapped his wings. “But I’m not permitted.”

“You’re banned from flying?”

“Yes, well, it’s part of the Treaty of Hrglethemot, isn’t it?”

As if Leopold would have the slightest idea what that was.

Crispin paused and then said, as if reciting from memory: “… in consideration of which the Fae of the Connected Worlds do hereby pledge and covenant that they shall heretofore and in perpetuity abstain from all flying, soaring, gliding, or hovering, and they shall also …. Well, there are two hundred and twelve other articles, but they’re not pertinent to our current situation.

Violation of the treaty could result in severe repercussions. ”

Leopold scrunched up his forehead. “But you said you hoped to fly in an airplane.”

“Yes,” said Crispin, nervously shifting his feet. “But I believe that may be an exception in that the airplane passenger isn’t technically flying at all, but rather sitting inside a vehicle that is.”

“So there are exceptions to the rule then.”

“Well, not exceptions precisely, but?—”

“But an emergency should be an exception. It’s, uh, exigent circumstances .” He’d heard that phrase once, in a cop show. “And we’re pretty exigent right now.”

Crispin folded his arms. “The Treaty of Hrglethemot does not contain provisions?—”

“Look, Crispy. Do you wanna stay stuck here forever, or do you want to get home to your desk and your, um, raccoon?”

“Minkis is a squirrel .” Crispin seemed offended. But he also seemed to be truly considering the rest of what Leopold had said, and eventually he huffed. “Fine.”

“Fine what?”

“I’ll… you know,” Crispin flapped his arms. That action was rather silly since he was in actual possession of perfectly flappable wings. But Leopold didn’t point that out. Sometimes the nicest thing to say was nothing at all.

“Great,” said Leopold. “You reconnoiter. I’ll wait here.” He sank down again into the soft grass, wishing it was as delicious as the purple grass on Vlotho.

After another few contorted facial expressions, Crispin handed over the phone, warned Leopold not to do anything to it, and then lifted into the sky as gracefully as a giant butterfly.

His wings were probably not big enough to lift something as heavy as a desk fae, but Leopold had already learned that there was no point in relying on silly things like logic and the laws of physics while on this adventure.

Instead, he looked upward, more than a little envious as Crispin flew in circles, rising higher with each circuit.

After a few moments, he landed softly beside Crispin. “How was that?” He was a little out of breath.

“You looked like a natural,” Leopold muttered, somewhat overcome with envy.

Crispin shrugged. “Many of the fae are naturally capable of flight. My people gave it up in the Treaty of Hrglethemot. It was probably intended to punish us for improperly making use of Chaos, which caused a lot of problems for everyone and, in turn, caused several other peoples to ally and declare war.”

Now, this was interesting. “Wait. Your folks were using that monster thing?”

“They still are. All of the fae do, and many others besides. Chaos provides the power behind our magic. And that’s fine so long as it’s carefully contained, but my forebears were…

. Well, suppose in your world a human owns a very large ferocious dog, and he keeps it chained up so as to protect his property.

A guard dog, yes? That’s considered acceptable.

But instead suppose he removes its collar and permits it to wander the neighborhood and terrorize everyone. Not acceptable.”

That did make sense. “So your fae ancestors let the dog loose and?—”

“And nearly started a war, which they would likely have lost and which would certainly have entailed enormous death and destruction. After the Almost War, they agreed to keep Chaos leashed, as it were, and also made several other concessions to atone for their poor behavior. Foreswearing flight was one of those. Providing assistance to the Office of the Lost was another.”

Oh. So that was how Crispin got his gig.

Leopold had probably watched too much Disney and way too many episodes of The Fairly OddParents , but he’d always pictured fairies flitting around in forests and granting wishes—maybe occasionally sprinkling magic dust—not sitting in offices collecting stuff.

Well, if it had been intended as punishment, that had failed, because Crispin clearly adored his job.

“Did your gang let the Chaos free again? Is that why it’s chasing us? ’Cause it seems like that would be a pretty big contract violation right there.”

Crispin was silent for so long that Leopold figured he’d clammed up for good. But then he gave a long sigh. “I don’t know.”

Leopold was going to ask more, but then Thea started playing an old song by Sly and the Family Stone, and Crispin fluttered aloft again.

Soon he was hardly more than a bright spot of light in a darkening sky.

Leopold had read about fireflies but had never seen one, and now he imagined that they must look something like this. He wished desperately that he could be up there too, that he wasn’t doomed to bumble about barely a few feet in the air and then crash-land. But it was also nice just to watch.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Crispy! That’s really cool! Show me your moves!”

Crispin did a dive followed by a steep ascent and a showy series of twirls. He performed a little ballet with dips and pirouettes and cartwheels. It was amazing. Breathtaking, almost. It was?—

Something huge and dark soared across the sky, snatched Crispin with enormous claws, and flapped away.