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Crispin

T his time it was Crispin’s head that felt swirly.

He’d already given up on his perfecality score—and oh how that hurt just to think it. He’d been the top curator in the department for three quarters running and had the somewhat sad but still significant blue ribbons to prove it.

And now Bidulla—he refused to think of her as his supervisor, and when in the mincing munchkins had that happened?—was about to take his beautiful bit of Chaos and stuff him into a room somewhere for all eternity. Or at least until he was needed.

Wait, that’s it! It was so obvious, he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t seen it before. He stepped in front of Leo. “I… can’t let you take him, ma’am.”

She stared at him through her huge gold-rimmed cat-eye glasses, which did nothing to soften her fearsome appearance.

“Excuse me, Curator Moscow?” She somehow managed to imbue his title with the exact same intonation she might have used for the word for excrement . Or chocolate . Bidulla Kronk hated chocolate.

Crispin stood firm, though his voice hemmed and hawed a bit. Have to take it out behind the woodshed and show it who was boss, later. “Well, you see, actually, he’s my necessary.”

She frowned. “Your what ?”

She might as well have said Your double dark chocolate ice cream with chocolate drizzle on top?

“My necessary. ” He tried to pull himself up to her height, aware that poor Leo was practically shaking with fear behind him. “I came here to find out what I needed for the next part of my mission, and nothing appeared. Except him.” Poor Leo. He was?—

Laughter burst out behind him.

Laughing. He’s laughing. Maybe it was some kind of nervous breakdown. Bidulla had inspired those in the past, on occasion, driving more than one curator out of the job sobbing and—at least once—rending their own garments. But laughter? “Um, Leo? Trying to make a point here.”

“It’s just… she looks… have you ever seen Bugs Bunny? When he dresses up like an opera singer with that Viking helmet and the long blond braids?”

And indeed, Bidulla was changing, her skin turning a fluffy gray with patches of white, her tusks shrinking and her two front teeth elongating, her long brown braids turning a cheery yellow.

“Leo, stop it,” Crispin whispered out of the side of his mouth. “ Not helping.”

Leo grumbled and Bidulla snapped back to her old, ogreish self.

Crispin wondered whether the changes Leo made to the world were permanent or if they would wear off when he went somewhere else. What if he changes me? What if… he already has?

He’d been part deer, part moth, maybe part dinosaur, and he’d assumed it was caused by the strange journey they were on. But what if Leo had done it? What if he changed how I feel, too?

It was not something he had the luxury of worrying about right now.

Bidulla, distracted, stared at her once-again-brown tresses. “What in the Dark Eye of Pothos was that?”

Crispin took advantage of her distraction, shoving Thea into his pocket and grabbing Leo’s hand. “Take me home.” He’d scooped up the pile of acorns on his desk when Leo wasn’t looking, and now he just needed to be somewhere safe. Somewhere familiar. “Can you do that?”

Leo’s eyes met his. “I… think so. Can you picture it, really hard, in your head? If you do that, I think I’ll have less chance of screwing it up.”

“What are you two up to? Crispin, it’s not safe to let this little piece of chocolate run around unhindered….”

She’d actually said “chocolate” that time. He was sure of it. “I’ll file all the reports when I get back.” That was all he could promise, and it would have to do. “ Now , Leo.”

“Buckle your seatbelt.”

Crispin pictured his home, the beautiful old oak tree with the little round windows spilling out golden light, and a big blue door, welcoming him home.

The world dissolved as the Necessary Room lost shape and color, and the last thing he saw was Bidulla’s face. “Curator Moss’caladin, stop that at once, or I’m filing a Form 739w on your sorry little desk fae a?—”

Then everything was gone, including Leo.

Consciousness came back to Crispin in dribs and drabs. First he heard birdsong, little tweets and powits somewhere far above.

Next, he felt something hard and sharp—and cold—poking into his back.

He moaned and shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position, only to encounter something equally annoying pressing into the other side.

He blinked, his eyes adjusting to the green filtered light.

A forest. He sat up quickly, then wished he hadn’t. His head swam, little butterflies cheerfully making the rounds just at the edge of his sight.

He took a deep breath, taking in the familiar wet, loamy scent of the forest. My forest.

His stomach settled, followed in short order by his head, and he looked around, finding the source of the sharp pointy things that had bedeviled his back. The toes of Leo’s boots.

“Leo!” He scrambled over the moldering leaves that comprised the forest floor. His earlier worries that Leo might have changed him felt petty now, contrived. Ungrateful. Leo had saved him again. Saved them both. Why shouldn’t Crispin have feelings for his Chaos Man?

Leo’s eyes were closed, his face pale. “Leo, are you all right?”

No response. Crispin checked his pulse. It was strong enough, but clearly something was wrong.

He looked around. He knew this place; he was home. Not inside his tree house, but close. To the left was the babbling brook whose soothing sounds put him to sleep at night. To his right, the tiny meadow where the fairies danced under the silver moons. And that meant….

A delighted chittering greeted him.

“Minkis!”

The gray squirrel approached cautiously, sniffing at him as if he wasn’t sure whether Crispin was real.

Small wonder. I’ve been gone for days. He reached into his pocket and held out an acorn.

Minkis stood on his hind legs, took it greedily, and dashed back toward the giant oak tree they both called home.

Crispin breathed a sigh of relief. He got his hands under Leo. Why couldn’t you have wished yourself a bit lighter? Still, he managed to lift Leo’s unconscious form. With a mighty huff, he started toward home.

Crispin whistled merrily, and Thea, perched on a little wooden table next to his wash basin, hummed right along with him.

He’d managed to get Leo onto the bed without too many of the leaves that had accompanied him from the forest floor, and his… paramour, he decided, was now in what appeared to be a blissful state of sleep.

It felt good to be home.

Around him, the cozy walls of his tree abode exuded a welcoming warmth, surrounding the wide living space inside.

He’d engaged the services of a local dryad when he’d first moved in, and the rather handsome young creature had coaxed the tree to put out a variety of helpful branches, forming cabinets, hooks and wooden towel racks, and even a platform of roots which was now the base of his bed.

He’d furnished the place with colorful bits and pieces that he’d collected during his travels, a practice that was sometimes frowned upon although there was no actual rule against it as long as they were unimportant things, ones that weren’t needed by OotL.

And he always paid the locals a fair price.

There were the forest-green curtains from Phraxis, a very cuddly semi-animated shaggy brown rug from a dragon weaver on Ferkin Four, and the glorious multicolored quilt from Methezuno City, each panel hand-quilted by a family of ogre nuns, on which Leo was currently resting comfortably.

He finished washing his arms and neck and face. It felt magnificent to be clean again, even if only from the middle up.

He’d need to check his cold stores next to find something to whip up for them to eat.

He was so fixated on the task, looking over sealed satchels of venison and wild blackberries and a whole container of zorfnen from—where else?—Zorf, that he failed to hear the rustling behind him.

“Hey Crispy, why is there a cat on my chest?” The bleary voice brought Crispin to full awareness, like a hoarbear after the first of spring.

He strangled a scream. Minkis was peering back at him from the aforementioned chest perch, his eyes decidedly slitted and catlike, his fabulous bushy tail now a long, gray snakelike thing.

Crispin bounded across the room and picked up Minkis, who looked at him with a disturbingly catlike feral cunning. “Put him back!”

Leo stared at him, confused. “I don’t have him. You do.” He looked around. “This is a crazy place. I once had a dream about a place like this after I had too many of Joey Taylor’s edibles. Am I dreaming?”

“No, you’re awake. This is my house—” Crispin sputtered to a halt.

“You… did something to Minkis. He’s not supposed to be a cat.

” His former squirrel squirmed around in his arms, freed himself with the magical prowess of a shapeshifter, and dropped to the ground, landing feet-first. Satisfied, he started licking his soft gray coat with his tongue.

“A squirrel? Oh. I just… when I woke, he was staring at me, and he reminded me of this cat I had at one of my foster homes. His name was Blackie, which was weird because he was entirely gray, except for his toes, which were?—”

Crispin put his hands on his hips. “Change him back, please ?”

“You get really grumpy when you’re at home.

” Nevertheless, Leo closed his eyes, creased his brow, and with an audible pop, Minkis’s tail fluffed out, his ears shrank, and his eyes moved back onto the sides of his head.

The little creature shuddered, looked up at him with a clearly betrayed look—whether for being turned into a cat or being changed back, Crispin couldn’t tell—and scampered up a branch into the dark recesses of the ceiling.

Crispin sighed. He knew that Leo couldn’t help it. He should be grateful that his whole tree house hadn’t transformed into—what did they call them on Earth?—a trailer.

He sat on the edge of the mattress, which was stuffed with astral down from Rigel 3, and put a hand on Leo’s forehead.

It felt normal—warm, but goodish warm. “It’s not your fault.

But we’ll have to help you get a better handle on your Chaos.

Can’t have you changing the world willy-nilly and causing… .”

“Chaos?” The smile Leo gave him lit a spark of pure joy in Crispin’s heart.

He snorted a very un-desk-fae-like snort. “I suppose a certain bit of that is inevitable.” And it would certainly keep things interesting between them. “You don’t seem sick.” He leaned over and kissed his paramour.

But he wanted to do more. They were alone with a bed in the place he felt safest, after all. That nagging doubt about whether Leo had changed him resurfaced, but he ruthlessly pushed it down.

Maybe he could strip Leo, one piece of clothing at a time, and wash his delicious body with a warm, soapy sponge….

Minkis made a sudden reappearance, chittering wildly, at the same time that a loud knock sounded at the tree house’s only door.

Leo sat up, exposing his beautiful, even if not muscularly impressive, chest. “Are we expecting someone?”

Crispin sighed. Drop-ins were unusual but not unheard of.

This part of the forest was rather sparsely settled, but sometimes Mrs. Dollywip would send one of her nineteen children over for a cup of this or a bowl of that, and old Meeser Crowflup occasionally needed help with something above the dwarf’s reach in his own subterranean den.

He just hoped it wasn’t his boss. Should have set the wards.

With one last longing look at Leo’s mostly-supine form, he got up and followed Minkis to the heavy round door. “Coming!”

“You sure it’s safe?” Leo’s voice sounded uncharacteristically worried.

“You can always Chaos them into a pumpkin, or something.”

Leo laughed. “Why is it always a pumpkin? And hey, we’re using Chaos as a verb now?”

Crispin ignored him and opened the door a crack. Only to find the absolutely last person he ever expected to see again.