Eric van Dyne

Eric van Dyne - Full Biography (under construction)

Origin Tale
Once there was an apprentice whose master sent him on a long journey to a distant lord. His master instructed him to be wary of thieves and strangers, and since he knew no one along the way he spent most of the time alone. He traveled alone, he slept alone, and--to pass the time between supper and bed--he played games alone. Shanghai, Forty Thieves, Bisley, House on the Hill, and others he made up to pass the hours away.

One night he sat near the hearth of an inn, trying to puzzle his way out of Solo Noble, when he suddenly realized he was no longer alone. A woman stood before him, fair of face with eyes keen and bright. “Pardon me, young sir,” she said, bringing a blush to his face. “I saw you playing, and I wished to complement you on the make of your board. It is among the finest I have seen.”

The youth explained how it was his master's, loaned to him for the long journey. “How does one play?” she asked. And she sat, and though his master had warned him of strangers he could not fathom malice from the beauty before him.

“One seeks to reverse the board,” he said, setting the pegs back in their slots. “To take it from full with but one empty slot, to a board empty save for a single peg left standing in the center.” He showed her the play of it, hopping peg over peg to remove them and clear the board. Within a pair of minutes he found himself with eight pieces still standing yet no moves among them. He shook his head. “'Tis more a puzzle than a game, but I've yet to find the riddle of it.”

“Ah, I know it's like,” she said, and her smile sent his heart to pounding. “Perhaps a different set? I found this upon my travels and took it for its beauty, but knew not the rules to play.” She reached into her travel pack and withdrew a board whose beauty made his own pale in shame. Each piece was a sphere carved of gemstone, ruby, emerald, tourmaline, lapis lazuli, and others he could not name. The board itself was mother-of-pearl, the divots of purest ivory. She held it to him. “Shall we make a trade?”

He stared at the piece, worth far more than his master's humble one of wood. “Why would you trade such a thing?”

“Merely that a board so fine deserves someone capable of playing it. Are we agreed?”

He nodded, speechless, dizzy at what such a board must be worth. She placed it before him. “Come. At least let me see you play before I take my leave.”

He touched the pieces reverently. Then, slowly, fearing he knew not what, he took his first move. Deftly he hopped a stone of polished jade and removed it from the board. And with it went all his memories from his eighth summer. Next a garnet, taking too his mother's name. Topaz, for the crafts he worked by his own hands. Amethyst, the girl he favored back at home. One by one the stones he took, and with them his memories washed away. In their place he knew only clarity, realizing each move so obviously he chided himself for never seeing it before.

Finally there were but four stones left. He hopped a black onyx flaked with white, taking thus his dreams. Then a jasper, blood-warm as his heart. Finally an agate in blue and white, the echo of his will. The board sat empty save for a solitary diamond, as clear and crystalline as his mind. This the woman picked up and breathed upon, then placed in a pouch over her heart.

“Come,” she said, drawing him up by the hand. “We have many games yet to play.”

Introductory Flavor (from GM)
You run.

Panic blinds you as you tear through wicked thorns and strangling vines, sure in the knowledge that something fierce and feral dogs your heels. Pain flares as the briars tear at your skin, leaving ragged gashes behind.

There! A light ahead, the glow of a doorway.

You pull through and fall to a hardwood floor, bleeding and bruised. Behind you, a mirror shows the brambles through which you just ran, before fading to reflect the lobby of a small hotel. On a nearby wall a clock reads 3:17. A desk clerk looks at you in shock, then rubs his eyes.

You don't wait to hear anything he has to say. Icy terror races through your veins and you run.

You run for days. Your path has no rhyme or reason; if anything, its only purpose is to throw off pursuit. You let chance decide your course. Two weeks in, you're confronted by police officers, one of whom is a monster. You try to get away but he subdues you. You're not quite sure how, but you wake up in a cell. He explains himself, your situation—you're a changeling now, one of those who were taken by beings of Faerie and managed to escape—and when you convince him you're calm enough he lets you go with a jacket as a parting gift.

You continue to run, but you think he might have had connections, got the word out about you, because not long after in Providence, you're caught again by more monsters, more of these “changelings.” They take you to a building that appears to be a bed and breakfast from the outside but turns out to be a changeling safe house. They keep you there as their “guest”—prisoner, more like—as they attempt to acclimate you to changeling life. You're too tired to run further, though, and let them keep you, deciding to play along for now.

Then you met Terrence Goatskin—who didn't look very goat-like to you—a changeling interested in your durance and escape. He asks you questions; you reluctantly answer. When he hears about your escape—the time and means by which you left the thorny Hedge—he seems very interested. When the interview is done he thanks you for your time and leaves.

Two days later, the tall, willowy, flowery woman who runs the safe house tells you that Goatskin has mentioned other changelings like you. Not with circuits in the skin and light in their eyes, but ones who came out on the same night, and through mirrors as you did. The woman—Nuo—suggests you meet them. Among changelings, there are no coincidences, and the Wyrd works in mysterious ways. If nothing else, it might do you some good to meet others who may have a connection to you.

You're not so sure about it, but at the moment there's really not much else you can do, so you agree to it. Hopefully you won't regret it.

Flavor - At the Safehouse
Eric lay on the bed his “hosts” had provided for him. It was a nice bed, really. Twin-sized, decent pillow, with blue cotton sheets and a lavender-and-white checkered quilt on top that was probably made by someone's grandma. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept in a real bed.

He couldn't remember a lot of things, and it scared the hell out of him.

A week he'd been here now. Not technically a prisoner, but not quite free to leave, either. For his own safety, they said. He'd been picking apart their words, looking for the little and the big lies since he got here. There were plenty to choose from, but which were the true lies, and which were just his own imaginings?

The room was bare. No closet, the only window welded shut, bed flat on the floor. No space big enough to fit through save the door out. Somehow this was important, but he couldn't pin down why. He just knew it was.

He ran over the patterns in his mind again, timing of meals, comings of “visitors” to check on him. There had to be a clue somewhere. She always worked in patterns, even if they were devilishly complex. Find the pattern, find Her. There was a clock on floor next to his bed. Maybe if he changed the intervals between visits to base eleven--

A knock interrupted the thought. He looked at the door without moving, and after a few seconds it sounded again. “Eric? Someone's here to see you.” Nuo's voice, soft as a rose petal. (But with what hidden thorns?) The door creaked slowly open, and Eric sat up, ready to bolt if need be.



Nuo glided into the room, tall and willowy with apple blossoms twined through her hair coppery hair, the smell of carnations preceding her like a calling card. A spindly, somewhat unkempt man followed her, his too-long arms folded around a satchel and glasses perched on his angular nose. A second set of eyes, jet black and staring, peered out of his brow. He looking somewhere in his mid-to-late thirties and was smiling a smile that invited you to trust him and be friends.

Eric didn't accept the invitation.

“Eric, this is Terrance Goatskin,” said Nuo. “He's a scholar”--her voice sounded sour at the word--”and he wants to talk to you about your escape.” Her mouth quirked; she wasn't too keen on his presence either, apparently. Genuine, or a double-bluff to get him to trust her?

“No.”

She almost looked relieved. (An act to bring him in?) She turned to “Goatskin.” “I told you, it's too soon. He need more time to recover and get grounded.”

Goatskin just smiled at her. “Oh, I understand. I won't push for too much. I just need a few minutes to get some details before they fade.”

“No,” he and Nuo answered at once. Terrance blinked, seeming (probably just seeming) genuinely surprised. He looked back and forth between them, then turned to Eric with that same why-don't-we-just-be-friends smile.

“Really? It would only be for scholarship, I promise. I collect the tales of Arcadia to find the unifying threads among our different experiences. Your unique experiences would help--”

“No.”

“See?” said Nuo. She took his arm and tried to turn him. “Maybe if you come back--”

Goatskin glided out of her grip like he didn't even notice it. “Let's make a deal, then.” He looked intently at Eric. With all four eyes. “I want to get some information from you. What do you want?”

He weighed his options for a second. How much of this was a game? Some of it had to be. And if people thought you were playing along, sometimes they dropped their guard. He answered truthfully. “I want to leave.”

Goatskin nodded. “Reasonable enough. Let's make it official.” He held up his hand. “I, Terrance Goatskin, solemnly promise to get you the privilege of coming and going as you please--”

“You can't do that!” said Nuo.

Goatskin shot her a friendly smile “--conditional upon your returning here each evening. In exchange, you promise to answer three of my questions truthfully.” He paused and lowered his hand briefly. “You can pick which three, by the way, but the answer must be true.” Arm back up. “Additionally, Fate will assist us to know if the other is being dishonest in our dealings. Sound fair?” He held out his hand for a shake.

Eric looked at it. In for an inch, in for a mile. “Sure.” He shook it. “Cross my heart and hope to--”

“No!” Both Goatskin and Nuo lunged at him, hands going for his mouth. He scrambled back, tensing to jump off the bed and run.

Whatever disturbed them seemed to have passed. Nuo smoothed her blouse, and Goatskin arranged his glasses on his head. “You can solemnify a Pledge with just about any phrase,” he said, “but not that one. It might come true. Now, where were we? Ah yes.” He held out his hand. “Do you agree? A simple 'yes' will do.”

Eric slowly reached out and shook it again. “Okay.”

As soon as he said it, something happened. It was like a huge brass bell ringing, so deep and far away he could only feel the vibrations through his feet and up through his entire soul. “What...”

“Oh, just a Pledge, that's all,” said Goatskin, digging into his satchel. Eric could hear the capital letter in his voice. “You read my pamphlet, I assume?”

“Actually, we ran out of those,” said Nuo.

“No bother, I have more.” Goatskin dug through the satchel for a few seconds, then pulled out a sheaf of pamphlets and set them on the bed while still searching through the bag. “Experience is the best teacher, anyway.” He pulled out a leatherbound notebook, a pen, and then some metal contraption that turned out to be a collapsible stool. He set it up, sat down, and flipped to a blank page before looking back at Eric. Nuo sighed in exasperation and started pacing the other side of the room.

“Remember, any three, but they must be true. Ready?”

He noddeed.

“What's your name?”

“Eric.”

Goatskin's eyebrows raised. “Just Eric? You may want to add something else; most of us take new names upon our return, after all. Sometimes we can't remember the original, sometimes we just want to forget. 'Goatskin,' for example, is actually an archaic word for parchment, and I took it as my appellative due to my interest in scholarship. In retrospect it might have been a mistake choosing something that makes people expect a man with horns and a beard, but oh well.” He shrugged. “Anything sound good to you? I've known Thrice-Cursed Harry, Jennifer of the Blue Moon, Weiwen Skullcrusher, and even The Daughter of the Ten Thousand Radiant Perfections.”

He thought for a second. “Van Dyne,” he said eventually.

Goatskin looked him up and down. “Appropriate, I like it.” Again, that disarming smile. It seemed genuine, and somehow this time Eric felt more certain it was. “Very well, Eric van Dyne, what was your Durance like?”

Eric considered for a few seconds. If he told the truth, it would be a magnet for anyone looking for him—assuming this entire thing wasn't just a ruse—so promise or no, that wasn't an option. Something close, then, close enough to sound true, but not quite. “I was slaved as a thinking machine for a military strategist. He--”

Something jerked out from under him, like having the floor removed and being sent into freefall. At the same time a massive blast of pain erupted in his forehead, like a hammer hitting from the inside. He groaned and leaned forward, waiting for the stars to clear.

“I was afraid that would happen.” Somehow through the haze, he could still make out a tinge of disappointment in Goatskin's voice.

“You knew--” began Nuo.

“No, I suspected. Experience is the best teacher. Besides, it's far better for him to learn the lesson here than out on the street.”

The fog was starting to clear from his vision. He squinted up at Goatskin. “What did you do?”

He shook his head, a little sadly. “I didn't. You, however, broke your Pledge. The Wyrd doesn't appreciate Oathbreakers, and even without a formal sanction it still metes out punishment. The headache should go away in a few minutes.” He started packing up his notebook. “However, given that experience I'm forced to agree with your hostess in that it will be better for me to come back in a few days.”

“Hmph,” said Nuo.

Goatskin ignored her. “Before I go, though, could you at least tell me how long ago you got back?”

The headache was starting to fade. Eric looked Goatskin over. He didn't want to say, but after that last thing... “Three weeks,” he said.

Goatskin nodded and closed his satchel, then paused as he stood. “Three weeks? That would put it around May 22nd, right?”

Eric said nothing.

Goatskin seemed to deliberate a moment. “Just by chance, did you happen to exit through a mirror?”

He knows. Eric said nothing, but something must've given him away, because Goatskin relaxed like he'd found his answer. “Fascinating,” he said. “Well, I must be going. Please let me know when you've recovered more, Eric, and I'd be happy to talk. Good day!”

He turned and left. Nuo watched him go, then after a few seconds she turned to Eric. “I'm sorry about that. He's always getting into places he really shouldn't. He doesn't mean ill.” She reached out to touch his arm; he jerked it away. She didn't seem upset, just resigned. “Can I get you anything?”

“No.”

Silence for several seconds. Finally, she turned away. “Let me know if that changes, then.” She left, shutting the door behind her.

Eric lay back on the bed. Would Goatskin still try to get him freedom? That was probably never a genuine promise to begin with. Just a front to show him they could yank his chain if he broke their rules. He shifted position, and his hand brushed against paper. Goatskin's leaflets. Whatever indoctrination they wanted him to believe, “conveniently” left there for him to peruse. He could ignore them, but then he wouldn't know the rules of the game.

You can't play along if you don't know the rules. Reluctantly, he picked up the first one and started to read.

Eric's Journal #1
(Official Summary)

''Note: Eric doesn’t actually keep a journal, for fear that someone (a) could be reading over his shoulder as he writes, or (b) could find it later. He considers his thoughts much safer when kept in his head. However, if he were to keep an honest journal, this is what it would say.''

Things have been going better. I’ve been playing along with the rules and getting “grounded” again, as Nuo says (as in, feet on the ground). I can come and go freely, as long as I promise (no Pledge, thankfully) to come back. She’s given me some spending cash to get me started—about $100, which seems like a lot until I remember how much less it’s worth now—and said I need to start finding my own way, get an apartment and a job, etc. She gave me some contacts for helping with that. Too convenient, but I don’t have better options so for now I need to play the game.

Terrance Goatskin called me in to an Indian restaurant run by an elephant Changeling. Apparently there are 3 others who just happened to come out of mirrors at the same time I did, and coincidences like that just don’t happen. We went around and introduced ourselves; I gave them a line about being an ENIAC for a WWII re-enactor (with real battles) and that I managed to escape through an engineered loophole, coming out through a department store mirrored column. No one questioned it, so either they bought it or they didn’t feel like challenging it. (Why challenge what you already know is false?)

Here’s the roster. Given the setup I figure I’m supposed to spend a lot of time with these people, so I may as well make note of them:

Hypatia (“Tia”) Earhart. Hawk-themed flier who disappeared ~50 years ago in the Bermuda Triangle while looking for her mother, Amelia Earhart. That’s too ludicrous to believe, probably to lull me into thinking she’s genuine because it’s so illogical. Sort-of a double-bluff.

Chiara Glass. Shadowy woman with bits of translucent, smoky glass through her. Abducted at college, wanted to be an architect. Mundane enough story. I'm probably supposed to trust her since she's the only other "normal" person.

Simon. Sallow-faced, vacant-looking man. Maybe a drug addict. Claims to have no memories of his past, which of course isn’t suspicious at all. Probably meant to be the one drawing attention to keep it away from the real dangers.

It’s like some sort of game, and these are the people I’m obviously supposed to trust. They're all ruses, of course, but some of them are more obviously dangerous than the others. I’ll play along for now, but I’m keeping an eye on all of them.

Anyway, no sooner had we gotten introduced when some random guy walks up and drops us a note, saying “The man in the black hat” wanted us to have it. Then he goes and orders food and claims he doesn't remember anything about it (talking to us) afterward. The note just had the word “Mirrors,” a set of latitude and longitude coordinates, and a time (3 AM).

Gee, that’s not suspicious at all. But since it’s obviously something we’re supposed to follow up on, I went along. We checked the library and found it to be in a cemetery, then called up “Bruja Garcia” to give us some advice in making a “motley pledge” to join us together as a group. (Convenient there’s someone around to facilitate that. Again, it’s obviously what I’m supposed to do, so for now I play along, and watch.)

We checked it out during the day, then after some quick supply shopping (flashlights, etc), we staked it out at night, dodging security patrols until 3 AM.

Simon claims to have seen a shadow moving on the ground; no one else did, but the earth was disturbed and digging it up we found a box filled with some little pottery figure things. Before we could really check them out I heard someone behind us, and turned to find three other Changelings there. They mentioned taking us “kicking and screaming” to the Market, presumably a “Goblin Market,” and by that drop they are presumably the “Privateers” one of Goatskin’s pamphlets warned about.



Yeah, we ran. No question. Apparently that wasn’t the right thing to do, though, because they ran after and were keeping close, including getting some gunshots in on the girls. Trying to stir chivalry there, I guess. I kept running, but it wasn’t working so I changed tactics and stood my ground. I tried to control the light like Nuo says I supposedly can, but it messed up royally (of course. The rules only stay the same when it works for them.) Still, I must’ve gotten points for effort because one of the screw-ups turned my road flare into a blinding strobe, and it was enough to get away. (Did I mention that after a bit all the privateers were coming after me? Almost seems sloppy, making it so obvious. And we only got away once I stopped running and acted. What is She trying to get out of me through this?)

We regrouped at a safehouse for some rest and healing up with magic, lumpy purple fruit the safehouse owner just happened to have on hand. I made Tia try one first, but apparently they just knit up your wounds quick (at least for now; no doubt that’ll change when it’s least convenient). The little pottery things look like ancient artifacts, kind of like you’d see in National Geographic. No clue why they’re important. And the privateers didn’t drop any clues to find out of they were looking for the pottery, or just happened to be wandering in a closed cemetery at night where no one else should be and happened to find us. I suspect the latter; it fits more with everything else going on.

And right now we’re resting up before heading out in the daylight to see what we can figure out about these clay things. Presumably this is some sort of puzzle She wants me to figure out. Why, though? And when I do, will everything else disappear? Or will she keep it playing like some twisted television show. (Heh. I am The Prisoner. I wonder if I'll ever get to take out Number One.)

Eric's Journal #2
The night at the safehouse passed okay, mostly because I stayed awake and didn't give the others the chance to pull something funny. Once it was light, Simon scouted outside and confirmed that the privateers were nowhere around. (He is conveniently good at sneaking). Hoping for the best, we gathered our stuff and headed out to try to take care of some things.

The first stop was—wait for it—the library. Not the police or even the Summer Court to report an attempted assault and kidnapping, but the library, to look into those little pottery things. There's seven of them total, four of which look like an attempt to look like each of us, as done by the local cave man. Everyone else is acting like these are the most important things, so I just have to go along for now.

At the library I let Kiara do the talking with Goatskin, giving her one of the statue things (that's not a representation of us) for him to check out. When she came back her conversation with the others boiled down to “He thinks they might be dream vessels. They seem sort of like dream vessels. Let's talk about how dream vessels work. Dream vessels dream vessels dream vessels.” Goatskin came back, and after that lead-in of course they turned out to be dream vessels. (Honestly, She can compute n-dimensional hyperbranes in an instant, but subtle hints seem to be beyond Her.)

Dream vessels are activated by sleeping with them, like a teddy-bear. And since there appears to be one for each of us, they're probably custom dreams, and will be extra powerful for that. I think we'll be better off destroying them, but I bet we're not allowed to do that. Goatskin instead recommended we form a dream pact to be able to jump into each others' dreams and help each other out--and, incidentally, give each other unfettered access to the deepest roots of our subconscious. Thank you, no, but the others insisted. I tried to make a one-way pact so that I could at least keep Her minions out, but it didn't work. I did at least manage a stipulation that they can't come in without my permission—which I have no intention of granting—so as long as that rule holds I should be good.

Since I refused to do it, Tia volunteered to be the guinea pig for testing the statues out. Fine by me, except that apparently we can only jump into her head if we're in the Hedge.

Now, after spending several days using literally every ounce of strength and will I had to get out of that nightmarish hellhole, going back in is the last thing I want to do. I got voted down (of course), and the hints were heavy enough that even had I managed to break it off something probably would have dragged us there anyway. At least I managed to get the others to stop by the Summer Court before we left so we could drop off descriptions and some sketches of the privateers that tried to kidnap us. (I was drawing while the others were colluding among themselves, thinking I couldn't hear.) I don't expect anything to come from it, of course, but I have to go through the motions.

So. We needed to find someplace safe in the Hedge to go dream-hopping. A safe place in the Hedge seems like a contradiction in terms, but supposedly they exist. One of the Summer Court officers suggested starting in the west side of town because the safe “Hollows” there go vacant frequently. No one else found this the least suspicious, of course, but after pointing out that it probably means something's eating the local residents, I convinced them to start on the opposite side of town, down in East Providence.

Getting into the Hedge is frighteningly easy. Just find an activated doorway, knock, and open it. If you can't find one, any enclosed space will do for making a new one if you feed it some Glamour. (Now I know why Nuo's guest room has no enclosed spaces. Not only does it keep wandering Things out, it also keeps the “guests” in.) Hypatia conveniently has some sort of sixth-sense for finding activated doorways, so it didn't take too long to find one. (Notice how anytime we need a specific skillset, one of the others just happens to have it?)



En route to finding one of these “Hollows,” we did a little hunting for goblin fruit. I don't trust them, but the others wanted some and I'll probably need them at some point anyway. I found some eggplant-looking things that, according to Kiara, are either super-stimulants or super-sedatives. I'm certain it will turn out to be whichever is most inconvenient when I need them.

Kiara also has oh-so-convenient Hedge-navegating skills and found us an inviting Hollow after only a few minutes' search. It's an enclosed grotto-like area surrounded on three sides by rock cliffs, with a small waterfall leading into a deep pool. There's a cave at the back, and since we'd been warned that Hollows are rarely unoccupied, we had to check it out for any hostile residents we'd have to eliminate before we could claim it as our own. (Presumably nonsentient residents, although the impression I got was that whoever can kick the current owner out—including by killing them--gains rights to the Hollow, and I wouldn't put it past Her to see how far she can push my morality.) The cave was the obvious spot, so I kept my eye on that deep pool while Simon scouted ahead.

I was right. (Thank you, J. R. R. Tolkien.) No sooner had Simon gotten alongside than this huge purple leech-insect thing arcs out of the water and tries to eat him. Things got hectic at that point, but after our last experience I knew this wouldn't end until I tried something heroic, so I lit myself up with a road flare and jumped on the thing.

You know those bucking broncos at rodeos where the goal is to stay on while the horse is doing everything in its power to get rid of you? Think that, but purple and scaly. I only managed to keep my grip for a few seconds before it tossed me off. I landed in the water thankfully, since otherwise I probably would have broken a bone or something. At least I could check out the pool for others (there weren't any), and by the time I got out the thing had died.



So, by brute violence we were now the proud owners (more like squatters) of a Hollow. I immediately set to work trying to hide the entrance so no one else could pull the same stunt on us. Simon immediately undermined my efforts by hanging the carcass of the leech-thing out by the front entrance. The others seem to think this is a good idea, and I wasn't able to persuade them otherwise, so I'll just have to do the best I can to make up for it.

Unfortunately, by this time my staying up all night was catching up to me, and I apparently fell asleep while trying to remember how to tie the right Boy Scout knot to keep brush together. At least I'd already had the Pledge made to keep the others out of my dreams; who knows what would have happened without that in place?

Flavor - Dream
''He was in a building, and with the intuitive clarity that came only in dreams he knew it had no outside. All doors led to more hallways and rooms and other doors, but none led out because there was no 'out' to lead to, like an n-dimensional polyhedron folded in on itself. He wandered the rooms anyway. One was an office full of cubicles all in disarray, as if everyone had run out to lunch. Another was a grassy hill overlooking a rocky shoreline, but still a room whose walls he could see only when he looked for them. Another was a hotel lobby of dark-polished wood, staffed with a bore attendant while a couple was making out on one of the couches. They didn't notice him. No one in any of the rooms seemed to notice him.

He walked the rooms, and watched, and tried to find the patterns. He knew he was dreaming, and so he knew the dreams were false. True dreams were never this vivid, this memorable. This was an illusion, some play-act fed to his mind for whatever arcane purpose She was driving at, like running a rat through a maze. He just had to figure out what Her purpose was. So he walked the rooms. It was like collecting puzzle pieces. Each one by itself was almost meaningless, but get enough and you could eventually figure out the picture.

A crowded shopping mall. A high-school locker room. A movie theater. Someone's living room. And on and on, each room another mystery, seemingly pointless and yet with some hidden purpose. But instead of finding meaning, all he found was frustration. Was was the point of all this?

Next came a classroom of some sort. Elementary school, judging by all the bright colors and cutesy posters. The windows showed a snow-covered expanse outside, but of course there were no doors in that wall.

He looked out the windows, looked at the other doors leading out, thought of however many hundreds more rooms he'd go through before the dream ended.

''You know what? Screw this.'' He was tired of playing the rat tonight. How far would She go to maintain the illusion that it was a dream, that he had as much control as those oh-so-helpful leaflets had claimed? Only one way to find out. He stared at the windowed wall and took a deep breath, then held his hands out in front of him, palms together. He breathed out, and the wall cracked from roof to foundation. He spread his hands apart, and the crack opened like a door, letting in the cold and the snow with an icy vengeance that took his breath away. He gasped, but smiled as the ice stung his cheeks and dredged up memories of sleds and snowball fights.

He walked onto the frozen lawn, closed his eyes, and breathed. When he opened them, the rolling hills and parking lot had been replaced with terraced mountain cliffs and icy gorges. In the distance, a herd of mammoths wandered slowly by.

Laughter sounded behind him, and a handful of kids—ten, maybe twelve years old—ran by carrying sleds. One turned to him with a face that seemed familiar under its layers of scarves and cap. “Hey, Eric? You up for a run?”

Eric smiled and grabbed his own sled suddenly materialized from the snowpack. “You bet!” He ran after them, heading for the nearest dropoff.

Yes, it was still a dream. But now it was his dream, and that made all the difference.''

Eric's Journal #3
I woke up sometime in the late afternoon with Tia poking my shoulder. Sloppy to let my guard down, but I could only push myself so far. Nothing obviously bad happened while I was out, though I wish I could have heard the conversations that went on.

Anyway, with a Hollow secured (barely), it was time to do our actual task of looking into the dream vessels. Tia volunteered to go first, with the vessel that looks vaguely like her (feathers, beak, etc). She just had to go to sleep; the rest of us had to do some meditative thing to access her dreams, and it’s hard. It took nearly two hours just for me to get to “sleep,” and then nearly as long to follow the pledge-paths into her head. (No, I don’t know how I did it, I just did. It’s kind of like following a distant tune through fog, barely heard so it’s hard to tell if you’re actually getting closer.) When I finally made it there I was basically riding Tia’s shoulder as she (in the form of a bird) soared over a nighttime forest and massive manicured garden. The garden had a gigantic stone tower in the middle that radiated danger, so she steered clear of it (I’ll get back to that later). There were fireworks going off all around, so riding her shoulder felt a lot like being shot at with pretty—and pretty deadly—antiaircraft guns. Someone shadowy down below in the middle of a massive party seemed to be directing the fireworks and laughing when one singed her, though it was hard to get a good look at him.

Anyway, we soared around on her shoulder for a while (Chiara was there too, also disembodied; Simon “conveniently” didn’t make it in.) Since nothing else seemed to be happening, I figured this was another case where I needed to do something to get things rolling. (Good heavens, I feel like I’m in Zork or something. Huh…odd name for me to actually remember. Anyway.) I decided to flex some dream muscles and stepped into the dream myself (flying, of course, or at least floating). It was hard. The dream—or, more likely, Tia herself—was resisting me something fierce, but I still managed to will the tower to crack at the base collapse right on top of Mr. Shadow and his dream party. There was a bunch of dismayed screams, then the sun came out and the dream ended. (Neatly confirming that only the things I do seem to matter.)

By the time we came out it was deep into the night, so we decided to break until the next day. I surreptitiously pocketed one of the other figurines to investigate on my own. (The little one with moth wings and a crazy sharp-toothed smile.) We used the Hollow’s back door to get out of the Hedge, and after parting ways I took a roundabout path back to Nuo’s. She was busy somewhere else in the house, so I headed up to my “guest” room and settled down for sleep with the statue under my pillow.

I should have known better that the first dream would have been a lure. This one started off in a dentist’s office with a bunch of butterflies pinned to the wall, and jars full of people’s teeth lining the shelves. One cabinet had a bunch of books with identical publication dates—half of them I hadn’t heard of, but after looking up plot summaries later they all seem to involve someone going crazy (and none were actually published on the listed date—12 Sept 1975). I went out the back door and found myself in a marsh, and after a while walking in it found an archway that took me back to the real world via a broken mirror in the basement of a dusty shop (a Hedge path, basically). I headed to the exit, and about ten feet outside found the first body, facedown in a pool of blood. And a few yards beyond that, another. And then another. And another. I knew I’d regret it, but I turned one of them over. It was a man, probably in his thirties. He was missing his teeth; they’d been sliced out with a knife, leaving his gums in bloody ribbons.

I knew it was just a dream, but some things are just too much. I started panicking, and the dream pounced on me (of course). Everywhere I looked I saw more bodies piled around me, more and more of then, all facedown in blood. I managed to get out before worse could happen, but let’s just say I didn’t sleep very well after that. (I managed to have enough control to not break the little statue; it spent the night wrapped in a sheet and tucked into a box in the far corner of the room with the coatrack weighing the lid down).

We met up the next day at Dunkin Donuts (man, I wish I had an income to spend), and proceeded to go to—yes, you guessed it—the library. Again. To talk with Goatskin. Again. Because he’s always so helpful and always just happens to know exactly what would be useful to us at the time.

Except…well, I guess he didn’t this time. Tia wanted an interpretation of her dream, and he didn’t have a clue other than recommending the psychoanalysis section. (Though he did have a field guide to identify goblin fruits that he let us photocopy. Probably he denied the dream thing to preserve some sort of realism.) Oh, and the apparently human secretary could see through our Masks. I think she’s supposed to be Goatskin’s ensorcelled girlfriend, but more likely she’s just there to keep me on my toes.

Speaking of which, I was pretty much drained of Glamour after the previous two days, especially that scrap at the graveyard. A few of the others claimed to be so, too, so we broke ways for a few hours to gather up some. I went to an evangelical church with a nice, rousing pastor. I’m still trying to decide if I believe in God after Her, but plenty of the congregation did, so it was a useful morning. (And refreshingly, totally mortal. I don’t care if it is all a hoax, hanging out around a bunch of normal-looking and –acting people was like a hot bath after dealing with my borderline-psychotic motley-mates.  ….crap. When did I start thinking of them as companions? It hasn’t even been three days and already I’m succumbing.)



Anyway, we freaks met back up in the Hollow, where Tia gave me a quiet but stern tongue-lashing for sneaking the mothman statue. She claims she saw me fiddling with it when I put it back. I don’t know if she actually knows the whole dream business or just my taking the statue, but after trying to dodge it for a while I told her enough to satisfy her. It was more than I’d like, but I’m perpetually in a position of weakness, so there’s not much I can do.

Anyway, from there Chiara took her turn at dreaming, eating one of the eggplant fruit things I’d found (and which Goatskin’s book still couldn’t differentiate as being a stimulant or a sedative; since sedative is usually less useful we guessed that, and were right). Another few hours finding my way to her dream, and we were in a castle tower of some kind, with her in a gaudy princess dress. Some bird was trying to land in a thorn-covered tree outside. Figuring it’d be the same as in Tia’s dream, I took hold and choked the thorns off with a flowering vine. The rules must’ve changed, though, because that didn’t work and instead Chiara had to do some sort of elaborate escape past a woman that looked like her mother and running through some representation of the Hedge. I still had to clear us a path through it, though, and after we got out the dream faded.

Next was Simon. Same drill with sleep, and then I’m riding his shoulder in a huge pit or well, with a tiny circle of light up at the top and a sheer drop to blackness at the bottom. There were some words on the other wall, but no way to reach them. I know a puzzle when I see one, so I stepped in and created a bridge across to them. It had what looked like a street address, nothing more. From there I created a stairway going up to the light so we could look out. (Notice how I’m the only one doing these things? Further confirmation that everyone else is just acting.)

We came out on top of the tower from Tia’s dream, but in the daylight. (See? Told you I’d get back to it.) There was someone menacing walking alone in the garden below, so I collapsed the tower onto him (but with a lot fancier special effects this time, including levitating our top potion on hands of lightning). Apparently that was cheating, since it slowly built itself back up. Chiara claims she went down to the bottom and found a bunch of rag-pickers gnawing at bodies and stealing their faces, but that was probably more scare tactics to keep me from going where I shouldn’t. Eventually the sun set and the dream faded just as the fireworks came out.

After all this it was late again. I volunteered to check out my own statue on my own time, and strangely enough the others actually let me do it. (Must’ve been getting tired and sloppy to let that one slip by.) I did the same thing as with the moth one, but this time went in more cautiously, knowing that something would probably come out and bite me.

My dream started outside Her domain: crystal gardens, immaculate rows, order and precision as far as you could see. But it soon fell away to that limitless white expanse, threaded through with mirrored paths. I wanted to turn and run, of course, but that would’ve short-circuited whatever lesson this was supposed to teach, and She would have just found some other way to force-feed it to me. So I went on. But instead of the great golden spindle, the paths all converged on a tree. A man was at it, carving what looked like a crude representation of my face, with “JY” underneath it.

That’s when She showed up. Not her true form, of course, but the immaculate, flawless woman I first met her as. With a wave of her hand she simply erased both man and letters, saying to forget them because they were imperfect.

Now, I’m trying to play along as best as I can, but you know what? By this point I’d had more than enough of her little mind games. She set up the rules of this thing, so I decided to use them against her. I took control of the dream, and though I could feel Her fighting me I managed to undo Her erasure and get both man and letters back. She started to do it again, so I figured why not?, and quickly dream-wrote a few glowing equations through the air in front of Her, then swiped them over a denominator of 0 and shattered Her avatar into so much glowing chaff. Her voice came then (of course it wouldn’t be that easy), again telling me to forget it all. I put chewed Her out. I know what Her game is, and I’m not going to play along that nicely. I was probably too free with my words, but maybe that was the point, because after that She left me alone. Well, mostly. I got a better look at the man carving the tree, and I think he looked like my Dad. Then the dream started fading, and just as it did the carving’s features altered into a disturbingly wicked grin.

I didn’t mention any of this to the others, and they didn’t ask. (Sloppy again. Obviously they already know about it, but it’s bad for their façade to tacitly admit it by not asking.) Instead we met up again and tried out the second-to-last doll, of a little patchwork person. (I think I’ll argue to leave the last one alone in case we need it later. We’re obviously supposed to go through them all, but maybe I can throw a little monkey wrench and buy some time before She advances things more.) Tia drove the dream again, and this time we ended up on a massive table with Tarot cards spread out. None of us have the slightest clue how to read Tarot cards, so I just filed them away for later. We did find one card with a little patchwork woman banging on it from the inside, asking (silently) for us to help her. The card had a doorknob on it, and opening it led to a sort of bazaar (probably a goblin market), where after a little wandering we found the same woman chained to one booth doing some handiwork. We got that her name was Hannah, but then the dream faded.

Since the Tarot cards were obviously important, we headed to—yet again—the library to look things up. I managed to convince the others to leave Goatskin out of it this time. Even though he probably knows exactly what we’re doing anyway, I can at least refuse him the satisfaction of directly steering us. Anyway, after skimming a bunch of New Age occultism books, we figured that the cards were basically saying “Some hidden disaster is going to happen soon. You can stop it, but it will cost you a lot.” I wonder what She has in store? Something She doesn’t want me focusing on too much, apparently, because as soon as we’d gotten that the others started advancing a theory about it having to do with towers, since Tia, Simon, Chiara, and the patchwork girl’s dreams all had a tower in them (the girl’s was one of the Tarot cards). Neither of the ones I did solo had anything like a tower in them, so it’s probably some sort of red herring. Unless the towers were metaphorical, but She’s not very good on metaphors. In any case, I’ll let them keep speculating to think they’ve got me suckered in on it, and I’ll just keep my own private notes on what the connections are.

Speaking of which, from what I gathered it seems each dream is supposed to represent our durance and/or escape from Arcadia. (Well, presumed escape.) My guess is that She’s teasing me with information She knows I want. “JY” isn’t much to go off of, but it’s a start. I’m pretty sure She can’t outright lie, but mistruths are easy to come by so it may not be as obvious as it seems.

Anyway, while at the library we also figured out that some letters and numbers around the edge of Hannah’s card were linked to map coordinates, and after some guess-and-check managed to match them to a point outside of town and indicating a date about a week away. It’s a little heavy-handed as hints go, but obviously it’s the next step, so I’ll see where it takes us. Hopefully She’ll at least give me a chance to rest up beforehand, but I won’t count on it.

Eric's Journal #4
With the date of the (potential) goblin market at least a week away, the others decided to follow up on the address we found in Simon's dream. Turns out it's in Portsmouth, a few miles south of here (out in the bay), and it's a Methodist church. The door was unlocked, and once inside we spotted a picture of Simon (in vestments) on a newsletter talking about a service project the congregation had done 3 weeks ago. When we heard footsteps coming Simon used some Changeling ability to shift his appearance to look like a random guy to avoid a confrontation. (Great. Now I can't even trust people to look the same. At least he just changed his facial features; the tells of being a Changeling were still intact, but if he'd suppressed those he'd look completely human. So now I can't even trust normal people to be normal.)



Anyway, a few seconds later the pastor (Reverend? Priest? Apparently I wasn't a Methodist in my previous life) came in. He looked exactly like Simon, but without the Changeling tells. (And, presumably, the needle tracks, but the long sleeves could have been hiding them.) We talked briefly and made up some lame excuses about wandering in. He seemed nice enough, and we got out before the confrontation could explode. Presumably that's Simon's “Fetch” (=doppelganger). I'm probably supposed to go looking into his backstory and help Simon resolve his repressed issues or something. (Or...hmm....that's really too linear. This isn't really a setup to teach the rat to push a lever; more like putting the rat in an infinitely branching maze and seeing which paths he chooses. I'll have to be careful in any case. It's still probably a good idea to look into the priest, but don't let the others know I'm doing it.)

As we got back into town we were intercepted by a little Changeling girl with heavy squirrel features. She looked cute, innocent, and harmless, so my inner alarms sounded immediately. Sure enough, she brought a message from Goatskin (of course) that he'd found someone else he wanted us to meet that night at Hathi's Garden. Never mind how the girl found us after we'd been wandering all over Providence; apparently when we (read: I) need to be found, anyone can do it.

We went, of course. Everyone else was in favor of it, and I knew if I ducked out something apparently unrelated would come smack me down for it. Goatskin showed up a little late with a short orange man with mismatched body parts and teeth that could tear through a Buick. He's called Francois Mangzhdom, or something like that. (Sounds French; I need to look up what it means, as I bet it's important.) We chatted over dinner, and he told his story of how he got taken while climbing Mt. Fuji, then came back only a few minutes later and in time to still catch the sunrise (after, you know, years of time under a Fae and all the trauma that involves). Goatskin's big marvel was that he came out at the exact same time we all did. I spotted the lie instantly: Japan is nearly half a world behind us, and since we all came out at 3:17 AM, there's no way he'd make it out and have to hurry to see a sunrise. It's a sloppy mistake, and maybe just a red herring to distract me, but I've filed it away for later just in case.

We all introduced ourselves to Francois, and he saw right through my lie about my Keeper. None of the others had (or, really, still did), so apparently Francois was sent to keep me in line. I'll have to be more careful with my lies in the future. I can probably get away with omitting information more than I can creating false information, but even then I'll have to tread lightly.

Seeing as we had now conveniently run across the last person corresponding to those little dolls, we then headed to our Hollow to see what it contained. (Note: en route I spotted someone with a hole in their shadow. Nothing came of it, so it's probably just some world element I haven't been told about yet, like an odd Contract or kith or something. Still, a little disconcerting.)

Once we got inside Francois's dream, we were basically in Hell's Kitchen, complete with a blue demonic taskmaster telling Francois to carve up a hiker for dinner. (No kidding it's freaky. Is this some sort of threat of what'll happen to me if I step out of line?) As usual, no one else stepped up to interrupt the flow of the dream, so I stepped in and dissolved the kitchen into woodlands and turned the demon chef into a chicken. Which then started breathing fire. (I didn't do that, and the only thing in the earlier dreams that had fought back was Her avatar. More evidence that She's puppeteering all this.) Thence followed a brief fight wherein I summoned Colonel Sanders to deep-fry the demon while the others did mundane things like shoot it. (Honestly, it's like they don't even understand it's a dream. More likely there's some important reason for me to be the one doing all the dreamshaping. It's fun, but I need to be careful, since I sometimes let me guard down.... That's it. They're trying to get me to act out to get my defenses down. Have to watch for that in the future.)

Once the oni was dispatched the dream dissolved, but instead of waking up we found ourselves in black nothingness with a black-hatted man obsessively counting little dolls in some foreign language. He'd get to seven, get frustrated, and start again. I tried manipulating those aspects, but nothing much came of it. Then he faded and was replaced by some little kid playing with seven dolls and making them fight. Then he started scolding them, and finally sliced their heads off with a cleaver. (Note: don't engage in open fighting with my motley-mates or I'll get the plug pulled. Thankfully, not all conflict is obvious.)

After that the dream faded, and we woke up back in the Hollow. I was pretty drained at that point, and thankfully the others let us break up to get some rest. I wish I could get away Scot-free, but we're supposed to meet up again in a week to check out the supposed goblin market where Doll #6 (“Hannah”) is supposed to be. *sigh* At least I'll have a chance to go get some things done without them breathing down my neck—well, obviously, anyway. For now I'll just act like things are normal and keep an eye out for Her fingerprints. Wish me luck.

Flavor - Taking out a Loan
Eric poked his head pout of the elevator and quickly checked if anyone was there. The hallway was empty save for the plush beige carpeting, dark-paneled wood walls, and a single potted plant in a brass urn. Windows across the opposite wall revealed a gorgeous view of the Providence river, as seen from 8 stories up. The glass had beveled rectangular panes that invited him to extend their joins to infinity and discover the patterns therein, but he shook it off. After one more check he ducked out and turned quickly left, walking lightly.



The hallway wasn't opulent, but it bespoke more wealth than matched his secondhand T-shirt and jeans. He darted his glance back and forth, including several over his shoulder, until he came to the open door with frosted glass and the words MORTIMER MONTEBANQUE picked out in gold. (No title; presumably anyone who wanted to talk with him already knew who he was.)

He gave the room a quick once-over. A woman at a desk, several chairs, more plants. An original oil painting of some fruit on the far wall. Like the hallway, basically, but more crowded. Another, smaller hallway stretched back behind the desk. The woman looked up. She had a gray business suit, dark brown skin, and hair braided into dozens of tight corn rows. Eric fought the temptation to duck back out of sight.

"May I help you?" she said. Her voice left no doubt that if she could not help you, you had no business being there.

He stepped quickly into the room. "I, uh, have an appointment with Mr. Montebanque. About the Quibler estate."

Her eyes flicker up, down, taking him in, revealing only a tint of distaste. "Ah yes. Mr. Kingston."

He nodded. James Kingston was the name he'd given, and the Quibler estate--pronounced "Keebler"--was apparently Montebanque's private joke and keyword for anything to do with Changeling society.

She stood and gestured to the hallway behind her. "Mr. Montebanque is expecting you." She led him through a miniature version of the hall outside, complete with single potted plant in a small urn. They passed several closed doors before she knocked on the one at the far end, then cracked it open. "Mr. Kingston is here, sir."

"Ah, wonderful!" boomed a hearty voice from the other side. "Send him right in!"

She opened the door and gestured. After a nervous gulp, Eric walked inside, jumping only a little when the door clicked shut behind him.

The office probably made the hallway bleed with envy. It was at least twenty feet square, two sides taken up by massive windows showing a vista across downtown Providence. Original paintings decorated the other walls at tastefully spaced distances, and the edge of a mini bar just protruded into the edge of his peripheral vision. But the real focus of the room was The Desk.

It deserved the capitals. Larger than a kitchen table, it looked like a solid piece of mahogany, the legs jointed with barely a seam and the entire surface finished a rich red-brown and polished to a mirror finish.

	A memory flashed by, the smell of wood shavings and polish, the oily cloth gliding under his hands until he could see his face reflected over the wood grain.

Behind The Desk sat a massive man, built like a barrel and with arms nearly as big around as Eric's torso. His suit was custom-fit to the massive frame, and his face somehow managed to be handsome despite the boar's snout and tusks protruding from it. When he smiled--apparently in genuine pleasure--the deeper parts of Eric's brain told him to run into a corner and hide.

"Good to see you, my boy!" said Montebanque, standing. He had to be at least seven feet tall, and must have massed at least three times what Eric did. Montebanque strode around the desk and crossed to Eric in two strides, taking his hand in a massive grip and shaking it vigorously. "James, right? James Kingston?"

Eric nodded and forced out a hoarse "Yes."

Montebanque's eyes glinted slyly. "You don't sound too sure of yourself. It's not really something else now, is it? Something like, say, Eric?"

	Don't run don't run don't run. He forced himself still though every instinct told him to bolt. A quick glance left and right showed him that the only way out was through the door behind him, or through the windows.

Montebanque laughed and slapped him on the back, hard enough to make him stumble. "Oh, don't worry! I make it a point to learn about new arrivals, after all. You can be James out there if you want, but in here I prefer to deal honestly." He put his hand on Eric's shoulder and led him to The Desk as inevitably as a bulldozer pushing a pebble. Eric quickly sat in one of the chairs, bunched tight on the edge of his seat, and waited as Montebanque's massive strides took him back around to his own opulent chair.

"So, let's get down to business. What brings you to my humble office?"

	Humble was about as close to Montebanque's office as New Delhi was to the North Pole. Eric didn't press the point, though. He thought about a lie, but Montebanque's eyes showed too much cunning there for Eric to trust his (never particularly great) ability to spin one.

"Nuo gave me your name. She said to talk about help getting back on my feet." She' also told him to be extremely careful, that Montebanque was honest but not nearly as altruistic as he thought he was. But he wash't about to say that.

Montebanque nodded. "I figured as much." He reached into a drawer in his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper, then arched an eyebrow at Eric. "A loan, I take it?" Eric nodded, and Montebanque handed it to him. "Most people are content with verbal Pledges, but I prefer good old paper. Makes it easier to remember what you promised."

Eric scanned it over. It was a single page, surprisingly clear and free of jargon. Montebanque promised to provide funds sufficient for a basic living for three months, in exchange for a minor favor to be determined by Montebanque during that time. There were a few sentences about breach of contract, and an odd little clause under the "Recipient" section. "Why can't I spend it all?" he asked.

Montebanque chuckled and held up his hands. "Because you can't. It's a silly rule, but it has to be there to balance the Pledge. It's just the way they work. Same for why you can't get a credit card, though apparently that doesn't bother you."

It didn't. He'd never had one before--he wasn't sure if they'd existed--but he knew enough to prefer cash. Cash couldn't be tracked. Well, not as easily.

The bottom of the page had a few small line across it: This Pledge has been pre-reviewed by Marta "Bruja" Garcia, the duly appointed Pledge Advisor for the Freehold of Four Rivers, Providence, Rhode Island, and it has been deemed both lawful and equitable to her satisfaction. It was followed by a tight signature in blue pen. "How do I know this is real?" he said, pointing to it.

"Because Ms. Garcia would rip my throat out if she thought I was forging her approval."

	Fair enough, thought Eric. He didn't believe Montebanque, but that was as good as he would probably get. He hesitated a moment, then signed at the location indicated. He didn't have much choice; hopefully things would work out.

"Wonderful," said Montebanque. He held his hand out. "And now to seal the deal."

A slight hesitation, then Eric shook. The deep thrum of a Pledge taking hold pulsed through him. Montebanque smiled wider in a not-very-reassuring way, then broke grip and reached into another drawer. "Here you go," he said, tossing an item on the table with an audible clink. It was a small leather coin purse, the size of his palm and dyed in the pattern of the Union Jack. "Don't let the size fool you. There's money enough inside for a decent living, dribbled out a bit a day so you don't go spend it all in the first week. Just remember to keep a bit inside, even if just a penny."

Eric picked it up; it was heavy with coins. He opened the tarnished brass clasps and looked inside. "No bills?"

Montebanque shook his head. "No, and I don't know why. But money is money, as I always say. Besides, most grocery stores have machines where you can change it into larger denominations for a small fee."

Eric tried to imagine paying rent with the coin purse. Yes, he'd be making use of those machines. Also, if this all really was some sort of twisted game, his Keeper had a more twisted sense of humor than he'd given Her credit for. (Granted, She'd never showed an iota of humor before, which just meant there was more behind it than he thought. A psychology experiment?)

"Any more questions?" asked Montebanque genially.

Eric closed the purse and shook his head. "No." He stood. "Thank you."

Montebanque smiled again and spread his hands wide. "Anytime, my boy, anytime. I'm a bit of a philanthropist in the Freehold. Do drop in if you need anything else."

	And can pay the price, added Eric silently. He nodded, then turned and hurried out of the room with only one backward glance. Thankfully, the door wasn't locked.

He darted past the secretary with only a nod and fled down the hallway, finally relaxing once the elevator doors had closed and the elevator started sighing downward.

He dug out the purse and hefted it in his hands, then sighed. Well, money was money, even in ridiculously small denominations. It was a start. Hopefully the price wouldn't be too high.

One task down, two to go.

Flavor - Paying Mr. Fix-It
Eric sprinted down the sidewalk, lungs heaving, chest burning, and legs churning up distance as fast as he could make them. From behind came the rapid slap-slap of his pursuers' footfalls, sounding closer than they did a few seconds ago. “Slow down, Pretty Boy!” came a too-close voice behind him. “We still got to give you that message for Fix-It!”

If he got out of this alive, Eric was going to have a serious talk with Mr. Fix-It about just what constitutes an “easy” job. The spidery man with too-jointed arms said it would be a milk run. Just deliver a package, come back, and he'd have Eric's official (albeit unregistered) driver's license minted and ready to go. He never mentioned that the delivery address was in turf claimed by a latino street gang, that they didn't appreciate Fix-It edging into their business, and that they'd promised to send his next runner back on a stretcher.

Eric darted into an alleyway next to a boarded-up church. The stench of rot and urine lay heavy in the air, and forgotten garbage mounded against the walls, threatening to spill out into the path. He grabbed a few likely-looking pieces as he passed, yanking them down to try to slow down his pursuers. He glanced quickly back, saw he'd gained maybe five or six yards, then nearly tripped headfirst over a skeletal minifridge. He focused on the way forward and ran, ignoring the stitch screaming in his side and the way his legs felt like they'd liquefy as soon as he stopped moving.



“You're just making this harder, Pretty Boy! Stop now and we'll go easy on you.”

Yeah, right. There were three of them, all in their late teens and looking like any one of them could not only put Eric in traction but enjoy doing so. He'd nicknamed the leader Brass because of the pair of brass knuckles he'd prominently flashed when they first approached. He hadn't stuck around long enough to figure out what to call the other two.

The alley met joined a second at ninety-degree angles and Eric ducked left, behind the church. This one was even more choked with debris, and he was so intent on keeping his footing he didn't notice the car until he was practically on top of it.

A car. Someone had left a freaking car back in this alley to rust and rot. Or maybe it had been gutted before it got dumped here. Whatever the case, its rusted frame was shoved sideways across the alley, and years of detritus and discarded furniture had piled up against it as an impromptu dam. It looked as solid as a mountain of tinker-toys, and if he tried to scale it he'd probably end up half-buried as it collapsed under him. He looked for another option and spotted a rusted door into the church, the boards pried off and it hanging an inch ajar. He ran at it just as the gang rounded the corner into the alleyway

He hit the door hard. Metal shrieked as it shoved in maybe an inch, then stuck. He pushed against it, got maybe another half-inch. Something clattered on the inside, some pile of debris blocking the way. “Come on, let me in!” He hit it hard, another inch. “Come on!”

“End of the road, Pretty Boy.” The three gang members walked slowly toward him, breathing hard but not looking nearly as winded as he felt. They probably chased innocent couriers as a warm-up to breakfast. “Ain't no way out of that old place. Jesus ain't gonna be saving you today.” Brass smiled as he slipped the brass knuckles back onto his hand. “'Course, you might get to say hi to him anyway.” He stepped forward.

Eric turned and poured every ounce of will had into one last shoulder-slam. Pain flared through his entire arm as something thrummed through him, and the door swung wide. He stumbled inside, nearly falling to the leaf-strewn floor, then caught himself and started running.

He stopped after three steps.

It wasn't a church. Not anymore. The ragged and age-worn walls rose around him, wrist-thick vines crawling up their sides and draped in white flowers. Sunlight shone down on him from where the roof had collapsed ages ago. Gaps in the wall showed elms and hickory towering over a forested gloom that disappeared among thorn-choked underbrush.

Oh. Crap.

Something slammed into the back of his head. Stars of pain erupted in his vision, and he barely felt the ground as he hit.

“Dios mio!”

He squinted through the pain and saw the three pursuers stepping back, staring down at him. Behind them the door was still open, showing the alleyway beyond. He tried to point, but his arm didn't seem to be working right. “Have to...get out...”

They didn't seem to hear him, and even as he watched the alleyway wavered and then faded, leaving just a hole in the wall and a small, weed-choked path through the towering brush.

“What the hell is this?” asked Brass. “This some sick joke of Fix-It?”

The skinny one to his left looked around. “Dude, I don't think Fix-It--”

“Shut up!” Panic edged Brass' voice. He grabbed Eric's shirtfront and hauled him up with one hand.

“What you trying to pull here, freak? Where is this?” He shook Eric, and when he couldn't answer Brass threw him back to the ground. “Answer me, freak! Where the hell are we?” He slammed his foot into Eric's ribs; something cracked, and Eric tried to curl himself around the pain.

“Tell me!”

Another kick. What part of Eric's brain wasn't busy handling the pain was almost clinically rattling off observations. ''Subject is suffering moderate hysteria due to fear, anger, and possible drug use. Will react instinctively, lashing out at anything that presents itself as a target. Rational thought is not –''

Another kick silenced the thought in a wave of pain. The edges of his vision limned in white, time seeming to stretch as he gasped from one breath to the next.

“I don't think he's--”

“Shut up!”

A hand grabbed him by the front again and hauled him to his knees. Brass shouted in his face, so close he could feel the individual spittle drops hitting his cheek.

“Answer me you little bag of...”

Eric didn't hear the rest, all his attention focused on Brass's other hand. It cocked back for another blow, the eponymous brass knuckles glinting gold in the sunlight except where a trickle of fresh blood tinged them red. He watched it head toward him, white edging his vision as it sped closer. Equations started to spun in his head--


 * force equals mass times acceleration


 * velocity-squared equals velocity-nought-squared plus twice acceleration times x-minus-x-nought


 * kinetic energy equals one-half mass times velocity squared


 * torque equals radius times force times sine-theta


 * integral of force differentiated with respect to time equals change of momentum

--and his last image before the world flared white was his hand coming up and catching Brass by the wrist.

###

The light faded, and Eric opened his eyes. He stood akimbo, breathing hard and swaying slightly on his feet. He couldn't see the three gang members anywhere. His head and side ached; he reached up to rub his temple and stopped cold..

His hand was on fire. Okay, not fire. Light. It was brilliant silver and spun out of his hand like shafts of diamond. When had he done that? He took several deep breaths, calming himself down, and slowly let the light snuff out.

A ripped piece of shirt lay on the ground a few feet away. Scorch marks on it gave the impression of fingers. Aside from that, he saw no sign of the gang, not even footprints in the leaf litter.

He groaned and slumped to the ground, only partly from the pain thrumming in the back of his head. Not only had he somehow gotten back into the Hedge, but he'd brought three mortals—albeit not very innocent ones—here with him. And then he lost them. He didn't remember too much of his scramble out of the Hedge, but the thought of what might happen to them running loose terrified him. They—probably--didn't deserve what would happen to them if something caught them. Worse still, it might trace them back to him.

“Well now, look 'oo's finally back to the living.”

Eric spun around in a crouch, and the world started spinning. He clutched for the ground until it steadied itself.

“Easy now, mate,” said the other voice. ''Human. Male. Late teens.'' Eric looked in its direction and saw the owner stepping slowly close. Short, stiff brown fur covered most of his face like an overzealous beard, and a large pair of donkey ears peeked out from under a cap that looked like it had been stolen from the set of Oliver Twist.

“'ere now, try one of these.” The donkey-man held out a plump red berry, speckled with blue spots. Eric shook his head. No way was he going to trust some random fruit handed him by a complete stranger. Especially here.

“Oh come on now, it'll patch you up right quick.”

Another shake, even though it hurt. A few deep breaths and he was starting to get it under control. The other man shrugged and pocketed the fruit. “Suit yerself.” He offered a hand to Eric. Eric ignored it and got to his feet, keeping an eye on the stranger as he went.

	“'E's a touchy one, ain't 'e?”, said a second, gruff voice. Eric glanced around In panic but didn't spot anyone.

The donkey-man chuckled and leaned against a crumbling brick wall. “Eh, don't you worry 'bout 'im none. That's just me mate, Jiminy.” He picked what looked like a large cricket off his shoulder and held it out. It twitched its antennae at Eric, then spoke. “I still says we shoulda slit 'is throat and rifled 'is pockets while 'e was out.”

The stranger grinned. “That's Jiminy, all right, always beein' me conscience an' keepin' me honest.” He put the cricket back on his shoulder. “Me name's Jack, by the way. Jack Bottom. You gave us a right scare, there, all zoned out and such. Thought some hob'd gone and stole your brain.”

Eric shook his head, ignoring the hand. “Look, I need to get going. I...have to get someplace.” No use giving unnecessary details, especially to someone oh-so-conveniently placed there for when he woke up. (Woke up from what? He'd have to figure that out later.)

Jack took the cap off his head and scratched his scalp. “This wouldn't have anythin' to do wit' those three blokes what ran screamin' from you, eh?” Eric didn't answer, but his face must've given him away because Jack smiled. “They norms, were they? Ord'nary mortals?” He shook his head in mock sadness. “Oh, that's a rough spot, that is. The Summer Court'll skin ye good if they hear you let some norms into the Hedge. They don't take kindly to that sort of carelessness.”

''“Nope. Probably skin 'im alive and dunk 'is bones in gravy, I reckon.”''

	Eric started sidestepping around Jack. “Look, I really need to get going--”

Jack put his hands behind his head somehow managed to lounge while completely upright. “Suit yerself, mate. I was gonna offer up me services to 'elp you out, but if'n you think you can spot them norms in the entire world of hedgestuff, well, far be it from me to be getting' in your way.”

Eric paused. Suspicion arced through him like lightning, but so far he'd done okay by playing along. Maybe this was one of those times. “You know where they went?”

“I saw 'em run out, as I says. Me an' Jiminy were just 'ere, minding out own sweet business and pickin' some goblin fruit, when we 'ear this 'orrendous racket from on over this way. We come over to find three norms running pell-mell outta this here buildin', and you standing all statue-like wit' yer 'ands on fire. And I said, 'Jiminy, this 'ere looks like an opportunity to 'elp some poor fellow in need,' didn't I now.”

''“Yup. We're right Samaritans, we are.”''

	Eric ignored the cricket. It seemed better for his sanity that way. “So will you help or not?”

Jack smiled. “'At's more like it. Now, I ain't gonna risk me arse with the Summer Court fer free, y'know. How 'bout a little pledge, maybe a smack of glamour in exchange for helpin' you find yer mates? I'll even promise not to tell the Summer Court about it, or may Fate strike me down.”

Eric didn't trust Jack farther than he could throw him—and though Jack was shorter than him, he looked solidly built—but his options were limited. He held out his hand. “Deal.”

Jack smiled and shook it. A deep thrum of a Pledge taking hold coursed through him, followed by a metallic tingle of Glamour flowing out. Jack smiled wider, his face wrapped in bliss like he was savoring some exotic meal. “Oh, that's the right stuff, that is. Great rush, that, almost better'n sex.”

''“Not that you'd know. You ain't got laid since--”''

Jack flicked the cricket off his shoulder. “Now, let's go find yer mates.”

“Wait.” A thought just occurred to him. “Your promise not to tell the Summer Court...is that still good after the Pledge expires?”

“Why my dear mate, of course it ain't.” Jack grinned like a loon, then lowered his voice and leaned close. “But jus' atween you an' me, I got me own reasons to give the hotheads the shift. You can count on it bein' safe with me.”

“Yeah, 'cause we're real expensive to bribe, y'know.” The cricket hopped onto Jack's sleeve and crawled its way to his shoulder.

Jack stood up and clapped his hands. “Now, I seen them gents go runnin' all crazy out...here.” He headed for a gap in the crumbling wall. Eric followed warily, eyes darting each direction just in case it was an ambush.

“Well now lookie 'ere,” said Jack as soon as he'd stepped out. “Ain't we in luck?”

Eric followed, then just stared.

There, just on the other side of the wall, lay the three gang members. Unconscious, stripped completely naked, with their hands and feet bound behind them with duct tape. Someone had even spray-painted crude graffiti across them, with slurs like “Hello, My Name Is Smalldick” and “Insert Wang Here” (complete with arrow). He just stared at them for a second, then turned to Jack, anger and sheer disbelief battling for the dominant emotion.

“What...you...”

Jack held up his hands. “'Ey now, mate. I promised I'd 'elp you find 'em, right? Never said nothing about 'em bein' lost. Besides, think of it this way: I just did the trouble of findin' them before we made our little deal. Saves you a lot of trouble, don't it?”

Eric hesitated. Jack had a point...sort of. And, frankly, he didn't have time to argue. The sooner he got out of here the better. Too late to do much about it now, anyway. “Fine. So now what?”

“Now, we leave 'em where someone can find 'em, 'opefully after a bunch o' other people get a good eyeful. Shoulda known that Norms ain't allowed to tramp through the 'Edge wit'out a license. Had to fine 'em the shirt off their backs, I did.”

“And a bit more, 'cause we ain't very good at math.”

Jack chuckled. “Right-o.” He swung a bulging backpack up a bit of Brass's shirt peeked out where the zipper didn't quite close. “Bit o' luck on my part, too. I got me a score to settle with these partic'lar blokes, and this'll be a right good way to start evening out the bill.” He grabbed hold of two of the gang members by their feet—one in each hand—and started hauling them back into the ruined church. Eric grabbed the third and started dragging, grunting under the effort. Jack didn't even seem to be breaking a sweat. He went to the far wall where Eric had come in through and reached out. A door materialized under his hand, and he yanked it open, showing alleyway beyond.

It took a little maneuvering, but they managed to get the thugs through the alley, around the corner, and most of the way out to the street without incident. The debris mostly blocked them from view, and after depositing the gang where they were just barely within sight of the entrance, they quickly beat a retreat. Jack stopped just before the reached the corner. “Wait now, I forgot the finishin' touch.” He quickly jogged back and took a canister out of his pocket, then sprayed it on each of the gang members' crotch.

Eric ducked around the corner and waited for him to come back. “More spray paint?” he asked as Jack rounded the corner.

Jack smiled gleefully. “No, mate. Just a bit o' perfume for their girlfriends. Eau de mace, you know.” He held up a small canister of pepper spray. “It'll take 'bout five or ten minutes to penetrate, and then not ev'n my little Changeling voodoo's going to keep 'em asleep past that.”

Eric stared at him, not quite sure what to think. “Remind me to not get on your bad side.”

Jack grinned wider. “What, that? That's just a bit o' harmless fun. You should see me when I get mad.”

''No, thanks. ''Eric started stepping away. “Look, I need to go. Thanks for your help.” The sooner he could get away from this budding psychopath, the better.

Jack held up his hands and smiled. “No problem, mate. Any time you need help, you just give ol' Jack Bottom a call. An' if you get yerself in a bit o' scrape, well I got me some good friends in low places, don't I, Jiminy?”

''“Sure do. Six feet under, last I checked.”''

	“Yeah, okay.” said Eric. He quickly turned and jogged away, his shoulder blades tingling as he forced himself not to sprint until he rounded the corner.

As soon as he did, he took off at a dead run. He slowed once he hit the street, trying to look casual as he headed back downtown in the late-afternoon sunlight. He'd gotten three blocks when, just barely, he heard a scream of pain and rage from back the way he came.

He quickened his step. And, despite himself, he smiled.

Flavor - Apartment Hunting
Eric tried not to squirm under the old woman's gaze. She was somewhere in her fifties or sixties, with iron-gray hair loosely styled and heavy makeup trying unsuccessfully to cover up the ravages of time. Thirty years ago she might have been simply “homely,” but time and an expanding waistline had connived so that now she looked like nothing more than a fat old toad, glaring balefully at him across a weathered desk in her hot, unkempt office.

“You're serious? No credit history, no references, not even an employer to check with. Just why should I risk renting to you?”

Because I'm out of options, thought Eric. He'd drawn up a list of places, gone there in random order, and so far he was zero for five. One had already been rented, and the other four turned him down for the exact same reasons. This was the last, but here he saw an opportunity. The landlord—Linda Dioli—wasn't looking at him like trash to throw out, but more like a worm on a hook, stuck in a tough spot that would be just perfect for her to exploit for a few extra dollars. He didn't like it, but it was something he could use.

“I'm just asking for a month to start with. And I'll pay in advance. In cash.”

Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly at that. Not in surprise, but desire. She needed cash for some reason, and he was offering. She scowled at him a few seconds more, and he could practically hear the sums adding up in her head. Finally she sighed in exaggerated exasperation. “Fine. Six-fifty for one month. If you don't make trouble, you can stay at the same rate.”

Of course it wouldn't be that easy. “Your ad says five-twenty five--”

“My ad also asks for references and a credit history. Consider it insurance.”

Insurance I can't afford, he thought. But he needed this place. He needed to get out from under Nuo's “benevolent” watch, and the sooner he did the better. He glanced quickly around the office, trying to spot some sort of in he could use. The room was crowded with stacks of cluttered papers, a dilapidated computer, a few bookshelves sagging with age (poor quality, he thought. I could do better), the fan blowing hot air, cracks in the walls, the A/C unit idle in the window, a square of floor poorly covered with a plywood patch...

There. His mind whirred madly, thinking up words as fast as he could say them. “What if...what if we cut a deal. I'm good with tools. I could do some maintenance work around, help save you some bills.”

She snorted. “I already have a maintenance guy.” She didn't add And he's a worthless layabout, but it was easy enough to read from her tone and body set.

“I can do better. And I'll do it cheaper, and on time.”

She feigned non-interest, but he saw the glint in her eye. He had her attention. “Really? You a hot shot with a hammer, then?”

He shrugged. “I know my way around tools.”

She chuckled. It was almost a rasp, and not at all pleasant. “Well then, hot shot, prove it.” She pointed at the idle A/C unit. “That pile of crap's broke the minute I fired it up last month. You fix it in the next hour, you have your deal.” Her face radiated mixed emotions: preemptive gloating that he'd fail, a hefty dose of greed hanging on the hope that he'd succeed. Either way, he was pretty sure he would end up the worse for this. But what choice did he have?

He picked his way over to the window and stared down at the air conditioner. He had hazy memories of working on small electronics, but he was pretty sure air conditioners weren't on the list. “Um...I'll need some tools.”

The landlord muttered some choice words under her breath and heaved herself out of her chair. “Angelo keeps his around here somewhere.” She dug around inside a cabinet and finally pulled out a tattered cardboard box with a handful of greasy tools in it. “Don't break them,” she said as she handed it over.

“Yes, ma'am.” At least, not more than they already are. Part of him cringed as he set the box on the floor. A hammer, two or three screwdrivers, some mismatched wrenches and pliers...it wasn't much, and whoever took care of them, well, didn't. Rusk caked in several places under the grease sheen, and one set of pliers looked corroded shut. He carefully selected a Phillips-head screwdriver of about the right size and set to work getting the unit out of the window. Dioli watched him for a minute, then promptly ignored him and went back to reading her fashion magazine.

Three minutes later he had it out of the window and on the floor, and he suddenly realized he had no idea what to do next. He wasn't even sure how an air conditioner worked. It had a motor and did something with compressing air, and somehow cold came out. So much for that brilliant idea. Still, he had to try. Maybe there'd be an obvious loose wire somewhere. He braced it with one hand and started unscrewing the case. “Well, let's see what's wrong with you,” he muttered.

Something tingled, and he jerked his hand back. It...almost felt like the machine was listening to him. Which, given how the past month had gone, it might very well be doing.

He hesitated several seconds. This was not a good development. Anything with a touch of fae could have Her taint on it, but his back was up against the wall. Finally he sighed and put his hand back on the unit. “All right,” he said quietly, lest Dioli think he was insane, “I need to get you fixed, and for that I need to figure out what's wrong. Got it?” He felt a little crazy for doing it, but that tingle and sense of listening answered him. So be it, then.

He kept the quiet monologue up, talking his way through as he removed the case and started hunting for problems. The tingling sensation grew, and as he worked he understood. He could feel the way things were supposed to go, the connections each part made and how they were all supposed to work together. Something was jammed along the way, and after a few minutes he traced it to the corroded contacts around the compressor. He pried them off, then cleaned them as best as he could with a screwdriver and the edge of his shirt. (Steel wool would have been better, but the box didn't have any, and he didn't feel like trying Dioli's patience again.) Putting the contacts back on made the unit feel better—not great, but better—and after checking a few other connections he plugged the unit in. It hummed, and within seconds started blowing out a stream of mildly cool air.

He looked up at Dioli, who was scowling at him over her magazine. “Does that count?” he asked.

“Put it back in the window, then we'll talk.”

Ten minutes later he sat back across from Dioli as the unit hummed in the background and the room slowly grew cooler, or at least less hot. “So...five-twenty-five?”

Dioli continued scowling, but nodded. “If you do the work.” She rummaged around finally brought out a stapled contract. She filled in a few blanks, then slid it over. “Initial each page, then sign here.”

He initialed as instructed, double-checking the price and other conditions (which were surprisingly clear of obvious traps, though no doubt she'd spring some on him later). Just before he signed, though, he paused. Maybe... “Just a sec.” He flipped the last page over and quickly wrote a few additional lines, then signed underneath.

“What are you--”

“Our discount agreement,” he broke in. He smiled wanly at her. “So neither of us forgets what we agreed to.” He handed it over. She looked at it, then gave him an incredulous glare. “You guarantee I'll make up for the lost income? Confident, aren't you?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“You realize this will never stand up in court.”

“I hope it doesn't have to, ma'am. But I would feel a lot better if you'd sign.”

She gave him a wary look, but finally muttered and signed. As she did so Eric pushed a bit of himself into the contract, and the thrum of a Pledge taking hold washed over him.

“Happy?”

“Quite. When can I move in?”



“A week from tomorrow. I have to clean it up first.” It was a lie, and a poor one, though he couldn't tell what the truth behind it was. He didn't press the matter.

He did press for a photocopy of the contract before he left. Once out on the broken sidewalk, he felt as if a great weight had lifted from him shoulders. He didn't trust Dioli farther than he could throw her, but at least she was honestly dishonest, if that made any sense. He could trust her to try to scam him, unlike most of the changelings he'd been with. They were too good at hiding their scheming where he couldn't see. And now he could finally tell Nuo he was getting out, and be rid of her oh-so-helpful ministrations. He would lie to her about where, of course. Even though she almost certainly already knew the truth, he had to do what he could.

All in all, things were looking up.

Flavor - A friendly introduction
Eric saw the man coming from halfway across the room. Medium height, wearing light slacks and a blue-and-white buttondown shirt, with a brown satchel slung over one shoulder. Except for the Red Sox cap, he could have passed for a typical thirtysomething professional visiting the library during his lunch break. Assuming one ignored the red eyes, the superhumanly sharp features, the deep ruddy tinge to his skin, and the serrated spines tracing his jawbone. It took a moment to place him, then Eric remembered spotting him at the Summer Court, lounging on a lawnchair and sipping a bright red drink with an umbrella in it.

Eric quickly planned out escape routes. At least the Cranston public library was bigger than the one at South Providence, and thus provided more exit points. (More importantly, it also lacked a certain four-eyed snooping librarian with too many easy answers.)

Eric tried to pretend he'd never stopped reading the Encyclopaedia Brittanica he'd pulled (Volume 4, article “Cold War, History of”) and hoped the man would ignore him. Instead, he made a beeline to Eric's table and sat down across from him like old friend, bringing a cloud of Old Spice cologne with him. “Eric van Dyne, I presume?”

Eric's eyes flicked up. “What do you want?” If he sprinted left and jumped the display case, it was just a few yards to a fire exit. The red-eyed man didn't look too athletic; he might make it.

The man smiled, showing pointed teeth. “That's my line, actually.” He tipped his hat, revealing hair like a nest of writhing leeches with tooth-edged suckers. “Ezekiel Amadeus Belshazzar, duly appointed ambassador of the Court of Worms, at your service.” The hat went back on—much to Eric's relief—but it still pulsed slowly. “But please, call me Zeke. Formal titles are way too stuffy for my taste.”

If he could make it to Sockanosset avenue, the way was basically open. He might even be lucky enough for a bus to be coming by. “You didn't answer my question.”

“Right, right.” Zeke waved his hand dismissively. “What I want is just to make the acquaintance of the new kid on the block. It's really what you want that I'd like to hear.”

No sign of Zeke jumping the table to eat him—yet. Eric didn't relax, but if he was lucky he might be able to talk his way out of this. “I want to be left alone.”

Zeke smiled again. It looked genuine, but still sent a shiver down Eric's spine. “I thought so. You have that hunted look about you.” He sniffed, though how he could smell anything through the overpowering Old Spice was a mystery. “And you have the touch of a Great Ones--” he paused, a slight frown on his face, then shrugged. “Well, greater ones, anyway.”

Eric tried to keep his expression deadpan. “You mean the fae?”

Zeke laughed. “No, not them. The fae are spoiled, overprivileged children who wouldn't know real power if it slapped them in the face. No, I--” He paused, head cocked, then continued with a smile. “I don't worry about the fae that much. I got away, didn't it?” Zeke's body language said it was true, but it also wasn't what he'd intended to say. For that brief, half-second pause, he'd almost looked like he was listening to something. Zeke spread his hands on the table. “So, you want to be left alone. That, I can help.”

“I don't want your help.”

Zeke just smiled again. “Ah, but you need my help.” He unlatched his satchel and started digging inside. Eric tensed to run.

Zeke pulled out a small book, bound in green leather, and set it on the table. Ornate black script spelled out The Art of Moving Unseen. The rest of the cover was blank. The book didn't look old, but it didn't look like it came from your typical bookstore, either. Zeke tapped it. “This is yours, if you want it. All sorts of secrets for how to move without others spotting you, how to walk the Hedge and leave no trace. I particularly recommend Chapter Four, on some of the more useful Contracts.”

Eric didn't move. “Why?”

Again the smile. “Because they're useful, obviously.”

“No, why the book?” The answer would be a lie, of course. No one who smiled that much could be telling the truth. But maybe he could learn something from it anyway.

Zeke shrugged and lounged back in his chair, hands behind his head. “Goodwill? I'm basically the Undercourt's PR man. We tend to attract a certain type of individual and, well, let's just say I'm about the most photogenic of the lot.” He smiled his sharp-toothed smile. “It sometimes creates problems and misunderstandings, so I'm just trying to generate a little goodwill up here on the surface.”

	You're lying. He didn't know about what, but there was definitely a lie in there somewhere. “No, thanks.”

A shrug. “Suit yourself. Can't fault me for trying.” He closed his satchel and stood. “The book is yours to keep, though. I was serious about it being a gift. No strings attached.”

“I don't believe you.”

A gleam lit up Zeke's eyes, not predatory, just perversely pleased. “You've learned quickly. However, in this case it's the truth. If it helps...” He held his right hand up, palm out. “I solemnly swear that there will be no unmentioned implications, repercussions, or otherwise unexpected consequences from accepting this book, or may Fate strike me down.” A slight tingle thrummed through the air, a Pledge taking hold. Zeke lowered his hand and shrugged. “It's just a book. Do whatever you want with it. See you around.” He tipped his hat again, then turned and left. Eric watched him until he disappeared around a bookcase. He never stepped back out, and Eric would've bet money there was a Hedge-gate back there. He made a mental note to find a different room to read in.

He stared at the book. His first inclination was to just leave it, but then someone else might find it, and he didn't want to bring that on some hapless librarian. Pledge or no, he didn't trust Zeke or the book, and something had to be wrong with it. He could throw it away, but then he'd put the garbageman in the same boat, or worse it would probably find some way back to him. It was obvious he was supposed to take it. Just what was the game here? Every time he played along he fell further into Her scheme, but at least he was going there on his own rather than being thrown into it. Maybe if he managed to avoid touching it...

He raided some newsprint from the recycle bin and used the Britannica volume to scoot the book into it, then wrapped it up, careful to not touch it directly (or indirectly, for that matter). He'd have to get some gloves, and better yet tweezers for turning pages. Could he get them from cold iron? Probably not; that'd be too useful. Still, it might be worth checking.

He sighed. One of these days, he'd figure out what was going on. And he was certain he'd regret it when he did.

Eric's Journal # 5
Ugh. I'm beginning to think this whole thing is some exercise in seeing how far She can push me. I...well, let's just start at the beginning.

I tried to come up with legitimate reasons that would get me out of hooking up with “my” motley again, but I could never find one that actually had a good chance of working. I'm pretty sure that had I just stayed home with the doors locked, they would have shown up to find me despite not telling them where my new apartment is. So we met up at Hathi's Garden again, and I at least tried to convince everyone that it would be best to renew our motley Pledge for only another week. I got outvoted and outgunned (well, out-hulked), especially by Francois, which just confirms that he was added to the team to keep me in line. At least I was able to keep the “don't intentionally betray each other” task as part of it, though I'm sure it'll come crashing down when I least expect it.

So we headed off to this “Goblin Market” down south of Providence. I'd scoped out the area beforehand and it looked plenty intimidating (at least on the other side of the Hedge). Some of the others also claimed to have done some research, conveniently coming up with (a) the exact location of the entrance, (b) when it was open, and (c) how to get in. (All of this once again provided, incidentally, by our dear friend Terrance Goatskin.) The entrance was a crumbling arch, and walking through in the same direction three times takes you to the market (when it's open: first and third Wednesdays and occasional holidays, like the Solstice).

It's...wow. It's like a bad acid trip, if I'd ever taken acid. (I don't think I have. I'm certainly not going get some from Simon to check.) Think of a huge rural flea market, built along winding alleyways made of shops crammed together tighter than New York bungalows, and the entire thing filled with the worst imaginings of the Brothers Grimm. I saw people (well, mostly people) with six arms, or antlers, or snakes for hair (or eyes), people two feet tall and built like bricks and others nearly ten feet and so spindly they should have snapped in half. It was....I'm not sure I have a word for it. I need something that fuses “horrific,” “eerie,” “oddly beautiful,” and “mind-stopping” all into one.

Anyway, we needed a guide, because there was no way I could make it in and out on my own. I certainly wasn't going to trust one of my erstwhile comrades/overseers, and I bet the terrain shifts when you're not looking, anyway. I found some little fairies flitting around a lamp, but after talking with them for a few seconds I determined they had the attention span of a hyperactive flea and probably wouldn't be a good bet. Chiara then “helpfully” mentioned looking for some hobgoblin kids who hung around for the purpose of being guides. (Supposedly she got this info from talking with someone at the market, as if she weren't just going to pull it out to move things along.)

Actually, I want to take some space to speculate about my companions right now, because I'm starting to notice the patterns. Chiara is definitely the “helpful” one, always coming up with information that would be convenient and coincidentally providing it right when it's needed. Tia is the “nice” one, hanging back usually but there to sweet-talk someone when needed. I already mentioned that Francois is obviously the enforcer brute. I don't know about Simon. His appearance screams “suspicious,” but he mostly just hangs around in the back and stays quiet...

Shoot. I've been playing right into Her hand and not paying that much attention to him. Either he's meant to stay out of the way until he needs to strike, or he's supposed to be the distraction making me think he's biding his time so that I'm all the more surprised when it comes from another direction. (I suspect Tia, but any of the others are fair game.) I'll need to redouble watching them. I can't afford to get complacent with any of them, since the most likely one to turn is whoever I'm not expecting at the moment. Crap. I really hope I can figure this puzzle out soon, because if I don't it might drive me crazy.

Anyway, so we found a hobgoblin kid, who came across more like a surly 12-year-old who kept calling me cheapskate for paying in glamour. I got a Pledge out of him to lead us true, and after some questions he took us to a shop run by “Min,” who sells faces.

Yes, faces. They look like little masks, but I've seen enough to know that rules of logic don't apply. “Hannah,” our patchwork girl, was indeed working behind the counter, and after some whispered conversation asked us to get her out. Problem being that she was chained to Min, an elegant lady in spiderweb clothing who probably would look quite beautiful if she had a face. I don't know how she talks, but she does, and she flat-out said we couldn't afford to buy Hannah. (That would have been too easy.) Of course, no one else had alternate plans, so I had to come up with one. She said she'd take Francois' face as payment. I did some quick thinking and got her to Pledge that she'd give me Hannah in exchange for me giving her Francois's face. She agreed, and I quickly went and sketched said face to deliver to her.

(Can I say that this is probably the stupidest thing I have ever done? Doing it felt like the ground had suddenly dropped out from under me, because I'm sure that had something gone wrong I would have been toast, one way or another. It doesn't matter if Min's just another actor, she represents power, and by toying with it I was playing with fire. But it was the only choice I had, which I'm sure was Her point all along.)

Min wasn't happy with my interpretation of our Pledge (obviously), and I didn't like the idea of having someone who can take your face upset at us, so I tried to renegotiate. She was all for this (as I'd hoped), and agreed to give us Hannah unharmed in exchange for us acquiring some materials for her. I managed to bargain her down on the number of items but forgot to specify which, so now we have to get some glass spheres filled with light and darkness (and made out of children's laughter and screams, respectively), tears from a harvestman, and an antique camera that's held by the Providence Winter Court. We promised to get it back within a month, then used our (extremely annoyed) guide to find a glassworker to order the spheres from, at the bargain price of all the color in Francois's right eye. (Honestly, hasn't anyone here ever heard of money? It's like the world's most messed-up barter system.)

Then we had to find out what a harvestman is (no real luck there) and somehow get its tears into a paper container. Chiara (surprise surprise) was able to learn that harvestmen lure prey into the Hedge by setting out shiny stuff, so we went in and started wandering around. Which sounds like a bad idea under any circumstances, but especially when you're looking for something that “lures prey” and that's managed to keep anyone who got a good look from getting back to give a description.

Long story short: they're crazy-giant spider things. We found a trail of shiny stuff (coins, gems, a gauntlet—all genuine, apparently), then Chiara fell down a hole and got tangled in a web. A web that's not only strong enough to hold her weight, but also impregnated with some sort of narcotic that instantly knocked her out cold for over an hour. Since we didn't have any climbing equipment or rope, Francois fashioned some out of vines and lowered Tia down to cut her free. I used some Changeling magic to get some good light down there, and we pulled them up just as the harvestman came to investigate. (And by “investigate,” I mean “tear the intruders to shreds and devour their innards.”) I blinded it as it came out of the hole, and there followed a short and brutal fight that still gives me shivers. Nothing that inhuman should be able to scream like that, and frankly we tore it apart. Ugh. Like I said, I think She's trying to push me, to see how far I'll go. Maybe this is some big morality experiment. Can She push me enough to kill another human being? One of my teamma—companions? I don't know. I don't want to find out, but it'll probably come to that eventually. I'll have to be prepared, just in case.

Anyway, since the harvestman's eyes didn't have anything resembling tear ducts, the group thought that the ichor from inside the eye would count as tears. (Ugh again.) I milked some of its silk glands, just in case. The last thing I need is for Min to claim default on a technicality.

Speaking of which, I may have to go back alone at some point. Min's role doesn't seem like an adversary, just someone to be wary of. I might be able to use that and see if I can get one of those faces she sells. (Assuming they can be taken on and off like a mask—which they probably can't, because that would be far too useful.) Anyway, I've got some downtime while the group regroups before we figure out whatever puzzles we have to work through to get a camera from the Winter Court, so I'm going to try to work through some of this stuff and see what I can do to get out of this latest scheme in one piece.

Eric's Journal # 6
To get the camera from the Winter Court, Simon called a buddy of his further up the hierarchy and asked if we could have it. He said we couldn't just have it (heaven help us if anything were that easy), but he was more than willing to tell us how to break in and steal it ourselves. It seemed a little too convenient to me, but everyone else acted as if it was normal so I (warily) went along with it. The Winter Court vaults are in an old railroad tunnel on the north side of Providence, and after slogging through a mile of ankle-deep water, we finally made it to the concealed door and into the vault. There was a pair of credulous guards who actually believed that us knowing the door combination meant we were supposed to be there, but they didn't even ask hard questions. If that's the status quo, it's a miracle the Winter Court has anything left in its vaults to guard. (It isn't, of course. It's just that I don't have any shape-altering contracts yet, and no one else will fess up to them, so there had to be some sort of reason for us to make it in even if it is paper-thin.)

Once past the guards, the major security seemed to be just some cameras (which weren't even in the hallways) and a Hedge plant called “robber's bane” that will attack, immobilize, and digest intruders—unless you've read the botanical guide conveniently provided by the ever-useful Terrance Goatskin, in which case you just whack it with the right stick and it leaves you completely alone. Can I just say that if the Winter Court was supposed to get any respect from me, it just lost it all? Supposedly they're the most paranoid of Changelings, but I think Mom had better security on her girl scout cookies.

(...I hadn't remembered that until now. They were the caramel-and-coconut ones, and she hid them in a new place every time. One time I found them in a hollowed-out phone book.)

Anyway, we got the camera out without problems, although Tia freaked out about the time we were leaving. (Claustrophobia, she claims, but I suspect she just wanted to get away from the rest of us—read: me—to take care of something, but I haven't figured out what yet.) We took the camera back to our Hollow, and I started taking it apart to disable it (one of the conditions of our being told how to steal it). It's a big, creaky, old-fashioned one, like from the beginning of the century (well, last  century, now), the type with a curtain for the photographer to go under. Taking it apart was pretty easy, but I had to make sure to keep it pointed away the whole time, since the last guy to get his photo taken by it got dragged into the Hedge by a True Fae. I fried some of the internal workings, and also happened upon a split penny that we figure is some sort of bug. I gave it to some sprites outside the Hollow; with luck, it'll be in China by tomorrow.

It was still the Summer Soltice, which meant the goblin market would be open that night. We headed in (armed with warheads and other candy to pay guides), and stopped first to pick up our glass spheres made of laughter and screams. They're about the size of a soccer ball each, and they just look like glass until you touch them, which is when you hear either the laughter or the screams. I was able to fill the laughter one with light, but we had to pay someone to fill the other with darkness. (Simon traded away his favorite flavor—which, since he claims amnesia, supposedly wasn't worth much to him. Again, why hasn't anyone here heard of the concept of money?)

When we got to Min, I handed everything over and explained a little about the condition of the camera. We had a tense back-and-forth, since she was obviously not happy about it being broken, but we had fulfilled the letter of the agreement. She gave us Hannah and told us to never come back, which I'll certainly agree to. So much for my plans of buying another face there, but apparently she's not the only face-seller in the market. I'll just have to be careful when coming back.

Anyway, we grabbed Hannah and headed out of the market ASAP, before Min found some loophole to use against us. When we were most of the way out a random seller started heckling Simon, claiming that he (the seller) had one of Simon's memories to sell. Now, given that (1) Simon had never met this person before, and (2) Simon can change his appearance at will, it's extremely suspicious that a random shopkeeper would happen to recognize him. He did have a little bottle labeled with the name of that Methodist pastor who we think is Simon's fetch, which he claims to have just picked up from one of his sources, and which he'd gladly sell for some bottled dreamstuff. Simon didn't buy it (literally or figuratively), and if I actually thought he was what he claimed, I wouldn't blame him. As it stands, I'll probably need to find some way of getting it myself so I can figure out what I'm supposed to do with it.

Once we were safely back in the real world, we headed to McDonald's to get something to eat and start helping Hannah to get a normal life. It sounds like she was about 12 when she was taken, but in the 2-3 real years since that happened she's aged up about 20, though she still acts a lot like a young teen. She comes across as pretty sweet, cute, and innocent, and I'm not buying it for a second. My guess is that since Chiara wasn't working out as a love interest, Hannah got dropped in to try for a different angle. Especially since her first need was someplace to stay. I pawned her off on Nuo to try to get her (Nuo) out of my hair for a while, but it sound like Hannah is our responsibility since we found her. (At least Nuo did let her stay the night.)

So, at last count I need to (1) figure out up the crazy Tooth Fairy changeling is up to, (2) solve whatever it is I'm supposed to solve with Simon and his fetch, (3) avoid Min and getting other people at the goblin market mad at me, (4) help get Hannah integrated back into normal life, and (5) avoid whatever repercussions the Winter Court will send our way for our brazen breaking-and-entering. And that's just the Changeling stuff. On top of it, I need to also keep my Pledge so I can keep my apartment and find a real job so I can continue keeping it once Montebanque's loan runs out. Maybe She's just trying to find out how much She can put on me before I break. I don't really want to find out, so I should probably get to work. Wish me luck.

Eric's Journal #7
Remember how I said She was trying to see how far she could push me? I was so right. But I beat her, at least for now.

Since nothing I can do would actually let me avoid the rest of the motley, I figured I'd better have it on my terms, and suggested a weekly lunch to trade stories and see how everyone's doing. (This also conveniently lets me trigger the catch on one of the Contracts I picked up from the book Zeke gave me. I'm sure they know about it, but since I haven't told them they can't mention it without blowing their cover.) The previous week was pretty interesting, it seems. Tia was in a park and found some eight-year-old girl who could see her true Changling form, Chiara saw some guy acting weird in a library (I blame Goatskin), and Simon had the Winter Court ask him to look into some drug that supposedly lets mortals see through the mask (like the little girl Tia saw. She says the girl didn't look drugged, but that's too close a situation to be a coincidence. They're probably all related, I just haven't figured out how.). Of course, any and all of these are probably fabricated red herrings to keep my attention split. I just know that whichever I ignore will be the one that comes back to bite me.

Anyway, we tried to look up some information on these things, but no luck, so we split up to do some solo research. Still no luck, but around dinner time we stumbled across a Changeling mumbling to himself in an alleyway and basically looking like he went completely off the deep end. He was apparently really scared of something that had attacked him. And he didn't have a shadow.

Now the other shoe drops. I saw something like that a few weeks ago and had wondered what it was all about. I thought it was just some Changeling aspect of the world, and I guess that's technically true, but now it's a hostile one. We took the guy to the Summer Court to see what could be done. Red, a seneschal there who looks like a wolf, identified him as Hopeless Jim, a two-bit con man. She deputized us to figure out what was wrong with him. (Yay, more ties to local politics.) We managed to forge a dream-pact with him to probe his memories of what happened. They were still jumbled, but we eventually worked out that he'd gone after his fetch, and it had won. (And ate his shadow in the process.)

The next day we met up again to try to track down the fetch. Armed with some info we'd pried out of Jim (in dreams and otherwise), we managed to track down “James Fields” and popped in for a visit. (Honestly, how easy it is to track people through computers nowadays is scary. It's like 1984 without the communism.) He shouted for us to go away, so we forced the door and found him crouched in the living room, eating a shadow—presumably Jim's, although we later realized that might not be true. We tried to talk with him, but he'd gone a little wacko too, and eventually attacked us. Chiara fired off some shots, wounding him, and he disappeared into a shadow. We searched the place as best as we could with no luck, then exited through the Hedge when we heard sirens coming near.

That trail went cold, but we kept an eye on several of his friends through the computer, and found one of them planning to meet him at a bar that night. We arrived first and tried to intercept him, and that's where things really got hairy. He ran down an alley next to the bar, and most of the group followed him. I'd been talking with the friend, though, and so I ducked into the bar in case he tried to use a back entrance. He didn't, since a few minutes later the group came back out, saying they'd been in a fight and killed James, and he'd dissolved into a bunch of stick and strings. (Of course, I don't have any actual proof of that. Anything could have happened back there. For now I'll just have to assume that James is still out there, and will reappear at the worst possible time.)

But—and this is the important part—I won. She was obviously trying to push me. With everything set up as it was, would I actually go so far as to kill another person? Thankfully, that answer is still “no.” I refused to be drawn in that far, so I came out on top.

This time, anyway. I'm sure She'll just try again in some other guise. Hopefully I'll be able to come out on top that time, too.

Eric's Journal #8
I managed to keep to myself on July 4th, watching the fireworks get shot off over the bay. It was nice, and brought up some nostalgia from when I was a kid. For a little bit, I was able to forget about all this Changeling crap and just enjoy life. It wasn't for very long, but it was nice while it lasted.

Anyway, since Francois hadn't prepared for the holiday (being a Canuck and all), he insisted on instead having a celebratory barbeque once he'd had time to properly prepare. It was a full week later, so it must take him a lot of time to prepare a simple cookout (though the shopping list he handed me was anything but simple; you'd think he was about to open a restaurant). He had me do the shopping to give me the illusion of control over the quality of ingredients and making sure they weren't poisoned. Poison seems too direct for Her—She's more interested in mind games—but I went along with it to hopefully throw them off. I still kept a tight eye on him while he was cooking, and grilled my own as much as I could. (Which, since Francois refused to hand over the grill, consisted in me lighting my hand on fire while holding a hot dog. I'm not sure if that's a moral victory or not.)

Anyway, partway through the BBQ this woman comes wandering through the park looking lost and pretty beat-up. Everyone else was ignoring her despite her asking for help, which seemed strange until Chiara tried to examine her bruises and her hand passed right through the woman. I did some quick experimenting to see if she was insubstantial to everything (hand, rocks, etc), which Tia and Francois thought was rude for some reason. (I was just trying to figure out the parameters of this particular puzzle, and if she were an actual insubstantial person instead of a carefully crafted construct, I would have just been trying to help.) Her memory was spotty and ended as she entered her apartment back in December, so we figure she's some sort of ghost.

We went to the library to see what we could dig up on her (no pun intended). She started fading out before we made it there, so we took her back to the park and I went to do some solo searching at the library. Armed with her name (Rose Montgomery), I quickly found a missing persons report filed ~8 months ago. She was a student at Brown University, and social web sites linked me back to her then-boyfriend and a recently-ex-boyfriend. I gathered what info I could and headed back to the park.

I found everyone else in a wooded area, which is apparently the “center” of where Rose is anchored to. There's a hedge-gate there, but she didn't recognize it so (I think) she didn't use it, despite having memories of “waking up” downtown. I broke the news to her of her death (which she took remarkably well), and started asking about her history. Apparently she broke up with her previous boyfriend because he just didn't seem himself anymore (which set alarm bells ringing in my head), and the new guy is some sort of rebound “bad boy” who runs a bar a few blocks from Hathi's Garden.

We decided to check out the bar, and even though Rose faded out partway there we found her again inside the bar itself. I tried to get a dream-pact going with the boyfriend (“Jake”) by mentioning I had information about his missing girlfriend, but he didn't take it kindly and threatened to throw me out. I was able to get a read off his reaction to Rose's name, at least, and I'm pretty sure he didn't kill her. (There was a lot of anger and suspicion, but no guilt.) He couldn't hear Rose, either, so there was another dead end.

We took her to Hathi's Garden, both so we could eat and so we could see if other Changelings could see her. They could (or at least, Pala, the owner, can), but I don't know if that's true for all ghosts or just this one. I really think her ex killed her (and that said ex is a fetch), but we broke for the night so we could get some rest before doing some more digging tomorrow.

I'm already dreading how this one is going to work out. I swear, if She tries to get me to kill another person already, I'll find some way of giving her a piece of my mind. (Metaphorically. I'm sure She already has a good chunk of it literally; how much, I don't want to know.)

Eric's Journal #9
When we were at Hathi's Garden, Pala told us we should hook up with the Parchment Pact (aka “Goatskin and friends”) to find out more about ghosts. It was too late that day, and the next I managed to convince the others to avoid that for a while. Instead we checked out some occult bookstore for information on ghosts. The person there couldn't see Rose, so we set an appointment with a local medium for next week. (I wouldn't have thought a medium would be so booked to need to schedule that far in advance.)

We then did some research on Rose's ex, who seems to be a fairly successful real estate agent. We weren't quite ready to confront him, though, so we did some more background work on Rose, including checking out her old apartment. Some frat boys had moved in and were throwing a party (don't they have frat houses for that sort of thing?), but we bought our way in with some beer and then we jiggered the wiring to get everyone to head to the roof so we could do some actual investigating. The only real snag was the couple that was making out in Rose's old bedroom; thankfuly, Franscois's hungry stare was enough to get them to leave while they still had most of their clothes on. We found a hedgegate in Rose's closet, and from it we could see a crumbled lighthouse which had also been visible through the gate in the park. So we went in to investigate, but no paths led to the lighthouse itself. Which meant I had to burn a path there. Through the thorns. For an hour.

[illegible scribbles]

(Sorry, had to stop for a while, hand was shaking too badly. I still have nightmares about that first trip out, and even though this one wasn't as bad, it was close enough. It's like the thorns are hungry, and after long enough I can almost hear them whispering to me.)

Anyway, after only marginal trauma we finally made it to the lighthouse and could look around, but didn't find any major clues. I did find a broken mirror that seems to be some sort of token; feeding some glamour into it (while being very careful to not look at it) made some old guy's face appear, and he kept asking who was there until it faded a few seconds later. I don't know what it is (fae cell phone?), but I'm going to be treating it carefully for the time being. (And no, I didn't tell anyone else. One of them probably planted it anyway.)

Given that no other clues revealed themselves, that token was probably the purpose of the visit. Thankfully we were able to find a door out of the Hedge from within the clearing with the lighthouse, so I didn't have to burn back through the thorns. Chiara claims to have sensed a second gate that felt masked, meaning we'll probably be going back at some point.

By then I was running low on excuses, so I finally relented and let us go visit Okiku, Goatskin's friend who is apparently the resident expert on ghosts. I don't trust her either, but we do need information. She said that most ghosts can't be seen by all Changelings, so there's something special about Rose. We should also look for some sort of physical anchor or unfinished business that's keeping her here (probably having to do with whoever killed her). And she vouched that the medium we'd talked to is better than average, so hopefully that won't be a total bust.

I think we've just about exhausted things we can do without actually confronting the ex-boyfriend at this point. I'm not sure what will happen, but I refuse to play Her games and kill someone. We'll see how much luck I have with that.

Eric's Journal #10
Well, someone just scored a point in our little struggle, but I don't know if it's me or Her. (Probably Her, but I can hope.)

Things started out well enough. With our other leads exhausted, we decided to investigate Max, Rose's ex-boyfriend (and probable fetch). We picked up some mock ghost-hunting equipment as a thin cover story, then went to his upscale condo to talk to him. We claimed there was paranormal activity at his place, but he wasn't buying it and just wanted us gone. (He did shoot one quick glance at Rose, even though she was invisible to most people, so something was up.)

Finally, probably to just be rid of us, he let us inside his apartment for five minutes to check things out. I went looking for evidence, but all that I found was evidence of an OCD organizer. After a few minutes Chiara tracked down a hedgegate, then used some heavy-handed innuendo to let the rest of us know. Max himself was getting fed up with us by that point, and threatened to call the police if we didn't leave.

Now, at this point I was getting really frustrated. We were trying to not blow our cover, not give away Changeling society, not do anything out of line, and for the past month I've been constantly on guard and keeping watch out for anything and everything that could come back to bite me. And I was tired of it. And now Max was obviously guilty, but we couldn't find whatever crucial clue we needed to prove, and if we played nice he'd throw us out, we'd be none the wiser, we'd still have a ghost woman following us around, and we'd be fresh out of meaningful leads.

Screw the rules, I thought. I'd had enough of it. So I stormed over and confronted him about Rose. He gave some wishy-washy evasive response, so I demanded to know why on Earth he wasn't worried about there being a gate to Hell in his hall closet?

And then I opened the hedge-gate.

Now, a normal human should have totally freaked out at this point. Having a forest suddenly appear where your towels should be isn't exactly a normal experience.

Max didn't even blink. He just ordered us out, still calm but a little angrier.

So I shoved him through the gate.

Well, I tried. He pulled some weird judo-move on me and slammed me into the doorframe instead, making my vision explode in stars. While I was still trying to get my bearings he closed the gate, then ordered us out (again!) and pulled out his cell phone to actually call the police.

I lit myself up with electricity, grabbed the phone, and fried it dead on the spot. From Max's reaction (or lack thereof), you would have thought I'd just flipped the switch. He claimed smoke-and-mirrors, and again ordered us out. (Talk about a one-track mind.)

Now, if I needed further proof that we was fake, that was it. A normal human would have gone completely crazy, but he was as unflappable as ever and kept claiming it was all parlor tricks. We argued for a minute (with me pointing out that I was melting his carpet, which he either didn't notice or didn't care about), and then he went off to the kitchen to call the police from there. (Notice in all this that I'm the only one taking a strong lead. Further proof that the others are just set-dressing, and this whole situation was to test me.)

I followed him, and apparently “calling the police” means “pulling out a double-barreled shotgun.” I was still dazed from the door incident and would've been an easy target, but thankfully (finally) Francois decided to step in and help. Max shot him instead of me, which gave me an opening to dart in and melt the gun's barrel. Francois was a little upset, so he laid into Max and within a few seconds had pounded him senseless.

That taken care of, I was finally able to do a real search of the condo.(The girls were freaking out a bit at this point. I think I really did break the program by going outside the typical parameters, but they readjusted after a few minutes.) Max's apartment was squeaky clean—as in, obsessive-compulsive, heaven-forbid-there-be-a-pen-cap-out-of-place clean. No bodies, unfortunately, but I did find a notebook in his desk with some odd mathematical notations. We started to hearing sirens by that point, so I pocketed it, set off the smoke alarms, and then we escaped through the hedge. (Max got tied up with extension cords and stuffed in Francois's giant cookpot. We had to remind Francois frequently that he was not allowed to eat Max.)

Once we got on the other side of the (incidentally well-used) hedge gate, Max started looking...well, not really less human, but sort of. He was too perfect: completely flawless skin and hair, not even a minor blemish. A changeling, probably, or maybe a hobgoblin. (I later determined he was a Changeling, which means Rose was actually dating his fetch, who he probably killed.) After a few minutes of arguing over what to do, the local Hedge started getting eerily quiet, so we booked it back to the park where this had all began. While Tia and Chiara kept Francois from eating Max (I think he got a shoe down before they stopped him), I puzzled over that notebook and was finally able to figure out it was coordinates, but in some sort of polar notation. A little more puzzling—and drawing maps in the dirt (and, yes, some help from Chiara, always ready with a hint when I fall short)--and we figured out that the various coordinates usually corresponded to where Rose was able to manifest. We didn't know what was at the center, though, so we took another Hedge-trip to get close, then set out across town to find it.

It turned out to be another hedge-gate, this one in the back parking lot of Lowe's Hardware. It led inside that lighthouse we'd explored earlier, where we found an examining table, a meticulous collection of unpleasant-looking knives, several neatly stacked crates, and half a dozen bodies buried in a corner. Apparently Max had murdered more than just his ex-girlfriend, and from the bone construction some appeared to be changelings. We phoned in the Summer court, who took Max off our hands while letting us take Rose's remains (that we could identify) back to help her pass on. We had a brief cremation ceremony in a park fire pit (not very fitting, I know, but I work with what I've got), then delivered the ashed and pulverized bone (thanks, Francois) to her boyfriend at the bar. Given that he probably didn't want to talk to any of us, I used FedEx to deliver it while Rose watched through the window. It must have given her some sort of closure, because as she watched she slowly faded away.

And we're finally done with that. Not that I don't sympathize with the plight, but this seems to have been intentionally designed to give us the runaround. She was trying to push me, and though I sort of snapped, I'm not sure I did it in the way She wanted. So I don't know which one of us won. I didn't have to kill anyone, so I consider that a victory, although I probably shouldn't make it a habit to go lighting up in front of (potential) mundanes.

Anyway, here's hoping things calm down for a bit. I'm ready to deal with nice, normal problems now, like how I'm supposed to keep paying rent once Montebanque's loan runs out at the end of next month. I think I can handle that; it's got to be easier than ghost women and psychopathic serial killers, at least.

Flavor - Buying Simon's Memory
Eric ran through the Goblin Market, inhuman faces and cacophonous music and a panoply of smells flashing past. Next time, he though, add “no running” to the deal. The little hob he’d hired ducked and dodged around people and architecture like he (she? it?) was born here—which maybe it was. Eric, meanwhile, had already jostled against half a dozen people, hurt his shoulder against a lamppost, and nearly tripped over a gaggle of knee-high satyrs that had capered into his path.

He didn’t recognize the route, and whether it was just a different way or that the Market reshaped itself, he couldn’t yet tell. Just when he thought his heart would pound out of his chest he started recognizing a few stalls, and then he nearly tripped over his guide as it suddenly stopped in the middle of the road.

Well, road was being generous. It was more like a glorified alley with crook-cantered buildings up three floors on either side. Stalls clung irregularly to the walls, like sandbars on a winding stream. The air was thick with the smell of incense and beeswax and roast meat, with a haze of smoke hovering up between the buildings like it couldn’t find the way out either. His guide pointed at a stall halfway around the next bend and held out its grubby little rat-paw for payment.

Eric bent over his knees and breathed hard for a few seconds, then pulled a tin of Altoids out of his pocket and dropped it in the waiting hand. “The rest…when we get back,” he said between breaths.

The hob scowled at him with its one red eye, then scurried into a crack between two buildings. A second later the sound of rapid crunching came from it, along with a curiously strong aroma of mint.

Eric took a few more seconds to catch his breath, trying once again to convince himself that he was doing something smart and proactive instead of stupid and dangerous. It didn’t work. He’d taken some precautions of course—borrowing Chiara’s mien so his skin looked like roiling smoke and using glamour to change his face to that of a bus driver he’d seen yesterday—but something would mess it up. It always did, because otherwise it would be too easy.

Once he’d stopped gasping, he started idling his way along the stalls, glancing over things without paying attention to them. This corner of the market belonged to the Trinket Sellers, which seemed to mean “people who sell a lot of useless-looking junk.” Broken bottles, piles of twigs tied in runic patterns, carved stone and seashells, glass baubles, dried herbs, mummified bats, and plenty of things he couldn’t identify crammed the shelves and rafters of each shop like the remains of an exploded curio cabinet. Finally he came to the one he was aiming for, watched over by a gangly man with four arms and a mouth that nearly split his head in two. He looked up as Eric approached, setting down the gilt-edged lantern he’d been polishing. “Good evening, friend. How can humble Werswaith help you tonight?”

Eric picked up a jar of oversized toenail clippings and tried to look interested in them. “I’m just browsing, thanks.”

The owner laughed and clapped all four of his hands together. “No, you are looking for something. I can always tell. And I am very good at finding what people are looking for.”

He considered lying again. But, frankly, that had never worked before—and he was horrible at it besides—so might as well go with the truth, or as much as he was willing to part with.

“Someone told me you have an item I might be interested in. A memory, from a mirrorskin recently out of Arcadia.”

The shopkeeper—Werswaith—grinned, showing two rows of wide, flat teeth. “Ah yes, that one.” He turned and moved a few items on a shelf, then pulled out a small wireframe cage the size and shape of a chicken's egg. A tiny yellow flame floated in the middle of the cage, but it didn't seem to burn the shopkeeper. He held it up and gave it a critical-looking appraisal. “This is a very rare find find. Very hard to come by.” He had a rumbling accent, like something Slavic.

“I'm sure all your stuff is rare and hard to come by,” he said deadpan. He didn't add, even though it looks like you pulled most of it from a trash heap.

Werswaith laughed again and slapped Eric on the back with both right hands. “You already know me well. Almost as if you have visited before.” He was still smiling, but there was a narrowed, probing look to his eyes.

Well, crap, though Eric. There went that plan.

Suddenly Werswaith laughed and shook his head. “Do not worry. Your concerns are not my concerns The price, however, is mine.” He held up the captured memory. “You were looking for this. What have you brought for me in return?”

“What do you want?”

“If you know what it is, then you know the price I ask.”

Eric nodded, then slung off his backpack. He pulled out a trio of mismatched bottles he’d raided from a recycle bin. Each of them swirled with different colors of smoke and light inside. He pointed to the first, which held a murky gray cloud laced with amber and red. “A dream of anger,” he said, “A man confronting his ex-girlfriend about cheating on him.” He pointed to the next, faintly luminescent with streamers of pale blue light. “Joy, from a child flying in the clouds and seeing wonder everywhere.” Finally the last, with wisps of pale blue fog. “Sorrow, from that child’s mother dreaming of his death.” He hadn’t even had to push for that last one; it still made him shiver. It’d taken him nearly a dozen tries to figure out how to channel a dream into something solid, and that was by far the worst of them.

The owner’s eyes lingered greedily on the bottles, but only for a moment. “That is the price, true, but these are very amateur. I will have to—”

Eric didn't have time for this. “Oh, lay off it,” he said. “You want the dreams, I want the memory. Don't try to dance around it.”

The owner looked taken aback, but just for a moment before his silky-smooth smile came back. “You are very...direct. You accept the price?”

“First, I want information.”

At this the owner’s face split into his too-wide smile. “Gladly. But information has another price.”

Of course. Not that he’d expected otherwise, but you could hope, right? He nodded and pulled another bottle out of his bag, the one he’d been saving specifically for this. It swirled with rainbow and lightning, and he Werswatih's smile edged almost imperceptivly wider as he saw it. Eric swirled the bottle gently. “A dream of power and wonder,” he said. He left off and possibly LSD, since this particular one had the dreamer saving the world from evil Superman before Winter set in and President Obama used it to ascend to godhood. Riding that dream had almost made the Hedge look normal.

Almost.

The trinket-seller eyed it up and down. “A good vintage, but still amateur. Is worth a question or two.”

“Six questions, but only about the memory.”

“Three.” If anything, Werswaith's smile seemed even larger. Either Eric was being severely taken, or this was the part the shopkeeper loved. Probably both.

“Four, answered truthfully and sealed by Pledge.”

The seller look at him hard, then finally nodded while not seeming happy about it. “Four truthful answers.”

“Agreed.” Eric pushed will into the words, and the deep thrum of a Pledge tingled through his bones. He handed the bottled dream over.

“First, what do you know about the memory?”

The four-armed man shrugged. “It was found among the Hedge, and originally belonged to a mirrorskin who passed this way some week ago. Everything else is part of the memory itself.”

“How do you use it?”

At this the man laughed. Eric was beginning to dislike that laugh. “I cannot tell you that. It cannot be taught, only learned. You must find out for yourself.”

Great. But the Pledge was intact, so it was (presumably) true. “How many times can it be used?”

Another shrug. “At least once. No more than three times. It depends on how strong it is.”

Eric nodded. “Number four: are you trying to rip me off?”

The man’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, and then he laughed and gave Eric another two-handed slap on the back. “You are clever.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Of course not. I try to get the best price from everyone I can. It is not cheating, it is just the Market.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice, still smiling, but with a slight edge lurking under the words. “But the real question is not how much I ask, but how much it is worth. I have no need of extra trinkets, and you have no need of dreams. “ He stepped back and smiled again. “So, we have a deal? Three dreams for one memory?”

Eric paused for a moment, trying to find loopholes, failing, and being sure he'd regret this later. “Deal.” He handed over the bottled dreams and quickly pocketed the memory while Werswaith stashed them in a lockbox.

Eric turned to go. The sooner he could get out of the Market, the better.

“You will come back again, yes?” said Werswaith behind him. “I have many more beautiful things. Some very useful, and I am very good at finding things. What is it that you want?”

Eric paused. Freedom. His memories. Peace. Family. His own name. Finally he shook his head. “No, thanks.”

He walked away.

Flavor - Getting a Job
Early August

Eric's landlord glared at him through layers of plastered mascara. She looked like she'd just swallowed some of the century-old refuse he'd cleaned out of her cellar last week. She still held a fashion magazine half-raised, one of half a dozen scattered across the desk so that you could hardly see the bills and paperwork underneath. The air was thick with garlic from whatever she'd had for lunch, and the single light bulb cast everything into harsh lines.

At least the air conditioner was working.

Her mouth stretched into a sour grimace. “So, instead of the generous discount I've already given you, and instead of the legally enforceable contract you've already entered into, you now want me to just give you a room. For free. And pay you on top of it?” The words dripped disgust, and Eric just barely willed himself into not flinching.

He nodded, slowly, taking a breath to steel himself. He'd practiced for this—for over an hour—but still just barely managed to meet her baleful eyes. “Yes, Ms. Dioli,” he said simply. “I am.”

“No.” She turned back to her magazine.

“Look, you say you have someone else to do the work around here, but I've never seen him.”

“Antonio's busy,” she said without looking up. Her mouth quirked as she said it; she didn't even believe her own lie, but she wanted to. Antonio was family of some sort. Dioli glanced up at him without moving her head. “And he does it cheap.”

He shrugged. “You get what you pay for.”

She slammed the magazine down, her sallow face flushing a blotchy red. “Are you saying--”

Eric backpedalled. There was a nerve there he hadn't meant to hit. “I'm just saying that Antonio can't provide all the work you need. These are old homes. They're wearing down and need a lot of work, and I can do that. When I first signed, I promised you that you'd get more than my discount back while I was here. You did, didn't you?”

Her face had fallen back to its normal pallor, but it still held an edge of anger. “No thanks to you, handing me bills every few days.”

“But it happened, didn't it? Vince was ready to move out if I hadn't fixed the wiring in the kitchen. And that water pipe I replaced was nothing more than rust and duct tape; another week and it would have flooded the Gutierrezes right out, too.”

Dioli snapped to another page in her magazine. “So you caught some stuff. I'm still just barely in the black.”

“But you are, aren't you?”

Another sideways glare. “Only because my ex finally coughed up his alimony. Don't tell me you fixed that, too.”

Actualy, I probably did, though Eric. Not that he had any intention of bringing Pledges and the Wyrd into this conversation. When he didn't say anything Dioli turned away. “Look, you want to continue our deal? Fine. You can have another month. But I'm not paying you to freeload off me.”

Eric fought down mixed panic and anger—freeloading certainly didn't describe how much work he'd put in these past weeks—and tried to think this through. Montebanque's loan would run out soon, and he needed a way to stay afloat, and one that didn't involve background checks and government tracking numbers. He tried to think of some excuse, some argument he could use to convince Dioli, but her face was set hard in lines that said that if he tried anything else she'd probably throw him out onto the street.

He needed better leverage. So he took a breath, steeled himself, and Looked.

It wasn't magic—at least, he didn't think it was. It was more like opening up his mind and listening to the low susurrus of measuring, cataloging and evaluating that was always whispering in the back of his head.

''...five-foot-four Caucasian female, features marginally consistent with mixed Mediterranean ancestry. Weighs between 220 and 240 pounds. Heavily applied makeup is used to cover facial blemishes and perceived flaws. Limited trust, highly self-interested, obsessed with superficial appearances...''

And on and on, in the space of two breaths taking in everything about her from cheaply dyed hair to her garishly painted nails, the angle of her posture and the distribution of clutter across her desk. It felt like dissecting her down to her component attributes, some horrible violation reducing an actual person down to a mere collection of impulses.

And, coalescing out of it all, he found his lever. He shuddered and forced the sensations back away. They were still there, tickling the back of his mind, but they no longer consumed everything else.

“What if I--” Eric started.

She slammed the magazine down. “I have tried to be patient, but if you--”

“I can make you beautiful.”

She stopped, though whether it was because of what he'd said or just surprise at the interruption, he couldn't say. Then she laughed. It was not a pretty laugh. “So, you're suddenly a beauty expert, too? What, are you going to start giving me massages and mud baths?”

Eric repressed a shudder. Not the mental image he wanted. “No, not that. It's, umm...it's sort of like Feng Shui, and Karma and...stuff.” Hopefully she didn't know what he was talking about, because he sure didn't. “It's like...I said how these homes were getting old, right? They've accumulated a bunch of bad mojo in all that time. It's taking it's toll on you and everyone else. Give me a chance, just a chance, to show you what can happen when I clear that out. Just for a month, then see how it is.”

It sounded lame even to him, but she didn't immediately throw him out. Instead she just eyed him narrowly. Distrust and suspicion radiated from her, but something in the set of her spine and jaw also held a glimmer of hope, and desire. She didn't believe him, but she wanted to. And that, maybe, was all he needed.

The silence stretched for several seconds. It started feeling awkward, how she kept staring at him, but interrupting would spoil his chance. This had to be something she arrived at on her own.

Finally she looked away and tried to nonchalantly get back to her magazine. “Fine,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “Go write up some sort of contract, then. One month, no more. And you'd better be grateful for this, you hear?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. He ducked out of the room before she could change her mind, taking the short stairway two at a time to get back up to ground level.

Once outside, he fell back aginst the wall and took a deep breath. It worked. It had actually worked.

Now he just had to make it happen.

Eric's Journal #11
It's been a while. Life has continued going in its strange new rhythm that I'm still trying to figure out. I even have a job now, after I convinced my landlord to hire me as apartment maintenance. (I had to make a Pledge with her that it would make her beautiful, explaining it as some mumbo-jumbo feng shui crap. I'm not sure which is more surprising: that she accepted it, or that it actually worked.) I see my motleymates less now because that keeps me busy most of the time, and I even managed to avoid Terrence Goatskin for a few weeks.

And...I made a choice.

It was getting bad for me. Real bad. I could see Her fingerprints everywhere, which meant there were ten times as many that I missed. She was in the mathematical precision of a pedestrian on the other side of the street, the Fibonacci pattern of hobos I passed in downtown, how every bus I took one day had a prime number in its license plate. Subtle fingerprints, but still there.

So I countered. I chose my routes each day based off random die rolls, never walking the same street twice in forty-eight hours. I walked to downtown one day to avoid taking the bus, then jumped on one and switched routes three times to get back. I even spent two nights on park benches because I didn't want anyone to see where I lived.

And it was never enough, because She was always there, no matter what I did. I started stacking my random number generators, using dice to draw cards to flip to random pages in the newspaper. I refused to buy food at the same place twice, ever. I picked clothes at random, set my alarm to random times, refused to talk to anyone I could avoid, sealed the windows, padlocked the doors, and spun plan after plan trying to keep one step ahead of Her, trying to see what Her plan was and cut it off. But I couldn't, I could never see that many steps ahead, so I spun more and more layers around me, cutting me of from determinism, letting random chance—as random as could exist in this world of Hers—rule my actions, my behaviors, my thinking…

It got to where I could see the spirals spreading to infinity even as they choked around my mind. A thousand thousand thousand possibilities I was trying to hold in mind from a hundred different directions, trying to find where She would come from, every action I took every second multiplying into a thousand possible repercussions.

I broke. That's really all I can describe it as. One morning as I was trying to plan my day to be as unplannable as possible, my plans spiraled off to infinity and I couldn't hold them anymore. I couldn't get away from Her. I could never get away from Her. But I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried and the plots circled around but I could counterplot but She was always ahead and I heard Her voice in the hum of the air conditioning and I saw Her face in the pattern of light on the wall and felt her touch in the grain of the floorboards and I could ''Never. Get. Away.''

I don't know how long I laid on the floor. A few hours? My thoughts going round and round and round, looping back inside themselves, splintering and fractalizing and trying to find a way out that, deep down, I knew didn't exist. (Well not quite. There was one way out, one I got dangerously, dangerously close to considering.)

However long I lay there, I eventually found myself coming back to a single thought: Is this what I wanted? Is this what I wanted to choose?

Because I did have a choice. I couldn't out-think Her. I couldn't out-plan Her. But I could choose what I would do with this existence I'd been given.

I chose to live.

And everything changed.

Not, like, literally changed, but metaphorically. You know those illusions where you look at it and all you can see is the head of an old woman, and then suddenly your perception shifts and it's actually a young woman in profile? The lines aren't different, but the way you see them is? It was like that. My world was built off an axiom that She was controlling everything. But as I slowly pieced my sanity back together, I realized that even though I could never prove it wrong, I could never prove it true, either. Not on my own. There were other axioms, equally unprovable, that could shift the meanings in my life. I had been giving everything a hostile reading, looking for every evidence of Her fingerprints. And I had found them. But it was also possible that I had found them because I was looking for them, not because they were actually there.

I...don't think I actually believe that. Not deep down. But I can forget I don't believe that for a little while. I can pretend everything is actually what it seems. That Dioli is just a petty landlord, that Simon really is a drug-addicted amnesiac, that Goatskin actually is a friendly librarian with lots of useful information. (Hmm...okay, I'm not sure I can go that far. I still don't trust him.)

I'm probably wrong about this. It will probably get me killed or worse in the end. But in the meantime, I can actually try to enjoy this half-existence I've been given instead of digging myself my own personal hellhole to live in.

And I think I can live with that.

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