Gigolo

©2009 Valentino Incanto Profferi




The story told here is utterly, fictitious and any resemblance between the characters herein or the events depicted and any true incident depicted by the Fairy tale is completely coincidental and unintentional.
 









For: Herman

 
1

“What are you still doing here?”  James was asking one of the miners that he found in the locker room, James was doing his rounds prior to closing the mines and offices at 4:30 P.M.  Roy, the massively built miner eyed him with distaste and contempt before responding with his blue sweatshirt pulled half way up over his shaved head.  The posture accenting his enormous, round beer-belly covered in hair.  “I’m late leaving because I had to call my wife about an issue at home.”  The reply James got was given in a low drawl that was used in an attempt to disguise the miner’s profound dislike and irritation with his supervisor.  

Most of the exchanges James had with the employees of the mine were like this, full of disbelief and irritation with each other.  However, James had his scripted reply to rely on when confronted with any insolent or objectionable resistance from the employees.  With the titles of Supervisor and Operations Manager he played James blurted out his reply in a low, measured tone with a subtle growl of threat in it.  “If you want to keep your job, get on with going home. You are clocked out at four and supposed to be off the premises by four-thirty so we can lock down the premises. You have ten minutes.”  With a snap of his fingers, a click of his heels, and a swish of his suit jacket, James turned and left the locker room to continue his rounds of the mining operations.  Every evening for the last thirteen years, James, the manager, would check every room of the eight buildings and their elevators prior to locking all the doors and gates.  At five o’clock on this Fridays, James had expected to be outside the gate in the Company car on the route to Madam Perle Gateaux’s fabulous home in Auburn California.  This, he had done for the last thirteen years.  However, today James would be later than the expected Six P.M. arrival time.

James, who was a careful and gentle sort of man, took his time with the remainder of his rounds to give Roy time to get out without need for a reprimand. Unlike the rest of the mine’s male employees, James was not rough, tough, muscular with a taste for beer, chips, and physical challenges.  He was a man of medium height and medium build with long fine limbs and features with short dark hair.  His demeanour and expression were both gentle and patient, which earned him the affections of most women and the ire of most men.  Having always been socially careful and chivalrous he had always kept the ladies fortunate enough to cross his path, keeping an eye out for his best interest since they wanted to keep him around. Because the women liked having a pleasant and inoffensive chap about to remind them of what a nice man could be like, they gave him a shield that kept the irritation of other men with his position from turning into a physically dangerous one.

James had the good fortune of not having to deal with the inter-male culture of competitive aggression that led to his co-workers having both jovial and perilous jousts.  Sometimes their contest would result in physical injuries.  Such incidents added to the lists James was obliged to compile of injured workers who were on leave for injuries obtained at the worksite.  There were always a few lucky fools that were assigned light duty on the mine, but most took the time off to heal without pay.  It was an exaggeration on James’ part, but he often felt that the men he supervised would just as well not work and fight over women and liquor instead.  Unfortunately, no employer would pay them to do that, so they put in their minimal effort of four and a half hours of actual work in their allotted eight-hour day.  It was, of course, to the chagrin of all the men who knew James that he was effectively under the very effective favours of every woman who had had the pleasure of meeting him.  This list of protectors included many of the employed men’s stalwart wives.

Four thirty passed and was far gone by the time the patient middle-aged bachelor came back to the locker rooms to lock them. It was the last building to lock before leaving for the weekend. James walked through the double swinging doors with a smile wearing his light brown finely checked Italian suit.  From his inner coat pocket, he took out a narrow toilet bag and hung up his coat on the wall hook.  With a quick flick of his wrist, his leaf patterned green and brown tie was whisked off and pushed into his coat pocket.  With his sleeve cuffs and shirt collar unbuttoned, James turned back toward the sinks and mirrors while rolling up his sleeves.  From the slim and wallet-like toilet bag, he took out a razor, toothbrush and paste, comb and a slim vial of perfume.  As gentle a man as he was, James was equally meticulous.  After denuding his face of the five o’clock shadow, he straightened the lines of his hairline over his ears with the blade.  He continued by brushing his teeth and tongue to keep his breath fresh until long after the dinner with Madam Gateaux.  After opening his button down shirt past his diaphragm, he splashed the eau pour homes liberally over his chest and underarms to his cheeks and neck.  The ritual took James some time because he let the scent dry after each of the three applications.

It was nearly six o’clock by the time his shirt was buttoned and his coat was back on with the tie folded neatly in the inner pocket, next to the toiletry.  Scented heavily with the aroma of fall leaves and musk, James locked the locker room doors shut before walking out.  The gates had to be padlocked with its chains signifying the end of another week.  On the way to his car he stopped at the security booth and collected the keys to the Aston Martin DBS he had been given.  James tipped the underpaid guard his customary $50 daily tip for watching over the car and washing it in the late afternoon.  Putting his briefcase in the trunk, James settled into the supple dark leather interior.  Breathing deeply with the relief of another week being over he let the tension of work flow out of him like a deflating balloon in the silence within his cockpit.  A few minutes later he started the powerful rumbling motor and pushed the play button on the sound system.  The incorporated ipod began to fill his mind and body as he departed the mine grounds on the south side of Sacramento, California.  

The motor rumbled down the rural roads toward the Interstate 80 on-ramp while James listened to a series of Waltzes that were surrounding him.  James loved to dance and felt, quite rightly, that the more he heard the music he danced by, the better he would dance to it if he danced along with it in his mind at every opportunity.  As was customary for him, he danced to the waltz as he sped down the massive concrete and steel road structure.  James was heading east and up the mountain.  The fall sun was setting as the DBS slipped through the winding hills ticking over effortlessly at 75 mph.  The orange blaze of the California sun was reflecting on the long car’s tinted sloping rear window like an orange bulb in the sky.

The trip up to Madam Gateaux’s house usually took about an hour.  James would pull off at the Downtown Auburn exit onto Elm Ave and turned north onto Auburn Ravine Rd.  Some time after he wove his way through the hills in the DBS, James was pulling through the wrought iron gates of the estate.  James parked the gifted company car next to Madam Gateaux’s graphite grey Maybach 62 at the end of the long, brick drve.  Leaving his coat in the back seat, James combed his hair and pulled the button down from within his trousers before exiting the Austin Martin.  The cars were parked beneath a canopy within sight of the currently unused Olympic sized swimming pool in the lawn on the north side of the house.  

As was customary, James entered by the back entrance by the garden on the south wing of the house.  James meandered through the house to greet the elder, widowed lady in her bedroom, where she always waited for him on Friday nights.  Leaving his French loafers by the back door, James crept through the big house quietly in his socks over the green marble stone floor that was tiled everywhere.  It was quarter past seven when James turned the porcelain door knob and appeared at the bedroom door where he discovered Madam Gateaux lying upon the down comforter in her silk robe.  

She was the widowed daughter of the man who had founded the mine early in the first half of the last century. After her husband had died in an accident at the mine some thirteen years earlier, she had asked James to live with her countless times.  To her insistent requests he had always graciously thanked her but refused to give up his studio apartment in downtown San Francisco.  Madam Gateaux had provided him with very well paid employment after her husband’s death.  To keep James interested in the position at the mine, Madam Gateaux had offered countless perks like the company car.  She had permitted James to continue his numerous other affairs that took him all over the western United States.  The wide ranging travels at no expense were thanks to the guidance of his Fairy lovers.  It had been a Fairy that gave James a way to travel incognito and outside of time with no financial expense.

  Being a robust woman of vigorous stock, despite being nearly seventy, Perle Gateaux still felt only about fifty-five.  She reached out an arm toward James, and beckoned him come close enough to take her hand.  When he finally did, she tugged him down onto the bed covers with her in a playful way, not unlike a wrestler.  In each other’s arms at last, they tossed and turned atop the plush down comforter, exchanging kisses and touches.  Their hunger was completely suppressed by their mutual lust that had been only minimally reduced with age.  Their good health and enjoyment of life had kept most of their youthful feelings unchanged.

Some time later, the two headed for the kitchen trailing remnants of clothing left from their shameless seductive tussle in the bed.  As they sat at the large stone topped table with steaming mugs of coffee they ate with their attentions on each other.  Awaiting them were a carrot cake and a dish piled with miniature stuffed pasties and quiches.  The two discussed how the mine was doing and how the bullion was selling on the free market.  Madam asked James once more if he would not like to live with her in the enormous house in the hills.  James responded in the negative as usual, as he liked his little place in the city, even though he did not spend much time there these days.  

Madam had a thought that she immediately proposed.  She could buy James a house in the hills or near the mine to cut his commute time.  Taking this concept up at once, James suggested that it would be a great way to give the miners a raise without actually raising their tax bracket to provide housing to the employees.  There was a large empty lot on Bradshaw Road that could be converted into a housing complex for the miners, service staff and security.  With this arrangement the employees would have a five-minute walk as a commute.  They would only have to maintain their houses.  All other services for the complex could be paid for by the mine, which could claim it from the taxes it would otherwise pay.  Being that this was a very effective way of reducing the rat race effect in the lives of the mine workers, Madam declared she would have her private secretary research the property and applicable code regulations to carry out that proposal.  After making a note about the idea in her Blackberry cell phone and organizer, she sat down to have more pasties and coffee. 

The two then talked about the next competitive dance coming up in San Francisco.  James hoped that he and Laura, her secretary, would place first in Waltz again as the two preceding years.  With that thought fresh in their minds, James stood and paced across the hall to turn on the music.  It would play from the Marantz home theatre system all over the house with the assistance of seven speakers built into the walls of every room.  With a gentle waltz playing in the background, Madam met James half way back across the room.  They engaged to dance the steps that they knew and loved so well.  

After dancing for nearly an hour the two collapsed in kissing embraces upon the sofa in the room while the music played on.  The affections led to lovemaking and then to cuddling while they watched a film projected onto the bedroom wall from the projector unit installed in the room’s high ceiling.  It was nearly eleven when Madam asked to go to bed and James took her up in his arms and carried her from the soft leather sofa to her enormous California King that she slept in amongst piles of pillows and comforters.  In each other’s arms, the two slept unconcerned for the weekend was upon them.  The mine remained closed every weekend and Madam usually had James to herself unless Laura, the young, blond secretary and dance partner was home with Madam. 

Most weekends, Laura would take Madam’s silver Porsche Turbo upholstered with fine black leather, kept in the auxiliary covered garage, with her to San Francisco.  There she would stay at James’s studio and spend Friday and Saturday nights courting partners at one of the night clubs of the city while James did his duty to keep the mine owning matron happy.  It had been  a result of his dedicated  attention to Madam for  years that had got the position in the first place.  Laura always came back to Madam’s house on Sunday around the mid-morning to be ready to work on Monday morning.  

Laura was charged with coordinating between Madam’s personal business and the business of the mine, which James took good care of most of the time without her.  Once James had put Madame to sleep in her opulent bed, he left the house for a little grove of pines at the back of the property.  There, he new there was a time-space gap, a sort of passage that takes one outside of time and conducts one to the time-space gap nearest to the destination one desires to reach.  Those were passages used predominantly by Fairies, and utilized by both witches and wizards at times.  James had a pair of Fairy lovers that he wished to visit. 

James was quite certain that Madam had no idea of the existence of this passage in her garden.  He was sure that if she knew she would have sought to block it as a disconcerting, inexplicable phenomenon that she would never accept as magic.  Therefore, of course, he kept his secret and did not divulge it just as his Fairy Lovers had asked him to keep it.  Between the third and fourth pine trees from the property wall, James turned sharply to the right and let himself slip into the fold in time without effort.  He desired to be with Otter and Red-bud.  

He had had the pleasure of knowing the two fairies from his youth in the hills of Orangevale, east of Sacramento.  It had in fact been Red-bud that had introduced James to Madam Gateaux at a party following a performance of Le Figaro at the Opera House in San Francisco.  That had been sixteen years ago near the civic centre.  They had met while her husband had still been running the mine.  Madam had never questioned the nature of the oddly ageless young woman with such a curious name as Red.  She had simply assumed without any evidence that she was a free spirit raised by hippies.  After her husband’s death, she had brought James into the company as the new manager.  Employing James had been an excuse to triple his pay since she had already been sustaining him with a generous $4000 check every month before he did any work for her.  With his employment the stipend was more than tripled because of such benefits as the company car and satellite phone service for his cellular and car phone.

James emerged from the dark tunnel of the time-space gap onto a lush green hill near a little hill with a small log hut wedged in the centre of two crossing paths.  The complex of the hill and paths formed a cross inside the circle created by the paths cutting through the hill.  James did not know that this was the home of the Fairy Witch Princess, but he was inexplicably attracted toward the little structure which could barely be identified as a hut.  When he pushed open the little mossy door, he discovered an enormous house within.  Its walls were covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves crammed with volumes in every imaginable language.  From behind one of the numerous, leather wingback chairs came a little greyish green man in brown rough clothes who asked him in a clear voice who he was and who he was seeking.  James had never seen a Brownie yet and was quite taken aback.

  Being stunned he found it difficult to speak in response to the question, but he managed to blurt out in a stutter, Otter or Red-bud.  In a very formal tone the little Brownie bowed and then informed him that he was welcome to the home of Lobina, the Princess of Redwood, Otter had left a while earlier on her way to take a message to the Undine Fairy Queen Correnteza.  Red-bud was in the garden with Princess Lobina and Luna, the witch medicine woman.  The Brownie invited James to follow him into the garden where James could find his lover engrossed in a discussion over some medicinal plant.

 
2

James was very much surprised at his reception for up until that moment, he had not yet met a Brownie.  For James this was all a little overwhelming.  He had never met magical creatures before when he had taken the passages in search of Otter or Red-bud, who despite being Fairies, looked distinctly human whenever James happened to see them.  In every previous sojourn, he had met them by a tree or a bush in the woods of a park, giving no thought to the fact that both his lovers were magical creatures, Fairies.  He had not even suspected that there were magical buildings such as the one through which he was now walking in the wake of the little Brownie.  

When they emerged from the door at the end of the corridor into the garden, James discovered Red-bud bent over a leafy plant bed with two other young looking women.  Lobina, who was actually over three hundred and fifty years, was in her many pocketed brown canvas skirt and blouse with long brown hair.  Silvia with her long auburn hair and green eyes wore a tight fitting, provocative, short green silk gown.  With her alluring dress she wore a broad belt that accented her slim waist exaggerating her other feminine characteristics.  Red-bud with her long fiery red hair was naked as she preferred to remain with no added artificial décor to her spectacular appearance.  The three were huddled about a bed of leafy plants discussing some matter about one of the plant’s roots.  As James approached, Red-bud introduced the middle-aged man as her lover of many decades.  After the usual cordialities and a kiss to both the left hand and cheek of both Luna and Lobina, Red-bud led James away into the depths of the enormous garden to find a secluded place for them to frolic in undisturbed.  For several hours, they were together in the private garden reasserting their enduring bond. 

Red-bud was an earth Fairy that resided in the Tellurian realm.  This included all the fresh water bodies in North America. She informed James that their usual partner, Otter the undine, would not return for a few days.  She had been sent by the Tellurian Fairy Queen Sequoia to deliver a message to her sister, the undine, Queen Correnteza.  The message was that the Fairy King Rowan, Sequoia’s  son with a man, was coming of age at fifteen years.  The Undine Queen would be need her as one of the most effective magical restraints on the Fairy King.  The Fairy King, powerful as he was, could not over come the Undine Queen with her High Magic and a realm beyond his reach.  He would be touring the country with his natural father, a man named Steve.  This would be his last chance to meet his father prior to setting off on his destiny.  The whole reason for being of the Fairy King was to hunt Trolls and Goblins throughout the continent.  

James did not completely comprehend what Red-bud told him about the Fairy King, but he could sense the importance of events that were afoot.  Intuitively he knew that these changes would also affect him in the long run.  It was early dawn before the sun rose when the lovers parted ways once more.  James had met Red-bud and Otter while on a camping trip with one of his many high school girlfriends.  That first time he had asked Otter how he could meet with them again in the future.  That night, they showed him how to use the time-space gaps to reach them easily being guided simply by his desires.  

For more than twenty years he had been able to meet with them regularly on weekends after putting the satisfied matrons that supported his lifestyle to sleep.  Before Madam had employed him full time to manage the mine with Laura on her behalf, he had been able to meet with Otter and Red-bud a few times a week as well, but not with the workload he now had.  With his commitments to his sugar mommies, the demands for attention from Laura, and time consuming tasks at work, James had less time for his Fairy lovers than ever before. Fortunately, the ways that time moved slower of faster in Fairyland in accordance with one’s desires allowed James to have their company for unlimited amounts of time if desired.

Eager to not be missed by Madam, James hurried back to the gap by the fire ravished redwood and slipped away as he usually forgot that time in Fairyland and the time-space gaps moved differently. Even though James had been using the passages and visiting Otter and Red Bud for years, he had found the time journey very difficult to accustom himself to that.  Unobserved as usual, he emerge at the back of Madam’s garden not more than an hour after he had left.. As he made his way into the house and through its corridors, he wondered if Madam knew of the time-space gap once again. He contemplated what she might use it for if she had known about it..  James found himself feeling jealous about the elderly Madam as thoughts of her perhaps, having had a Fairy Lover of her own.  Thoughts of how much more pleasing they would be to her filled his mind.  

His concerns and possessiveness took James by surprise and left him hot under the collar even though a sixth sense told him with certainty that Madam had never found the gap and would not know about it if he asked her.  He was also sure that she had no other lovers apart from him and the financial advisor and accounts manager who she had visit her in her palatial private office at the mine when she came to inspect the mine after the close of every quarter.  It was her token affair; she kept seeing the young financier because she could not bring herself to forbid James’s affairs since he maintained his own home separate from hers.  

James was still reeling from his jealousy when he dropped his robe beside the bed and slid in beneath the cosy comforter to cuddle and spoon with the sleeping Madam.  Not long after that the two were dozing in a close embrace whilst their eyes moved rapidly with their dreams of passion and amour.   Madam, having slept a much more complete night awoke with the first light rays traversing her room’s semi translucent curtains.   She found the male implement she sought with a meandering right hand, and dove beneath the covers to enjoy herself with it, once it was in her firm grasp.  This was as good an excuse as any, to awake her much younger lover from his restful slumber beside her.    Because she afforded James such a free hand in managing the business and his other affairs, Perle felt entitled to have him when it pleased her however it pleased her on the days he was engaged by promise to her.  Friday and Saturday of every week plus all major holidays and celebrations James was expected to be at Perle’s disposal, which included both their birthdays.  After making love to his Madam once more, James amused her by preparing coffee and breakfast for her in a state of complete undress.  Just to add humour to his culinary services, James would dance to the playing Waltz when he had a chance.

In her oversized stone-decorated kitchen, James prepared a pot of fresh ground coffee with the enormous French press.  For the  meal he prepared a bowl of sliced tropical fruit, a pile of toast spread with butter and preserve, and two poached eggs for each of them served in small crystal bowls.  With the dishes piled on a large steel tray he led the bubbly Madam Gateaux out into the back garden where they ate in the morning sun in their bare skins.  When ever weather allowed it, they ate outside in their birthday suits.  This practice made it a simple matter for James to copulate with his sugar-mommy to satisfy her desires following the delicious meals that James arranged for her on weekends.  

The dependable weekend ritual also kept them both tanned a light golden brown without having to use the sun bed.  That hazardous device had been a favourite of  Madam before he husband had passed away.  I was kept in the exercise room next to her weight machine and her aerobic exerciser which she used daily to keep her unusual strength at her age.  The pattern begun on Friday night was continued throughout Saturday, into the early morning hours of Sunday.  By that time Madam was exhausted from an entire day of lovemaking at regular intervals punctuated by delicious meals prepared to her tastes by her dedicated lover.  Despite her vigour and surprising endurance at her age, she did not have the energy of her hearty lover who was more than twenty years her junior. 

As was customary, James kept Madam from a full night of sleep by interrupting her slumber on Saturday night.  He would wake her intermittently with amorous attentions preceding regular congress.  The elderly lady would subsequently pass into a deep slumber at about ten in the morning following a hearty breakfast that had been chased by a final frolic in the garden.  Once James had put his mistress to bed to recover her strength, he would dandy himself to await the arrival of his work and dance partner, Laura, from the city.  Laura would invariably arrive with a new dress that was ruffled.  As a habit she was missing both her bra and panties.  She had left them as prizes for the lucky man that had the benefit of fornicating with her after clubbing late into the two weekend nights.  

Laura burst in through the door from the car garage in her little embroidered white sun dress with one breast already bursting out at James and the skirt held up over her thighs by a man’s belt that she had swiped from that weekend’s partner.  James could see that Laura was in a fiery mood.  She embraced him amorously and massaged his partial erection with a hand while she gave him a sloppy kiss to the lips.  Breaking off the kiss but retaining the embrace Laura croaked huskily at James, “Fuck me darling.”  It was quarter to one when Laura was finally satisfied and asked what they were having for lunch.  The rich, young CEO/CFO she had caught in her net at the club had bought her a new dress, watch, and shoes.  The outfit designed by Givanchy  had been bought for her on the Saturday morning at Union Square while at a fashionable boutique.  The gift had pleased Laura,but his diminutive endowment had utterly failed to satisfy the fiery middle aged Waltz champion and executive secretary.  However, she had obliged him with a performance of screaming orgasms to satisfy him since she could not see the point of telling him the truth.  She would probably never see that young man again.  

Laura had given the weekend lover James’s telephone number at the studio in which they had copulated and slept.  She knew that after talking to the figment of his date’s supposed husband, he would never call again on a weekday.  Usually she would have her date for the weekend take any telephone calls ensuring few repeat dates.  In this way Laura entertained herself when James was committed to Madam and had a new partner every weekend.  Week days at the office she knew that James would be freely available to her.

By two in the afternoon, James had the grill in the garden hot and was cooking a stack of home made beef and chicken hamburgers.  James made the seasoned patties himself with marinated ground meat, corn flour, mustard, egg, chives and burgundy wine.  Laura, who had showered in the garden sprinkler while she toyed with James, went to wake the worn out Madam for her to join them for the late lunch.  After eating, Madam napped in a garden chair while James and Laura fornicated again in the shade of a huge Rose bush that perfumed the air near the time-space gap.  After their session, James prepared himself for his return trip to his studio on the sixth floor on a high-rise overlooking Van Ness Ave.  

By sun down, at seven, James looked forward to being in his bed with Mrs. Babs Compton, the bombshell blond who lived in the Penthouse flat on the eighteenth floor and who always took care of his needs at the apartment, in exchange for a couple of nights filled with passion every week.   She was perpetually neglected by her prosperous husband who had founded an electronics manufacturing firm with factories in South America and the Far East.  The ambitious and wayward fellow was always away on some business trip with his latest secretary who he hired for business purposes and used as his personal whore.

Earlier in the week, she had gotten the central heating in the flat fixed and gotten the plumber to install a Jacuzzi in his bath for them to share as a surprise gift for him.  Babs knew that Madam Gateaux had taken him on as her toy-boy, but she kept on trying to top the extravagant gifts that Madam would bestow on him, such as the Aston Martin.  In the unspoken race between the two wealthy ladies for James’s favours and affections, James could never be sure what he would be given next.  

All he was certain of was that every week would bring him a new set of gifts.  Babs had provided him with a new set of Florentine suits the same week that Madam had bestowed him with a new Platinum Breitelling wrist watch with diamonds, chronometer and alarm.  On Christmas of the previous year Babs had gifted him with a catamaran powerboat with twin Lamborghini motors, that was now docked at the marina of San Francisco.  She happily paid to have it kept ready for boarding and trips out into the bay by the harbour master who was another of her lovers.  Madam had gifted him with the Austin Martin to replace the Mercedes Benz SLR he had been driving for the last twenty months that same Christmas.  The frequency of new gifts was almost as absurd enough for James to refuse them, but he knew that the competition between the ladies kept their attentions from focussing on his life and untold relationships.  

As far as James was concerned, there was no race to be won by the women because he could please and keep both ladies satisfied with relatively little effort and get his job done as well.  Babs had her husband home on most weekends, so he was certain he would give his attentions completely to Madam. Only if Laura had been asked to stay home by Madam would his attentions be shared between them.  During the week, Madam was busy meeting with buyers of her mine’s production and investors that wanted information on availability of bullion that would be coming onto the market in the next few months for futures investing.  Therefore, most of the weekdays, James was home at his studio after work and the commute from Sacramento.  When at his studio he would be available for Babs to indulge her lusts.  Laura was the closest woman to have taken possession of James’ heart.  He was quite utterly devoted to her beck and call and would jump to any of her requests without being asked more than once. If James had not been cared for so well by the two ladies that had taken him under their wings, he would have asked Laura to marry him years before.  

Laura knew this of course, which was why she had carried her pregnancy of her daughter by James to term twelve years before.  They had understood each other very well, and had not even needed to discuss how to deal with the child.  Malvine, the girl had been nursed by Laura, who had kept the child with her at all times until she was five.  At age five she had been put in private education where she lived with her teacher who owned a little homestead in Wisconsin.  James, who had little else to spend his enormous salary on, paid the boarding teacher a hefty tuition to take on only one pupil.  In addition to the fee, James paid for food, clothes, and entertainment.  

Every summer holiday the mine was closed for a month of summer vacation and Malvine came to stay with her parents.  That month the girl and her unmarried parents took a month long vacation in Europe where they would live like a regular family while they were abroad.  Apart from the expense of the private schooling, this annual vacation was the only significant expense of his income.  It was lavishly enjoyed by the three who looked forward to spending every moment possible conversing and enjoying themselves.  August was the month they spent together and James was always greedily expectant of it.

It was past four in the afternoon by the time James was rumbling down the Interstate Route 80 on the way down the mountain, toward San Francisco.  At a quarter past five James was past West Sacramento, whey his car phone rang with a call forwarded from his satellite phone.  On the other end of the line was a hungry sounding Dora, wife of one of the miners who had taken a fancy to him.  Her voice was husky and crackling with anticipation.  She was a tall and large woman with a pronounced Rubenesque figure and long straight brown hair.  She was fond of wearing tight fitting outfits and revelling in the attention she attracted from the men that came into the diner.  Dora was a strong and efficient waitress and took all the advantages and gratuity she could win with her charms, manners, and appearance.  Her husband was of course very happy and proud of having gotten himself such a woman.

 Dora said she was calling from work at the Milk Farm Restaurant on the turnoff beside the interstate shortly after Dixon.  Dora wanted James to meet her in the parking lot for a bit of fun in her big black Suburban with tinted windows.  She even tried to entice him by offering to have his baby and pass it off as her husband’s.  James tried and failed to talk her out of having to have another baby to enjoy his attentions and told her he would be arriving in about twenty minutes.  James knew that Dora wanted another baby anyway and that she was waiting for an opportunity to have a child with him.  James put in a valiant effort to dissuade her to no avail.  Dora was just the sort of woman that believed that money equated to brains and that she would have a smarter kid if she was inseminated by the manager of the mine instead of her faithful, brawny husband, who happened to be quite a clever man.  This was an unfortunate belief in James’s opinion that he knew he could not talk her out of.  

Therefore, reluctantly, James parked the Aston Martin DBS in front of the restaurant and walked around the building as if going to the visitor lavatory outside.  He vanished into the back entrance of the big black Chevy Suburban where he met an already undressed Dora on her dinner break.  She was a large woman of six feet, a good match for her enormous husband, Patrick of six foot six inches weighing in at three hundred and twenty pounds of mostly muscle.  Patrick was a very good father and a dependable, hard working provider.  They had had three children already and Patrick had asked for a raise, which was in the process of being executed.  Because they were planning to have another child, James had already heard half the plan from her husband.  

Apparently, Dora had discussed this with Patrick without mentioning that her goal was to be impregnated by his boss, James.  Dora was a very big girl with massive mammary glands and hips accompanied by long hair that hung past her immense bum in a ponytail.  Nearly half an hour later, James had sowed the seed in the Dora mommy.  She was excitedly chatting to her best friend about how she would have a smarter fourth baby on the cell phone while she still rose and fell on the rigid male organ trapped within her womb in the back of the SUV.  It was nearly six in the evening when James set off for San Francisco after Dora had made him promise her to meet and mate with her at work on her diner break every night of that week on his way home, to make sure she conceived his child.  

By seven thirty James was home, parking the DBS in the underground lot before making his way into the studio apartment.  Babs had been paying for him to live in it for the last twenty-five years since they had met at a college function.  He was studying at USF as a freshman at the time they had crossed paths.  Babs had been taking courses to meet people and have a good time.  Meanwhile, her wealthy older husband stayed busy with his endless stream of temporary secretaries.  Even though he and Babs were of approximately the same age, twenty-two and nineteen when they met, she had become his first sugar-mommy and had encouraged him to stay a bachelor that made a life of keeping wealthy married women happy.  

Happy to accept her generosity and counsel, James had taken on the life a Gigolo to please her and he had learned that it suited him quite well.  Babs had of course also been the first woman to want his child and to then pass it off as her legal husband’s son.  Dora was only one of four other women in addition to Laura, who subsequently had children with James deliberately.  They  had each had long-standing affairs with him over the years.  Dora had even had a daylong sex-party with her best friends.  The two other women were not only friends, but also with whom she worked at the restaurant.  She had invited James to be the main attraction and to satisfy the three women sexually while their neglectful men went to the east coast to see the Super Bowl live in Miami.  The three women worked at the Milk Farm Restaurant and pooled their tips for that week to buy James a thank you gift that James was ashamed to accept and unsure how to refuse, meaning that he accepted it in the end.
 
3

It was nine months later that the child was born.  James would be on Mt. Athos, in Greece, visiting a monastery with Malvine and Laura when Dora sent him a text message thanking him for giving her a big bright-eyed boy of thirty-four inches weighing nine pounds eleven ounces.  Laura read the message and patted James on the back in a congratulatory sort of way, but nothing was said about the message to Malvine.  Hoping to protect their daughter they kept their secret.  James and Laura felt that Malvine would not have understood the lifestyle choices of her parents at the tender age of twelve.  

In time, James promised them he would introduce Malvine to what he knew of Fairyland without introducing the sexual side of it.  He had only done this because Otter had told him that Malvine was a little witch in the making.  According to a vision by Croma, there was a higher destiny for her to form another bridge between Fairyland and the ordinary human world after completing her higher education.  Croma was the Fairy Queen of the one and only realm of Fire.  So far the only Fairy that the girl had come across was her Fairy godmother, Tide Route.  Tide Route was an undine fairy of the coastal salt water region governed by the Pacific Fairy Queen Correnteza.  Malvine would be destined to work the intersection of modern maritime industry and its destructive influences on the ever threatened coastal environment.  For this reason Queen Correnteza had determined to wait for the girl to complete her Ph.D. in Marine Biology that she would obtain from the Université de Marseille in France at the age of twenty seven, after a thesis that would take her six years of research in the Mediterranean to complete.

Tide Route had first met James and Laura when they were in the UCSF hospital with the newly delivered Malvine in Laura’s arms while she suckled.  She had appeared out of thin air into the little hospital room standing at the foot of the bed naked and filling the sterile little private room with a powerful smell of the sea, with no forewarning. It had completely startled both of them, but they had become accustomed to Tide Route’s unannounced visits over the years.  She had even taken to having sexual liaisons with James once every month on the third Tuesday night of every month.  She would appear in James’s studio apartment completely undressed and mate with him energetically until the sun rose when she would suddenly vanish until the next month.  

For this reason, James had arranged his schedule to come to work on the third Wednesday at noon, just that day of every month.  In August, when the little family was on vacation in Europe, Tide Route would visit James in his hotel room at night and make him mate with her even though Laura was lying in the bed next to them.  Laura took this in stride and found the affair very amusing and a subject to joke about privately with James.  If he ever resisted her, Tide Route would simply charm him and break his will with her desire.  He was quite disconcerted by how forthright the little Fairy godmother was about the entire relationship, but his hands were tied magically, and Laura did not object in any way.  

Tide Route was most often busy instructing Malvine or one of her other godchildren in the magical arts so they may be better equipped to resolve uncommon or magical problems appropriately.  She taught her godchildren such things  as a spell if necessary in an effort to offer them a magical advantage in life that was uncommon for a Fairy godmothers to bestow.  Most obstacles in our lives are mundane in nature and require mundane solutions for which our society usually has mundane means by which to address them.  Even if the solutions are not very good, we can depend on them.  However, magical problems, which typically arise at certain stages of our lives and in the development of our cultures, do not have mundane solutions at all.  For the magical hindrances, we need magical solutions that we can sometimes obtain from a fairy directly as in the case between Malvine and Tide Route.  Part of the education that Tide Route provided though was beyond conventional teachings.  

Tide Route also taught Malvine to intuit spells and magical solutions which was a rare skill for a yet unconfirmed witch or wizard.  The little witch girl was learning quickly and in the process had outstripped her parent’s ability to comprehend her magic by the age of nine.  If it had not been for the absolute faith both James and Laura had in God, and his Fairies, they would have had many of the same parent-adolescent conflicts typical of mundane parents who refuse to accept or acknowledge their children’s innate and learned magic.  This stubbornness comes even if the magic is only temporary and imparted by their vigour and youthful growth through adolescence.

Despite James and Laura not being trained and confirmed as a wizard and a witch, they had managed to hold onto some of the magic and links to Fairyland through their adolescence, an uncommon stoke of luck for them both.  These qualities endeared them both to motherly women both younger and older.  This had its effects as with Madam Gateaux who looked after both of them.  Unfortunately for most of the men who encountered either of them, the two earned their ire and disrespect.  Had it not been for the positions of power in which ladies such as Madam and Dora put them in, they would both receive abusive treatment from those men and the more competitive and less maternal women.  

For the majority of men Laura seemed frivolous, childish, and whore like.  These misunderstanding males won her many well earning lovers that bought her lovely gifts as payment.  How men viewed her was a point of humour for Laura who played up their views to get the pleasures of sex with out having to deal with constant proposals for marriage like so many of her compatriot women.  

Tempering the seditious attitudes of men toward her was her executive position of acting as both Madam’s representative carrying power of attorney, and acting Chief Executive Officer for the mining company.  James was also ill received by most men who could not grasp his allure to the motherly women around them.  Even their wives and daughters would talk about him with infatuation once they had met James.  James was typically seen as childish and frivolous as well as effeminate and ineffectual.  This was a shame, for if they had paid attention to how hard James worked to keep the women pleased, the men around him might have found a way to have their sexual fantasies come true.  It was in fact because he could acknowledge both his masculine and feminine side and coordinate to balance his own desires with the wishes of the women and his inordinate patience, that James had gained such success in his life and affection from so many of the women.  

During their month touring around Greece the three would spent a week in Athens, another in Pilos, the third in Thasos from which they visited Mt. Athos, before spending their last week on Crete.  The holiday was full of visits to ancient historical sites, hikes in the hills and on the islands of Greece interspersed with water skiing and snorkelling adventures between stretches of sun bathing and eating delicious foods.  Malvine even had a chance to meet a couple of young Greek witches on different weeks that took her around to visit the Fairies in Pilos and in Crete.  She was also given an ancient stone amulet on a cloth strap that she could use either as a chocker or as a bracelet to help her focus her energies when working generative or growth spell to help land, plants or animals develop more strongly.  For the present time Malvine was unsure how she would employ the amulet, but she wore it regularly after she witnessed the excitement with witch Tide Route responded to her gift on her return to school.  

Shortly after Laura and James returned to the mine following that vacation, it would be decided to begin developing a precious metal and gem stone processing facility in one of the out of use under ground cavities.  In this way the mine would be able to generate higher profits as well as employ more women of which there were now many living in the new housing development into which the employed miners had been offered homes free of rent for as long as they were employed by the mine.  The wives and children of the miners could then be offered employment in the various new positions that would arise.  It would be an ambitious project with fantastic rewards, the addition of a housing development to manage and later a refinement and preparation facility.  It was expected to produce fine jewellery grade products that could employ men and women of many ages.  

For the past sixty years that the mine had been in operation, it had only employed women in the cafeteria and as secretaries to the offices.  With the joint management of James and Laura over the past thirteen years, the mine had been grown into an immensely profitable, iron, zinc, aluminium, sulphur phosphorus, gold, emerald, aquamarine, garnet, and alexandrite plant.  It was producing raw material that was sold to industry in bulk and still making a remarkable revenue. The two had hopes of growing the mine to the point where they would be able to easily convince Madam to increase the hourly rates significantly and offer the employees annual bonuses tied to the market value of the raw material  in a profit sharing scheme.

When James walked into his studio on the Sunday evening, he thought that at last he would have a few hours of rest and relaxation before he would have to be available for Babs.  He was quite mistaken for as soon as he came through the flat door he was confronted with not just a lusty Babs, but a little troop of four wealthy San Francisco women that included Babs.  The four women were all acquainted with James and his obliging services to them in the past years.  Furthermore, all four of them were intoxicated on their choice of Martini blends and were also high on some stimulant that James suspected was probably Ecstasy.  It was not very common for James to be confronted with a selection of enthusiastic sexual partners that were all both drunk and high, but this was one of the periodic circumstances he would have to cope with and try to please them despite their diminished ability to take pleasure in their sensory experiences due to the drugs.  

All four of them were in one stage or another of undress and they had clearly been attempting to satisfy each other whilst they had been awaiting James’s arrival from Auburn.  They all complained loudly about how late he was, but were quickly distracted by his rapidly undressed and available body.  The same antics of always were repeated.  Babs and Angela, the two blonds wanted oral sex followed by fertilization by their man lover. Stacie just wanted to be made love to for a while before James sodomized her the way she always wanted him to, perched on her shoulders while her hips were balanced on the seat of the desk chair.  Lila, the red headed, blue-eyed youngest of the group, insisted on giving fellatio to James between each of the other companions being mated or sodomized before she begged him to sodomize her on her knees in front of the wall length mirror so that she could give him fellatio one more time after that.  By midnight James was asleep beneath a pile of women recovering from their drugs, waiting for his alarm to wake him at six for his exercise and ninety minute commute to work at the mine offices.

Babs and her three friends were not quite recovered by the time that James left for work in his dandy pressed suit.  Lila had been the only one to have gotten up.  She showered with James because she wanted a quickie.  Then she made him a breakfast of two pieces of Baguette buttered and spread with apricot preserve and a strong cup of coffee with condensed milk while he dressed.  With a lingering kiss and an emotional embrace Lila had shut the door to the DBS.  Loosing sight of James behind the dark privacy glass, she only shut the door after obtaining agreement from James to meet with him regularly.  For most of the year he was to come to her house in the Presidio every Thursday to satisfy her and her then, seventeen year old daughter before going home.  Beginning the coming Tuesday James was expected to satisfy them both as it was her daughter Mercedes’ birthday on Tuesday.  

Her husband was away in Lisbon, Istanbul and Berlin every week from Tuesday morning to Friday night for his import export business from March through November.  Lila had recently learned that her successful husband had a secretary/partner in each of the cities that kept his bed warm and his cock busy every weekday night.  After being away from home all week, the best she could get out of him was a quickie just before they went to sleep on Sunday night when he had gotten his strength back.  Lila had been trying to get her daughter’s linebacker boyfriend to take care of them, but he was on the track to becoming a husband like Lila’s.  The athletic and competitive boys made good earners and offered a good social arrangement, but they invariably had their heads and dicks busy with work and new conquests.  

Lila and Mercedes both wanted regular sex that was delivered with the intent of pleasing them.  This was a tall order which neither the husband nor the football playing youth could deliver.  The mother and daughter pair had been having unsatisfying one night stands for months that they had been meeting through online adverts] and dating websites.  Invariably, if the date did not flake out all together, the man was promising much more than he could deliver.  Many of the online dates were looking for a fling and a woman to get pregnant without her agreement, which was tantamount to rape in Lila’s eyes.  

In order to get what they wanted finally, Lila had come to the gathering that Babs had announced on line at one of the bulletin boards months before.  After a very satisfying experience with James at the sex party in Babs’ flat, she had kept contact with Babs and expressed her interest in James to her.  It had been in this way that she had, once more, been invited to fornicate with James on that Sunday night.  Her husband was at home watching a football game with his beer and chips.  As was so usual for Sunday night, he was willing to have sex, but uninterested.  He was in fact relieved that Lila was out that Sunday night and was not expected home until very late after he had gone to sleep.  They both knew that they had married because they looked good together and wanted the social advantages that were promised by marriage and making a financially secure life together. 

James went off to work at his office on Monday as usual.  As was normal, Laura came to the office at fifteen hundred hours to meet with James to review the production number and employee statistics for the previous week as James had prepared them.  After talking about the production, employees, and development plans as they stood and how they were projected to advance, they discussed the events at his flat with the four women and his new commitment to Lila and Mercedes who would be adding to his income in yet unknown ways.  By the time they were done copulating over his office desk, Laura was massaging his testicles with pride and a sense of congratulation as she rose and fell above him.  They both hoped that the episode with the alcohol and Ecstasy was just a one off through Angela’s influence  who was a known addict, instead of being in Lila’s repertoire.  

James went home that Monday night to a quiet studio to get a good night of sleep.  It was the night before his engagement with Lila and Mercedes the next evening, before the inevitable visit from Tide Route.  Even though James was asleep, at about three in the morning, Babs returned from one of her nights at the nightclubs of the City.  As was so common with her, Babs was utterly drunk and had only her dress and shoes on.  It was quite normal for her to loose her undergarment to some dance partner that enjoyed coupling with her in some dark corner of the nightclubs as others passed them in transit to the back rooms or the bathrooms.  Long ago, Babs had opened accounts with the club owners who would just charge her credit card instead of having her lose her purse at the clubs.  

Having already been mounted by two lucky drunks that night, Babs came into the studio apartment and got into bed with James.  In her uncoordinated state, she woke him with a bump and swore to give him fellatio to put him back to sleep.  This, James knew, would not work so he simply embraced the partially undressed, smashed matron and kissed her adoringly for the quarter hour it took for her to fall asleep and into unconsciousness.  Shortly after that, James fell back asleep.  In the morning, he left Babs to slumber and departed for work.  Before leaving James took his exercise and prepared a breakfast of warm buttered croissants and fruit.  Some of this breakfast he left on the table with an amorous note for his ladylove when she awoke. 

 It was nearly eleven in the morning by the time that Babs was curled up on a chair at the table, wrapped in the bed sheet she had dragged from the bed with her.  She could still smell the stench of booze on her breath and feel the ache around her hips of the savage penetration by the two uninvited, equally drunk male violators she had admitted into her in the back corridors of the night club.  Babs was used to being treated roughly by men who were unable to communicate their interest in her or to express their desires for her in a delicate way.  This was of course why James was the recipient of so many benefits and tolerance for his other affairs.  He was gentle, communicative, and always sought to please her rather than to massage his own ego and proving his male prowess.  

As she ate portions of the now cool croissants and sipped from the coffee, Babs began to masturbate herself as she began to think of James and his sensual touches and affectionate embraces.  Her mind and senses were lost in reminiscing memories of being made love to by James.  Babs’ thoughts in another part of her mind fantasized imaginatively about the other women that James had affairs with and what he was like with them.  Being a sensitive and perceptive woman, her imaginings incorporated imagery of James with mother daughter couples and James with nonhuman female creatures that she was not sure how to identify.  Her perceptions had given her information that she could not accept consciously.  James had lovers that were Fairies, or were they angels, she was not sure.  As Babs mused over James, she was no longer sure if James was not an angel, a succubus, or a Fairy.  All she knew was that James was the most perfect lover, yet he was also beyond morality, beyond fidelity, and beyond reproach for his liberal approach to life. 

The difficulties of thinking about this unknowable, un-provable, perceptible reality about James was somewhat disturbing to the mind of Babs.  Forcefully she masturbated more vigorously to provoke an orgasm as she focused on her promiscuous lover intending to force herself to forget her magical awareness that threatened to displace her in her ordinary world.  She ate the fruit James had left her quickly and read the note once more with warmth filling her chest and head before she headed for the shower.  Clean and perfumed she dressed her designer dress from the night before and left the studio apartment with her shoes in her hand to take the elevator to the penthouse.  

Upon arriving home she found the maid cleaning the kitchen in her provocative French Maid costume.  It had been suggested by her twenty year old son that the maid would look more the part wearing it.  His father had of course agrees and arranged to have a set of the costumes provided to her.  Babs knew full well she had been in bed with her son before giving him breakfast and taking him to school  Troy was in college at UCSF, in the premedical program, but still lived at home.  He was planning to move out in a year or two if they could believe what he told his parents.  Troy was stalling because of the great sexual relationship he had with the maid.  She lived at his parents’ penthouse from Sunday night to Friday afternoon most weeks of the year.  Babs gave her keys to the tall and thin, shapely Brazilian woman with mulatto complexion, straight dark hair and green eyes.  She then asked her to also clean up apartment 601 when she was done with the penthouse.  

Marcella was a very efficient and observant young woman of a surprisingly chipper disposition.  She had been engaged with keeping the home of Babs Compton and her family for the past seven years.  Marcella was quite aware of and comfortable with the unspoken, promiscuous lives of the family that employed her and paid her so well.  She had been sending her relatives in Natal, fourteen hundred dollars a month to help support her elderly and terminally ill grand mother.  This represented a full thirty-three percent of her wages that she donated.  She was able to live quite well on the remainder as she shared a room in a four-room house with seven other Brazilian gals in the Richmond district.  

Most of the girls worked as servers in restaurants and as maids while attending English language programs that were supposed to help them gain admittance to either a university program or a job that would earn then a work visa.  However, the reality, for most of them was not tied to the promises of their language institution.  In reality, they were morel likely to get the visa if they got pregnant by one of their local boyfriends and marry him.  Intending to gain a permanent visa, Marcella was arranging things with Troy.  Most of the girls would return home to the north east of Brazil to take jobs at the primary schools, teaching English on a minimal wage to live in poverty.  They would simply return to their rustic lives and hope that their daughter or sons may have better luck than they had.  

Marcella was planning to move in with Troy when he moved out of his parent’s home.  She planned to become pregnant with his child as soon as he had gained admittance to the Medical Doctor program.  As far as they were concerned, Troy and Marcella were relating to each other as if they were already married.  This arrangement suited them both just fine.  Despite having Babs’ approval to carry on as if a couple, the reality of their relations had been completely missed by the inattentive father.  There was no love between them, which they accepted and did not have any concerns about.  The things that were important to then were, how good they looked together socially, how good a provider he would be, how good a mother and house keeper she could be, and how fun the sex they could have was.  Troy new that Marcella would be reliably tolerant of his taste for affairs in exchange for her gaining citizenship and an affluent life without having to deal directly with organized crime.  As long as the two kept up the appearance of a happy marriage like Babs and Frank Compton did, they would both be able to get the affection and love they craved without obstacles from other lovers.
 
4

Babs went to bed for a siesta after eating more and changing into her silk teddy for a restful trip into dreamland.  By the mid afternoon, she was walking around Union square in her fitted leather dress and boots.  Babs often went shopping to pass the time while she waited to return to apparent 601, to have James to herself that night.  She was hoping that he would let her stay that Tuesday night.  He had usually asked to sleep alone on Tuesday nights because of the visits by Tide Route that he never disclosed to her.  Babs, was informed by her intuitive perception that James had a commitment with a Fairy he could not cancel on Tuesday nights.  However, Babs chose to ignore her sensory perceptions and to try to have her way regardless.  By nightfall, she was waiting in her body stocking for James to come home from work, inside apartment 601.

While Babs had been out that day, Marcella had judiciously attended to every part of the little studio flat until it was once more spotless, fragrant and orderly.  The attractive young maid new how to please and she had succeeded once more that Tuesday.  James’ flat was kept up well beyond the standards of cleanliness that satisfied Babs, much as she did with the enormous penthouse duplex the Compton family inhabited.  In the same way that she satisfied the lady of the house with her house keeping, she satisfied Troy on a daily basis and his father once a week.  Just one day a week, Frank left for his work early on Thursday mornings and returned early in the afternoons, while Babs was asleep or out shopping.  For the three hours before Babs was expected home or remained asleep from having become drunk with lunch Frank had his rendezvous with Marcella.  Since Troy was also usually out with his friends or at the library studying on Thursday afternoons, Marcella would bathe Mr. Frank Compton, pleasure him, relax his tired elder body with a full massage, and them make love to him.  For this weekly service, as with his secretaries, Mr. Compton would gift the maid a $500 gift card to the Stonebridge Mall of which he was one of the owners.  Mr. Compton also gave her an additional bonus of $360 in cash that he left under her pillow the following morning as he left for work once more.  

James did return from work by six thirty that Tuesday night as Babs had expected.  However, he did not head for his studio.  James made his way to the large terraced house of Lila and Mercedes on one of the lush, green, tree covered hills of the Presidio with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the two lighthouses on the other side of the water.  Unfortunately for Babs, her patience ran short.  She returned home for a light dinner of steamed salmon and clams in broth with wild rice and a side of kale with in butter sauce.  In her irritation she ate and drank a few too many glasses of Shiraz.  After completing her delicious meal Babs asked Marcella to drive her to a new club.  In the driver’s seat of the white Mercedes CLS 550, Marcella dropped Babs at a new nightclub in the South of Market area which had occupied the vacant space left by a failed dot com in a large warehouse.  Babs knew that she would be able to get a ride home, somehow.  If she did not get another ride from the bloke that gave her a ride in the nigh that Tuesday night, there would surely be another that would be willing to fix her up after a brief carnal exchange.

Pulling up next to Lila’s Jaguar XKR and Hummer H1 in the circle drive, James had not even stepped out of the DBS when the double wide front door of the big house flew open with a rattle of the inlaid glass.  A now eighteen year old Mercedes, with short brown and green hair, came tearing out to meet James.  The excited youth had on her riding boots that came up to her knees with a dark brown and blood red denim mini skirt with a matching PVC top inlaid with muslin for ventilation.  James recognized the style as couture originating from a Japanese house, but he could not recall the name.  

She embraced him where he was seated, half way in the driver’s seat with his feet hanging out.  After a peck on the cheek, she took his hand and tugged him up onto his feet.  Complementing her on her extraordinary good looks and giving her a kiss on each cheek, he wished her a happy birthday before taking her left hand in his.  James knelt between the cars after locking his Austin Martin with the remote and kissed Mercedes’ hand adoringly before picking her up in his arms and carrying her back into the house.  The two entered the enormous house to the applause of Lila who was observing them through the window next to the entrance.

With the door shut, Lila conducted the gentleman and the celebrated youth to the family room.  Knowing what was expected of him, James deposited the eager Mercedes on the air mattress that they had prepared in the centre of the large trapezoidal room.  To one side James could see the entrances into a sauna room, a fitness room, and a sunbed room.  Through the sliding glass door was visible the vast hot tub set into the covered porch beyond which were a beautiful manicured Japanese garden next to an ellipsoid green tiled swimming pool. 

 He did not loose time with the energized anniversary lass. His caressing touches and sensual kisses were conferred generously upon her acquiescent body as he very slowly began to undress her.  As he lavished his attentions on Mercedes, Lila helped him out of his gabardine wool three-piece suit.  Nearly two hours later the three were soaking in the hot tub naked as they had been those two hours.  They had already joined in coitus a few times.  After the inaugural association in the family room, they had coupled once while in the sauna, after which they ran out to the pool together and dove in to cool off. 

The frolicking and coital games with both Lila and Mercedes were interrupted by periods of play, kissing, and sensual stroking.  They continued in the darkness within the comfortable space of the spa, lit only by a glowing orb filled with paraffin that was perched on the garden table beside them.  Following the pleasures and relaxation of sex in the bath, the three returned to the air mattress where their fancies and amorous antics continued to be indulged up till quarter to ten that night.  Having pleased and satisfied both ladies, James dressed himself with a smile across his thin brown lips.  Once he was sufficiently dressed, he departed after two more impassioned and lingering kisses given to the two lovely loves. Mercedes had requested to have his telephone number for her to text message him during the week.  Lila thanked him after confirming with James that they were scheduled to meet three Thursdays every month.

Setting off for his flat wishing to get home before Tide Route appeared, James was just turning from Lincoln Avenue onto 25th  Street, on course  to take Fulton Avenue to get to Van Ness, when Tide Route, his predictable Fairy lover, appeared in the passenger seat next to him, already undressed.  She only gave him a moment in which to blink and realize she had arrived before beginning to molest him while he drove.  About twenty five minutes later, the two were entering apartment 601.  Tide Route, unabashed, had no clothes on as they had walked from the parking garage to the apartment.  This display was to the amusement of the security guard and the shock of one of James’ youthful single neighbours that had irregular affairs with James.  Francine, the 26-year-old bank teller that occupied apartment 612, had been on her way down to the lobby.  Her online date was waiting for her to go to a late diner, before hitting the club scene for drinks and dance.  Blushing deeply she passed James and his Fairy in the corridor.  Francine wished she was going in to see James instead of the yet unknown accountant blind date.  As she passed them, she stared at the shapely and lithe Fairy’s body and avoided eye contact with James.

To the utter surprise of both James and Francine, Tide Route took Francine’s dress by the hem with one hand and tugged her towards her, catching Francine in her arms when she lost her balance.  Embracing Francine intimately, the Fairy extended an invitation to Francine to come and have fun with her that same Tuesday night.  Additionally, she suggested that Francine should come to see James every Tuesday night instead of going on dreary dead-end dates so early in the week.  She added that she was welcome to nock on the door when she returned from the rendezvous, to recover from the date and ennui in their mutual affections.  Tide Route emphasized to Francine that as she should know, James was the best lover she was likely to meet without going to Fairyland.  

With that said, the Fairy released Francine to her brief night of listlessness with the accountant.  During her subsequent date, Francine spent most of her time day-dreaming about her encounter in unit 601 later that night.  While Francine was engrossed in her fantasy, the date advertised himself to her with stories of his professional accomplishments and accolades.  Unfortunately for him, his date paid him only nominal attention and could not recall even his name at the end of the encounter.  He had been aspiring to ask Francine to date him regularly to possibly marry him.  His ambitions had quickly ceased on the value of having a wife with abilities and understanding of accounting as he planned to set up his own accounting service firm.  However, his dreams and aspirations for the lovely bank teller fell on def ears.

James was dumbstruck by the Fairy’s direct approach, and Francine was stimulated, overwhelmed, and confused as she mistook Tide Route for her concupiscent neighbour’s strangely permissive wife or maybe girlfriend.  At about one in the morning, a very relieved looking Francine was standing before the door of studio 601.  With her fitted wool overcoat slung over her arm again.  She was feeling doubts and behaving indecisively about her rendezvous with James and the Fairy.  Under Tide Route’s instruction, a nude James, bearing an alluring protuberance, opened the door for Francine and invited her in before she had got around to ringing the doorbell.  

Feeling guilty and blushing slightly as she stared directly at the engorged fleshy member that she remembered enjoying before, Francine followed the gesturing hand of James into the flat.  After she had entered, James re-locked the door to the little flat.  As on her previous visits, Francine took to James like a fish to water, which had her out of her underutilized dancing dress within minutes of being let in.   When the first crack of light appeared in the morning sky, Tide Route vanished from sight spontaneous with the sound of a faint crack and a pop, startling Francine into a hysterical fit of laughter.  Regardless of the startling disappearance, she continued to fornicate with James on the sofa.  By six in the morning the two lovers were united and asleep in each other’s arms.  Three hours later she awoke with a start feeling rightly that she was late for work.  She rushed out of the flat with her under garments and shoes hidden in her folded coat.  Francine went down twelve doors to change and was in her car on the way to the bank singing her apologies to the manager on her cell phone twenty minutes later.  

When James arrived at his office at noon as expected for one Wednesday a month, Laura was making a presentation.  Her audience consisted of two Sacramento city council and two Sacramento county board officials about the plans for expansion of the mine operations.  Her highlights were the expected increase in available positions in the workforce at the mine.  This was part of the process that was used to win the approval vote on the plans to gain financial advantages with local government.  A fabulous catered lunch had been brought in from Green’s Restaurant in San Francisco for the occasion by the attentive James.  James met the dignitaries he was well acquainted with and exchanged niceties and positivistic banter to maintain the atmosphere of prosperity, good humour, and agreement while they ate.  After the meal, James took the four around the mine on a tour before leaving them in the capable hands of Laura again.  

James had to attend to his analysis, charts, reports, and evaluations.  Laura remained occupied with the visitors until nearly closing time.  The guests were shown the new property where the employee housing development was planned and bought them all the coffee beverage of their choice while the five were out together in the company van.  At four thirty, the mine was locked up once more and James was heading out on the way to San Francisco once again.  As with each day of that week, James was planning to meet with Dora for another quick impregnation behind the restaurant in her SUV.  That would be the third mating with her that week, a favour.  For most of the trip otherwise, James was occupied with a convoluted discussion with Laura on the car phone.  To ensure his driving was not compromised, James utilized the hands-free speaker and microphone system installed in the Austin Martin.  

The point of the chat was in fact to review the day with the officials.  However, a significant portion of the time was spent flirting and chatting each other up as if they wished to meet later that night. In fact that was exactly the motivator for that situation.  James and Laura did want to meet as much as they would have liked to live together and be married.  However, James had his duties to fulfil for Babs, his first sugar-mommy.  Laura had after hours meetings with construction contractors with whom she had both to discuss the plans for the new construction and its pricing.  Further more, Laura had her affairs with them, which she used to solidify their bond and commitment to the mining company through a personal relationship.  Laura, who liked the sex, also used it to bind their honesty and commitment to her personally.  In this way, she had managed to keep the same contractors for all the jobs at the mines in the last thirteen years.  Because of her personal management strategy, she had also managed to both lower the costs and expedite the projects without losing quality of workmanship.

Babs was at her home in the penthouse duplex that night.  Her penthouse was on the eighteenth floor overlooking the busy thoroughfare.  Babs was having an early dinner, not expecting to see James that night either, when he called her from his studio.  Immediately, and without much thought to what she was doing, Babs sent Marcella, the house cleaner, down to Unit 601 with two bottles of Bordeaux reserve from1982 and a large plate of the same salmon pâté, epi baguette, and chèvre that she was dining on with Troy.  

Nearly forty minutes later, Marcella returned with the plates and a tummy full of James’ fecund delights.  She always liked taking the opportunity of visiting James on an errand to have some more carnal fulfilment and fun.  James had transferred the food to some storage containers destined for the freezer and stored the wine to enjoy with Babs later that evening.  He had then asked the beautiful Marcella to indulge in coital pleasures with him.  She had smiled with satisfaction and anticipation before they had begun their associations as she always did.  Once well prepared for the much rougher Troy, by the gentle and sensual James, she had returned home to clean the kitchen before being entangled with her future husband.  

Upon Marcella’s return, the capricious Babs headed to suite 601 in a skimpy satin strapless dress with high heeled mules and her long hair in a pony tail.  Neither Barbs or Troy noticed anything unusual about Marcella’s delayed return from James’s apartment.  Troy, who was in the kitchen chatting with whilst groping Marcella, watched his equally libidinous mother leave in her provocative attire with a thin grin and a twinkle in his eyes.  As soon as he was certain she was departed, he pounced on his desired dame in the skimpy maid costume with crotch-less stockings, and three inch matching heels.  

The crotch-less stockings were an added detail that Mr. Compton had included when he had provided the uniforms.  He had thought that it would have been his little secret to share with the desirable Marcela.  Troy and James had both found it out to be a very convenient detail of her attire.  Even Marcella had found it to be beneficial in concealing her sexual relations with visiting repair men and parcel deliverers to the flat from her employer.  To keep the farce of her private relationship with the head of the household, Marcella had asked Frank to also provide her with brassieres that exposed her nipples for his amusement.  It had in fact been a suggestion made my a parcel delivery driver, but Troy had approved as vociferously as his father.

By nine thirty Troy had, unknown to either of the two, impregnated his future wife with their first child.  The premature success was principally thanks to the additional arousal and stimulation that had been provided by James at that key moment of the month.  By that time of day the house was cleaned and Marcella had just left to visit with her room-mate friends.  The additional visit attributable to her high spirits was a surprise to her roommates, with whom she usually spent the weekends.  Troy’s father had come home as Marcella was leaving, to get an early night of sleep for the early start particular to Thursdays.  

Mr. Frank Compton was unconcerned with where Babs may have gone out to.  He merely stopped in Troy’s doorway to wish him good night while the young man sat at his desk doing homework and reviewing for his tests.  Troy looked up briefly and scowled uncomprehendingly before looking back at his books and wishing his father a good night indifferently.  The purple silk robe his father seemed to be wearing back from the office seemed odd to Troy, but it did not concern him what his father or mother got up to as long as he got uninterrupted time to do what he pleased.  

Babs was joined with her Faeriefied lover until nearly one in the morning on that Wednesday night.  It was nearly two in the morning of that Thursday when she finally left the tired James to sleep.  Babs returned home to sleep beside her equally infidelitous Frank.  Babs did not wake the sleeping father as she slipped in beneath the comforter to cuddle with the big man that seldom made love to her.  Yet, she was inexplicably excited from her copulations and lay awake with her husband in her arms.  When the alarm rang at four in the morning, Babs rose with him to make him breakfast and chat amiably before returning to bed after he left.  Normally, Frank would have woken Marcella to enjoy a coupling in the shower with the young maid, before leaving to have coffee and breakfast at the office.  Babs had thwarted his usual plans though, which sent him off to work in a particularly foul mood. 

This effect on her husban’s mood went completely unnoticed by the sleepy Babs.  She returned to her cosy bed to have more unsettling dreams about James and Fairies.  It was taking Babs a long time to absorb what she had perceived of the magical part of the world.  What she knew about the world could not explain with reason to her mind the irrepressible awareness of Fairies and magic surrounding her.  However, eventually she would be able to accept and understand the realities of Fairies in her environment.  Though, the truths that Babs would come to accept about Fairies and magic would be twisted distortions of the reality that were comfortable and nearly totally false.

This challenge was something that Francine, the bank teller neighbour in unit 612, had to come to terms with much faster.  Francine simply had to accept Fairies with out the benefit of her dreams and subconscious to create a more comfortable semi-real version of the reality for her to digest.  She had met and made love to Tide Route.  The Fairy woman had transformed herself into a male bodied Fairy for part of the night allowing him to also copulate and sodomize the slender bank teller that had come to visit James. 

 The effects of coupling with the Fairy had been more addicting than any drug she had tried to date, including Cocaine.  Francine, being a practical minded woman, had recognized that she adored the energizing high of Cocaine.  Though, she also recognized that its long term effects would ruin her professional career.  In finding that the Fairy was more addictive than she had found James to be, Francine felt she had found an addiction worth keeping.  

Later, after Tide Route had copulated with Francine with an unpronounced male member, she had transformed back into her usual female form to be mated with by James.  Furthermore, she had witnessed the Fairy vanish into thin air while James had been thrusting into her womb lovingly.  She had struggled with herself to accept and understand what she had seen and experienced.  The result was that other Fairies began to appear in her life in unexpected places such as the bank vault and at her Jazzercise dance and exercise class.  Her visits to James’s apartment also became more common as their friendship grew.
 
5

That Thursday morning James awoke much earlier than usual, before the alarm rang.  It was still dark and foggy outside with the lights from the Embarcadero and the harbour just faintly visible in the distance when there was a break in the cloud cover.  James made himself a cup of strong Oolong tea and had a banana with it before going out at ten minutes before five in his sweat suit and sneakers with a seven pound weight in each hand and a five pound weight wrapped around each ankle.  Checking he had his wallet and watch with him, he headed out taking the lobby exit onto Bush St, where he turned right going down the hill toward Montgomery.  Walking briskly, James descended the hill quickly while enjoying the cool air and light breeze.  

When he reached the corner with Montgomery, he entered the little Greek café through the glass doors with one arm already raised in greeting as he hailed the thirty eight year old co-owner that usually opened and tended the eatery from five in the morning until noon.  She was dramatically attired as usual.  This day, Alda had on a long yellow, blue and rose-coloured dress with enormous floral patterns in it that complemented her delicate Rubenesque form and high cheekbones with deep set eyes surprisingly well.  In her thick, wavy, dark brown hair she wore a set of three broad ribbons matching the colours of her dress and other accessories like the fluffy satin hair bands she used as bracelets.  

Alda, who was ever flirtatious, had an entire wardrobe of these sorts of flowing dresses made with an excess of fabric with linings of contrasting but complementary colours.  Each of them had deeply cut necklines that exposed a significant portion of her large pale breasts.  Purely for effect, Alda wore a matching scarf loosely tied about her neck to accentuate her pronounced chest, which was even more noticeably displayed by her preference for not wearing brassieres.  Occasionally, Alda would lean forward provocatively to tease her more flirtatious clients.  It had even happened that under peculiarly strained circumstances, one of her teats would come out from behind the fabric that only barely contained them.  

Alda and her sister, the other co-owner who tended the café from noon until 19:00, were in strong disagreement over her theatrical and provocative approach.  However, like James, she maintained a string of lovers that fancied themselves suitors, and who provided substantial financial support to her.  Because she was able to support herself completely on their gifts without drawing on her half of the profits, they never needed any loans for the business.  Furthermore, Alda’s substantial financial reserves accumulated from both the business and her lovers made it a simple matter for them to maintain all the newest capital and to renovate the customer area to reflect the latest trends and fashions in interior décor.  This amounted to new equipment every year or two and redecorating approximately twice a year with new furniture annually.

The two recipients of gifts by lovers had been friends for the last twenty years since the inauguration of the café opening.  As was customary for James, he took Alda’s extended left hand and kissed it before asking for a buttered hot crumpet and a short mocha late with a tablespoon of honey.  The tanned Gigolo handed her a bill of twenty and one of five, of which he expected no change, before taking a stool at the bar on her far right, toward the interior of the café.  In a few minutes Alda brought him a cup and a plate with the toasted aliment upon which James found a key and a note written in natural green ink with a neat calligraphy.  
“At Sun Down,
While the light fades,
Before the rise of the moon
On Sunday
A Summons for the Son
A Fairy mother awaits
In the hidden hill
By the edge of the Lady’s lake
Requested by the Mermaid
Through the Lady of the Lake”

James folded the note and put it carefully into his wallet’s pocket with the key.  Alda returned to James who was waiting for her with anticipation on his face once he had cleared his plate and drained his cup.  He was about to speak his question when Alda answered his mind’s question.  In an audible whisper intended only for James’ ears, Alda clarified, “The key is from Mercedes, who would like to see you tonight after you have put Babs to sleep.”  “I ran into Mercedes while doing my daily five-mile swim at Club One yesterday.”  “She was very flattering of your charms and qualities.”  “She gave me the key after I told her that you came by the café several times a week in the early hours when it is quiet, relatively speaking.”  “She knows that you and I are alike, I do not know how though.”  James raised his eye-brows in surprise, and vocalized inquisitively as he looked with thankful friendship into Alda’s burnt umber eyes.  They understood each other implicitly most of the time.  Alda leaned over the counter affectionately and gave James a kiss on his cheek whilst resting her ample cleavage upon his open hand.  She exclaimed that they both would see him on Sunday at the lake before letting him leave to continue his brisk walk.  The exercise took him down to Market street and around the block before he returned up the hill at a march up Sutter Street until he reached Octavia before returning down Bush to get home by approximately six. 

By six forty he was showered and dressed for work in a slightly more eye catching brick red suit with dark rose trim.  It was a very unusual colour, but it was an attractive colour when next to his radiant, tanned skin.  By the usual 08:15 James was seated at his office after having already collected the clock-in information from the security booth where he left the keys to the DBS as usual.  Thursdays were typically uneventful days at the mine.  James took advantage of the relative calm to focus on paperwork. He did not even leave his office for lunch. Instead, he called the cafeteria and asked one of the dishwashers to bring him a large Caesar salad with a toasted half chicken breast and extra sauce.  He had an electric kettle and a selection of teas that he drank while working there.  James tipped the dishwasher with a $20 bill and ate slowly while reviewing the forecasts made by the team leads the week before in comparison to the figures he had so far.  

By the end of lunch James had a broad smile on his face as the mine had already produced more than had been expected just from the rising gossip of employees being offered free housing, virtually no commute and jobs for their other family members in the near future.  It seemed that the plans to be generous toward the mine workers would bring a larger growth effect for the mine than either he or Laura had expected.  Within a year James expected that he would be seeing yet another raise since his lavish income was also linked directly through a percentile formula to the total profit of the mine, in the same way that Laura’s and Madam’s portions were related to the profit.   Quite honestly James felt he did not know what he would do with the additional income, for he already donated thirty percent of his income to various charities and churches.  While he mused over these thoughts he wished he could marry Laura again, but that was just not possible at present.  A happy thought occurred to him, perhaps when he and Laura were old and retired maybe they could marry and have a few years of that fantasy before their time was up in this life.

Just them his cell phone rang, interrupting his thoughts.  Mercedes had sent him another flirtatious note but this time she also asked him if he was stopping by that night at 22:00 to take her and a gift.  Before commencing work again he replied a brief  “Yes, and I have your key, which door? RSVP.”  While James was busy he received the reply to go to the cottage in the back behind the bushes at the back of the Japanese garden through the side gate.  It was four-thirty in the afternoon by the time he notified her that he was on the way home.  James added that he would visit with the key through the side gate into the garden. 

However, James was first expected by Mrs. Babs Compton in his flat.  Babs had let herself into the studio after receiving word from Marcella that the flat was clean and ready.  She had even prepared a set of salty pastries for dinner and another set of sweet pastries for desert in unit 601 with another two bottles of aged reserve Riesling from the wine cellar dating from the early 1990s.  The wines were in the refrigerator with the deserts to be eaten chilled. The entrées were to be reheated in the oven for five minutes on broil.  She had prepared half the pastries with cod and the remainder with ground beef.  In addition there was potato, carrots, and peas blended into the fish and beef that had been prepared with seasoned reduced broth of the corresponding flavour.

Babs was lying wrapped in a bath towel on the sofa watching a reality TV drama on the 64inch flat screen HDTV she had given when James came through the door.  It was a little after six.  Babs smiled mischievously when she saw him wearing the becoming red toned suit, one of the more recent collections of Florentine suits Babs had gifted him.  Immediately she remarked on how pleasing, an effect it had with his complexion.  

They embraced and kissed and the large towel she wore was soon on the coffee table along with about half of James’ suit.  Following an initial outburst of affection and playfulness, they conversed about the latest fashions at Union Square’s boutiques and about Marcella’s fabulous cooking while they had the quick and clean dinner.  Only two plates and two wine goblets had been used as all the pastries could be eaten as finger food. Babs consumed approximately one litre of wine during the meal whereas James had only half that.  Naturally, Babs was well beyond relaxed when they took to their pleasant love games once more.  By ten that night Babs was not only very well satisfied but also recovering from the wine sufficiently to walk back up to her penthouse flat to get to sleep.  James escorted her in his slacks and button-down shirt to the elevator where she blew wanton kisses at him through the closing gap in the doors.  

With Babs so utterly wasted, it had been very little effort for James to bring her the sensations that would satisfy her carnal wishes.  With her gone and happy once more with her affectionate liaisons, he preoccupied himself with showering, shaving, brushing and perfuming himself for Mercedes, the energetic eighteen year old for whom he had been a birthday present.  Before he began though, James sent an apologetic note to his witch rendezvous affirming that he was on his way as promised despite being late.

At twenty to eleven James was touring through the streets of San Francisco on his way to the Presidio again.  He parked the sleek car in a lot by one of the old buildings that were once part of the old military base on Ralston Ave., and walked a couple of blocks to the big house.  His senses told him to be cautious, so he put on the dark brown trench coat and matching brimmed canvas hat before setting off through the winding streets.  Ten minutes later he pushed his way through the unlocked side gate into Lila’s garden and made for the back of the pool along the shadowy side.  Fortunately, it was only the first quarter moon, which gave a minimal amount of light into the dark garden.  Once he was past the tall growth of dense rose bushes he could see a dark little building that could easily have been confused for a garage had it not been for its inaccessible position for a car.  Following the wall of the little rectangular building with his hand in the dark ness, James moved carefully to not disturb any objects that may be in his path. A few minutes later he found the little door on the back side, out of sight from the main house. 

Feeling through his coat pocket for the blocky key ring with only one key on it onto which he had transferred the key from his wallet at the office, James came across a pen, a miniature folding utility knife, a few silver pieces, a small owl feather he had found on one of his trips to visit Otter and Red-bud, and a packet of Chiclets - dried but still in their ancient wrapper.  Beneath all that collection of paraphernalia James found the key he had been given by Alda in the morning.  The little steel key fit the socket in the thick, dark, solid oak door with ease.  James turned the knob and let himself into the apparently unilluminated interior of the cottage.

 
6

Passing into the even darker interior, James felt a delicate feminine hand take his gently.  He heard the door behind him pushed shut and latched behind him.  Mercedes’ soft lips found his in the murk.  As she kissed him she reached toward the wall and turned on the light by the door.  Skin all over James’ body tingled as goose bumps spread.  The little space seemed filled with a natural magic that he had only felt when visiting Fairies before.  It was an odd feeling that alarmed him at first.  Though, that eerie sensation quickly changed to an enveloping feeling of comfortable warmth and sense of unshakable security.  

He could feel the wave of gratitude that he had come as promised rather than getting cold feet and cancelling at the last minute as was so common for her previous dates.  The wave of emotion came out of every pore and hair on her like a field of energy radiating out from her bones.  In his clothes, he began to perspire as her energy overcame him and provoked a powerful arousal response.  The immediate response to a feminine touch was something that James usually only had with his Fairy Lovers Otter, Red-bud, and Tide Route.  His arousal time had increase significantly over the years with age and experience.  Part of his mind felt that Mercedes was either a Fairy or the progeny of a Fairy with Lila, a Changeling like him.  However, he was not sure yet for she could also be Faeriefied and be either an unmagical gal or a witch also.  His memory of the note and conversation with Alda that morning had dissolved in his mind as the encounter with Mercedes had begun.

In her soft and seductive unusually deep voice Mercedes began to speak to James.  He was listening to her every word, but had a hard time containing his stupefied reaction to the girl.  “I am also a daughter of a Fairy like you my dear,” she began as her hands stroked James into ever-greater arousal and encouraging his clothes to come off with gestures. “Mama met this odd looking brownish-black wild dog in the forests of the Butano State Park when she was out there for a hike and some exercise years ago.”  “He stopped and watched her while she raised her skirt and crouched to relieve her bladder among some bushes under tree cover.”  “She heard him tell her that she was very attractive and that he would like to be with her if she had some time.”  “She was so startled that she dropped her skirt and got it wet with her own urine.”  “Naturally, she had to take it off and rinse it in a creek and let it dry before she could go back to the public areas.”  “Therefore, they had their fun in the woods that day.”  “The dog turned into a man with a very attractive yet somewhat androgynous physique and a nearly grotesque endowment Mama couldn’t pass up.”  

Mercedes continued as James stood before her transfixed, naked, and rigid in her stroking grasp.  “This Fairy-man also took her to some other part of the forest where time moved slower, where they made love repeatedly.”  “Mama told the story of their affair lasting about seven nights and six days when I asked after chatting with Alda and the Lady of the Lake.  However, when she got back to the park area with a clean skirt and pregnant with me, she had only been gone for seven hours and no one had noticed a thing.”  “She told me that the Fairy was called Pebbles, and that he used to meet with her several times a month until nine years ago when he suddenly stopped visiting her after she had started watching a lot of TV and movies.”  “Since she no longer had to work as Dad’s business was growing rapidly, she stayed home and had started to do a lot of shopping and watching the media when Pebbles was not around.”  “It was Alda that first told me about you and the connection to Babs Compton late last year at the club.”  “That was why I encouraged Mama to go to the party she had advertised online.”  “The Lady of the Lake will fill in the remainder and how we connect magically on Sunday.”  “I will be there too.”  “Now, love me you half-Fairy-man.”

Partly hypnotized by the charms and glamour of Mercedes, the Changeling girl, James obeyed her every request from that moment on.  It was nearly four in the morning when he came out of her intoxicating influences, after having thoroughly satisfied the Changeling witch.  With weariness in his body and mind, James awarded the impassioned girl an apologetic, affectionate kiss and rushed home to get ready for work.  After a cold shower, a session of grooming that included three perfuming layers and a coat of moisturiser, James dressed his green hound’s-tooth suit with a waistcoat and a pocket watch.  Over his Brazilian leather brown oxfords with medium lug soles he put a pair of spats of matching green hound’s-tooth made to go with a wool walking hat of precisely the same fabric.  After three cups of strong café-au-lait and two warm, buttered croissants he set off for work with his toiletry wallet and a little tartan duffle with clothes for the weekend at Madam Gateaux’s home.

James could feel that the entire weekend would be very different from the usual the moment he arrived at the mine.  Madam was at her usually abandoned office in the company of Laura, who was briefing her on the meetings she had with the contractors that would be working on the housing development and later on the redevelopment of the disused chambers into processing and refinement plants.  With James present, after exchanging devoted kisses and hugs with both ladies, Laura briefed them on the success of her negotiations and persuading meeting with the two city and two county officials.  The proposals had been turned in to the appropriate ministerial agencies at the end of the day on Thursday for review and approval.  The projects were expected to commence by the beginning of the following month with a projected completion of the phase one, the housing complex, in a little over a year.  It was expected to contain a central park with a playground, a communal outdoor pool, and a community fitness centre that was to include a sauna.  Among the seven street, there were planned three hundred homes to accommodate the expanding labour force that was anticipated to grow from 83 to over 250 in the next five years.  

Madam asked James if there was any critical work that he needed to do that Friday, or could he arrange for the guard to lock up so that he could come home with her that morning.  Feeling somewhat fatigued from his lack of sleep, he thought about her offer for a moment, and looked at Laura briefly with a thoughtful expression.  He was tired and in need of sleep before being expected to perform for Madam.  It was also clear from Laura’s expression that she thought she would like to be making the same offer to James that Madam had just extended.  It occurred to the Operations and Safety Manager that perhaps if he delayed his rendezvous until 1330 or 1400, Madam would still have a much longer weekend with him, he would be able to sleep for about three hours seeing that he had been invited to not work that day by the owner.  Enticing James even more than that offer was the knowledge that he would be able to mate with his partner of choice, the lusty Laura, before departing for the home of his mistress.  With these thoughts James informed Madam that he would be leaving for her home at or shortly after one o’clock that afternoon. James knew that he was offering her six hours longer with him this week.  To excuse himself, James clarified truthfully that he would not be able to leave immediately as there were some things that he wished to do before he concluded his week at the mine.  James phrased it so because lying about having actual work to do was unacceptable to him, but he felt that if he told his mistress precisely what he intended she would order him to come with her immediately because she was horny at that moment.

Once Madam had left the premises, having been escorted to her car by James and Laura, James promised Laura she would receive his attentions before he left for the week.  Following their flirtatious chat and his pledge to her on the walk back to the office complex, James locked himself in his windowless office and reclined in his comfortable office sofa to sleep.  His alarm was set to wake him in precisely three and one quarter hours.  With his coat, vest, and tie on the coat stand, he fell asleep immediately.  Fortunately, James did not snore, which made such recuperative siestas easily managed at the office.  The telephones were intercepted routinely by the receptionist at the lobby, and the secretary he shared with Laura, Tara, could easily manage any incoming messages to have them on his priority list for Monday morning.  

Tara was a short, overweight, young woman of about thirty four.  She was a very vigorous, robust, and healthy mother of three with two teenagers.  She was a very attractive dark skinned blond with a gentle disposition and excellent mental acuity.  James often felt that she might make a good replacement for him if Madam ever chose to have him stay home with her more of the time.  She had made a remarkable recovery from her early youth in the Elk Grove area.  Tara had been drawn into a gang before her teens and become involved in both traffic of and addiction to methamphetamines and later to heroine.  She had been repeatedly impregnated in that youthful period during which she had miscarried three times and had two abortions in addition to bearing her three children to whom she was completely dedicated.  

After Tara had nearly died of an overdose at age eighteen, with two children at the time, she had committed to get clean and stay off the drugs.  She had come to the mine looking for work in the kitchens like her friends.  Some of them had been so damaged by their experience with the drugs that they were not even able to reliably wash dishes.  Tara had not only been fortunate enough to keep most of her faculties, but upon the interview with James and Laura, had been offered the position of receptionist instead.  Within three years, when the former secretary and a lover of Mr. Gateaux’s, retired at age 55 to claim early retirement after twenty-six years at the mine, she had been promoted and been given a substantial raise.  Without hesitation, Tara had been offered the position by James, who took it with relief as she needed a higher income with her prepubescent progeny.  Most of her friends had subsequently forfeited the steady work at the cafeteria either for personal reasons or because they returned to drug use.  Subsequently, a predominantly stable crew had formed with little more than a handful of transient workers, principally in the cafeteria kitchens.

At 12:30 James awoke to the sound of the waltz playing from his desktop computer.  He took up his cell phone and sent Laura a brief text message to alert her of his accessibility to her.  There was little time for James to refresh himself and make another cup of tea before Laura opened the door with her key and locked herself in with James.  While the fresh cup of hot tea cooled on James’s desk, the couple pleasured each other and flirted with each other among chitchat about maybe having another child before Laura was too old to have more children.  While they made love Laura proclaimed with an inexplicable certainty that she felt that James would be having another child soon, but not with her until Malvine was sixteen.  

By 13:20 Laura was peaceful resting on the white leather sofa in only her stockings and pumps with a broad smile of contentment across her Nordic features as she watched her charming and seductive proto-husband putting the final touches on his suit in front of the full length mirror behind his office’s door.  Ten minutes later, after she had redressed her skirt and blouse, they parted with longing in their eyes and an affectionate touching of noses.  James made his way to the security shack to give him his tip and collect his car keys to reach Madam’s home by 14:30.  Laura returned to her large windowed office and closed the blinds to groom before leaving for San Francisco by 15:00.  Laura had clearly notified the guard that James would be leaving early, for the Aston Martin DBS had already been washed before he had begun cleaning Laura’s Porsche Turbo.

It was an unusual day in many ways, and the complete absence of traffic going east on I-80 that Friday brought the speedy James to Madam’s home in record time.  By 14:05 the DBS was parked and locked beside the long, grey 62S with its tinted windows.  James was already in the garden with his mistress pealing his fetching hound’s-tooth suit to lie with Madam on the bed-like garden chair upon which they frequently coupled unceremoniously.  Beside them was the matching circular outdoor table upon which rested the remains of Perle’s lunch and two bottles of a Sonoma Valley Moscato Bianco she was fond of drinking after her meals.

It was the middle of sunset before the two fornicators ceased to rest and eat from a selection of samosas crab cakes, and creamed chicken croquettes.  While they ate they were both surprised by, and Madam was shocked by, the appearance of the wood Nymph, Aliso, who had been sent by Queen Sequoia to confirm James had received the message to appear at the home of the Lady of the Lake on Sunday at sundown.  Aliso simply came into the garden in the shape of a mightily built, small, dark man through the time-space gap at the end of the property in the same way that James had so often come and gone to meet with his Fairy Lovers.  Once Aliso had introduced himself to Madam and to James, he took advantage of Madam’s obvious interest in intercourse and her temporary transfixation at his appearance to copulate with Madam Gateaux while James obliged her as well.  

Enchanted by the experience and the Fairy glamour that frequently makes these creatures so irresistible, Madam invited Aliso to stay the remainder of the weekend, once she had regained her senses, until Sunday at sunset when he would leave in the company of James.  For the remainder of Friday night and most of Saturday, Perle Gateaux was nearly continually ravished by James, Aliso, or both her lovers at once in one way or another.  Despite her increasing degrees of exhaustion, she urged them on having never been so thoroughly satisfied and pleasured as well as by a tender Changeling and a wanton Fairy.  It occurred to James that she might now ask of them how Aliso had entered her garden and how she may have him join her again in the future.  However, Madam was so utterly engrossed by their attention and so charmed by their abilities, that these questions never entered her conscious mind.  

I was in fact Aliso who asked her if he might come again.  To that question, she emphatically pleaded him to visit her daily after sunset.  Aliso also requested to bring a few of his Fairy colleagues such as Townsend the absurdly endowed wood Nymph, or Jabiru the black Faun.  In addition, there was a Bison Faun named Wan, which Aliso wished to introduce to Madam.  Under his pleading charms, Perle Gateaux had no questions or any objections.  She whole-heartedly opened herself and her home to the Fairies, a choice that would ultimately endanger Madam.  Atone point in the lovemaking, James was left with Madam while Aliso went to fetch Wan and Townsend.  As far as Madam and James were concerned, Aliso was away for only a few minutes and returned with the shaggy haired and massively muscular Buffalo Faun.  

It would only be in her dreams at night that Madam would venture to query her intersection with Fairyland, at least that was what was expected from her as an ordinary person.  In her dreams over the coming weeks, she would not have to face the discomfiting realities of Fairyland being a part of her life and a reality of life on this earth that humans are so fond of claiming possession of and supremacy over.  In her dreams she would both be visited by spirits from Fairyland and be taken through the time-space gaps to visit the Tellurian, Welkin, and Pelagic realms, but never the Fire realm, as she was not to be a witch.  

Because of these dream-treks, she was expected to become comfortable with the Fairies and accepted James’ Changeling half Fairy-ness without becoming consciously aware of any of it.  This allowed life to go on as before without alterations of upsets.  The only change resulting would be that Madam Gateaux had much more sex throughout the week which made her a happier, more satisfied woman with fewer hungers and cravings making demands on James, who was otherwise happy to please her.  This fantasy and desire was not to be though, for Madam became rapidly conscious of the Fairies and began to use her will to learn more and to track them as they moved about to have some control over her interactions with Fairyland.  Madam became aware of some sort of passage at the end of her garden through which Fairies had unrestricted access to her private property.

 
7

By Sunday morning, Madam was so overwrought by the attentions that immediately after breakfast she fell asleep in a Brazilian hammock hanging from hooks between two posts of the back porch covered by the Terracotta tiled roof extending over half the porch.  Because of a text message sent to Laura by James on Saturday night advising her of the changes with the Fairy visitors, she arrived very much earlier than the usual noon.  For the remainder of Sunday, Laura enjoyed the pleasures offered by Aliso the wood Nymph, Wan the Buffalo Faun, and James her proto-husband.  

She had returned as was customary for her, in a new dress gifted by her conquered partner for the weekend, missing her underwear and once more, with new shoes.  Madam was left to sleep and recover herself most of the day as she had been kept up all of Friday and Saturday night by the Fairies, who had come to visit and ravish her.  Townsend, the soft-spoken and gentle little giant Wood-Nymph had come on Saturday afternoon from the Pebble Beach home in which he usually lived with a young medicine woman and witch name Luna the Coveted. Townsend had left shortly after having coupled with Laura.  As Townsend had left, Jabiru, the Faun arrived into the lovely garden.

  It was nearly sunset when Madam finally woke to enjoy a magnificent feast prepared by the magical culinary arts of Aliso.  The Fairy food entranced both the lovely 29-year-old Laura and the elderly Madam.  Therefore, at sunset, when James left in the company of Aliso to meet the Lady of the Lake, both women were once more doting their attentions gladly on the Nymph and Faun that were coupling with them once more on the lawn chairs in the light of the setting sun.

With the sky glowing a brilliant orange from the west over the hills and a bright golden moon rising in the south quadrant James and Aliso left together, each wearing a brown and green flecked cloaks that covered their naked bodies.  The light but warm coverings protected them from the chill breeze in the Placer County hills and the foggy winds sweeping over the peninsula of San Francisco where they were headed.  Aliso walked unhurriedly with James toward the time-space gap at the end of Madam’s garden.  They vanished together down the dark, silent, hard, but smooth passage that led them directly to the gap exit on the opposite side of Lake Merced from the busy street and hoards of pedestrians or drivers that habitually failed to notice the appearance and disappearance of oddly dressed travellers.

Engrossed in gossip about the doing and alluring charms of the new master healer, Luna the Coveted, the two made their way around the edge of the lake to a stand of tall bamboo obscuring a little hill at the base of which was a little cave large enough for a small child to crawl through and nothing more. Together they stood before it with their feet partly in the opening.  Aliso chanted a brief, one line spell while holding James by the hand.  They were both giddy for a brief moment in which the world seemed to turn upside down and back upright once more.  When James regained his bearings, he found himself inside the hill with the dim moon light making a semi-circular bright patch where the gravel path narrowed and exited through the opening beside the bamboo patch.  

James remembered having been here only once before.  He had been only fifteen when his Fairy godmother Flow, had taken him to meet his actual mother, the Undine Queen Correnteza.  She had met his father while he had been working on under water repairs to one of the piers used by Navy ships in the San Diego harbour.  The two had had a long love affair while he had been with the Navy, which was what had prompted his father to have a career with the merchant navy.  Oliver had impregnated the Undine Fairy Queen with James while on his fourth year of service.  Within three years after his six-year service contract being completed, he had returned to the open sea as a captain of an oil tanker.  Despite having married a pretty, bright, dark skinned, and young lass from New Mexico he met while in the service, he had stayed out at sea as much as possible.  This of course meant that they had a financially lucrative life, but the absentee father’s neglect in pursuit of his Mermaid love moulded James’ future.  James learned to please his neglected mother early on, a skill helped by Flow, the Fairy godmother.  Later, his abilities were ceased upon and encouraged by Babs who transformed James into a Gigolo.  

On that first occasion, James had been in a receptive position as he came of age.  The Fairies, his mother, and a pair of witches had been present and given him their blessing and advice which had earned him great success with the girls and a sting of girlfriends that culminated with his transformation from a college student in the media and communications business program into a Gigolo and then a manager and Gigolo.  After the blessings he had been taken to the hidden lake through one of these time-space tunnels.  The hidden lake with its island in the centre with an inactive volcanic crater at the peak on the island’s centre was the place of his testing.  He had been expected to make his way across the lake to the island and then to find his way through the jungle and to the cone.  From the foot of the mountainous cone James was expected to climb up to the crater and jump into it.  

All aspects of his task were to be completed using only his wit and his magic.  It had taken James nearly an entire day to manage the trip which in theory was only a three and three-quarter mile journey if he had chosen the direct path.  In the end he had asked for assistance and received the aid of magical creatures.  A porpoise undine kad eventually taken the young man across the  large span of mountain chilled water.  In the midst of the thick and prickly underbrush of the mixed conifer and deciduous forest James had met a deer Faun.  It had perceived that he was lost.  When James had finally admitted his condition and asked for help, the Faun had carried him through the trees to the foot of the dormant volcanic cone.  Having finally accepted that as part of nature he was doomed to always take its help, James had circled the cone looking for help scaling the loose rocks and treacherous slope.  On the east side of the cone where light of the setting sun was no longer visible, James thought he had found a talking tree. He had asked the tree to facilitate his mission.  James was not as surprised that time when an ancient Alder Wood Nymph came forth who allowed him to take one of the tree’s limbs for a staff to help him climb the steep slope.  
By a late hour of the night James had managed to climb to the edge of the void When he had finally fallen into the mist within the crater he had been given his first mark.  Immediately he had been transported to the realm of Fire to be marked by the Flame Pit.  Over the hot coals that ringed the pit filled with the magical fire, he had been made to walk barefoot with only his faith that Fairyland would not harm him to prevent being scorched by the hot coals.  This had been yet another test of his unwavering faith in God and in the goodness of his land.  Once at the edge of the Flame Pit, James had sprung into the centre of the non-consuming eternal flame within the stone-ringed earthen pit.  After some time standing within the flame that threatened to burn him to a cinder with its feeling flames that stroked his naked body, he had been given his second mark by the fire.  The Crater had given him the white Pentagram bellowed his left breast.  The Flame Pit had born him the black mark of two linked rings on the left side of his neck.  This had made him wear turtlenecks for nearly nine months as nine lunar cycles had passed before the mark vanished from sight.  James was not destined to be a wizard though, only a magical helper.  He otherwise lived a completely mundane and ordinary life.

  Now James had been summoned for a witch making ceremony in which he was to give several things and receive only thankfulness and a life-long bond to the new witch.  The ceremony was expected to last twelve nights, but somehow James was to be at work in the office on Monday morning.  This conflict of schedule and other such impingements of the known human world were of no concern to any but himself, meaning that no arrangement had been made.  However, James simply trusted that thing would work out as they always did with Fairyland if he kept his faith without doubt.  In the end, James was right to trust for upon his return only nine hours had passed which put James back in Auburn early in the Monday morning before sunrise.  He had expected an early breakfast with Madam and then to be heading off to work after the strain of both the magical task and his promised linking to the new witch, Mercedes.

What would be expected of him in the next twelve nights outside of time was not on James’ mind as he walked down a gravel sloping path beside Aliso, the Wood Nymph Fairy.  They descended toward a narrow creek over which they crossed on a tiny arching bridge to ascend the dirt path on the other side.  Along either side the path was flanked by an elaborate and lush garden full of blossoms and rich green foliage.  The garden was beautifully illuminated by a flood of moon light that appeared to come in through skylights that were not visible in the high domed roof when James looked up in wonder seeking the source of the moon light.  

At the top of the slope, James and Aliso came upon a broad veranda.  It served as an entrance into the cavernous home of the Duchess of Lake.  She was the elder half-sister of the Princess of Redwood, Lobina who had been introduced to James as the Witch of the Woods.  The Duchess was a Faeriefied Changeling witch that orchestrated and facilitated most of the intersections of the magical and Fairy world with the unmagical mundane world of most humans in the western region of the North American continent.  She shared a mother with Lobina, but had been the outcome of The Fairy Queen’s love affair with a powerful Native Indian wizard, from several centuries earlier.  She had had the misfortune of witnessing the inhuman massacre and bare faced robbery that the new American settlers, the white men of European descent had made of their conquest.  She had heard the excuses made by the invaders with disbelief at how confidently they lied.  However, there is little that can help a people adjust to change, even if brought upon them by their own choice, if they act with fear and refuse to think or to look around for guidance in dealing with their new circumstance.  

At the veranda, the two were greeted by the Lady of the Lake.  With her was a small party of Fairies and other creatures that included Flow, James’ Fairy godmother, Otter, and Red-bud, all of whom were undressed as usual, except for the Lady who wore her customary white gown.  James and Aliso greeted them and exchanged kisses, hugs, groping and fondling touches with the members of the party.  Mercedes was expected to arrive soon, but the lusty Red-bud invited James and Otter to come with her to frolic before Lobina made an appearance with Mercedes.  As the three lovers passed into the earthen rooms at the back of the magically expanded home, they stopped at a large buffet table and collected a plate with fodder and a goblet of Metheglyn, a spiced draught related to mead, after James discarded his warm cloak in a pile of others.  

In one of the quiet and dark back rooms the three found themselves a cosy corner with a thick mat of woven leaves stuffed generously with soft grass and wrapped with a heavy wool rug.  This rustic but comfortable mattress rested atop an earthen platform that had been built into the wall and floor of the little room.  There were no windows, but it was pleasantly illuminated by a broad but low fireplace; one of many that was tended by the sooty Brownie, who was called the fire master at the home of the Lady.  Red-bud and Otter both took on the physical characteristics of women at first as the three made love.  Over time though, they each switched into their male forms for some time during their entanglement.  James was not capable of such transformation being only half Fairy, but their antics always amused him greatly.  While the three were engrossed with each other in the back room, Mercedes arrived in the company of Lobina, Luna the Coveted and Lord Mavis Gyre, the Centaur who was one of Luna’s many Fairy Lovers.  Lady Misty Oftime Crone, who was Mercedes’ unknowably ancient Undine Fairy godmother, appeared in her sprite form perched comfortably upon Mercedes’ shoulder shortly after the young witch had done her rounds introducing herself and greeting the various Fairies and creatures that had been awaiting her arrival.  

It was nearly two hours after sunset by the time that Mercedes was through with her conversations and acquainting herself with the Fairies.  It was Lady Misty Crone who suggested they go find the missing James and join him in his fun, for as she told Mercedes, he was certainly in the house and in good company in her opinion.  This was of course true, and furthermore, it was to be part of her making over the twelve unrecorded nights to find James each night and to take him into her body, into mind, and into soul.  It was written in the book of destiny that James, as the non-wizard-half-Fairy Changeling was to be the magical facilitator and aide to the half-Fairy Changeling witch, Mercedes.  She was to serve as the liaison, negotiator, and broker between Fairies and non-magical persons who engaged with magical services or that attempted to provide them, such as psychics and fortune tellers.  It was also Mercedes’ task to bear the three-quarter Fairy child that would grow to be Lobina’s liegeman in her academic and magical collection of lore.  

Following her Fairy godmother’s lead from her perch on Mercedes’ shoulder, the young witch made her way through the earthen house to find James.  Along the way she stopped at the table and collected a large wooden goblet filled with Metheglyn for her to share with the sprite.  Mercedes took no food after a warning hiss was emitted by her sprite godmother as she reached toward a large stone terrine piled with acorn cakes, pine nut tarts, and personal sized walnut/blueberry dacquoise.  In time, after wandering the halls and meeting numerous other Nymphs, Undines, and Fairy creatures in the many rooms, Mercedes ran into the little subterranean room in which she discovered Otter being lovingly penetrated by both James and Red-bud in his male conformation.  

To the surprise of both James and Mercedes, Lady Misty Crone transformed herself from her sprite form into a full grown woman of five feet eleven inches.  She had peculiarly long legs and arms, an unpronounced chest, and alluring curves that were remarkable for her obvious great age.  Furthermore, she carried a strongly marked face with exaggerated but extraordinarily beautiful features and enormously long wavy hair that was both dark brown and carrot orange, it was impossible to be sure which.  As far as James was concerned, she could have been mistaken for a partially developed teen of around fifteen or sixteen.  However, her keen touch revealed masterful experience and sensuality that only develops with age.  Lady Crone was of course as old or older than the Lady of the Lake.  She had seen many Fairy Kings come and go over the centuries and pleasured them all when the opportunity arose.  Most of her carnal acquaintances though, had been men, usually the parents or siblings of her Fairy godchildren.  

Without any hesitation, Lady Crone in her womanly form drew off Red-bud, who had been exchanging oral pleasures with Otter with his projecting erection and pendulous hairless testicles.  She took him away into her own mouth beside Otter, who continued being pleasured by her adoring James.  Following her Fairy godmother’s lead, Mercedes, who could not transform from her provocatively curved feminine form, took her place where Red-bud had made a vacancy and joined the fornicating frivolities.  Eventually, each of the Fairies had his joining in the male form with Mercedes, and in their female from with James.  At the end of it all, James was once more united to Mercedes’ womb.  It was only then that his restraint failed him and Mercedes was inseminated by James for the first time in the twelve nights of the making.  This was to be repeated each of the twelve nights at midnight on each of them to ensure her conception.  

Shortly after midnight Lobina and the Lady of the Lake entered the room to take Mercedes away to her first test and marking at the Flame Pit in the realm of Fire, where she was tested in precisely the same way James had been at age fifteen.  While she encountered the barren, smoky, and ever smouldering grounds at the gate to the underworld, James continued his games with Otter, Red-bud, and Lady Crone in the earthen room.  The Flame Pit gave Mercedes the marks of a silver salamander on her two wrists in reversed identical mirror images.  She returned to the earthen home of the Lady of the Lake to receive a day of instruction in the magical arts and in the pursuit of magical knowledge from Lobina and Luna.  Of course, her breaks, when not occupied with eating or sleeping were filled with the amorous attentions of the impregnating James and several other Fairies and male creatures such as Lord Mavis Gyre and Fallow, a rather large Gnome that stood a whole two and a half feet and that was marvellously gifted in his physical development.  Mercedes was perfectly well pleased and satisfied with the arrangement and the excellent progress she was making in her tuition and with the marks that would help her in the duties she would face in her future.  

 
8

For most of the second night, Mercedes was united with one or another of her varied lovers, whether she remained awake or was asleep.  The third day brought mostly tutoring during which James was asked to offer himself to the mercy of either Lobina or Luna to be used in examples.  James was made to endure a great variety of uncomfortable and harrowing experiences for the sake of the witch he was there after bound to by breeding and expected to serve and protect faithfully.  By spell-work he was put into trances, hypnotized, and made to divulge his deepest secrets.  As lessons for Mercedes, he was also made to open his heart and his soul to her, shrunken to the size of a sprite, petrified, and made to perform magic on her behalf by spell-work that he would never be able to do himself, amongst many other distressing experiences.

After sundown, Mercedes was taken away to the Welkin realm, which was ruled by the Sylph Queen Eurus through the time-space gaps as before.  Once she had found the floating flowers in the Welkin meadow and brought the collection of thirteen stem-less blooms to the hand of the Queen, she was asked to find the Minotaur within the black crystal walls of the Welkin Labyrinth.  Once she had found him, she was expected to discover from an interview of sorts where his heart resided.  Following two nights and one day during which she searched the Labyrinth and communicated emotionally and physically with the reddish furred bull headed muscular and sensual man within the Minotaur, Mercedes returned to the mouth of the maze by dawn.  She had concluded from the Minotaur who could hardly be said to truly speak but who was uncommonly expressive, that his heart had been given to Luna in her witch making, and that their daughter with the subtle cow like features, Hedonabos, had stolen it before age seven from her mother.  With that knowledge Mercedes was given a day of rest at the home of Lobina, where she was taken with James who was finally made to leave the company of his lovers.  

On that fifth night James and Mercedes were put to bed together for more mating for the ensured propagation of the expected child and for a good night of sleep.  On the morning of the sixth day they were both taken to a small and thickly over-grown island within sight of the pacific coast naked and bare footed with only a thin cloak to keep them warm.  Together they were expected to find the Mouth of Tortoise, a sometimes submerged cavern with an out-flowing spring of fresh water.  By that path, one may find the only fresh water passage by which to reach the Undine Queen Correnteza in her bastion within an enormous cave.  Within it there was an enchanted transparent barrier in its centre that gave the Queen Correnteza a Great Hall in which she could entertain both her aquatic subjects and land bound visitors.  The two were expected to bring her a gift from above in return for which they would learn the enchantment by which they would be able to return to her moving castle when needed in the future.  James was to accompany Mercedes both to lend her physical and emotional support in her task and to also earn the visitation spell so that he may thereafter visit his mother occasionally.  

While on the tiny island dense with vegetation, James and Mercedes scoured its surface assiduously.  During the time of this search they each collected a terrestrial gift for the Undine Queen.  Under foliage and stones they sought and all along its coast for a day and a night.  Tired and out of ideas the two lay on the soft brown sand that ringed the little island.  There, the two made love and fell asleep beside each other in the soft sand.  In a start James awoke from what he thought was a dream in which he had asked for help from a blue crab who told him to find the Balsam Poplar for the gate was at is foot.  

When James opened his eyes, there was indeed a dark red crab resting threateningly upon his chest clinking his claws shut in a rhythm that made James feel that the time for them to find the opening was rapidly expiring.  In something of a panic he rolled away from Mercedes to throw off the crab and roused Mercedes from her dreams of about motherhood.  Together they scrambled through the shrubs and undergrowth beneath the trees to locate the poplar that stood at the very heart of the little island.  Circling the narrow but tall tree, Mercedes encountered a previously unnoticed depression at its base that exposed approximately one quarter of the tree’s roots.  Crouching, she discovered that the roots exposed a small grotto just large enough for them to crawl through on their stomachs.  

Feeling hesitant, but certain that this must be the path, Mercedes began to enter it with her feet first.  For comfort, she held James’ hand for as long as she could.  She was certain that at some point she would have to let go to descend further. To the absolute astonishment of them both, before Mercedes was in with more than half her shins, the air about them seemed to swirl and the cavity grew to swallow them like a whale taking in a large mouthful of plankton and whatever other unfortunate creature that failed to escape the jaws.  In the blink of an eye, the two found themselves inside a dark cave.  Standing up the two looked about them in the murky half-light inside the tall cave with tree roots clearly visible protruding a small amount through the cave ceiling more than twenty feet above their heads.  As their eyes adjusted to the half-light, they began to walk slowly hand in hand toward an opening.  Soon they found they had walked into an illuminated tunnel that vanished out of sight as it sloped downward steeply from its entrance.  The blazing torches set into the wall that illuminated their path gradually gave way to luminescent blue-green crystals set into the niches in which the torches had been set earlier.  

For a considerable amount of time the two walked on down the steep slope with broad shallow steps.  The steps resembled garden terraces made of a solid light grey stone that reflected the dim light in the gradually narrowing passage.  Nearly an hour after they began their descent beneath the mysterious Fairy Island, they found that they could once again smell the sea.  The air grew damp and chill with a peculiar scent of sea that seemed oddly unfamiliar.  They were at the half way point where the passage became more a part of the deep sea than of the land.  The lights grew dimmer and the walls, floor, and ceiling seemed to shimmer with a light that came from within the stonework itself.  James commented on how the walls seemed almost translucent, it felt as if they were encased in ice that was actually stone.  They had been drawing closer to each other over the last quarter hour, and now they walked more quickly while embracing closely for both warmth and reassurance.

An hour later by Mercedes’ Swiss Rolex chronometer wrist watch, they emerged in their thin cloaks into an astonishingly broad and tall stone cavity that was very clearly far beneath the sea, close to the gorge that formed one of the deepest points of the ocean.  As they surveyed their new surroundings, they discovered a fresh water creek that had been flowing next to them along the path, which explained the unceasing echo of running water in the tunnel.  In addition, as they looked out across the Great Hall, they could see a shimmering wall of water inside the cave beyond which ocean inhabitants, deep sea creatures, undines, and a number of living things they could not identify were visible swimming, eating and frolicking.  A particularly long, sinuous, and graceful Mermaid suddenly crossed the enchanted barrier, transforming form her tailed form into the tall and elegant Queen Correnteza as she passed through the barrier.  

With all of her magnificence and grace Queen Correnteza approached the two visitors after donning one of her exquisite gowns of an unrecognized fabric that resembled mother of pearl with the flowing softness of sea foam.  She curtsied before them and waited for Mercedes to also curtsy and for James, her son to bow.  Following the ceremonious greeting, she embraced them both in a motherly way and exchanged familial kisses and embraces.  For an untold stretch of time, the couple was distracted by conversation with their imperial hostess.  She wished to know how they had been faring, what occupied their lives, the good and the bad of both their lives.  During the chat the Queen addressed James as “my son”, and Mercedes as “my child”.  James knew that the Queen was in fact his mother, but was somewhat confused by her relation to Mercedes, who as we know, was the product of another Fairy of the Tellurian realm with no ties to the realm of the Queen Correnteza, save for her Fairy godmother.  

Eventually, it occurred to Mercedes that they ought to offer the Queen their earthly gifts.  James gave his Fairy Mother a piece of charcoal he found amongst some rocks in what was a grave of some long fallen timbers from an bygone fire that had once ravaged the little island.  “Ah, thank you dear, the old Mahogany Sumac that passed with the fifty year fire,” said the Queen.  She kissed him and brushed a stripe of soot with an ashy finger from the top of James’ forehead, at the hairline, over his nose and lips to where his head met his neck.  Once James was striped, the Queen informed him that by keeping a corner of the piece of coal she would break off with him, he would be able to emerge into the passage to her moving castle through the time-space gaps he knew how to use.  Mercedes gave a sprig of wild sage that had both leaves and a flower.  Queen Correnteza was very well pleased by that gift   In response she gave Mercedes a kiss and then turned toward the wall and opened a gap in it with a wave of her right hand.  From the narrow opening in the stone wall, the Queen took a sceptre of sorts.  It was curved and made of fossilized whalebone capped with a piece of Coral in which a large black pearl was set in its centre on one side.  At the other end of the salt encrusted fossilized bone was set a cap of Geode.  

With the gift of the sceptre, and while both Mercedes and the Queen held it each with their right hands, the Queen gave her simple instructions for its use.  “Have it with you my child when you birth the Fairy child and take it with you always on your quests, hunts, seeking, and research for if you listen to your inner voice the bone will speak through that voice to guide you to always find what you must find or collect.  With this bone for example, the taker will relinquish the heart.  That will be your first task to retrieve the heart you now know has been taken out of greed.”  Following that exchange, the mood in the Great Hall was radically altered with a clap of the Queen’s hands. 

A long table bearing food and drink appeared at the centre of the room.  Benches of stone came forward from the wall for both the visitors and subjects to rest on. Magical creatures and Undines that could survive the atmosphere entered the Hall, either through the enchanted wall of water or through a stone door that opened into the Great Hall from the left wall, just at the foot of the passage that James and Mercedes had arrived through, at the foot of which a heap of skins, furs and pelts formed.  For the remainder of the day and evening the couple revelled with the residents of the Pelagic realm enjoying the delectable fresh seafood, fruits of the sea and the powerful sweet, salty, and oddly desiccating beverage that was introduced to them by a Selkie that had come in the skin of an elephant seal.  The curiously large but beguiling woman named it as Aguævidæ.  Soon after the festivities began, that very same Selkie who introduced them to the drink, Costa, took advantage of James’ insobriety to molest him and fornicate with him in full view of all the other company.

Before daybreak, James and Mercedes were ascending the stone steps in their cloaks with the gifted sceptre firmly in Mercedes’ left hand, and the fragment of coal in an inner pocket of James’ cloak that had been added by one of the Queen’s servants.  At some point during the festivities at the Pelagic Great Hall, Mercedes had developed her third sign on her chest just beneath her throat.  In a pale purple she gained a mark of three parts, the outline of a foot with a lengthwise inward spiral within the foot, and a shadow of a rustic key intersecting the spiral at five points.  The ascent took them significantly longer than the descent had.  Not quite four hours later, the two emerged from the passage beneath the Poplar to be greeted by Lobina who took them back through a time-space gap.  That day they rested and in the evening, they copulated once more.  While James mated with his lovely young Mercedes, Lobina was engaged with her lovers, a man named Steve and the Fairy ΦBulkwark, a stone Nymph, in her extravagantly large bedroom.  

For most of the ninth day Mercedes was kept occupied with lessons and exercises in both magic and in information retrieval.  Luna returned to Lobina’s home in the company of one of  her Fairy lovers, the Undine Wayfare.  Luna had new patients to tend to who were put together in Lobina’s second spare room.  It was typical of Luna to care for her Fairy and animal patients at Lobina’s home for it was Lobina who maintained the apothecary   In addition to tending to her patients, Luna also offered Mercedes some instruction and tests.  Luna even found the time to draw James away, who was resting in the garden while Mercedes was performing her tests and exercises.  Luna took James deep into the backyard where she molested him and coerced him to both couple with and sodomize her beneath a large conifer on who’s trunk were found a number of fungi used in certain medicinal preparations.  James was quite taken by the seductive auburn haired witch, but that was the only time she would ever seduce him.  

The lessons for Mercedes went on throughout the night which meant that Mercedes was only put to bed at four in the morning.  In the bed that she was sharing with James, she found Wayfare, who had been neglected by her lover Lobina, that night with the intensive instructing being given the new witch.  Wayfare was bound to James who was helplessly satisfying the wanton Fairy in every way that she desired.  Having learned her ritual etiquette very much younger from her Fairy godmother, Mercedes exchanged kisses with the mounted Wayfare as a plea to allow her to replace the mounted Fairy.  Wayfare returned to Lobina’s room to find the sleeping Lobina and Luna while Mercedes fell asleep upon James’ chest. It was nearly two in the afternoon when the half-Fairy couple woke to discover a table and three large plates of finger foods had been brought into their room by the Brownies that served Lobina, along with a large pitcher of Metheglyn and two small wooden goblets.  

Of their little private banquet, they ate and drank naked, as they were when they awoke.  Between bouts of eating hungrily, the two made love twice during intermissions to their feast.  Satisfied and rested the two guests left their room to explore the large home that was contained within what looked like a shack atop a hill from the outside.  In the sitting room that was littered with leather wing-back chairs and little coffee tables, they discovered the surrounding walls to be covered with enormous book shelves filled with books, manuscripts, parchment rolls, and papyrus packets with texts in every imaginable language and some that they did not even recognize as languages.  In addition, they met a well dressed gentleman in one of the seats with a small writing table before him working on a laptop who introduced himself as Steven, Lobina’s man lover and also Luna’s human godfather.  

He explained that Luna and Lobina had left for the afternoon for some tasks they had and had left him to work on his text for the collection of photographs of Fairies from Rumania and the other Balkan States that he was preparing to have published.  Mercedes, who had her curiosity roused, asked to see his pictures.  For some time the trio poured over the pictures as Steve, the tall and very average looking blond man, commented on and provided anecdotal narratives on each image.  At sunset, their little gathering was interrupted by the Brownies, bringing in dinner, and more drinks for them shortly before Luna and Lobina’s return from their tasks.  It was an hour after the rising of the half moon before Mercedes was taken away for her fourth testing and marking in the Tellurian realm.

Mercedes left James in the capable hands of Wayfare and the visiting Sylph, Aurora, to be assaulted and enjoyed at their leisure.  Mercedes was taken in the company of Luna to the Great Hall of the Tellurian realm beneath a giant redwood tree not more than a mile from Lobina’s home.  Upon arrival she was introduced to the Fairy Queen Sequoia and to numerous other Fairies and creatures that included Elves, Dwarfs, Nymphs, Gnomes, Fauns, Centaurs, Lamiae, and fresh water Selkies.  She was then asked to take a Gnome with her to ensure she would find her way back.  Her task, which she had expected, was to locate Hedonabos, the cow-like young woman of thirteen who had stolen her father’s heart, the Minotaur imprisoned in the Welkin Labyrinth.  Once located, she had to persuade, coerce, deceive or force the malefactor to relinquish the captured heart.  
 
9

In the company of Kale, the Gnome, Mercedes, carrying her sceptre, departed the Great Hall by the same sloping dirt path through which she had entered earlier.  With Kale sitting upon Mercedes’ shoulder, they emerged through the open side of the giant redwood with a gap in it that had been created by an olden fire that had consumed a portion of the still living four hundred year old tree.  Quietly, but enjoying each other’s  company, they set off through the forests over the coastal ridges that spanned the Bay Area Peninsula seeking Hedonabos in the forests, open spaces, parks and preserves in the hopes of finding her.  They set off heading south toward Big Basin, where Mercedes’ intuition told her she would find Hedonabos.  

As the two wandered through the hills Kale would point out fruits, fungi, and seed pods that were edible to keep up their strength.  In addition he would also show her the way to springs and creeks where they could drink.  Along the way, they would also periodically meet other creatures or Fairies on their way north.  There was a mother Coyote that Kale asked if she had seen Hedonabos, for of course, Mercedes had not yet mastered speaking to the animals.  Several hours later, with the light rays dimming as the sun fell behind the coastal hills, a pair of Nymphs and four raccoons met them in a clearing enjoying a meal of grubs and dear meat that had already been partially consumed by a Cougar who was not currently in the vicinity.  Curious and also tired of the constant walking, Mercedes found a fallen log on the edge of the clearing to sit at while she conversed with the party and also asked for information on her quarry.  Kale, who was disgusted by the eating of flesh before him fell silent and turned his back to the little group while seated on Mercedes’ shoulder after informing her of his abhorrence of the barbarous habit in a whisper.  After an interlude during which the raccoons and Nymphs conversed, one of the Nymphs replied to Mercedes’ question.  The older of the raccoons had in fact seen her with a young Faun that was part deer two nights before, at Peters Creek where they were drinking.  

They seemed to have been in the area for some time.  They had asked him if there was any good news about Pescadero that the raccoon may have heard.   It seemed that they were planning on heading to Pescadero and its surrounding hills and creek.  Therefore, Mercedes resolved to make her way southwest to Pescadero Creek by floating down the creeks on a log with a push rod to save herself the walk.  Kale, however, suggested they take the time-space gap that was only a few hundred yards away to the outlet onto Pescadero Creek instead.  Mercedes had not yet learned to navigate the passages something that she indicated to Kale who was very amused and rather proud to teach her how to use them.  It was a simple matter of using only your focused desire on the destination or person you wished to find once in the passage and it would lead you to the nearest outlet to the person or place.  In order for it to function, it was a matter of never employing your will.  Furthermore, to enter the passages was equally effortless; simply let yourself fall into them with a clear mind.  However finding a passage one had not yet memorized its location was a matter for which Kale felt Mercedes should ask a witch.  For Kale it was a simple matter to find any passage for he had a natural ability to feel any aberration in the time-space fabric and its expansion or contraction anywhere with in his natural territory which extended all over North America from southern Mexico to northern Canada, or even Greenland.  

Armed with this expertise, it became a much simpler matter for Mercedes to complete her task and to return to the Tellurian Great Hall.  A part of her mind was irritated that she had been made to walk for nearly twenty miles in the forest before learning this, but she also realized that there would be times in the future when what she had learned by walking with Kale would serve her well in the future tasks she would be handed.  Following Kale’s directions, the pair made their way to a patch of Juniper bushes and when between the two larges plants, they turned sharply to their left with clear and relaxed minds.  Promptly they vanished into the time-space gap and proceeded to walk quickly while Mercedes concentrated on desiring to find Hedonabos.  

For a timeless period, they walked along the smooth and dark passage.  Eventually, they emerged through a gap between two large stones on a hill facing west only a few yards away from where Pescadero Creek turned toward the sea once more.  From where they stood at the stones that demarked the time-space gap they could see Hedonabos fornicating with her deer Faun companion.  The young cow-girl was born with hoofed feet and nearly imperceptible cow like features faintly visible beneath her beautiful luxuriant shape.  Her large and adult looking body was covered with mottled pale skin and delicate red hairs that were repeated in an elegant reddish brown wavy head of hair which sat silkily upon her amicable conquest. The big girl was ecstatically impaled upon his member.  All she wore was a small brown apron that had a pocket and that hid their genitalia from view.  

Mercedes, who had already learned her calming and entrancing charm chant, assessed the nature of her possible opponent.  Hedonabos was quite a bit larger than she was, and did not seem to be particularly conversational or likely to be persuaded by logical arguments.  After all, the very act of stealing a heart that had not been offered to her was illogical to begin with.  Furthermore, Mercedes could feel that apart from the success of the acquisition, the young cow-woman gained nothing from having it with her.  After a few minutes of observation and assessment, Mercedes chose to simply charm the girl into a trancelike state and take the heart from her pouch without her consent as she had taken it rather than to engage with her, advice given to her from the sceptre through her inner voice.  This was a fine plan that would work very well for being part bovine she was particularly susceptible to that form of enchantment.  

Before Mercedes took even one step away from the stone that hid her from view of the two lovers, she began chanting her spell in a quiet and barely audible feminine voice.  Within a minute the eyes of both showed the distinguishing opacity and unblinking stillness that was characteristic of that charm.  Mercedes then stepped forward and discovered to her amusement, as she continued singing, that Kale had also fallen under her spell when he nearly fell off her shoulder.  To secure the Gnome, Mercedes put him in the crook of her left arm with which she was carrying the sceptre.  Still singing she reached down and pulled the enchanted heart out from the diminutive apron.  A glimpse of the Faun’s partially embedded implement was all that Mercedes had as the apron rose and fell, a sight she would not forget.  Still chanting, she returned to the stone where the time-space gap awaited and took refuge in its cover before breaking the charm with a commanding word.  

Kale whispered a question into her ear as he became curious whether she would go up to them to take the heart.  She replied calmly, to Kale’s astonishment, that she had the heart, but that she wished to know what the name of the Faun that lay with her was.  After a brief laps during which the little mystified Gnome absorbed what she said and arranged his thoughts, Kale responded that the Faun was known as Umbra.  With his curiosity roused, the Gnome asked why she wished to know for as she could see for herself, he was one known for not discriminating in who he kept company with.  Mercedes merely explained away her question as trivial inquisitiveness, but in truth she had designs to seek out his carnal company shortly after completing her training.  

With the acquisition of the heart and the easy return to the Great Hall of the Tellurian realm through the time-space gap, Mercedes Gained her fourth mark.  On her waist, over her groin appeared the form of an arc over an open eye with a four leafed clover beneath the left base and a crescent moon beneath the right hand base, all in the colour blue.  Upon her arrival at the Great Hall Mercedes turned the heart over to Luna and was immediately put on the back of Lord Mavis Gyre, the Centaur of rank, and was taken away into the forest and up an increasingly steep slope that led to a plateau that lay beyond the end of the tree line where the coniferous trees gave way to a rocky waste.  She was left at the edge of the hidden lake to find her way onto the island and into the crater at the top of the island in its centre.  All that Mercedes had been allowed to bring were her cloak, a gown that she had donned, leather sandals, and her sceptre.  

Wrapped in her dark wool cloak with her hood on to break the chill wind whistling through her long hair and delicate ears, Mercedes paced slowly around the little lake gazing at the island.  She searched her mind for a way to cross the waters.  Mercedes had nearly circled the entire lake in the three hours that she strolled.  By some shrubs she caught sight of a golden brown, thickly furred Jackalope grazing.  While feeling her sceptre carefully she began to speak asking the rabbit with antlers how she may cross the lake.  To her surprise, it hopped over to her feet and replied into her mind to summon a Harpie who may either bear her or call another creature on her behalf.  She thanked the Jackalope and made her way back to the other side of the lake using a marching stride.  

Mercedes made her way to a broad, flat stone that stood about a yard tall with a sloping side opposite the water.  From her high stance the young witch began to hum the summoning charm in her gentle soprano voice.  For an hour she hummed as she waited, simply to pass the time.  She finally fell silent when she saw the Harpie soaring over the forest that surrounded the hidden lake.  Calmly seated upon the flat top of the glistening rock with her legs folded and tucked beneath her, Mercedes watched the enormous eagle body with the upper torso, head, and arms of a golden haired woman descend from the darkening, partly cloudy sky.  Some time later, with a soft rustling sound of feathers, the Harpie landed beside her upon the ground a yard lower than where  she sat upon the stone.  The Harpie glared at her for a few moments with a scowl on her pretty, finely shaped feminine face as she towered over Mercedes on her stone.  Finally she spoke with a soft alto voice once she had surveyed the young woman inquisitively with mild irritation. 

“Why have you been singing for me the entire hour it took me to reach you?”  She asked Mercedes with a renewed calm expression upon her youthful, but elderly face.  Mercedes explained that she had kept singing simply to pass the time as to not feel so lonely by the silent lake.  With something of an expression of sympathy mixed with compassion she embraced the young woman still wrapped in her cloak.  As they embraced the Harpie felt the fossilized curved bone beneath the cloak and asked Mercedes, who she addressed as Deun Zoeker, what she had.  When the Harpie laid eyes on the detailed and craftily worked fossilized whale bone sceptre she gasped.  “You have been well named young Deun Zoeker.”  Mercedes, who would from here on, be known as Deun by those in Fairyland, asked to know why she had been addressed as that.  The Harpie was happy to clarify that as a witch she was renamed with a magical name that bore some significance to either her role, her ruling sign or some other characteristic trait.  In her case Mercedes bore the traits of seeker and of chanter.  

By the time the two were through conversing and acquainting themselves the night sky was dark and the moon would not rise that night.  Mercedes, who will be identified as Deun henceforth, finally came to the point of why she had summoned the Harpie in the first place.  She needed transport across the lake to the island as to reach the crater at the peak of the mountainous cone at its centre.  The artic-like frigid waters were difficult at best and possibly fatal for her to swim in.  The Harpie looked at Deun intently for some time after her request and then looked about her as if questing for something in the air or the sky.  Eventually she responded with the lines of sadness on her beautiful face.  “It is the eleventh day Deun Zoeker and you must meditate until you hear the voice of your sceptre for it can take you not only across the water but also directly to the top of the crater.  Only once you have heard its instruction and have learned to use your gift, may I return to fulfil your request for assistance.  I will wait for the sign and will not be far.”  

The Harpie took flight and Deun lost sight of her as she dipped behind a dense wall of foliage from the dark green coniferous forest.  For some time she thought about what the Harpie had told her as she waited for the first rays of the sun to shine on her new day.  Still seated upon the stone Deun took off her cloak and folded into a tight little bundle resembling a small matt or pillow.  She adjusted her position upon the large stone and sat upon the little woollen pad facing the island with her legs tightly crossed and her back very straight.  In that meditative position with her body completely relaxed, she began to repeat her mantra in her mind as she cleared it of all thoughts.

“Io Eur, Not Evo, Zeph Bor Evo, Ecce He”, and so continued her meditative chant as she sat unmoving upon the flat rock at the edge of the hidden lake.  The sceptre lay across her lap as she meditated with her arms resting with the insides of the arms touching the sceptre’s end-caps.  In this way Deun sat meditating until well after the sun had reached its highest point on the following temperate and mid-winter day.  Time felt as if it stood still for the remainder of eternity while the night passed quickly.

While deep in her meditative state she was no longer feeling the hunger, thirst and weariness that had troubled her during the earlier portion of the night.  It was nearly sunset of the following day when in a way Deun began to experience a waking dream or what could have been also called a vision.  The sceptre was speaking to her audibly and intelligibly using a language which the witch comprehended.  The voice came from the Geode cap with its beautiful, iridescent divot that resembled a sharply toothed mouth.  It told Deun that the pearl was also a toggle for bringing her, her dearest desires.  She may rotate it, pluck it, strike it, or depress it with subtle gentleness of action and intensely powerful desires.  If she dared to use her will upon the sceptre she may look forward to being delivered the inverse of her desires, physical pain, and perhaps even death.  

As soon as the sceptre ended its message Deun came out of her meditative state with a sense of light-headedness and feeling famished.  She took the salt covered bone into her left hand feeling the rough, finely crystallized surface in her delicate palm.  Deun concentrated on flying upon the Harpy’s back to the top of the crater.  Deun fell into a renewed meditative state with the image of her soaring with the Harpie in her mind.  What felt as it should have been several hours later, Deun stood up with the bone and redressed her folded cloak.  With it secured she grasped the black pearl with her right hand and turned it very slowly and delicately counter-clockwise.  Deun blinked and found that she was sitting atop the back of the Harpie approximately fifty feet above the tree tops.  They were flying toward the lake and Deun could see the misty interior of the crater as they gained altitude over the trees on the lost island.  When Deun looked at her watch she was also surprised to find that it was nearly midnight which meant that the hours that had gone between when she realized how to listen to the sceptre and the moment when the Harpie was actually permitted by the High Magic to transport her, had passed in the blink of an eye.  A few minutes later they landed on a flat at the edge of the crater filled with mist.

With a giddy twirling in her mind, Deun dismounted the Harpie.  They stood together for a moment enjoying each other’s spirits.  The Harpie then took flight after having embraced the new witch warmly.  Once she was well out of sight beyond the trees and cloud cover, Deun turned to look at the crater with its steeply sloping sides that vanished out of sight with the swirling mist that filled it.  There was no telling how deep it was or how dangerous it was.  For the time it took for her heart to beat thrice, Deun gazed into the swirling clouds hoping that daylight may show her how to enter it.  As she stood motionless she began to feel as if the sceptre was trying to leave her grasp and shoot out over the mists.  Having learned her lesson, the witch looked briefly at the rising mist on her twelfth night and leapt out into the crater clutching the sceptre.  

She found that she did not fall far and that she was held up in the swirling mist as if caught in an enormous spider’s web spinning languidly in a slow-motion tornado.  The sensations were terrifying at first and transformed into comforting reassurance and absolute relaxation until the searing pain in her chest began.  It was beneath her left breast that the pain finally focussed on as it intensified.  Her skin burned and the chest ached with no apparent explanation or cause.  From the intensity of the pain that felt as if her heart were being pierced, Deun lost consciousness.  Later that night she awoke in a large earthen room at the home of the Lady of the Lake.  Deun lay upon a soft blanket of Buffalo hide with its long hairs tickling the backs of her knees.  As soon as she awoke she found she was surrounded by both Fairy and human friends who offered her a bowl of warm broth with rice and chicken and a small glass of Metheglyn.  Bellow her small left breast was visible a portion of the black pentagram that every witch and wizard to earn their marks possesses visibly for five quarters of a year, fifteen months.  Proudly and with expectant smiles James, Alda, Lady Crone, the Lady of the Lake, Lord Gyre, and many others had been crowded into the little room awaiting her rising for about an hour.

 
10

It was early on Monday morning, long before the sun rose and the cool fog was thick over the city obscuring even the lush green grass that grew around Lake Merced.  Inside the earthen home of the Lady of the Lake it was warm and cosy thanks to the coal fires that the Brownies maintained.  Deun sat up on the thick fur and crossed her legs with a grin on her face before accepting a warm, thick wooden bowl full of the thin rice and chicken soup Alda handed her.  All were silent as they watched the new witch drink hungrily as she peered at them over the edge of the bowl.  A few gulps later she spluttered and began to laugh, nearly spilling the broth.  “Why are you all staring at me like that,” she asked still laughing, “haven’t any of you ever seen a naked girl before?”  Alda was the first to come forward and embrace her as a Brownie deftly took the bowl out of her hand and placed it on the bedside table.  Deun was still shaking with laughter, but she also felt comforted by being embraced by the warm and enveloping affections of Alda.  After a few minutes of embracing Alda remarked unnecessarily loudly that she was very proud of how well Deun had done in her making.  

In a resonant chorus, all in the room behind her echoed the praise.  The effect of this was to send Deun once more into raucous laughter as she quivered in Alda’s arms, busting with joy and energy.  Alda stood up, naked like most of the others, and turned so that she partly faced both Deun and the group.  She announced that her home in Stinson Beach was opened permanently to Deun Zoeker to serve as a serene base for her to operate from and in which she could raise the ¾ Fairy-child in a more natural environment surrounded by the home’s forest like grounds with access to the beach.  Alda sealed her offer by presenting the young girl a set of keys to her home, after which she added perfunctorily that she could easily reach it by the time-space gap that existed in her meditation room.

Before Deun had time to think much more about the offer of a new home from which to begin following her witchy responsibilities, the Lady of the Lake came forward as Alda recedes into the crowd, almost like if they had rehearsed this as if a dance.  The Lady, who always wore her demure white flannel gown, congratulated her once more, whilst she still held the keys, and took her by the shoulder delicately and kissed her cheek and forehead before speaking to her again.  While bent over so that the Lady was at eye level with Deun, she looked intently and with loving admiration into her grey-blue eyes.  For a moment, the Lady seemed to hesitate, as if she did not wish to break the joyful atmosphere, then she asked in a pleading sort of voice, “would you please begin your first duty today, after you have taken James home to his mistress from where he will go to work?”  The answer was of course, yes, and Deun was happy to be able to begin her witch life.  

Deun and James both donned their cloaks and headed for the reception room amidst the little group who were mostly in good spirits and chatty.  As the two travelers were preparing to depart the Lady and Lobina stood before them somewhat severely, very much like school masters examining their troop of bright but foolhardy students that were being sent to an inter school competition.  “your task,” Lobina began, “ will be to befriend Madam Gateaux and either teach her about how to relate to Fairyland or erase her memory of the Fairies.”  Deun stared at her for a moment in astonishment and then bowed low into a deep curtsey of acknowledgement.  Lobina added that  Madam had begun to dream heavily about the Fairies that she had met and was fantasizing about investigating it herself as she could see that an inlet to it existed at the back of her property.  

A few minutes later the two were walking down the sloping earthen path toward the creek and up to the exit behind the Bamboo on the edge of Lake Merced.  The couple were holding hands while they walked together as Deun’s pregnancy had been confirmed.  Deun felt some anxiety mixed with thrill and joyful anticipation about the mixed future that she was walking into   Having her first child was both exciting, scary, and invigorating.  Having her first task was alarming, challenging, and fulfilling.  Deun was glad that the sympathetic, supportive, and generous James was and would be either with her or at her disposal through her challenging life, his company was very reassuring even if he did not follow or understand the processes and magic that she pursued.  His task, as with Alda, was to facilitate her duties and ensure her success by diverting the attentions of non-magical persons away from Fairyland and the witches and wizards when they were about doing their work.   

It was a simple fact hat non-magical persons were naturally attracted to magical happenings, and that they were simultaneously insulted by their perception that it is out of their reach.  This unfortunate tendency meant that most people would simply meddle and interfere where one was doing magic, as in the case of the wizard who was attacked at a city park while meditating.  The elderly wizard was naturally treated by Luna, who eventually had one of her many children with him.  In fact, magic is perfectly within the reach of the ordinary person if only they had a true and unshakable faith in God and a love for his lands.  Becoming a witch or a wizard was first and foremost dependent on faith and a sensory connection with the universe that resulted.  However, magic could also be easily created as an illusion by those who had only marginally more faith than the average person.  Such characters, depending on what aspect of the universe they plugged into could be known as conjurers, magi, illusionists, con artists, psychics, hypnotists, or many other names that are generally looked down upon by human society.  Was it not for humanity’s generalized inability to have unshakable faith in God that prevented them all, each and every individual would have an equal chance of becoming witches and wizards.

There are certainly things about modern human life that could be changed to remedy this for those that wished.  The faith of the homo-sapiens is strengthened by being in daily contact with nature much as the Fairies are.  The habit of inhabiting artificially constructed edifices and leading our live within and around them detaches humanity from nature, permitting them to reach rational and utterly illogical conclusions such as that of them being created in the image of God, as if everything else that existed in the universe had somehow not also been created in its image.  If these primates that are so ridiculously fond of reproducing would permit death and the other natural cycles to go on un-interfered with, there would be fewer people and more of them cold live natural lives.  Natural life permits magic and allows for illness and death in addition to recovery from illness and new birth, including the birth of strong faith and the ability to touch magic with confidence, but with fear for even the Fairies have fear naturally.  

James and Deun emerged from the bamboo in the thick fog and found their way around the lake to the time-space gap.  From there they vanished to reappear onto Madam’s garden.  They came out onto the lawn and were greeted by a little cluster of gnomes that surrounded them as they all bellowed over each other in consternation with very obvious distress.  The horde of gnomes all lived on her property and had been assisting her with her garden, housekeeping, and ideas on the better management of both her children, her home and the mine.  They had felt her change of spirit as her curiosity about Fairyland had grown.  When her will had become determined to find out where the fairies came from and what they were, the Gnomes had come out and swarmed in an attempt  to distract her and give Deun time to do her work.  Unfortunately, their desire to save her from her own wilfulness failed as she had simply hardened her resolve.  The harder they tried to keep her away from the passage, the more clearly her will had focused on where it was.  It had felt to the Gnomes as if every thought they had helped to show her the way more plainly.  It had been only a few minutes before James and Deun had appeared that Madam Perle Gateaux had located the fold in time and space and vanished into it with sheer force of will.  This had meant of course that she would never be seen alive again.  Her dead body would emerge somewhere, in some time, decomposed to an unknown degree when the fabric of the universe release her   It could not be known in what time, place or state she would be found.  It was equally possible for her to turn up in the future as in the past.  She might turn up anywhere in the world and she might be a clean skeleton or recently passed away.  

To Deun it was more than a disappointment to begin her witch life with a failure.  To James there was only the horror of the emotional reality and a swirl of confusion in his mind as to how such a thing would be dealt with in his regular life.  It had taken them a significant amount of time to calm the Gnomes sufficiently to obtain the tale of recent events and the sun was beginning to rise.  James took refuge from his inner fear and confusion by preparing to go to work.  However, Deun knew intuitively that they had to do the unthinkable, go back in time through the passage to maintain the order of things as to keep society from incriminating the innocent bystander that happened to catch their eye while they sought out an answer to their investigations that were inevitable with the disappearance of such a prominent member of society.  

Deun looked at her watch and noted the time and date before taking James with her back to the time-space gap.  With James in tow she led them back to Sunday night when he had left Madam with the Fairies and Laura.  She wove her spell and led the James  from that moment to take the James of the future and become one with him in order that James leave Madam’s home with his belongings and go with Laura back to his studio flat on Van Ness Avenue.  It was arranged that they would make a prolonged stop at the Milk Farm restaurant for James to mingle with Dora on her evening break and then to visit the Greek Café at the corner of Montgomery and Bush until closing on Sunday night.  From the café, the couple would be seen by the night security also.  By providing alibis that could be supported in a court of law, Deun arranged a change of events that would have Madam Gateaux alone from Sunday night after 20:30 to Monday morning when Laura would arrive at her employer’s home to find it deserted with no sign of her and no messages.  Laura who had her memory altered by Deun would not recall any other version of the past.  It occurred to Deun to also alter James’ memory, but she would need him to remember his bond to her and his resulting responsibility to assist her.  If she altered his memory she would have far more work to do training James later.  

As was arranged, the past of both Laura and James it remained.  Once James and Laura left for the City together in the Austin Martin, Deun left by the passage to go home to the Presidio.   Deun carefully disguised where she emerged by a thicket of trees.  Calmly she walked up the hill to her parents’ home on the Monday morning.  Deun packed a large nylon duffle with most of her clothes and a large toiletry bag and went to sleep following a refreshing shower. On that morning, Deun rose late and sat down at the cosy, solid Padouk wood table strewn with carved wood candlesticks and a delicately hand embroidered runner that contrasted with the reddish wood.  

Over several slices of pumpernickel with hard cheese and a bowl of fresh litchi that Lila and Deun ate with steaming mugs of lightly steeped Jasmine tea.  Deun told her adventures of the twelve nights outside time to her mother, including her new name.  Lila was intrigued and listened with fascination at all the creatures, spells, tests, and challenges.  Deun was careful to leave out the incident with Madam and the presence of either James or Alda at the home of the Lady of the Lake.  During the chat she told of the invitation that had been extended to her and showed her the keys that had been given to her so she could come and go from Alda’s house at Stinson Beach.  Lila was impressed and excited for her, but assumed that she would need to have a car to reach the house with ease.  

After breakfast, Deun left with her bag, and headed back to the time-space gap and found her way into Alda’s home.  Lila, who did not know about this assumed that her daughter was taking the bus to Marin County.  Later that morning, Lila visited the auto-mall where she paid cash for a new Porsche Boxter S.  It was scheduled to be delivered that evening so that it would be waiting for Deun in the drive when she came home at the promised time to have dinner with her parents at 21:00 for the last time.  Deun was of course hugely surprised at the unexpected gift, as she did not need a car. However, she accepted the gift as a leaving home present and embraced both her parents before going out to test drive her new transport.  The remainder of her belongings such as her collections of shoes, hats and handbags would be left to be transported by the Brownies who assisted Alda at her home.  There were also a plush rabbit fur upholstered chaise, a black-green bureau of Lignum Vitae and her books.  The Brownies could of course come and go at will, unseen, and had certain magical abilities only shared with Gnomes, Elves, and Dwarves that allowed them to take the objects away undetected and with ease.  

James was left feeling nonplussed by his experience throughout the weekend.  At the adjustment to Laura’s memory he was so overwhelmed that he found it difficult to focus and do any work at the office that entire week.  On Monday night, about 1700, when he was on his way home to his flat, just crossing the bridge of the I-80 from Sacramento into West Sacramento, he took a panic call from Laura.  She was in tears and nearly hysterical at the continued absence of Madam Gateaux.  She had not been home when Laura had arrived for work at her home earlier that day and had left no messages or notes about leaving.  Laura had assumed that she had gone out for a walk as the car was cold and still in the usual spot.  She had not been online, taken or made any calls.  Most alarming was that she had not collected the newspapers from the drive as was her custom.  Laura added that she had contacted Madam’s daughter, living in Switzerland with her wealthy precious stone and metal trading husband in Montreux, to see if she had heard from her mother and notify her of Madam’s absence.  Pauline-Louise Gateaux Timmerman Von Saar had seemed unperturbed by her absence for only half a day and advised her to wait for her mother to call in a few days from some exotic and faraway place she had fled to for some relaxation.  Laura had noted her absence in the company records and spent the afternoon in the sauna and exercise room trying to relax and stop worrying so that she could get some work done.  

James listened to her wailing hysteria and to her story as he drove.  He was well past Davis when she began to show signs of calming down.  He parked the car at the Milk Farm restaurant when he reached it and tried comfort and reassure Laura without having to change his course.  An hour later, Laura had agreed to come down later that night to stay with James at his flat as on the night before.  Laura had made it crystal clear that she felt frightened staying at Madam’s house without her and not knowing where she might be.  Her intuition rightly informed her that some fatal mishap had taken Madam away from the known world never to be seen again.  James knew that Babs would not mind having Laura with them that night as she had sent him a text message that Angela had asked to come over that night for some fun.  James knew that Angela would bring some kind of drugs with her, but Laura would be so distraught that he felt a faint hope that maybe the women would forget to get high as they attempted to comfort Laura.  

By 20:00 hours James was walking into his flat to find Babs and Angela out of their minds on some powerful stimulant.  They were both naked and wearing clear plastic garbage bags while they masturbated each other with an enormous double ended plastic phallus while watching an episode of some game show on the TV.  He told them that Laura would be arriving later and asked them to take it easy with the drugs, but they were beyond any reason and took more of the drugs in response to his arousing presence.  The two women attacked him and took his clothes off before tying him to the dining table with rope, prefacing a long night of molesting him.  

Two hours later, Laura came in through the unlocked door of studio 601 and found James still tied to the table with Angela bouncing happily upon her captive male.  Babs made more drinks for the three women and spiked them all with more of the stimulant.  Five minutes later Laura was as high as the other two, naked and forcing herself on to Angela while Babs took her man once more.  It was nearly three in the morning when the three women came down from the high into grovelling depression and morose exhaustion.  Too tired to do anything the three women fell asleep in each others arms on the rug.  Soon they were unconscious, leaving James tied to the dining table naked.  

It was 6:15 when James managed to wake Laura from her slumber with yells.  She released him from his bonds and promptly fell asleep on the sofa after apologizing to James.  He simply bathed, dressed and left for work in a rush.  He took breakfast from a drive through coffee house and was relieved to have gotten away from the imbecility of Angela’s influence as quickly as he had.  James had become quite cold sleeping on the dining table naked and had mostly dosed with the discomfort.  He dressed more warmly for work and turned the air conditioning off at his office.  However, James still found that he sneezed regularly and felt a little under the weather.

It was nearly noon when the three women showed sighs of waking.  Angela was the first to rise and made coffee for them, into which she added more of the drug into each cup along with sugar and cream.  Needless to say, Laura did not return to work or Madam’s house that Tuesday.  Marcella, the maid, came to studio 601 that afternoon and cleaned up the little flat while the three women were singing along to thrash metal on the sound system while watching cartoons on the TV.  Once Marcella had left, Angela phoned her dealer and had him come to the apartment and deliver another bag that cost her about $2,500 for which she paid in cash with 500 dollar bills.  

When the dealer made the delivery, he brought two other men with him that were more or less his friends, customers, and body guards.  He paid them well and kept the two close to him whenever he was out on the town.  The three men, observing the unaware condition of the three women, took the ropes they found lying on the table and bound the three women.  They forced themselves on each of the three women that were high and out of their minds, taking turns with each of the three.  None ofwomen recalled the violent  intercourse later as a result of the drugs.  For this reason the three men left the apartment with the $2,500 payment and satisfied with themselves for having gotten the sex they wanted as well.  

At 17:00 James departed the mine and made his way to the house of Lila.  On his way from Sacramento to San Francisco, James called his apartment to check on Laura and discovered from Angela, who answered the telephone, that Laura and Babs were still there and that her friend, Maryanne, had also joined the Party at his apartment, as she called the get together.  James was worried about Laura and asked to speak to her.  To his dismay and alarm, she was once again high, apparently happy with her company and expressed no interest in being taken away.  However, finding this out took James nearly half an hour as he was made to listen to a long string of meaningless babble and hysterical laughter between short segments of actual communication.  When James put down the car phone, he was relieved he had Lila’s home to go to.  He expected and was eager to see Deun once more, but she was away at Alda’s house when he arrived.  

Lila watched James arriving from the upstairs window as he pulled up into the circle drive paved with cobblestones.  The Austin Martin was parked behind the Hummer and James took his time arranging his things and taking off his suit coat before locking up the sleek car.  By the time he was shutting the car door, Lila had come out to meet him on the drive.  She embraced him adoringly as soon as James had pushed the door shut.  While they embraced James pushed the lock button on the remote and shoved the keys carelessly into his pocket. James took Lila up into his arms and carried he into the house through the wide door inlaid with glass panels in the heavy oak.  Lila would have him to herself all that evening until 22:00, when she expected him to want to leave.  But at the dinner they shared over the kitchen table, James told Lila that he would like to stay the night and informed her that he would have a visit from Tide Route and suggested that he take a guest room.  Lila was ready to experience what Laura had seen before and urged him to stay with her in the Master bedroom with its stone fireplace and stone tiled floor covered with an Alpaca wool woven rug.  Behind the bed hung an old, hand made tapestry and opposite the window, decorated with an elaborate double curtain, hung a large painting made by a new American Artist.  

James and Lila lay together all the remainder of the evening.  The large double bed of Ebony inlaid with olive wood patters was covered with a matching set of black and olive green linen, flannel sheets.  Atop the specially made sheets lay a harmonizing quilted down comforter and down pillows.  While Lila sat straddled upon James, at ten that evening Tide Route made her appearance beside them on the bed, and immediately applauded the union with clapping and cheers.  Lila was so surprised by her appearance and raucous enthusiasm that Lila fell off James and the bed.  She would have hit her head on the bedside table and lost consciousness, but Tide Route broke her fall with a wave of her hand and brought her back to rest on the cushioned bed.  By the time Lila absorbed the reality of what had just happened to her at the hands of the Fairy, Tide Route was bouncing merrily where Lila had vacated the position atop James.  So fascinated with the magical visitor was Lila, that for over an hour, all she did was watch her with James.  

Eventually, Tide Route invited the immobile Lila to take her place with James.  While Lila was not watching and enjoying James, the sensual and feminine Tide Route transformed into her male form.  Suddenly aware of another male taking her in an unexpected way, Lila turned to discover the attractive and androgynous male form of the Fairy behind her.  The trio performed their love and carnal pursuits until sunrise, when while atop James, the Fairy simply vanished while Lila enjoyed the dexterous attentions of James.  Lila let out a scream of shock as soon as Tide Route disappeared into thin air.  James and Lila went to sleep in each other’s arms soon after sunrise, following a light breakfast of freshly baked crumpets smothered in butter with a tall glass of Papaya juice.  

Angela and Maryanne had finally left the weathered and exhausted Laura and Babs just before midnight on that Tuesday.  The drugged Babs had then phoned her penthouse flat and asked Marcella to come to James’s flat with Troy, her son, so the two women, Babs, Laura, could watch her get  impregnated by Troy, something they would never have thought of had they not all been out of their minds on drugs.  To Troy, who also took drugs periodically, it was just another part of life and another chance for him to get high.  At least this time Troy was sure that if his mother recalled any of this, she would not berate him for taking drugs.  As expected, both Marcella and Troy took the drug Angela had left behind.  As a result of his subsequent loss of control, he coupled with all the women present including Babs, who would have been mortified had she been able to recollect the incestuous incident.  All that resulted from the incident was that Babs was left with an inexplicable sense of disgust at having her adult son living at home after Marcella’s pregnancy was confirmed and tests showed that Troy was the father.  

Following these events, Babs rented another studio apartment in the building, unit 315, and had Troy and Marcella move into it to begin their lives together while they planned the wedding.  Babs and Laura were still together, in bed and naked, when James arrived.  Troy was coupling with Marcella in the sofa while the two recovering women watched in each other’s arms.  James suspected he knew what had happened that night, so he took Laura up in his arms and took her to the bathroom to shower with him.  Half an hour later, dressed in yet another beautifully tailored suit, James left leading Laura, who was still weak and semi-conscious, by the hand with an arm around her body supporting her in her stumbling walk.  Laura had her dress in her hand and was wearing James’ bath robe and slippers.  At the entrance to the garage, reacting to the car fumes and odours of petroleum products, Laura stopped James to vomit.  After rinsing her face at a faucet in the car wash area of the underground garage, James buckled Laura, who was now feeling somewhat better, into the passenger seat.  Grateful, and now again in the company of her proto-husband, Laura was taken to the mine offices in Sacramento.  

 
11

For the first time in years James asked the guard to open the gates for the car to enter.  Once he had stopped the DBS directly in front of the entrance to the office building he asked Tara to collect the nurse from the medical station near the mine elevators to distract her from her observant position by the entrance.  With Tara walking away across the property and security busy closing the enormous gates, James helped the unwell Laura out of the car with no onlookers.  It was eleven twenty in the morning and the entire mine and cafeteria staff were busy in their respective duties.  James took Laura up in his arms and quickly carried her in and up stairs to his office.  Laura was put down on the white leather sofa to rest while James close the door and made his way down to the reception to meet with Tara and the nurse.  

The nurse and Tara were conveyed into the little conference room opposite the reception.  James served them both a cup of coffee from the thermos and sat down at the end of the little oblong pine table.  “Laura,” he began, “is very ill at the moment..  I want one of you with her at all times, I will have a doctor come to see her as soon as possible.  She has become ill since she was unable to locate Madam Gateaux on Monday morning when she reported for work.  I am going to call a doctor and contact the Police again.  I was unable to make contact with her on Tuesday, I called several times.  Her daughter, Pauline and Madam’s lawyer have both been notified of her absence yesterday when I called them in the evening before leaving.”  James stood up abruptly and left the room to sit in his office with Laura while he called the doctor.  Tara and the nurse, neither of which had touched their cups of coffee yet, remained in their seats.  The two were shocked and frozen by both fear and anxiety.  They sat opposite each other clutching their coffee cups and staring at the empty chair as it swung in circles gently at a slow and steady speed as it squeaked, making the only noise in the little room.  Laura and the nurse slowly turned their heads to face each other and jumped in their seats as they saw their own feelings reflected in each others’ faces.  

In somewhat of a daze, Tara returned to her reception desk to play a game of solitaire on the computer while she absorbed the news. The Nurse, Amanda, made her way slowly up the wide steps to the second floor and found her way into James’ office still clutching the untouched coffee cup.  Amanda was a short and plump young woman with thick medium brown hair cut into short locks that framed a very round, pale and plump face devoid of any lines or marks from emotion or experience.  Like Tara, she wore a heavy layer of make up meant to cover up any lines or marks of age, but at thirty, she still had none.  Amanda walked into James’ office in her tight white dress and white sneakers.  Taking a stool from the corner she brought it with her and sat on it next to the sofa upon which laid Laura, sweating heavily and tossing her head back and forth between weak groans that could have been taken for either pain or delirium.

Taking the thermometer, stethoscope, and blood pressure gage from her pockets, Amanda began to follow her pre-diagnostic procedures.  The nurse took note of Laura’s, temperature, pulse, blood pressure, irregular heart beat and sluggish response times to general neurological and reflex tests on a notepad that James handed her from his desk with a pen.  Amanda left for her office and returned with two cold compresses and a wedge pillow with which to prop up Laura’s limp body. Half an hour after this the doctor arrived.  Amanda was called away by a team leader of one of the mine working teams to tend to a young man that had been injured by debris from a blast in one of the newer tunnels deep underground.  With Amanda gone, James conveyed the tale of drug abuse he suspected to have caused her ailing condition, but he could not guess at what the drug used had been.  

After a through examination and a rather difficult conversation between the doctor and Laura, he indicated that Laura also showed signs of having been bound and violated with some force.  Unfortunately, Laura could not recollect any incidents that might have explained her condition.  The short, chubby, and balding middle aged doctor threw up his hands in exasperation at the lack of forthcoming information, but he did collect blood and a sample of semen form Laura before he prescribed bed rest for at least two weeks accompanied by a complex herbal tea taken hourly and an antipyretic if needed for her peculiar fever.  The normally affable and jovial doctor left with a worried scowl promising to call with the results once the originator of the semen had been identified as Laura was only known to have been in the company of Troy and three women.  James doubted that the ambitious jock in the pre-medical program in university would have violated Laura in the presence of other women.  

Naturally, James was very preoccupied with Laura’s condition.  He remained in his office with Laura dong a little work while she slept and talking to her as calmly as he could manage when she was awake and being either fed or served tea by Amanda, as prescribed.  At five in the evening he left with Laura and headed for the home of Madam Gateaux to meet with the police sergeant and a corporal that had been assigned to investigate Madam’s disappearance.  Laura, who was clearly ill and showed clear signs of distress at the absence of her employer, was only asked a few questions to which she responded nearly unintelligibly.  For two hours the police officers posed questions about Madam and searched the home for clues.  James told the sequence of events on the pertinent weekend as had been arranged by Deun, leaving out the witch making.  The last time either he or Laura had seen Madam had bee on Sunday evening when they had left her in her garden to rest and recuperate from the carnal entanglement he had with Madam weekly.  

The house offered little or no clues with the exception of her slippers having been left at the end of the garden near the wall, in a little grove of pines that James knew well but he responded with surprise at the find.  He could not come up with any reason that she would have been there and how the foot prints could have simply vanished from there.  There were other foot prints also found there that were matched to James and also to Laura.  Foot prints were found both in bare feet and in shoes that were explained by James and Laura walking about the property in search of Madam Gateaux.  The two officers left with little information, many questions and little doubt about the innocence of either James or Laura.  

James knew that they would be checking their alibi, but he felt relieved that there was noo suspicion directed at either of them.  The two officers would work on the case for the coming six months without any new information before closing the case until new evidence surfaced, but it never would.  Madam Gateaux’s body would emerge from the time-space gap no less than thirteen hundred years earlier in nearly pristine condition in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada to feed condors, turkey vultures, ravens, a small and hungry yearling black bear and a sickly coyote that later died from his festering wound.  Her corpse or skeleton was never found.  

Three months after the disappearance of Madam Perle Gateaux, Pauline, her daughter and, Mr. Coleman, her solicitor, arranged for a memorial service at a chapel in Auburn before executing her final instructions.  The Mining operations and the company were to be transferred to James and Laura as Pauline had expressed no interest in the business.  Thirty percent of the firm’s future earnings were to be placed into a Trust Fund of which Pauline would be the executor, and the remaining seventy percent would be put into the hands of James and Laura.  The house in the hills of Auburn was gifted to Laura to inhabit with her daughter if she chose while the cars and yacht, were given to James.  Pauline was entitled to all of Madam’s other possessions  James had been adopted by Madam as her proto-son since they met because of the death of her son, Christopher, twenty years earlier from a drug overdose while at a party in Beverly Hills.  Christopher had shown some interest in running the family business before that, but with him dead, Madam was forced to take on the task when her husband had passed away.  The revelation of the arrangement came as a complete surprise to both James and Laura who protested weakly and with astonishment at the enormous financial gift and imposed responsibility.  The plans had never been discussed with either of them and they had assumed that Pauline would get everything.  

With Perle Gateaux passed away James and Laura were free to live together at the Auburn home as if married for most weekends.  But James still had commitments with Babs and Lila that kept him returning to the studio flat in San Francisco.  Laura, who enjoyed management, took on most of the tasks of running the mine that had been occupying James for the prior fourteen years.  James offered to continue overseeing the operations at the mine to allow Laura to work from home as to have their daughter live with them for the remaining years of her adolescence.  Additionally, James would rather not have Laura be in the position of enforcement and disciplining with a bunch of aggressive male miners.  There was quite enough to do with managing the entire operation single headedly.  

As a result of the events of that odd weekend when Madam died and Deun earned her marks there came about several changes to James’s life.  A fortnight after the party where Laura had been doped by the unsolicited application of the unidentified drug in her drink, she finally regained her full health and vitality that brought the rich tones of her good spirit back into her tanned face and arms.  James, who had been outraged at the results of Angela’s company had a meeting with Babs at the pancake house in Auburn before taking her to see Laura at Madam’s house where she was convalescing.  Babs flew in by helicopter to Auburn airport where James collected her.  Emphatically, yet acknowledging that Babs was paying for the studio, James forbade Babs to bring guests to party at his flat without informing him who the guest was by phone.  Furthermore, James insisted that if she wished to get high on drugs to do it in her own flat and expressly forbade Angela to ever enter his domicile again.  This was a set of rather bold demands coming from the soft-spoken James.  Babs was slightly offended by his insistence until she saw the poor condition in which Laura was left.  

For a month after the meeting James only met with Babs as he was scheduled to give Babs reports on Laura’s progress and to accept her apologies over coffee.  Once Laura was back to work and fully recovered, James resumed his amorous affair with Babs who remained somewhat hesitant in his presence for months afterward.  Once James informed Babs of his inheritance and joint ownership of the company, Babs relaxed and actually begged him to not leave her while on her knees.  James of course agreed to continue seeing her but announced that he would rather be visited at his new home with Laura whenever Babs wished to meet him.  He would of course,  be available whenever he was not at work in his en suite study and private chambers he would be keeping on the north side of the house facing the pool in the front lawn.  Babs continued providing James with her donation, gifts and the studio flat despite the changes.  For his birthday she even gifted him with a sculpted large piece of Yellow Zircon in the for m of Venus and a new platinum Rolex watch encrusted with diamonds.  

Lila’s meetings with James on Thursdays was not affected, but Deun learned what had taken place from James while visiting him at work on the Wednesday he had brought Laura away to his office when she had first fallen ill.  Tara had called James about the visitor named Deun Zoeker attired in a magnificently provocative dress with high heels and a matching green satin cloak trimmed with a wool hunting tartan that was also used as a lining.  Deun had come only to meet with James to see that all had gone as planned and learned of Laura’s ailment.  She offered to have Luna, the medicine woman come and treat her, but James refused citing that that woman was far too tempting and distracting for him to manage anything with her around. Deun had laughed at his reason and also complemented him on knowing himself and his limits.  During that visit, Deun had also offered to bring Lila to his flat or to the house in Auburn whenever he found it difficult to manage the time to go to her mother’s house.  Several times during Laura’s infirmity James had called on Deun to come to him at the house and Lila had subsequently been brought up to Auburn by Deun in the Porsche her mother had  given her.  After the incident with Madam Gateaux, Deun had felt reticent about exposing unmagical persons such as her mother to Fairyland unnecessarily.  

Lila remained unaware of the magical relationship between James and Deun, but she was happy that Deun was having a child with James.  She wished she could also have had that as part of her life, but to Lila, being a grandmother was almost as good.  The news of the inheritances surprised Lila a great deal, and as a result she asked James if she might visit him more than once a week.  To Lila, James extended the same open invitation to visit him at his chambers through the entrance at the front of the house whenever it took her fancy, as he had made to Babs.  Deun, of course, had every right and the freedom of movement to come and go from the home in Auburn by the garden’s time-space gap as often as she needed to see James.  Most of her visits were to request his assistance with providing mundane cover for her coming and going form daily life and to assist her in social involvement where her work had to be done that would be facilitated by James’ company to make them appear to be a couple.  This was not strictly necessary for Deun to do her work, however, Deun, as a young, alluring, and single woman would have often have received much more attention than she was given having a male companion with her.  This was especially true given Deun’s taste for dramatic and at times scandalous dress.  

For James’s birthday Lila made Panetoni and gave him a full length, brown leather trench coat lined with patterned vicuña wool.  Laura, who was present, and Deun commented on how unlike James the coat was and on how becoming it looked on James despite being uncharacteristic.  The leather matched his skin tone very well and also highlighted the bright tones in his hair.  It had been only a few months before that Lila had begun making her donations to James as recompense for his affections and dependable amorous attentions.  James had never mentioned it or asked for any donations, but through Deun, Lila had progressively increased her cash and precious stone donations delivered by her witch daughter.  James eventually offered Lila his account information to his account at a little bank  in Idaho from which James had all his deposits transferred out of the country as payments to a company named the Buffalo and Elk Hide Corporation, registered in Liberia, of which James was the owner.  From the corporation the funds and precious goods were put away in his Swiss account.  The process offered James a way to keep his earnings from being registered apart from his disclosed income as a manager at the Mining Company.  

Most of those earnings were consumed with the private education that Malvine, his daughter had been receiving and then spent on the annual vacation the family took.  Malvine’s teacher, Ms. Edith Mae Stowe, was offered a thirty percent raise from her $75,000 tuition and invited to stay at their home in Auburn where Malvine would now live with her parents.  Laura’s chambers and office were in the east wing of the house looking over a small valley, and Malvine was given the South wing where the library was situated facing the enormous garden from which Madam had vanished out of known time.  Ms. Stowe was given a set of rooms that had an en suite bedroom, a private sitting room that also looked into the garden, and a small study that was adjoined to the library in the South wing with Malvine.  The west wing of the house was taken up with the kitchen, exercise room, sauna, and social rooms, two of which also let out into the garden.  Mr. Gateaux had once been an avid Snooker player and had imported a standard twelve foot table constructed of Zebra wood may years earlier and occupied one of the social rooms with it.  

Some months later, James and Ms. Stowe had taken to the game and had become amicably competitive in their snooker matches that they played at least once a day if James came home.  She had leant out her homestead and rented the barn, the three pastures and the ten acres of Sage with the apiaries to a young family that were trying to get started farming.  The only rent she requested in return for the arrangement was to receive ten pounds of her Sage honey each year and for them to keep the goats milking and rotated through the pastures to allow for regeneration of the scrubland.  There were also two five acre fields of fodder that had to be maintained and alternated, one of Kale and the other of Corn.  She expected them to do what they wished with the remaining twenty five acres.  From the seven she goats, three kids and one Billy, combined with the Corn, Kale, and honey the family were expected to have enough food for them and sufficient income from the sale of the excess to allow them slowly expand the operation.  With a family of five, Ms. Stowe had no longer felt  it  necessary to employ the three boys and one girl that she had kept on to do the work at the homestead while she taught.  

Ms. Stowe was a tall, muscular woman with a very pronounced figure, short, pale blond hair and sky blue eyes that almost glowed in the dark.  She was also a witch that had been left to her own tasks that had chosen to use her abilities to educate young witches and wizards in the prescribed curriculum in unconventional ways.  She had in fact also gained her teaching credentials as well as two PhD’s by the age of twenty seven simply to not be harassed by the overly bureaucratic system as she would be known to the public as a private services teacher for preschool through high school.  Edith had had numerous clients over the twenty five years she had been teaching, but with James and Laura’s offer to pay the equivalent of all her clients combined to ensure that Malvine received private education from age five, she had had only one client for the last nine years.  In a way, Edith Stowe had become an aunt and guardian to the young witch that had grown up loving Ms. Stowe’s ways and techniques of real life experience with the land to aide in learning abstract concepts and methods of thought.  Apart from her personal possessions and clothes, she had only brought the books and a pot bellied pig with her to the house in Auburn.  Naturally, with Malvine at the Auburn house, Tide Route spent all her time there when she was not with her other godchildren.  
 
12

Three months after the case on the disappearance of Madam Perle Gateaux had been closed; Deun gave birth to Corvus Newel, a bright eyed baby boy that would grow into the liegeman for Lobina. The boy was born on the latter half of the summer, one lunar cycle before the autumnal equinox.  Corvus grew into a tall and very thin young man with extraordinarily long limbs and neck despite being six foot nine when he had reached his full height by age twenty one.  Corvus bore jet black hair with thick brows and large and beaky nose that would always show even when his face was hidden by the hood of his cloak.  Early in his child hood he showed his abilities with the abstract by learning to speak in binary code with complete sentences to amuse himself.  Furthermore, Corvus learned to carry on calculations in his head using irrational numbers and differentials just to pass the time when only twelve.  For his entertainment Corvus learned nine computer programming languages, Etruscan, Romansh, Romany, Greek, Archaic Chinese, Sanskrit, Frisian, Pashto, Armenian, Manx, Euskara, and Icelandic by age twenty one.  By then he was taken through his making to take on his role beside Lobina ever after.

Babs continued to visit James at his new home as did Lila.  Francine, the bank teller and neighbour of James in studio 612 of the high rise on Van Ness Avenue between Bush and Sutter St. also now lived at the Auburn house serving Laura as her personal assistant with the enormous task of managing the mines and the new housing complex that had been built for the employees of the mine.  Francine had been given an en suite studio adjoining James’s Study in the North wing of the house.  With the package of employment offered, she had been given a salary that doubled her previous income and obviated her necessity to rent the little flat in San Francisco.  This made her relations with James much more frequent with the adjacent chambers.  

On that hot and oppressive Saturday afternoon, James was in the Sauna with Francine when Babs arrived, unannounced and unexpected as was now her custom, to find the two joined casually in the cedar walled and furnished room.  Malvine had gone to the state fair with Laura and Ms. Stowe earlier that day.  This made the garden available for James to continue his casual fornications with both Francine and Babs in the porch’s hammock without Malvine being exposed to the lustful entanglements.  The three enjoyed a light lunch of fruit salad and crackers with Gravalax, accompanied by two bottles of a dry Pinot Gregio produced locally in Placer County.  

Just as the trio were finishing their late afternoon meal, Deun came in from the time-space gap with a small bundle of cloth, startling Babs which made her drop her  long glass.  Francine went in to fetch the dust pan and broom while James distracted Babs from her fragmented questions and queries by making a dramatic production of introducing Deun as his Mistress, witch that gathered information and dealt with psychics and such things, and the mother of his second son.  The news that James had a son with such a young woman of such dramatic and stunning appearance so utterly filled Babs with wonder that she forgot all else and fell absorbedly into conversation with the newly arrived visitor.  

Deun, as was characteristic of her dramatics, wore red leather musketeer like boots with five inch heels, a yellow and red tartan mini skirt with ragged edges, a light yellow silk blouse with an Edwardian collar and billowing sleeves topped with a tartan pointed hat that matched her skirt.  It was an arrangement that might have looked absurd had it not been for the attention to detail in the tailoring and the fact that the colours matched Deun’s complexion giving her a rosy and lively appearance.  Aware of what was taking place in the garden, Deun soon revealed that she also wore matching tartan brassieres and garter with no knickers.  The young witch was soon involved with the open minded Babs, leaving James to play a relaxed game of Bowls on the lawn with Francine while Mrs. Compton and Deun Zoeker became intimately acquainted.  

The sun was setting and James had disappeared into the kitchen to have the cook prepare them a dinner of canard à l’orange with saffron pilaf and greens to serve seven, including her of course.  Despite being the house keeper and cook, Ms. Simplicity Doppler was included in all household functions like a family member.  Simplicity had come to them through a placement agency for private staff from a little town in Humberside, England, after having completed her culinary training in London, Paris, Porto and Naples.  On the north wing of the large house there was an upstairs with two rooms with access onto the roof that were made her chambers.  The plump and cheerful young woman had been very surprised with the unexpected location of her assignment, but had accepted it due to the astonishingly generous compensation offered.  Five months into her assignment Simplicity could be said to have felt that there was a good chance that she would remain with that peculiar household for the remainder of her employed life.  

Two hours later, Simplicity sat at the large Cocobola table and chair dining room conversing amicably with Deun and enduring the monologue erupting from the very inebriated Babs who had theories on the existence of Fairies and witches she wished to expound on. Following the fabulous meal chased with an exotic fruit Savarin desert.  Malvine and Laura, who had spent the day at the fair, went to the kitchen with Simplicity and Ms. Stowe to chat about the day’s entertainment and arrange the kitchen together while James went with Deun out to the garden.  Babs was left to sleep off her drink lying across three of the dining chairs.  

While the girl and three women conversed jovially in the kitchen, James was taken out to the garden by Deun.  She needed James for a task.  On a soft bed of leaves between the two trees they donned the thick cloaks that Deun had brought and then turned into the time space gap and vanished from view together.  A few minutes later Deun and James emerged into a narrow dirt path in a double row of trees flanked on one side by a field of Rye and an apple orchard on the other.  The sky was pale and grey with a cool light that felt unfamiliar but soothing.  It was early in the morning and there was a gusty wind whipping through the trees making them rustles and whistle.  James shivered and turned to ask Deun where they were.  However, Deun answered James before he could utter a word.  Achel, Belgium,” she said in her seductive voice while she stroked James’ shoulder reassuringly with one hand, “to your left and beyond the fields of Rye is the Netherlands, while beyond the orchard lies the grounds of Achelse Kluise, one of the two abbeys we will be visiting to collect copies of texts from their archives.”  James pulled the thick wool cloak shut with a swift and coordinated dance like gesture and began to walk down the path to where the path emerged from the trees onto a narrow paved road with ditches on either side that seemed more like military trenches to James than canals for rain water.  

For about ten minutes they walked in the cold wind clutching their cloaks for warmth without talking as they walked along the road through the orchard.  Soon the high, rough stone walls that surrounded Achelse Kluise grew clear with its enormous wrought iron gates, one that was narrow and open for pedestrian visitors and the larger double wide gate for Lories and other vehicles that were usually left locked.  Through the narrow gate they stepped into a large courtyard paved with cobble stones with small squares unpaved where tall oak, poplar and chestnut trees grew surrounded by stone benches.  To their right was a reception building that was part of the exterior wall.  The long and low stone building showed visitors one door beside the gate with black lettering neatly painted onto the white wood door.  
Achelse Winkle
Magasin d’Abbaye
Gifts
Regalos

The shop was closed, and so were the other four doors along the side of the building that faced into the court yard.  Two rooms were used to store the bicycles used by both the monks and visitors.  One room served as a little workshop for mechanical repairs and the fourth served only as a storage shed for odds and ends.  Surrounding them were three wings of the abbey rising three stories of solid stone masonry construction with little square widows set at regular intervals on two of the three sides.  To the right was the church with its long cathedral windows decoratively filled with stained glass windows bearing biblical images.  The entire structure was covered with a steeply peaked slate roof with a few skylights dotting the roof.  From the church could be heard the chants of the monks as they prayed, interrupted periodically by proclamations by the abbot in Latin followed by Gregorian chants and then more singing accompanied by organ music.  James and Deun made their way into the small church with an enormously high ceiling.  Within there were two tiers filled with folding chairs.  The seating on the elevated stone shelves overlooked the two rows of monks that sat on baroque wood pews on the ground floor of the church with their backs to the walls.  

For an hour and a half they listened and watched in silence with a few other guests that had been staying at the monastery.  Not one of them took notice of the two cloaked new arrivals.  After the elaborate morning service the guests and one monk robed in his white hooded gown and black hooded cassock filed out and went to the Guest house section of the monastery for the breakfast meal.  The rest of the monks made their way to the refectory to sit at their twenty foot long lacquered oak tables on equally long wood benches to eat rye bread with cheese and cold meats accompanied with  an apple and a cup of mild black coffee unsweetened and a tall glass of cold milk.  Their stone dining hall was equipped to seat some three hundred or more monks, a reflection of the earlier popularity of monasticism amongst the public in a time before rationalism and humanism destroyed the public’s ability to have faith in God and Magic.

The guests sat at individual chairs at standard dining tables in a much smaller reception room used as a dining room with a large crucifix hanging from one wall.  The seven guests and the two visitors filed into the large kitchen to prepare the meat and cheese dishes, coffee, milk jug, and to collect the dishes to be used.  Deun and three other guests set the tables while James arranged a large dish with three stacks of thinly sliced Rye bread and a large butter dish that he brought out with the others when the breakfast was served.  The monk stood at the head of the table at which they all sat to eat and led the group prayer.  After the litany brother Marcus left the room to join his monastic congregation at their dining hall while the guests ate in silence.  Only one guest, a middle aged man that had been at the monastery for a cure mumbled continually and unintelligibly even while he ate.  Following the meal, the guests with James and Deun, cleared and cleaned both the table and the dishes before scattering about the grounds with their own thoughts.  

James and Deun headed for the reception building to await the gate keeper monk that would open the shop door and wait for guests once his other tasks had been completed.  Thirty minutes later, after having turned all the cheese rounds that were aging in one of the cellars, Brother Johanes marched out to the little door by which the two visitors were standing once again in their cloaks to ward off the chilly air.  With the large iron key in his hand, the monk asked them how he could help them, first in Dutch, then in French, and finally in English with complete patience and not a hint of irritation or suspicion in his tone.  He did in fact smiled broadly once he had attained the correct language to use with his guests, pleased with himself that he was fluent in the required language.  Deun asked to see the Abbot to obtain permission for James to search the private library and ancient manuscript archives.  With a look of astonished surprise, and the large black key still hanging in his now limp hand, Brother Johannes asked them to wait a few minutes for him to relay the message after which he departed into the stone structure at a brisk pace.  

James and Deun sat at one of the court yard’s stone benches and watched the sparrows and finches flitting about as they chirped.  Some time later three crows joined the gentle ruckus in the bleak stone cloister.  Nearly a third of the hour had passed before the monk returned in his black and white gowns at a much more leisurely pace smiling happily to himself.  The Abbot accented to their request and asked to interview them first, before they entered the ancient store rooms with artefacts that dated sometimes to before 600 Ano Domini.  However, the Abbot had requested that they please wait for him to complete his morning studies that would take him approximately an hour more.  Brother Johannes invited them to await the Abbot in the second floor lounge of the guest house for it was much warmer an led them up the old wood and stone stair well to the little lounge with a small bookcase, four upholstered wood chairs and a comfortably warm water radiator heater beneath the large end window on the south side of the guest house.  No windows had been put on the north side wall which had been plastered over the stone work and wood panelling had been installed to help insulate the guests from the frigid stone.  

The hour came and passed while James and Deun waited, looking carefully through the books available to the visitors.  Numerous popular novels and hard back editions of literature novels were there along with countless periodicals and tourist guides to Flemish Belgium, French Belgium, Luxembourg French and the various regions of Holland including Frieseland and its numerous islands.  James found a text detailing Trapist Monasticism and found a map of all the Cistercian monasteries throughout Europe inside.  Deun noticed an aged brown paper volume that had been printed and bound by hand entitled Toverkunst en de Kerk.  It had clearly been hidden as it was perpendicular to the other books and slipped in behind less popular books on the rail system and philosophies by Niche, Kant, and others on the bottom shelf.  Deun was thumbing through the text in Old Dutch using her knowledge of modern German to surmise what she could.  Brother Peter, a very young monk in his three-year novice period before being confirmed as a monk came to retrieve them to meet the Abbot.  Deun brought the book with her to ask Abbot Franciscus about it.  

They were taken deep into the expansive stone structure and up several stone stair cases to a large room on the third floor illuminated by candles and the dim sun light coming through two sky lights set in the sloping walls of the Abbot’s offices.  It was a long room only wide enough for the large desk to fit in its breadth.  There was only enough room on one side for the elderly Abbot to pass beside it leaning slightly over the desk where the ceiling’s slope narrowed the tall space above it.  Sitting at his desk in thickly layered white wool gowns the elderly Abbot stood to welcome them in and shook their hands over the ancient, darkly stained pine bureau.  As Deun and James took their seats and the young monk was dismissed it began to rain and a light tapping at the skylights and on the slate all around them muffled the conversation.

For a minute or two, Deun and James looked at and were also observed by Abbot Franciscus.  The old man broke the silence directing a question at Deun.  “Well, Well,” he spoke with a thick Irish accent, “what have you got there young witch?”  For a moment James and Deun stared in wonder at the old man with the fringe of long white hair and a full white moustache with the pale face and deeply set black eyes.  Deun put the little book with the thick, yellowed paper binding onto the dark pine with the gold leaf lettered title facing the Abbot.  “Ah, yes, well done, this book had been waiting to be found for over forty years.  I hid it myself when I came from a monastery in Ireland before becoming an Abbot.  It has been waiting for you.  I translated it into English before I hid it also.”  The old man reached into his desk and brought out a similar book bound in burgundy leather with the same gold leaf lettering with the title in English, Magic and the Church.  He pushed it at Deun and told her it was a gift for her to keep.  To their surprise, he added that it may be fitting if she added it to the collection at the home of the Princess of Redwood with the many other books that were used from that collection utilized in the region in which they inhabited, the San Francisco Bay Area.  

With a twinkle in his eye the old Abbot took the little paperbound book and put it away in his desk before pulling out a long sheet of a thick natural paper that had been folded into letter size sections for filling.  It resembled a list and was in fact the catalogue of books and archives kept at Achelse Kluise.  After opening a few leafs of the catalogue, the old man looked up at them and asked them what they were in search of.  James, who had remained silent since they had arrived in Belgium, took Deun’s hand to remind him that he was not alone amidst all that new experience and finally uttered, “I don’t know, Deun is the witch.”  Deun squeezed his hand and the old Abbot stood and came around his desk to take a seat beside them in another visitor chair.  He also took James by the shoulder firmly, but also gently as a father may do to his young son when the son expresses doubts that need reassuring.  

“You can be a wizard too, James, it was your choice to let the magic come though you or not.  Two marks you have received, and the other three you may also obtain if you choose.  It is never too late to strengthen your faith in God; you may even do it on your death bed.”  James sighed with a mixture of relief and frustration and let his head fall with his sinking eyes.  Deun handed James an envelope from her pocket after having taken out her wale bone sceptre and placed it in her lap unceremoniously.  Within it James found a legal size sheet with a list of texts in various languages from Greek to Gothic written in Deun’s hand with an elaborate form of calligraphy.  The abbot took up his catalogue and asked James to read off the names of the books that he would lead James to in a few minute.  Once the ritual reading was completed and approximately half the books sought had been identified on the Abbot’s catalogue, James was led by Abbot Franciscus into the old dungeons which had been transformed into a library of a sort.  Different sections were kept in different stone rooms that had now had their windows either sealed over or weatherproofed in some practical way.  The dungeon rooms had been stripped of shackles, chains, and torture devices leaving rough, barren stone walls against witch oak shelving had been erected, three bookcases per room.  

James and the abbot took their time searching after having traversed the monk’s sleeping quarters and the enormous dining hall.  Deun was left at the Abbot’s study while the materials were collected.  Nearly two hours later James and the Abbot returned with a stack of nearly twenty books, many of which had been previously copied and rebound as the original texts faded and, or crumbled.  This kind of manual copying was of course no longer necessary with the advent of modern presses and copy machines.  And conveniently, the abbot had a copy machine in his office.  There also existed microfilm records of the library and the monastery was beginning to incorporate computer stations and digital imaging with a large flat scanner.  They had also recently added an informative website about the cloister, just one more among millions of websites that are virtually impossible to locate without knowing precisely what one is seeking

Deun set about locating the sections of the old texts that she was seeking.  With every book there was some portion, however large or small, that James then copied and added the little packets to his satchel that he wore beneath his cloak.  It was time for the afternoon service and prayers before the lunch when James was copying the last section to be taken from the archives at Achelse Kluise.  With the other guests Deun and James sat watching and listening to the Sexte Service and then joined the others for lunch before departing for the monastery of Orval, France which has an even more ancient archive than Achel’s and is the home of a delicious brewery that produces a rich, dark and flavourful bitter beer.  However, unlike Achel it is a silent monastery, no speaking allowed.  The monk assigned to tourist services is essentially the only monk permitted to speak and then, only in certain circumstances such as with guests.  
 
13

After the Sexte Service, James and Deun helped the other guests, and the monk serve the afternoon meal of mutton stew with potatoes, carrots, peas, and stale bread.  Four carafes with mineral water were served with the meal which was also accompanied by one beer bottle per guest at the table.  Once the dishes had been cleaned, and all was back in order, James and Deun made their departure and headed back to the time-space gap from which they had emerged in the early hours of that morning.  Far down the dirt path between the trees, James and Deun disappeared once more to emerge in the foothills of the Ardennes Mountains above the vast lands of the abbey of Orval.  Finding a path through the scrub and then through the orchard, James and Deun made their way down to the guest reception adjoining the entrance gates.  Orval being a much larger complex with much stricter provisions, Deun suggested they wait at the reception for the assigned monk to retrieve them.  

The wait left them at the gates for over an hour while lunch was finished and tasks were completed.  Brother Benedict, a rather reserved and aloof middle aged gentleman, collected our witch and her assistant from the reception building and read the notes that Deun had put into the guestbook.  Knowing their purpose at the abbey, Brother Benedict escorted them directly to the office of the librarian and notified the Abbot of their presence at the institution.  Father Superior at Orval had received notification from Abbot Franciscus of the imminent arrival of his guests, immediately after lunch, by email and had been gathering himself when, he was notified by Brother Benedict.  Father Superior immediately headed for the library where he intended to interview the foreign guests amicably and perhaps learn something of what went on in their hemisphere.

Father Superior met Deun and James in the enormous vaulted corridor outside of the library at Orval.  He was somewhat surprised to find them in cloaks but he was gracious and polite with very little conversation.  Father Superior took the list of texts from James who had marked the texts that had already been found at Achel.  As he reviewed the sheet written in Deun’s hand, Father Superior discovered that some of the ancient texts were possibly moved to the Vatican for archiving and documenting on microfilm at the library.  He also asked them some questions about the state of things in the North American continent and was promptly reassured that most things went well and there were even some Trapist Monasteries growing in the central regions such as the one that had sprung up in Utah despite the Mormon stronghold in the region.  Father Superior was pleased and amused by the news of a monastery constructed with Quonset Huts donated by the Pentagon.  The monastery was growing steadily but was in need of some permanent buildings being constructed to house them.

Father superior requested the librarian to collect every text listed on the sheet that had not been marked as found and copy its contents for their guests.  Then he invited Deun and James to accompany him to the brewery and cheese factories for some tasting of the local monastic brew and their cheeses.  As Father Superior was one of the creators of their selection of cheeses he was quite proud of their selection of five cheeses.  James had to concur with him that they were quite delicate and subtle in flavour.  The dark Trapist brew was traditional and accompanied their cheeses exquisitely of course.  Three hours later the librarian monk appeared at the cheese factory tasting room with a canvas satchel containing the duplicated texts and the original list.  After making his delivery to James he joined then at the little square table to enjoy a few morsels of cheese before returning to his obligations repairing ancient texts and replacing bindings where necessary.  

Deun and James joined the guests at the refectory for a light supper of bread, ham, cheese, jam, beer and apples taken in silence as before which followed the Vespers service.  After their meal they made their farewells and departed having nearly all that they sought.  Deun new that what was missing would have to be sought at the Vatican City Libraries, but that would be another trip for another day in the company of Sister Marilyn who was available to accompany Deun at every equinox and solstice when her Cistercian duties were completed in the convent in which she resided in Santa Cruz County.  As the monks and guests made their way to the Complies service that followed the meal, James and Deun left by the main gate.  She led James back up the hill to the time-space gap through which she took James back to Laura’s house in Auburn, entering through the garden passage by which they had left the day before.  

Upon their return, Babs had departed for her penthouse in San Francisco.  Malvine was in class with Ms. Stowe, Simplicity was preparing more sweet and salty pastries while she conversed with Francine who was reviewing the accounts on her laptop while perched at the bar looking into the kitchen.  Work on the expansion of the mine operations was now well under way since the housing development had been inhabited by the hundred or so households that were now employed at the mines.  Francine had just returned from her morning inspection of the grounds and a meeting with Laura who was in a video conference with the builders about complications with the subterranean structure planned.  Deun followed James into his chambers where she happily molested her tired assistant before letting him fall asleep to recover from the travels during which they had not taken any sleep.  Deun took her rest in James’ arms for a couple of hours before rising to return to Alda’s home with the copied texts and the gifted book.  James was left to sleep until his internal clock caused him to rise just before lunch was served.

Over the hearty meal during which James was mostly silent with fatigue, Laura was loquacious with complements for Tara, the recently promoted administrator at the mines, and Francine, who blushed a deep red in response to the praise Laura bestowed for her financial management of the mining and housing operations which were managed more firmly than ever before.  To the surprise of James, who had his mind on sleeping after being up for twenty eight hours and having only slept three hours before the lunch; Laura suggested that both Tara and Francine be awarded company cars of their choice as recompense.  

After many protests from Francine on fiscal grounds she finally consented to the plan and chose a red BMW 650 for her before making a conference call with Laura to ask Tara what she would choose.  Tara expressed that she needed a big wagon or utility vehicle to transport her growing kids and their friends in so Laura suggested a Land Rover 110 with an optional soft top knowing that Tara often went camping with her kids on weekends.  Later the following week James was at the mine offices to take delivery of the red coupe for Francine and the green truck for Tara.  That same afternoon James turned the cars and keys over to their rightful new benefactors.  Tara’s eldest son came to the offices of the mine with a friend to drive his mother’s car home on his student licence.  Francine took her BMW home to Auburn leaving her previous transport inside a large warehouse at the back of the mine that was used as a mechanical service shop that repaired equipment and vehicles used inside the mine.

With the improved resource management at the mine that led to the two managers being awarded company cars came a general raise in profits that provoked a twenty five percent raise in the wages of all the employees since neither James or Laura could see what more to do with the renewed increase in profits.  The profit s were also used to purchase Christmas gifts for all the employed families that now lived at the Bradshaw Sands housing estate that was only a third full at that time.  Every employee, spouse and child of an employee was presented with an appropriate gift as chosen by Laura and Francine.  The two ladies had done all the shopping according to interest cards that had been collected by Tara at the communal thanksgiving dinner.  The enormous thanksgiving meal  had been served at the community centre for all employees and any family they wished to invite with no fee or donation either accepted or insinuated.

Over four hundred persons had attended the communal meal where thirty five turkeys with stuffing were served with mashed potatoes, carrots, peas, and cranberry  with orange sauce.   Pumpkin pie and Apple tart were served as desert with both eggnog and fruit punch.  Tara and Francine also organized a donation collection there that was given in equal halves to the local Carmelite convent that looked after the poor and homeless; and to the children’s hospital to aid the battle against child cancer.  Nearly thirty five thousand was raised by the employees at the Thanksgiving feast to which James and Laura added enough to triple the gift that was then spit between the convent and the hospital.

Later that year, Deun brought Alda and Lila with her to the house in Auburn to spend the New Year holiday in the foothills from which small groups would sojourn up the Sierra Nevada to go skiing on each passing day of the holiday week.  Both Lila and Alda shared a bed with James on that holiday.  If James was not eating in the kitchen, playing snooker in the game room, or sunning himself in the garden, one of the women was usually molesting him in his chambers or in the sauna.  They even arranged an order in which the ladies took advantage of their man.  Lila and Alda who shared James’ bed had his carnal attentions from after dinner to before breakfast.  Following the morning meal James gave Francine a game of snooker and then was forced at cue point by the lusty accountant onto the green velour coated table.  Invariably Simplicity would come into the game room to investigate the racket and then replace the satisfied Francine upon James who lay atop the massive snooker table.  James would shower, swim and then sunbath in the garden when an open sky permitted.  If driven to it, James would take his place in the sun bed room in the company of Ms. Stowe, Malvine, and Alda.  

An hour before lunch Laura would call James into her chambers where they would make love until Simplicity interrupted them to announce that lunch was served.  Laura would invite Simplicity to join with James for a quickie before the meal and then the three would join the others at the dining table.  Ms. Stowe would follow the lunch with a game of snooker with James which was also followed by intercourse in the sauna.  Laura would interrupt Ms. Stowe’s fornications and replace her on the slatted cedar benches.  Deun would sun bathe in the garden and play bowls on the grass naked with James until a group of the women of the house would head out on some trip of other to the mall, or some event such as a choir singing, or musical performance.  Deun and James would them frolic in the garden until the sun set.  Simplicity would call James into the kitchen prior to the dinner to taste the food and couple with her once more and following this, James would couple with either Laura, Deun, Lila, or Francine in his chambers while they awaited the return of the others.  Dinner would follow and James would retire to his chambers with Lila and Alda for the night.  

On New Year’s Eve Babs came to visit and she brought Marcella the maid with her since Troy, who was now scheduled to marry Marcella on the first of February of the coming year, had left to spend the New Year with his father in Vienna, Austria where they would be watching the Vienna Boys Choir.  With Marcella, Babs brought five bottles of Vintage Reserve1982 Champagne and five bottles of Cherry Blossom Mead.  The addition of Babs and Marcella to the Auburn household simply added to the expectation being mounted onto James who was working harder to keep the women happy over the holiday than he ever had before.  At ten in the evening of the eve, Tide Route appeared and remained connected with James over the turn of the New Year.  Malvine celebrated the passing of the year with the others in the enormous common room where the projection television was tuned to the Big Apple in Times Square, but nobody paid any notice to it as they were all too intoxicated to notice the excitement in the moving pictures.  Even Malvine was smashed to such an extent that she failed to notice Tide Route joined to James in a merry union in one corner of the large and minimally illuminated room.

It was the second of January before the attendees at the Auburn house, that had been legally named Valley Mine Woodlands Estate effective on the first of the New Year, showed signs of reviving.  With the change of the address of the house to the name of the estate there were also one hundred and one acres of forest land that had been added to the house which had resided on five acres previously.  The woodland had been Federal Lands that had been managed by the Forestry Service and had been sold along with 900 other acres of forestland to potential developers.  As of the first of the year the house now had woodland surrounding it on three sides.  The new forested land would be managed for conservation and used as a wilderness preserve, a brainchild of Malvine and Deun.  For this great task, Laura had appointed James as the custodian.  James was made responsible for identifying a suitable Forest Ranger and one logger to serve as Grounds Keepers.  

By the fourth day of the New Year all the residents and guests at Valley Mine Woodlands were sufficiently recuperated and cognisant to either return to work or home as the case might be.  Marcella who was several months pregnant with Troy’s progeny was the only one apart from Alda who had not drunk themselves silly.  It had been Marcella and Alda who had watched over the well being of the celebratory group.  From the night of the thirty-first through the evening of the third the six smashed merrymakers lay heaped on the common room floor when not eating or drinking more from the stores in the cellar that was well stocked with mead and various wines.  It was fortunate that Simplicity had prepared enough pastries, pies, and quiches for one hundred people to give herself five days without having to cook over the new year festivities.  Marcella had of course known precisely how to serve the food without needing instructions from the incapacitated Simplicity.  

James and Laura had provided time for the recovery and given the mine seven days of paid time off expecting that the staff would be in a similar state to theirs that first week.  The next Monday James and Laura had completed all the end of year accounts before the mines were reopened for digging and refining work that was to begin in the partially constructed subterranean facilities.  The thirty percent of profits that were due to be turned over to Madam’s daughter, Pauline-Louise Gateaux Timmerman Von Saar, by a direct transfer to her Swiss account.  By the first Monday of work for the year the process was complete and Francine and Tara had only the current running of the firm to occupy themselves with.  

The expedient closing of the books for the previous year only made it easier for James to then fulfil his obligations to Deun.  Deun came to the estate to collect James from Laura’s arms for she need his company in her visit to the Vatican City Library and archives.  They still had to find the three remaining texts she had to collect and review before it became her task to instruct Corvus Newel.  She, Deun, had been appointed by the Fairy Queen to instruct the young liegeman in lore and legend as interpreted by modern as well as that of ancient human society and in lore as taught by the Fairies.  

Corvus was only a young boy but he was soon expected to surpass his young age with scholastic ability and to engage in college preparatory coursework before he reached age eight.  Deun was only one of many witches and Fairies that were involved in the accelerated training of Corvus the Liegeman to Lobina the Princess of Redwood and witch of the woods.  Freya the very tall Nordic Sylph that lived part of her time with Luna the Coveted in Pebble Beach was one of the first tutors that Corvus was instructed by.  Freya was visiting Corvus where he lived with his mother and Alda in Stinson Beach.  Timeous, the elderly wizard from the Silicon Valley who frequented Luna’s home as well, was occasionally also expected to instruct Corvus.  The involvement for Timeous began when he was only a toddler and was expected to take on a more pronounced role as Corvus became more involved with unmagical persons and the members of society that served them with magical services in his adolescence.

James departed for a three day visit to the Vatican in the dawn of the first Tuesday of the year.  James left wearing one of his best Linen suits with a matching cape cravat.  His exquisite attire was another gift by the tastes of Babs who despite her absence of self control had excellent tastes in fabric and colour.  Deun, who accompanied James, was surprisingly demure in her choice of apparel in which to call on the Vatican.  She wore a long and close fitting white dress with a high collar and lace fringing her shoulders and her broad hem that covered her black closed toe heeled shoes.  With it she wore a white broad brimmed hat with a black silk stripe and three white silk roses.  Over her linen dress Deun donned a three quarter length black wool cloak with a black silk lining visible within her hood and as she walked.
 
14

The Tuesday morning that Deun came to collect James to visit the Vatican she had spent the night sharing her deer Faun lover, Umbra, with Alda in the green house at Alda’s Stinson Beach home. She was fatigued from enjoying bursts of coitus with the Faun who had a particular fondness for sodomy to the delight of Alda.  Deun had been visiting Umbra in the forest for several months following her task to retrieve the Minotaur’s heart from Hedonabos, the cow girl.  Their affair went on unobserved until, one day he had run into Alda in the greenhouse where he had expected to meet Deun.  Deun had discovered the two rapturously engaged in sodomy over a garden bench beside the heater.  Ever since then, Umbra had been visiting them daily at Alda’s house during the night to have congress with Deun and to follow that with anal copulation with Alda.  She was still some what sore from having coupled for several hours.  Deun had some discomfort remaining from having permitted the deer Faun to indulge his fancy with her rear only once on the previous night.  Deun appeared at the garden of the Valley Mines Woodland Estate in her beautiful but demure white linen dress with black accents with a slight and nearly imperceptible waddling hesitation in her gait.  

Ms. Stowe, who was wilier and more observant took note of Deun’s uncharacteristic walk and suspected she knew the cause attributing it to horse riding.  Apart from Ms. Stowe, only James noticed Deun’s discomfort and invited her to rest in his study before they departed.  James brought her a large mug of consommé with two hunks of baguette spread with butter and a terrine of gelatinized salmon with a knife.  While she ate resting on the chaise langue with James at her feet, massaging them gently, Deun told James about her associations with Umbra the Faun. As James listened attentively, Deun filled in every detail of her night including watching Alda and Umbra entwined in between sessions.  James’s jaw hung partly open by the end of her tale as his eyes stared fixedly in wonder into Deun’s.  With a crackling of incredulity in his voice James asked her if she enjoyed the same fetish as Umbra, and he sighed heavily with relief when Deun responded in the negative.  

Once Deun had completed her account and cleared her dishes, James took them away from his room and deposited them in the dishwashing area of the large kitchen.  He returned to his chambers and selected an olive green suit in fine Linen with moss green trim, lining, handkerchief, cape, and a cravat.  James changed in his study where he conversed with Deun about their journey to the Vatican. Deun had made arrangements for their trip and Sister Marilyn was awaiting their arrival at the convent in Santa Cruz.  Sister Marilyn who was fluent in Italian and in several ancient dialects including Latin, Gaul, Briton, and Anatolian would accompany them.  She was the one who had asked Deun to please bring James along for her pleasure.  She had a familial link to James through his father’s maritime adventures with the U.S. Navy before he had met Queen Correnteza.  Sister Marilyn was his step sister’s godmother.  The nun was born to a mother originally from Sardinia.  Sister Marilyn had joined the Convent on the island of Capria in the Tuscan Archipelago when only an adolescent.  Some years later she had been awarded a significant post as Vatican liaison and administrator at the small convent in Santa Cruz, California.  

Once James was fully dressed with his pocket watch in his waist coat and his travel satchel discretely slung beneath his suit jacket and out of sight, he helped Deun to her feet and took her with him to the kitchen to notify Simplicity that he would be out for a few days.  Charmed by James and with lurid thoughts about the charms of the new grounds keeper fresh in her mind, Simplicity blushed a deep crimson in her pale, full complexion, and then curtsied with a deep bow hoping that James had not suspected her desires for both him and the young woodsman that had interviewed with Laura.  The young groundskeeper and forester was scheduled to move into a second floor being added over the West wing in two months.  The young chap was a strong and healthy twenty year old gardener from Poolebridge, Montana, with two years experience working as a volunteer with the Forest Service, and no formal education beyond his junior year in high school.  

Bo, as he called himself, had no degrees to prove his worth, but he knew the land and understood how plants and animals prospered on it, that was what made him so valuable to James and Laura.  The part native Indian boy had been raised from age four by his elderly Indian grandmother and learned his gardening trade with one of his uncles after school and in the summers.  In his package offered with his employment Bo received free room and board with a two room apartment much as Simplicity inhabited, a Land Rover to serve him on and off the job, an ATV to give him access to parts of the forest where the Land Rover was too large six sets of work clothes with boots gloves and hats, and an income comparable to Tara and Francine’s extravagant recompense.  Bo would be moving into the estate as soon as his chambers were completed, a change which Simplicity looked forward to with impatience.   Simplicity had a fantasy yet unknown to her of sharing quarters with Bo, but this would only develop some months after Bo had taken up his post and residence in the chambers with a view of the forest over which he had guardianship.  

James, impeccably attired, in the company of the equally well dressed Deun, set off for the garden and its time-space gap that led the couple to the little Carmelite Convent in the hills of Santa Cruz.  From what looked like a crack in a wall at the back of a narrow alley beside the nunnery, the couple emerged into the murk of the weed choked alley.  In less than twenty yards they reached the sidewalk and walked the short distance to the broad concrete steps that led up to the dramatic entry into the little convent.  Sister Marilyn, the fine boned, delicate, small blond with the grey wisps in her hair concealed by her wimple that accentuated her dark eyes, was in the reception hall already waiting for James and Deun with a small bag with her toiletries and a change of clothes.

It was still early when the three companions departed the convent after having exchanged greetings and farewells with several other nuns that had been conversing with Sister Marilyn in the high ceiling reception hall of the little convent.  The morning fog of coastal California still lay low and chill like the fine damp vale it resembled.  Distracted from the morning chill by amicable banter, they made their way slowly down the hill to the small and cosy café a few blocks away.  James purchased the three coffee drinks and joined the two dames at the modest Ash wood table and benches beneath the over hanging Eucalyptus tree at the corner of the garden sitting area.  For nearly an hour they sipped their coffee and enjoyed an assortment of warm scones, crumpets, and croissants accompanying the Latté, Mocha, and a Caramel Latté.  	

Once they were all fed the three headed back up the hill and past the convent and turned down the abandoned alley way just past the end of the convent.  In a few more paces they vanished into the time space gap.  No one noticed their disappearance except for a dirty little poodle that was relieving itself in a corner of the alley by the wall of a house next to the convent who began barking vociferously at the spot where they had vanished.  Disturbed by the barking, the neighbour opened a window from their kitchen and threw an old rusted wrench at the little dog and missed.  However, the little poodle did scamper off somewhat frightened still wondering what had happened to the three people and what he had missed. 

The journey took the three a considerable time longer than Deun had expected.  The sun was setting over Rome when they finally emerged from the passage through an apparently fine crack in the masonry work that made up the eastern wall of the head post office into the alley that was flanked on its opposite side by the Papal printing house.  Deun correctly attributed the length of their trip to a combination of reticence in James and of some degree of fear on the part of Sister Marilyn.  She would be retrieving archives from the secret archives hidden within the Vatican Palace that only authorized clergy and Fairies, unknown to the Vatican Guard, had access.  To the irritation of human security concerns, Fairies could access any high security area with no effort.  However, to the relief of the mischievous and secretive man kind, the Fairies could not be bothered to infiltrate their strongholds for nothing that they hide has any true value to either the Fairies or the people from which it is all hidden.  It was a simple fact that Fairies discovered several thousand years ago that mankind liked to keep secrets to massage their own egos and to make themselves feel important for having a worthless article hidden from the view of others.  

With a copy of Deun’s list of required books copied in sister Marilyn’s own handwriting, she left James and Deun to view the Musei del Vaticano while she reported at the offices of the citadel near the garage.  Once she had reported in she made her way to the office of the librarian inside the palace to turn in a copy of her letter of approval