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“What?” Lila squawked.
“It never hurts to be prepared,” I told her.
Greenie sniffed at the paper, then lowered his head to look at the girl.
She stood completely still, wide eyes tracking Greenie’s movements.
“This is Greenie,” I said, patting his side. “Greenie, this is Lila. We do not eat Lila, either. Unless she’s mean to us.”
Lila gave me a panicked glance, but I just smiled serenely. It was good to establish some ground rules.
Greenie finished his inspection of the kid, then went back to looking at me expectantly. He was fully aware that me calling on him often meant chaos and mayhem—his favorite hobby.
“We’re going on a tracking adventure,” I said.
Lifting Lila—and good lord, kids weighed a lot more than they looked—I helped her onto Greenie, then used my chair to get onto his back behind her.
Greenie huffed, annoyed that he’d been denied his favorite game of watching me try to get onto his back by myself, then trotted toward the wall. The pool of goo had already formed, waiting for our passage.
“Try to imagine the last place you saw Squibbit,” I told Lila. “See it in your mind, then concentrate on passing it to Greenie. He’ll do the rest.” Or at least, I hoped so. That was how it usually worked between us. Just in case, I concentrated on Greenie, mentally telling him to go wherever the girl was trying to communicate.
It seemed to work because Greenie suddenly jumped forward into the wall, and then we were bouncing through the ley lines running right under the Hub.
Ley lines were corridors of concentrated magic crossing under the surface and Greenie’s preferred way of fast traveling. After several minutes of running across the watery surface coating the tunnel, Greenie jumped into another pool of goo and took us into Fae proper.
As usual, the sight stole my breath away. We had landed in a small clearing inside a vibrant-green forest, allowing us a view of the ceiling far, far above us, completely covered by orange and green trees growing upside down. A soft ambient light gave everything the hue of a cozy late-evening sun, which meant we were on the edge of a Fae lord’s or lady’s domain.
Faerie didn’t have sun and night cycles like the surface. Fae lords and their mansions produced the light illuminating their domain, and anything else was perennially drenched in complete darkness.
Lila mumbled something and tried to get off Greenie, nearly pitching forward face-first. I grabbed her at the last second, and Greenie helped by planting his butt on the floor and almost sending me rolling down his back.
“Thanks, Greenie,” I muttered ungraciously as I dragged the Fae child off his back.
Greenie answered with a wag of his bushy—literally—green tail and a huff of doggy laughter.
I laid Lila on the floor and waited for her wits to gather. Full Fae had trouble traveling through the ley lines unprotected—something about the purity of magic was too much for their systems, leaving them confused and kind of drunk.
While I waited for the poor kid to return to her normal precociousness, I took a better look at our surroundings. The opening was wide and clear of stumps, the ground covered with a soft layer of grass and tiny wildflowers. I went to pick one up, but then thought better of it. Given my luck, it’d probably be spelled with something like pick a flower, lose a finger.
“What do you think, Greenie? Smell another Fae creature?”
Greenie thumped his tail some more. A butterfly flitted past and alighted on his nose, making the scene picture-perfe—
His tongue shot up, grabbed the butterfly, and stuffed it into his mouth. He grinned in happiness, showing me all his teeth.
Moving on.
Lila mumbled some Fae words and tried to stand. I gave her a hand, and soon she was stumbling around, trying to get her bearings.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “I should’ve warned you. Is this where you usually met Squibbit?”
She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, rubbed her eyes, then nodded solemnly.
“She usually comes here.” She pointed at a small bush on the first line of trees. “Hops out of the bush and scurries up the tree.”
We both followed the tree trunk up to the canopy.
“Squibbit!” Lila shouted. “Are you there?”
