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We watched them go, both of us staring at the dun-brown and creamy white tail sticking out from a split seam in Pops’ pants.

“You know. Sometimes, just for a single sliver of a second, I forget where we are. Maybe we just popped out for a little camping excursion and got wasted on mushrooms. And then shit like this happens,” I whispered to the living bush at my side.

“I thought you talked a lot. That Fae is ninety percent mouth and two percent sense.” Green Man said to the backs of the retreating crowd.

“What’s the other eight percent?”

“Bullshit. Pure, unmitigated, unadulterated, absolute batshit bullshit.”

I snorted. “Get in loser, we’re going shopping.”

Green Man lofted a bushy ivy brow and looked around in confusion. “Get in what?”

I rolled my eyes. “C’mon, my shrubby friend, we’ve got a merchant to see to.”

“But what am I getting into?”

“Definitely not Harvard.”

“What’s a Harvard?” He trotted after me.

“I forget that you’ve been in this shithole for a very long time.”

Pops had laid an enormous carpet out on the ground and was humming to himself as he pulled bauble after bauble out of the leather satchel that had been at his hip. The bag was no larger than a backpack, but the items he pulled from its depths seemed never-ending. Pots, pans, books, a bow and one solitary arrow, a whole array of knives from cooking to stabbing, fabric on long bolts, ribbons of every color imaginable. If it could fit on the carpet and through the mouth of the satchel, it was manifested.

“So Travers was definitely a Fae,” I grumbled, watching Pops settle the last of his wares on the carpet.

“You know Pamela? I just saw her a few tides ago. How did the two of you meet?”

“Who?”

“Pamela Travers?”

“Who?”

“Are you crafted after a particularly ornamental breed of owl perhaps?” Pops frowned and stroked a moss beard into existence as he stared at me. “It matters not. What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t.”

Cora and Rook watched the exchange quietly as the other humans looked through the strange Fae’s wares.

Pops laughed. The sound was a spring stream running over jagged rocks, rough but not unwholesome. “I very much like you! It’s very nice to meet you. I am The Wandering Hart. Cora and her ilk just call me Pops though.”

“Cuz he just pops up,” one of the children offered. Pops cast a doting eye down on him and ruffled his hair, laying a hand on his shoulder when he was done. The strange ripple of soft possessiveness as Pops watched the young boy caught my attention. Pops, oblivious to the way I was interrogating every breath he took, whipped a piece of yellow candy from his satchel and presented it to the child with a flourish.

“Shhh, don’t tell anyone. Just because you’re my favorite.” Pops’ eye stayed on the young boy as he ran off and immediately told all of his friends that Pops had given him a piece of candy. Pops leaned back and laughed with his full belly before letting it fall off into a warm apple cider in winter smile he gave me. “May I ask for your name?”

“I Don’t Know.”

“How can you not know your name?” Pops tilted his head left to right and the butterflies danced around him before setting down on the mushrooms. “Were you harmed?”

“No more so than is normal for this place.”

“Ah, you don’t trust me.” He looked to Cora. “She has not decided?”

“Not yet, Pops. They just got here.”

Pops turned his head back to me and scratched his shaggy, brown hair with a chipped green nail. “In time, then.”