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“I’m sorry, Mr. Fifi,” howled over the grassy hill. “I didn’t mean to!”

The chattering birds and rushing grass all drowned in the tide of this one small child’s sobbing, carrying over the pastures that surrounded Fenrir’s family estate.

Shit, shit, shit.

Orpheus looked around like help was anywhere to be found. Down at the base of the hill, the old bank barn stood tall and empty. The green painted metal roof glinted brightly in the late afternoon light, setting-off the tawny creams and grays of the fieldstone masonry that supported its gables. Three stories of soaring white pine framing held aloft enough space for a nest of dragons, but instead, the barn housed the whole of Fenrir’s extended family. Each of his three sisters and two brothers and their entire brood of children.

Two of which had been left in his care for some hells-forsaken reason.

“Astrid, you okay?” Roland’s shadow fell first across the ruined board, then Orpheus. Astrid wailed again before Orpheus could tell him to fuck off.

Roland’s stare held daggers. He was only a handful of years older than Astrid, but in that moment, the bow of his mouth reminded Orpheus of Fenrir, age be damned.

“What did you do?” curdled in the afternoon heat.

“Me?” Orpheus snapped before he could stop himself. “She ruined my sign!”

Roland sneered. “She’s six.”

“It’s important!”

Between them, the white-washed board sat solemnly in the sun, bits of grass sticking to paint turned tacky, just enough of Orpheus’ bold lettering remaining legible. Roland stared down at it, frown deepening.

Orpheus felt heat rise to his face at the exact moment Roland read, “Toilets?”

He didn’t snarl. He didn’t snap. He grabbed his board, swept to his feet, spun towards the barn-turned-homestead and stalked.

Grass crunched under his feet in a solid rhythm, the pants he wore uncomfortable against his legs, the collar of his shirt coarse. Orpheus missed his robes for the half-second he allowed himself to remember them, shoving the impression of wrongness away alongside the sound of Astrid’s wet sniffles drifting down the hillside behind him.

He didn’t have time to worry about some silly kids. He certainly didn’t have time to miss the years of power and authority he’d lost to a mundane, average man’s existence. Orpheus of yesteryear had worn the decadent robes worthy of his station. Mr. Fifi wore tall boots and brown linen trousers and a hand-spun cotton shirt too large for his bony shoulders.

Wrong. It was all wrong. Why—now that everything was finally right—did it have to feel so wrong?

At the bottom of the hill, his path deposited him in the courtyard of the barn’s half-buried foundation, horse stables angled into the hillside so the barn’s shadow protected them during the hottest part of the day. Grass sprouted in tufts between pavers that had been laid hundreds of years before, thriving under the dappled canopy of an enormous red oak. Where the light didn’t reach, the fieldstone tinted an earthy green, the scent of leather and oil and animal strong in the air.

Like something out of a storybook, Orpheus had told himself when he and Fenrir had arrived two weeks ago. Now it felt more like a nightmare.

Not far behind, Astrid continued to cry, voice rolling down the hill like the wind itself. Orpheus ignored her and stood in the shadowy courtyard, staring out over the hillside that comprised the Rawkner family farm.

Cows grazed in the nearest pasture, the lone alpaca guarding a family of goats playing in their own private paddock along the old creek. It wasn’t feeding time yet, but it was close, so surely someone should be home by now. Unless they expected him to muck stalls and tend their livestock too? Orpheus snorted. He may have lost everything else, but he hadn’t lost his dignity.

This early in spring, the air was cool, but the sun was hot, summer a blister that had only begun to sting. The change felt more acute than ever, now that his veins were no longer filled with ice.

Now that he knew, for certain, his magic was never coming back.

And that’s okay, his mind reminded him, because look what it’s gotten me.

A future. Possibly, a family.

Mostly, his life.

As if summoned by sheer force of will alone, a mechanical chugging rose with the wind. Orpheus saw the belch of exhaust before he did the tractor. Certainly, before he saw the wagon full of people it hauled.

Orpheus cut through the shaded courtyard, past the stables to another steep incline. Stairs carved from the same fieldstone the barn was made from were embedded into the embankment where an ancient retaining wall had long crumbled. Orpheus took them by twos, reaching the top of the staircase at the precise moment the tractor trundled into view, paint dulled by the clouds of dust it kicked up, framed by the verdant hues of fields sprouting with their springtime harvest.

According to Fenrir’s family, this crop was early.

According to Red’s almanac, it was right on time.