Boston drew in her breath with excitement. Belden and Ms. Franklin did not know what this strange man might be talking about.

“Who?” Lockhart sounded curious.

“Lady Alice,” Glen said.

“Me?” Alice looked surprised, but Lockhart and Glen waved her off.

“I thought she was tied to Avalon,” Lockhart said.

“Not tied to Avalon exactly, but she is more contemporary than the Captain, in a way, and she is tied into the organic net. The change is not required, but in my brain, there would be some lag time in speaking, since the language would have to be filtered through my memory. She has direct access.” Lockhart shrugged. He did not quite follow that, but he smiled when Glen went away and Lady Alice stood in his place. Boston clapped. Ms. Franklin shrieked, but softly. Belden had his mouth open, and Alice shook her head.

“What?” Lady Alice asked her namesake in a voice as sweet as her looks, and Alice the lawyer thought this woman looked almost worse than the Princess. This one easily stood about five-ten with blond hair and medium, sort of light brown eyes that were piercing—not a description normally associated with brown eyes. What is more, that evening gown kind of a dress she wore showed off her slim body perfectly. Any supermodel would die to look like that, and it seemed that the dress itself enhanced this beauty’s movements in a way that appeared more than supermodel graceful. She might call it, sort of ballerina graceful, or even more graceful than that; and the woman looked very pale, like she never spent time in the sun. Lady Alice just finished kissing Lockhart gently on the forehead when Alice the lawyer wrote “Avalon” on her pad and spoke.

“So, you are, what? The Fairy Queen?” That summed things up nicely.

“No.” Alice of Avalon laughed a laugh as sweet as the rest of her and the other Alice thought this one is very different. She could see the Princess could be a great tease and that she had a bit of a bawdy side, but this one probably did not know what bawdy was. This one came across as totally innocent, like a perpetual virgin. What is more, the Princess had more, well, everything—the kind of sexy, attractive beauty that men might fight and even die for. This one seemed more the kind that could only be dreamed about and admired from afar.

“No?” Alice the lawyer found her handwriting fairy queen on her notepad and then felt amazed at what she heard.

“But I have perhaps been spending too much time with her of late. She is so enchanting and rather hard to resist.”

“Alice of Avalon lives in the real Wonderland.” Lockhart smiled and pointed at the Lady.

“Not exactly,” Lady Alice countered and she shook her finger at the man, like a schoolgirl might scold a little boy. “But near enough.” She dropped her hand, smiled that enchanting smile, and gave Lockhart another kiss on the head.

“Um.” Boston hardly knew what to say.

“Lovely to meet you, Boston, dear,” Alice said. “And Belden the brave, and Ms. Franklin too.”

The lawyer wrote on her pad, “and Toto too?” but Lady Alice had not finished.

“Now, I am sorry, but I am going to need some help with this work.” She held out her hand and a metallic circle appeared in her palm. Ms. Franklin held back the shriek this time, but Alice, the lawyer shrieked softly. She held the volume at bay by writing “magic” on her pad, though of course she had already seen the clothing and armor come and go.

Lady Alice stepped up to the window and picked up the microphone with one hand while she placed the circle against her throat with the other hand. She paused and coughed a sweet little cough to clear her throat, a sound so sweet, Alice the lawyer almost felt sickened from the sugar overdose. Then Lady Alice spoke in a deep male voice that sounded like gears grinding in a factory with some crashing of waves against rocks and jackhammers making those rocks into gravel. It sounded loud enough to make everyone cover their ears.

The Vordan immediately stood and answered in kind and he seemed willing to carry on a dialogue for a while, but soon enough, he shut his mouth and though Alice tried several more times, the Vordan clearly decided to say no more. Alice set down the microphone, backed up and sighed, and it came as such a pleasant sound after that cacophony of conversation, everyone sighed with her. Then she vanished. She took that little metal circle with her, and Glen returned.

“Not much information.” Glen said immediately, as if he conducted the interview himself, which Alice the lawyer was beginning to understand that in a sense he had. “This one is merely a soldier and I don’t think he knows anything, except this is not the place they had planned to come and he was not sure if his superiors know how to get home.”

“Great!” Lockhart threw his hands up, which said he thought it anything but great. “We may be stuck with them, and that could make them very dangerous. Don’t underestimate what desperation can do.”

“I need to check in and see what the lab has discovered about the equipment we captured.” Boston changed the subject. “We had better move fast on devising some countermeasures because it looks like we may have to defend ourselves again.” She smiled and kissed Lockhart on the head much as Lady Alice had done, and she patted him on the shoulder while she gave one, longing look at Glen like she did not want to miss anything, but she left.

“I need to arrange a trip to the White House in the morning, I guess.” Glen turned to Lockhart. “Would you mind helping with that, or do you have other duties?”

“Right now, you are my duty,” Lockhart responded. “And kid, when are you going to start telling rather than asking?”

“In my next life. No? Maybe the one after that.”

Alice looked up from her notes and picked them up along with her laptop. “I do need to start working on that treaty, though I don’t see how it will help.” The three of them left together as Belden turned to Ms. Franklin.

“I need a drink.”

~~~*~~~

Well into the night, things finally calmed down to the point where people thought of going home. Despite her prediction, Bobbi managed to wrap things up well enough by midnight so she could take a break for some sleep. The time got far too late to get rooms in town, so she brought Glen and Alice to the infirmary where there were beds, now that those in need had all made the trip to the hospital. They set up a partition to separate the boys from the girls. Glen, Lockhart, and Fyodor, who had a home but lived alone and so opted to stay with them, got one side. Alice, Boston and Bobbi took the other, and it looked like it might be a quiet night, until the women decided they wanted to talk. The men tried to ignore them, but the women did not talk long before Alice invaded the men’s side. She said she had too many questions to sleep, and Boston came because she did not want to miss any of the answers. Bobbi relented last of all and arrived to ask who brought the marshmallows.

“That is an interesting piece of clothing you have on.” Boston noticed. Glen wore what on a glance might have passed for a plain, white undershirt and boxers, but on closer examination, it had a sheen to it that no ordinary cloth would have. When the people brought clothes for them all to sleep in, and fresh clothes for the morning, Glen said, “Thank you, but I’ll just wear what I have.”

“Fairy weave.” Glen named the material. “It is what I wear under my armor and it is extremely light and comfortable, extremely tough and durable, and extremely versatile. I can change the color.” As he spoke, the fabric changed from white to blue to red and back to white again. “I can change the shape and make it appear thicker, more like real clothing.” The arms of his shirt lengthened to full length and his shirt took on a brown and fuzzy appearance, almost like a winter coat before it changed back to a white t-shirt. “It keeps me warm in winter, and acts like air conditioning in the summer, which is great when I’m in chain armor and leather and it is ninety or better outside, and humid.” Glen became introspective, but Alice was not about to leave him alone after that demonstration.

“Fairy weave,” she said. She had her steno pad with her. “You don’t mean real fairies, of course. After all that has happened today, that would just push credibility beyond the beyond. I’m assuming you mean some different sort of aliens, and that clothing is the result of some fantastic technology, no?” She looked around but no one said anything until Boston could not contain herself.

“I always dreamed of fairies when I was young. I wish I could see one someday.”

“Young?” Lockhart looked up from where he lounged in his bed. “You mean like last night?” At least Bobbi smiled. Boston appeared the youngster in the group. Glen imagined she could not have been over twenty-five.

“You know what I mean,” Boston whispered and stared at Lockhart, but that exchange got overshadowed by Alice’s outburst.

“You can’t be serious!”

“Can you think of anything that would mess up history quicker than a bunch of spiritual creatures running around loose in the world?” Bobbi offered the thought.

Glen protested quietly. “Hey! That’s my line.”

Bobbi turned to look at Glen. “As I understand it, he was given responsibility for what he calls his little ones when he was first born and he has had to bear that burden ever since.”

“I think after some six thousand years they have finally gotten the message, though,” Glen added. “They have no business interfering or even making remote connections with the human world. I had a few on my crew when I was a Privateer in the West Indies some years back, but really, in the past few hundred years it has only been incidental contacts.”

“Incidental?” Fyodor spoke for the first time.

“Apart from Lincoln’s wife,” Lockhart said, and to Alice he explained in a secretive whisper. “She’s an elf.”

“Was,” Bobbi corrected the man. “But she has been gone for a whole year now. I meant to ask, but with all that has been going on, it slipped my mind.”

Glen looked up at the ceiling, like he did on the plane at one point. It seemed as if he looked for something that only he could see. “The transformation on Alexis was very thorough, unlike Mirowen, not Doctor Robert’s Mirowen—she’s an elf, too—but you did not know the other Mirowen. Sorry. I’m not getting anything about where Alexis might be.”

“Lincoln spent a lot of time looking for her,” Bobbi said. “Maybe that was why the Vordan picked him up so easily.”

“Topic, people,” Alice interrupted, loudly. “We are getting off topic. I want to hear about the fairies.”

“Why are you surprised?” Fyodor asked.

Alice shook her head. “I don’t know anymore,” she said, flatly.

“Maybe a story would help,” Glen suggested, and the others were agreeable. “I would think with this campout, though, wouldn’t you all rather hear a ghost story?”

“No!” Bobbi, Lockhart and Fyodor all shouted in unison. Boston and Alice just looked at each other with yet more questions.

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MONDAY

Pumpkin Seeds, the seeds of love and revenge. Merry Christmas and Happy Reading

 

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