The three unlikely companions - leprechaun, elf, and dwarf - crouched behind a vine-covered fence, watching the ranks of soldiers gathering to the south. Five thousand men were in the field, by their estimate, with hundreds more coming in every day. Infantry and cavalry, and all with helms and shields and bristling weapons.
"Kinnemore's to march again," said Mickey McMickey, the leprechaun, twirling his tam-o'-shanter absently on one finger. Only two feet tall, Mickey didn't need to crouch at all behind the brush, and with his magical pot of gold safely in hand (or in pocket), the tricky sprite hardly gave a care for the clumsy chase any of the human soldiers might give him.
"Suren it's all getting tired," Mickey lamented. He reached into his overcoat, gray like his mischievous eyes, and produced a long-stemmed pipe, which magically lit as he moved it towards his waiting mouth. He used the pipe's end to brush away straggly hairs of his brown beard, for he hadn't found the time to trim the thing in more than three weeks.
"Stupid Gary Leger," remarked the sturdy and grumpy Geno Hammerthrower, kicking at the brush - and inadvertently snapping one of the fence's cross-poles. The dwarf was the finest smithy in all the land, a fact that had landed him on this seemingly unending adventure in the first place. He had accompanied Kelsey the elf's party to the dragon's lair to reforge the ancient spear of Cedric Donigarten, but only because Kelsey had captured him, and in Faerie the rules of indenture were unbending. Despite those rules, and the potential loss of reputation, if Geno had known then the ramifications of the elf's quest, from freeing the dragon to beginning yet another war, he wouldn't have gone along at all. "Stupid Gary Leger," the dwarf grumped again. "He had to go and let the witch out of her hole."
"Ceridwen's not free yet," Kelsey, tallest of the group - nearly as tall as a man - corrected. Geno had to squint as he regarded the crouching elf, the morning sun blinding him as if reflected off. Kelsey's lustrous and long golden hair. The elf's eyes, too, shone golden, dots of sunlight in an undeniably handsome and angular face.
"But she's soon to be free," Geno argued - too loudly, he realized when both his companions turned nervous expressions upon him. "And so she is setting the events in motion. Ceridwen will have Dilnamarra, and likely Braemar and Drochit as well, in her grasp before she ever steps off her stupid island!"
Kelsey started to reply, but paused and stared hard and long at the dwarf. Unlike most others of his mountain race, Geno wore no beard, and with a missing tooth and the clearest of blue eyes, the dwarf resembled a mischievous youngster when he smiled - albeit a mischievous child bodybuilder! Kelsey was going to make some determined statement about how they would fight together and drive Kinnemore, Ceridwen's puppet King, and his army back into Connacht, but the elf couldn't find the words. Geno was likely right, he knew. They had killed Robert the dragon, the offsetting evil to Ceridwen, and with Robert out of the way, the witch would waste little time in bringing all of Faerie under her darkness.
At least, all of Faerie's human folk. Kelsey's jaw did firm up when he thought of Tir na n'Og, his sylvan forest home. Ceridwen would not conquer Tir na n'Og!
Nor would she likely get into the great Dvergamal Mountains after Geno's sturdy folk. The dwarfish Buldre- folk were more than settlers in the mountains. They were a part of Dvergamal, in perfect harmony with the mighty range, and the very mountains worked to the call of the Buldrefolk. If Ceridwen's army went after the dwarfs, their losses would surely be staggering.
And so Faerie would be as it had once been, Kelsey had come to believe. All the humans would fall under the darkness, while the dwarfs and elfs, the Buldrefolk of Dvergamal and the Tylwyth Teg of Tir na n'Og, fought their stubborn and unending resistance. After quietly reminding himself of the expected future, the elf's visage softened as he continued to stare Geno's way. They would be allies, like it or not (and neither the dwarfs nor the elfs would like it much, Kelsey knew!).
A horn blew in the distant field, turning the three companions back to the south. A force of riders, fully armored knights, charged down onto the field on armored warhorses, led by a lean man in a worn and weathered gray cloak.
"Prince Geldion," Mickey remarked sourly. "Now I've not a doubt. They'll start for Dilnamarra all too soon, perhaps this very day. We should be going, then," he said to Kelsey. "To warn fat Baron Pwyll so that he might at least be ready to properly greet his guests."
Kelsey nodded gravely. It was their responsibility to warn Baron Pwyll, for whatever good that might do. Pwyll could not muster one-tenth the force of Connacht, and this army was superbly trained and equipped. By all measures of military logic, the Connacht army could easily overrun Dilnamarra, probably in a matter of a few hours. Kelsey's allies had one thing going for them, though, a lie that had been fostered in rugged Dvergamal. After the defeat of the dragon, Gary Leger had returned to his own world, and so the companions had given credit for the kill to Baron Pwyll. It was a calculated and purposeful untruth, designed to heighten Pwyll's status as a leader among the resistance to Connacht.
Apparently the lie had worked, for the people of Dilnamarra had flocked about their heroic Baron, promising fealty unto death. Connacht's army was larger, better trained, and better armed, but the King's soldiers would not fight with the heart and ferocity of Baron Pwyll's people, would not hold the sincere conviction that their cause was just. Still, Kelsey knew that Dilnamarra could not win out; the elf only hoped that they might wound Connacht's army enough so that the elves of Tir na n'Og could hold the line on their precious forest borders.
"And what of you?" Kelsey asked Geno, for the dwarf had made it clear that he would soon depart when this scouting mission was completed.
"I will go back with you as far as the east road, then I'm off to Braemar," Geno answered, referring to the fair- sized town to the north and east, under the shadows of mighty Dvergamal. "Gerbil and some of his gnomish kin are waiting for me there. We'll tell the folk of Braemar, and go on to Drochit, then into the mountains, me to my kin at the Firth of Buldre and Gerbil to his in Gondabuggan."
"And all the land will know of Ceridwen's coming," Kelsey put in.
"For what good it will do all the land," Mickey added dryly.
"Stupid Gary Leger," said Geno.
"Are ye really to blame him?" Mickey had to ask. Geno had always remained gruff (one couldn't really expect anything else from a dwarf), but over the course of their two adventures, it seemed to Mickey that the dwarf had taken a liking to Gary Leger.
Geno thought over the question for a moment, then simply answered, "He let her out."
"He did as he thought best," Kelsey put in sternly, rising to Gary's defense. "The dragon was free on the wing, if you remember, and so Gary thought it best to shorten Cerid-wen's banishment - a banishment that Gary Leger alone had imposed upon her by defeating her," he pointedly added, staring hard Geno's way. "I'll not begrudge him his decision."
Geno nodded, and his anger seemed to melt away. "And it was Gary Leger who killed the dragon," the dwarf admitted. "As was best for the land."
Kelsey nodded, and the issue seemed settled. But was it best for the land? the elf silently wondered. Kelsey certainly didn't blame Gary for the unfolding events, but were the results of Gary's choices truly the better? Kelsey looked back to the field and the swelling ranks of Ceridwen's mighty hand, an evil hand hidden behind the guise of Faerie's rightful King. Would it have been better to fight valiantly against the obvious awfulness of Robert the dragon, or to lose against the insidious encroachment of that wretched witch?
Given the elf's bleak predictions for Faerie's immediate future, the question seemed moot.
Gary's first steps off the end of Florence Street were tentative, steeped in very real fears. He had grown up here; looking back over his shoulder, he could see the bushes in front of his mother's house (just his mother's house, now) only a hundred or so yards and five small house lots away.
The paved section of Florence Street was longer now. Another house had been tagged on the end of the road, encroaching into Gary's precious woods. He took a deep breath and looked away from this newest intruder, then stubbornly moved down the dirt fire road.
Just past the end of the back yard of that new house, Gary turned left, along a second fire road, one that soon became a narrow and overgrown path.
A fence blocked his way; unseen dogs began to bark.
Somewhere in the trees up above, a squirrel hopped along its nervous way, and the lone creature seemed to Gary the last remnant of what had been, and what would never be again.
He grabbed hard against the unyielding chain links of the fence, squeezing futilely until his fingers ached. He thought of climbing over, but those dogs seemed quite near. The prospect of getting caught on the wrong side of a six-foot fence with angry dogs nipping at his heels was not so appealing, so he gave the fence one last shake and moved back out to the main fire road, turned left and walked deeper into the woods.
Hardly twenty steps farther and Gary stopped again, staring blankly to the open fields on his right, beyond the chain-link fence of the cemetery.
Open fields!
This fence had been here long before Gary, but the area inside it, these farthest reaches of the cemetery, had been thickly wooded with pine and maple, and full of brush as tall as a ten-year-old. Now it was just a field, a huge open field, fast filling with grave markers. It seemed a foreign place to Gary; it took him a long time to sort out the previous boundaries of the cleared regions. He finally spotted the field where he and his friends had played football and baseball, a flat rectangular space, once free of graves and lined by trees. Now it was lined by narrow roads and open fields, and rows of stone markers stood silent and solemn within its sacred boundaries. Of course, Gary had seen this change from the cemetery's other end, the higher ground up near the road, where the older family graves were located.
Where his father was buried.
He had seen how the cemetery had grown from that distant perspective, but he hadn't realized the impact. Not until now, standing in the woods out back. Now Gary understood what had been lost to the dead. He looked at the playing field of his youth, and saw the marker of his future.
Breathing hard, Gary pushed deeper into the woods, and could soon see the back of the auto body shop on the street that marked the eastern end of the trees. Somewhat surprised, Gary looked back to the west, towards Florence Street. He could see the light-shingled roof of the new house! And he could see the auto body shop! And across the open cemetery, across the silent graves, he could see the tops of the cars moving along the main road.
Where had his precious woods out back gone? Where were the thick and dark trees of Gary Leger's childhood eye? He remembered the first time he had walked all the way through these woods, from Florence Street to the auto body shop. How proud he had been to have braved that wilderness trek!
But now. If he and Diane had kids, Gary wouldn't even bother taking them here.
He cut left again, off the fire road and into the uncleared woods, determined to get away from this openness, determined to put all signs of the civilized world behind him. Up a hill, he encountered that stubborn chain- link fence again, but at least this time, no dogs were barking.
Over the fence Gary went, and across the brush, growling in defiance, ready to pound any dog that stood to block him. He was in the back lot of the state-run swimming pool, another unwanted encroachment, but at least this section of land hadn't been cleared. Beyond this stretch, Gary came into the blueberry patch, and he breathed a sincere sigh of relief to see that this magical place still existed, though with the trees thinned by the season, he could see yet another new house to the west, on the end of the street running perpendicular off the end of Florence Street. That road, too, had been extended - quite far, apparently. Now Gary understood where the dogs were kept chained, and predictably, they took to barking again.
Gary rubbed a hand over his face and moved across the blueberry patch, to the top of the mossy banking that settled in what was still the deepest section of the diminishing wood. Here, he had first met the sprite sent by Mickey McMickey, the pixie who had led him to the dancing fairy ring that had sent him into the magical land.
He moved down the steep side, out of sight of anything but trees, and removed his small pack, propping it against the mossy banking as a pillow.
He stayed for hours, long after the sun had gone down and the autumn night chilled his bones. He called softly, and often, for Mickey, pleading with the leprechaun to come and take him from this place.
No sprites appeared, though, and Gary knew that none would. The magic was gone from here, lost like the playing field of his youth, dead under the markers of chain-link fences and cement foundations.