It was day - what the heck was going on?
Gary felt the grass under his cheek. At first, he thought he had simply fallen asleep, and he was drowsy still, lying there so very comfortably. Then Gary remembered again the sprite archer and the dance of the fairies, and his eyes popped open wide. It took considerable effort to lift his head and prop himself up on his elbows; the poison, or whatever it was, weighed heavily in his limbs. But he managed it, and he looked around, and then he became even more confused.
He was still in the blueberry patch; all the trees and bushes and paths were in the places he remembered them. They were somehow not the same, though - Gary knew that instinctively. It took him a moment to figure out exactly what was different, but once he recognized it clearly, there could be no doubt.
The colors were different.
The trees were brown and green, the grass and moss were green, and the dirt trail a grayish brown, but they were not the browns, greens, and grays of Gary's world. There was a luster to the colors, an inner vibrancy and richness beyond anything Gary had seen. He couldn't even begin to explain it to himself; the view was too vivid to be real, like some forest rendition by a surrealistic painter, a primordial viewpoint of a world undulled by reality and human pollution.
Another shock greeted Gary when he turned his attention away from his immediate surroundings and looked out over the ridge, at the landscape beyond the school that had stolen his favorite valley. He saw no houses - he was sure that he had seen houses from this point before - but only distant, towering mountains.
"Where did those come from?" Gary asked under his breath. He was still a bit disoriented, he decided, and he told himself that he had never really looked out over that ridge before, never allowed himself to register the magnificent sight. Of course the mountains had always been there, Gary had just never noticed how large and truly spectacular they were.
At the snap of a twig, Gary turned to look over his shoulder. There stood the sprite, half a foot tall, paying him little heed and leaning casually on its longbow. "What are you?" Gary asked, too confused to question his sanity.
The diminutive creature made no move to respond; gave no indication that it had heard the question at all.
"What...," Gary started to ask again, but he changed his mind. What indeed was this creature, and this dream? For it had to be a dream, Gary rationally told himself, as any respectable, intelligent person awaiting the dawn of the twenty-first century would tell himself.
It didn't feel like one, though. There were too many real sounds and colors, no single-purposed visions common to nightmares. Gary was cognizant of his surroundings, could turn in any direction and see the forest clearly. And he had never experienced a dream, or even heard of anyone else experiencing a dream, where he consciously knew that he was dreaming.
"Time to find out," he muttered under his breath. He had always thought himself pretty quick-handed, had even done some boxing in high school. His lunge at the sprite was pitifully slow, though; the creature was gone before he ever got near the spot. He followed the rustle stubbornly, pouncing on any noise, sweeping areas of dead leaves and low berry bushes with his arms.
"Ow!" he cried, feeling a pinprick in his backside. He spun about. The sprite was a few feet behind him - he had no idea how the stupid thing got there - holding its bow and actually laughing at him!
Gary turned slowly, never letting the creature out of his glowering stare. He leaned forward, his muscles tensed for a spring that would put him beyond the creature, cut off its expected escape route.
Then Gary fell back on his elbows, eyes wide in heightened disbelief, as a second creature joined the first, this one taller, at least two feet from toes to top, and this one, Gary recognized.
Gary was not of Irish decent, but that hardly mattered. He had seen this creature pictured a thousand times, and he marveled now at the accuracy of those images. The creature wore a beard, light brown, like its curly hair. Its overcoat was gray, like its sparkling, mischievous eyes, and its breeches green, with shiny black, curly-toed shoes. If the long-stemmed pipe in its mouth wasn't a dead giveaway, the tam-o'-shanter on its head certainly was.
"So call it a dream, then," the creature said to him, "and be satisfied with that. It do' not matter." Gary watched, stunned, as this newest sprite, this leprechaun - this frickenleprechaun! - walked over to the archer.
"He's a big one," the leprechaun said. "I say, will he fit?"
The archer chirped out something too squeaky for Gary to understand, but the leprechaun seemed appeased.
"For yer troubles, then," the leprechaun said, and he handed over a four-leaf clover, the apparent payment for delivering Gary.
The pixie archer bowed low in appreciation, cast a derisive chuckle Gary's way, and then was gone, disappearing into the underbrush too quickly and completely for Gary to even visually follow its movements.
"Mickey McMickey at yer service," the leprechaun said politely, dipping into a low bow and tipping his tam-o'-shanter.
Oh my God.
The leprechaun, having completed its greeting, waited patiently.
"If you're really at my service," Gary stuttered, startled even by the sound of his own voice, "then you'll answer a few questions. Like, what the hell is going on?"
"Don't ye ask," Mickey advised. "Ye'd not be satisfied in hearing me answers. Not yet. But in time ye'll come to understand it all. Know now that ye're here for a service, and when ye're done with it, ye can return to yer own place."
"So I'm at your service," Gary reasoned. "And not the other way around."
Mickey scratched at his finely trimmed beard. "Not in service for me," he answered after some thought. "Though yer being here does do me a service, if ye follow me thinking. Ye're in service to an elf."
"The little guy?" Gary asked, pointing to the brush where the sprite had disappeared.
"Not a pixie," Mickey replied. "An elf. Tylwyth Teg." He paused, as if those strange words should mean something to Gary. With no response beyond a confused stare forthcoming, Mickey went on, somewhat exasperated.
"Tylwyth Teg," he said again. "The Fair Family. Ye've not heard o' them?"
Gary shook his head, his mouth hanging open.
"Sad times ye're living in, ye poor lad," Mickey mumbled. He shrugged helplessly, a twittering, jerky movement for a creature as small as he, and finished his explanation. "These elfs are named the Tylwyth Teg, the Fair Family. To be sure, they're the noblest race of the faerie folk, though a bit unbending to the ways of others. A great elf, too, this one ye'll soon be meeting, and one not for taking lightly. 'Twas him that catched me, ye see, and made me catch yerself."
"Why me?" Gary wondered why he'd asked that, why he was talking to this... whatever it was... at all. Would Alan Funt soon leap out at him, laughing and pointing to that elusive camera?
"Because ye'll fit the armor," Mickey said as though the whole thing should make perfect sense. "The pixies took yer measures and say ye'll fit. As good yerself as another, that being the only requirement." Mickey paused a moment, staring reflectively into Gary's eyes.
"Green eyes?" the leprechaun remarked. "Ah, so were Cedric's. A good sign!"
Gary's nod showed that he accepted, but certainly did not understand, what Mickey was saying. It really wasn't a big problem for Gary at that moment, though, for all that he could do was go along with these thoroughly unbelievable events and thoroughly unbelievable creatures. If he was dreaming, then fine; it might be enjoyable. And if not... well, Gary decided not to think about that possibility just then.
What Gary did think about was his knowledge of leprechauns and the legends surrounding them. He knew the reward for catching a leprechaun and, dream or not, it sounded like a fun course to take. He reached a hand up behind his head, feigning an itch, then dove headlong at Mickey and came up clutching the little guy.
"There," Gary declared triumphantly. "I've caught you and you have to lead me to your pot of gold! I know the rules, Mr. Mickey McMickey."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk," he heard from the side. He turned to see Mickey leaning casually against a tree stump, holding Gary's book,The Hobbit, open before him. Gary turned slowly back to his catch and saw that he held Mickey in his own two hands. "Sonofabitch," Gary mumbled under his breath, for this was a bit too confusing.
"If ye know the rules, ye should know the game," Mickey - the Mickey leaning against the tree - said in response to Gary's blank stare.
"How?" Gary stuttered.
"Look closer, lad," Mickey said to him. "Then let go of the mushroom before ye get yer hands all dirty."
Gary studied his catch carefully. It remained a leprechaun as far as he could tell, though it didn't seem to be moving very much - not at all, actually. He looked back to the leaning leprechaun and shrugged.
"Closer," Mickey implored.
Gary eyed the figure a moment longer. Gradually the image transformed and he realized that he was indeed holding a large and dirty mushroom. He shook his head in disbelief and dropped it to the ground, then noticedThe Hobbit lying at his feet, right where he had left it. He looked back to Mickey by the tree trunk, now a mushroom again, and then back to the dropped mushroom, now a leprechaun brushing himself off.
"Ye think it to be an easy thing, catching a leprechaun?" Mickey asked him sourly. "Well, if it was, do ye think any of us'd have any gold left to give out?" He walked right next to Gary to scoop up the strange book. Gary had a thought about grabbing him again, this time to hold on, but the leprechaun acted first.
"Don't ye be reaching yer hands at me," Mickey ordered. "'Twas me that catched yerself, remember? And besides, grabbing at the likes o' Mickey McMickey, ye just don't know what ye might put them hands in! Been fooling stupid big folk longer than ye've been alive, I tell ye! I telled ye once... what did ye say yer name was?... don't ye make me tell ye again!"
"Gary," Gary answered, straightening up and taking a prudent step away from the unpredictable sprite. "Gary Leger."
"Well met, then, Gary Leger," Mickey said absently. His thoughts now seemed to be fully on the book's cover, "Bilbo comes to the huts of the raft elfs," an original painting by Tolkien himself. Mickey nodded his approval, then opened the work. His face crinkled immediately and he mumbled a few words under his breath and waved a hand across the open page.
"Much the better," he said.
"What are you doing to my book?" Gary protested, leaning down to take it back. Just before he reached it, though, he realized that he was putting his hand into the fanged maw of some horrid, demonic thing, and he recoiled immediately, nearly falling over backwards.
"Never know what ye might put yer hands into," Mickey said again absently, not bothering to look up at the startled man. "And really, Gary Leger, ye must learn to see more the clearly if we mean to finish this quest. Ye can't go playing with dragons if ye can't look through a simple illusion. Come along, then." And Mickey started off, reading as he walked.
"Dragons?" Gary muttered at the leprechaun's back, drawing no response. "Dragons?" Gary asked again, this time to himself. Really, he told himself, he shouldn't be so surprised.
The fire road, too, was as Gary remembered it, except, of course, for the colors, which continued with their surrealistic vibrancy. As they moved along the path towards the main road, though, Gary thought that the woods seemed denser. On the way in, he had seen houses from this point, the new constructions he always tried not to notice. Now he wanted to see them, wanted to find some sense of normalcy in this crazy situation, but try as he may, his gaze could not penetrate the tangle of leaves and branches.