joegoda | The Kansas Incident.

16084 / 50000 words. 32% done!

There was a set of wooden French doors leading from the kitchen to the back porch. Before I followed Christie through them, I got a glimpse of the bedroom that was just off of the kitchen. Not much of a glimpse, because I tend to think that most folks' bedrooms are a bit sacred. Maybe it's just a weird thing in my head, I don't know.

The bedroom, what little I saw, was a tiny affair, done in the style of quilt. There were pictures on the wall, might have been family, might have been friends, and an old, old, four-poster bed with a massive patchwork quilt on it. That was all I saw. That was all I choose to see. It reminded me of childhood, seeing the dark wood and the pictures and the faint smell of mothballs and all the quilts. Maybe that was all it was supposed to do.

There was a simple two-step affair from the back door to the porch and I helped her up it, even though she certainly didn't seem to need it. Christie's back porch was a massive wrap around affair. The porch didn't wrap around the house. No, it wrapped around the backyard. The entire back yard, probably the size of half of a football field, was enclosed in a walkway made of redwood and railings, nails and bolt heads. There were benches set along the railing every five feet or so, and little round wooden tables placed near the benches. It was a place to come and think, to sit and reflect.

The yard itself was a whole other world entirely. There were a few trees and their leaves fluttered green and gold and blue and red and orange. This was a meditative garden, and I could see stone pathways carving their winding way through the amazing colors and shapes and golden globes and flittering butterflies and... and... It looked like something out of the back of Better Homes and Gardens, if that magazine had been written by a wizard with a flair towards the romantic.

From what I could see, there were small areas enclosed by pathways, places where who knows what grew. I opened my Sight and wasn't exactly floored, but certainly impressed. The walkway and benches glowed indigo, and the area just behind the walkway... that spot between walkway and fence, glowed violet. The railing shone an incredible dark blue. Beyond that, the nearest fringe of the backyard was a brilliant green, merging into a Crayola yellow just where the trees started. Each of the little segregated areas were a sweet orange. At the center of it all, there was a tall pillar of red, blazing out. The backyard, all of it, had been specifically created to be a rainbow, but only visible to someone with the Sight. Which meant magic folks. Fae folk or someone like them.

"Christie," I said quietly, almost reverently, pulling back the Sight. "This is the most amazing back porch I have ever seen."

She smiled brightly up at me, dropping fifty years. "Bobby built it. He said that it was so that we could have our own little world, right here, and that we would never have to travel very far to find it." She took my hand, and tugged me along. "Come with me. I want to show you something."

She had a powerful grip, and her hand was small and warm and soft and dry. If she had lost any of her strength due to age, it didn't show, and the energy I felt radiating from her was a little intoxicating.

We came to a little overlook on the porch, a little wooden outcropping where we could cross almost to the middle of the park like backyard.

She released my hand and pointed to a spot on the ground. I followed her finger and saw a lovely arrangement of bright red phlox, tiny bachelors buttons and little blue bells. And a house.

It was a little doll's gingerbread house, about as perfect as it could be, from the dull blue shingles on its roof to the tiny little windows that dotted each of its two stories. There was a turret on one corner of the house, where the bedroom would be and wisps of smoke rose from the single tiny chimney. The flowers that surrounded the house finally resolved into the form of a flower garden, and when I focused even closer, I could see miniature flowerboxes under each of the windows and they too had flowers growing in them.

There were steps leading up to the enclosed front porch, where a tiny rocking chair sat rocking to the left of the red front door. There was a doll dressed in black sitting in the chair, and it was caught in the pose of drinking from a itsy-bitsy teacup. At least I thought it was a doll, until it put the cup down on the table next to the chair, stood up and walked to the front of the porch, leaning nonchalantly on one of the perfect newel posts.

"A fairy!" I turned surprised eyes to look at Christie, who was in turn looking at me, a broad childlike smile on her face.

"Yes, child," she said, "a fairy. Or to be more precise, she's a pixie. The last one in these parts, I think, and she's been my companion for the last thirty four years." Christie called out to the Little person. "Catherine! Come meet my guest."

"Do I have to?" The pixie's voice was tiny, but sultry and clear. "It's still early yet."

"Yes, you have to," Christine chastised. "It's only polite, dear."

"Oh, all right," was the sulky reply.

The pixie stretched her arms above her head luxuriously and she extended her wings. They, all four of them, were a dark veined gossamer and she looked like a leather clad, woman shaped dragonfly. The wings flapped soundlessly and the little pixie rose up to eye level.

"He's not much to look at, Chris." Fists balled against waist, the pixie looked at me with one eye closed and the other squinted. "You think he's worth meeting?"

"Catherine!" Christine's hand swooped out to swat the flying figure. The pixie moved lazily out of the way. "Be polite. This is the one Bobby told me to watch out for!"

"Humph," said the pixie. "I still say he's not much to look at." She moved closer until she was about six inches from my nose.

She was a female fairy all right. Curves in all the right places, bumps in all the right places and full of attitude. I've never met a fairy that didn't have an attitude. They are a matriarchal bunch, fairies are. The male fairies tend to kowtow to whatever the females want, and the females take as much advantage from that as they can. I don't have much use for 'em myself. Give me a good woodling or house brownie any day. Granted, a pixie is a wonderful thing to have around if you need a good scout, and they certainly can't be called lazy, but still... attitudes on the wing.

This pixie had almond shaped eyes, full lips below a pert little nose and a shock of auburn hair with streaks of electric blue in it. She looked like a Romanian pixie, but it's always kind of hard to tell.

"Well," I said, "you're not any great shakes yourself, pixie." I sniffed haughtily. "I've seen larger."

The pixie flitted angrily towards me and pulled a tiny little dagger from her belt and pointed it at my nose. "Oh? Larger, have you?" Her voice took on a decidedly Romanian accent. "A larger pixie? Well, I'll have you know, mister pixie expert, that it's not the size that counts. It's the heart."

She flitted over to Christie. "He's the one, eh? I don't think I like him much. He looks like a whatchamacallem... an accountant." She gave the same one-eyed squint to Christie. "You sure he even knows magic, Chris? He seems more suited to ciphers than to sigils."

Pan woke up and muttered a Word. It was just one, but it was a good one. A small ethereal cage, purple in color and translucent, formed around the pixie and closed her in.

"What the blazes?" the pixie yelled, whipping her wings and beating at the purple bars. "Get this thing off of me!"

Christie frowned. "Children! If you can't play nice, you won't be playing at all!" She turned to me and pointed her finger. "You call off your dog, Chester, right this minute." I saw the spark begin to build at the end of her pointing finger.

"Pan," I sent down to where he snoozed inside my head, "better do what the nice lady asks. I suspect she could zap you and me but good."

"Oh, all right," rumbled his reply. "Say this," and he gave me the breaking word to say, which I did. The purple of the cage flitzed once and then faded. "All gone," he said. "Better?"

"Thanks," I grumbled to him. To Christie, I asked, "How did you know about my Aspect?"

"Yeah," grumbled Pan. "And tell her I'm not a dog, and quit calling me an Aspect. I am not an Aspect."

"Never you mind how I knew," Christie answered me. "I know all sorts of things, I just don't tell all of them." To the pixie, she said, "Now Cat, you're going to have to play well with this one. He can do wizardries, as you now know. He's come here looking for what Bobby left behind."

She turned back to me. "You did, didn't you?" Her face grew hopeful and thoughtful. "You did come here to finish what Bobby started?"

"Um," I started. "That depends, Grandma. What was it that Bobby started?"

"Why," she said, "he was going to defeat the Evil One, for once and for all. That was before he was killed, of course."

"Of course," I said.

"And you're here to pick up where he left off, right?"

Her question created a whole bunch of my own questions. The biggest one was, "And where did he leave off?"

Cat, the pixie, flew at me, angrily, her dagger drawn and threatening, such as it was. "He was trying to send the bad guy back to where he came from, as if you had to ask. You're such a wizard, go find out, big guy." She humphed at me and flew back to the front porch of the dollhouse. "Men are such idiots," she complained. "And human men are the worst of the lot." She picked up her teacup and sipped noisily from it.

Christie leaned over to me, "You'll have to forgive Catherine. She's been without her own kind for a very long time. Bobby made a bargain with her mother, and Catherine was given the Geas of guarding this garden from those who might wittingly or unwittingly destroy it's purpose before it was used."

"Used?" I asked. "What was its use?"

"I don't know," Christie admitted. "Bobby never told me. All he told me was that one day a person would show up here and finish his work. To send the Evil one back to wherever he came from and trap him there forever."

"Grandma," I said, "the only thing I know is that he, Bobby, told me to come to find a windmill in a wheatfield, and to find him there." I shrugged. "He never wrote anything about you, about a garden, and certainly nothing about having to fight a stubborn pixie."

A flash of dark came at me. "I'm not stubborn!" Cat said. "I'm willful!"

I raised my hand defensively. "All right, he never said anything about fighting a willful pixie. Especially a beautiful, willful pixie." Maybe it was time to use a little charm.

"How would you know if I was beautiful, human?" Cat flitted around my head. "Maybe I'm the ugly duckling of my family. Maybe I was the only one left behind because I wasn't good enough."

Oh great. A pixie with an inferiority complex.

I looked at Christie, who winked and gave me a nod.

"Look, Catherine... Cat..." I pulled my voice down into a deeper register, the one that I use when I'm trying to be smooth. "I've known elves and sprites and brownies and woodlings and even a few pixies. There aren't many where I come from, but there are a few. And I can tell you, from what I've seen and from what they've told me about what they consider pretty, that you'd be in the top ten of the pretty pixies if there ever were a top ten. Heck, if you were human, you'd be one of the top ten of the pretty humans that I know."

"Pretty?" Cat circled my head twice. "I was beautiful, but now I'm only pretty?" So much for being smooth. Still, she quit jabbing the dagger at my face. "Well...," she seemed to think for a bit. "I guess you're okay." She backed off from me and sheathed her dagger. "Just don't ever do that cage thing again, all right? I hate cages." She squinted at me again. "Of any kind."

"I won't," I promised, crossing my heart. "No more cages."

"And that goes for that thing crawling around in your head, too!" Cat flew up to my forehead, startling me, and knocked on it twice. It took everything I had to keep from flicking her out of the air.

"Hey!" Pan was not amused. "Who does she think she is?"

"Oh...," Cat grew quiet and thoughtful. "I know that voice. Mamma used to talk about this one. Faunus, she called him."

Christie's eyes grew wide. "Faunus?" She turned to me and touched one of my hands. "You carry Faunus in you? Pan? You carry Pan?"

"See?" Pan said, sounding prideful and echoey in my head. "I'm a rock star in some places. Some folks never forget."

"Oh, child," Christie muttered quietly, shaking her head sadly. "I'm so sorry. He must have been a burden for you when you were young."

I nodded. "I didn't even know he was there, Grandma, until I was about seventeen or so. It was a trial." I sighed miserably. "Still, he has helped me a couple of times, so I can't complain."

"Can't complain?" A dark rumble was between my ears. "Can't complain? All you ever do is complain! And I've only helped you a couple of times? A couple of...?" A sigh whispered in the dark of my skull. "Well, it's my own fault, I suppose. I could have been in Hollywood, in a body that I could have really used, but no. I had to pick you." Another heavy, wounded sigh. "We can only do what we can do, you know?"

I gazed at the pixie. "So, you can hear him in my head?"

Cat nodded. "Yep, he's pretty clear too. There's some in town where the voices are like listening to whispering in the dark, but yours? Yours is like a radio, broadcasting wide open. Little pervert, this one is. I remember the stories mamma told me."

"Pervert!" If Pan could have thrashed around inside my head, he would have. "If I was outside, instead of inside, I'd show you a pervert, you four-winged excuse for a garden gnome!"

I cleared my throat, hoping to drown out Pan's ranting. "I'm sorry... he's a bit touchy. He's been cooped up for a very long time." I turned to Christie. "You were going to show me the windmill?"

Taking the hint of my changing of the subject, Christie nodded and led me to a small staircase that let me enter the garden proper. At the bottom of the stairs was the beginning of a winding stone pathway.

"Now," Christie said, "I can't go with you. I can only stay on this wooden walkway."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because that is the way it is, child." Christine smiled sadly. "There are some places some of us may not go. And there are some of us that can go any place. Bobby must have believed that you were one of those, and so he sent you here." She waved me on. "Stay on the straight and narrow path, child. I'll watch from up here. Don't step off the path or bad things will happen."

"Bad things?" I had to wonder. "Like what?"

"I don't know," Christie said. "Bobby never told me. He just warned me never to go wandering down in the garden. In fact, he placed a ward specifically designed for me, so that I cannot get closer than this walkway."

Great.

A leather-clad pixie flew up and took one of my fingers. "Come with me, human. I won't let you fall." Cat pulled at me gently.

"Maybe you know what the bad things are?" I asked her. I'd rather know than not.

"Yep," she said, nodding vigorously. "I do." She tugged me along a skinny path, maybe six inches wide.

I waited for her to continue, and when she didn't, I counted to five and then said, "You're not going to tell me, are you?"

"Nope," she said, shaking her head. "I'm not. You wouldn't believe me, anyway."

"Why is that?" I asked. "What's not to believe?"

"This." She dropped to the path and kicked at a stone. It rolled off the path and fell. It not only fell to the ground, but kept on falling. And falling. And falling.

I watched it as well as I could, the stone getting smaller as it fell. The stone never reached the ground, as far as I could tell. It never touched the grass or the dirt of even a flower as it fell. It just kept falling.

"That's impossible!" I shook my head. "How could it just keep falling? It's got to hit the ground sometime, right?"

Cat fluttered back up and took hold of my finger again, urging me along the path. "I told you that you wouldn't believe me."

"It's a trick of the light?" I asked her.

"Nope," she said. "No trick. The rock is still falling."

"But how...," I let the words fade.

"I dunno," she said without looking back at me. "It's just one of those things, you know? Those unexplainable things." Now she did turn to look back at me and winked. "Like a pretty pixie, it's just one of those things."

"Ah," I said, as if I actually understood her reference.

"See, human," she went on, "Not everything is as it seems, which I'm sure you know. Otherwise you wouldn't be here being led by a pretty pixie to look at a windmill in a garden that used to be a wheatfield, and in fact still is."

The path opened up to an area where nothing grew except grass. The windmill was sitting at the center of a ring of gray stone, and the ring was surrounded by grass and wheat.

"Look around you, human," Cat commanded. She let go of my finger so I could turn around.

I looked. I turned around and looked. And did it again. The house was gone, and so was the garden. The windmill was still there, up ahead, sitting in the middle of the field. Other than that, there wasn't anything around except a big old expanse of wheat and wildflowers. Far in the distance, there were some old buildings, whose broken windows glinted in what sunlight burst through the clouds.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Oh," Cat said, "not too far away. Maybe twenty, maybe fifty miles. Near an old foundry, I think. I don't know if it's a foundry or not, really, but I can smell the iron." She shuddered. "Folk like me don't like iron much, you know."

That brought something to mind. "What happened to the rest of your family?" I walked behind her as she fluttered ahead, stopping to smell the few remaining wildflowers that still bloomed in the chilly fall air. "Where are your kin?"

Cat turned from the purple flower and looked at me for a few long moments. "My kin are gone from this place, human. Their magic was stolen by an evil man," she said with a trace of bitter sadness. "I am the only one left here, and that is because of the Geas put upon me to tend the garden and to guard Christine." She turned away quickly and continued on in silence.

"Hmm." I pondered aloud. "So an evil man stole their magic, and because of that they just... disappeared?"

"That is what we do when there is no magic," she tossed at me over her shoulder. The windmill was about fifty yards away. "We fade away. You should know that, human. You're supposed to be a mage or a wizard or something like that, aren't you?

"I guess some people think I am."

"You should know what you are." Cat turned in mid air and stopped. "You carry a powerful force in you, human. Not just that shadow of Faunus, but a real power." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I can smell it and see it all over you."

"Yeah, I've been told that before." I sighed. "It's not that I don't believe in it, Cat, it's just that I have my doubts sometimes."

She nodded and bobbed in the air. "Good. To have doubts keeps you humble." She looked away, at the windmill, as if wondering about something. "Tell me your name, human, please."

"My name?" I raised my eyebrows.

"Yes, your name." She turned back with a bit of irritation. "Christie didn't tell me your name, and she probably didn't tell me because a name is something that is precious and needs to be given freely. She told you mine because she knew it would put me in the position of having to be with you and do as you direct." She blew out a breath. "So, if you don't mind, I would like to know your name." She placed her right hand over her heart and raised her left hand high. "I solemnly swear I will not use it against you under any magical circumstances." Dropping her hands and hovering there, she smiled at me winningly. "Besides, human has a bad feeling to it, and I'd like to think you're a good guy."

"Don't tell her your name!" Pan fluttered about in my head. "She'll use it against you! You'll be sorry!"

I stuck out my right hand and told her my name. She fluttered over to me, grasped my extended hand and shook it, once, hard. She had a lot of strength for someone only five inches tall.

"Now you're screwed bud," Pan grumbled. "Don't come running to me when you're in the throws of being a slave to a pipsqueak."

I ignored him, and so did the pixie.

"Chester," she said approvingly, rolling the name around. "Well, met, Chester Beebe. A good name. An old name. Beebe is a name I've heard before." Winking, she turned and continued along the path to the windmill.

"Oh?" I asked. "How so? Where?"

"My grandpop used to talk about a man named Beebe," she said. "Back before he went away. Said he was a good man, kind to our folk." She stopped and pointed. "Here we are. I can't go any further, Chester. The windmill has a powerful protection cast on it."

The windmill stood before us, a tall, wooden and metal giant, reaching up a hundred feet into the air. Okay, so maybe it was only fifteen or twenty, but the difference between a hundred and twenty is pretty small when you fall. Besides, this windmill was special.

The windmill's legs were iron, old and rusty looking. Each leg stood about ten or fifteen feet apart from it's neighbor. On the far side there was a maintenance ladder going up, so that a person could reach the gears attached to the mast and sail. In faded brick-red letters, the word "Aeromotor" was still visible on the tail. The base of the windmill was set in old concrete, stained with veins of rust from standing in the open for decades, and there was a hole in the center of the concrete for the pipe to run.

The sail was turning, slowly, in the slight Kansas wind and the squeaking it made reminded me of days spent on my grandfather's farm in Indiana. The blades of the sail were still solid, even having been made from wood, though they were bleached barnwood white from the wind and rain and sun.

I stepped forward to put my hand on one of the legs, you know, to touch it, to make sure it was really there. Not that I doubted it, but just because there was something in my mind telling me I needed to.

As I stepped onto the circular white gravel that surrounded the concrete base, I felt a tingle at the base of my spine. It wasn't a hard tingle, like when you grab an exposed wire; it was a gentle tingle, like the tickle of a baby.

"Huh," I said as I turned back to look at Cat.

"Felt it, didn't you?" she said, nodding. "Used to be a game for us, way back. To see how close we could get to the thing without getting bug-zapped."

"It didn't feel so bad to me," I told her.

"Maybe not to you," she shrugged, "but you're obviously supposed to be here." She pointed off to one side of the gravel circle. I followed her finger and saw the carcass of something very dead for a long time. "IF you weren't allowed here, that would be you."

"Ah." I took a step back. "That makes me feel all sorts of better."

"Oh, don't be such a baby," Cat chided. "You didn't die, did you?" She humphed. "Look, what're you supposed to do here? Just look at it?" She shook her head. "No, I don't think so. You're here for a message or something, right?"

She flew up beside me and put her hand out. Blue and red lines shot up her arm and a spark jumped from the air to her hand.

"Ouch! Son of a bitch!" She shook her hand violently and looked up at me with tears in her eyes. "That hurt like crazy. Now, if you hadn't been the one to get whatever is in there, you'd be hurting just like me. Now I gotta go find something to quit hurting." She turned in midair and glared at me.

"You're supposed to DO something, Chester. Maybe it'll avenge my folks, I dunno. Maybe it's just so that you'll know what to do next. So do it all ready!" She flew away into the wheatfield, cradling her hurt arm. "Do something!" She disappeared, leaving me alone with the windmill.

I sighed and shook my head. Cat was right, of course. The windmill is just another breadcrumb tossed to me by Robert Plumb. And I apparently was supposed to finish what he started, whatever that was. I had an idea of what it was, but I really wasn't ready to look at it yet. If it was a heavy sounding as what Christie said it was, I wasn't sure I was up to the challenge. Sending the 'Evil One', whoever that was - and I suspected it was this Ammit thing - back to where it came from... man, that was gonna take some serious firepower.

I mean, okay, so maybe I'm a wizard. Maybe I have a little talent. Maybe I had a major hitter of a teacher, but he didn't teach me hardly anything! And okay, so maybe I pushed the 'Bads back aways, maybe even hurt 'em a bit. Maybe hurt 'em a lot, but it was with the help of my friends.

Here I was alone. No back up. Nothing but the magic I carried in my head and heart and that was pretty much it.

"You are such an idiot," Pan muttered. "What makes you think you're alone? Quit your whining and complaining and touch the damned thing already."

I took a couple of steps forward, my shoes crunching on the gravel and then scuffling on the concrete. That tingle at the small of my back came and tickled me and then faded. I didn't see any sparks or lines of red and blue running up my arms.

"See," Pan chuckled. "No hit, no foul. No guts, no glory. Remember you are much greater than you think you are. Hell, chum, you've been to the abyss and back, remember?"

"With help!" I shook my head. "Pan, what if this Ammit is more than I can handle? I've never face a God before."

"So what," he said. "The worst thing that might happen is that this Ammit would kill you and how can that be so bad? You've been dead before, right?" I felt him pause. "Well, actually...."

"What?" I hate it when he pauses like this. "What? There's something worse than being dead?"

"Ammit is the Eater of the Dead, remember?" Pan reminded me. "His job was to sit at the side of Osiris and Osiris' job was to make sure the dead continued on their way. Those he didn't find worthy to continue on their path, he got rid of."

"So...," I asked, "Osiris was like a Gatekeeper?" I knew Osiris' name, but not a lot more about him except what I had gotten out of kids cartoons.

"Of a sort, yeah," Pan continued. "But see, if he didn't like you, if Osiris judged you unfit or unworthy, he'd cut you loose. He'd let Ammit eat your soul, so to speak, and let your essence be destroyed, cutting your life path short." I felt him shake his head. "Yeah, I know. Makes not a lot of sense. But let me tell you buddy; those Egyptians took him really serious. Ammit was the definition of divine retribution back in the day."

"So... if Ammit was the one that killed Plumb, where's Osiris?"

"Hell," Pan admitted, "I don't know. What do I look like, so sort of cosmic operator? If there's an Aspect of Osiris floating around, maybe the two of them haven't met yet."

"But, I thought Aspects were drawn to each other." I was a bit confused. "You know, trying to get the old gang back and that sort of thing."

"They are, chum," Pan said. "It's just that sometimes things don't go as wanted, you know? Osiris could be on a whole other continent. I still looking for Bacchus, but you don't see me whining about it. Your buddy Tim is a pretty close second, though, let me tell you. That guy can certainly put away the beer."

"Anyway," he continued, "if Ammit is running around loose, it would be just like a dog loose from his leash, and from what I remember, this is one dog you don't want running around loose. This puppy makes an angry pit bull look like a happy Chihuahua."

"So stopping him would be a good thing," it wasn't a question.

"Stopping him is a very good thing, buddy. If your mentor was trying to stop Ammit, then it was like a fly trying to stop a freight train. Ammit is one bad dude."

I sighed again. "You are not helping me feel any better."

"Not my job, boss," Pan said flatly. "If you die then I get to move on, maybe. And that maybe is a big maybe. Never know where I'll end up next, if I even end up anywhere. But if Ammit is involved, then I'd just as likely end up being eaten by him. The Egyptians and the Greeks didn't exactly see eye to eye on a lot of things. Being eaten is high on my list of Not What I Want, so I have a vested interest in you winning. Then again, I kind of like you. You're fun, in a totally stupid way."

"Thanks," I said sarcastically. "You kind of fun too, in a totally annoying way." Which reminded me. "Say, what's your issue with the pixie? She seems like an okay kid."

"Aw, boss," for maybe the first time ever, I felt Pan be a bit embarrassed. "I don't have anything against the kid personally. It's just that..." he paused and I felt him shuffle his feet. "Well... if she's got your name, it means she's adding it to the other names written in her heart. It means she trusts you enough to befriend you."

"Ah," I said, understanding. "'Fraid she'll steal your thunder?"

"Thunder?" Pan asked confused. "Oh! Like I'm your only magical friend? Not bloody likely. You have so many friends who don't exist in the real world, it's a wonder you're sane at all. No, boss... I just know how you are about your friends. Little miss pixie is old, boss. And her kin are gone, gone, gone. If you succeed, then maybe her Geas will disappear and so will she. Remember, the 'evil man' took all her people's magic away. If she dies, then you'll feel guilty and I'll never hear the end of your whining. This is all about me, buddy, and don't you forget it."

I smiled and let Pan know I was smiling. "OF course. Silly me." I looked up at the windmill and sighed again. "Okay, let's go see what all this is about."

I stepped forward and put my hand on one of the old and rusty legs. A shock ran through me and bright light filled my senses. All of them. I was blinded by light, deafened by light; I could taste and smell light. I felt like I was filled and overflowing with light, and not just white light, either. Light of every color imaginable poured from every pore of my body and I felt myself being wrapped in that light and lifted out of my body. Far in the distance, I heard Pan calling for me, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered, because I wasn't there any more.