[tshiggins]

(...continued)

A few minutes later, the cab stopped by to pick up Randy, and then headed over to Lake Ray Hubbard, where Henrietta got out. The driver then took the on-ramp to I-30, and headed toward the I-635 loop.

Meanwhile, Henrietta joined A.J., Frank and Jimmy at the shore of Lake Ray Hubbard. Within a few minutes, Hops About had them walk out into the lake, and then notified the dryad (somehow). Within moments, they found themselves back in Faerie, under the giant full moon.

There, the dryad looked briefly put out that the group had come up with yet another woman (although Henrietta was the only one, this time), but her demeanor brightened when she saw Jimmy, again. She sashayed up to him, did a full-body shave ‘em dry up and down, and asked the red-head if he wanted to reconsider and take her initial offer.

He resisted again and she produced the acorn out of somewhere, dropped it in his shirt pocket and gave it a pat. At that point, Henrietta stepped up and asked for clarification of the deal. The dryad tersely repeated the terms, to her, and reluctantly allowed Jimmy to leave with the rest of the group.

The amused nunnupi took up the same posts as before, with Hops About scouting ahead and Twirls Thrice bringing up the rear, a short distance back. Looking back, Frank noted that the lake they’d emerged from was pretty nice, and asked if anybody ever did any fishing, in Faerie.

Hops About replied that people did, in fact, go fishing, but had to be a bit cautious and respectful. Generally speaking, she said, if the fish verbally objected to being hooked, then it was only polite to remove the hook, apologize for the inconvenience, and make sure the fish got back into the water with minimal fuss.

Frank absorbed that bit of helpful advice as the group traveled as long through the chilly night, crunching vivid autumn leaves under their feet. They traveled as far as the exhausted Henrietta and A.J. could manage, and then found a campsite and set up watches, for the day. Frank and Jimmy took the first two, to let A.J. and Henrietta rest for a while.

Henrietta took over a bit after noon. About halfway through her watch, she saw a bright red fox with white ears, also trimmed with red, trot out of the woods. It saw her, and then sat down as she approached, cautiously. Once she got to within about 10 feet, the fox cocked its head and greeted her with a, “Hey.”

Flabbergasted, Henrietta said, “Hello,” and asked the fox’s business. He replied that he’d followed the group for a bit, figured out that they were trying to travel fast through potentially hostile territory, and had a deal to offer. The fox said he knew of a fast, hidden way through the territory, and offered to show it to the group in exchange for a favor.

Henrietta demurred, noting that the group owed enough favors to faeries for one trip. The fox spent a bit more time trying to convince her (and laid on a manipulative patter that resembled a pitch from a used car salesman…), but Henrietta steadfastly refused. At that point, the fox bid her good afternoon, and took his leave.

As soon as the fox left, Henrietta let everybody know about the rather surreal incident, and then turned in for a quick nap to end the afternoon. It was about time for A.J.’s watch, anyway.

The group broke camp and took to the trail as the moon began to rise. A few hours into the hike, Frank noted that the group seemed to be flanked by small creatures moving through the trees and brush to either side of them.

The group soon determined that they’d been found by the zips. They also noted that Hops About and Twirls Thrice had disappeared.

The group readied the weapons they could, and decided to press on at greater speed. Within a few minutes, they came upon a tiny zip, lying up against a tree, pierced by an arrow that bore the fletching pattern used by Hops About and Twirls Thrice.

Now thoroughly alarmed, A.J., Henrietta, Jimmy and Frank began to jog up the path. The trees began to thin out, fairly soon, and they found themselves moving through the chilly outer edge of the Faerie desert.

Soon, they came upon a spot where the trail appeared to go through a remarkably straight canyon that almost resembled a road-cut. Almost everyone saw that looked like zips moving up through the underbrush at the sides of the canyon, making little effort to conceal their presence from the humans.

Frank called a halt and A.J. said this looked like a great ambush spot. He questioned whether or not the group should move through it, and noted that the path they'd taken so far had been awfully strange -- almost perfectly straight, but with no signs of tool marks of any sort (Critical success on Perception!). Frank started to look for a way around the canyon, but Henrietta (who'd been struck by A.J.'s comments) stopped him.

The archaeologist and folklore expert said that many of the old stories about fairies mentioned, or even took place on, what were called “straight paths” or “fairy tracks” or "fairy traces." These magical roads allowed those who moved along them to cross vast distances very quickly, and the tracks sometimes even compressed or expanded the time that passed, during the journey.

Frank and Jimmy realized that described the trip down, pretty accurately. They’d spent most of the journey traveling along long, straight trails. The only times they hadn’t been doing so was when they walked along some meandering paths that took them from the end of one long, straight trail to the start of another.

The Utah State Trooper also said he didn’t remember seeing this canyon, on the trip down, and deduced that the nunnupi had chosen a different route back to Moab from the one they’d taken down, perhaps in an effort to throw the zips off the trail. A.J. said that made sense, as the time that passed in Faerie probably differed from the hour or so they’d spent in Dallas.

Given that they likely found themselves on such a straight path or “faerie trace,” Henrietta said, they very likely needed to stay on it. In the old stories, she explained, those who left the trails frequently found themselves facing much greater hazards, and they almost always got thoroughly lost.

Dismayed, the group remained on the trail and hesitantly advanced into the canyon. Frank and Jimmy in front, with blunderbusses at the ready and watching the sides of the canyon, Henrietta in the middle with her quarterstaff at the ready (the nunnupi had repeated their refusal to take anybody bearing iron or steel into Faerie), and A.J. bringing up the rear with his resin and aluminum crossbow cocked, locked and loaded.

Despite their caution, nothing happened until they were about halfway along, when they looked ahead and saw the fox sitting on the trail in front of them, bushy tail curled around its paws. As the group approached, not quite pointing their weapons at him, the fox looked at Henrietta and again said, “Hey.”

The archaeologist asked the fox what it wanted, as she’d already refused its deal. The fox replied that, while he’d have much preferred to make a deal with her, when she refused he was forced to go to his second option. He’d made a deal with the zips.

Alarmed, the group asked about the terms of the agreement, and the fox said he’d offered to help the zips set up an ambush of their traditional enemies – the nunnupi. Moreover, he said, he’d guaranteed the zips he’d use the humans as bait the nunnupi couldn’t help but take.

Frank pointed his blunderbuss at the fox, and said the group didn’t take kindly to being used as bait, and demanded the fox move aside and let them pass. The fox glanced up at the sky and readily agreed, saying that he’d delayed them as long as needed, and trotted off into the underbrush at the side of the trail. Looking up, the group saw Hops About and Twirls Thrice diving out of the sky toward the last location of the fox.

Frank quickly shouted a warning just as the nunnupi passed below the lip of the canyon, Hops About and Twirls Thrice immediately jinked and dodged like crazy, tiny zip javelins screamed toward them, and the party ran like hell to get out from beneath the storm of elf-stroke weapons. For the next half-mile, or so, the party continued to dash beneath occasional eruptions of whistling death and the thrum-whap of arrow-shots, praying they didn’t get hit in the cross-fire of the ancient feud.

After they cleared the canyon, the group paused to rest for a few minutes, and wait to see if Hops About and Twirls Thrice would catch up. When the nunnupi failed to appear, the party decided to continue on the trail until either daybreak, or they reached the end.

About an hour later, the fox emerged from the underbrush and ambled along beside Henrietta, for a bit. Quite pleased with himself, the fox explained that he’d figured the nunnupi had made a lucrative deal to guide the group through Faerie. A cautious Henrietta grudgingly agreed that might be true.

The fox said that, while he didn’t know the terms of the deal (and didn’t care to), the existence of the deal was enough to give him an idea. While he really would have guided them safely through zip territory, her refusal to take the offer still created opportunities for him.

Knowing that a deal almost certainly existed, at all, meant the nunnupi had a vested interest in keeping the group alive. After all, the fox said, it was awfully difficult to collect a debt from the dead.

(continued...)