In just the past few days, the concept of "mystery box" storytelling has popped up a couple of times for me, once in a review, and once in a private conversation about the trailer for the DisneyWars series The Acolyte. And a few things occurred to me, or aligned such that I realized consciously something I had always felt subconsciously.

First of all, in case you don't know, what is a mystery box? It's a method of storytelling that J.J. Abrams made famous in a TED talk, and explains both why he is such an awful storyteller, and part of why he has been so successful in Hollywood.

The gist of it is, he bought a "Mystery Box" from a magic shop as a kid, and has never opened it, because he loved the feeling of anticipation about what was inside it, and knew that if he opened it, he would be deflated, because the thrill of the mystery would then be gone. And he holds that presenting such narrative mystery boxes to audiences is far better than ever actually opening the boxes and revealing the mysteries.

He actually shows the Mystery Box in the TED talk, so I'll assume that his story isn't bullshit (in the technical, philosophical sense), but it also does not match up with his early career as a screenwriter. And it also matches too-perfectly a certain line of academic and film studies thinking, the kind of thing that midwits mistake for Very Deep Thought.

Let us start with Abrams's early produced screenplays. Before he turned thirty, Abrams had four films either released or in production based on screenplays he had originated (or co-originated), and had worked as a producer on two of those four.

Those films were the Jim Belushi comedy Taking Care Of Business, released the year Abrams turned twenty-four, the Harrison Ford drama Regarding Henry, released the year Abrams turned twenty-five, the Mel Gibson melodrama Forever Young, and the Joe Pesci-Danny Glover comedy Gone Fishin', released the year Abrams turned thirty-one.

I include his age at the time both to show that he got his position in Hollywood through nepotism (Daddy was a producer, and people don't sell screenplays while they are still in college without connections already in place), and to show that he achieved "success" without any experience or apprenticeship. Which, frankly, is reflected in his work.

Taking Care of Business is a pure gimmick comedy. Jim Belushi finds a highly successful busines executive's daily planner (for people who hate product placement, it is specifically a Filofax, which company is still in business, and whose trademarked name is used throughout the film) and, through the magic of gimmicky writing, steps into that exec's life without anybody realizing he's not The Guy. There is no depth to it, the potential thematic noir implications are untouched (and besides, Detour did it better forty-five years before), it is purely a vehicle for Jim Belushi to mug, with a side of "hey, '80s comedies were great, let's show everybody we don't understand why!" In short, shallow, forgettable fun, with a title taken from a rocking '70s song.

Regarding Henry is a bizarre duck. Directed by Mike Nichols (who would sink to much more pathetic depths in less than a decade), it was made at a point when Harrison Ford was still trying to be seen as a respectable actor, not just an action lead. He'd had an Oscar nomination in 1985 with Witness, and made several other films where he was probably hoping for the same kind of magic, including The Mosquito Coast, Working Girl (remember that supporting actors in comedies were getting Oscars at that time, including Kevin Kline and Marisa Tomei), Presumed Innocent (which, while a thriller, had a director and a cast that easily elevated it to something more), and more. So a serious, adult script in which a career lawyer gets shot in the head, survives, and has to relearn who he is and how to live probably seemed like a great idea, particularly with a director with the Hollywood cachet of Nichols. Unfortunately, the script, which needed the lawyer to learn Life Lessons, was by an under twenty-five year old kid who had never had to work a real job or struggle in life. So the film has the flattest Deep Insights you can imagine, like family is important, being a lawyer is bad, and things are made better by getting a puppy. Shallow is once again the watchword.

Just ask Roger Ebert:

There is possibly a good movie to be found somewhere within this story, but Mike Nichols has not found it in "Regarding Henry." This is a film of obvious and shallow contrivance, which aims without apology for easy emotional payoffs, and tries to manipulate the audience with plot twists that belong in a sitcom.

Forever Young once again lifts a title from a pop song, and is not only not deep, but utterly tepid in dealing with what could have been an interesting premise. Mel Gibson gets involved in a cryogenics experiment in 1939, wakes up in 1992, and has to deal with the decades he missed, and the love he lost. (No points for thinking Abrams may have read Captain America comics as a kid.) The Life Lessons are just as vapid as the other films, and the drama (such as it is) is undercut by Gibson rapidly aging at the end, thus erasing any consequences of the experiment he was involved with (and robbing him of most of his adult life, but never mind that, we got to a safe ending). (A far, far better treatment of the same idea was done on a smaller budget, to less acclaim and box office, one year earlier in Late for Dinner.)

Gone Fishin' is a comedy nobody saw, nobody remembered even the week it came out, and was mostly notable at the time for being a film on which a stuntman died in a stunt gone wrong. I saw it on cable at some point, and have no memory of it, so we'll just set that one aside. (It flopped so badly it was reportedly one of the reasons Joe Pesci retired from acting.)

The reviews for all of these movies were lackluster, and almost all of them pointed to the shallowness of the writing, and lame life lessons characters were supposed to learn.

So when I say that I suspect Abrams hit upon his mystery box method in reaction to his inability to deliver revelations that anybody found interesting in the slightest, there's a track record there. Isn't it much easier to suggest there is a mystery, get the audience and characters all hyped up for the mystery, and then... never resolve it? If you never resolve it, then nobody can mock your shallow resolution. And, after all, college professors and Very Important Thinkers all say that ambiguity is what Good Art does, right?

Well, here is where a distinction needs to be made.

First of all, somebody is going to bring up MacGuffins, so let me deal with that. A MacGuffin, film buffs know, was defined by Alfred Hitchcock as "the thing that everybody in the story wants, and is otherwise not actually important". Hitch made all kinds of MacGuffin movies, from The Thirty-Nine Steps to Notorious to North by Northwest. That last film, arguably, even has two MacGuffins: George Kaplan, the character who doesn't exist, and the microfilm toward the end of the film, which has some kind of government secrets on it, but is utterly unimportant beyond that. But George Kaplan's nonexistence is explained rather thoroughly before the movie is half over.

The reason that MacGuffins can be undefined ("pure" MacGuffins is the term I've seen) is that they really are unimportant to the actual story being told, apart from motivtaing characters to act. North by Northwest isn't about finding some microfilm and stopping it from leaving the country, it's about a slick ad man who considers the truth to be negotiable suddenly finding himself in a world of lies where nobody believes him and having to learn some sincerity.

Another "pure MacGuffin" movie is John Frankenheimer's Ronin. It's not about whatever is in the silver suitcase. It's about the tensions among a group of ex-spies who don't know each other, and have to work out if they can trust each other enough to do a job they are hired to do, and also if they can trust those who hired them.

Abrams himself wrote and directed a fine example of the pure MacGuffin, Mission: Impossible III. Apart from being a biohazard, the nature of the "rabbit's foot" is never revealed. Because the movie isn't about the rabbit's foot. It is, again, about trust, loyalty, deception, and truth. It is not a mystery box because what the audience wants answered gets answered. The traitor is revealed. The fate of Ethan Hunt's wife is made clear. The members of the team succeed in their mission at the end.

No, mystery box is something more than a MacGuffin. In Lost, there were endless unanswered questions. What was the island? What did the sequence of numbers mean? What was the smoke monster? And so on and so on and so on. It never ended, and the few answers that eventually were served up were about as lame as new puppies making life better.

I never watched Alias, but understand that it got exceedingly mystery-boxy at the end, with the nature of the Rambaldi Cube never being made clear, the metaphysical questions about its effects on history (and, unless I misunderstood one person's lengthy rants at the time of its airing, reincarnation?), and so forth.

But, the midwits who think they are intellectuals will cry, that's Ambiguity, and Ambiguity is Good.

The canonical examples of ambiguous objects in film that academics go gaga over are the suitcase in Kiss Me Deadly, a MacGuffin (but once you get to the end, it's not exactly ambiguous), and its heir in Pulp Fiction, because film students got into arguments over whether it was gold, nuclear stuff, or Marcellus Wallace's soul. PF's version is arguably a MacGuffin, but it's a fairly minor one in the film as a whole, driving part of one plot. The film as a whole is about Jules's redemption and choice to walk a different path than he had up to that point, to which the contents of the briefcase have no relation.

But let's take a MacGuffin whose essence is not a mystery, and is in fact important to the point of the story. Rosebud in Citizen Kane. In one sense, the nature of Rosebud is unimportant in that it is the chasing of it by the reporter that reveals the story of the life of Charles Foster Kane to the audience. But Kane would not be a better film if Rosebud was not revealed to the audience. Because the fact that it is his childhood sled, and he was thinking of that boyhood in his last moments, casts everything he did in the film in a different, more poignant light. (The fact that nobody in the movie ever learns it adds a certain dramatic irony to the proceedings, as well, and irony, as anybody who ever had a college course in the liberal arts knows, is how you can tell whether something is good, or popular trash.)

I am not saying that ambiguity has no place in art, not remotely. But there is genuine ambiguity that can lead you to contemplate important philosophical ideas about life, and there is forced ambiguity of the "oh, aren't I so clever" variety that is usually a stand in for "I had nothing important to say, so ambiguity will tickle the critics". 

(I said a few things about ambiguity, and a particularly striking example of it in a film, a few months ago.)

But back to mystery boxes. Chris Gore of Film Threat did a spoiler-free review of the Netflix adaptation of Cixin Liu's excellent novel The Three-Body Problem, and he was (without having read the novel) extremely positive about it. I am not going to watch the series (the novel has a very personal effect on me, as someone who lived in mainland China during some of the time the novel is set, and the trailer for the adaptation enraged me because of how clearly they cut down on the Chinese aspects of the story). Gore convinced me that they have not utterly ruined the book, but he also said something that struck me. He said that it was mystery box storytelling, but that every mystery pays off and has an effect on the story. He compared it extensively to Lost (as an example of nothing paying off).

I take his meaning, and appreciate especially the fact that he credited the well-built elements of the story to the original novel. But "mystery box" storytelling is literally the opposite of what he described the show being. It's presenting a mystery, and having no clue what the resolution is, nor caring much, because, hey, new mystery!

For another Abrams-related example, the TV show Fringe drove me up the wall to the point I stopped watching it after the first season. It had plenty of cool and interesting ideas, but then it did nothing with them, it just kept presenting more mystery boxes and relying on metaknowledge from the viewers for big "oh wow" moments that then got brushed aside as if they were nothing.

Good storytelling uses mystery, and has to, really, but while there is definitely room for ambiguity, and resolving things too neatly or lazily will anger people in the long run (for example, the climax of the movie Signs, which is just stupid all over).

You can have ambiguity in your story, absolutely, but it's tough to pull off. You can have unresolved threads and details, too, but beware of angering your readers. But you must resolve something, and the something must be important to the reader.

To be important to the reader, it should be what the story is really about. If you resolve what the story is really about, then other things that seem important can be left hanging, either for the reader's imagination, or for the sequel.

Another Saturday, another chapter...

Chapter Two

"You want me to protect you from the vengeance of all the loved ones of people fate screwed over!? Lady, I don't care what kind of power you believe I have, that's nuts."

"Why?" She was not only unperturbed, she was curious. Honestly, genuinely curious.

"Because it is completely impossible."

"How so?"

"In every way there is, and probably a few that never existed before. To list just a few items: first, how am I to determine who is and who is not after you? Second, how am I to determine who is likely to make an attempt on your life, and who just wants to vent some anger in your direction? Third, how do I tell which ones, and how many, are coming after you today, and which ones will politely wait a few years?"

"That's what I'm hiring you to deal with. I don't care how you do it." Elven necks are thin, proportionally. That thinness makes them awfully tempting to throttle, sometimes.

"I'm telling you that can't be done. You can care or not care, it doesn't make a difference, the task is impossible."

I took another drink from my stein. Well, okay, I emptied it. Can you blame me? And she was an elf. This conversation was apt to go in circles for hours as she tried every rephrasing and reframing that she could imagine to find a way to trick me into saying yes.

So when she nodded and said, "I understand. Do you have any alternative suggestions?" it threw me.

Because, like I said, she was an elf. Set in her ways, ancient (by human standards), and of a mindset and from a culture that was quite certain that everyone and every thing else should be required to conform to its whims at all times.

And that's before factoring in the fact that she'd been a bureaucrat for Delph knew how long.

Actually, Delph might know how long. But I wasn't going to ask.

I looked at her, and fiddled with the empty stein, turning it one way, sliding it an inch or three, rotating it the other way. But I kept looking at Smythe the bureaucratic elf. Well, actually I was staring in her general direction and thinking. My brain sluiced down dozens of channels at once, dropped the ones with obvious barriers, and tried to see twenty implications down the line. Which my brain is not especially good at, but I didn't seem to have any problems with it that day.

Except one.

What she wanted really was impossible. I kept running up against that wall, over and over again.

Then I realized I was looking at it in the wrong way.

"You asked me to stop every sentient being that has ever lost a loved one to an unjust fate from exacting revenge on you. But that's not what you really want."

Her lips might have compressed a fraction. Elves in general are not accustomed to being treated that rudely, let alone bureaucratic tyrant elves. But she didn't rebuke me, either.

"What you really want is to continue living, in safety."

"Yes," she sniffed, "that is what I said."

"It is not what you asked of me, madame. What you asked was impossible. What I just stated might not be."

"'Might'?"

One corner of my mouth might of lifted a bit. "You want cast-iron certainties?" She quivered a bit at the reference to cold iron. "If I do nothing, you'll definitely die, and soon. Yes?"

She nodded.

"Well, I can't guarantee you won't die ever, but I do believe I can lessen that certainty quite a bit. Or, I believe it is possible, but... well, I have to think at the problem a bit, and then if I find a solution, you'll have to approve it. Meantime, you're a guest here at the Hotel. You're going to be here for a while, so check with Bob," I waved at the dorf behind the bar, "about a key and a room. You're safer here than just about anywhere else for the time."

"I imagine it would be useless to ask if I might stay here indefinitely?"

"For the moment," I said, "your stay is indefinite, as in I'm not sure when we can get a solution for you working. If you mean, stay here permanently," I glanced over at Delph, who seemed not to be paying attention to the two of us, "that's not up to me." 

Smythe thanked me for my time and consideration, arose, and went over to the bar for a minute, getting a key from Bob.

When she was out of the tavern room, I went, got a tumbler of something a good bit stronger than beer, and went over to Delph's table.

There are not many who would dare sit without invitation in the unQueen's presence, even after the Renunciation, when she theoretically made all beings equal. She remains a being of immense power, and still carries the reputation — unfair, in my experience — of being capricious.

I sat.

Delph smiled. "Well, Guy? Did you have an interesting chat with our new guest?"

"You know her?"

"The ministers of fate had an unusual position, one even the Queen could not trump. Fate ruled over all, even the Queen."

"You telling me you were fated to destroy fate?"

Her eyes twinkled at me. "That is a conundrum which is nigh unanswerable."

I took a swallow of the old firewater. "Do you also know why she came here?"

Delph moved her head in a maddeningly elven, indeterminate way. "There are multiple possibilities."

"Milady, boss, if you're going to be difficult and kittenish, I'll knock off for the night and come back when you're willing to talk instead of bait me."

"I am not baiting you."

"Then answer the damn question. I'm in no mood."

"No," she said, "I do not know. Is she here to kill you? Or to seek protection from the loved ones of the victims of fate? Or for another reason all together?"

"She started by telling me she's going to kill me, and then she asked me to protect her. You're two for three."

Delph lifted a flute to her lips and took a sip of the bubbly. "Three for three, more than likely."

I "humph"ed at that. Elves. Even when they're playing straight with you, there's always the things they don't mention. Delph was right, there was probably something else going on, too.

"She's getting installed in a room here. I presume that's acceptable."

Delph waved a hand. I had authority here to go along with my responsibilities. Whether the unQueen herself would have protected one of her own without me doing it, she wasn't likely to tell me. The decision was made, and that was that.

"There's going to be attempts made on her here," I said.

She smiled. Yeah, the attempts, at most, would provide a little entertainment. 

"Might be an attempt or two on me, as well. And I'm going to have to go out and about into the bargain."

"You," she said, "are neither child nor naif. I will worry what to do without you only after you actually die. And though your client be an elf, and a bureaucrat, I doubt she'd like you dead before she was genuinely safe. We are capricious, not suicidal. Any attempt from her quarter would be a mere test of your resilience."

I'd had a few elven tests of resilience. I knew better than to expect to skate through whatever was coming, even from a supposed ally.

But that wasn't what I needed to talk about.

"Delph, she wants permanent protection."

The lady didn't laugh. She did seem to choke a bit on her champagne, though. Probably a bubble or two went up her nose. That must be it.

"Even funnier, milady, is that I have an idea how we might do that."

Her eyebrows went up. "'We'?"

"Well, I'm assuming you don't want this place becoming a permanent dwelling for former bureaucrats. Do you?"

She shivered, ever so slightly.

"Yeah, thought not. So I'm going to need magic. Strong magic. You've not only got that, you've got some experience with what I have in mind. We'll tap whatever reserves of manna she's got left, but I'll need your hand guiding things, I think."

And I told her what I had in mind.

She was not amused.

This is the first chapter of a novel I've been working on for a while, which is meant to kick off a series. Ex-Ministers of Fate, Book One of AnarchoFaerie. Figure if I post a chapter a week, sooner or later I'll have to finish the thing, just so I can keep posting. 😀

Enjoy!

Chapter One

When I saw the middle-aged lady elf walk into the Peace Hotel, I had a feeling she was there for me, but I didn't really give her much thought because I was dealing with a situation. 

There was an imp trying to pass himself off as a sprite in need. Yeah, we get all kinds. Luckily, that night it was mostly regulars, and nobody was buying his schtick. But, to a man, every single patron let the imp think he was succeeding in his charade. 

He'd go from table to table, bar stool to bar stool, and lay down his tale of woe, about how times for sprites since the Renunciation were hard, nobody needed the guidance of seemingly harmless folk who, now, were in fact mostly harmless.

Which was all true, so far as it went. Of course, times were, ah, interesting for just about every kind of being since the shakeup. One of the reasons a realm like the Peace Hotel, which is really mostly a tavern, thrives. It serves a need that wasn't really there before.

Anyway, I'd kept an eye on the imp, trying to figure out what kind of half-assed glamour he was throwing up to hide his horns and skin color and make himself sort of seem like a sprite. Seemed to be a hearth imp from somebody's home or castle. Not a very powerful entity at the best of times, but probably not a thing to piss off unnecessarily either, anywhere outside of the tavern.

The tavern has rules, and he was in violation of them. But the rules, of course, have exceptions, and he'd hit upon one of the unspoken ones: he was entertaining the guests without realizing it. You come into the tavern, you've got to be honest about who you are and why you're there, whether it be for a drink or to seek refuge from a slavering hoard of lesser demons your pissed-off wife cast at you. That's it. 

The imp was lying about who he was. But he was doing it so badly, and so extravagantly, it was all most of us could do not to laugh in his face.

Lady Delph was not one of those holding in laughter. She takes her tavern, its rules, and its purpose very seriously. But she also was not expelling his maroon pointy-tailed butt out of the realm, so there was that.

The "sprite" capered from the bar toward my table in the dark corner. Great mog, the poor thing had no awareness at all. Not only did he come into the Peace Hotel with a phony story and a bum glamour as a disguise, not only did he fail to grasp that not a single being he spoke with was buying it, he decided it would be a good idea to seek out the human in the darkened corner, possibly armed with cold iron in one form or another, even if it was just currency, and see if he could fly his sucker story.

A human. Glowering in a darkened corner. Sitting alone. And, while maybe not of an imposing size, one not afraid to be alone in a realm entirely populated by very dangerous fae beings. 

The "sprite"-ly imp either did not take any of this into account, or decided he didn't care. As far as I was concerned, this spoke poorly of his judgment. Which was already rated low, given his antics up to this moment.

"Pardon me, sirrah," he said as he leapt from the floor onto my table. At least he didn't bump my bottle of ale. "Might I trouble you with my tale of woe?"

The thing I couldn't figure out, especially now that I was seeing him close up, was not what you might expect. His glamour wasn't working, true enough. But it was kind of working, in that I could see a ghost of what it was he wanted the world to see. And that shouldn't have been possible. Certainly not to a low-wattage house imp with no resources outside his home realm. At least, that's what I would presume.

The ghost-sprite image was about six inches tall, while the imp was more like a foot. I tried not to smile at his total ineptitude. 

"I am but a humble sprite, as you can see," he said. I reached for my ale, without acknowledging him beyond a look that told him I knew he was there. Didn't tell him whether I was especially happy or annoyed about it, but since my starting expression was a glower, he might have taken a hint. 

"Ever since the Renunciation, things have been out of joint in every realm there is, as I am sure you know." With each word, he watched my expression like a cat watching a mouse hole. I've seen some inept con artists in my time, both human and fae, but this imp was a prize among fools. He had no subtlety at all. I wondered if he ever succeeded in fooling anybody at all about anything.

"Well, my home realm is abandoned, its power dried up like a spring in the desert. I am forced to search from realm to realm for the most pitiable tasks just to keep enough manna and food to keep myself in existence."

Carnies and con men have a term for that moment when the mark or sucker buys into the bullshit story they're weaving. In that moment, the mark becomes complicit in something he knows can't be right, not fully, and his acceptance brings him the hope woven into the bullshit for that very purpose, but also the guilt that will keep his mouth shut out of shame once he realizes he's been had. Any line of patter in a con leads up to that moment of acceptance, the baited hook that the sucker must bite. It's the okeydoke. 

And this imp pretending to be a sprite, for some reason I had yet to discern, was barreling to the okeydoke without doing even the bare minimum of spade work to soften me up and get me into a mood to go for it, even if I wasn't wise to his glamour and his phony stories and posturing for the past half hour in the tavern.

"But," he said, dangling the baitless hook before me, "I have knowledge that a wise being such as yourself might use to great advantage. Great advantage," he repeated, trying to tell me with a glance that he had Inside Information. "If you can, perhaps, help me out, I would be very willing to share such knowledge with a creature of power and focus and judgment just such as you..."

No, really. He included the ellipsis in the way he said it. Blatantly.

Bob, the dorven bartender, had been polishing the bar back near my corner so he could listen in, but at hearing that I was a creature of great power, he suddenly had to attend to something below the counter. He was quick, and not loud once he dived down there, but I heard part of his chortle even so.

Impy boy, oblivious as ever, had no clue that anyone but me was listening.

Which is funny, because at least half the room was paying attention. Even Delph cracked a small smile at hearing about my "power".

I took another mouthful of ale, swallowed it as I set the bottle back on the table, quite some distance from the imp, and responded. "Mm?"

"You're a man of the realms," he said, leaning in to include me in his supposed conspiracy. "But how do I know I can trust you?"

I inhaled. Even if his glamour had worked perfectly, it would have been obvious. The ghost sprite I was looking at had some interesting proportions. 

Imps and sprites both flit about the realms naked. But imps hide their private parts. Sprites are more like miniature humans, or sometimes elves, with insect wings. Sure, there are more variations than that, but you get the idea. So male sprites prance about with their reproductive apparatus on display. But it's in proportion, and you generally don't notice it much, because sprites are so, well, spritely and innocent. I mean, you see it, but they're not waving it in your face trying to impress you. (Female sprites are much the same. Boobs, sure, but not gigantic ones that bobble all over the place when they dance or caper. Just sort of pleasing, if you like that sort of thing.)

This imp, however, had either not understood sprites, which seemed likely given his other evidences of general ignorance and obliviousness, or he had felt the need to enhance his maleness for the sake of impressing the marks, which given imps' notorious ego issues, also seemed quite likely. 

Hell, they weren't mutually exclusive. It could easily be both.

Not that he'd gone quite so overboard that the glamour's manhood was competing with the imp's tail for length. Not quite. But it was distracting.

So even if his glamour was not literally transparent, nobody would have believed this was an actual sprite even at first glance. Maybe some sort of half-breed, though that's pretty rare with the little folk. It happens, but I've only ever met three myself, and I'm well-traveled among the realms.

But, as I say, I inhaled. And let out a breath without sighing. Not per se.

"I imagine," I said, "you've worked out a way for me to earn your trust?"

The imp smiled, though the ghost-sprite simply nodded — goodness, maybe some competence went into the spell after all! — believing I had just bought into the okeydoke.

Oh well, at least he thought I was his sucker, rather than one of the customers.

"I know," he said, continuing to try to make me think I was part of his select conspiracy, "that you changelings don't have much of a reputation for being trustworthy, but between you and me, that's what they call a self-fulfilling prophecy. Treat a being as inherently unworthy of trust, he can't ever do enough to prove that he is worthy, am I right?"

I tilted my head, which he could take for agreement if he liked.

"Right," he went on. "So here's what I plan to do. I'm just going to trust you, and we'll work things out from there."

It was at this point that I started to wonder if this was a joke on me. Maybe concocted by Bob. Dorves have notoriously low senses of humor, and shining me on with a completely and totally incompetent imp pretending he was a sprite and believing his incompetence was in fact a kind of genius... okay, that was maybe a bit of a complex, abstract gag for Bob. But not entirely out of the question.

"Will you?" I said without much expression, and I looked up at Bob, over behind the bar. He'd recovered from his fit of laughter, but was still overtly amused as he stared at the extremely-well-polished bar that he was continuing to rub with a cloth. 

"Indeed I will, sir." The imp all but bristled with feigned self-righteous pride and smugness. "But, of course, I need at least a little help immediately. My manna is all gone. Could you see your way to sparing me some? Or perhaps, helping me to determine a likely tap point in this rather small realm?"

"Well," I said, finally catching Bob's eye and shooting him a quick glare, "it's like this. You don't seem to have a very good understanding of this realm, your situation, or even of yourself— "

"Oh, but I do! Indeed I do, sir, I am far more intelligent than I appear to be! I saw that you were a changeling, did I not?"

I'm not a changeling, just a simple human. But either this was some joke, which was going to make me kind of angry, or this imp was so stupid that telling him the plain truth would have no effect, because he was so convinced of his cleverness that no volume of bricks bouncing off his forehead would disabuse him of his self-regard.

Which didn't keep me from rubbing his nose in it anyway.

I leaned on one elbow on the table, and jabbed a finger at him. In fact, the tip of my index finger thumped him right between the horns, several inches above where the ghost-sprite's face was appearing. Let him figure out if that meant the glamour was exceptionally effective, or completely faulty.

"Listen, sparky," I told him, "you chose entirely the wrong realm to crash if you're looking for free mana. Haven't you ever heard of the Peace Hotel?"

He shook his head dumbly, but I think he was shaking off the effect of the poke in the forehead I gave him rather than answering. He looked so dazed I almost started feeling sorry for him again. Almost.

"It's a new establishment, sure," I said, "but so is every establishment, since the Throne of Power was neutered. And this one's older than all the rest, really. You're in neutral territory. No violence, no duels, no killings, no revenge, no executions. This here is sanctuary for anyone who asks it. You're not going to draw much mana here, and what you do draw, you can only get by her permission," I hooked a thumb toward the half of the tavern room that included Delph. Really, the imp hadn't noticed the unQueen on entering, so why point her out to him now? He wasn't going to be here long, true, and Delph's ownership of the realm was far from secret, since her presence was what convinced so many that this really was safe territory. But I just didn't feel like extending the clown show any further than I had to, and having this idiot realize he was in the presence of Herself could only draw things out. 

No. Thanks.

Not that I needed to worry. Slowpoke didn't even glance around. His eyes were widening, and I realized this wasn't a joke. This imp was bone stupid, and only just realizing he'd misjudged his surroundings.

"No... mana?" he asked.

"Not free to tap, no. You can, by dispensation, get access to a trickle of the pure white stuff. Not much, basically to sustain life and maybe make a jump to another realm. But you're not going to need that."

I grabbed his pointy tail. The one I wasn't supposed to be able to see. The imp was not best pleased.

He flapped his leathery bat wings, straining to yank himself out of my grasp. He squeaked in fury, pinwheeling around and around, my right hand the focus of his arcs toward freedom.

Crimson little bastard knocked over my bottle of beer.

It was right around this point that the lady elf entered the tavern. But, like I said, I was a little busy to notice much more than the fact of her presence. And that she stopped looking around the room when she got a good look at my face.

Standing up, I hauled the flapping imp toward the Lady Delph's table. I'm not supposed to call her Lady. Nobody is. And nobody pays attention to that rule, except when she's in a very, very bad mood.

It's not terribly important, but do you have any idea how freaking difficult it is to walk normally while holding a pissed off imp one-handed? Try it sometime.

Delph the unQueen looked up at me when I stood before her table, trying to keep the gyrating imp from making me look too ridiculous before the boss.

"My lady," I said, careful not to capitalize the L before her, just in case, "we have a rascal here under false pretenses."

It wasn't necessary to do a full-arm swing to thwack the imp down on the table before her. Except that I enjoyed it. I did not let go of the bugger's tail.

"You see the poor excuse for a glamour."

She nodded.

"I admit," I continued, "that he has been entertaining some of the regulars, but, in my view, he is now become an irritation. If you do not object, this one I shall eject."

"Do we know his name?" she asked.

"Even had he given me a name, I would then know only one name that was not his."

She compressed her lips in acknowledgement. And to keep from giggling.

The imp kept looking back and forth from her to me.  When he realized his glamour had failed, it faded, and his energy went from manic rage to fear. In fact, it might even be called abject terror. I think he had finally recognized the Lady. But I didn't ask.

At least he stopped flying out in all directions. I was pretty sure I'd get several nasty bruises, the way he'd been flapping and flailing.

"Master imp," Delph said. The imp bowed his head.  "May we know your name? Your true name?"

He stuttered. He trembled. He kept trying to speak in reply, but made a hash of it for almost a minute. Delph's eyes twinkled. But she didn't laugh in his face. Anyone who didn't know her wouldn't have seen how amused she was.

Finally, he managed to stammer out: "I hight k-k-ki-Kirjazok, mistress."

"I am not your mistress, Kirjazok," she said with almost no rebuke at all in her tone.

Still, he flinched. "I meant it only out of respect, and in view of my being a guest, and in reply to your calling me master, mis— ma'am."

"You show respect to me in my realm by masking your nature and telling falsehoods to my honest guests? Perhaps I should be flattered?"

Have I ever mentioned that elves are cruel? I swear, sometimes I think they're simply humanoid cats.

Kirjazok was probably one or two further comments from a nervous breakdown, which could get messy. Lot of wood in the tavern. The tables, the chairs, the rafters. All that sawdust on the floor. Delph could have her fun, but causing the twit to combust would be bad for everybody else. Or a nuisance, at least. Maybe I was the only one who'd be much hurt by flames. Well, Bob too, I suppose.

"My lady, I think it best to escort him through the boundaries of this realm now." I yanked Kirj off the table, inclined my head a fraction of a degree, just to be absolutely clear that I was respecting her — not that she'd doubt it, but fae creatures get finicky, even if only sometimes — and went to the front door.

The Peace Hotel realm is really an entire pocket universe, and yet it is also just a building. There is an outside, but that's a consequence of the realm's function. Nobody can enter or exit the tavern directly by hopping realms, so that no attack can be mounted by just jumping into the middle and fighting everybody. Not that, having jumped in, they could do violence, but that's a separate point.

Anyway, point being, to slingshot Kirj's scaly red butt to some other realm, I had to take him "outside", and so I did.

He still wasn't fighting. He had a dazed look, and I thought maybe he was still absorbing the fact that he was escaping with his life.

What do you know, the little piece of sludge could learn. 

"Kirjazok," I intoned as I held him before me, right on the edge of the barrier, "you have broken the rules of the Peace Hotel. I have already told you what those rules were. Do you dispute this?"

"I do not." Even for a foot high imp, it was a very small voice.

"You are not barred from this place of sanctuary. I am sending you elsewhere, but if you require peaceful refuge, know that you are permitted to return. How. Ever. I strongly recommend that you not find need of returning anytime in the very near future. That is not an imperative, but friendly advice from me."

He nodded to show he had heard me.

"Very good. Begone."

I pushed him through the barrier, not taking any particular care about which of the infinite realms he wound up in at the other end.

Then I stood there a moment. Took a deep breath. Rubbed imaginary imp germs off my hands.

The tavern is not a loud and boisterous one most of the time. Or rather, it wasn't up to that point. Even so, I'm not a people person, and walking through the crowd back to my table of safety in the dark and forbidding corner where people tended to leave me alone unless I invited them to talk for a bit took a bit of mental girding.

I went back in, nodded at Delph as I caught her eye, and made my way toward my table. Then I saw two things at pretty much the same time.

The bottle of spilled ale on the floor, which reminded me that I needed to get another drink from Bob.

And the middle-aged lady elf. Sitting. At my table. Facing my seat, presently with her back to me and the room.

I walked up to the bar. My hands were balled into fists, my teeth gritted. I had to get over my mad. She could potentially be a customer. 

Bob glided to where I stood. "What'll it be, Guy?"

I dipped my head left, toward my table. At the invader. "She order anything yet?"

"She has."

"She pay?"

"Indeed."

"Right. Pilsner in a stein, then."

Bob shook his head. "We don't have any cold, and stop being fancy. Beer's beer, mate."

"Shut up and give me what I ordered, you stodgy dirt-grubbing midget."

Bob harumphed with a grin and went to the back to get a bottle of one of the beers few customers ever drank. He brought back the tall glass full of golden liquid, almost no head, and slightly chilled. I didn't even ask how he managed that. 

Bob, unlike dorves the world over, considers warm beer an abomination. I consider cold beer the same. We have a friendly war over the topic that usually involves me getting slightly chilled beer that I let sit for a while so I can drink it the way I like it.

Picking up the glass mug, I steeled myself, went, and sat in my chair.

"I suppose it's pointless to tell you that this table is reserved?" I said.

"I came here specifically to see you, Mr. Sheppard."

"And you are...?" I hate people that do that. I hate people who can't ask a question, but passive-aggressively leave a sentence uncompleted, to try to manipulate the person they're speaking to into being more pliant. But there I was doing it. I figured either it'd piss her off, like it does me, which is petty but there you are; or else it might, actually, make her a little more pliant.

Then again, she was an elf. And not a young one. Water off a duck's back. Maybe I could figure out some other way to annoy her in return for her presumption in just sitting at my table without so much as asking.

"Benedetta Smythe. Ex-Minister of Fate."

Oh hell.
 
"You and I," she said with a sinister lack of malice, "have some unfinished business."

She sipped her cocktail.

I put my stein on the table without drinking. Between her and me. I leaned back in my chair and looked her over.

Elven women are desireable, pretty much by definition. Tall, willowy, somehow both fragile and hard. And while they age, they do it with a grace few human women have ever achieved. Smythe had black hair that seemed to float around her head rather than hang. No gray, of course. Elves don't do that. But there were wrinkles around her eyes, and they weren't laugh lines. Her job had been handing out death and doom. A year ago, along with every other power broker in every magical realm, she'd lost her power source and her reason for being. 

Her clothes were remarkably plain, but they might always have been. Flip a coin. Was her elven heritage more important to her, or her identity as a bureaucrat? No way to tell. She might always have been plain, or she might have affected it to discourage unwanted attention.

When she said we had unfinished business, she wasn't kidding. Of course, the "ex" in her job title meant that the business was irrelevant now, but she obviously had other views on that. 

Now I had to figure out if she was here to kill me... or something worse.

I wasn't immediately worried. Even had she been still a creature of power, that power would not work in this place. She couldn't kill me here. Oh, she might try an old fashioned way, like a dagger, but even that kind of attempt would be dulled by the realm itself, and its purpose.

Also, I might have one or two special exemptions, being the realm's bouncer.

If she wanted to kill me, it couldn't be here. And, since she was smarter than good old Kirj the imp — most beings are, it's a very safe bet — she knew that already.

Great. So she was here to play mind games on me. Joy.

"I don't agree, Ms. Smythe. What business we might have had was nullified, along with your job."

"No man can escape his fate," she said, again putting no ice at all into her bureaucratic manner.

"I did. Fate's dead. You know that better than most. Free will reigns, now."

She ground her teeth. I managed not to grin at that.

Looking back, I probably should have been looking around to see if Delph was taking any notice of our conversation. But at the time, my attention was centered entirely on that table, and the rest of the world, even the relatively small world of the realm containing the Peace Hotel, was faded from my notice.

"You were to die. On the field of battle." She was tense, but not angry. I was having trouble figuring out her angle here. She didn't seem to be headgaming me. She was getting more flustered than I was, for one thing.

I mean, sure, that could be part of the thought process she wanted me to go through, but worrying at it that way is madness, and infinite regression, and other things I don't want to deal with, so I don't.

Besides, even among elves, headgames rarely get quite that baroque.

Well, they rarely get that baroque outside of court politics, but that's another ball of wax entirely. 

In any case, I decided to play along. Not nicely, no, but I was a bit curious where she was going. Other than the killing me nastily part; that was a given, sooner or later, if she had her way.

"I know it," I said. "Knew it, somehow, when I wasn't there and should have been. All those folk dying, and me not. It's a funny thing, though. What in hell would I be doing on a field of battle. It wasn't my realm, wasn't my fight, and I'm not much of a fighter to begin with. Certainly not a warrior. So why me? Why there?"

"Fate is not a thing to question," she said, primly.

"Fate is dead and gone. I'm questioning one of its former bureaucrats."

That won me some emotion from her eyes. The eyes that didn't have laugh lines. And wouldn't, by the evidence. Though, granted, it was only a flicker. I was obviously going to have to work harder to give her any new lines.

"You were not one of my cases, so I'm afraid I don't know the details of why you were meant to be there, nor how. Only that you were meant to be there."

"Would you believe that fate had other plans for me?"

That ruffled her a bit.

"That's not possible."

"Says you. I didn't know what my fate was supposed to be till after I missed it. Not that I'd have run to meet it if I knew beforehand, but I got diverted, and snatched, and yanked, through several dozen realms, and I'm telling you, up to a week or three before I got snatched into the nether realms, I'd had no magical dealings of any sort. So not only was it not my fault, I was too wet to your whole world and all your rules and obligations to know enough to make it my fault."

Her eyes narrowed. Thinking.

"You are of Earth."

"That's a fact."

"And not a wizard, or conjuror, or... anything?"

"Not a damned thing."

"And yet you possess the power to cheat your fate, evade your weird, and help bring about this present..." she searched for a suitably hateful word, and settled on "...anarchy."

"Lady, I'm telling you, I've got no power. Can't you see that? You're an elf, for mab's sake."

"You hide it very well. Very, very well. But it must be there."

I rolled my eyes. Why was I getting all the numbskulls today?

"Look, get to the point. My patience is at a low ebb today, I'd rather not play verbal chess with a fae, if it's all the same to you."

Her stern, dark eyes took me in for a moment or two. "Admit your power," she said.

"Go find another table, this one's taken and you're not welcome here."

Oh, she was very good. Bureaucrats and fae, great at hiding their emotions. Combine the two, and you face an enigma. Her anger did not show. Not even in what she didn't express. Her expression told me I was a bug that she deigned to notice, not even worthy of crushing, just there, before her.

But if I was insignificant, why was she here, looking for me, and demanding that I admit to having power I have never had? Good at masking her inner emotions, maybe, but something was keeping her from the sort of baroque, roundabout actions that were impossible to read that most fae, and especially elves, and especially particularly bureaucratic elves, always prefer.

Holy shit. I suddenly realized: she was desperate.

Not that I was going to play nice with her because of it. "Well?" I said, "are you moving to another table, or are you going to force me to make you move?"

"My understanding of the rules of this place are that no being may force any other being in any way whatsoever," she said imperturbably.

I stood up and circled the table to where she sat in her chair. "Yeah," I said, "about that." Her face did not turn, her eyes did not follow me. "There are a few tiny exceptions to those rules. Like," I said, grabbing the top of the wooden back of the chair, "the enforcer of the establishment has some leeway."

I pulled. Hard. And turned my body as I pulled.

Elves don't weigh much.

She wound up in the center of the room, sprawled and tangled in her cloak.

I pushed the chair back to its place at my table. Gently.

Then I went to where Smythe still lay on the floor, deciding how to stand up with elvish dignity, or if dignity was even possible, and offered her my hand.

"You dare?" she whispered.

"You remain welcome in the Peace Hotel, madame. But do try not to annoy the staff. It's, well, a bit ungrateful. Even if you aren't making use of our status as a refuge."

She twitched at that. Not much, not something you'd see in the dim tavern from more than a few feet away. But I caught it.

And she did take my hand and let me help her back to a standing position.

"The bar is open to you, as is any open table or barstool, or table to which you are invited. Good evening, ma'am." I didn't bow, but I nodded slightly, which was a concession to her dignity, whether she knew it or not. Then I turned my back on her, went back to my seat, and began to enjoy my pilsner.

Of course, somewhere in there, I had noticed the lady Delph noticing what I'd done. But if I'd been out of line, I would know it already. Sometimes I think she finds my temper curious. Or interesting. Or something. Maybe I'll ask her one day.

As I set my stein back on the wooden table, Smythe silently walked back up to the place where she had been sitting. She did not pull out the chair, however, so I chose to treat her interruption as possibly courteous.

"Yes?"

She looked into my eyes, deadpan. "My drink. I left it. My apologies."

I held my hand out, palm up, fingers aimed more or less at her drink, welcoming her to take it. She picked it up, daintily.

"And —" she began.

I waited. And my intake of breath and subsequent exhalation might not even have been easy to confuse with a sigh of long suffering. Maybe.

"I have offended you. I apologize for that. But I need help."

She let that hang in the air between us.

So did I.

Uncertainty crept into the edges of her eyes. Goodness, maybe she really was sorry she'd been rude.

"You've possibly come to the right realm for help. Am I to take it that you are not here to kill me, then?"

"Oh," she said, "you will be killed, but that can wait."

Yeah. Not every elf is innately charming. I kind of got the feeling that she'd also never worked at it, either.

"So not only can you not come out and ask for help — which, by the way, is one of the lesser-known rules of this realm; you need to ask plainly for that which you seek — but you're also going to kill me. Madame Smythe, at the risk of seeming difficult, can you understand why that might not incline me to help you?"

Elves don't fidget. But she was standing, bound by courtesy not to sit without invitation now that she'd attempted and failed to presume an invitation from me. And I was seated. And she was, in so many ways, a creature entirely unused to not being in the position of power in her interpersonal relationships. So, elves don't fidget, but I sort of think she really, really wanted to. If so, however, she managed to fight the urge down.

"These new rules, different in every place... they are difficult to navigate. And sometimes to remember."

"I sympathize," I said. "Instead of falling back on one set of rules, you are forced to deal with each being as an individual. A new experience for many, but particularly for one such as you, I should think."

She didn't bristle. Quite.

"OK, fine," I said, "I'll throw you a line here. What kind of help do you need? And why should I choose to come to your aid?"

"May I sit?" she asked.

"That depends," I said. "If you start with the word games, the power games, or anything other than just talking to me and telling me what I need to know, you will be immediately disinvited again. But if you can speak plainly with me, and in all ways behave as a being asking or begging for assistance, rather than presuming to be above me, the one whose help you would appear to require, then you may sit at my table."

She inhaled, pulled out the chair, and sat.

"I need your help, Guy Sheppard."

"What kind of help. Be specific."

"A number of beings wish me dead. And are making efforts in that direction. Many efforts."

I grinned a little. "The efforts are unsuccessful so far."

She didn't grin. "Three have been very close. Including one just before I entered here."

I sat up in my chair. "What?"

"It's true."

"Someone almost killed you in this realm? 'Outside' the door there?" I waved at the tavern's entrance.

She shook her head. "No, I mean just before I entered this realm."

I let out a little sigh, and relaxed. If such a thing had happened, I damned well ought to have known it instantly, and so should Delph, and Bob, and a few others. The rules of the realm are strong. Damn strong. As far as I or the unQueen or anybody who'd looked at the enchantments and magicks could determine, they were, in fact, unbreakable outside of the exceptions Delph had built into them. But there is always a being with more power, or a clever new application of less power. 

If there was a being clever enough to bypass the magicks and the alarms, that would be bad.

But I had to get back to business.

"Did they follow you here, madame Smythe?"

She looked around. "I don't think anyone has come in after me, no."

"And I didn't see anyone 'outside,' either, when I was just out there. They can come here, you know." She nodded. "But don't worry about that, because they really can't do anything. And if they try, well, they'll have all sorts of troubles to worry about.

"So," I continued, "do you know why these beings are trying to kill you?"

She looked astonished. "You mean you don't know?"

I took another drink of my beer. "Humor me and say it plainly." Truth was, I hadn't put it together, and I should have.

"Have you any idea how many beings died because they were fated to, without reason or justice?"

Oh. "Quite a lot, I should think."

She nodded. "The families of those who died... pointlessly. Want revenge. On me, among others. I want you to stop them."

I put my beer down on the table — without sloshing — and gaped at her.