Locke, Stock, and Barrell, Attorneys at Law by J. P. Nicol

Locke, Stock, and Barrell, Attorneys at Law

by J.P. Nicol

Lincoln Douglas was supposed to get an internship for his political science major, but he’d found that a rather difficult task. He’d sent out hundreds of applications to various law offices, research institutes, and politicians, and had never gotten a single acceptance. If he was lucky, he got a form rejection email. But most places just didn’t respond to him at all, and after a few months, he checked them off his list. But then his mom poked around their family connections and found a place. A friend of Lincoln’s uncle, a Mr. Perseus “Porky” Barrell, worked at a law office and was willing to have him on for the summer. It wasn’t likely to build him much of a network, but it was college credit. Besides, his mom said, it was bound to be an interesting experience. It wasn’t every day that you got a peek into the world of fairy law.

Fairyland had crashed into the human world twenty-five years ago, their lease for the garden of Eden having expired, according to some accounts. For a while both mortals and fey tried to ignore each other, but eventually the fairies succumbed to the time-honored tradition of messing with humans, and the humans succumbed to the time-honored tradition of turning everything into a lawsuit. However, reconciling the jurisprudence of the two worlds was no easy task, and fairy law was less about traditional legal practice and more about navigating an immense labyrinth of contradiction and equivocation.

But Lincoln’s advisor had approved of the internship anyway, so here he stood, in the middle of Chicago, hoping that he’d given his taxi driver the right address. A skyscraper loomed in front of him, its shining glass creating a perfect reflection of the street behind. Well, an almost perfect reflection. The buildings were all the same, but there were different people walking around. In fact, the only person’s reflection that was unchanged was Lincoln’s, but as he looked at it more closely, he could have sworn that he saw it blink. Lincoln started back, and his reflected face grinned at him of its own accord. Then his reflection morphed into some other passer-by and walked away.

Lincoln watched it go and marveled. He’d seen a couple fairies at home, but here he was surrounded by the extraordinary. Gigantic fish swam in the river, flying carpet taxis deftly avoided the traffic below, and a squad of leprechaun bankers passed Lincoln, swearing at the sylphs who’d blown their hats off as they careened down the street. Lincoln could have stood there for hours, but the buzzing of his phone told him he needed to get a move on or he’d be late.

Lincoln entered the skyscraper and took the elevator to the twenty-seventh floor. He found himself in a small waiting room, decorated with watercolor paintings. A grandma sat in the corner near a coffee maker, knitting a scarf. For who could this lady be but a grandma? Her poofy white hair, her large round spectacles, her flower dress… Lincoln could easily believe that this was the original grandma, the Platonic grandma, the one upon whom all other grandmas, past and future, were based.

Seeing Lincoln, the grandma tried to stand up, but winced at a sudden pain in her back. Lincoln hurried over to her. “Do you need a hand, ma’am?”

She gratefully accepted his help and smiled at him. “Oh, that’s so nice of you. What a nice young man. Can I have your name?”

“I’m Lincoln. Pleased to meet you.”

Her smile vanished and the wrinkles around her eyes deepened. “This is going to take some work, I see.”

“Is something wrong?”

She stood up straight and peered at him over the top of her glasses. “You can call me Laffy. We communicated through email.”

And suddenly Lincoln’s vision of the milk-and-cookies grandma was dashed against the realization that this was Laffy Stock, the firm’s head lawyer. “Ms. Stock! Of course!”

Laffy shook her finger at him. “What were you thinking, giving me your name like that? I could’ve been a fairy in disguise!”

Lincoln was taken aback. “I… I didn’t mean…”

“Say what you mean, and nothing else. Robin Goodfellows are a tricky breed.”

Lincoln flinched a little at the slur, but didn’t say anything.

As if on cue, the lady’s cell phone buzzed. “Excuse me. Hello?”

“Hello,” Lincoln heard from the other end, in a voice like the gentle caress of tides upon the sand. “This is the US Post Service. You have a package being cleared, and we need just a few more pieces of information. May I have your name?”

“No you may not,” the old lady said, and hung up. “There. That’s how you do it.”

Laffy shook Lincoln’s hand and the two of them walked a little ways down the hall. “We’re talking with a new client right now. It should give you a good idea of the sort of thing we do. And later, Jane said she’d have you Xrssk some documents.”

Lincoln raised an eyebrow. “Xerox some documents?”

“No, Xrssk them.”

“Ah, I see.”

Lincoln did not see, but he didn’t want to make even more of a fool of himself in front of his new boss.

Laffy opened a door and they entered a small room with four cushy chairs and a glass coffee table. Spilling out of one of the chairs was ‘Porky’ Barrell, an immense gentleman in a gray and white striped suit, with greased up hair and a thin mustache adorning his lip. Across from him sat a middle-aged woman with large cat-eye glasses and curly red hair, who nearly jumped out of her seat at the sound of the door opening.

“I’m showing our new intern around,” Laffy said to the timid woman. “Do you mind if we sit in, dear?”

“N-no, of course not,” she replied.

Lincoln waved. “Hi. I’m Lincoln.” Then Laffy shot him a sharp look and he quickly added, “That’s not an invitation to claim my name or anything, that’s, uh, just what it is.”

“Our new intern, hey?” the portly lawyer said, in a thick Louisiana accent. “Good to see you, Lincoln.”

“The pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Barrell.”

“Porky,” the lawyer corrected, with a hearty laugh.

“Oh!” the mousy woman exclaimed. “I’m, um, Mrs. Liv Mild. Call me Liv.”

“Liv here was just explaining her story,” Porky said. “So, business is falling on rough times, and you were just about to throw in the towel when this ‘Mr. Crabapple’ approaches you.”

“Y-y-yes,” Liv said. “He, um, said that he wanted to be my fairy servant, which, you know, would really help and all he asked for is, um, this.” Liv presented them with a small cooler bag containing an even smaller fish. “I got it at the grocery store last Thursday.”

“Well, it is a very tasty looking fish,” Porky observed.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t hire myself out for it,” Mrs. Mild said. “A-anyway, I was worried. You know what they say, if it sounds too good to be true… it probably is.”

“Has he given you a contract yet?”

“Yes, but it’s, um… a little complicated,” Mrs. Mild said, extracting a piece of paper from her purse and handing it to Porky.

“Mmmm. I do see what you mean,” he mused.

Lincoln peered over Porky’s shoulder at the contract.

Section I:

For the purpose of this agreement:

Mrs. Liv Mild is the party of the five hundred and first part.

Mr. Crabapple is the party of the fifty fourth part.

Mrs. Liv Mild is the party of the eleventh part.

Porky put the paper away before Lincoln could read any more. “We’ll take a look at it and investigate this Mr. Crabapple. Rest easy, ma’am. Locke, Stock, and Barrell are on the case!”

Mrs. Mild sighed. “Oh, thank you. It’s really a big weight off of me.”

Laffy nodded. “And can we keep the fish for a little bit? I want to see if there’s anything strange about it.”

“Certainly,” Mrs. Mild said.

Porky escorted Mrs. Mild to the door, and Laffy peered at the fish. “Still in its packaging, and she got it last Thursday,” she muttered. “Can’t be an ‘intimate possession’ for a curse’s focus. Lincoln, be a dear and get a couple incense sticks from the cabinet over there.”

Lincoln obliged her, though it took several tries and several more exclamations from Laffy of “No, not that drawer, more to the right” and “A little further up!”, but finally, Lincoln found her two sticks. She lit them and held her spectacles in the smoke, then, once each of the lenses had been thoroughly incensed, she put the glasses on again and looked at the fish.

“No traces of magic either. I’ll see if the ladies at bridge night know anything.”

“It’s quite possible,” Porky added, “That it has significance only to this Mr. Crabapple. Fairies can have very peculiar tastes.”

Laffy’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe. But I say we can’t give our client the go-ahead until we find out just why Mr. Crabapple is so particular about this fish.”

“I heartily concur. I’ll set up an in-person meeting and see what his history is.”

“If he’s a known trickster, the deal’s off.”

Porky helped Laffy out of her chair and the two of them were about to leave the room when Laffy paused as if she’d forgotten something, then turned to Lincoln.

“Oh, yes. You. We’ll be busy for a while, so why don’t you go find Jane?”

Lincoln nodded, trying to ignore the feeling that he’d just been brushed off, and as Porky and Laffy left the office, Lincoln found the door marked “Jane Locke” and knocked. Hearing no answer, he walked in.

The office was incredibly neat. Not a speck of dust lay on the bookshelf, the carpet had an almost glossy sheen, and even the pencils sitting in a mug on the desk were evenly spaced out. The only thing out of place in the room was a swan sleeping in a dog bed over to one side. Well, there had to be something, Lincoln supposed. Anybody specializing in fairy law must be a little odd.

The only chair around was the one behind the desk, so Lincoln sat down, and his gaze fell on a post-it note on a folder in front of him.

Hi, Lincoln! Welcome to Locke, Stock, and Barrell!

I’m a little indisposed at the moment, but I’ll be able to talk come nightfall. In the meantime, if you could invoke Xrssk Mkkra Vth (Zer-sk Mick-rah Veth) and use the attached RAI form to get the Seelie Court’s grammar rules, I’d appreciate it!

-Jane

“Xrssk Mkkra Vth,” Lincoln said out loud, and a deathly stillness fell on the room. The shadows congealed into a puddle in the center of the floor, then out of the puddle rose… Darkness. Claws. Teeth. The thing loomed over Lincoln and stared into his soul with beady eyes.

Lincoln stood up and looked at it from head to foot. “Hi… um… I guess you’re Xrssk?”

“What is your pleasure?” it purred.

“Oh. Yes. You, uh, may call me Lincoln. We were looking for the Seelie Court’s grammar rules. Can you get me those?”

“I can.”

“…Will you?”

“With pleasure.”

A sudden gust of wind threw Lincoln into his chair and pushed it against the wall. A whirlwind rose in the middle of the office, casting documents all over the carpet and knocking over the mug of pencils on the desk. He heard the roar of a waterfall, but when he looked to see where it came from, he was blinded by the noonday sun that was shining at 7 PM.

Before Lincoln could properly consider how badly he’d messed this up, the office was filled with angry honks and the swan lunged at the grinning fairy, berating him with her wings.

“Stop that!” the fairy exclaimed. “I did what he asked, didn’t I?”

The swan responded with an angry trumpet, then picked up a folder off the ground with her beak and thrust it at Xrssk.

“Fine, fine!” the thing of darkness hissed. “You’re no fun.”

Cruel claws wrapped around the folder and Xrssk sank into the shadows once more. The gale abated, the waterfall was no longer to be heard, and the dim evening light fell on the office once more.

Lincoln immediately set to work putting everything back in its place, but was soon interrupted. For when the last rays of sunlight died the swan craned her neck backwards and folded into herself. Before Lincoln knew it, the swan was gone and in its place was a beautiful woman in her late twenties, in a neat blue skirt and white blouse. Without giving Lincoln a glance, she immediately left the room and headed down the hall. Lincoln hesitated for a moment, but decided in the end that it was better to follow behind. He found her next to the coffee maker.

“Ms. Locke, I assume? Call me Lincoln. Sorry about the whole… whatever happened there.”

The woman took a sip of her coffee. “Pleased to meet you, Lincoln. Call me Jane. Next time, please just give Xrssk a Retrieval of Archaic Information form. It’s got all the necessary syntax to prevent deliberate misinterpretation. For instance, it lets him know in no uncertain terms that he is to give us the English translation of the Seelie Court’s rules, not the one carried on the wind and whispered among trees and stones.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Jane rubbed her head. “No, no, it’s my fault. I forgot you’re new to the city. You haven’t dealt with many fey.”

“I guess… My sister plays with the naiad in our creek every–”

“–This one ate fifteen children before he was caught,” Jane said, nodding back towards where Xrssk had been.

Lincoln’s jaw dropped. “You’re joking!”

“He won’t hurt you, he’s thoroughly enchanted. His lawyer pushed for the death penalty, but there wasn’t a chance he would get off that easy. His true name was made public information, so now he’ll spend the rest of eternity tugged around at the people’s whim.”

Lincoln frowned. “Oh.”

“I don’t like him either. I’d just as soon use the web, but fairy precedent extends past the code of Hammurabi, so there’s a lot that hasn’t been uploaded yet.”

“I see. Um, can I ask about the… swan?”

“Jealous ex-boyfriend.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

Jane checked her phone. “Hm. Laffy wants fresh eyes on a new contract.”

“Oh, yes,” Lincoln said. “They were talking about it this afternoon.”

Jane tapped her phone and the printer spit out a couple sheets of paper. Lincoln looked over her shoulder as she read.

Section I:

For the purpose of this agreement:

Mrs. Liv Mild is the party of the five hundred and first part.

Mr. Crabapple is the party of the fifty fourth part.

Mrs. Liv Mild is the party of the eleventh part.

Mr. Crabapple is the party of the one thousand and first part.

Mrs. Liv Mild is the party of the fifth part.

A Clupea Harengus processed and sold by Fishybitz™ is the party of the twenty second part.

July 5, 2025 AD is the party of the third part.

Mr. Crabapple is the party of the four hundred fiftieth part.

Mrs. Liv Mild is the party of the forty ninth part.

Section II:

The party of the fifty fourth part shall be at the beck and call of the party of the five hundred first part until the party of the eleventh part dies.

The party of the fifth part may order the party of the one thousand and first part to do anything, unless a local, state, federal, or magical law prohibits such action.

The party of the twenty second part shall be delivered to the party of the four hundred fiftieth part by the party of the forty ninth part no later than the party of the third part.

This contract is enforceable by geas.

Jane took out a notepad and began writing. “So the numbers referring to Mrs. Mild are 49, 11, 501, and 5. The numbers referring to Mr. Crabapple are 54, 1001, and 450. The fish is 22, and the date is 3.”

“11, 10, 55, 7,” Lincoln said, squinting a little. “So… if you translate that to the contract… He’s gonna be at her beck and call until she dies, and she can order him to do anything as long as it’s not against the law. In return, she needs to give him the specified fish no later than July 5. And it’s magically binding.”

Jane rubbed her forehead. “That’s the plain reading, anyway.”

“Okay, it says that she can order him around, but does it say he has to obey?”

“The phrase ‘beck and call’ in fairy precedent establishes the responsibilities of a master-servant relationship. It’s a shorthand used in all fairy binding contracts.”

Lincoln scratched his head. “But if Mr. Crabapple isn’t trying to pull anything, why the cipher? Why not just say what he means?”

Jane took a sip of her coffee. “…You really haven’t met many fairies, have you.”

At around nine o’clock, Xrssk returned with the English translation of the Seelie Court’s grammar rules, and Jane sent Lincoln home to rest up while she worked through the night.

The next afternoon they all assembled in front of Mr. Crabapple’s townhouse with Mrs. Mild, and rang the doorbell. There was no answer. Lincoln looked through the door’s glazing into the house. At first, he thought that he was looking through some sort of tinted window, but no. Everything inside was red. Red carpet, red floor, red chairs. There were different shades of it, to be sure, but it was all red.

Then a red man suddenly swung down at him, and he nearly jumped out of his shoes.

“Ohoho!” the man cried through the door. “You must be the lawyers, the barristers, the advocates!”

The man stood upside down on the ceiling of the front hall, and his face looked as if someone had made a paper maché mask with dried oak leaves instead of newspaper. He had a beard made up of dead ivy, and two crabapples formed his twinkling eyes.

“Come in, come in!” he cried, opening the door and leaping to the ground. “Call me Crabapple!”

He skipped into a living room decorated with Corinthian columns and busts of Roman emperors, all painted a deep crimson. “So many lawyers for just one contract! It’s curious, isn’t it? How did you humans get so paranoid!”

Porky shrugged. “We like things to be straightforward.”

“Yes, but you praise anyone who manages to trick a fairy!” Crabapple said, doing a handstand. “I was just reading one of your storybooks. A fairy made a contract with a human and he was called a villain. But then the human snuck through the woods and learned his true name by eavesdropping on him, and she was called cunning!”

“Rumpelstilstkin was trying to take the queen’s firstborn,” Laffy said.

Crabapple shrugged. “As part of the contract she made with him!”

Porky sighed. “We just wanted to know why you proposed this whole thing. I must confess, I don’t see why you’d go into servitude just for a fish.”

“That’s because you don’t have the eye for decoration that I do!”

“…Decoration?”

Crabapple gestured to an empty plaque on the wall just above one of the columns. “That fish is just such a marvelous shade of red! I’ve never seen anything like it in nature. I just have to have it!” He squinted at Mrs. Mild. “The lady’s bound to die in what, forty? Fifty years? But I might never come across this color again in my life.”

Lincoln thought this was very strange, but it was clear from Laffy and Porky’s expressions that they didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary.

Crabapple took a copy of the contract out of his pocket, signed it, and shook it in front of Mrs. Mild. “Oh, won’t you sign soon? I can’t wait to have it up!” He pirouetted out of the room.

Laffy turned to the other lawyers. “I don’t like him, but I don’t like robins on the best of days. What do the rest of you think?”

Porky scratched his chin. “I don’t know. I don’t trust him, but there’s nothing wrong with the contract. You find anything, Jane?”

The swan shook her head.

“Then I think I’m ready to sign,” Mrs. Mild said.

Laffy frowned. “I can’t advise you to do that. But I also can’t advise you not to. There’s nothing strange about the fish, besides its ‘marvelous shade of red,’ and the fairy’s explanation seems plausible enough. We can investigate further, if you want.”

Mrs. Mild shook her head. “No. If the shop can be saved, I’ll have to get his help soon. And if he finds a loophole, the most I’ll have lost is a fish.”

Laffy offered Mrs. Mild a form. “Then at least authorize us to take this to court if something goes wrong.”

Mrs. Mild signed Laffy’s form and looked over the contract one more time. “Well… thank you all for your help.”

She signed it, and suddenly the paper folded itself into two strips, which wrapped themselves around her wrists and disappeared.

“What… what is this?” Mrs. Mild asked, her eyes wide.

“That’s normal, dear,” Laffy said. “All that means is that you’re magically bound by the agreement. You’ve just got to give him the fish.”

But it was clear that something was wrong when Mr. Crabapple walked into the room. Not danced in, not twirled in, walked in. His posture was straight as a rod, his smile had vanished, and even the crabapples forming his eyes seemed hard and cold. Under his arm he carried an identical fish to the one Mrs. Mild had and he set it in front of her. “In

payment for services rendered: One red herring.”

Mrs. Mild adjusted her glasses and looked down at the fish. “What?”

“Can you count to one hundred? To one thousand?” the fairy asked.

“I-I don’t understand.”

He snapped his fingers and she jerked to her feet. “I said, do you know how to count to one thousand?”

“Y-yes..?”

“Excellent. Come with me. The rest of you can go.”

He walked out of the room and Mrs. Mild followed him, leaving the lawyers in a state of shock.

“What… just… happened?” Porky said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say she just turned into his servant, rather than the other way around.”

“…I think that’s exactly what happened,” Laffy replied. “But how?”

Lincoln looked at his copy of the contract again, but there was no mistaking. Despite the complicated runaround of “the party of the fifty fourth part,” etc., it clearly put Mrs. Mild as the master and Crabapple as the servant.

“That does it,” Porky said. “I’m filing suit.”

Lincoln took the bus to his apartment that night. Although he was the only human aboard the bus (the other passengers being brownies on their way to work), he barely noticed, instead finding a seat and vacantly staring out the window. At first, skyscrapers and neon signs lit up the night, but as they got further away from the downtown area, the city lights became rarer, and the darkness was punctuated more infrequently, until the only thing Lincoln could really see was his own reflection.

Then Lincoln’s reflection stuck his tongue out.

But the imitation didn’t seem as whimsical as it had before, and Lincoln was just annoyed. He turned away from the window, put in earbuds, and called home.

“Hi, Lincoln!” piped a voice from the other end. “Guess what? Burble was just telling me about the funny names that some rivers have!”

“Hi, Daisy. Can I talk to Mom?”

“Oh, sure. MOOOOOOM? LINCOLN WANTS TO TALK TO YOU! Anyway, did you know, when the Romans went to England, they went to a river and asked the Celts what its name was, and the Celts said ‘Avon.’ So the Romans called it the Avon river. Then they went to another river and asked what its name was, and the Celts said ‘Avon.’ So they called it the Avon river too. But Avon means river! They were calling them the River rivers! Weren’t the Romans funny? Oop, here’s mom.”

“Hi, sweetie!” Mom said. “How’s my new interny-at-law?”

Lincoln sighed. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.”

“Baby, what’s wrong?”

“It’s crazy. Normally if you mess up a case, your client loses some money. But you mess up here and boom, your client gets enslaved, ’cause apparently that’s legal again! And then they’re talking about Xrssks and I don’t know what that is until I wreck my boss’s office with one. Be honest, mom. Did Mr. Barrell actually want an intern or did he just take me on as a favor?”

“You’re here to learn. Mr. Barrell knows that.”

“I don’t know…”

“Sweetie, all that’s expected is that you be there and learn what they do. If you help out, that’s a plus, but nobody expects that.”

“Nobody except me.”

A little after the call ended, Lincoln got an email from Laffy saying that they would meet Mr. Crabapple the next day at the office of Smoak and Myr, AAL.

Smoak and Myr had their office in a run-down brick building on the south side, whose lobby featured peeling wallpaper and a ceiling that showered dust every time the L went by. The three lawyers and their intern came in ten minutes before the appointment and found Mrs. Mild already sitting there, in a wooden chair that did not seem to have been built with organic creatures in mind.

“Mrs. Mild,” Lincoln said. “Are you all right?”

Mrs. Mild sniffed. “I’ve… been better.”

Porky sat down next to her. “Ma’am. What did he do?”

“Last night he got out a box of pennies and demanded that I count them. So I started sorting them into piles, but he wasn’t happy. He wanted me to do it right, to count them one by one. And all that time he just sat in the corner and watched me. I didn’t get home until eleven, and I just didn’t know how to explain to Tim and Becca why Mommy couldn’t make them dinner.”

Mrs. Mild tried to keep her cool, but when the front door opened and she saw Mr. Crabapple enter, she broke down and sobbed on Porky’s shoulder. “He’s got a jar filled with sand. He’s going to make me count that next!”

The vines making up the fairy’s mustache twitched. “What kind of ‘hello’ is that?”

He snapped his fingers and Mrs. Mild rose to her feet, gave a stiff curtsey, then her legs gave out and she collapsed to the ground.

Crabapple shook his head. “Some people just have no manners.”

Swan Jane’s eyes flashed and she lunged at the fairy, but she was caught mid-jump by a translucent hand that appeared out of thin air. Then the rest of the ghostly body materialized, forming a pallid man with a lean face, in a suit that was a century out of fashion.

“Jane Locke, I presume,” he said in a nasally voice. “I’m Chimney Smoak, of Smoak and Myr. Pleased to meet you.”

He tossed Jane into the chair next to Lincoln, and she let out an indignant honk.

“So now we’re all here,” Porky said. “Maybe you can explain just how Mrs. Mild got bound to Mr. Crabapple when the agreement was for the opposite?”

“We’ll be happy to comply with any requests for discovery,” the ghost said, handing Porky a piece of paper. “Just as soon as you sign this.”

Chimney floated into the next room, and Crabapple strode confidently behind him. He snapped his fingers and Mrs. Mild followed, giving the lawyers one last pleading look.

Porky looked at the document and frowned. “He’s asking us to accept a magically binding confidentiality agreement.”

“A geas?” Laffy asked. “Why does he need something like that?”

Swan Jane gave an excited honk and pecked Porky’s hand so hard that he dropped his briefcase. “Ow! Why’d you do that?”

Jane didn’t respond, but tore through the briefcase’s contents until she found a page of the Seelie Court’s grammar rules and thrust it at him.

“In the absence of a true name,” he read, “A nickname is binding. Should a binding contract contain both a nickname and a true name, only the true name shall bind.”

“Of course!” Laffy exclaimed. “A fey’s true name would have to be confidential information. If that’s part of their case–”

“–Mr. Crabapple’s true name is hidden somewhere in this contract,” Porky finished.

Jane picked up a pen in her beak and waddled over towards the agreement, but Laffy took the pen from her. “If that’s true, they’ve got us dead to rights. Any other nickname he gives himself, like ‘Crabapple,’ is going to be overruled by his secret true name. I don’t think we’re going to win this in court.”

“Then?” Porky asked.

“Then it’s time to play Liar Liar Pants on Fire.” Laffy took the agreement from Porky, signed it, and the paper folded itself onto her wrists. “That always tickles,” she commented, and walked into the other room.

Lincoln was about to catalogue “Liar Liar Pants on Fire” as another term which he had no hope of understanding, but Porky saw his confusion.

“It’s a way to get around confidentiality,” he explained. “If Laffy signs the agreement, she’ll be magically obligated to try and keep what she knows a secret, but I can read that crone like a book. That way we get the information without the geas.”

Lincoln frowned. “How does that help you win the case?”

“It doesn’t. But it means that we can work outside the system to get this thing settled.”

“That sounds extremely illegal.”

Porky sighed. “If this were a human court, it would be. Welcome to the Wild West, kid.”

In a couple minutes Laffy returned and shook her head. “If we bring this to court, we won’t win. It’s a cut-and-dry case.”

“But were we right?” Porky asked. “Is the fairy’s true name hidden in the contract?”

Laffy’s face turned blank. “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

Porky grinned. “At least there’s that.”

The four of them returned to their 27th floor waiting room, stopping on the way to pick up some snacks. Porky put some coffee on and selected a large Boston Cream donut for himself.

“So, like I said, the piece of confidential information that you were given was Mr. Crabapple’s true name?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

“But it can’t be just his true name, he has to get Mrs. Mild’s name in the servant’s place to make the switch. Otherwise he’s making a contract with himself.”

Porky scratched his chin and Swan Jane got into the breadcrumbs. “I’m guessing it has to do with those numbers. ‘The party of the eleventh part,’ ‘the party of the forty ninth part,’ and so on.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Laffy replied.

“That’s exactly what it is!” Porky crowed. “I’ve got you now, you old hag! So, the ‘master’ in the contract is represented by 501, 11, 5, and 49, while the ‘servant’ is represented by 54, 1001, and 450. That right?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

Porky frowned. “‘That’s a ‘yes…’ I’m pretty sure. Is it some sort of number cipher? A is 1, B is 2, and so on?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

“No, it’s not that. Oh! Maybe there’s some sort of magical significance to the numbers? You’d know about that.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

Porky took a bite of donut. “You’re getting a little too good at this, Laffy. I can’t tell if that’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I’ll have to ask your friends at the bridge club… can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”

“Why,” Lincoln asked. “What happens there?”

“Nothing bad,” Porky replied. “It just takes hours to get the lipstick marks off.”

It went on like this for the next couple days. In the evenings, when Jane was a human, they interrogated Laffy. In the afternoons, Jane slept and the rest of them did their own research.

Porky came back the next day and reported that there was nothing in numerology that could put Mrs. Mild in the servant’s place and Crabapple in the master’s. But he kept up his interrogation, prodding Laffy at every angle for the numbers’ meaning.

Lincoln didn’t talk much, but he wrote out several ciphers, splitting up the large numbers so they’d fit in a 25 character alphabet. Even then, he kept getting results like ‘Edjade’ for the servant and ‘Eakedi’ for the master, which, while perfectly believable as fairy names, were nothing like ‘Liv Mild.’

Jane looked further afield for any significant information. She researched birthdays and ancestors, name meanings, root words, and more. But there was no luck there either.

Finally, on the fifth straight night of Liar Liar Pants on Fire, Laffy spoke up and said the thing none of them wanted to hear. “It might be time to call it quits.”

“We can’t do that!” Jane exclaimed. “If everything’s switched around, the contract doesn’t end at Mrs. Mild’s death, it ends at the fairy’s. Hundreds of years after we’re dead and gone, her spirit will still be bound to him.”

“I know!” Laffy said. “But you’ve tried everything from numerology to Caesar’s cipher, and while I can neither confirm nor deny that any of those guesses are correct, at this point you’re just throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping something sticks. In the meantime, we’ve got more clients waiting for us, and I don’t know what more we can do.”

Porky sighed. “I’ve got a couple friends in major firms around here. We can at least blacklist Mr. Crabapple from making any more contracts with humans.”

Jane clenched her fists. “Not you too!”

“I’m tired, Jane. We’ve been asking Laffy questions for almost a week now, and we’ve got nothing to show for it. Worse, I’m not even sure that I’m reading her right. She says ‘I can neither confirm nor deny that,’ and I just don’t know what she means anymore.”

“Did you see how he treated Mrs. Mild? Snapping her around like that? She made that contract under our watch. We can’t just give up on her now.”

“Look, I hate seeing that robin get what he wants as much as anybody!” Laffy said. “But we told the lady that we couldn’t recommend her signing the contract. She decided to anyway. That’s not on us.”

Lincoln slowly stood up and, unnoticed by the others, he went back to Jane’s office. Laffy’s mention of Caesar’s cipher had made him remember his sister’s soliloquy about the Avon river and the Romans, and he’d gotten an idea. He found a Retrieval of Archaic Information form, then sat down and turned on the desk light. He read through the form carefully, clause by clause, and, only when he was sure that he understood each section did he fill in the blank spaces. Finally, he stood up. “Xrssk Mkkra Vth.”

A pair of beady eyes and a toothy grin appeared in a shadowy corner. “What do you want? Spit it out.”

Lincoln simply handed him the form, and didn’t say a word.

“Smart boy,” Xrssk said.

Lincoln steadily met the fairy’s gaze.

Xrssk looked over the form and his dark eyes glinted. “The proper pronunciation of a fairy’s true name? I don’t get a request like that every day. How’d you get this?”

But Lincoln stayed silent.

“Fine, fine,” Xrssk said, extending a long claw and scribbling something at the bottom of the form. He handed it back to Lincoln and vanished once more.

Lincoln strode back into the waiting room and took a deep breath.

“If we can’t reverse Mrs. Mild’s servitude,” Porky was saying, “can we at least–”

“–Dixivil!” Lincoln cried. The word hung in the air.

“Lincoln,” Jane said cautiously. “What exactly did you just do?”

At the far end of the room, the elevator’s floor indicator began ticking up, from 1 to 2 to 3, then faster and faster until it was all a blur. The room began to shake, and Porky rushed to one of the watercolors on the wall to stop it from falling. At floor 27 the chime rang and everything abruptly stopped. Then the elevator doors opened and Mr. Crabapple slid into the middle of the room, standing perfectly straight, with his arms at his sides and his legs together, as if bound by an invisible cord.

“Wha-what is this?” he grunted.

“I figured it out,” Lincoln said. “How he managed to switch who was doing what part of the contract. He needed to make all the numbers that seemed to be referring to Mrs. Mild actually refer to him, and vice versa, right? The numbers that referred to the servant in the contract, the one who we thought was ‘Mr. Crabapple?’ They were 54, 1001, and 450. But get this. In Roman numerals, 54, 1001, and 450 are LIV, MI, LD.”

Mr. Crabapple shuddered, and Lincoln turned to face him. “Once I figured that out, it was easy to find your name. The numbers that refer to the master in the contract are 501, 11, 5, 49, or DI, XI, V, IL.”

Lincoln let out a satisfied sigh, then noticed that Laffy, Porky, and Jane were all looking at him expectantly. “I, um, actually don’t know what to do from here. You were all just wanting to know what his true name was, so I figured it out… Laffy?”

“You idiot,” Crabapple said. “The crone signed an agreement. She can’t do anything with my name.”

“Not quite,” Laffy said. “The agreement was only for information I heard in your lawyer’s office. Now that I’ve learned your true name someplace else… Dixivil!” An unseen force spun the fairy around to face her. “Nullify the contract you made with Mrs. Mild.”

The printer whirred to life and a copy of the contract flew out, its letters glowing gold. Dixivil’s hands jerked up, caught the paper, and ripped it cleanly in half.

Laffy adjusted her glasses. “Good. Now, what I’m about to say isn’t a command, it’s just a suggestion. Be at Mrs. Mild’s beck and call. Fulfill her commands to the best of your ability, with no complaints, and to your best understanding of her intentions. If you try to hurt her again, or if she is displeased with your work, believe that I will know about it, and I will release your true name to the world wide web. I’m sure you’re familiar with Xrssk Mkkra Vth.”

Laffy’s shadow rose up the wall and formed into the thing of darkness. “What is your pleasure?”

She gave him a pleasant smile. “Just proving a point, deary.”

Porky grinned. “Either Mrs. Mild is your new boss, or everyone is your new boss. Get it?”

Dixivil nodded, his eyes wide.

“Dixivil,” Jane said, rising from her chair and brushing off her skirt. He swiveled to face her. “One last thing.”

She punched him in the face.

The invisible bonds around the fairy loosed, and he gave them one final terrified glance before turning tail and fleeing the room.

“All the same,” Porky said. “I’m worried that he’ll cause trouble in the future.”

Laffy looked out the window at the street below. “Maybe. But I think he’ll take the safe route, and just wait until Mrs. Mild dies. He might try and trick someone afterwards, but that’ll be after our time.”

“I hope you’re right,” Jane said. “The poor lady needs a break.”

“Well,” Laffy said, “Good work, everyone. I’ll let Mrs. Mild know what’s happened. The rest of you get some sleep. We’ve got a big contract coming up between a bunch of fairies. Should be fun.”

“A big one?” said Porky. “Between who?”

“Precisely.”

“What?”

Laffy nodded. “Yes, between Who and What. That’s what they’re calling themselves.”

“What’s what they’re calling themselves?”

“One of them is.”

“I don’t get it.”

“That’s the third one. He’s trying to cut in on the deal.”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Jane. “Another minute of this and I’m going to go crazy.”

Lincoln wished them good night and followed Jane into the elevator. Behind them, Laffy and Porky continued their banter.

“Wait, who’s cutting in on the deal?”

“No, not Who. I don’t get it.”

“If you don’t get it, how am I supposed to?”

The doors closed and their argument was soon drowned out by the purr of the elevator. Lincoln’s thoughts drifted back across everything that had happened, and despite their ultimate success, his shoulders drooped and his gaze was fixed on the carpet for the entire ride down. When they arrived at the ground floor he finally spoke, as much to himself as to anyone else.

“Is that what fairies are really like?”

Jane glanced over at him. “It wasn’t a fairy who cursed me. Is that what humans are really like?”

“…No, I guess not.”

“What do you mean, ‘no?’ Yes, absolutely, that’s what humans are really like. We can be cruel in ways that no fairy could ever dream of! But that’s not all we are.”

They walked outside, and the street greeted them with gasoline fumes and the faint smell of shawarma. A cloud of pixies played overhead, lighting up the night like technicolor fireflies.

Jane sighed. “Look, Lincoln. Laffy… She’s been hurt badly by fairies. I suspect it happened even before the worlds fully converged. It’s given her a distorted perspective on them. Truth is, there are douchebags in every camp. But the important thing is to fight cruelty wherever you find it, and not to give up hope, because for every prick like Mr. Crabapple, there’s a naiad who wants nothing better than to play with friends in her creek. And people like that are worth protecting.”

Lincoln nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”

“And hey, Lincoln. One more thing.”

Lincoln looked up at Jane and she smiled at him.

“Good job today.”

He returned the smile and the two of them parted ways.

_______________

This is J.P. Nicol‘s debut publication. When he’s not writing, he regales the bar he tends in Wheaton, IL with riddles and philosophizes on the nuances of empire at 1 AM. In all cases, he is fervently dedicated to being the weirdest part of somebody’s day. To read more snippets of his work or to sign up for his newsletter, visit jpsjabberings.com.