“From what she told me about her early training,” Sparkle offered helpfully from where she stood atop a stack of books, “Mistress Chessie’s practical lessons started out a lot more slowly. Wind, then levitation, basic telekinesis, some minor Transfiguration and simple charms…”

“Master James’s instructions were quite clear on the subject,” Ken said firmly. “Caley’s mind is much more organized and orderly than Mistress Chessie’s was. She’s absorbing the theory at a tremendous rate during our lessons while she’s asleep -“

“Just because I’ve started walking doesn’t mean I’m ready to try riding a unicycle,” I interrupted him. That weird jumbled feeling I’d woken up with still hadn’t gone away completely. Combined with the stress - and relief - of having decided on a course of action the previous evening, and the general weirdness I had struggled to encompass since arriving at the House, it was rapidly turning into frustration. “If there’s a normal structure for teaching magic, shouldn’t we follow that? There must be a reason for it.”

Ken waved that off dismissively. “Mistress Chessie required additional lessons that you never will. Today, she’d probably be categorized as having ADHD, and would have been taught differently. You, on the other hand, have a mind like a dry sponge -“

I cut him off again. “And didn’t grow up surrounded by all of this,” I gestured around me, struggling to keep my temper under control. That was unusual for me…normally, I was so level-headed that some of my teachers had wondered if I ever got frustrated at all. I did, of course. Everyone does. “Ken, I haven’t even been here a whole week yet! Even if it does feel longer than that sometimes.”

Ken pursed his lips.

Sparkle zipped over and perched on my shoulder. I tipped my head and tried to look at her, but it was quite impossible, so I gave up. I was pretty sure I felt her little foot tapping impatiently, though. I imagined her with her hands on her hips and an irritated look on her cute little face. “Caley isn’t Mistress Chessie! And while Master James no doubt had excellent ideas for her training, he’s not here.” She stomped her foot with each word, tiny little impacts. “He didn’t know how Caley would handle any of this, not really!”

Ken blinked in surprise and shifted his attention from her to me.

“She’s right,” I said softly. “All I know of my father is what I’ve read in his letter, that one journal entry, and what you and Sparkle have told me about him. How much did he really know about me? He never saw me again after he sent me to live at the orphanage, did he? All he had were Sister Sarah’s progress reports to go on. And this…this is all so much stranger than anything I ever studied in school.

“A lot of what I’m learning is forcing me to reassess reality Ken, at least as I’ve always understood it,” I continued before he could say anything. “I’m doing my best, but…Ken, you still haven’t really told me what it means to be the Guardian. Just hints here and there. I have little pieces of an absolutely enormous puzzle, and you want me to throw lightning around! A week ago, I would’ve said that was impossible for anyone whose last name wasn’t Tesla.”

“But Caley -“ he began.

“No,” I said flatly. “You seem to think there’s some kind of threat hovering ominously behind me, waiting to chew me up and spit me out. I understand that my father thought that too. But I haven’t seen any sign of anything like that since I arrived!”

Except maybe that old black Bentley and its rather sinister driver, but come on, that was probably just a coincidence. Right?

I felt a little frisson of unease, but my frustration had boiled over already. “I need to clear my head. I’m going to go wander around the house, and later I’m going down to the pub. Let’s try again, with something less violent please, tomorrow morning.”

Ken hesitated, then nodded. “All right. Would you like me to -“

“No. Just…let me wander.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Sparkle told him reassuringly from the vicinity of my left ear.

“Sparkle,” I began, really wanting to be alone for a few minutes.

“Nope!” She broke in quickly before I could say anything. “That’s not optional. Where you go, I go.”

I very briefly considered saying something, but…no. It was Ken I was frustrated with and, by proxy, my father and his assumptions about me. Sparkle was just looking out for me. “All right,” I said softly, and headed for the door.

“Call for me if you need anything,” Ken said quietly as I stepped out into the hallway.

I nodded without looking back at him. “I will.”

I wasn’t honestly trying to hurt him, though I undoubtedly had, at least a little. I just…

“It’s okay,” Sparkle said very softly as I picked a direction at random and started walking. “I’m sure he understands. He’s very smart. I bet he’s already creating a whole new lesson plan for you.”

I huffed a little laugh. “I’ll bet you’re right.”

Since I wasn’t looking for any room in particular, the House presented me with no special guidance. I just walked, Sparkle holding lightly to my earlobe for balance. I walked down hallways, up staircases, down staircases, past landscape paintings, portraits of people I had never seen before, and nooks holding antiques from all over the world. All of them would have been worth stopping to examine, but I felt like moving and - using a technique that had worked for me before when I was frustrated about something - paid such close attention to the movements of my body that I was able to not think for a while.

It’s a good way to clear your head when you’re feeling the way I was.

Sparkle, bless her, remained - for the first time since we’d met, aside from when we were sleeping - utterly silent. I couldn’t imagine how hard it must’ve been for her.

After a while though, the silence began to get to me, and my brain began to shift back into gear. “Was I too hard on him?” I asked her.

“Nope!” She said immediately. “He’s awfully eager for you to learn to defend yourself. And that’s not a bad thing. You’ve gotten a glimpse into what lies beyond what mortals consider to be the ‘real world.’” She said the words just a little bit mockingly. “Eventually, you’re going to learn to straddle the line between mundane ‘reality’ and the Otherworld, and there’s all kinds of things out there in the dark that love to hunt and kill anything that’s weaker than they are.

“Sooner or later,” she continued, hopping off my shoulder and fluttering around my head before settling into a graceful bobbing glide beside me, “everyone who’s touched by the Otherworld is threatened by something that lives in it. Little children understand that instinctively…weren’t you ever afraid of something lurking under your bed or in your closet?”

“Sure,” I said. “Every child is.”

“That’s because children are naturally more sensitive to the supernatural and paranormal than adults. As you mortals grow up, you…you…” She zipped in little circle, making a gesture I took to be frustration as she tried to find the right words. “You kinda…calcify. You harden yourselves to not see the bigger picture. I don’t get it.” She somehow managed to shrug even as her tiny wings continued to blur behind her. I couldn’t imagine how those muscles would work.

Maybe there weren’t any. Maybe her wings were pure magic. Another question to add to the mental to do list, to be transferred to a physical list at the first opportunity.

“But you can’t afford that,” Sparkle went on, putting her confusion behind her. “You’re the Guardian…you’re going to be really well known in parts of the Otherworld, and eventually to mortals who’re clued in. Things are going to come looking for you, for all kinds of reasons, and most everything that lives in the Otherworld learns how to fight in some way or other. Why, even we pixies are taught at a young age how to defend ourselves against predators!”

I stopped in the middle of the hallway. “Even you, Sparkle?”

“Oh, sure,” she said airily, waving it off as if it were of no consequence. “Before I met Mistress Chessie, I fought in a clan war against some Redcaps that lived not too far from one of the doors to the House on the other side of the Border. I was injured in the last battle before they were driven away, which was the first time I met Mistress Chessie. She came out with her mother to help heal some of us in thanks for defending the door. She was really young then.”

I tipped my head a little. “Redcaps? Like the fairy tales?”

“Uh huh!” Sparkle blurred in a circle. “Nasty little creatures that’re related to dwarves and goblins. But don’t go saying that to either…Dwarves won’t claim them, and goblins are afraid of them.” She giggled. “Which is really saying something. Goblins are nasty. But Redcaps are nastier. They like to dye their hats in human blood.”

I nodded, remembering the old stories, and sighed. “It’d be easier to accept if I had a bit more lead-in time.”

She came to a halt, hovering in front of my face, just far enough away for me to be able to focus on her easily. I could see the sympathy in every line of her pretty face. Even the tips of her pointed ears seemed to be drooping a bit. “I know, Caley. You’ve been…what was the expression Master James used to use? Um…Thrown in at the dark end?”

I smiled. “Deep end.”

“Right!” She beamed. “Thrown in at the deep end.” She tipped her head. “I don’t get it.”

I laughed a little. “It references the worst possible way to learn how to swim. Being thrown into the deepest part of the pool with no experience.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh wow. Yeah, that would be awful.” Then she nodded. “But that is kinda what’s happened to you. But only kinda. You still have time to learn to protect yourself.”

“And I should use that time wisely,” I said with a sigh. “But first, I think I need to better understand what being the Guardian really means.”

Sparkle pursed her lips and put her hands on her hips, frowning. Even frowning, she was adorable.

After a moment, her face lit up. “I know! You need to visit the garden! That’ll help you understand!” She zipped around behind me and I felt her thump against my back between my shoulder blades and start to push. “Go on! I’ll show you where it is!”

I laughed and started walking. “All right, Sparkle. Lead the way.”

Sparkle stopped pushing and zoomed over my shoulder and out ahead of me in a streak of purple light. She led me down hallways for several minutes, and I somehow felt that we were moving deeper into the house…that the outside was getting further away. It was a fascinating sensation.

We finally reached a pair of heavy oak doors banded in thick iron. They looked old, and a large lock with a big, heavy-looking, old-fashioned dangling iron loop of a door knob on the right-hand door kept them shut. I pulled the Master Key on its chain out from my necklace and hesitated.

“That lock looks way too big for this key,” I said to Sparkle.

She giggled. “It’ll work. Go ahead.”

I did. The Master Key was almost comically small compared to the ancient-looking keyhole in the lock, but when I slid it in I felt the lock grip it as I’d come to expect. I turned it, felt the usual ratcheting sensation, and heard the big old deadbolt slide open with a clunk.

Shrugging mentally, I pulled the Key free and let the chain retract into my choker. Then I grabbed the big iron ring, gave it a turn - it was awkward, and I ended up having to work it with both hands to get leverage - and opened the door.

Onto a sight that, even having seen the aquarium, made my mouth drop open as astonishment flashed through me.

The room - and I call it a ‘room’ in the loosest sense of the term - was an enormous indoor garden. The floor was natural grass, thick, lush, and vividly green, with neatly laid flagstone paths running through it here and there.

From where I stood in the opening, I could see flower beds filled with every type of flower I was familiar with and many more that I wasn’t…everything from common daisies to lush rose bushes and gorgeous hibiscus flowers. There were enormous pink and white peonies, yellow daffodils, and tulips in every shade imaginable. I saw Lilies of the Valley, several varieties of orchid, and even a double-row of tall sunflowers.

There were bushes - flowering and non-flowering - and small evergreens, rhododendron, lilacs, poppies, and more and more and more. At the furthest edges I could see what looked like the panes of glass walls enclosing the room, rising to a glass ceiling that had to be four stories tall.

And in the center of everything was an enormous old oak tree, its branches spreading out to shelter everything in the room that didn’t need direct sunlight. Its roots - ancient and thick - pushed up through the grass all around it. Its leaves were large, green, and healthy, as though it were mid-summer in the room and not early winter.

“Wow,” I said quietly, stepping into the room and following the smooth stone path that led from the doors. “Sparkle, this is incredible!”

She nodded, flitting along beside me. “Some of my clan used to live in here and help tend to the flowers. I don’t know if they’re still here, though.”

I ignored the doors swinging shut behind me - I was getting used to that - and looked around. Somehow, I was not surprised to see both an old-fashioned charcoal grill and a lawn set - round metal table, four padded chairs, and two reclining deck chairs - on a flagstone patio off to one side. I immediately resolved to make use of them, though I’d never used a grill before myself.

“Well,” a warm contralto voice said from somewhere nearby, “This is a pleasant surprise. It has been many a season since anyone came to visit me.”

I glanced around, and spotted Sparkle nodding to the tree. I turned my attention to it and walked a bit closer.

And almost jumped back in surprise as a woman melted out of the trunk, approached, and paused several steps away from me. She was…she was gorgeous. Not too thin, not too heavy, and shaped like a classical Greek statue of femininity, all smooth curves and graceful lines. Her skin was a very pale shade of green, and she was covered from neck to wrists and ankles in a thin, flexible, perfectly form-fitting suit of bark that matched the surface of the tree. Her hair was long, curly, and as green as the tree’s leaves, and her lips were the same shade.

Her eyes were a piercing, brilliant amber color, and sparkled with joy and warmth. She was a few inches taller than me, but as I watched she shrank until she was at eye-level with me.

She smiled. “You look so much like your mother, but you have your grandmother’s eyes.” She bowed deeply, spreading her arms in a formal, courtly style. “Lady Caitlyn Reid, Guardian, welcome home, and welcome to my garden.”

I curtsied politely in return, then examined her again, utterly fascinated. “Are you a dryad?”

She beamed. “A hamadryad, actually, but it’s a common mistake and one I take no offense to. My cousins are a bit flightier than my sisters and I, but every bit as dedicated to the preservation of nature. The major difference is that my sisters and I are part of our specific tree, where dryads are representative of types of trees and not bound to them.”

I thought there was sadness in her voice as she spoke.

“May I ask your name?” I asked carefully, not sure if I was being impolite.

She laughed, evidently delighted by the question. “My name is Oak,” she gestured to the enormous oak tree, “and this is my tree. But your great-great-great-grandmother called me Dara, which is Gaelic for ‘of the oak.’” She winked. “I think she thought she was being funny, but it is a perfectly appropriate name for me. And so you may call me Dara.”

“Thank you, Dara. Please, call me Caley.” I offered her my hand.

Dara took it, clasping it in both of hers. Her skin felt like supple leather, but with an odd texture to it, and I couldn’t help but look. The texture looked for all the world like the inner rings of a tree, starting at her fingertips and working their way back to her wrist where they vanished under her bark catsuit. “It will be my great pleasure to do so,” she said warmly. “I do hope you’ll visit my garden often. Here,” she released my hand and turned, spreading her arms, “you may find the peace and tranquility of nature in this, a more controlled setting.”

Sparkle flitted forward. “Hello, Dara!”

The hamadryad turned and beamed. “Sparkle, darling! It’s wonderful to see you again! I take it you have been passed to Caley as Chessie intended?”

Sparkle nodded. “Only a couple of days ago.”

“Better late than never,” Dara said. Then she put her fingers in the corners of her mouth and whistled. It wasn’t the piercing sound I was expecting, but sounded instead like the rich tone of a wooden flute.

A moment passed. I looked around expectantly.

Then Sparkle was mobbed by a dizzying, swirling blur of colors. The blob of multicolored light swayed and staggered around before plummeting to the ground in a a cacophony of happy little voices and laughter.

I started in that direction, but was stopped by Dara’s hand on my shoulder. She was laughing softly. “It’s all right, Caley. They’re part of Sparkle’s clan. They live here in the garden instead of out in Faerie, and haven’t seen her since your mother died. Give them a few minutes.” She gestured. “Come and see my garden in the meantime.”

I hesitated, uncertain and a little uneasy.

Sparkle disentangled herself from what I could now see was a mob of about two dozen fairies in a multitude of colors, all of them a bit smaller than she was, and flew up to me. “It’s all right, Caley, you’re perfectly safe with Dara.”

I relaxed. “Thank you, Sparkle.”

She was immediately mobbed by her…family?…again and dragged back to the ground before any of them could figure out a way to remain glommed onto her while staying in the air. I couldn’t help it…I laughed. Dara laughed with me, her voice about an octave lower than mine.

We watched the happy scrum for a moment longer before I turned to her and smiled tentatively. “I’m sorry, it’s not…”

I stopped when she held up a hand. “You don’t need to explain, I understand. This must all be very new to you, and you don’t know who you can trust beyond Sparkle and the Caretaker. But you can trust me. This I vow, as I vowed it to your many times great-grandmother when the House was originally built…as long as the House stands, as long as my tree is sheltered and protected by it, I shall do all in my power to protect it in return, as if it were part of my tree.”

I blinked a few times. “How…how old are you?” I asked, my train of thought derailed by that detail.

She laughed. “In human years? I honestly do not know. My life is measured in a much different way. I am as old as my tree, which is older than the House by many moons and seasons.”

I smiled. “So you’ve known…”

“All of your ancestors since the House was built, yes.” She smiled. “There is much I can tell you about your family history, as time allows. But for now, let us begin with a tour of my garden.”