Hey  @mymomsareallygoodfriendtome​! It’s Secret Friend Day!  I’m your secret friend!  Since fic is my strongest suit I’ve written one for you!

I
hope you enjoy!  This was the story that kept wanting to be
written, and it originally didn’t really have a lot of old school fae
dark and danger
about it, so I went and added a few things so it can be as dark or as
light as
you want to read into it!  (Also I added an OC for plot purposees, I
probably should have asked first, but too late now!)  Enjoy and Happy
Secret Friend Day!  (Also its unbetaed, so sorry!)

afdrif (the fate of someone)

Word: 8196

Robbie
loves his mother and then she’s gone.  ***   Robbie hates Sportacus and
then he stays.  (Somewhere in the middle is Robbie’s Uncle trying his
best to plot, plan, and parent.)

---

When
Robbie was small he heard the sound of mouse feet in the back garden,
he heard the feather light softness of their little pads (pat, pat, pat)
and the gentle tap of their little claws (tip, tip, tip).  He could
feel the softness as though they were already in the palm of his hand,
against his cheek.  As though he had already slipped them carefully into
his mouth and swallowed them whole so they could run in the world
inside his belly, like a great whale swallowing little prophets.

When
Robbie was small he lay awake with silver eyes staring at the
electricity flowing blue and sleek through the walls of their home and
feeling the iron springs in his mattress like a piece of meat between
his back teeth.  He always got up in the morning with a backache and
dark circles under his eyes.

When Robbie was small his brother
Glanni would laugh and take him by the hands and they would spin
together in a circle until mushrooms would pop up. Mamma would come out
with a hand shovel and dig out the mushrooms one by one, burning them in
a big barrel.

Glanni couldn’t sleep on a spring mattress at all,
he slept on a plump pillowy thing their uncle had brought them for a
present.  Glanni was thoughtless as Mamma, but twice as cruel.  She
loved to laugh over how foolish someone must be to trust a stranger with
their life savings, she wore other people’s family jewels, and didn’t
always remember to get them a babysitter.  Glanni made their teacher
dance until his ankle broke, and made a girl sick so he could be class
president, and taught classmates to encourage their parents’ fighting so
they could get love-me-best bribes.

Robbie was a nosy boy, he
wanted to know everything.  He wanted to play forever (FOR-EVER), he
wanted to be in control, he watched, and he tinkered, and he thought.

Robbie’s world was small when he was young.  Small and safe and strange.

His
mother was a big part of his young life, her laughter, her patience,
the way she rested her chin in her palm and her eyes twinkled as she
watched him build with his blocks.  She was more a part of his life than
even Glanni was for a long, long time.

***

When that
sports elf, Number Nine, parachuted into town Robbie’s heart almost
stopped, his wings shivered with fear against his back.  Down in his
bunker he couldn’t escape the feel of phantom hands pulling his spine
straight and pushing him to and fro.  Harder, faster, higher, longer.  
He had crouched behind a wall to watch Nine lecture little Ziggy.

“No,”
Number Nine said, pulling the lollipop out of the boy’s hand.  Robbie
felt the swish of the stick across his palm. “That is bad for you!  Do
what I say or you’ll get sick!”

Ziggy stared up in wide eyed confusion, but didn’t argue, he had always trusted authority too much.

He
told Uncle about it in their weekly (though Uncle had only the loosest
grasp of what weekly, or daily, or routine meant) telephone call right
after Uncle’s update about how in jail Glanni was feeling at the moment.

“You
do know you’re an adult, right?” Uncle said. “If you want me to come
and kill him you can just say.  Or do it yourself.  You’re allowed you
know.  You might even get a second one after they come to figure out
what happened to the first.”

“I’m not going to kill him!”  Robbie shouted, flopping back into his chair.

“No! Of course not!  But if you wanted to…”

“No!”
Robbie snapped at his uncle.  His voice popped with magic that cracked
down the line until Uncle’s sleek dispersal of it made him feel clumsy
and six again.  He flinched in on himself in shame. “I’m sorry, I’m
sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, darling,” Uncle said, voice low and
gentle.  “You don’t need to apologize.  If it means that much to you I
won’t interfere yet.  No harm done, and if it was I’d probably deserve
it.” He barked off a laugh, a sound like a glacier cracking.  “I just
worry sometimes you’re too human.  You’re allowed to defend yourself,
Robin dear. That’s what Stingy was about, wasn’t he? That you’re allowed
to have things that are yours and you’re allowed to keep those things
safe.”

Robbie closed his eyes, his body slumping.

“My
weird darling.  You’re not just fae you know, you’re allowed to be a
little human too.  Allowed to have a little revenge.  Now go eat some
cake, I’ll talk to you next week.  It’ll be alright.  You’ll figure it
out, my clever boy.”

***

Mamma had an uncle who stood ten
feet tall with long hair the pearly ivory of mistletoe berries and a
laugh like an avalanche.  He bent himself into a child sized chair at
Glanni and Robbie’s little table and had tea parties with them.  He told
them stories about stars and seasons and taught them to pick pockets
and pick marks. Mamma watched them with a pinch between her eyebrows and
her mouth pulled to the side in something too worried to be a smile.  

He’d
take them on adventures too, beaming down at them with a mix of pride
and amusement that made Robbie feel like he could fly.

“They’re fine,” Uncle would tell Mamma when they came back from the toy, or the candy, or the beauty store.

“You wrecked the store!  It was on the news!” Mamma would shout back.

“Its fine, my jewel.  I erased all their memories, they thought it was a wind storm.”  Or an elephant, or a ghost.

“You’re impossible!  I’m trying to keep a low profile, what if an elf was there?”

“Then
we would have been careful,” Uncle would roll his eyes.  “You know I’d
do anything in my considerable power to keep them from real pain.  Now
let the children go play, they’re only this young once.”

Then
Mamma would get down the wine and she and Uncle had conversations in the
kitchen, Uncle’s face like a frozen heart, like a laugh at a good joke
while Mamma was like the velvet of the sky at midnight, like the quiet
of a good sleep. Glanni and Robbie watched from the upstairs railing as
Mamma took down the braided knot at the crown of her head, jewels and
passion flowers and raven’s feathers shining in her dark hair.

“What
do I have to do with the Courts?” Uncle told her, waving the hand with
his wine glass through the air.  “Stuffy and unsatisfying.  Boring.  
They know I helped hide you away somewhere, but they dare not cross me
directly as long as they know it’ll mean a fight.   And you’re stronger
than I am as far as they’re concerned, and they’re right.”

“Hmm,” she said, flexing her fingers on the table.

“A
tree in winter still has all its strength, you have your power still.  
It is the nature of nature to shift and change and become something
new.  You’re finding yourself, you’re learning love and the Fair Kings
have been broken with love by heroes enough to prove you have a greater
power than them all. After all you can command me with a word.”

“You
and your words,” Mamma said.  “You could always convince me of
anything, that you were anyone you wanted me to believe you were.  That I
was whatever you said I was.  And you haven’t talked to me in so long.
Just. You understand so much more than they ever could for all the good
it’s done.  Now look at me, one child with all the harm, one with all
the charm, and neither I know what to do with.”

“Hmm,” he said, shrugging.

“You
were the only thing about the Court that didn’t bore me,” Mamma
confessed like it was something awful.  “I don’t think they could stand
that, that you were the only thing I found interesting. You never wanted
anything but for me to be safe and happy.  I’m trying to do that.  I
think it’s better than what they had in mind for me.  Tying knots in
cows’ tails can’t be more interesting than watching babies figure out
walking.  Babies are so dumb and funny.”

Neither Robbie nor
Glanni had much more than a distant academic curiosity in who their
father was when compared to their towering great-uncle and their perfect
mother.  Mamma was the one who decorated what she laughingly called
fairy cakes with them. Mamma was the one who let them wear her long
flowing scarves as she told fortunes in her little shop.  She was the
queen of all women.

***

“Well,” Robbie shrugged as he
looked over his clipboard.  The clipboard was the most important part of
his small town judge disguise.  “This is the laziest, least well
behaved town I’ve ever seen.  That boy in sleep on a pile of taffy, that
other boy has been playing video games for six days, and what is that
girl doing?” he asked, pointing at Trixie.  She skateboarded by painting
a long purple line down the wall.  “Have you been officially assigned
to the town?  If so I’m afraid I’m going to have to make a report to the
hero’s league.”

This was going to be a hard line to balance on,
getting Nine to believe him, but he hoped after the long weeks of being
shot out of cannons, caught in nets and smothered in chocolate sauce the
elf wouldn’t care.  If Robbie didn’t act fast, that well placed yet of
Uncle’s was going to be the death of the sports elf. He certainly didn’t
like elves, he wasn’t crazy, but he didn’t want Uncle to murder one.

“No!” Number Nine said, hands held up. “Not at all!  I’m sick of this awful place!  I’m leaving!”

Robbie waited until he was back into his bunker to dance around his fuzzy orange chair, his long wings fluttering behind him.

***

“Well,
if you’re going to play with the dumb elf I’m going to play with my
friends!” Glanni shouted at him with all of his fourteen year old wrath.

“You
don’t have any other friends!” Robbie shouted back, looking up at his
older brother, going up on his toes to try and shorten the gap between
their heights.

“Yes I do!” Glanni shouted back.

There was a
sort of pop in Robbie’s ears and there was a giant ugly rooster
standing there next to Glanni.  For a moment it was a cloudy ghost of a
thing before solidifying into something as real looking as Robbie and
Glanni if strangely rubbery, almost puppetish.

Both of them
stared at it until Glanni grabbed it around the neck and pulled it
close. “See!  I have a friend and he’s all mine!”

“Well! Well!”
Robbie shouted back, stung by his brother’s preference of some dumb
chicken over him.  “I have one too!  And he’s twice as cool!  He doesn’t
steal my cake and he loves taffy and playing just like me!  And he’s a
superhero!”  There a sort of pressure inside his chest and there was a
small boy next to him with a red cape and a dandelion puff of yellow
hair.  His face looked super weird, smooth as a doll’s, but he blinked
up at Robbie and took hold of his hand.

Mamma burst in from the
hall holding a ball of frozen light, the temperature of the room
dropping several degrees.  Her wings fluttered behind her before flaring
up, sparkling and purple.  

The brothers startled, clinging to their new friends.

“What happened?” she said, then pointed.  “What’s that?”

The weird chicken turned to look at her.  “I’m Hannin.”

Robbie’s weird doll friend burst into tears.

“Uncle!”  Mamma called out.  “Uncle, come here!  We need your help!”

Uncle
appeared in a cloud of lavender steam in a fluffy white bathrobe and
his pale hair wrapped up in a towel.  “What is it? I was at the spa.”

“Look,”
Mamma said.  “Look at those.  There was this burst of magic and then I
came in and those two whatever they are were in here.”

Uncle
sighed and spun himself into a sleek suit the color of dawn.  His long
paned wings hung down his back, heavy and powerful.  They buzzed at
Mamma and Mamma flashed hers back at him. “Ugh, fine.  I hope you
appreciate I’m doing this with my hair and makeup undone.  I look a
fright.  Still, family first, let me take a look at them.  They aren’t
dangerous or the wards would have been tripped and I would have been
here sooner.”

“That’s nice and all, but these are my kids and I want them to be safe,” Mamma crossed her arms at him.

“Well,”
Uncle said, crouching down.  He tilted up Hannin’s face to squint at
him; for a moment he glowed silver blue.  Glanni gasped, clutching at
his chest, and Uncle nodded, seeming pleased at the result. “It is a
changeling, both of them are changelings.”  

“They can’t be, that one’s a rooster,” Mamma said.  “How did he make it?”

Uncle
pressed his lips together, his wings emitting a low annoyed buzz.
“Well, when you mix together two volatile things, weird stuff happens.  
Usually the changelings are attached to the children that get whisked
away, but as there are no such children I would say they’re probably
attached to the boys.  As long as they doesn’t try to kill any of you in
your sleep I’d say leave them be.”

“But they look so weird,” Glanni said.

“Only
to fae, to everyone else they’ll look normal.  I have a changeling left
over from a project that didn’t work out. I might even bring old
Milford by sometime.  You remember Milford, don’t you, my jewel?”

“Milford?” Mamma said.  “He was a changeling?”

“Of course he was.  He was a great nanny, wasn’t he?  He’s an idiot, but he’s reliable”

“I liked Milford,” Mamma said in a strange voice, brow furrowing.

“You’re my uncle, aren’t you?” Ziggy asked Uncle before Mamma could say anything else, wiping his eyes.

Uncle blinked and opened his arms, as though Ziggy had spoken some magic word.  “Yes, I suppose I am.”

Snuffling,
Ziggy wrapped his arms around Uncle’s neck.  Robbie shifted awkwardly,
he wanted to get a hug from uncle, he didn’t understand what was
happening.  As soon as uncle’s arms went around Ziggy’s shoulders,
Robbie felt warmth wrapped all around him like he was getting a hug too.

“Oh.
What a sweet little baby.  I haven’t had a hug from a baby for so
long.” He pressed his cheek to the top of Ziggy’s head.  “It’ll be
alright, little baby.  I’ll keep you safe.”

“Will you?” Ziggy asked in a small voice.

“Of course, little one.  Of course.”

***

No
sooner had Robbie got everything settled in town than the pink girl
showed up and started jumping and kicking and playing.  She tried to get
the kids all running and playing with her with a little dance, the
sound bizarrely funneling in through Robbie’s ears as well as all the
children’s in the way it sometimes did.  She tried her best, but Robbie
knew the kids like he knew the back of his hand.

And then she
ruined things again by calling for another hero.  Robbie could already
feel the phantom pains.  He had to get that elf out of town.  The elf
would have the kids up running around again, falling down and skinning
their knees and breaking their wrists and slipping and falling.  And
pushing and shoving and shouting.  

Lazy was good, lazy was safe.

But nothing was working with the Number Ten.  He’d look angry, and act angry, but then he never did anything.

“Don’t
look a gift elf in the mouth,” Glanni said over the phone.  “I would
know, it never ends well, I have my own elf problems.  Why don’t you ask
Uncle for advice?”

“Because Uncle’s advice tends towards mayhem
and mauling.  Besides, what else are you going to do in your safe house
other than help me figure this out?  Do your nails for six weeks?   I
want to run the blue kangaroo out of town, not have him turned into a
frog and smushed.”

“What about uncle’s changeling?  Shouldn’t Milford be putting up more of a resistance?”

“I
don’t know.  Milford hated Number Nine, well hated him as much as
Milford could hate anyone, but he gets along great with Sportakook.  All
the kids do too!”

“Hey,” Glanni said.  “Stay sharp, bro.  Keep your head on straight.”

Secondhand
delight wrapped around him like a hug, he barely held back his indirect
laughter.  He was trying to have a serious conversation with his
brother, it was very annoying. “Don’t worry, the sooner that blue
buffoon is out of here the better.”

“Blue baboon,” Glanni answered in a sing song voice.

Robbie let himself laugh.  “Blue balloon!”

***

Mamma
had been as constant as the rising and the setting of the moon,
sometimes disappearing for short time periods before returning again.  
Always returning, until she didn’t anymore. They ran out of grocery
money and then they ran out of food in the house.  Every day seemed
exactly the same, cookie cuttered over the top of the other, in the way
that time did when one was achey and tired.  Somewhere in the patch of
days they had gotten a bit rowdy and wrecked some things in the house.  
They felt very bad about it, but there wasn’t much they could do about
it until Mamma came back.

Glanni was up on the kitchen counter on his knees, trying to see if there was anything hiding in the very tip, tip top cabinets.

“Did you find anything?” Robbie asked, hands tight on his blanket.

Glanni sighed, head bowing so it rested on the cabinet door.  “No.  I think we might be in trouble.”

Robbie jolted as his ears popped.

“Uncle!
Uncle!” Hannin cried out from where he was slumped down on the counter,
flapping his wings.  Robbie spun on his heel to see Uncle standing
person sized in a dark suit and a weird flat brimmed hat, he wore funny
round sunglasses that reflected back a picture of the brothers’ back at
themselves.

“Did someone call?” he said, adjusting his hat.

“Uncle
Vetur!” Glanni called out.  He jolted back from the cabinet, his eyes
wide, then leapt to the floor to wrap his long arms around his uncle’s
middle.

“Oh,” Uncle said, surprised as he always seemed when they
looked happy to see him.  He wrapped his arms around Glanni’s shoulders
to give him an absent squeeze.  “Hello. This is a nice hug.”

Robbie rushed forward to be hugged as well, snugging in under his uncle’s arms.

“Why are we hugging?” Uncle asked, his voice pleasant and calm.  He smelled kind of weird, like ice and magic and electricity.

“We’re
hungry,” Robbie said.  “Mamma’s been gone for a long time and there’s
no more food in the house. Glanni tried to steal a cake, but the baker
chased him away.”

“I’ll have to teach you to do better,” Uncle
told them, squeezing them tight. He breathed in a tight, sharp breath
and then pressed his cheek to the top of their heads.  After a moment,
Uncle seemed to have gotten over whatever had him so upset and he was
smiling down at them.  “Theft is a cake wake with two, but that’s for
later.  Come sit and eat and you’ll have to tell me more.  I see Hannin
on the counter, he’s seen better days.  Robbie, where are your little
changelings?”

“Ziggy’s sleeping,” Robbie said.  “I don’t know
what Stingy’s doing.  Counting my toys again probably.  When I started
getting hungry, he got tired and stopped wanting to play.”

“You’re young yet, when you’re older you’ll be stronger and they won’t drain so much energy.”  

Robbie blinked slowly, pressing a hand against his hungry tummy.  "When I grow up will they get bigger too?”

That confident affection slid off Uncle’s face.  “We’ll see when we get there.”

“You know what happened to Mamma,” Glanni said.  “Why did you take so long to get here?”

He
pulled back from them, waving a hand so the kitchen table groaned under
the weight of cake and cookies, ice cream and deviled eggs.  “I’ll go
get him, you eat, and then-  Do humans usually have the children decide
or do the adults decide?”

“The grownups,” Robbie said.

“The kids!” Glanni said over his brother.  “And you didn’t answer my question!”

“Hannin?” Uncle asked.

“I’m not getting in the middle of this,” Hannin squawked back.

Uncle laughed as he turned to head to their rooms.

The
brothers ate until their bellies were full and they laid in a pile on
the sitting room floor.  Uncle wandered in after they had woken up with
Ziggy in his arms and Pixel trailing behind him, laughing at them.  
Ziggy’s weird changeling face looked down at them and at Uncle before
tucking it into Uncle’s neck.  

“Ziggy’s really grown,” Uncle
told them.  “Mentally if not physically.  I’ve been reading him stories
and he’s been paying attention.  Great work with him.  If you had really
replaced a child with him he would have done fairly well at pretending
to be human.”

“I don’t want to take any children,” Robbie said where he sprawled out on the floor.

“No,”
Uncle rolled his eyes.  “Of course not, you’re still a child
yourself.   I’ve talked to Ziggy and he’s told me everything that’s gone
on.  I’ve come to a decision.  I’m worried something bad happened.  
Your Mamma didn’t act like she was bored with you and so something must
have happened to make her stay away.  So what I’m going to do is take
you to a different place and do something, I don’t know.  Build a house
and put you two in it.  I’ll figure something out.”

“What about Mamma?” Robbie said.

“Shut up,” Glanni elbowed him. “He’s trying to distract us, he knows what’s going on.  Tell us.”

“Glanni!” Uncle laughed.  “So paranoid!”

“No, I know you.  I’ve known you for my whole dumb life.  All Mamma has to do is say help and you’re there right away!”

Their reflection stared back at them from Uncle’s mirrored sunglasses.

Robbie felt scared, he got up to take Uncle by the hand and pull. “Where’s Mamma?”

“She went away,” Uncle said.  His wings were invisible, but Robbie could still hear their tight annoyed buzz.

“Where?”

“She died, pumpkin bread,” Glanni said, arms crossed tight over his chest.

Robbie looked up at Uncle and pulled on his hand again.  “Is she dead?”

“How would I know?”

“Liar!”
Glanni snapped, jumping to his feet.  He sniffed and scrubbed at his
face, pretended like he wasn’t going to cry. “Take off those ugly
glasses and say that to my face!”

Uncle got down on one knee and
slipped his glasses off to slip into his pocket.  “Glanni, I’d know if
your Mamma was in danger right now, or if she was-”  Uncle had to stop
for a moment.  “I’d know, okay, I promise.  She’s not in danger right
now.  Wherever she is she’s not scared or hurting.”

Glanni
fidgeted in place, before jutting out his chin.  “You love Deals, you
love them more than you love me or Robbie or Mamma or anyone else.  
Make a Deal with me.”

Uncle’s eyes got a sharp silver glow to
them, his whole face shifted to something razor edged and craggy.  “No
reneging. You offered a Deal.”

It took Glanni a second to get to
get his courage up, but he stuck out his hand. “I mean it.  Make me a
Deal, I want to know what you know about what Mamma!”

“You’ll have be more specific, cupcake.  I can’t fulfill a deal if I don’t know what I’m fulfilling.”

“I don’t care.  Tell me anything, just tell me something.”

Uncle’s
hand grabbed his with a clap of thunder.  “Your conditions are set, if
you’re brave enough to try this again you’ll word it differently.  Too
late now. Here’s my conditions, sweetheart, you can’t try and go after
your mother and you have to call me for help whenever you or Robbie need
it.  No matter where you are or what’s going on.”

“That’s two things!” Robbie protested on behalf of his brother. “Glanni only offered one.”

“Well, he’s the one who wants to make the Deal with me,” Uncle said.  “As far as negotiations go I have the upper hand.”

“He’s right,” Stingy said.

“That’s what you want?  Just, like, for us to ask for help?”  Glanni asked.   “That’s dumb.”

“Well,
I’m dumb,” Uncle said.  “And it’s more than a request, you’ll be
compelled, you won’t be able to help it. Yes or no?  Are we shaking on
this?”

Glanni shook.  He opened his mouth to ask a question then
made that gasping sniffing sound he made when he was trying not to cry
and seemed to change his mind.  “Are you really going to take care of us
then?”

Some of the sharpness went out of Uncle’s face, he
pressed his lips together, looking over the boys.  “Well, I’m not going
to be very good at it.  But at least I can keep you fed and clean or
whatever.  I don’t know.  It can’t be that hard.”

“Then I accept the Deal.  You could have asked for more you know, I’m only going to be this naive once.”

Laughing,
Uncle let go of his hand to pull him into a tight hug, picking Robbie
up with one hand to bring him into the hug too.  “Don’t worry, you’ll be
plenty naive for plenty longer.  I’ve still got plenty of tricks up my
sleeve.”

Glanni popped back from Uncle with his elbows.  “Can’t we stay with any other family?”

Uncle’s shoulders slumped.  “You don’t really have any other family.”

“You’re our uncle though,” Robbie said.  “That means you and Mamma had the same parents.”

“Great Uncle, that means a whole generation back.  And Fae don’t have parents, darling.  I was born when a glacier cracked.”

“Everything has a parent, that’s like how stuff works,” Robbie told him.

Uncle
just gave them a look.  “Your Mamma should have taught you better.  Fae
are unnatural creatures, no parents, no siblings, no children in the
truest sense.  They just become and then they are, their only chance for
offspring is with a human lover or a stealing a human child. Most fae
never really know love.  They make do with jealousy and obsession and
call it the same.”  Uncle pulled back from them to stand and pick Ziggy
back up, resting his cheek on the top of the changeling’s head.  “They
make their lovers dance until they die and turn their stolen children
into china dolls when they stop being amusing.  Bad news all around.”

“So fae aren’t good with kids?” Glanni asked, staring at uncle with an intense gaze.

“No, they aren’t.”  

“And you’re fae.”

Uncle set his jaw.  “Yes.”

“Ugh,” Glanni said, flopping down on the sofa.  “Fine.  But you still have to tell me what happened!”

“Just wait until you’re wings start coming in,” Uncle grumped.  “Then you won’t be so disrespectful.”

***

Robbie
had watched the elf who’d taken up guardianship of the town flip flop
his way around town in a flash of blue and white and a stream of helpful
words. He seemed to take the children’s happiness to heart, as much as
an elf could.  He was dangerous, certainly, but he still seemed to enjoy
the kids, want to help their little games.  Robbie preferred their
laziness, but had allowed as best he could for the hero to do the
children some good.

This was Robbie’s town, his world, his magic.  

Take right now for example, the children were playing even without Sporkadork egging them on.

“Hey Robbie!” came a voice behind him. “What are you doing?”

Robbie jolting, shouting as he fell over.

“Oh no!” Sportacus said, darting forward.  “Are you alright?”  Why did the flippity flopper have to exclaim everything?

“I’m fine!  I’m fine!” Robbie flinched back against the low wall he had been hiding behind.

The corners of Sportacus’ mouth tipped down, his hands curling as they pulled back. “Alright,” he said, taking a step away.

“Go on,” Robbie shooed at him.  “Go play soccer or whatever it is you’re going to do.  Make a lot of racket.”

“You know, Robbie,” Sportacus said with that little head bob of his. “Sports are really fun.”

“Sports, ugh,” Robbie said, crossing his arms.

Sportacus
sat down on the ground cross legged in front of him, just far enough
away he was out of direct arms’ reach.  “You could join in too if you
wanted.  There’s always room for one more!”

“No thank you!” he pulled his legs close and his arms tighter across his chest.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Robbie, why do you hate sports so much?”  

“Because they’re loud!  And bothersome!  And dangerous!” he told him.

“Dangerous?”
Sportacus asked, eyebrows drawing together.  The blue kangaroo had
never looked like that at him before, like he was actually listening.  
The way he looked at the kids.  Lazytown felt silent all of a sudden,
still and paying attention to this moment right here. Then Sportacus’
face did something, twitched like a big cat when it had scented
something and there was noise again, the playing of children.

“The
kids were safe before you came,” he snapped.  “They didn’t need you to
come rescue them from falling and tripping and-” he tried to make a
vaguely sport-ish motion that was meant to indicate a whole host of
activity related dangers.  “They were happy and quiet and totally fine.”

“You really care about the kids, don’t you?” Sportacus asked him, leaning forward, his face pinched up with thinking.

“Of course I do you blue buffoon!”

“That’s
why you get so upset with me all the time.  I promise, Robbie, that
I’ll do my best to keep them safe.  I care about them too.”

Robbie
looked away and sniffed, trying to channel Uncle’s powerful
disinterest. “You can’t do everything,” he said. He could hear the
listlessness in his own voice.

Wide-eyed, Sportacus startled
back.  The elf looked so vulnerable all of a sudden that Robbie found he
didn’t want to hurt him after all.  “I-”

“You make the kids feel safe,” he said, his arms wrapped around himself.  "But they’re not, you’re not.“

"Oh,” Sportacus said, a look of epiphany making him look open and harmless.  "Oh.“

"What?”  Robbie pulled back and Sportacus immediately pulled back as well.

“Robbie, will you describe Nine for me?”

Narrowing
his eyes, Robbie considered him.  It didn’t seem like a trick, but then
it never did with heroes and their obedient followers.  Uncle would
trick him sometimes, but he always knew the conditions, always knew
roughly what the consequences would be.  Heroes tested you and if you
didn’t fit right with their philosophy then bad things happened.

“Please.  Robbie, I would like to know.”

“Dangerous.”

“Can you tell me how?”  Sportacus seemed actually interested.

“Have you ever been somewhere old?  Old and abandoned.”

Brow furrowed again Sportacus nodded.

“Have
you ever been walking along in that old house and everything was fine,
but then you stepped on a rotten board and your foot went through and
your heart hurts from stopping in horror and your lungs hurt from
gasping and for a moment your whole body seizes up in anxious terror?”

“No,”
Sportacus said, his face sad.  "But I think I understand.  One of those
feelings that you can call up at a moment.  I was attacked by a pod of
orcas once, I was really afraid for a moment under they pulled me down
before they realized I wasn’t a seal.“

"That moment is the
worst,” Robbie told him.  "The moment gets fossilized, caught in amber.
Nine was like that, the old house with the rotten board, but there was
the feeling about him that there were rotten boards everywhere and I had
just been lucky to step on solid wood so far.  There was just something
about the way he grabbed them…“

Sportacus made a sort of rumbling snarl in his chest, his pupils narrow. “He touched the kids after they told him to stop.”

"No,
well, they’re just kids and he was the hero,” Robbie said quickly.  
“They could tell he didn’t mean harm by it, but the way he treated
them-  I tried to- to sort us all out, but there were so many of them
and I-”  He pressed the palms of his hands against his temples. “They
wanted to believe in a hero so much.  They didn’t feel it like me.  The
way he treated them like they couldn’t choose, like they weren’t real.”

“Robbie,”
Sportacus said, his face crumpling.  “I’m so sorry.  I’m sure in his
mind what he was doing was alright, but that’s absolutely no excuse.  I
wish there was something I could say or do.  My dad was like that, more
so when he was younger.  He just knew how things were supposed to be.  
It was very frustrating.  I don’t know him personally, the hero here
before me was from the ninth house and I’m the most recent champion of
the tenth, but I can send word to make sure the League takes a look at
him.  I promise that as long as I can I’ll stay and protect the
children, keep them safe for as long as I can so you don’t have any
other hero problems.”

“You’d really stay here?  Forever?”  The echo of the word shuddered through Lazytown.

Sportacus
laughed.  “Maybe not forever.  Just until the kids are grown, Ziggy is
what?  Six?  So that twelve more years at least.  Just so you don’t have
to worry about any other heroes.”

“I mean I guess the other tens could come too,” Robbie said, “if they’re like you I guess.”

Sportacus laughed, “Sure, just my family and me. Would that help you feel better?”

“I don’t know,” Robbie said, some old instinct flaring up in him.  “Can we shake on it?”

***

“There
are these creatures, nasty things,” Uncle said, spinning the cherry in
his drink round and round.  The fancy restaurant was kind of crowded,
but everyone but the waiter seemed to be ignoring them.  Uncle was
drinking a Shirley Temple and love-hating every second of it because
Glanni had tried to get Uncle to agree to let him have whatever Uncle
was having and Uncle had forgone his usual expensive wine for a little
familial torment. Glanni could have bought his own bottle after that
small job he pulled off in Mayhemtown, but he would drink something he
hated as long as Uncle had cash in his pocket to pay for it.  Robbie
didn’t get what they were complaining about. He loved Shirley Temples.

“Elves,”
Uncle told them.  “Alfar.  They’ve taken it upon themselves to be
heroes instead of receding to the shadows to drink cream and perform
elegant con jobs like the rest of us.  And they’re so bossy!  Such
strict definitions for what’s acceptable, who’s allowed where, what
they’re allowed to do when they’re there.  They talk about health and
exercise and the power of words, of giving your Word like a fae doesn’t
know!  And the flipping and the flopping and the nonsense-”

“Uncle!” Glanni said, leaning forward in his seat. “You told us to tell you everything!”

“I did no such thing!” Uncle demurred, hand on his chest.  “You made me promise to tell you anything.”

Glanni growled, then hissed, then crossed his arms.

Looking
down, Uncle’s face tightened for a moment before it went blank, a
pleasant empty expression.  “I’m sorry for teasing you.  This is very
hard for me to talk about.  Just because I took cares to protect you
from any real pain, I can’t protect you from everything.  Some times
pulling up all the weeds pulls up all the flowers too, its better this
way I think.  I mean I’m terrible at parenting, but at least I can do
that.”

“It’s alright,” Robbie said.  Uncle wasn’t really terrible
at parenting as human style parenting was still a foreign land he was
journeying through with no map.  “You were telling us about elves.”

“Elves,
right.  Well, your Mamma stepped on some curly toed shoes.”  Uncle’s
face seemed to sort of crack and he looked away, his eyes shiny with
tears.  Robbie could watch him wrestle with a decision, watched him
chose one path and shut the other up to himself.  “Usually when there’s a
changeling, it means a child’s been stolen.  That’s how it usually
works.”

“Because there’s only two ways for a fae to have a
family,” Robbie said, leaning back as he realized something.  “They have
to make a changeling or they have to have a mortal wife.  Why a
changeling?”

Glanni looked back and forth between the two of them.

“You,
you, um.  A fae makes a fake child out of their magic that’s connected
to the real child. Then they take the real child and the magic, the
fae’s magic comes back the other way through the connection and it makes
them.  It makes them-”

“Your daughter,” Glanni said, leaning back in his chair.  “Mamma was your changeling child.  You’re not our uncle.”

Uncle
covered his face.  “You don’t know what it was like.  I’d never loved
anything before.  I-  I hadn’t loved anything and then she’d ask me
something and even if it was inconvenient, or if it hurt, or if she
wanted to leave me.  I thought once her wings came in she would change,
but she didn’t.  I could have changed more of her memories, had her
forget but-  It hurt.  To think of taking something like that from her,
the idea of changing her mind, even for my benefit repulsed me.  I was
so mad, enraged, furious, but she was so sad and the thought of hurting
her…”

“So, you’re our-?” Robbie started.

“Please, keep called me Uncle, I can’t take the responsibility of grandfather.  Ugh.  It sounds so respectable.”

“Gross,” all three of them said together.

“So
Mamma fell in love with a mortal,” Glanni said, leaning forward on the
table.  “That’s why our magic is so weird, why we make changelings when
we’re upset, and why they’re attached to us instead of some normal kid.”

“She
was a princess, engaged to be married to a prince of another Court, she
had made a Deal.”  Something hard flickered behind Uncle’s eyes before
it disappeared. “I don’t know why, I thought I had raised her better.  
She had to marry him, but she hadn’t said anything about staying put.”

“So
you helped her escape on her wedding night.” Robbie grinned.  “That’s
so cool.  Did Mamma look cool?  Did she repel down a tower in her
wedding dress?  Was it very Avant Gard?  I bet she looked so cool.”

“I
never take a bet I would lose,” Uncle pulled up, a fingertips resting
against his chest.  “Her dress was the Avant-est.   And of course I
helped her bust out of there, I mean, what’s a little war compared to my
little girl’s happiness?”

“So did they come back for her?  The other Court?” Glanni asked.

“The
thing is, they’re too scared of me to try directly.  I’d already
decimated most of their army and took the spoils.  But the elves aren’t,
aren’t aligned with one of our courts, aren’t afraid of me.  So all the
fae had to do was tell those self-righteous heroes there was a fae who
had given herself in marriage and then taken herself off to parts
unknown. She didn’t want to be married to that idiot prince, but as far
as the elves were concerned she’d given her word to stay forever.”

“What?  Forever?” Glanni asked.  “What good is forever if someone makes you promise?”

“That’s
the alfar, standing on ceremony.  She must have made a run for it, made
those fools rethink how fast they considered themselves.  Never mind
what elves think of changelings.   If they found you…  Well, she led
them on a merry chase and to be honest I don’t know where she is now.  I
think I’d know if she died.”

“You think!” Glanni shouted, no one noticed.

“Please,”
Uncle waved him off that big thing shifting behind his eyes for a
moment.  “There are no absolutes, just really good chances, but knowing
her she’s probably on an island beach somewhere.  If I know my girl at
all she’ll show up eventually when she’s done doing whatever she’s
doing.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you?” Robbie asked.

“Darlings,
if anyone had stolen my own sweet baby girl from me do you honestly
think I would be doing anything except planning the perfect, cruel
revenge on them and their families?”

“That’s right,” Glanni
said.  “If they had really done something to Mamma you would be ruining
their lives.  So, I guess we just have to wait for Mamma to come back
then.”

“What do we do until then?” Robbie asked.

“Well, I found this place called Lazytown.”

***

The
next morning Robbie woke in a panic.  He thought about calling Uncle,
but then thought that was probably an awful idea, then he thought about
calling Glanni and that was worse.  Glanni would have to tell Uncle and
then Uncle would show up being all tall and over the top and fae.  And
Robbie was starting to have a friend that wasn’t just Glanni or Uncle
and who wasn’t just a weird doll faced part of his personality.

He
seriously thought about hiding in the bunker for the rest of his life,
but who knew how long that could be?  He made a run of it, but ran out
of cake after three days and accepted he’d have to do something about
this.  The Deal. He also thought seriously about leaving, just picking
up and going, but the same instinct that compelled him to shake hands
with Sportacus somehow told him that he had to stay.  The Deal with
Sportacus was that the elf would stay in Lazytown until Ziggy reached
adulthood, and Ziggy was attached to Robbie. The idea of longterm
separation from his changelings was somehow repulsive, and Robbie didn’t
know if it would even make a difference to the Deal.

There was
nothing for it, he would have to collect his cowardly bones and go and
face the elf and the consequences of the Deal.  The only trick was how
to do it.  He couldn’t approach him directly, those kids were very nosy,
especially Stephanie.  He’d have to get him alone another way.

He
found the Uncle’s changelings at town hall, milling around and doing
whatever it was that they did when Uncle wasn’t using them in some
plot.  Milford was looking at some kind of papers when he approached.

“Milford,” Robbie said, wringing his hands.

“Yes,
Mr. Rotten?” the changeling nodded, that blissfully absent look on his
face.  Robbie wondered if Uncle had made him that way or if whoever
Milford had been created from had been that way.

“Could you go and get Sportacus for me?”

“Whatever for?”

Robbie grumbled, “Because I said so!”

Milford blinked and held up his hands, placating Robbie.  “Oh, no, I only meant what should I tell him?”

A
thousand different plots and plans filtered through his head before he
remembered he wasn’t trying to trick Sportacus, he was trying to do the
opposite. “Tell him I’d like to talk to him. If you don’t mind.”

He
thought he might have to wait a long time, if he was Sportacus he’d
certainly be suspicious, but the elf flipped into the office in record
time. When Sportadork landed, Robbie let out a shout of surprise that
startle the blue kangaroo back on his heels.

“Robbie?” Sportacus said, eyes wide, arms outstretched as though he’d need to catch Robbie.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m
fae!” Robbie shouted at him and then flinched back, covering his face.
That was both an answer and no answer at all.  When he peered at
Sportacus between his fingers the elf was staring at him in confusion.

“Okay?”

“Okay!” Robbie flung his arms out.  “That’s what you have to say?”

Sportacus gathered himself into his hero pose, chin lifted and fists on hips. “I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me!”

Robbie rubbed his face.  “Sportacus, yesterday you shook my hand.”

“Yes! I did!”

Robbie rubbed his face harder.  “Sportacus, we made a Deal, and well that’s a big deal.”

Sportacus
shifted out of hero pose like shifting gears, making these little half
steps forward with his feet and then lowering his hands.  His face took
on an expression Uncle would call canny and Robbie would call only half
as dumb as he looks.  “Yes, I suppose we did.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“I’m trying not to make any assumptions or jump to any conclusions.”

“Why not?” Robbie grumbled.  “You jump everywhere else.”

That got him a chastising look, he was chastised.  “Why don’t you just tell me what it means to you?”

After
a moment of breathing in deeply and then breathing out, Robbie settled
himself. “Its instinct, I don’t know why, it’s just instinct.  And it
was more than a mistake, a mistake is adding a tablespoon of salt
instead of a teaspoon.  But it was a mistake too, an accident.  And now
that I’ve made it I can’t go back on it, it is what it is.  You’ll be
compelled to stay in Lazytown until Ziggy becomes an eighteen year old,
you’re trapped, you can’t leave the environs.”

Something shifted
behind Sportacus’ face.  Before he could say something entirely hero-y
and entirely missing the point, Robbie continued.

“This wouldn’t
really be a problem except Ziggy isn’t a little boy, he’s a changeling.
He’s been six for the past eighty-three years.  He might be six
forever.”

Sportacus’ face went even sharper.  “Robbie, I know the kids are changelings.”

“Well,
not all of them,” Robbie admitted, too distracted by all the
confessions.  “Stephanie is a real girl, or a real pain at least. I’ve
tried to figure out what her deal is, but sources aren’t sharing.”

“Oh,”
Sportacus relaxed, half talking to himself.  “I thought Lazytown was
some kind of…  Maybe that wasn’t fair of me.  Obviously it wasn’t.”

“Elves
generally aren’t this open-minded about fae and changelings and all
that-” he waved his hands around in a way that was meant to represent
fiddle faddle.  “Wait. You said you know they’re changelings!”

Sportaloon gave him one of his really looks.  He probably deserved it.

“You knew this whole time?” Robbie said, shrunk back against his spine.

“I
figured it out,” Sportacus told him.  “At first I thought you might
have the real kids secreted away somewhere, but it became obvious pretty
quickly that they weren’t really attached to anyone, they were just…
little pretend children.  And you didn’t really mean any harm.  You
grouched at them if they were too loud, but they seemed to enjoy being
around you and you seemed to enjoy them too.  That and there isn’t
anyone else.  There are just houses with nothing inside, the way someone
might make a neighborhood for their dolls.”

He watched the elf.

“After
that I just watched you and them.  You and Ziggy have the same look
when you’re happy, on the rare cases you do smile.  And you and Pixel
share technological brilliance.  Then there’s you and Trixie, that’s
fairly obvious.  And Stingy and you share the same possessiveness, you
over the town and he over, well, the town.  I thought at first it might
be some kind of trap, but all you did was try to get me out of town
forever and you were so scared of me.  I’ve heard how fae are with
Deals, and I thought maybe if I stayed I could help you.”

“Help me?” Robbie asked, clutching at his vest.

“Robbie, what happened to you eighty-three years ago?”

Robbie shrunk back.

“Oh, never mind then.”

“No, its okay, I never thought about it that way.  I was lonely and felt betrayed by someone who was supposed to like me best.”

Sportastare just looked at him.  “Okay. Maybe we can help you not be lonely, and then you won’t need Ziggy anymore.”

Clutching at his heart, Robbie watched the elf.

Face
creasing with frustration, Sportacus tried to shake it off like an
annoyed dog.  “Elves live a really long time, Robbie, a really long
time.  I know you didn’t mean to trap me, and you don’t really want to
hurt me.  You’re just trying to keep yourself safe, and that’s always
okay.  Maybe the Deal will mean I will be here forever, maybe it will
only mean I have to stay for another week.  I want us to be friends,
Robbie, in a way we already are.  I care about the kids, and they’re
just a part of you. Aren’t they?  So maybe I’m trapped, but that’s
okay.  I wouldn’t want to leave anyway.”