"Anyone asks we're minstrels on our way to entertain the fairies," I said.

It was our basic cover story. We'd been a huge hit with the Vikings. Also in some nameless peasant hole in the deep forest. But Hel had not been amused. Maybe our luck would be better with the fairies.

We sauntered down looking as innocent as we could. At the same time we wanted to project a don't-mess-with-me look. It's a balancing act, Everworld is.

Part of me hoped for a fight. A fight I could win, anyway. Jalil had covered for me. Shown no expression when I lied to the others. But that left me being a fake.

"Sheep coming up the road," Jalil said. "Let's hurry."

"Why hurry?" Christopher asked.

"You want to walk in front of the sheep or behind the sheep?"

"Ah."

We stepped up the pace and joined the road about fifty feet ahead of the first sheep. About the same distance behind a big ox-cart loaded with what might be beets.

The road was hard-packed dirt and crushed shell. Like a country road down in the South. Grass faded at the edges. Intermittent knots of shade trees near the road offered temporary respite from the sun.

A stream, deep-cut and narrow winded alongside the road. Reeds and cattails covered the banks. For a while all we saw were the sheep behind us and the back of the ox-cart ahead of us. And little enough of either of those. Jalil's hurry to avoid sheep crap had overlooked one vital fact: an awful lot of flocks had already moved along this road. We mostly kept our eyes down, looking to avoid the bigger piles. I was wearing the last pair of running shoes I'd ever find in Everworld. If they became unwearable it was lace-up boots if I was lucky.

Gradually we moved up on the wagonload of beets. But just as we were looking to pass, we ran into oncoming traffic. A file of dwarves, an even dozen of them carrying huge sacks on their backs. The loads would have crushed a human. The dwarves were sweating profusely and straining, but I heard no grumbling as they passed by.

It was my second view of dwarves. The first time had been in Hel's harem city. They were taciturn creatures. A hair taller than Idalia definitely, but built as broad as they were tall. They might have been carved out of live oak. Despite the heat and their burden each wore a chain mail shirt that went down to his knees and some sort of weapon: short sword, axe, nailed club.

The dwarves seemed to have no interest in us. We decided to show none in them. I had the feeling that dwarves liked to be left alone. I also had the feeling that if they weren't left alone the person who hassled them would be sorry.

We walked for another two hours keeping as quick a pace as we could manage. The peaches had helped but not much. We had about a two day food deficit. Water was plentiful but the food situation was becoming critical. I was thinking about dropping back to the beet wagon we'd passed and seeing if I could bargain for some. Had no idea what raw beets tasted like, or even if they could be eaten. But the hungrier I got the more openminded I became.

The countryside was becoming prettier all the time. It had been nice to begin with: rolling hills, bands of trees broken up by flower-filled meadows. But now it was going beyond anything nature could manage unaided. We were walking through land that was more and more like a tended garden.

A low stone wall now lined the road on both sides. The shade trees lined up on both sides of the road, spaced far enough apart to allow for lush hydrangia hedges, orange day lilies, rose bushes bearing fat, full roses in white, pink and red.

The grass was trimmed, edged, and as green and fresh as a golf course.

"Hey, I think my grandfather lives here," Christopher said. "This is exactly like his country club down in Florida. Less humid here. Not as many people driving with the turn signal on." The only thing that marred the trimmed, artificial perfection was the sight of the satyr's legs bounding along.

"Man, what is going on with that?" Christopher wondered.

"It must feel some affinity for us. Maybe some inchoate attraction," Jalil suggested.

"It has no eyes," April pointed out. "How does it follow us? I mean, it has no head. No nothing." "You know, I think on the scale of mysteries, how it follows us is maybe less mysterious than the mere fact that it can move at all," Jalil pointed out.

"Jalil you talk so purty when you want to," Christopher said. "When you do that I feel an inchoate attraction for you."

The road turned around a willow so huge it seemed to be a small grove rather than a single tree. The road turned and we found ourselves looking at a gate.

It was very pretty. An arch formed out of rose bushes rose very high over the road. It would be just high enough for the beet wagon to squeeze under when it caught up to us. The arch was anchored on either side of the road by a stout stone wall. The wall extended maybe a hundred feet to left and right and ended in a round stone tower two dozen feet tall, give or take. More roses adorned the top of the wall.

"That's pretty with all the roses," April said. "Kind of looks like what you'd expect the entrance to Fairy Land to be, huh?"

"It's not about the roses," I said. "It's about the thorns. Try going over that wall it'd be like barbed wire. And see on either side, out past the towers, more bushes of different types. I'm betting on more thorns. See the way the ground rises sharply? Someone wants to avoid this gate they're going up a steep hill into dense thorn bushes and with that tower looking down at them the whole time."

We approached the gate cautiously, but without looking guilty or like we were worried. Senna's warning about little people who survived in a land of giants was fresh in my memory. And if I had forgotten it this beautiful-yet-serious gate would have reminded me.

A small person lounged beside the gate, tipped back on a chair. He was smoking a long pipe. He wore a bright red cap, a bright green tunic and soft shoes that ended in curled, pointed toes. He was approximately the same size as a dwarf but built in more nearly human proportions. His legs were perhaps a bit short for his body, but other than that he could have been a seven-year old with an old man's wrinkled, good-natured face.

As he spotted us he lifted his cap in greeting. Smiled around his pipe. Winked a blue eye.

"It's like right out of a fairy story," April marveled. "My great-grandmother, may she rest in peace, she was from Ireland, she'd tell stories about the leprechauns. They were just like that! Exactly. It's exactly the image I had in my mind from when I was little."

"Top 'o the afternoon to ye, then, good folk," the leprechaun said. "And ladies, sure your loveliness pales the most beautiful rose on the bush. It does, it does, an' no mistake."

"Hello," I said. "We're looking for Fairy Land. I guess we're there, huh?" It was hard to feel very worried under the circumstances.

"You've found it, then, so ye have. Aye, you've found us out. How is it we can help you, good sir?"

"Well, we're traveling minstrels. We're looking to find a place to put on a show."

The leprechaun smiled. "Minstrels are ye? Ah, then that's something, eh? Minstrels. Have you happened to notice as you walked along the road, I say have you happened to notice that from time to time you came upon, perhaps even stepped in, a steaming great pile of manure?"

I nodded, grinning, couldn't help myself. He was cute. And I don't use the word cute.