"Sherry, look," says the voice of a gleeful teenager from amidst the trees, "we found a witch's house, Sherry!"

The cat inspects them, then tilts his head expectantly. "Mrow?" he asks.

"Nah," says Tony. "Not unless you wanna. What's with the sign?"

"Well," says the possible witch, "I could have been more specific, but then I would have been less accurate. Do you need some magic done or undone or looked at or theorized about or squealed over or combined with some other magic?"

"Not especially," says Tony. "But if you want any of your magic squealed over, I'm game!"

"Well, then, why don't you both come in and have some biscuits and limeade, and you can tell me what a pair of princesses are doing all the way out here?"

"I think that is a great idea!" says Tony.

Sherlock nods.

"The last squirrel we tried pointed us this way, but was either unable or disinclined to direct us further."

"Husbands, husbands," says Maybe-a-witch, tapping her chin. "I don't think I have a window that will do husbands. Not my area. I have one that will do lost tailors and tinkers and merchants' sons and the like? Generally I just find them and see if I can help them find what they're looking for and get home without incident, but I bet several of them would be the sort to be pleasantly surprised by eligible princesses, if you're so inclined."

"You're a very helpful person," Sherlock observes.

"How do you know? Perhaps I am intimidated by princessitude and want you to think highly of me. Perhaps I'm a romantic of some sort and would be completely worthless to you if you were in search of the Spring of Crystal. Perhaps I am bored and you present a diversion," she says.

"You exhibit helpfulness," she says. "You are helpful. The alternate theories you propose do not explain my observations as well as mine."

"All right then," she laughs. Her oven opens itself, and she gets up to don oven mitts and remove a sheet of biscuits therefrom. "Here we are." She puts one on each of three plates, cuts them in half, and dollops butter on each half. "What are you looking for in a husband or husbands, anyway?"

"Sense," says Sherlock.

"Looking good in a crown: also a plus," says Tony.

"Admirable criteria. I'm not sure how much my lost-people window will help, unless you're planning to stay in this general area for some weeks. They are not that frequent, and when they appear, they are sometimes short on sense. Also, about half of them are female. No comment on whether they'd look good in crowns. I suspect it might depend on the crown."

"You'd look good in a crown," Tony observes.

"Do you think so?" asks maybe-a-witch, who has managed to go for a rather long time without realizing that she needs to introduce herself now. "For cosmetic purposes, quite possibly! And yet my parents do not qualify me."

"There's ways around that," she says cheerfully.

"You said husbands," says maybe-a-witch. "And I like the Enchanted Forest, I don't want to go marry the princess of Linderwall or wherever; I imagine they'd oblige me to live there."

"Did I say I wanted to marry you? I did not say I wanted to marry you! But yuo'd totally look good in a crown. And you've got sense."

"Tony is flirting," Sherlock translates. "And Tony's flirting is not principally matrimonial in nature."

"...Not to speak to the likelihood of such an event," says Sherlock, "but technically the need to find a suitable future monarch-consort and the need to find someone to create suitable future monarchs with are separate items that could be dealt with separately. And there are two of us."

"Monarching is boring," says Tony. "I take after Dad; I'd rather drink, flirt, and tinker with magic artifacts."

"Oooh, magic artifacts," says she-who-has-not-yet-been-asked-for-her-name. "What kind of artifacts?"

"Please tell me you've heard of the Skyvault," says Tony. "Otherwise I might have to take away your 'Magic' sign."

"Of course I've heard of the Skyvault," says she-of-the-"Magic"-sign dreamily. "If I thought arbitrary visitors were allowed I'd have hiked all the way to the castle just to look at it."

Tony laughs. "You can come to the castle and look at it if you want!"

"Will I be allowed to touch it - get a really good look?" asks maybe-a-witch, bouncing in her chair. "Or does it repel people who aren't members of the family, or something?"

"You can't mess with it," she cautions. "I mean, no casting spells on it, no hitting it with sticks. But you can walk up and stare at it to your heart's content."

"And can I wear my funky magic-seeing glasses while I look?" she says. She leans over and opens a drawer and gets them out; they're black metal and multicolored lenses that can drop down in front of the wearer's eyes in arbitrary combinations. "Some big enchantments are shy and don't like it when I do that."

"The arch isn't really an enchantment," says Tony. "It's a... well, anyway. Funky magic-seeing glasses are fine. How do they work?"

Of course she isn't.

"That," says Tony, "is awesome."

"Yes!"

She grins.

"So the Skyvault's not shy, then?"

"Nope!"

"Excellent! Let's see, it'll probably take four days to get there, longer if I bring Cricket, but it's possible I can get a ride from Kexan and then it's down to hours, but Kexan won't have the patience to watch me stare at it for hours so I'll still have to plan to hike back..." She puts her spectacles back in their drawer, closes the drawer, opens it to reveal not spectacles but a stack of notebooks and a heap of pens, and starts writing.

"Kexan...?"

"A dragon friend. He can occasionally be convinced to fly me places if I ply him with sufficient pancakes."

"What volume of pancakes does he consider sufficient?"

"It's a truly ridiculous number, and he also likes there to be a variety of kinds, but it takes less than four days to make that many," laughs why-has-no-one-asked-for-her-name-yet-it's-not-going-to-occur-to-her.

"I volunteer to assist in creating pancakes," says Sherlock.

"Well, he needs them hot, and it may not be convenient for him to come over for the next day or two, so you could help me with some of the prep work if you'd like to, but the finished pancakes themselves just sort of get continuously tossed into his mouth over a three-hour period as they come off the griddle, and none of this is relevant to your quest so I wouldn't expect you to still be here."

"...No," says Tony, "see, I will take you to see the Skyvault. Is what I meant."

"Oh!" Pause. "I don't understand! You're busy and Kexan knows where the castle is!"

"You want to see the Skyvault. I think you're cute, so I want to show you the Skyvault. If you just show up there on a dragon, Mom might decide not to let you look at the Skyvault."

"Oh. And that would be a terrible pity." Beat. "All right, should I call Kexan right now and mix up pancake batter and pack or - I don't know what your questing schedule looks like."

"Our questing schedule is completely whim-based," Tony assures her.

"Certainly."

"Oh well," says Tony. "More pancakes for us, right?"

"So, no chocolate," says Sherlock. "All right."

"Yes, sorry." Notwitch starts snapping her fingers imperiously at all the implements, and they put themselves away. The still-dry pancake mix finds itself a lid and tucks itself into a cupboard. "It looks like it's a hiking trip after all. Will Her Majesty also not let me look at the Skyvault if I arrive not-on-a-dragon?"

"The dragon is not significant. The presence or absence of another member of the royal family is. We are each capable of showing you the Skyvault on our own authority."

"Well, it seems like it would put you much farther out of your way to hike there with me for four days. I have this awful phobia of brooms ever since a temperamental one kicked me off of it, and I'm still saving up to order a carpet to enchant..."

"Do not consider it going out of our way," says Sherlock. "That would imply far too much planning and coordination on our part."

"So when you said you were looking for - no, come to think of it, you didn't, you said Her Majesty wanted you to look for husbands. Ah-ha."

"Let us say that if I were to look into the Pool of Heart's Desire, I do not think I would see a suitable husband looking back at me."

"You know, I do actually know where that one is. The window I mentioned showed me someone who needed to find it, last year. What do you think you'd see?"

"I have no idea. But a husband would not be it."

"Not even an unsuitable one?"

"Not even that."

Notwitch giggles. "I had a look in the pool once. It's pretty useless to me. I already know what things I want, and it doesn't dispense advice on getting them."

"What did it show you?"

"Well," says Notwitch. "It doesn't give you a complete rundown of everything you want - just the most indispensable heartfelt desire. Which is another reason it's not that practically useful. But since you're curious - I got a picture of me sitting in my study, with Cricket on my lap and a book in my hands - and the calendar displaying a date some nine thousand years in the future."

"Cat-inclusive immortality. Very nice."

"Awwwwww," says Tony.

"What'd he say?"

"Are you sure you want the translation?"

"...Yes?"

"He says you only think it's cute that I'd miss him if he died because you don't have a sufficient conception of nonhuman personhood. It wasn't phrased quite that gently, though."

"What," she says, "no, the cute part is you saying 'I love you too'!"

"She is completely serious about the graphs," Sherlock puts in. "We did research when we were six."

"I am somewhat curious to see these graphs!"

"They are at the castle! You can see them. At the castle," says Tony.

"That sounds lovely," says she who has not yet been prompted for her name.

Tony beams.

"Okay," says Tony, "your professional opinion as a magic person - how easy is it to get a witch's-sleeves thing going on something that is not a sleeve and doesn't belong to a witch?"

"Well," says the magic person, "there are degrees of not being a witch; how not-a-witch and what not-a-sleeve do you have in mind?" She packs a sack of oranges and then reopens that cabinet and takes some sampling jars. She also retrieves her spectacles, but these she puts in a pointed black hat she produces, rather than in either sleeve. "Hats are easy. Bags are doable. I could probably figure out how to do a wooden box, but it would be hard."

"I keep trying it on bags," she says, "but it's not my natural medium and I get exactly nowhere."

"What manner of not-witch are you? I know fire-witchery runs a little in the royal family, but you're not redheads, so you've probably only got a faint talent for it if any. Fire-witch, even a little bit of one, is easier to work with than completely nonmagical, though." She reaches into her hat, puts on her spectacles, flicks the lenses around, and peers at Tony.

"Hmm. Why a bag and not a sleeve or a hat?" Magic person flicks her lenses around some more. "I could sleeve you a hat."

"I don't wear sleeves," she says. "Or hats. Hats get lost, sleeves catch fire."

Magic person puts her spectacles back in her own hat and her hat back on her head. "Do you have a bag on you that you'd like worked on? I can poke at it while we travel."

Tony offers up her - very full - backpack.

"...I have to work on it while it's empty. I can start now, and then you can pack everything up when we're ready to start hiking, or we can start first and I can start when we've quit for the night, what's your preference?"

"Hmm... start when we've quit for the night," she decides. "Less total packing and unpacking that way."

Magic person nods. She flits about her house a bit more, putting things in her sleeves and a few of the more fragile items in her hat. "Do you want to go soon or not-so-soon?"

"Soon," says Sherlock.

Magic person tosses a few last minute things into her storage space. "Well, I'm set whenever you are," she says.

Sherlock starts for the door.

Sherlock takes the lead when they reach the forest.

"Anything else I should peer at while I'm in the environs of the palace?" inquires magic person. "Other less famous fascinating magical artifacts, other adorable childhood graphical models of things?"

"If Mom really likes you, she might let you look at the sword."

Magic person looks like she might be about to swoon. "Tell me how to get her to like me, please?"

"The ways of Mom are mysterious," says Tony. "Be nice to her offspring, employees and subjects, don't break anything that didn't need to be broken, and at least she probably won't dislike you."

"I'm very nice," says magic person. "I wanna look at the sword." She sighs like she has been carrying on a long distance pen pal romance with the sword.

"Are you sure looking at it is all you wanna do," snorts Tony.

"Well, it probably won't let me touch it," she says. "Not comfortably, anyway. But I would really like to look at it."

She laughs.

"There are," says Sherlock, "ways around that."

Magic person throws her head back and laughs. "Oh, this is the most amazing day," she says breathlessly.

The twins laugh, too.

"I know very little about royal magic, really, since it won't respond to me - I can look at it but not use it in any sort of spell, and there are so few books on it. I can't wait, I'm excited." There is a bounce to her step.

"I have what you might call a royal sense of direction," says Sherlock, "but less success using it to accomplish practical effects."

"My limited and rumor-based theoretical understanding probably can't help you very much, but I could try?" says magic person.

"Thank you," says Sherlock. "Perhaps later."

"Okay," says magic person agreeably. "So have you had an eventful whimsy-based quest that might or might not yield husbands so far?"

"Not especially, no."

"No? How long have you been at it?"

"A week."

"And you haven't run into any mischievous elves or lost panthers or would-be bandits or lost dukes' children from Kasselthwaite? I'm surprised."

"I'm not."

"Why not?"

"Because when Sherry doesn't wanna meet anybody in the Enchanted Forest, she doesn't."

"Really! Now how do you manage that?" inquires Bella, who will now be narrated with her name despite the fact that her traveling companions don't know it.

"I go where they are not."

"That seems logical, but how do you know where they won't be?"

"It is obvious."

"...Is this an obscure royal magic sense, or...?"

"Near as anybody can tell, nope," says Tony. "She's just really good at noticing things. Not that the royal magic doesn't help."

"Huh. You'd have to be extraordinarily good at noticing things to avoid running into anyone in a week's walk through the forest. And that's if the forest didn't decide to throw anybody at you a bit more forcefully than usual. If you were feeling so antisocial how come you came up to my house?"

"Your house," says Sherlock, "was interesting. And there was that squirrel."

"What exactly did you ask the squirrel for directions to?"

"Someone interesting."

Bella giggles. "I try to be that, yes."

"You succeed."

Bella is inestimably pleased by this compliment. "Cricket said you thought I was a witch."

"Not for very long."

"What gave me away?"

"Everything."

Bella laughs. "Most people can go on thinking I'm a witch for a long time. Sorceress stuff isn't widely recognized, I have to adapt anything from fire-witches or elves or unicorns till it's unrecognizable, nobody expects a girl to use wizard magic in any form, and everybody uses a dragon spell or two. A witch could do most everything that's left over, and I do dress like one."

"And yet," she says, "you are not a witch."

"D'you know what I am?" Bella asks, grinning.

"You are yourself."

Bella giggles. "Of course I am. But there's a technical term for a student of all kinds of magic. I'm a magician."

"There you are, then."

"What else can you tell about me, Princess Observant?" inquires Bella brightly.

"You're very cute."

Bella laughs again. "Thank you. You are both also cute."

"We know!"

"Good! Self-knowledge. Important stuff."

Tony laughs.

"Are we going to be avoiding running into anybody on the hike to the castle, too?"

"Do you prefer not to?"

"I'm usually perfectly happy to encounter strangers, but on the other hand I don't know why you weren't."

"I find them tedious most of the time, but it's not a strong preference."

"Well, then," says Bella, "I suppose what I'd rather comes down to how well your status as interesting conversationalists holds up."

"Do let us know."

"What do the both of you do with your time apart from quest without much interest for one or more husbands?"

"Tony made this armour," volunteers Sherlock.

"It's great," agrees Tony. "I'm proud."

"Do you tend to have much call to be armored, if you avoid everyone before you could get into a fight with them even if they were unfriendly?"

"It is always possible I might detect someone or something I would prefer to intercept."

"Like what, a wizard? I'd expect wizards to mostly be terrified to come into the Enchanted Forest, let alone as deep as this. Have you been having elf trouble or something that I've not heard of?"

"I don't have particular candidates in mind."

"Fair enough. Ever-vigilant warrior princess. So Tony forges armor, Sherlock wears it, that seems very tidy."

"Yup," says Tony. "I mean, I'd wear it too, but she's way scarier than I am."

Bella looks assessingly at Sherlock. "Should I be scared of you?"

"Only if you represent a threat to Tony, the royal family as a whole, or this forest. Otherwise no."

"I do not represent a threat to any of those persons or political entities," says Bella serenely. "I am just a magician who magics magic magically. And quite harmlessly."

"Then you need not fear me."

"Excellent, I hate it when I have to fear stuff, especially traveling companions."

She laughs.

Someone did! Someone did say 'wizard'!

Gosh! This wizard over there about fifty yards off on a course that's likely to meet theirs perpendicularly actually has nothing to do with that, but what a coincidence!

"Soon we will encounter a wizard," says Sherlock.

"Oh dear," says Bella. She starts rummaging in her sleeves. "I do not actually have anything on me to counter a wizard if he decides to be unfriendly - I don't expect them in the forest - I might be able to talk my way past him if you'd rather not get into a fight, though."

"Oh, but getting in fights with wizards is such fun."

"Do you do it often?" inquires Bella.

"Only when the opportunity presents itself."

"All right, then I won't attempt to distract him by conspicuously saying something incorrect about Zemenar's Third Principle and then paying rapt attention when he corrects me."

She chuckles.

"Hello," says Sherlock. "Please get out of my forest."

The wizard jumps a foot in the air, scrambles back for a bit of distance, and says, "Well! That's a mightily prejudiced attitude! And entitled, too!"

"It is inarguably my forest," she says, "and I would like you to get out of it."

"You haven't even asked me what I'm doing here," sniffs the wizard.

"I invite you to explain, but advise you to be brief about it."

"Well, you see, I'm simply here to -" And with that he makes a break for it, running full-tilt through the trees in the direction he was originally headed.

He brandishes his staff at her. "You leave me alone! This is harassment! Discrimination!"

"This," says Sherlock, "is trespassing. And shortly it will be violence."

"You'll regret not leaving me to go on my way!" exclaims the wizard, and he shakes his staff again, but this time it pours chill into the air, frosting the surrounding trees and Sherlock alike.

That is quite enough for Sherlock, who steps forward and swings her sword at his neck.

"...So, are you okay?" Bella asks. "Also, can I have his staff? I can wrap it up so it doesn't try to grab any forest magic."

"He used a frost spell. I am uncomfortable, but will survive. Do what you like with the staff," she says, sheathing her sword.

"Sherryyyyy," says Tony. "That's horrible!"

"...Do you need - I have some - if you want -" Bella sets about rummaging in her left sleeve. "Brightwort and goldflower and a little sorcery, if you want me to patch you up?"

"Yes," she says. "Thank you."

Brightwort and goldflower are both produced. "I don't suppose either of you can set these on fire for me? I also have matches, somewhere, I think but am not sure..." Rummage, rummage.

"Sure, just say when," says Tony.

"Soon, soon," murmurs Bella, and she gets out a glass plate, arranges the herbs on it, and says, "Sherlock, I'm going to need to hold your hand - or something, but hand's easiest."

Sherlock divests herself of a gauntlet and offers Bella her hand.

She lets out a soft sigh of relief. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," says Bella cheerfully, letting Sherlock's hand go with a pat and blowing herbal ashes from her glass plate before she tucks it into her sleeve again. "Lucky thing I have so many healing trigger-spells set up. Comes of wanting to be immortal." She goes up to the staff cautiously, puts her spectacles on, and starts peering at it through various lenses in search of traps to disarm or work around.

Sherlock spends a moment smiling before she puts her gauntlet back on.

"This will take me about two hours to make it safe to pick up and put away, or I could destroy it right now," Bella finally announces. "Do you two object to waiting that long?"

"What would you do with it once you had it away?"

"Hang onto it until I got home, and then study it!" says Bella cheerfully. "There's no good way for non-wizards to learn about wizard spells, but the best way is to take apart the staffs and see what's in them. The next best way is to marry a wizard and pretend to be deaf so he'll talk to his friends in front of you, and some fine books on wizard magic have been produced that way, but I do not care for the methodology."

...She laughs.

"You go right ahead and pack it up, then," says Tony.

"Excellent. Shall we continue?"

"I do believe we shall."

Sherlock continues to lead them, then.

"So," says Bella, "has soapy lemon water stopped working, then? I keep expecting them to find a way around that; perhaps they finally have."

"A bucket of soapy water with lemon is useful only against things in need of a good scrub," she says, "of which wizards are by far the most threatening. A sword protects against more dangers and is less awkward to carry."

"You haven't got an argelfraster trigger set up, I take it?"

"The sword works just as well."

"Better if you want them dead. Not as well if melted for later respawning will do," Bella points out.

"I believe they've gotten too used to respawning."

"Too used to it?"

"It functions as a temporary setback for them, rather than any kind of deterrent."

"I don't think they like melting," says Bella.

"No. But as I said, they have gotten used to it."

"Mm." Bella makes no further audible protests as they move on.

"Troubled about them? Not really - not in either sense - not specifically. Troubled about - death. It's awfully permanent."

"Yes," she agrees. "But difficult to thoroughly avoid."

"Yes, well. I'm working on it."

"Good luck."

"Thank you."

"Are you getting anywhere?"

"I'm ruling out a lot of things that won't work," says Bella, brightening some. "At quite an impressive clip, if I do say so myself."

Sherlock laughs. "A fine start."

"I have some time left to work on it, after all, even if I don't manage the trick anytime soon. I'm only nineteen."

"Do let us know if you figure it out."

"Oh, I'll pretty much tell the entire world," says Bella placidly.

"How helpful of you."

"Rather," agrees Bella merrily. "But at any rate, people I do not know who are less deserving than a wizard trespassing in the Enchanted Forest die on a regular basis, so I am not troubled specially about him."

"I see. That is good to know."

"I do wonder what he was doing there. We haven't been walking long enough to get out of range of my usual haunts even considering that I don't have a magic carpet yet, and I've never seen a wizard around this close to my house. Occasionally near where my mother lives, one time where my father lives, but never here."

"Where do your mother and your father live?"

"Linderwall, both of them, but not the same town anymore."

"Why not?"

"Well, they got divorced, in large part because Charlie's very attached to his town and Ranata doesn't like it there. She moved."

"I see."

"It's a perfectly nice town, but small and sleepy and unremarkable," shrugs Bella. "I don't really want to live there either, not for any significant length of time."

"What's it called?"

"Tines. And Ranata in Phoenix. Why?"

"Just curious."

"I suppose it's only fair. I know where you grew up," laughs Bella.

Tony giggles.

"Did you enchant Sherlock's armor yourself," asks Bella, "or just forge it?"

"Forged and enchanted!" she says happily. "That's from Dad's side of the family. He was good with metal, too."

"It looks like a dwarf enchantment. I've investigated the magic but it doesn't like me as much as some kinds do."

"I am pretty sure my dad wasn't a dwarf," says Tony. "I guess it's not impossible that he could've had some dwarf in him somewhere, though."

"Dwarf spells are like elf ones - friendlier if you're in the family or some sort of tempermentally inclined but theoretically usable for anyone," says Bella. "I go ahead and wrestle with a dwarf spell whenever I want to work on something metal, but it's not often - I substitute when I can."

"Well, now I know what kind of magic it is, I guess. I never really thought about it before."

"...You were doing magic without knowing what kind it was?"

"It was Dad's kind," she says reasonably.

"He never told you what sort of magic he was doing?"

"He invented most of it himself."

"...Huh. Well, it looks dwarven to me, but I'm not enough of an expert on dwarf magic to say for sure that there's nothing else mixed in there."

"I'll believe you that there's some dwarven, anyway."

"You should. I am a magician and we know these things," says Bella grandly.

Tony laughs.

"Just how fire-witchy are you two? My specs aren't that fine-grained. They just say 'not zero, not all the way', but if there's books on thinned-out fire-witch families I haven't got copies."

"I think maybe it was our... great-great grandma?" she hazards. "And it's been pretty strong in the family since then, we're the first generation with no red hair. But we still do the fire thing and the knowing stuff about stuff thing."

"And it's hard to tell about the rest, because the royal family of the Enchanted Forest also has a strong natural affinity for magic."

"The fire thing. There's parts to the fire thing - does your hair burn when you're mad? I saw you do an ignition -" She waves at Tony. "And the frost spell bothered you, although you were perfectly talkative and so on so I don't know how much -" She waves at Sherlock. "I'm not getting much of an impression of a temper off either of you - you were pretty calm about the wizard, sword or no sword - do you cry fire? Could you push magic into a wizard's staff and explode it? Thanks for not doing that if that's a thing you could've done," Bella adds, "I've never gotten hold of an intact recently-used staff whose owner wasn't liable to steal it back a few days later before."

"Yeah, Sherry can be a real firestorm if you piss her off bad enough, it just takes a lot to get her going these days," says Tony. "Which is a good thing, 'cause we live in a forest. I dunno about exploding wizard's staffs, I've never tried."

"If you're worried about burning down swaths of forest I could probably make you gear for that," says Bella. "Like my marble, only I think I'd make them out of something else if they were intended to contain fire-witch magic specifically."

"I have not set anything on fire that I did not fully intend to set on fire since I was nine," says Sherlock. "I believe I am all right on that front."

"What's your marble do?"

"Stores magic. It's like a wizard staff - some of the same basic principles on the storage end - it'll take all kinds, it could store fire-witch magic without exploding but it wouldn't like it - but it's not a thief. It takes runoff from my spells, anything I generate by accident, occasional donations. Then if I ever need a lot of power without a lot of time to prepare, it's there."

"Cool," says Tony.

"I think so! I like glass in general, the specs and the marble are good examples of its uses," says Bella. "That and windows and kitchenware."

"What sorts of kitchenware?"

"The limeade pitcher, you saw. Mixing bowls and so on. I have as much as I can in glass and then it's easier to add it to the general spell I have over the kitchen that makes it so cooperative."

"Convenient. I want one."

"If you want to park me in your kitchen for a day or two, I can do that," says Bella merrily. "The cooks aren't quick enough to suit you?"

"Oh, I love to cook."

"Aha. Yes, you'll like the kitchen spell. It does take some getting used to, though - the spell does for you, and you do for the spell, it has to learn what you mean when you tell it this or that. I don't have to read off my pancake recipe anymore to get all the ingredients because I don't often change them, but if I did my kitchen would be petulant for hours."

"How large is the spell's vocabulary? Could I teach it several varieties of pancakes and not run into trouble so long as I kept the names straight?"

"Yes, if the names are all distinct it will do fine, it has no trouble with the complexities of white bean soup versus black bean soup. Its memory is as large as I make it - mine's got a stack of paper tucked away in a cupboard-space to serve and hasn't run out of room yet."

She laughs. "How delightful. Yes, unless Mother raises an unexpected objection, I certainly think you should enchant our kitchen."

"All right!" Normally she would bring up compensation at this point, but a kitchen enchantment and a witchsleeved bag are nowhere near what Bella would happily pay just for access to the Skyvault and possibly the sword. Plus this bonus wizard staff.

"You are helpful!"

"So helpful," agrees Bella. "Are there already any enchantments laid on the kitchen? That'll affect how I go about it."

"Not to my recollection, but the castle is quite old, so there's probably some residue."

"Residue that's not in active use? I can just suck that up into the marble if nobody minds to get it out of the way."

"As long as you're careful about it, I don't foresee a problem."

"What would the particular hazards of not being careful look like in this case?"

"If you took some magic that was in active use in whatever capacity, someone would be likely to get annoyed."

"That makes sense. The marble's pretty well set up to avoid that sort of thing. I didn't want to get evicted on account of practicing straight-up wizardry, after all."

"Wise," she comments.

"It's really a pity that wizards insist on such unfriendly forms of practice. And such secrecy. There are benign applications of their principles, but they're hard to dig up, and the wizards won't help anyone look."

"I agree."

"I do wonder what that one was doing. He didn't say anything useful on the subject?"

"No."

"There's nothing much in the part of the forest except the Tree of Pearls, which I can't imagine why it'd interest a wizard particularly."

"What's the Tree of Pearls, again?"

"It's a tree. It grows pearls," says Bella. "Instead of fruit. Or as fruit, depending on how you look at it. They're edible, in contrast to most pearls, quite tasty actually, also make lovely jewelry, I made Renée a necklace of them once."

"Did she eat it?"

"Nope. She wears it. I put pearls in my omelettes sometimes, though."

"That's kind of awesome," says Tony. "Unless you threw a real one in there by accident. Then, ow."

"There's no good place to get real ones without just buying them from a traveling salesperson, around here, and I have no use for real ones - for all the magical applications the fruit kind works just as well. You'd have to go south for a week to get to a lake with freshwater oysters, and southwest from there for another two weeks to reach the ocean."

"Well, it is the Enchanted Forest. You never know."

"True. There's all kinds of stuff here. That's why I moved in."

"Yep," says Tony. "That's the Enchanted Forest for you. Full of stuff."

"Mostly trees and moss," says Bella. "But interesting trees, some of them, and pretty moss!"

"I love my forest," Tony says happily.

Tony cheerfully unpacks it and hands it over. (The unpacking is surprisingly fast.)

...Tony giggles.

Bella smirks at her and goes back to wheedling the bag, interspersed with variants on the spell. Eventually she has made enough progress to sprinkle the bag's interior with a mix of herbs that smell almost like dinner. "Come onnnnnn... you can do it... you will fulfill your destiny..."

Tony is absolutely cracking up at this point.

"I bet my sleeves want to be bags. They work more like bags than sleeves anyway - c'mon - you know you wanna be sleeved - c'mon c'mon - deepandwidecapacioussleevealwaysgiveherwhatsheneedsbythepowerofthisspellkeepitallandkeepitwell!" she blurts as fast as possible without losing diction. She peers into the bag. "Sleeved!" she says triumphantly.

Tony scoops up the bag and hugs it. Then she hugs Bella too, for good measure.

Eee, hugs! Bella is pleased. And huggable.

"Have you met many?" asks Bella archly.

"Nope!"

"That only makes sense. We are rather uncommon."

"It was a magician that did the first spell to keep wizards' greasy paws off our magic," she offers. "Way back before Mom was even born."

"Yeah, I've read about Telemain. Good role model, kind of lousy writer, too fond of his jargon - I understand it now but it was kind of intimidating when I was just starting out."

"Yeah, I remember Dad used to complain about him all the time."

Bella laughs. "The jargon problem, or something else? Were they contemporaries at all?"

"They might've been?" she hazards. "Mostly it was the jargon. He complained about the spell structure on the anti-wizard thing, too, but it was the admiring kind of complaining."

"There's an admiring kind of complaint?"

"Oh, yes," says Sherlock.

"Like what?"

"I cannot give you examples," she says. "It was mostly in the delivery."

"You had to know him."

"Fair enough. I had just moved in when he passed away - it was a fairly miserable welcome, the forest grieving all around me - I'm sure it was worse for you. I'm sorry."

"What brought you here?"

"There's really no better place to be a magician," Bella says, brightening. "I think there's something like a dozen witches in the whole of Linderwall - no permanent wizard residence - there's Little Elfholts in two of the big cities but it's nothing like having a native elf population - there's just not as much to look at, magic-wise."

"That," says Tony, "is very true."

"And I do like to be busy."

"What are you currently busy with?"

"There's the ongoing immortality project, and on the shorter-term front I'm deconstructing some unicorn magic, trying to convince Kexan to introduce me to his grandmother, setting up a test garden to see which of several spells is better at repelling gnomes and other pests, and - now - I'm going to have lots of notes on the Skyvault and maybe the sword to pore over."

"What exactly are you doing to unicorn magic? And who is Kexan's grandmother?"

"Kexan's grandmother is the King of the Dragons. I want to convince her to let me have a look at the King's Crystal. I don't expect to be allowed to touch it or do anything to it, but I give myself even odds on being allowed to look, possibly if I spend a month in indentured servitude to her first or something. So far Kexan's on the fence about it."

"Good luck," snorts Tony. "Kazul's an old friend of the family, and I wouldn't ask her for a look at the Crystal."

"I'm at least reasonably confident that Kexan will not introduce me if she'd be liable to eat me," says Bella. "Merely not getting a look at the Crystal wouldn't be so bad; I'm not getting a look at it now. But I have to be gentle and patient - which is hard - about wheedling Kexan, since of course if I annoy him too much he might present me without being sure if I'll get eaten. Dragons can be depressingly casual about people getting eaten."

"I had noticed that, yeah," says Tony. "And I come with a spare."

"...I had not been under the impression that this was how twins work..." says Bella.

"It isn't," says Sherlock. "Royal families, however..."

"So you think a dragon would think less of eating one of you because the other could carry on questing for a husband and produce an heir," says Bella, sighing. "Yeah, probably."

"From a dragon's perspective, individual humans don't last that long regardless of being eaten. Human continuity on the level of the family is more comparable to dragon continuity on the level of the individual."

"I think half the reason Kexan is willing to be friends with me is that I take the limitations of human lifespan very seriously as a bad thing that I plan to fix," Bella says, nodding. "I'm certainly not gearing up to produce an heir and he doesn't know my parents."