The pixies swarmed around us, picking up bits of broken cobblestone and whisking away cobwebs with quick sweeps of their wings. The bogies were nowhere in evidence; probably lurking in the shadows, waiting for someone they could jump out at and terrify. They were going to be waiting for a long time. After the day I’d had, my threshold for terror was very, very high.

At least the lights that were burning now were powered by magic, and not captive pixies. The pixie-power lights must have been purely decorative. Which didn’t make them any less horrible, but meant we weren’t going to be forced to deal with installing a new lighting system while we were doing everything else.

“It worked, didn’t it?” I asked. I could still feel Goldengreen at the back of my head, but it was fading quickly. The knowe was willing to talk to me, even willing to tolerate me—that didn’t mean that it was mine. The Queen had given me these lands. The lands themselves were still reserving judgment.

“Next time, risk somebody else’s neck,” suggested Danny amiably. “Like, I dunno, the Queen’s. Bring her next time.”

“Yeah, there’s a real life-extender.” I snorted, leaning over to ruffle Quentin’s hair. “Besides, now we have a built-in workforce to get all the crap down from the ceilings.”

“You’re going to make us clean, aren’t you?” asked Danny.

“And repair, and replace, and probably paint.” I stood. “Now that we have the doors open, let’s go beg the local nobles to lend us all their Hobs and Bannicks.”

“I’ll go for beer and pizza,” said May.

“I’ll drive her,” said Danny.

Quentin sighed. “I’ll get a mop.”

“Good call,” I said, and grinned before I started for the nearest exit. The bogies slipped out of the shadows, joining the pixies as they followed me all the way to the door, wings buzzing and legs tapping against the floor. Reclaiming Goldengreen was going to take a lot of work, and a lot of favors from the local hearth-fae community, but it was going to be worth it. Changelings and pixies have at least one thing in common: it’s rare that we have places where we’re safe. Goldengreen was an opportunity to change that.

With all the time I’ve spent feeling like I was on the outside, looking in, it was going to be nice to finally have a place I could say, with absolute conviction, was my home. The giant horror movie spiders, well . . .

Those were just a bonus.

“The Trent Museum,” I sighed to my friend, the Spirit of the South Mountain, “refuses to return my head.”

“You are wearing your head.” If mountain spirits can be said to have a weakness, it is this penchant for stating the obvious. “Furthermore, you are a ghost. Even if you desire a second head for reasons you have not explained, the head you speak of, if it has gone off somewhere from which it must be returned, is clearly corporeal. Were it to be returned, you would have no ability to use it.” They also tend to expound at length on any topic before them.

“It is not, literally, my head,” I clarified. “I speak only out of a sense of attachment, a spiritual obstacle of which I daily struggle to rid myself, now no less than when I lived. The hermit monk Tuo Mo, my most recent incarnation, who died one hundred and three years ago as you might remember—”

South Mountain Spirit shrugged. Flocks of birds arose squawking from his trees, to settle once again when the tremor subsided. “Time has a different meaning to me,” he said.

“Yes, of course.” I watched a last edgy bird circle, finally fluttering onto a branch. “In any case, the body of Tuo Mo has returned to dust long since; and that dust (including, of course, the dust that had been the head) has reentered the cycle of existence. The head I mention is that of the Buddha statue in my cave.”

“Ah, yes. One of the many carved from the sandstone cliff by monks such as yourself? I have always wondered, actually, why Cliff Spirit permitted that.”

“From reverence for the Buddha, I would imagine.”

“You have never asked him?”

“He’s rather forbidding, not approachable like yourself.”

“And you, even as a ghost, retain the timidity of the little monk you once were.” Sunlight bathed his slopes and a light breeze rustled the trees thereon.

“I’m glad I provide you with amusement,” I said, attempting a grand air of dignity. The trees danced even more merrily. “But yes.” I deflated. “It is as you say: here in the spirit realm I retain all the flaws I had in my last life as a man. It is quite disheartening.”

“Never mind about that,” said my friend, who, craggy and precipitous though he may sometimes be, is often also gentle. “We were discussing your head.”

“The statue’s head,” I said, only too happy to turn away from consideration of my own flaws. “Yes. Well, the cave in which I lived as a hermit monk contains a large carving of the Buddha, created by monks seven centuries ago. From it, shortly before I died, an expedition from the Trent Museum, in New York City, America, removed the head.”

“Did they? For what reason?” Though once familiar with these events, South Mountain Spirit nevertheless required some prompting of his memory. Spirits of Place are universally better at being remembered than at remembering.

“Do you not recall their arrival?” I inquired.

“Vaguely, I do. A loud and unpleasant bunch, with growling vehicles, clanging pots, and boisterous voices, building smoky fires larger than they needed. They came to your caves from the north, however, and did not approach any closer than my foothills, so I did not consider them of consequence. Over the course of millions of years, you understand, one sees so many things.”

“Yes, I imagine.”

“In fact, a similar group has arrived at your caves now, I believe? Sometime in the last decade, if I am not mistaken . . .” Mists gathering, he drifted into reverie.

“Six months ago. You are correct.”

The mists thinned, stretching apart. “They are different, however, I think. More respectful, surely?”

“Yes. They have come for another purpose. They are here to restore the caves.”

“What does that mean?”

“To make things as they were.”

“Why would one want things as they were? Or expect them to be so?” My friend gave me an uncomprehending look. Fog, thicker than the mists of a moment since, began to gather at his brow. He is the spirit of an ever-changing mountain, whose trees grow, leaf, and fall, whose waterfalls break rocks from boulders and, washing them into streams, alter their courses. I knew at once this was a concept he would never grasp.

“It is a notion of men,” I said, an explanation I have often used in conversations since entering the spirit realm. At first I had been astonished to hear myself, not because the phrase is incorrect, but because conversation itself was an activity I, as a man, had hardly been capable of; and explanation or correction, never. Spirits, I have found to my surprise, are much less terrifying than men.

“Ah, I see,” said South Mountain Spirit, the fog lifting. Humans, with their dissatisfactions, rushings-about, and simultaneous attempts to change some things and prevent others from changing, are inexplicable to most Spirits of Place. Thus South Mountain Spirit accepted this pronouncement, if not as the elucidation he sought, then as the explanation for why such elucidation was not forthcoming. “In any case,” he said, “we were not discussing this new expedition of men. Our subject, as I have had to remind you once already, was the Buddha head.” Spirits of Place, as they are tied to very specific objects of the physical world, can on occasion be doctrinaire.

“Indeed,” I agreed. “Well, apparently the Emperor of China”—again, the fog began to gather, so I reminded him—“at the time, our secular ruler.”

“Oh. Yes, of course. Is he no longer?”