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By the time Todd thundered down the stairs, stuffing a pair of swim trunks into his jacket pocket with one hand (the other had a death grip on the jug containing the jinn), Margo had disappeared.
He smiled weakly at Eliot, who was glowering at him. "Did she—?" he asked.
"Around back," Eliot said.
"Thanks."
As Todd rushed past Eliot caught his arm. "Remember to take care of her," he said in a low, fierce whisper.
Todd gulped. "I — I will."
"Alright then." Eliot let go and smiled. "Have fun!"
Todd hurried out the front door and raced along the path to the back of the Cottage.
Margo was standing on a round stone circle at the far end of the garden, her arms folded. As Todd approached she asked, "Do we have to go over the ground rules again before we leave?"
Todd shook his head. "No ma'am," he said. "I need to fit in and not talk."
"But—?" she prompted.
"But I won't stay in a corner alone, moping and whining and bumming everyone out. I'll just," he slapped the jug a few times, "carry this and do whatever you say."
Margo nodded and said, "Alright, alright, you know how to pay attention. Very good."
Todd stood for a moment, then rocked back and forth. "Am I allowed to ask questions?"
"Of course," Margo said expansively. "How else will you learn?"
Todd looked taken aback. "Okay, so… how do we get there?"
In reply, Margo took Todd's free hand, then closed her other hand around the golden padlock necklace she wore and tapped the heels of her shoes together.
They materialized on a hill, on the grounds of a beautiful estate. Behind them was a small mansion; off to their right a stone path wound out of sight between palms and pines; and in front of them, on a raised dais, four masked Elders in Grecian robes sat on massive golden thrones.
"Lady Margo!" a gray-bearded elder exclaimed. "Now at last the orgy can begin!"
Margo approached the dais, and, tossing Todd a sharp look, genuflected deeply. "Thank you for your generosity."
"What have you brought us this year, my child?" a serene woman asked politely.
After the woman at the other end of the dais murmured, "Please don't tell me it's another bag of dicks," Margo gestured at the jug Todd held and said, "No, it's a jinn who grants wishes."
"That's hardly unique." The fourth elder, a man with a dark goatee waved his hand dismissively.
"Without casting or spell materials?" Margo asked with buttery politeness.
"Really? How very Interesting," the goateed elder said eagerly, sitting up and leaning forward before he caught himself. "Well, it might be somewhat amusing," he added, trying unsuccessfully to sound bored.
"Anything I wish for," Margo said, batting her eyes at the entire dais. "Anything you can imagine."
The scoffing elder smiled faintly. "We can imagine quite a lot, Ms. Hanson."
"A very suitable gift," the gray-bearded elder said appreciatively, waving Todd forward, "as is this lovely youth you've brought as cupbearer." He patted the arm of this throne. "Bring the gift hither, Ganymede, and then sit by me."
At Todd's wide-eyed look of panic, Margo whispered, "Don't worry about Poppa Zeus. No debauching without consent."
Todd gulped and gave a small nod, then hurried forward to hand up the jinn jug.
"Welcome to Encanto Oculto," the serene woman said. "The opening celebration will commence shortly."
Ɵ
With a series of conciliatory bows — accompanied by disappointed murmuring from "Poppa Zeus," — Margo nudged Todd toward the path that led into the woods and downhill toward the bay.
After a few minutes' walk they came to a clearing. Most of the people there were, like Margo, third years or older; nearly all were wearing some version of the golden padlock, as a necklace, brooch, earring, or belt buckle.
"Carb up, or drink up," Margo said, nodding at a table with platters of pancakes and a small army of shot glasses.
As Margo disappeared into a throng of men and women who were soon wailing and sighing in disappointment that Eliot wasn't attending, Todd edged himself over to the table and eyed the pancakes. They were very well cooked, dark brown with green flecks. "So what flavor are these?" he asked two amazingly cute girls standing nearby.
The girls glanced at each other knowingly. "First timer?" one said.
"Definitely," said the other.
Todd smiled nervously. "I'm with Margo," he offered.
"You wish," the first one said. She reached past him and picked up a pancake, then held it out to him. "Flaon?"
Todd took a hesitant bite, but then his eyes widened. "Wow, that's fantastic! What is this filling?"
"Goat cheese, eggs, sugar, peppermint, anise… a few other things. Hidden charm through and through." She exchanged knowing glances with her friend.
Todd, busy gobbling the rest, missed this. "It's really good," he said. "Is it okay if I have another one?"
"Sure." Her eyes twinkled with amusement.
The other girl, who'd gone around behind Todd's back to stand at his other side, asked, "Frígola?" At his blank stare she picked up one of the shot glasses.
He sniffed, took a sip, then coughed.
"Thyme liqueur," she said, thwacking him on the back. "Traditional Ibiza beverage."
A light chiming sound wove through the woods.
"See you later," the pancake girl said, and waved a little tootle-loo as she and her friend joined the crowd beginning to hurry down toward the beach.
Frantic, Todd looked around for Margo.
When she came over to him he asked in a whisper, "Time for the orgy?"
"Yes," Margo said with mock sadness, "but not for you."
"No?"
"No," she said sweetly. "You haven't proven yourself orgy material."
"Uh, okay," Todd said. "How do I do that?"
Margo pointed to a tree on the opposite side of the clearing. Dozens of long ribbons, in dozens of colors, dangled from the tree.
"Take one of those light blue ribbons," Margo said.
Todd did, and then yelped as golden letters appeared, spelling out BLOW JOB.
"Wear it on the right if you're willing to give," Margo said, "Wear it on the left if you want to receive."
"How did you—"
"Lucky guess," Margo said smoothly. "Okay, so here's what you're going to do. Go through the ribbons, pick out what makes you tingle, and then go find the randy bangers on the beach. Prove that you're GGG, and you'll be welcome next year on Orgy Island."
"That's all?"
"That's all." Margo turned to go.
"And if I don't, I'll get turned into a pig and eaten, right?" Todd asked fearfully.
Margo turned back, started to say something, then smiled and nodded. "Yes, that's exactly right."
Todd frowned slightly. "Aren't you going to wear any?"
Margo raised an eyebrow, tapped the orange ribbon she was wearing as a headband, then left with the last of the crowd.
Todd hurried over to the tree and found a ribbon of the same color. ANYTHING, ANYWHERE, it said.
Ɵ
Obviously, picking the right ribbons was the key to Encanto Oculto success. Todd knew he had to sort through and check every one, because if he picked something scary by accident he was going to be stuck doing it, but he got so wrapped up in doing it right — there were so many, a lot of them things he'd never heard of — that he lost track of time.
When he finally pulled himself away from the ribbon tree the clearing was filled with the shadowy light of dusk. He hurried down to the beach, hoping he wasn't too late.
In the end, he'd only taken light blue, navy blue, and white. He wanted to receive and not give, and so he should wear them all on the left, but he wondered if maybe people would think that was selfish. As he jogged down the path he tied only the light blue ribbon around his left wrist, and then rolled the other two up and stuffed them into his jacket pocket. He could ask Margo about etiquette later.
And then it didn't matter, because the beach was deserted. Across the bay, bonfires on a distant island threw stripes of light on the waves; the bass boom of the dance music throbbed across the water like a reprimand.
So much for coming back next year.
He had brought his suit, though, and since there was nothing else to do he decided to take a swim. There was a large craggy nearby that was as good a place as any to stash his clothes, so he began to strip.
He was down to his underwear before he realized that he had an audience. Two figures were propped up on their elbows on the edge of the surf. "Hello?"
One of them lazily raised a tail and splashed. "You don't need a suit," they said, in a voice that somehow sounded as though it was full of bubbles. "Come in as you are. We'll take care of the rest."
Todd hesitated, then held up his wrist.
"Yes," the other mermaid — he thought they were mermaids, it was hard to tell — cooed. "We can do that."
"But leave the ribbons on shore," the first mermaid said. "It would be a shame to get them wet."
The water was welcoming and silky against his skin, and the mermaids — he was still pretty sure they were mermaids, but it was past sunset now and even harder to tell — swam in a circle around him, teasing him.
"How about a snack first," one said, holding up a small silvery fish. "It'll be so much more fun."
"Sure," Todd said. He'd eaten sardines and anchovies; how bad could swallowing one little minnow be?
As it turned out, it was not bad at all. The fish practically dissolved on his tongue, sweet and salty, and gave him an almost instant rush, as strong as Everclear on an empty stomach.
"Whoah," he said, and then he was a dolphin, and it was fucking awesome.
So awesome, in fact, that he didn't mind that there was no actual fucking. There was some rubbing and nudging that got kinda intense, but overall it was very chill. Mostly there was a lot of swimming — skimming over the beautiful white sand ripples of the sea bottom, which somehow he could see even though it must be night, and leaping out of the water to snap up fish that the mermaids tossed to him, and even swimming in his sleep somehow, by clasping one of the merpeople with his fins and sort of hooking their bodies together to corkscrew very slowly through the water.
And the dreams! Who knew dolphins dreamed? Of course, most of it he had no words for, because his dolphin brain didn't know those words, but it was still incredible. Being almost totes dolphin, a dolphin body with a dolphin brain, was way better than flying down to Brakebills South after the Trials. Sure, he'd kept his human brain when he was a gander, but knifing through Antarctic winds wasn't nearly as much fun as cavorting in warm, moon-dappled waves.
When the surface water grew light and rosy with dawn he understood from the merpeople's gestures that he should return to the shore. Which he did.
Sprawled on the sand, wondering why his horribly split tail didn't hurt, it took him a moment to realize that was his legs, and then another to notice that Margo was standing over him.
"How's it going, Abe?" she asked.
"Uh, okay, I guess."
"Just okay?"
He was about to tell her about being a dolphin when the memory of one of his dreams came back, and with it the words to describe it. "Well, I did have the coolest dream!" he said. "There was a tree that you could climb to reach a parallel universe where everything was made of pearls, but before I got to the top there was a nun with a trumpet, and she told me, 'This is the end' and took me to Constantinople, where all the sea snakes were reading Jane Austen and Henry James."
"Very literate!" Margo said. "Go on."
"And after that she took me to a city made of emeralds where it rained milk. We were standing in the streeth with out mouths open, getting a drink, when a bunch of people ran by. They were excited that the Moon was sitting in a labyrinth, reading the Communist Manifesto, and we were going to go see that, but then a baroness who made rubies out of roses," Todd continued, trying to articulate it all before it faded, "made us get into her carriage and took us to a museum where there were popes inside of rabbits, and caliphs inside of eggs, and a flamingo made of basketballs, and a glass box with a thundercloud inside. And when I put my ear against the glass I heard it whisper, 'I wish I was a universe,' and… and then I guess I woke up."
"Well, there's a lot more going on in there than I would have expected," Margo said, holding out his pile of clothes. "After that much excitement, you must be ready to go home."
"Go?" Todd just then remembered that he was naked. He sat up.
"Yeah, home. Week's up," she said, and tossed the clothes into his lap.
"No," Todd said. "It can't be. It hasn't even been a day."
"Oh, those bitches," Margo said. "Did they feed you fish that made you think you were a dolphin?"
"Uh, maybe." Todd clutched his clothes. "Was that bad?"
"Dolphins move through time eight times faster than humans," Margo explained, "which means that you burn through a week in a day." She added thoughtfully, "They catch a newbie with that every year."
Todd's face crumpled in disappointment. "That's so… so mean. And how does that even work?"
"Easy," Margo said. "Time magic's all over the place here; it has to be, to run the time pods."
"Time pods?"
"Yeah, when you're inside one you can bang for a whole day and a night, while only a half hour passes out here. Manage your pods right and you can get in almost a year's worth of non-stop boning done in a week. Eliot did that last year, although personally I think it's better to pace yourself and take time for meals and naps."
Todd pulled up his knees and rested his forehead on them with a groan. "They cheated me out of six days!"
"Did you have blowhole sex?" she asked. "Or give a fin job?"
"I —"
"It's okay," she assured him, "I don't need to know. How much of your menu did you get through?"
"I had three ribbons, but they were in my jacket pocket the whole time I was in the water," he said morosely.
"I think you mean the 'hole' time," Margo chuckled, then added, "Listen, Todd, Encanto Oculto isn't a competition. You only fail if you don't let yourself have fun. Now, did you have fun?"
He nodded. "I suppose."
"Well, that's the point. Make friends, try new things, get blazed. And you don't need ribbons for that; they're just a gimmick to get you started."
"Like the Sorting Hat?"
She pursed her lips. "No, because the ribbons don't lock you into just those choices: I mean, word is you took a mustard from Marv the Merman. A yiffy one, but it still looks good on your application to the Waugh Club. Well done."
Todd gawped at her and turned scarlet. "I, uh, how do you — "
"I just do," Margo said with a sigh. "Sooner or later, everyone wants to be fucked by Eliot. Alright, get dressed so that we can grab a disk home."
When Todd came into the clearing he saw Margo next to the ribbon tree, running her fingers through the various strands, making the golden words flash and sparkle.
"Final thoughts?" she asked without turning around.
"I guess I should have branched out a little more," he said, grinning at his own cleverness.
Margo turned to face him, wincing. "Oof, tree pun? Minus ten points."
"Sorry." He cleared his throat. "How did the jinn work out?"
Margo preened a little. "Very well, thank you for asking." She let the ribbons fall, the letters fading. "Alright, here you go." She held out a small golden padlock.
"I can't take your travel amulet."
Margo rolled her eyes and pulled hers from beneath her shirt. "I'm not giving you mine, Todd; this one's yours. For transport to next year's Encanto Oculto."
"Wow, really?" he said as he reached out and took it. "I qualified?"
"I told you," Margo said with faint irritation, "it's not a pass/fail situation. You get in once, you're welcome every year. Unless you act like a dick and piss off the Elders." She raised an eyebrow. "So what are you gonna do differently next year?"
"I was thinking," Todd said, trying to keep his voice steady, "Coral and gold. And er, fuschia? And, uh, maybe beige?"
"Left side or right side?"
"Right." His voice cracked a little.
Margo widened her eyes in delight. "Adventurous Todd! J'approve!"
It was, Todd decided, the absolutely most perfect way to end the week.
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~ The End ~
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posted 26 March 2020; rev 29 March