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“Have you ever heard of a fire-fairy?” Esther had no idea why she phrased it like that; Ricky Matsui had known about magic for maybe 36 hours. He’d accepted it better than most, but that didn’t mean he knew–
“The one that dances to find gold?” Ricky asked.
“What?” How? She’d never heard of them before, despite twenty years buried in books.
“Is that not it?” He looked at her, eyes wide and worried.
“No, no, you’re right, it’s just it’s an obscure summoning spell, I just found it, after.” She gestured around at the Chantry, still a tiny bit sooty in the corners despite mendings and prestidigations by various Society members since the fire three days ago.
“I like fairy tales?” Ricky still sounded uncertain.
“Huh.” She did not like fairy tales. Too many curses cured by true love’s kiss which was neither real nor helpful. “Well. I’m impressed.”
“My parents took us to a lot of story times when I was little, to help with their English and so we’d meet other kids.” His lips pressed together, and he looked down at the axe on his hip. “I guess a lot of those stories might be real?”
“Sometimes?” Esther drew the word out. “Fairy tales have a lot of rules, and real magic’s mostly just weird.”
“Was it even looking for gold then?” Ricky looked around at bookshelves and desks and paintings. “Is there gold here?”
“A little bit. Mostly artifacts, so it might have been drawn in by magic in general.”
“Ok.”
He didn’t ask anything else about magic or gold or spells or summonings, and she wasn’t complaining, but talking to someone who just accepted whatever nonsensical magic bullshit she said at face value was an odd experience. “You free to help me track the summoner down?”
“Sure.”
That was apparently that.
The summoning circle was in the middle of an empty lot with a fairy ring surrounding it.
Which would be bad if it was an active ring connected to somewhere else, or if she was part fairy and susceptible to it, but neither was true, so she walked right into it to study the summoning circle itself.
And froze, unable to move as a sharp little voice shouted, “Esther Sinclair! Ricky Matsui!”
How the hell did it know her name? How was that enough to work a trap?
And why didn’t it work on Ricky?
Because he wasn’t caught.
He charged toward the voice, which made a very awkward squawking noise of surprise that Esther enjoyed tremendously, and then Ricky swung his Questing Axe in what was, Esther thought, his very first (and very effective) smite.
Ricky picked up a stunned two foot tall fairy guy by the collar of his shirt, and carried him back to Esther. “Now what?”
“Um.” Esther could talk, which was good, but the fairy ring was still working so she couldn’t move beyond that, which meant no casting, and she didn’t in fact know what to do next?
“Esther?” Ricky looked worried, and she hated to admit it but she did NOT know why she was stuck and he wasn’t, or how her name had been enough to–
Fairy tales and names?
True names?
Shit, there was one about names and a first born child and the gold, it had been looking for gold, and oh, magical resonance, she wanted to know its name when she was in its spell, was that?
“What’s the fairy tale with the straw being spun into gold?”
Ricky looked at the fairy dangling from his hand. “Rumpelstiltskin?”
Esther stumbled forward as the trap broke and she cast literal actual Rumpelstiltskin, holy shit what was her life, into the same pocket-realm stasis she'd framed for the fire-fairy almost before she’d fixed her feet beneath her.
That was a mess she and Alejandro would clean up later.
Ricky blinked.
“Thank you,” Esther said.
“You’re welcome?” His hand was up in the air as if he still had a fairy to hold onto.
“Fairy tales are real and he was looking for gold, you were right.”
Ricky lowered his hand to his side.
Slowly.
Esther scraped the edges of the fairy ring apart with her heel while she tried to explain what had happened without devolving into too much weird magical theory.
“Rumpelstiltskin’s magic is all about true names, that’s how they defeat him in his story?”
Ricky nodded.
“Because he’s specifically about names, and I stepped inside his spell while looking for him, he could use that connection to know the names I know, and then he could use my name to keep me stuck in his spell. Most magic can’t do that so I didn’t know to shield for it. Sorry?”
“Huh.” Ricky stood there for a moment processing that, then nodded again.
Esther was surprised that worked, it was possibly the worst magic explanation she’d ever managed.
Alejandro was going to have so many questions when she told him about this.
Ricky summoned some water to wash away the remnants of both spells, and then they were done.
“I don’t know why you didn’t get trapped.” Esther glanced at him as they started back. “Unless your middle name is important to you so your name wasn’t right without it?”
Ricky hummed. “You probably thought Ricky was short for something, so he did too, which is just off enough?”
Esther blinked this time.
“My parents named me Riki.” For just a moment she could hear the Japanese in his voice, distinct from every English syllable. “But R-i-c-k-y was easier, growing up.”
There was a weight behind his words, but that wasn’t for her, just like her Curse wasn’t for him.
“My father’s from Ethiopia,” she offered instead. “If I’d met Rumpelstiltskin when I was ten and he’d shouted Esther without my father’s accent, it wouldn’t have worked on me, either.”
Ricky smiled at her, small and crooked and wistful, but also sincere in a way she’d seldom seen before.
She smiled back.
