He couldn’t unless he jumped onto the bed. Which didn’t make sense, because the mattress was on the floor. Except it wasn’t. What had been a mattress was now a bed—a huge bed, one at least three feet longer and wider than it had been last night. The boxes at the head of the mattress were still there, but now they sat in a bookcase-like headboard. The blankets had also grown in size. While we slept, the bed had adjusted to me.
I slowly sat up. The window hadn’t changed. It still snowed outside, but the flakes were fewer and farther apart, and the sky lightened. The cloud cover lessened.
The settee that had been pushed to the wall was gone. The two chairs were still there, as was the small table between them, but the big piece of furniture had vanished to make enough room to walk comfortably around the new and improved bed.
The creaky spiral stairs were still around the corner of the hearth, which also hadn’t changed. The painting over the fireplace looked different. I couldn’t put my finger on how, other than I was pretty sure the colors had moved from reddish to more blues and purples and that the overall pattern of the landscape depicted had somehow shifted.
When I’d come in, the kitchen on the other side of the arch had been dark. I’d gotten a sense of it anyway, of the table and the sink and the counters, and how it filled the other part of the cottage I’d seen from outside. There was a second exterior door in there somewhere, one that led to the part of the yard with the pump. All had seemed correct spatially, and I hadn’t paid attention.
The space no longer made sense.
The front door now opened into an added mudroom. A glimpse of the new external wall was just visible through the big window. On the other side of the new room, the kitchen had been greatly expanded. Something warm and golden glowed in there just outside my line of sight.
Ellie sighed in her sleep. My hound wagged his tail as if he expected me to figure out where the magical mystical cottage stored the dog food.
I patted his head. “Hold on,” I whispered.
He did a small hound shake, then backed toward the embers in the hearth. I swung my legs off the bed. I was still in my t-shirt and jeans, which was probably for the best. The fabric had likely kept my body from radiating its cold toward Ellie as we slept.
I needed either high-intensity exercise or to stoke the fire. I added two logs, doing my best to be gentle and quiet, then turned toward the kitchen and my hound’s quest to be let out, and for food.
He watched me from the arch. I followed him through into what I thought was just a kitchen.
The cottage had added a sunroom during the night. What had been the outside snow-covered area with the pump and the pond was now inside under a passive solar roof. A small waterfall aerated the water, and fish plimped at the surface as if they, too, were looking to be fed. A small horde of plants filled in around the pond. Some were tropical, like the big umbrella tree, and others were small harvestable herbs and leafy greens.
And there, in the middle of the big plants, was a pallet with a thick, bed-sized cushion like the one I sat on when sunning myself on my deck.
Marcus Aurelius trotted toward the doggy door carved into the wall next to the back door. “That explains your comings and goings,” I muttered. The cottage gave my dog his own door. It also built me a golden-glowing, so warm I felt the heat radiating from the pallet, sunning spot.
Rejuvenation magic swirled around it in soft, slow waves, the kind that recharged and balanced. It was often place-specific and dependent on the ambient energy of the nature around it. The elves had built a few similar places, most of which were inside the magic bubble surrounding The Great Hall.
I had never asked for such a spell to be created along my lakeshore. I wanted to learn to do the calming myself. I would rather it be centered in me than in someone else’s magic.
Yet one night inside Ellie’s concealment enchantments, and her fae-magical cottage built me this extraordinary gift.
Should I be afraid? I should be afraid. Fae gifts were often not… balanced.
But that was the way of the fae. Either you were all-in, or you were fighting not to drown under the all-in you wished to escape.
I glanced back at the bed, then back at the pallet. I had a choice here. One I wasn’t quite sure what to make of, because like all fae-created choices, there was no way it was about the obvious alternatives. This was not about going all-in with Ellie. It wasn’t about falling in love with a fae-born witch, or the family-blending work we had coming.
This wasn’t about the mundane parts of dating. This was about going all-in with Ellie’s magic.
Marcus Aurelius escaped through his doggy door. A puff of cold rolled along the floor, under the kitchen table, and to my feet.
“I live with elves,” I said to the cottage. “They’re the family that comes with me. This is their land. If I’m going to deal with your magic, you’re going to have to deal with them.” Was I offering the cottage a deal? I’m an idiot, I thought. Never make a deal with the fae.
“Frank?”
I looked back through the arch at the bed just as the mound of blankets exploded.
“Frank?” Ellie shrieked.
I’d been quiet. I’d let her sleep. She didn’t know where I was. “I’m in the kitchen!” I should have realized.
I’d panicked my girlfriend.
Chapter 4
Ellie burst from the bed. “Don’t do that!” she shouted.
I wasn’t sure her reaction was about me not waking her, but it was a pretty good bet. “You were sleeping. I didn’t want to
