“You eat a variety, so your hair and eyes don’t pick up on any certain color; they just stay light.” He smirked. “Try eating nothing but strawberries for a week—that’ll give your mother a shock.”

“Would I turn red?” Laurel asked in horror.

“Not all of you,” Tamani said. “Just your eyes and the roots of your hair. Like mine. Back home it’s a fashion thing. Blue, pink, purple. It’s fun.”

“That’s so weird.”

“Why? Don’t half the humans’ stories say we have green skin? That’s a lot weirder.”

“Maybe.” Laurel remembered something from the last time she’d met Tamani.

“You said there’s no faerie dust, right?”

Tamani inclined his chin somewhat, apparently in agreement, but his face was unreadable.

“Last time I was here, you grabbed my wrist and later there was this sparkly powder on it. What was that, if not faerie dust?”

Now Tamani grimaced. “Sorry about that; I should have been more careful.”

“Why, was it dangerous?”

Tamani laughed. “Hardly. It was just pollen.”

“Pollen?”

“Yeah, you know.” He studied his hands as if they had suddenly become very interesting. “For…pollinating.”

“Pollinating?” Laurel started to laugh, but Tamani didn’t look like he was telling a joke.

“Why do you think you grew a flower? It’s not just for looks. Although yours was very attractive.”

“Oh.” Laurel was quiet for a few moments. “Pollinating is how flowers reproduce.”

“It’s how we reproduce, too.”

“So you could have…pollinated me?”

“I would never do that, Laurel.” His face was deadly serious.

“But you could have?” Laurel pressed.

Tamani spoke slowly, choosing his words with great care. “Technically, yes.”

“Then what? I would have a baby?”

“A seedling, yes.”

“Would it grow on my back?”

“No, no. Faeries grow in flowers. That’s one thing the human stories generally get right. The…female…is pollinated by a male and when her petals fall off she’s left with a seed. She plants it and when the flower blooms, you have a seedling.”

“How do you…we…you know, faeries pollinate?”

“The male produces pollen on his hands and when two faeries decide to pollinate, the male reaches into the female’s blossom and lets the pollen mix.

It’s a somewhat delicate process.”

“Doesn’t sound very romantic.”

“There’s nothing romantic about it at all,” Tamani replied, a confident smile spreading across his face. “That’s what sex is for.”

“You still…?” She let the question hang.

“Sure.”

“But faeries don’t get pregnant?”

“Never.” Tamani winked. “Pollination is for reproduction—sex is just for fun.”

“Can I see the pollen?” Laurel asked, holding her hands out for his.

Tamani pulled his hands back instinctively. “I don’t have any right now—you’re not in bloom anymore. We only produce pollen when we’re around a female who’s in bloom. That’s why I forgot and left some on your wrist. I haven’t been around a female with a blossom in a long time.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a sentry. There are always other sentries, but the ones here are all male.

And I don’t go home too often.”

“Sounds lonely.”

“Sometimes.” He looked at her again and something changed about his eyes.

His guard was down and she saw deep, mournful sadness. It almost hurt to keep looking, but she couldn’t turn away.

Then as quickly as it had come, it was gone—replaced with a careless grin. “It was more fun when you were here. You got me into big trouble, by the way.”

“What did I do?”

“You disappeared.” Tamani laughed and shook his head. “Boy, we’re glad you came back. When you—”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“You didn’t think I was the only faerie here, did you?”

Laurel played with a strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail. “Kind of, yeah.”

“You won’t see us unless we let you.”

Despite what Tamani had just said, Laurel glanced around at the trees. “How many?” she asked, wondering if she was surrounded by legions of unseen fae.

“Depends. Shar and I are almost always here. Ten or fifteen others usually rotate through for six months or a year at a time.”

“How long have you been here?”

He looked at her for several silent seconds with an unreadable expression. “a long time,” he finally said.

“Why are you here?”

He smiled. “To watch you. Well, till your disappearing act.”

“You were here to watch me? Why?”

“To help protect you. Make sure no one found out what you are.”

Laurel remembered something from her research. “Am I a…a changeling?”

Tamani hesitated for a second. “In the loosest sense of the word, yes. Except that we didn’t steal someone and replace them with you. I prefer to think of you as a scion.”