The German woodland rushed by to either side of me as I loped down the half-overgrown roads. Every now then, I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye, lurking in the shadows under the trees. When I turned my head towards the apparition there would be nothing there. Similarly, I would sometimes catch the hint of movement between the tree trucks as if something was keeping pace with me in my flight, but it was gone whenever I looked at it directly.

  I put my head down and ran faster.

  When I first joined the CIA, about two years after the Surge, they sent me to get trained as an analyst. That was my first matriculation at Central Intelligence Agency University. That really is its name. You would think that the oh-so-clandestine CIA would have called their principal education facility something a little less… on the nose; but you would be wrong. I was convinced that it had to be a false front while the real CIA training facility was somewhere else, but it wasn’t.

  Sometimes I’m a little shocked that the Old Gods didn’t steamroll us like everyone else.

  Unfortunately, CIA University wasn’t nearly as awesome as it at first sounded. It wasn’t in a cool, underground bunker or on an innocent looking horse farm. Instead, it took up a couple of floors of dull office building in Chantilly, Virginia. They also don’t teach anyone badass martial arts, or how to bungie jump off of a dam or even how to climb a skyscraper with suction cups.

  They teach stuff that is more useful and more tedious. When done right, intelligence work should be really boring, even for the guys on the ground. The whole reason I was in this situation was because everything had gone wrong. When things go wrong, that is when things get exciting (and exciting is just another word for dangerous.)

  The I trained to be an analyst for my first matriculation at ole CIAU (I always thought our mascot should be the Fighting Spooks but sadly there were no sports teams). Intelligence work for an analyst is about studying satellite pictures until your eyes bleed. Listening to endless hours of meaningless conversations until you get that one little nugget of information that you need. Sifting through banks of metadata… for some reason… I never took those classes. It rarely involves dramatically running away from an explosion. The movies are mostly wrong and the classes at CIA University reflected that.

  Even when I went back a second time to learn how to be a field agent, the classes were only slightly more interesting. Those classes focused on gathering intel in an urban setting (if an intelligence resource was in the mountains or jungle somewhere the Special Forces were usually sent instead of spies). You could sum up such work as blending in and keeping your eyes open. Your average small-town gossip could usually make an excellent spy, provided you kept her from blabbing her take to the world.

  We did learn some cool stuff; cultivating sources, losing a tail, making a dead drop but no gun play. We trained to be spies, not assassins. It was also during those classes that we left the boring, bureaucratic beige walls of the Dulles Discovery Building (yes, the building is actually named Dull) and actually do some practical work in simulated field conditions… which meant urban field conditions. But a strip mall in Baltimore is little better than an office building in Virginia.

  All of which meant that the class on Escape and Evasion in a Rural Setting was a major exception to our normal routine. The CIA recognized that just maybe one of their people might have to flee into or through the wilderness to evade capture.

  So, they flew me and half dozen others out to Camp Perry so we could run through the swamp for a few weeks. Our instructors on that course were Air Force personnel who were used to running pilots through the mud but were happy to torment some wannabe spies for a while instead.

  Those weeks were pure misery interspersed with occasional instruction that was actually useful and a lot of what I learned contradicted itself. The issue, as always, was the Resurgence. In addition to altering the laws of reality, physics and religion it had altered the rules of tradecraft. Activities that had been considered good practice in the old world became virtual death in the new one. It used to be that the best thing for a pilot, or spy, lost in the wilderness to do was to stay in the forests and scrub to avoid being seen. That was less advisable when those forests could be the home of literal monsters.

  Other pieces of instruction and advice in the course were similarly dated to the point of suicide. They had tried to update the course to account for the post Surge world, but it was obvious that the more subtle implications of the Resurgence had yet to fully work their way through the government bureaucracy.

  I used what I could of that imperfect training.

  The navigation courses helped me to keep my bearings by using the sun and few standing German road signs to keep myself moving west towards the frontier. I also stopped a few times to rest and ask Kris for information on the lay of the land ahead of me. She wasn’t quite as good as having a smartphone loaded with Google maps, but she was better than nothing. Resting when able was also something my instructors had recommended. They said it was best to preserve your strength for when you needed it. They never mentioned what you did when you had not strength left.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Though I was exhausted, the thought of hounds leading a group of elves (or a workshop as I preferred to think of such a grouping) along my trail kept me from resting for too long, as did those shadows keeping pace with me under the trees.

  A few times, I saw towns and villages that looked like they had not quite been reconquered by the forest. I kept a wide berth around those, skirting at the edges of their fields and not stopping anywhere nearby. Most people in these parts were far more likely to rat me out to the Wotanvolk than not. Evan with those diversions, I neared the proximate frontier with Frau Wyrd just as the sun moved within a handbreadth of the western horizon.

  My shoulders slumped and my stride had become an uneven thing as my feet refused to fully lift themselves off the ground. Even if nightfall hadn’t been approaching, I was spent. I needed a place to rest my head for the night before trying to cross the boundary from one god’s dominion to another. I had covered nearly twenty miles that day and hunger gnawed at my backbone despite the cookies I had found.

  Borders were always tricky, and I didn’t want to attempt a crossing with an exhausted body, addled brain and empty stomach. Besides, I had not detected the merest sign of pursuit all day and figured that I had shaken the Wotanvolk at the dwarves’ hideout. I let myself slow down for the first time that morning and when I came upon an abandoned cottage I stopped for the night.

  The cottage only half stood, at some point a tree had fallen on it and collapsed most its front but the kitchen and a back bedroom were ok. I even found a few jars of Rotkohl, red cabbage, that hadn’t been cleaned out by previous looters and after tasting it I could understand why. As nasty as it was it was at least something to ease the pains in my stomach and I ate two of the three jars right away and saved the other for breakfast. As terrible as the stuff tasted I was pretty glad that I didn’t have to share it with Kris; a single spoonful was more than enough to slake her shrunken apatite. I placed her on the kitchen table so that it was easier for me to put my head close enough to her to hear her tiny voice.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked as she munched her cabbage several inches from my nose.

  “Like somebody put me in a refrigerator and pushed me from the top of the Matterhorn,” she replied, she wasn’t so small that I couldn’t hear the sourness in her voice.

  “Sorry, I really don’t see another way that we can do this.”

  “Neither do I,” she said after a few moments. “That doesn’t make it more comfortable for me.”

  “I could probably find some more cloth in here somewhere. We can make it a little more comfortable.”

  “That would be good. The cloth in there now smells like burned meat and smoke. Where did you say that you had found it again?”

  “Nowhere special. Is there anything else I can get you?”

  “Yes, a wizard who can make me large again.”

  “If you’re lucky we can find one who can make you only ninety five percent of what you were and then we can call this whole incident a weight loss program.”

  “Please do not joke about this.” Kris wasn’t so small that I could not hear the tears in her voice or the anguish upon her face. “Thomas… what if I cannot be fixed? What if nobody can undo this Fey magic and I am trapped this way?”

  I didn’t have a good answer for her at first. The thought had occurred to me but I had been too busy running and hiding to dwell much on it. Kris had been trapped in a sardine can all day and probably had nothing else to do but ponder her state and despair. She was right, a lot of the people who got shrunk the way she had stayed that way. I heard that back in the States that such unfortunates had formed their own small communities but they had little to do with the larger world… no puns intended.

  “Eulenspiegel wants something from me,” I said after a moment. “He made you into another bargaining chip. When I give him what he wants he will change you back.” I silently added an ‘I hope’ to the end of my sentence, Kris did not need to hear my doubts just then.

  “You still do not know what the Fey wants. What if he asks for something that you cannot give?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. But I don’t think I will have much a choice in the end.” I gestured at the half-collapsed building around us. “Even if you were not impersonating Thumbelina our situation keeps getting worse. Owing a favor is better than dying. Oh, I will try to bargain as hard as I can but if this is the way Eulenspiegel bargains,” I gestured to her. “Then eventually I will be forced to give in.” I forced a smile, “But maybe things will get better once we leave Big W’s territory. Maybe the elves won’t follow us across the border and the Frau…you know…” we were too close to Frau Wyrd’s domain for me to be comfortable saying her name out loud, “…will leave us alone? We don’t plan on bothering her and she might just know that.”

  “I do not know, there is this Destiny business with Eulenspiegel,” she shivered uncomfortably. “Somehow you have drawn the attention of two different Ancient Ones. Is it too much to expect that a third might be interested in you as well?”

  “Probably,” I conceded with a grimace. “Though right now I will accept getting across the border in one piece. Let’s get some sleep. Once the sun goes down its going to be dark as hell in here. Do you need me to get you a napkin to sleep under or something?” There was still enough light filtering through the dust shrouded windowpanes for me to see her flip me the bird. “I’ll put it in the sardine tin and you can sleep in there tonight. I want to know where you are so I don’t step on you accidentally.” She still looked furious but didn’t argue.

  For myself I found some towels that looked clean enough for me to arrange them in a little nest on the floor by the kitchen table (the mattress in the bedroom had mushrooms growing on it). It wasn’t comfortable but it was still mere minutes before I drifted off to sleep. It was a black and dreamless sleep, like drowning a lake of oil.

  It ended once again with the baying of hounds and the smell of fire. The Wotanvolk had followed me after all.