The Ballad of Adler Young, Canto 2.5

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>Adler: "Hudalaleigh" , "bedad"? Saint Reynard sounds a lot like Estvan.
>Adler: Ask if Rebecca received any visitors while she was recovering.
>Rebecca: You have no idea.
>Vernier: Answer truthfully whether there was or wasn't.

"Remarkable," I murmured vaguely as thoughts raced through my mind. Rebecca claimed to have been visited by Saint Reynard and Fuma! Even in a dream, this was incredible! I had never heard of Lady Fuma visiting a lowfolk! This was unprecedented! If it was genuine, what could it mean? Could it have been due to my involvement? Was Rebecca visited because she was my pupil? Or ... come to think of it, her description of Reynard sounded a lot like a certain mischievous old fox I knew.

"Did you have any visitors while you were recovering from your attack?" I demanded.

"I have no idea," Rebecca shrugged. "I thought Reynard and Fuma were there, but I was delirious."

"Burnside or I or some of your insects were with her at all times," Vernier explained. "Nobody visited. Nobody could have come into the room without being seen by one of us."

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"Huh," I said, thoughtfully. That seemed to rule out a prank by Estvan (though why he would do something like this was almost as inexplicable as Fuma visiting a lowfolk femme.) Rebecca had proven to be very open to elfly things. She was an incredibly apt pupil who had read (and memorized?) the Foxspell in what might be a record time. Perhaps she...? No, that was simply impossible. The odds against it were staggering! What elf in their right mind would leave their child in the care of those horrible rabbits? There's no way Rebecca could be ... a changeling!

>Adler: Ask Rebecca her age and whether she's had any strange happenings or encounters in her life.

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"Exactly how old are you?" I demanded.

"I turned eighteen during your absence, My Lord," she stated, with a Meaningful Look. So she knew Wiles too! My suspicions deepened.

"And how do you know you are that old?" I pressed.

"Uh, because my birthday went past, and it was the eighteenth one."

"Are you sure of that? Do you remember all eighteen of them? How do you know what day you were born? Do you remember that too?"

"Well, no, but my parents told me that was my birthday, and we've celebrated it every year for as long as I can remember, and the number has gone up by one every year ever since I could count and keep track of it myself, which I guess was when I was five."

"How do you know they are your parents? Are you sure they actually begat you?"

"Funny you should mention that," Rebecca chuckled. "They told me they found me under a cabbage leaf, but that's just the kind of story adults tell to kids in Bunkirk. They want to keep it a secret, but you can't hide the truth from a witch! I know how babies are really made."

"A cabbage leaf, eh?" I mused. Why, this practically confirmed it! "Do strange things happen to you often? Do strange people turn up in your life?"

"You mean, like, witches and elves?" she asked sardonically. "All the time."

This line of questioning wasn't leading anywhere! I began to realize, with increasing dismay, that it was actually very hard to tell if someone was an elf or not! There was only one more thing to try...

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I focused my Elfmind on Rebecca and transmitted to her the message: If you can hear me, say the word "rutabaga."

"By the Bunny!" I could hear her thinking. "When he stares at me so intently, it sets my heart all a-flutter, and my loins all a-quiver!"

"Rutabaga," Burnside mumbled from where she lay, still semiconscious, on the ground.

The test was inconclusive, but I decided it was most likely that Rebecca was not a changeling.

>Adler: The book going missing is troubling. It could have faded into nothing since you conjured it to nothing. If that's the case, it's a little disappointing that your conjured items have a time limit. You'll need to experiment to find out. If Ash took it, that might just be a disaster waiting to happen.

"It troubles me that the book has gone missing," I sighed. If Ash took it, that could mean trouble. Or did it fade away to nothing, as Rebecca supposed? Did that mean that the things I conjured from nothing had a limited life span? That was disappointing, but then again, I realized I didn't know exactly what kind of magick this was. Elf gold turned back into sticks and rocks after a while, because it was a low-effort glamer meant only to fool lowfolk for a short time. Transmogrification required much more concentration but produced lasting effects - for example, Angela Weakflit's new form, which she had retained for longer than I could calculate offhand.

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"Where's the chair and all the stuff I conjured up for Vernier?" I asked, as I surveyed the lawn inside the stone circle. "Did you take them?"

"No, sir," Vernier declared. "Those things were all gone when I came back."

The hair cult's wash basin was still there, but that had been made from a stone I apported from the forest. Apports were durable, of course, because they were real objects that had been magickally moved from one place to another. Only the things I had conjured were gone. Had they been illusions? They couldn't have been. The chair was solid. The chocolate was edible. The copy of the Foxspell had been complete. Conjuring solid objects from thin air should be impossible, yet I had done it. How?