“Scattered,” a fairy said, and I looked at Sidereal standing at the edge of the bubble. “When parents die, the young scatter. They die, or find mates and probably die. None return.”

“Jenks isn’t dead,” I said quickly, feeling the hurt to the bone, and he grinned to show me his sharp teeth. Stifling a shudder, I looked back to the stump. Jenks’s kids were going to leave? “Why leave?” I asked. “The garden isn’t going anywhere.”

Sidereal shrugged, his wicked grin turning to a grimace of pain when the skin on his back pulled. “It prevents inbreeding. They’re only animals. We drift on the currents far above, listening for funeral songs like wolves listen for the ailing elk. The mourning pixies abandon their garden, and new ones won’t move in until all evidence of habitation is gone. That’s what we do. Wipe the slate clean. And they call us animals.”

I was sure they scattered from heartache, not to prevent inbreeding, but I said nothing.

“There isn’t even a fight unless another fairy clan claims it, too.” Sidereal reached over his shoulder with disjointed arms to fix his clothing, rubbing the stumps of his wings. “That the pixy told his eldest to maintain the garden was unusual. Disgusting, when you think about it.”

“It’s not disgusting,” I said, insulted. “Jenks told Jax to maintain the garden because he thinks I need pixy backup.” But Jax was gone again, abandoning his father’s dreams to follow his own. It was hard to find fault with him, though.

Sidereal was silent for a moment. “Your magic can make you as small as this?” he said doubtfully, looking down at his white, robelike clothes.

It hurt to talk about Jenks, but I said, “Yes. I made Jenks big once.”

The fairy made a dry hiss I was starting to identify as disbelief. “He wouldn’t be able to fly that size. The weight would be too much.”

“He didn’t have wings.” I looked at the porch, then back to Jenks’s stump. “He didn’t need them when he was that big.” I was struck by a sudden thought, and my eyes flicked to Sidereal. I could make them big, then small again to give them their wings back.

Then what? I thought. Pat them on the head and tell them to be good? If I gave them their wings back, they’d have a renewed life as well, with no promise that they wouldn’t turn around and murder me in my sleep. They had already tried to kill me with that dart. Ivy, too. No, I wasn’t going to make them big even for a second.