Canto 3 – The Rooster Riders
When it was decided that there would be three teachers rather than one for the start of Poppy’s magical training, the debate between them was about what to do next.
“I will explain as we head to the stables,” said Flute rather imperiously. Poppy supposed his status as Prince, Prinz in the Zauberin language, gave him that authority to decide things without asking for anyone else’s opinion.
“Not Roosters again?” asked Tod with a pained expression.
“Poppy and I can fly,” added Glittershine.
“Rooster riding is an important skill for life in Tellosian Court. And besides, we need to ride out to Castle Cornucopia to fulfill my duties to the White Stag’s needed magical research. We need riding beasts that can fight back if we are attacked by Cyclopes and Wartoles between here and there. We will be crossing lands contested by the Stoor.”
This was distressing news to Poppy. She hated chickens. They had bird capabilities, but dinosaur temperments. And she remembered from her time enthralled by the Necromancer that the Stoor’s people were always ugly, cruel, and mean. Worse even than chickens.
Of course, the walk down to the stables would take them all the way to the root of the willow tree that had been shaped into Cair Tellos. There they would find two large Rhode Island Red Roosters, their wings strapped down with Fairy saddles to keep them on the ground and ready to ride.
“The biggun is Tannehauser en the little-un is Seltzerwater,” said the naked little stable boy.
“Those are their names?” asked Poppy.
“Yessum,” said the Sylph boy with a proud salute.
Steps made from Slow Ones’ cracker boxes and matchsticks were pulled up to each rooster.
Prinz Flute mounted Tannehauser with Glittershine behind him. Poppy mounted Seltzerwater with Tod climbing up behind her and taking the reins by reaching around her with both arms. To be comfortable in that position, she had to put away butterfly wings with a Wingaway spell. Most Butterfly Children didn’t have the option to put their wings magically away in such situations, but she had never noticed how much of an advantage the spell really was.
“So, we’re going to Cornucopia?” Poppy asked Tod.
“Apparently. King Mouse needs assistance with something that requires some of Prinz Flute’s Invention Magic.”
“Oh.” Of course, Poppy had no Fairy-worldly idea what the heck “Invention Magic” even meant.
Seltzerwater eyed Poppy with one creepy yellow eye before Tod turned its chicken head with the reins and spurred it to make it go.
Poppy wished she were riding naked, the way the Elder Gods made Fairies to be, but even with these clothes on, it felt good to lean back against Tod’s strong chest and feel his quickening heartbeat, knowing he was forbidden to assault her in any way. For the first time in her young life, she was feeling safe and unafraid. And she really was no longer thinking about hitting Tod anymore.
The roosters ran out of the castle gate at a very fast pace.
No Slow Ones were watching, although the massive homes of the gigantic human ones surrounded Cair Tellos. The Slow Ones’ town of Norwall had been built all around the willow tree quite by accident. And the fairies refused to move as their kingdom had been there first. But it mattered little. There were many glammers, disguising magics, that kept Slow Ones from seeing fairies as they really were. The roosters were even hidden from their big Slow-One eyes.
In minutes the roosters were through the wire field-fences and running through the farmers’ fields that made up the bulk of Tellosia’s above-ground territories.
“Did you give Poppy her new spellbook?” Flute shouted at Tod.
“Not yet, but I will do it now.”
Tod reached into his bag of holding and brought out a vellum-covered book made of highly magical pages. Normally it would be a carefully crafted thing made by the hand of the apprentice’s new master. This, however, was an ordinary and rather plain one bought at Oddbod’s Magic Emporium.
“Thank you!” Poppy hugged it to her chest as a treasure she would never part with.
“I’m sorry the Master didn’t make you one with his own hands. Master Pippen is too often thinking only of himself.”
Tod’s face was red at the embarrassing confession.
“Oh, no, Tod. I love it. I have never owned any such thing before. This is something I would never have imagined I could ever own only a year ago.”
“Well, the White Stag says you have many worthy spells to be written in it. Glittershine will help translate them by magic into the spellbook this very evening when we make camp. You really deserve something better.”
“How could one such as I, lucky to even be alive at this point, expect anything finer? I will thank Master Pippen over and over again for giving me a treasure such as this.”
That made Tod smile. He had a lovely smile.
Catch a Falling Star 
On the Problem of Always Being Wrong
I was a middle-school teacher for thirty-one years. That, of course, basically means I have to be wrong about everything. Principals have told me so. Parents have told me so. And students who have heard them say so take it completely to heart because, well… Who has the most authority to declare someone else completely wrong?
Yes, I have it on good authority… I am wrong about everything, always.
.
But it is very useful to realize that I am in good company. Galileo was wrong about the sun not going around the Earth. The College of Cardinals said it was so, and the Inquisition forced him to confess he was wrong. Giordano Bruno was so wrong about Copernicus being right that the Inquisition had to burn him at the stake. One would almost think that it is a bad thing to be wrong.
But it’s not.
Science, in fact requires its greatest practitioners to find out all the ways that they are wrong. How else do you create a theory of what is probably right?
It is fundamental to the scientific method to be as right as it is possible to prove. Of course, every scientific theory yields up a lot of anomalies that somehow defy the rules of the currently understood correct theory.
Isaac Newton got thumped on the brain-top by an apple and realized that the same thing that made the apple fall to Earth was making the Moon fall to the Earth, although the Moon is falling at the same rate as it is going around the Earth, so it never finishes the falling.
Later, Albert Einstein would realize that Newton’s gravity would even bend the light of distant stars around the edges of the Sun. And so, he found where Newton, genius that he was, was wrong. And so, the Theory of Relativity was born.
Guess what. Einstein was wrong too.
So, ultimately, it is okay for me to be wrong about things. It is necessary to be wrong before you can find out what is right. So, when I say something stupid like the following…
Comedy is good for you.
You should be naked more.
Fairies are only real if you believe in them.
You must take a leap of faith and live in the world like a Navajo, in tune with the natural world and comfortable with other people living in your world too. Moment by moment in the present moment.
…and eventually, I may stumble upon what is right and true. Or get burned at the stake like Bruno. That happens too.
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