I'm on a quest to recover a magic necklace stolen by a Queen of Faerie. Not the Queen--they have more than one. No wonder the Fairy Queen seemed so fickle and inconsistent in fairytales. Different people!

I wonder if the necklace is exactly stolen, or if it's just one of those political things. Maybe this Queen feels she was robbed and now she's recovered a national treasure. You never know with magic talismans--I better keep an open mind.

But the Queen doesn't! She captures me, calls me a thief, and locks me with the other necklace hunters in a basement with steam pipes and electrical conduits all over. Still, we're let out a lot for exercise and it's not a bad prison except for all the machinery; we even get separate rooms, fairly spacious.

The Queen of Faerie is busy trying to run an alternative radio station. She's nocturnal, so she can cover the late shift herself without stress. She looks a bit peculiar though: bright yellow with purple bits? Or was that her clothes? I'm told it's not her natural color-scheme, which is fairly human; it's the influence of the magic necklace. Hmm, maybe she really did steal it; magic indigestion isn't a good sign of a necklace that's come home to mama...

The Queen gets some free time at last and invites me to dinner. My first date in forever! She wants to seduce me, and she just might succeed; she's cute with that necklace off. She cooks at home. Mmm, real elf cooking. I peek in the big pot to see what the main course is.

She's boiling an extension cord. It coils in the bubbling pot like a rattlesnake ready to strike me with indigestion. Ugh. As a former anorexic, I'm ready to cut others a lot of slack around weird low-calorie diets, but this goes too far... Pick politely at the salad, wondering what's in it, and don't touch the main course.

The Queen's depressed. I wonder if that's the necklace or her job. She works in Silicon Valley; the commute and the job are both hard. She's a bit subdued by her sadness, but basically... for a kidnapper, she's quite attractive! So I question her, strongly, decisively, trying to help by clarifying the problems.

After dinner, she lies on a sofa and I cuddle with her. We don't go too far but she rubs up against me in pleasure--the attraction is clearly mutual. I feel happy. Despite the awful meal, I had a good time.

Later, back in the dungeon, I tell my friends "She's not the monster I expected. I think the magic necklace is affecting her mood, not just her color."

They have their doubts. One says "She's off-color, nocturnal, with a bizarre diet... all symptoms of a vampire!"

Another says "She's still locking us up, while amusing herself with you!"

I have to admit they could be right.

Or wrong. Is the necklace making her weird... or is it keeping her halfway sane? Do I like her, and hate the necklace's influence... or the other way round?

What do you do with profoundly mixed signals?

NOTES

• Stolen necklace, magic mixed with sleaziness:
  1. In the French film Furbelows, a fashion designer arrogantly told his date that her necklace clashed with her outfit. She takes it off and he's right--suddenly, magically, she's more elegant. He has the eye! But he's a sleazy human being.
  2. 2: Semley's Necklace, by Ursula Le Guin. A woman from a medieval culture seeks a family treasure that's in an alien museum. She rides a starship, wins the necklace, but comes home to find years have passed and her family's dead. To her, the Lorenz-Fitgerald Contraction means the fairies played tricks with time...
• Fairy Queen with a Silicon Valley job: Last week over sushi, my friend Dawn told me of her stressful new Silicon Valley job. Despite it, she was glowing and sexy, though I hid how charmed I was, as she's married and deep in love.
• Fairy Queen's nocturnality and odd coloring: Owl in Love, by Patrice Kindl, about a nocturnal kid who has gray skin, blackish blood, big scary yellow eyes, and eats live mice. She's no monster--just a were-owl with a crush on her science teacher.
• So the Queen is... probably sex, dating and romance. And my fears around that.
• Friends say the Queen's evil... but if her oddities do refer to Owl in Love, the dream suggests she's (I'm?) not bad, just owlish--solitary by nature and unpracticed at friendship or love. But able to learn.
• Though I'm her prisoner, I question her boldly, trying to help: my friend Mark's been reading Thomas McKnight's book "Love Tactics", which emphasizes "Everyone wants a strong partner."
• Electric cord as a snake: The cover of Why Things Bite Back, a book on failure analysis, has a photo of an extension cord coiled like a snake, head rising to strike.
• Toxic dinner: the ways dating can mess me up--from my food allergies, or just from the stress.
• Lie on cot or sofa: memories of my ex-girlfriend Raven. I got very ill from stress in that relationship
• ACTIONS: I fear dating will make me sick, but I'm willing to give it a chance. However, I MUST be sensible about food. Don't eat to be polite! I can't thrive on a human diet. They eat things that... bite back.

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