Scenes from a Preternatural Presidency -- 1. I Do Not Need Enemies to Know Who I Am ... Much (A)

[bracketyjack]

Author’s Note
As a collective sequel to my very AU Mercyverse novels Earth Shaken & Mercy for President these stories will make no sense whatever without them. And be warned, Patricia Briggs is way out-of-sight in the rear-view mirror by now ; but having put Mercy, a.k.a. She Doesn’t Only Fix Cars, She Drops People Right In It, into the White House, as well as Skuffles, Adam, and Jesse & friends, any number of things they might variously enjoy doing did keep suggesting themselves, and amusing me, while the Real World kept right on going to hell in a handbasket, so here we are.
While I’m mostly happily occupying Cloud Cuckoo Land, by way of preferable alternative, details usually have at least some foothold in US reality, though I play fast & loose where it suits me, and more realistic bureaucracy would be a sorry narrative drag. But, please note, I’d reached the point where this one begins before the Pandemic, and as I have no desire whatever to write a Pandemic novel I have simply ignored it, filing under Didn’t Happen Here. Ditto Ukraine, which forestalled any Russian presidential adventures, and I would not wish to slight in urban fantasy. A planned visit to China also came to seem dubious, Xi Jinping not being so very like Tigger after all. In other respects, though, the world is more or less up to date.
I owe special thanks to AO3 user hishn_greywalker, who kindly kept me up to date on the wonderful Blackfeet efforts with plains bison near Glacier National Park.
B’jack, December 2023
1. I Do Not Need Enemies to Know Who I Am … Much
BEING President of the US is a ridiculously conflicted position. On one hand you’re meant to be the most insanely powerful person on earth, and it’s true there is always someone near you carrying nuclear codes, just in case you need to destroy all life on the planet. In the White House you are also surrounded by a no-fly zone strictly enforced with everything up to F-16s, military fingers hovering 24/7 over launch buttons. On the other, there are more rules and regs and laws and entrenched routine than anyone can tally, and I spent a lot of time during my first months in office being told that whatever I’d asked about was another thing presidents were Really Not Supposed To Do.

Some of it was sensible enough. Adam was First Gentleman, and had plenty of security clearances of his own, but when his contracts included federal or state business it was Not A Good Idea for me even to know what he was doing, which was fine by me, my desk not exactly being empty. Nor did I have a problem taking a furlough from Clean Up the Basin!, and if more people than the IRS rolled eyes about the continuing sale in huge numbers of tees, sweats, hoodies and other merchandise bearing images of cloaked or furry me and Skuffles doing whatever, they still weren’t federal business and I didn’t care what accountants did so long as production was sustainably green, all tithes paid, and the rest of the money arrived when and where it should - though I indulged in some snark about a tax return that ran to more than a thousand pages before the IRS agreed it was complete, and decreed it be released only digitally, to spare the trees. I didn’t really need the $400,000 salary - and that was an absurdity I couldn’t have imagined before Medicine Wolf - but given the hours involved saw no reason to refuse it, and amused myself and many people by paying the tax due to the Commissioner of the IRS personally, in cash fresh from the mint. And though I drew the line at seeing a veterinarian, I agreed to regular medical checks on four legs as well as two, though no-one could tell me what they thought my coyote could come down with, seeing me change tended to freak the doctors, and their earnest advice to avoid raw meat even if I’d just caught it was a waste of breath.

Other things were trickier. There was concern in more than one quarter about what I might be sharing with preternaturals, especially Skuffles, the Marrok, and Gwyn ap Lugh, but some straight talking with State as well as the most senior intelligence and military people eased us through. Skuffles wasme, as she insisted, and everyone who’d voted knew about her, so however no-one was used to presidents having a maxi-me they not only had to lump it, they had to issue her official ID ; not that denying her access to anywhere she wanted to go was possible anyway, as she pointed out when they tried arguing she wasn’t of age. With another VP it might have been a problem, but Frank had really thrown himself into his education brief, pushing Others 101 and the Magical Entente nationwide, and locally liaising with Georgetown U. and Jesse about the shape Others 201 would take once she was enrolled, so he was happy to have another two pairs of paws on the job, and delighted by Skuffles anyway. And she was very useful. Being a sensible magical coyote, she rarely attended the duller meetings I had to endure, but did listen to my daily brief, occasionally expressing a pithy opinion, and found it satisfying to goose Beltway people on my behalf when a two-legged command didn’t seem to have cut it.

It first came up because I’d asked my Secretary of Transportation for a proper national review of roadkill - what did they have on it, and what could we do to reduce numbers ? - and when I realised nearly a month later that I’d had no reply I asked him again and he said he’d push someone. A fortnight after that, amid continuing silence and irritated about yet another needlessly bloody mess in the Middle East, I extracted the name of the pushee and deputised an amused Skuffles, who promptly glamoured the presidential seal onto the dome of every ruff-skull, collected some bemused Secret Service bodyguards, and set them a brisk pace across the National Mall and down to New Jersey Avenue SE. The delay, she told me when she got back, was because Transportation had had no roadkill policy of any kind nor any collated stats to report, so the pushee had done nothing but twiddle thumbs and wonder what to say, but having a large magical coyote with presidential powers arrive on his desk and explain that they did now have a policy, namely reducing it, of which he was in charge, any possible promotion depending on how well he did, induced much more satisfactory despatch, with inception of an animal overpass and road-fencing programme I gave serious budget and Medicine Wolf and Ol’ Manitou River gave serious time. The example generated consternation and schadenfreude, which I didn’t mind at all ; contacted for comment by the media, the ex-Man said he only wished he’d had a maxi-me too, and had they noticed Co-President Skuffles had riffed on the Grateful Dead’s Steal Your Face skull in upgrading her ruff ?

Bran and ap Lugh were more arguable issues. Both were de facto members of my kitchen cabinet and had legitimate concerns with federal policy, but (as sharper intelligence people soon realised) neither was remotely interested in having any more secrets to keep unless there was compelling reason, and information was flowing both ways. There were limits, but with wolf justice mostly out of the closet and properly tempered, and me in the White House, Bran was good with wider senior federal awareness of ordinary problems - leadership challenges, some of the surlier loners, newbies doing their best to keep average wolf lifespan down - while ap Lugh, delighted by my election and the progress of the constitutional amendment mandating new oaths of office to support the Medicine Wolf Accords, did not mind a similar awareness of issues causing fae or half-fae concern. He was also content for senior people to know something of what Underhill, very fortunately for humans, kept firmly behind wards of cold iron and strong magic. The big one was child-stealers and -eaters, confined by policy decision when the Fae first came out, and sensibly not resorted to during the post-Boston standoff, but there were other horrors, raveners and blighters, succubi and incubi, that made vamp mind-bending look very tame. Along the way I learned the Wild Hunt were not confined, just opting out of the technoworld, and filed that one away to think about.

National Security, as many agencies had belatedly realised, also meant tracking preternatural as well as human threats, which was a lot easier with preternatural resources and vampires outed, and if the Farouts could do a bunch of that they still had to be integrated into the intelligence fold. And (I flatly insisted) it also meant tracking anti-preternatural bias and bigotry within federal and state government. The John Lauren Society was still reeling from their exposure in the Watchdog Times, with the resignations that followed, the Harris lawsuit, my election, and Heuter’s execution, but plenty of members remained in post on the government dollar. That was their right, but expressing their bigotry in federal decisions was not, and despite many dubious looks I insisted that the work each and every one did be audited to check it wasn’t, and you bet they could all know it.

Well and good, but it was small things that rankled. As I was looking over their shoulders the White House motor pool had done as ordered and sprayed the armoured stretch limos everyone called Beasts marsh-sedge green, adding the hood ornaments, but the number of Beltway people way below my pay grade who tried to find a rule that Beasts had to be black and shouldn’t be decorated with very tasteful silver coyotes was ridiculous. Marsh-sedge green was, apparently, insufficiently dignified, or executive, or something, and in any case insufficiently black, while if it had to be an animal on the hood it should be an eagle, or cougar, or something else carnivorously noble. After a while I commissioned a poll, and as more than two-thirds of the public thought marsh-sedge green Beasts with coyotes on was fine by them, and the rest just said ‘Huh ?’, I gave up listening to objectors, which didn’t shut them up. I also gave short shrift to some PR and wardrobe instructions-posing-as-advice I received, and my jeans and tees stayed untouched, even making public appearances - I am the only person under 40 ever to hold my office - but the fashionistas were partly assuaged by a couple of very happy First People I brought in to deal with craft dresses, skirts, blouses, boleros, and leathers I had every intention of parading.

And all that was nothing to refurbishing the public rooms on the first floor of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Thanks to an Executive Order by President Kennedy there is - was - something called the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, chaired ex officio by the Director of the NPS, because they manage the house and grounds as a national park. Sorta. And the Director - not career NPS but an administrator appointed a while back when they got into a financial hole - was very unhappy with me well before I was elected, because strands of the Medicine Wolf Accords interfered with his SOP, and even unhappier after, because forcing renewed bison migration and liaising with the new Department of the Mississippi Basin about recruiting Buffalo Rangers did nasty things to his workload, despite a proper budget for the expansion. Remembering the poor NPS guys trisected in Sacajawea SP I had some sympathy, but not much, and went right on insisting that the two or three years we’d need to wait while herds built up with the help of Manannán’s Bane ensuring healthy twins had to be used well. My patience was wearing distinctly thin, which was not going to be good news for him, when the portrait problem came up and he tried to take a bureaucratic revenge. Or perhaps it was just bigotry masked as conservation.

Either way, thanks to another, much sillier predecessor in office, federal money cannot be used for official portraits, though such a portrait is mandated. As it happened, I knew exactly what and who I wanted, and was happy to pay for it ; but when the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma found out I’d commissioned Marcus Amerman to do me and Skuffles in beadwork, which was about five seconds after the call ended, they pre-empted me - sensibly accepting flatteringly plentiful donations from other tribes. It roused interest, not only among First People, and as I had my own reasons for wanting to get on with it I cheerfully cleared a morning of duller meetings, donned cloak, Carnwennan, and Excalibur, with my paramount warbonnet, and bunked off to Idaho to collect him, Skuffles bouncing anticipation beside me.

My special Secret Service squad were all preternaturals, welcome Underhill, and I’d cleared bringing Amerman through with Gwyn ap Lugh and Underhill, who both liked his work, but once I’d introduced him to Skuffles, Manannán’s Bane, Carnwennan, and Excalibur, let him stroke the warbonnet, and given the general Underhill dos and don’ts talk, I asked for his oath not to speak of anything he might see there. He looked quizzical, but when we emerged into the Garden of Manannán’s Death and he saw the Statue of Surprising Mercy his face was a picture. I named him to Underhill, a chime rang in greeting, and he carefully spoke his gratitude without ever taking his eyes from the statue.

“That is …”

“I know, Mr Amerman. It’s called the Statue of Surprising Mercy, which is a good joke, but I think of it as giant nude ice me, and you will see why I do not want it spoken of Overhill and will not allow it to be photographed. It is exactly accurate, saving the fig-leaf, stands just where Manannán and I did when I killed him, and was the second work in the triad, the first being the Fountain of Uphill Justice and the last the Untenanted Duckpond of Valorous Impossibility.” He gave me a long look, and I grinned. “I’d tell you the tale but it’d only give you a headache.”

“I believe the names are enough to be going on with, Ms President.”

“Sensible man. Now, I truly honour Underhill’s honour, but giant nude ice me is also exactly what I do not want from you. Heroic is trickier, I know, but makes me squirm, so I’d rather you went for wise warrior.”

I don’t mind heroic in the least.

“So noted, Skuffles. Surprise. You can also give maxi-me the teeth, Mr Amerman, but I get the inclusivity. Thoroughly First Person, yes, but everyone’s president.”

“Un huh. That I get, Ms President.” He was still staring at the statue. “You said ice ? It’s got a sheen …”

“Yup.”

“Can I touch it ?”

My eyebrows lifted. “Probably not a good idea, but you can peer at an arm, if you must.”

He was doing that, angling his head, when Underhill skipped in to the Garden and gave me a look.

“Greetings, Mercedes Elf-friend. Nice feathers. I did not expect you to linger today.”

“Greetings back, Underhill. Aren’t they ? And me either, but artists. What can a president do ?”

She grinned. “Any number of things, I would imagine. But I will be glad to hear a human artist’s opinion of my work. You have not brought one here before.”

“No reason to. What do any fae artists say ?”

“Very little, and all of it extremely polite.”

That made sense, and our voices had drawn wide-eyed attention from Amerman, so I made introductions.

“Underhill, this is Marcus Amerman, a Choctaw artist doing an official beadwork portrait of Co-Presidents She Doesn’t Only Fix Cars and Skuffles. Mr Amerman, meet Underhill, in whom we stand.”

He blinked but bowed, and Underhill didn’t have to ask for his responses.

“You sculpted this, Underhill, Ma’am ?”

“In my fashion, Marcus Amerman, using magic, not tools.”

“Sculpture’s not my medium, but it’s amazing. If I’m using translucent beads I can get some refraction sheen, but with the coloured ice there’s a more luminous gloss, and the way you’ve done the muscles beneath the skin makes it really dynamic - but it’s utterly poised. Those blades aren’t driving home, are they ? You were … holding him, Ms President ? Is the ribbon-thing magic of some kind ?”

Quite impressed, I nodded, looking at the statue with fresh interest. “Right on all counts, Mr Amerman. Being badly outmatched, I was calling on Underhill’s justice, and that did most of the holding. The ribbon represents a pack-bond I used to silence him as well as make the necessary third in iron, silver, and magic. Fae things tend to work in threes.”

“So I have been told. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen such … contained power in solid form. Vast energies, but all about holding still. Stunning.” His gaze went to Underhill. “Have you done other statues, Underhill, Ma’am ? Ah, if I may ask ?”

“You may, Marcus Amerman, and just Underhill is fine. No, I haven’t. But perhaps I will. Of whom or what, though?”

It was my turn to grin. “If presidents get portraits, maybe Gray Lords should too. The Morrígan would make a lovely triptych, surely ?”

She gave her tinkly laugh. “Perhaps. Keeping more statues frozen would be a chore, though.”

“Make a mould, and cast in non-ferrous metal ? Or grow them in wood ?”

“Now that is a nicely sideways idea, Mercedes Elf-friend. I will think on it. And I am glad you appreciate the Statue of Surprising Mercy, Marcus Amerman, so you have my free blessing. I would think it cannot be easy to follow me and Medicine Wolf, but no pressure. Fare you well Overhill.”

Amerman blinked, and with a smile and brief expressions of mutual gladness Underhill skipped away again, lost among roses. And while I can’t swear it was that blessing and challenge that set it all off, something certainly did.

When I’d told Amerman that Skuffles was included in the commission he had definite ideas, so our destination was Lawetlat’la and She Moves Mountains (And So Do I), where Skuffles and I made some tourists very happy indeed by waving even though the agents kept them at a distance. Having depicted Medicine Wolf’s three statues for Jesse’s dress, he wanted to see us between its stone front paws, a setting I deeply agreed with, but after taking photos from a dozen angles, and some close-ups of the paws, he was frowning.

“I don’t think this will work as I’d hoped, Ms President. At the size you need, the paw won’t have much detail even if I use microbeads. It’s just too big when the stone has uniform colour.” He stared up for a moment at the hundred-foot version of me, then shook his head. “Bother. But … maybe the, um, normal-size Medicine Wolf standing by you, with a vertical leg? Just one, in frame, but implying the whole ?”

I thought about it. “Can you do a sketch?”

“Surely. And there are enough file photos of Medicine Wolf I can work from.”

“Mmm. Probably no need for that.”

Medicine Wolf had known we’d arrived in the Basin, and when I called, raising Amerman’s eyebrows, it was happy to come by and let one front leg be photographed with Skuffles and me beside it, with a set of close-ups for the colours of its brindling and texture of fur. Once I saw the images I agreed at once, liking the doubletake as the column beside me was seen as an oversize canid leg, and the multiple implications. Medicine Wolf liked it too, and made Amerman very happy by praising both Jesse’s and Jill Widepaw’s beadwork dresses ; then it went to talk to the freaked but delighted tourists and I cloaked Amerman home to Idaho before returning to DC.

I was expecting him to need months, beads and especially microbeads being fiddly things, not to mention some unusual colours in my cloak and warbonnet that needing matching. But I hadn’t allowed sufficiently for a First-Person presidential commission plus Underhill and Medicine Wolf, and he finished it in an inspired five-week artistic tear that left him looking frazzled when he called early one evening to tell me so.

“Oh yeah, Ms President. Next up, I’m going to sleep for a week. I think I’ve done good - the work just poured out of me - but it is, ah, a bit bigger than we’d discussed. I needed to get everything in. So it’s also heavier, of course.”

“Un huh, Mr Amerman.” There is no set rule for bead weights, as size and coating vary, but in the metrical system Toho 4mm cube beads come in at about 0.1g each, meaning a 4cm x 4cm block weighs 10g, and beadwork measured in metres gets into multiple kilograms fast no matter what kind of beads are involved. “How much bigger ?”

“Um … about six by four feet. And about a hundred pounds, I’d guess, though I haven’t had it on the scales yet. There’s some layering with microbeads. I’ll have to contract transport.”

I almost said something unpresidential because that was twice the agreed size and a problem, but found I was flattered. Being represented in serious art is an unsettling business, but slightly oversize layered-microbead me was a welcome step in the right direction after giant nude ice me and hundred-foot clothed direwolfite me.

“Don’t bother, Mr Amerman. Is it packed for safe transit ?”

“Not yet, Ms President, but I have stuff to hand.”

“Good. Get that done, please, and I’ll ask Irpa Thorsden to pick it up. She’s due here from SF in an hour or two, to talk about that bridge we’re building in Detroit, and swinging by Idaho’s no problem for her, nor that weight.”

He blinked but agreed, I made the call, and when Irpa blew into the Oval Office ninety minutes later, human-size, she set down a large and bulky canvas-wrapped bundle with Styrofoam shells, and theatrically put her hands to the small of her back.

“That has some heft, Mercy. Had to carry it through x-ray and hanging’s gonna need serious wire and solid stone. Where will it go ?”

“I dunno yet, Irpa. Wait till I’ve seen it. And I’m glad you could get it, but if it’s as good as I hope, and you want to get this bridge stuff done, I’d best ask Adam to unwrap it upstairs while we talk.”

“Fine by me, and no problem.”

Adam was good with unwrapping, though he also complained about the weight, and if it took some heroic control on my part to prioritise the New International Trade Crossing over the Detroit River Irpa had good points to make. Most were fine tuning, but one or two had broader implications, and I was more than willing to grant her and Vanna some US authority and let them loose on the Canadian crown corporation overseeing construction. A conference call to the Canadian PM and Premier of Ontario cleared their way some more, but led to lots of happy bridge geekery, the Canadians having run three megaprojects to build new ones since the 1990s including the - count them and wonder - eight miles of the Confederation Bridge linking Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick. Multi-span balanced cantilevers seriously punched Irpa’s buttons, as did deflection cones to protect pillars from passing icebergs, but food was calling and eventually I managed to end the bridge-love and get us upstairs to the private quarters. But food was still on hold because Adam hadn’t got much further than unwrapping the portrait, and he and Jesse, with Jenna Fisher and Sally Willis (on a Georgetown exploring trip) plus Andrea (riding herd), were all parked on a sofa staring at it. So was Skuffles, and it was gorgeous.

A lot of Amerman’s beadwork is vivid, in the nature of the contrasts tessellated beads offer, and because he goes for impact anyway, but he’d truly gone to town with the colours of Skuffles, cloak, and warbonnet against the brindled fur of Medicine Wolf’s leg. Some layering with microbeads was an understatement, because he’d used that technique for the whole of Skuffles’s ruff and my cloak, giving skulls and roses rounded depth, and for brindled fur, the fractional topography of the surface magnified for the viewer. In consequence the things that weren’t layered - my body in the Blackfeet dress I’d worn at my inauguration, Manannán’s Bane, Excalibur, Carnwennan’s hilt, faces, and ever so many feathers - stood out sharply, framed rather than overwhelmed by the rioting beads around them. And even by electric light it glowed, something in the coating of the beads, perhaps, and reminded me of Amerman’s response to Underhill’s ice. He couldn’t exclude the heroism bit entirely, nor Skuffles’s teeth, but her jaw was dropped in playful invitation and, like Medicine Wolf, most of the danger was out of frame, implicit only. We were both gazing straight at the viewer, and I had a half-smile and warm eyes as well as looking really good, though I say so myself.

“Oooh!” Irpa squatted next to Skuffles, dropping one arm over her while tattoo-Skuffles peered from the other. “That’s excellent. Amazing ruffwork.”

Isn’t it ? Cloak, too. And fur. Whatever the Choctaw Nation is paying him, it should be more.

Adam and Jesse had given me time to absorb it, but rose to offer very welcome embraces.

“You’re keeping up the style, love, and then some.”

“Oh yeah. And you get big colour points, Mom. It’s way better than any of the other presidential portraits.”

“Un huh, Jesse. They do tend to black, don’t they ?”

“Every one, except Hoover, Kennedy, and Bush number 2 in gray, Ford in gray pinstripe, and one Adams in brown. Dullsville. But not you. It’s like the Beasts.”

“Hush. Enough people will squawk I ought to be in black too.”

“They can go whistle.”

“And will. But we still have a problem, because where - and how - do we hang it ?”

“Good questions, Mom. It won’t fit with the others at all.”

The White House has a … working relationship, I’ll say, with the Smithsonian, other public collections, and bodies like the White House Historical Association, which owns various presidential portraits, and within some limits I never did grasp stuff can be requisitioned for four years if a president fancies, while other stuff is returned. I hadn’t done much art re-arranging, having other priorities, except for the private quarters and Oval Office, where my paired Clyde Aspevig oil and Ansel Adams print of the Tetons were installed, like the Presidential liferose-bush usefully breaking ice, and in showing the same view in very differently faithful (and distorting) media proving every bit as helpful a set of props as I’d hoped. But I had noticed the dreary runs of past presidents lining the main staircase, and spilling into the central hall on the State Floor - neither of which had panelling with the chops for hundred-plus-pound beadwork.

“Is there a rule about having the others where they are, Mercy ?” Jenna sounded doubtful. “For foreign dignitaries to trek past, or whatever ?”

“Probably. Then again it may just be the easiest answer to ‘where do we put forty-something men in black ?’”

Adam grinned, and Andrea laughed.

“I’d think, but you should put the two together, Mercy, in the public rooms. Get people walking past all those men in black to hit you in … well, not black covers it. You could call it the return of the native.” I gave Andrea a look and she gave me an unrepentant one back. “Or not, but it’s the truth. And thatamazement ought to have a public showing.”

“Oh yeah. And it will make First People very happy, Mom. Others too. The clothing’s good, and beadwork better.”

“Why stop at one thing, Mercy ?” Jenna and Sally were looking at one another, and spoke in near unison, laughing before Sally went on. “I mean, it’s going to stand out wherever it is, but it should have some company. All those portraits are Anglo, in their own tradition, but this one has that tradition and its own, of beadwork. And the other arts it shows - your dress and warbonnet, and the fae things. On its own it’d be as if they come from nowhere, but they don’t.”

I like this idea. Skuffles cocked her head, thinking. The portraits come at four- or eight-year intervals from 1789, so we want impressive native and fae artefacts that match their dates. First People and preternaturals were here all along, however the Anglo record just ignores them.

That was a long speech for Skuffles, and I liked the idea too, as Adam did, so once we’d had some food we went to have a look at the public rooms, causing something of a stir even though it was well past closing time. I wasn’t going to mess with the murals in the Diplomatic Reception Room, and didn’t want to move the portraits of First Ladies in the Vermeil Room, though I had every intention of adding one of Adam, preferably in both forms and also by Amerman. But the Map Room no longer had much in the way of maps, the china in the China Room did nothing for me, and the Library was only a token anyway - besides which they were all what I thought of as aristocratic European. First Ladies who’d taken a decorating interest had automatically looked to British stately homes or French chateaux as their model, and they so weren’t mine. Skuffles had an eye for distances, and with a bit of pacing and measuring we decided all three rooms could be used, with some overflow into the Center Hall.

The number of people necessary in planning Executive redecorating is almost as ridiculous as my schedule, and surviving Amerindian art and artefacts are very widely distributed in private as well as some public collections, but that’s where a maxi-me can come in really handy and Skuffles was more than willing. It took some serious Googling, emailing, and calling for which she enlisted Jesse, Jenna, and Sally, with legal advice from Andrea, while pointedly remarking that mindspeech dictation software was still on her Christmas list, but as she was genuinely into it and had learned from Medicine Wolf how to mindspeak by phone, most of those she contacted were soon into it too, and within a few days my evening meals were being enlivened by lengthy reports.

Major museums with a First-People focus in DC, Howes Cave, Evanston, LA, and Santa Fe had some decent lists of what was where, so far as they knew, as did the Smithsonian, but being a sensible magical coyote Skuffles swiftly brought in Jill to advise on beadwork, and Wolf on weapons, while telling chiefs everywhere to check tribal inventories fast and think hard about what they really wanted to offer a show that would be seen by ever so many Second People. Photos of the Amerman astonishment grabbed all who’d seen them hard, and so did the idea of making the White House notably less white, or at least less Anglo-Palladian ; to which Skuffles added a joint KEPR and PBS special with Caroline and Penny, whom I continued to use for things I wanted out there but for which federal money really shouldn’t pay. That she wanted to call it Living Free and Housebound I took under advisement, without much hope of dissuading anyone - Frank and Rachel were already laughing about it - but in principle this one fell squarely under redressing First-Person and other history, so media time was fair game.

And then there were the Fae, Skuffles having had what sounded like really interesting conversations with Baba Yaga as formal ambassador, Gwyn ap Lugh, and Underhill. Fae artefacts tending to be seriously magical, displaying the real things was not a good idea, but glamoured copies were apparently no problem, and in any case those made later than 1776 were all by Fae standards pretty small beer - but included much more non-magical artisanal work, largely by half-fae, that would serve nicely. There was however an exception that had Skuffles grinning and me resting my head in my hands.

Underhill said the finest recent magical artefact by far is our Untenanted Duckpond of Valorous Impossibility, and says she doesn’t mind a glamoured copy if you don’t.

I blinked. “She’s not insisting on the whole triad ?”

Nope. The Fountain of Uphill Justice is glamoured at their embassy, and she knows you have mixed feelings about giant nude ice you.

“You could say.” I shrugged, wondering why I wasn’t more uneasy with the idea. “I don’t think I mind advertising the Duckpond, in principle, but I’ll need to ask Excalibur. And the explanatory text will be … fun for someone else to write.”

I looked at Jesse, who rolled her eyes.

“Why is it a problem, Mom ? A glamoured copy of the Untenanted Duckpond of Valorous Impossibility, created during Excalibur’s transit to Gateway Park via the Garden of Manannán’s Death. The Duckpond Fund is named in its honour.” I blinked again. “And even allowing for Skuffles with several bees in her ruff having done the asking, if Underhill is offering isn’t accepting a no-brainer ?”

Hey! Just be glad they’re not Valhallan bees, First Daughter. I only asked about artefacts made since 1776.

“Good thing too, Skuffles. And maybe, Jesse - that’s smart wording, and I like getting the Duckpond Fund in, but do we want to add an exhibit that will confuse everyone and stir up any amount of curiosity I won’t be indulging ?”
Jenna nodded. “I was wondering about that, Mercy, but the Untenanted Duckpond is very beautiful, and the colours would echo Mr Amerman’s portrait.” She grinned at me. “I spent a while staring at it while Mom was being freaked by the statue.”

I shook my head, remembering Leslie’s need to report the Statue of Surprising Mercy to me even though I already knew all about it. “Alright. Duckpond’s in. And it’ll nod to Audubon. But your mom won’t be the only one looking askance. Jill will chunter.”

Let her. Skuffles shrugged, ruff-skulls rattling. Bears. But that reminds me she pointed out there’s no space for a proper totem pole, and we really ought to have one somewhere. On the front lawn, for my money - the spirits who want to hang out here these days have nowhere to relax.

I rested my head in my hands some more, which didn’t stop Andrea and later Charles, Jill, and Jim Alvin, who actually knew something about totem poles, wondering about the proper design for a Presidential one that was going to be at least three times the usual height if they all had their ways, and so probably an aviation hazard - not that any aircraft were allowed anywhere near the front lawn. But the ideas and contributions kept right on rolling in, and as Skuffles really did have presidential authority within the remit I gave her I found a Saturday back in Kennewick commandeered by an impressive if wholly ad hoc Selection Committee, some using Adam’s conferencing facilities but many present in person

I have to say the agenda was very well organised, presidential term by presidential term, with images of possible artefacts, but the membership was absurd. Wolf, Gordon, and Bear with Jill were present, with an intrigued Charles and Anna, my pesky father, and Gwyn ap Lugh. Ariana joined by screen, with Samuel, and to my considerable surprise Thomas Hao was also up to teleconference, blandly telling me craftwork was a more popular vamp hobby than most people realised. Amerman had been roped in, and collected by Irpa, still looking more frazzled than not but enchanted by the images, if bemused by what his work was precipitating. But there were also chiefs and artists from every tribal federation, museum directors, and goggling private collectors, those present, Skuffles assured me, having been properly vetted. I was less happy when the first order of business was my formal declaration that any loan would in the first place be for the duration of my presidency, including a presumptive second term, though my successor might request a renewal, but appreciative when Skuffles set Andrea to keeping careful score, and briskly told the assorted chiefs that every federation would be represented, but not every tribe, family, or individual, and a minimum of one per federation was the only quota allowed, though all would seek to balance different crafts, from leathers and basketwork to figurative and abstract art, as well as gender. Gordon grinned, Wolf and Bear stifled laughs, Coyote didn’t bother, and we were off.

Presidents command a lot of AV resources when they want to, and Skuffles had had someone do a superior job, the relevant presidential portrait alongside a potted summary of major events for all continental residents during their term, and available artefacts in glorious technicolour, individually or as a grid. But she knew what I wanted, and interesting arguments began straight away with George Washington and 1789-97, because one possible was a set of slave manacles - not Anglo iron, but Lakota rawhide and copper, that had once been attached to some captured Comanche given to a bunch of French trappers in an arms deal. That sat First People and African Americans right up, but Skuffles was sternly clear that history was history, and while plantation slavery was an Anglo import, chattel slavery unhappily wasn’t, though it was also true, and mattered, that there was no indigenous equivalent of the Middle Passage. And any way you cut it, there had been good, bad, and creative interactions between free and enslaved First People and African Americans, in every permutation, as Faulkner knew. Preternaturals weren’t objecting, and provoking discussion being the whole point the manacles were in, with a Lakota winter count showing the context of their actions. And that in turn was balanced by an unknown plantation slave’s carved footstool that could have been pure Ashanti, and in some measure was, a small and faded but very fine Navajo rug it could stand on, and the beautifully judged Fae offering, small carvings by a brownie of fox, badger, wild boar, and muntjac deer, Old World animals left behind and nostalgically missed, as well as racoon, alligator, porcupine, and coyote, New World ones to learn to dodge and appreciate.

Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and the other Adams (in brown) saw some more wincing, with carvings from the burnt White House timbers of 1812, plantation mojo bags decorated with hair and blood as well as beads, a vamp who’d commemorated a dozen Amerindian sheep lost to smallpox by etching a frieze of their faces into one’s femur, and from Samuel, without explanation though it had to come from Bran, a Flathead basket that to knowing eyes showed not a man and a wolf but a werewolf in both forms. There was an interesting argument about whether books counted as artefacts, definitively settled in the affirmative when we hit Tyler and Polk to include a first edition of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Western crafts did not have to wait on the Gold Rush, one big point being that they’d been right there long before greedy Anglos bumped into them, but did thicken after 1849 because more had been collected. Carved bison bone and horn became more frequent too, as did Amerindian weapons - and Wolf really did have some beautiful bows and arrows, while Coyote seemed to have come mostly to insist on some very fine Quileute leatherwork by a lost avatar. But Andrea’s tribal score-keeping came into play, forcing a constant geographical hopscotch, north and south, west and east, being fairly ruthless about observing the Canadian and Mexican borders (with some wiggle-room for Texas), and a matching expansion of crafts, reedwork as much as beadwork, clothing, bone and wooden fish-hooks, more leatherwork (including such tack as First People bothered with), horse blankets, papooses, travois and lodge poles, as well as painted hides, rugs and hangings, pottery, carving and whittling of many kinds, amid slowly percolating effects of Anglo manufacture, especially steel blades and dye colours for clothing and beads.

Letting it run under Skuffles’s firm paw, I had an interesting side conversation with Gwyn ap Lugh, while Ariana occasionally offered fae work for consideration, about the carvings of Old and New World animals and complicated US attitudes to immigrants’ nostalgia. Fae making the transition had had mixed feelings too, welcoming space but knowing cold iron followed everywhere, coming to terms with the continental scale, and taken aback by some indigenous flora and fauna, as well as forced shifts in diet. It crystallised thoughts drifting in my backbrain, and with Andrea fully occupied I ran them past Jesse and Jenna, Sally having been firmly collared by her mom for some family thing, and got a double thumbs-up, so that was alright. But passage through Lincoln into the Reconstruction and Jim Crow years bought painful memories again, including the worst of the Indian Wars, with Lakota year-counts showing the Little Big Horn and Cherokee representations of the Trail of Tears.

Getting modern was pretty interesting, with dye colours exploding all over again, photography (I voted in an Ansel Adams close-up of stone and tree-bark framed by a Navajo as an artefact, although Adams was Anglo), and electronics, while pottery, fine art, and textiles acquired more abstract dimensions, as well as clays sourced worldwide, engineered fabrics, and new media. Books were seriously confirmed with a privately printed 1903 edition of Stoker’s Dracula for which a vamp had done a single, stunning illustration, of him feeding on and turning Lucy ; it was a neck-bite, and clothing remained where it ought, but the mutually ecstatic expressions and lines of their bodies made it erotica anyway, and would, as Thomas agreed promising me one as a gift, send the price of any copy offered for sale skyward. I doubt Teddy Roosevelt would have appreciated it but got it anyway, starting the twentieth century with a bang, as Coyote entertainingly remarked. Less disturbingly, from the 1950s acrylic paints made themselves very visible in First Peoples’ work - we’re always suckers for bright colours - but also inflected representational work trying to come to modern terms with the scale and topography of our land, including several stunning views of the Tetons as well as some amazing animal portraits. But sorrows didn’t go away, and there were pieces mourning children of First People forcibly taken into state orphanages that were heart-breaking, jagged protest art from the Depression through World War II and internment to the years of McCarthyism, and the first Vietnamese-American painting, an unsettling small self-portrait by a Hmong woman who’d managed to get into the US and found herself dumped deep in the Louisiana bayou. An original page of the first 1913 Krazy Kat comic by George Herriman having made it into Woodrow Wilson’s large assortment, I added an Afua Richardson page from Genius to the second Bush’s haul, but as we started to hit living artists I generally pulled back, speaking only if asked or I had a very strong reaction to something, and returned to my conversation with ap Lugh, turning to glamoured copies and the Untenanted Duckpond. He gave me a look.

“It is your geas that forbids wider knowledge, Mercedes Elf-friend, not anyone else’s.”

“Hmph. What happens if some idiot human manages to fall in ?”

“I have no idea and would rather not find out. A small enough copy to preclude immersion would seem wise.”

“With you on that, Gwyn ap Lugh.” I wrinkled my nose. “Truth to tell, I’m mostly bothered because I’m less bothered than I would expect.”

“Perhaps Nemane is rubbing off on you.” I glared and he smiled. “Or perhaps it is just your habitual discretion about Underhill - wise and proper enough, yet the triad is as public as Underhill can be, while humans already know from your statement to St Louis PD that some of the magic that brought Excalibur to you that day happened in the Garden of Manannán’s Death.” I got another look. “Unless you are at last embarrassed by having to explain your contribution to the triad ?”

He got a look back. “Not in the least, Gwyn ap Lugh, though I shall be doing no such thing. Is there anything else among the glamoured artefacts I should know about ?”

“Not for reasons of safety or security, though many of the artisans yet live, and will for the most part be delighted by invitations.”

“Not a problem when we get there, Gwyn ap Lugh. Will the glamoured items need any maintenance ? Or special transport ?”

“A full-blood fae will have to place them, but otherwise they will just be objects, as the glamoured fountain at the embassy is.”

“Good to know. I can ask some of the resident brownies and pixies.”

I still wasn’t entirely happy, somewhere, but thought he was right that it was mostly dissonance between extreme human discretion and what was by fae standards extreme publicity, not to say advertising by Underhill herself. It was also that the joke embodied in the Untenanted Duckpond was hard to explain as a deliberately bathetic deflation of heroics without giant nude ice me, but after a while I decided that as the Duckpond wasn’t any kind of human business, even if exhibited, they could go whistle.

For the last segment, attending Amerman’s amazing work, Jesse contributed her dress with the beadwork that had been his first inspiration, though with a strict stipulation that it head back to her wardrobe sooner than later, and I added the original of Ariana’s coyote statuette, which pleased her. Besides the glamoured Duckpond, which they had to take on trust, and did, if with head-scratching, an African-American watercolourist had done a wonderful scene of Ol’ Manitou River talking to crowds under the arch in Gateway Park, and there was a photo of a collaborative sprayed mural that had appeared on a railway embankment in Cuyahoga Falls, showing me with accoutrements borne aloft by a very multi-ethnic crowd, all within a border of milling wolves and coyotes, among whom some Freed were recognisable. For the rest I insisted on craftwork, and ended up with a gorgeous Hopi bowl, a Navajo head-dress using found eagle feathers, and an abstract spiral by a Jamaican-American woodcarver that was absurdly pleasing, as well as a recent Clyde Aspevig oil of the Cabinets in winter that Bran had bought about two seconds after he’d seen it and I rather envied him.

Skuffles, or more probably Andrea, had also laid paws on some VR software that allowed selected artefacts to be installed more or less where they ought, in proper sequence, and it was immediately clear visitors were going to be negotiating a pretty narrow path around each room, and would have a lot to take in. Nor was the audio commentary I intended to supply going to be as brief as I’d first thought, so movement was likely to be slow. Skuffles met my gaze, and we knew we agreed.

Extended hours, clearly. Mercy, is there any reason the show shouldn’t be open 24/7 ?

“Noise and diplomatic receptions. Staff numbers, too, but we can recruit and be as extended as possible. There’ll be squawking, maxi-me, but we can hang tough. DC cops will need some soothing too.”

Fun. Skuffles dropped her jaw in a laugh. And the PD expect the White House to run 24/7, so why shouldn’t they ?

“They do, but we will be adding to their workload, so make nice. And we’ll need to run it by that Committee for the Preservation the Director of the NPS chairs. Not so much fun, for my money.”

Skuffles wasn’t bothered, then, but that turned out to be my understatement of the year. The staff and PD were happy with the idea of the exhibition if much less so with extended opening hours, but that I could deal with by authorising extra budget for new hires, and did. The Director, however, took three days to reply to my personal email requesting a swift meeting of the Committee, then said only that the next scheduled meeting was in four months, and I should submit any agenda items in the usual way. I thought briefly about Excalibur, then about bison, and despatched Co-President Skuffles to explain that I did more things differently than campaign, and if he didn’t pick a time in the next three days I would. She also delivered the agenda in the form of a flash drive with a complete VR walkthrough of the Exhibition of Presidential Portraits with Contemporaneous Artefacts, and came back shaking her head.

You get the meeting, Mercy, but that one is going to object to everything, and will not hear otherwise. A very narrow and deaf human indeed. If you want advice, don’t wait to lose your temper.

Having some perfectly absurd powers, I had tried hard since being sworn in not to lose my temper at all, at least with Americans, and mostly succeeded by giving the heavy bag in the presidential gym daily grief and perfecting my flying spin-kick, but with the Director Skuffles had a point. As the odd mix of people on the committee assembled two days later, in the Vermeil Room under the eyes of all those First Ladies, he was glowering resentment, and while I didn’t mind agreeing that hanging Amerman’s work was problematical given the building’s age, suggesting it could rest on a support of some kind so the weight was borne by the floor, it became clearer and clearer that he disapproved of it altogether, and not only because I wasn’t in black. Unsurprised, if wondering at his failures of taste and perception, I stayed polite to point out that choice of medium and artist was mine alone, only to be told it Really Wasn’t because oils of men in black had been established by George Washington.

“So you say, Mr Chairman, but no-one’s ever written it down, so tough. And as the men bit is toast anyway, so is the rest. I’ll also warn you that I don’t much care for people trying to pull unwritten rules on me, and you are perilously close to claiming that First People’s arts and crafts are intrinsically inferior to Anglo arts and crafts.”

But as Skuffles had predicted he wasn’t hearing me, and doubled down with snippy invocations of the First Ladies around us, implicitly criticising me, or perhaps Adam, for failing to emulate their ways with couture, coiffure, and décor, added many allegedly universal decencies and proprieties with some eternal verities built in, and eventually made an open statement that the portrait was wholly unacceptable, being oversize, overweight, absurd, and entirely inappropriate, failing to fit with or respect the context as any presidential portrait should. By that point a cascade of increasingly heated thoughts had run through my head, starting with a belated realisation that blocking the portrait so bluntly was strategy, because without it there was no reason for the rest of the exhibition, and ending with the also belated realisation that I had just decided to take Skuffles’s advice and was on my feet, golden-eyed, while my warbonnet had appeared on my head, the cloak was settling round my shoulders, and Excalibur hung at my waist on an abruptly acquired leather belt, handle warm in my hand. Skuffles had steel teeth on show and her ruff standing out, skulls glaring at the idiot right along with her. Despite human squeaking and ragged breathing the silence was painfully thick but I wasn’t hauling power back in yet, though I did make sure the alarmed Secret Service agents on the door were unaffected, and let rage flatten my voice.

“Basta! Mr Chairman, besides your utter failure to realise that my electoral mandate for change extends to official artwork, regardless of your preferences, you seem to have forgotten several things. First, that this committee was established by Executive Order, and could be abolished the same way. Stop tempting me. Second, that however neoclassical its façade, this building is in the Americas, not in Europe, to which I’ll add that now you’ve really annoyed me I expect I shall be doing something about that façade too, in your memory. Because third, as I can have no confidence in a man so openly scornful of Amerindian craft and dignity to deal with either bison or Buffalo Rangers, I hereby request and require your immediate resignation as Director of the NPS, making you as of now the ex-ex-officio chairman. My thanks for your service, and the door’s that way.”

I wondered for a moment if he was going to combust, or just peg out, but even without presidential authority when I let magic into my dominance it tends to work just fine on humans, and he marched out, quivering with outrage as much as fright. The deputy chair was an older woman from the White House Historical Society, who took over efficiently despite being badly spooked, and sensibly liking Amerman’s work herself became increasingly hooked on both the idea and artefacts as a smug Skuffles took them all through the VR show. I occupied myself composing a statement my long-suffering Press Secretary toned down, though it still said I’d decided fresh eyes and ideas were needed at the NPS, as well as on the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, and watch this space. Concern about visitor throughflow came up, with probable numbers, and the notion of extended opening freaked them as expected, but they had no better arguments against than I’d supposed, having the staff and PD already on-board soothed worries, and I conceded a half-hour cleaning break every six hours. Despite the addition of glamoured artefacts the security involved wasn’t any different from the usual requirements when the public were coming through, and with agreement in principle I could deputise details, including the ought-to-be spectacular catalogue, which the Smithsonian would take care of, though I did promise to record audio commentary.