When last we met: We learned more about Grenn’s race of elfin beings, whose name humans can’t pronounce. “What about you?” I asked, turning to the eagle. “There seems to be an eagle warrior society of some kind going on.” “It’s nice of you to ask,” the eagle chief said. “Let me tell you about it.”

And he told us. And told us. And told us. And told us. And told us.

My first impression of the eagle had been that he was pretty full of himself. After all, his first words to me had been, basically, “Don’t you know who I am?”

All I had asked was for the eagle to tell us a little bit about eagle society. There followed a lengthy exposition of eagle history, regarding how eagles have proudly defended their heritage against any and all foes through the ages. This particular eagle chief was particularly heroic, and he was happy to describe just how heroic he was.

“All well and good,” Dejah said after a very long while. “What can you guys do about the Evil One and its hurricane?”

“What can we do? What can we DO?” the eagle said huffily. “Why don’t you just go inside your house and have a little doggie bone, and leave the fighting to me and my valiant eagle colleagues.”

“I’m thinking we need to work together, all of us,” suggested Seth the Dragon.

“Have you ever seen an eagle wait patiently in the sky until he was ready to seize his prey, then swoop down and inevitably vanquish his target?” asked the chief eagle. “Now imagine dozens of eagles diving at the foe, talons at the ready to slash and destroy. It will be a glorious sight.”

“Sound icky,” said Summer.

“Well, yes,” the eagle replied. “That’s the point.”

“How are you going to slash and destroy a hurricane?” asked one of the dragons. “It’s just wind.”

“Clearly you have never seen us in action,” the eagle said indignantly.

“And clearly you didn’t answer the question,” the great buck said wryly.

“OK, so me and my folks will be ready with some spells and counter-spells and stuff,” said Grenn the [unpronounceable]. “And the eagles have a lot of pointy things to slash the wind. What do you have, deer?”

The big buck looked a little perplexed. “I have to admit, I am not as confident as our feathered friend. I have these” — he glanced up at his great rack of antlers — “but as our giant scaly friend pointed out, we’re planning to fight the wind.”

“And a few worblatts,” Summer said. “And that guy who was taller than the worblatts. And the little green guy with the bright teleprompter light.”

“Teleport,” I said, trying not to smile. “Oh, Summer, you’re so cute.”

“You have five of us,” said Seth the Dragon. “That’s four more than you need to vanquish an Evil One.”

“Dragons and [unpronounceables] have magic on our side,” Grenn said. “And October is The Time of Magic, and Halloween is when magic is most powerful. The hurricane may be some kind of evil magic, but we know a little something about casting magic ourselves.”

“You’ll both be at the height of your powers on Halloween,” the buck said. “Both you and the forces of evil.”

“Should I start putting plywood over my windows, stuff like that?” I asked. “I’ve never lived in hurricane country, it’s like asking someone in Louisiana to get ready for a blizzard.”

“If this hurricane has the power of the Evil One behind it, don’t bother,” the eagle chief said. “Your house will be utterly destroyed.”

“You are one of the least cheerful people I’ve ever met,” Dejah told the big bird.

“Silence, cur,” the eagle sneered.

“What’s a cur?” The old dog asked.

“It’s a mongrel or an inferior dog,” one of the [unpronounceables] said.

“I’ll have you know I’m a purebred English cream golden retriever,” Dejah said proudly.

“What’s that mean?” asked one of the eagle’s fellows.

“It means she’s a high-class cur who will be useless in a battle.”

“That’s really not nice, bird,” Seth said.

“This isn’t helping,” said the buck. “We need to be figuring out how to defend this land, not fighting among ourselves.”

“Yeah,” Bellzy the worblatt said, stepping through the dimensional portal and into the field once again. “You never know when the bad guys might attack.”

When last we met: Everyone was looking at the newcomer with the elongated head, T-shirt and jeans leaning up against the fence. “What? Impossible!” The little green monster grinned an enormous grin and waved his hand in greeting. There came an enormously bright flash.

And just as suddenly as he had appeared, the green guy vanished.

“What in heaven’s name was that all about?” Dejah asked.

“I thought I killed him,” said Seth the Dragon. “And Clancy the worblatt.”

“You’re losing your touch, Seth,” one of the other dragons said.

“That’s OK, I don’t like killing folks,” Seth said. “I’d rather hurt him real bad.”

“Evil beings don’t die so easily anyway,” said the leader of the eagles. “They wanted to taunt us and make us doubt our power and ability.”

“Now we know when they’re coming,” said Grenn the elfin being. “Hurricane force on Halloween morning, and this seems to be the epicenter.”

“I still don’t understand why it’s all happening here,” I said. “There’s nothing special or especially magical about this place.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Summer. 

I saw the faraway look in my younger dog’s eyes and realized she was right. My wife and I called this little plot of land Serenity Valley, and the enormous willow trees — which were sticks in the ground when we planted them — led me to dub the estate Three Willows after I lost her. I have spent a dozen years writing about how special and magical this place is, a place that the most evil of evils would have to hate and possibly destroy.

I looked at Grenn, my new little friend from the race of elfin beings whose name I could not pronounce.

“And who are you anyway, Grenn?” I asked. “You said you were here before we built the house.”

“And for a thousand generations before that,” said the [unpronounceable]. “Minding our own business until you people started crowding us out.”

“I asked you before, why didn’t you let us know you were here? Maybe we could have worked something out,” I said.

“We didn’t think that was who you are,” Grenn said. “Now that I’ve gotten to know you a little, maybe you’re not so bad.”

One of the other [unpronounceables], one with a sorcerer’s robe, came up next to Grenn with an urgent look on his face.

“If the Evil One is bringing a hurricane here, we need to start planning,” the mystic one said. “We have spells to cast, potions to conjure. We have to stop wasting time.”

“But we want to help,” Dejah said. The little person in the robe rolled his eyes.

“We don’t need your help.”

“Actually, Blurg, the dogs have been somewhat useful so far,” Grenn said.

“Ri-ight,” said the one named Blurg. “All they ever do is chase squirrels and foul the yard.”

“I don’t mean to intrude,” said Seth the Dragon in a low purr — the problem with a dragon purring is even that sounds menacing. “You’re talking about friends of mine.”

“Aww, thanks,” Summer said. “You’re our friend, too — I think. Seth is our friend, isn’t he, Dejah?”

“Of course he is, don’t be silly,” said Dejah.

“You little guys are terrific with the magic stuff,” said the dragon, “but I think beating this thing might take all of us working together.”

“I’m with you there,” Grenn said, earning a wide-eyed “Harrumph” from Blurg. “Oh, go round up the others and start preparing some spells and such. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

Blurg stalked off as if he had been dismissed, which of course he had been.

“To answer your question, we are everywhere, living what you humans would call a sustainable life,” Grenn said. “We return what we take from the land in ways that leave it exactly as we found it. That’s why it’s so easy to escape detection unless we choose for you to detect us.”

“Given what I’ve seen today, I think there’s a lot going on in these woods that have escaped detection by our civilization,” I said.

One of the [unpronounceables] guffawed. “Your ‘civilization’ ain’t exactly civilized.”

“What about you?” I asked, turning to the eagle. “There seems to be an eagle warrior society of some kind going on.”

“It’s nice of you to ask,” the eagle chief said. “Let me tell you about it.”

When last we met: “You can’t keep a good worblatt down, huh, Clancy?” said Bub. “Got that right,” said the third worblatt, who looked as grumpy as if Dorothy had been stealing his apples. The three of them stepped back into stances that suggested they were preparing to dive into battle. “Are you ready to rumble?” asked Bellzy. “Because we are.”

Grenn put his thumb and forefinger into his mouth and emitted a sharp whistle that seemed to have a melody.

All of a sudden, as if from out of nowhere, the little elf was joined by two or three dozen other elfin beings, some of them armed with what looked like bows and arrows, a few of them in blue robes decorated with stars and sparkles as if they were sorcerer’s apprentices, and most of them dressed in animal skins like Grenn himself.

The head eagle emitted a loud cry, and within moments the convocation of a dozen or so eagles doubled in size, and I could see more eagles approaching in the sky.

The great buck didn’t say a thing that I could hear, but a half-dozen huge bucks walked out of the woods and joined their colleague standing on the mound.

Seth the Dragon leaned his head back and set a pillar of flame shooting high into the sky, and in a blink of an eye there were four more dragons hovering in positions surrounding the three worblatts.

Summer, noticing that I had left the patio door open, lunged into the house. Dejah stood next to me but began to inch toward the door herself.

“I don’t suppose you folks could take this a little farther away from my house?” I asked plaintively. 

The three worblatts seemed to falter and reconsider whether they were ready to rumble.

“Come on, guys,” Clancy said. “Shall we go down swinging?”

“No, this is good,” Bellzy said. “Now we know who they can muster, how many and how fast.”

They stepped back into the inter-dimensional portal, which zipped up and vanished as if it had never been there.

“Huh. That was easy,” said one of the elves.

“Almost — TOO easy,” said Grenn. “We played our hand, and they sneered at our steenkin’ hand.”

“What are you talking about?” Seth said. “They took one look at all of us and stepped back into whatever dimension they came from.”

“— while making comments about our ability to rally the troops,” said Grenn. “I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Next thing you know, the green guy will be coming back to torment you,” someone said.

“I don’t think so,” the big dragon said. “I torched him pretty good.”

“Um, Seth?” Dejah said.

“Yeah, doggie, what’s up?” said Seth the Dragon.

“It’s the green guy.”

Everyone was looking at the newcomer with the elongated head, T-shirt and jeans leaning up against the fence.

“What? Impossible!”

The little green monster grinned an enormous grin and waved his hand in greeting. There came an enormously bright flash.