Sprite

It was a cloudy morning when Neistah decided to leave. Miriam had begun to look at him with adoring eyes and he knew the tables had turned. It was all right as long as he was the pursuer. But not now.

He dove deep into the pool, deeper than any human could go. Far below the surface was his cache—a pair of silver knives which no one had ever found. He secreted them into hidden pockets which had been specially sewn into his peculiar woven trunks, and snorted in amusement as he recalled the flimsy kitchen knife Miriam had insisted he take. In all this time he still hadn’t come up to breathe, hadn’t needed to. The humans would not know what to make of it, for in all the time he’d spent with them he was very careful to come up for air at least every five minutes. Now he swam under the surface, deeper still, until he came to the underground stream that fed the pond. With a twist of his shoulders he entered the stream, streaking along in the total darkness at a speed that would have astonished anyone who saw him.

When eventually he emerged into a larger river and broke the surface, he was miles away from the Hanan property.

x x x x x x

“Neistah!” Miriam lugged a basket of apples and peaches to the edge of the pond. She set it down and slapped her hand in the water. It was their signal.

Usually a dark streak would mark Neistah’s coming, but today the water was smooth as glass. Black Pond was aptly named.

Miriam settled down to wait, knowing full well the contrariness of her Sprite. She took a peach out of the basket and bit into it. Peaches were Neistah’s favorite. She tried slapping the water again, and kicked her feet at the very edge, swirling the water into ripples which radiated across the still pond. Sometimes he went for walks, usually with her. Maybe he went for a walk. But never for this long.

Alarmed, Miriam slipped off her outer garments and, clad in a swimsuit, dove into the pond, swimming in the manner Neistah had taught her. She circled back and forth, diving as deep as she could before the need for air drove her back to the surface. She swam until she was exhausted.

Even when the afternoon passed with no sign of the Sprite, she wouldn’t accept that he was gone. Jim came to fetch her when the sky turned dark. Jim, who was never far away, who knew more than she thought he knew, though not more than Neistah thought, gave her a pitying glance.

“You!” She pointed an accusing finger at him. “Did you do something to Neistah?”

“Me? Of course not.” The Sprite was a curiosity his scientific mind found irresistible. Still, he had to face the probability that one of the others, either Bill or Dave, had sneaked back and kidnapped the Sprite. Obviously, being a creature tied to the water, he couldn’t have escaped overland by himself.

“Let me help you to the house,” Jim said, as Miriam paced up and down the length of the pond, her red hair drying in tangled strings down her back. “Your Neistah’s gone.”

Miriam shook her head vehemently. “Something must have happened to him,” she argued. “He wouldn’t just leave me.”

Jim didn’t think so, either. He had seen them together when Miriam thought he wasn’t watching, and he saw how close they had become over the course of the summer, closer than a mutant and a purebred human should ever have been allowed to be. That was the fault of Hanan, who still maintained that the Sprite was a magical creature. But something made him say, “How can you be sure?”

“I’m sure!” Miriam insisted. “Neistah and I—“ She hesitated.

“I know you were lovers,” Jim spoke flatly.

“No,” Miriam whispered, her face white. “No.”

“Come to the house. We’ll tell your grandfather that his Sprite has disappeared.” Jim looked significantly at her. “And that’s all we’ll say.”

Miriam nodded. Tears spilled down her face but she did not speak until they returned to the house.

For weeks after Neistah disappeared Miriam wandered around the woods. Her grandfather had taken the news of the Sprite’s disappearance more easily than either Miriam or Jim had thought he would. Deep in his heart, John Hanan was relieved. It was one thing to have one’s fantasy revealed, but it was another thing entirely to have the whole world at your doorstep clamoring for a look at it. And that was all too likely to happen since those two no-good unscrupulous retainers had left his employ for the city. Well, if they did raise the alarm and people flocked out to the house, John Hanan would just tell them to look for themselves—no Sprite here—it was another wild goose chase. Eventually the excitement would die down and he would have his peace again. The important fact remained—he now knew without a doubt that Sprites did exist, and Miriam knew it, and her children and their children would be blessed because of it.

Jim, too, knew that the Sprite had been real—very real, even if he didn’t believe he was magical. Jim was concerned that Miriam was too obsessed with Neistah, and he took to following her on her wanderings for her own protection.

“Yes, keep an eye on her,” John Hanan encouraged, with a knowing smile. Nothing would have pleased the old man more than to see those two matched. Jim, like John Hanan himself, had little use for cities or city people.

So it happened that Jim came across Miriam doubled over near the old stone fence half-way to Black Pond.

“What is it—what’s wrong?” he shouted, running towards her.

She waved him away and turned her head to retch into the bushes.

“You’re sick. Let me help.” He helped her up and sat with her on the stone wall. Her hair was damp and her face shone with sweat.

“Go away. I’m not sick.”

“We’ve got to get you back to the house—to bed. Your grandfather will be very upset if I—“

“I said I’m not sick.” Miriam stood up and walked a little distance away. She put her hands on her stomach and stared defiantly at Jim.

“My God!” he exclaimed as he realized what she meant. “Was it Neistah?”

“Yes—what do you think I am? Who else would it be?” Miriam was indignant.

“I think you’re a beautiful young girl with a very big problem,” answered Jim. “Actually, I think you’re a foolish young girl who was seduced by an inhuman creature through no fault of her own.”

Miriam was about to retort angrily. Instead, she giggled. “Well, I guess this proves that Neistah isn’t a magical creature anyway.”

“I agree—but your grandfather probably wouldn’t.” Jim considered his next words. “What are you going to do about it?”

Miriam shook her long red hair so that it fell over her face. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Well I do. Miriam, you have to marry me. I’ll say the child is mine.”

“You would do that for me?”

Jim smiled wryly. “It’s not such a sacrifice. I would have asked you eventually.”

“What if the child takes after its father?” asked Miriam. “Papa would never forgive either of us.”

“You underestimate your grandfather and me. The child is mine, as of this moment, and of course she will look like you, her mother.”

Jim grinned at the pleased look on Miriam’s face. Secretly, he had his doubts. If the child was born mutated, like the father, well it did still sometimes happen among the city-dwellers so it was within the realm of possibility. But in the cities they always destroyed the mutations. Always.

x x x x x x

Neistah knew just where he was going. When the water became too shallow for him to swim, he started walking into the forest, careful to follow the line of stone that wound down and down. He smiled contemptuously as he remembered Miriam’s theory about the stone fences.

He moved quickly, for a human. For his kind he was being cautious, for there were things he sought in that dark wood, things that, along with the stones would return him to his people. It had been too long.

There, in a hollow by the fallen oak, was the flower. Blood-red and solitary, it only grew where his people had carefully planted it, a symbol of their world in this world of dying things. Neistah knelt by the flower and inhaled its gentle fragrance. As he did so he opened his mind and sent out his silent call once again.

This time he felt a familiar tingle, faint but discernable. His deceptively youthful face brightened—home at last!

Again he sought out the ancient stone wall and began to follow it unerringly wherever the stones diverged, to go the way of the red flower which marked the proper intersections.

If anyone had been watching, it would have seemed that Neistah slowly faded into the forest.