Sprite

Sleek nymphs cavorted around Neistah in the green water, their hair streaming out in colorful clouds until he was hidden from sight in their midst. Every now and again a pale, pointed face with upturned eyes and curving lips would dart in close to kiss him before darting away again so that one of her sisters could have a taste of him. Hands plucked at his golden swimming trunks, whether to remove them or just to touch, even Neistah couldn’t be sure.

It was a game as old as time, and usually Neistah loved it. Eventually, one of the lovelies would catch his eye and he would begin the chase, through the deepening green, until the girl he chose let herself be caught. The others would then either set their sights on another young man, or they would go off on their own, to play again another day. It was their life, full of sunlight and moonlight, water and games. Love to while away the hours, given freely and taken for what it was meant to be: a fleeting moment of joy, no more.

Grinning in anticipation, Neistah suddenly wrapped powerful legs around a pretty who had swum a little too close, and lengthened the teasing kiss she had meant to place upon his lips. There was a flurry of tangled hair as the others paused to see what would happen next.

’Neistah!’ The girl he had caught scolded. ’You’re too quick!’ She wriggled away from him and sped out of the circle. Her hair was a light springtime green that fanned out behind her as she swam. ’But I’m quicker!’ Her mind signature was full of laughter. ‘Catch me if you can!’

Neistah sped off after her, letting the sub-vocal giggles and comments fade away behind him. ‘If I can?’ he mocked, quickly gaining on her. ‘I’ve got you!’ He overtook her, swimming under her so he could come up slightly in front of the laughing nymph. He had chosen her because she was not Lara, who had lightly mentioned making him a garment out of her own honey hair the last time they played this game.

There was no true binding among their people except that. When a male chose a female, and she accepted him, she would weave his swimming trunks using her own precious hair, which took decades to grow long again, thus showing her commitment to her lover. Lara had been there among the other girls who encircled Neistah with their long hair. She played this game with other males besides Neistah, as he did with other females. Yet she had offered, however teasingly, and Neistah wasn’t ready. So he had chosen another for today.

They swam to the far end of the lake and found a secluded beach drenched in shadows. Neistah nipped lightly at his partner’s ear, carefully avoiding the webbing that lay behind it. ’Sweet Leane,’ he cooed, slipping his arms around her.

“Neistah.” The voice spoke aloud in the stillness, causing both Neistah and Leane to start with surprise. Everyone knew where they had gone, and why. This interruption was beyond rude. “I need you to come with me. Now.”

Valin’s face was implacable in the moonlight. He didn’t even acknowledge Leane.

’Later,’ Neistah sent, turning back to the girl, but she waved him away with a regretful smile, the mood spoiled. Valin waited at the edge of the water. Since he had no intention of leaving without Neistah, the other sprite heaved an irritated sigh and flowed to his feet. ‘Later,’ he promised Leane, and she nodded.

He dove into the lake, leaving Valin to follow. ‘What’s this about?’ he asked, once they had put some distance between themselves and the beach where Leane had curled up to take a nap. Neistah wanted to get whatever it was his father had summoned him for over with, so he could get back to her before morning light.

For answer, Valin passed Neistah and swam to the point where their lake narrowed to a small neck. He shot out of the water in a move that Neistah had appropriated as his own, and Neistah followed suit. Father and son dripped together on the rocky ledge where the lake began, fed by a tiny stream that tumbled past the rocks. Beyond the rocks, the air was blurry. On the other side of the blurry area Neistah could just make out the mirror image of their lake. This place must be a gate, and a very close one at that, but certainly one that had never been there before, or Neistah would have known about it.

“This is your doing.”

Among their people, speaking aloud exclusively was considered rude, for it hid one’s thoughts. Valin hadn’t spoken mind-to-mind with Neistah since his return. Neistah responded in kind. “Why? Just because I have gone through and back without incident?” he taunted, reminding his father of the ancient time when the older sprite had traveled to the mortal world, only to be captured and maimed. Neistah put his own captivity out of his mind, glad for once that they were speaking out loud. There was no need for Valin to know Neistah had also been captured by humans.

Valin gestured towards the opening between worlds. Just visible on the other side was a dead body, one of their own. Blood pooled under him from a hole in his shoulder. “How is this possible?”

Neistah dropped his attitude instantly. “Iron,” he replied succinctly. “The humans have guns which fire iron pellets. One of those must have pierced his body.” If the iron had entered him, then it would have poisoned him faster than the blood loss from the small hole it had created, especially if it had stayed within the sprite’s body. “We have to get him back. The hunters will be coming for him.” If he had been shot, the sprite would have fled, trying to get home. That would have been impossible with the iron poisoning his blood. The hunters would follow the trail and eventually find the creature. Neistah could not allow that to happen.

He lunged for the indistinct opening, only to be pulled back by his father’s grasp on his arm. “Be careful,” Valin said, letting go. Neistah shrugged and dropped down to the earth on the other side of the misty barrier. Whatever happened, the hunters must not be allowed to find out about the other world. Better to let them think they had been tracking another mutant.

He grabbed the dead sprite under his arms and hefted him over his shoulder, kicking dirt and leaves over the bloodstains on the forest floor. Later, he would have to come back and muddy the trail so that the hunters who followed would think their prey had continued on. He sighed. Leane would sleep alone tonight after all.

“Take him,” he said to his father. The barrier had let him pass without a whisper, an ominous sign in itself. It meant that anyone could pass—human or other. Was it really his fault? No, that other sprite, the dead one, had been playing in the mortal world, too, to his cost. Neistah wasn’t the only one of his kind who found the humans intriguing. “Keep the others away from this spot,” he said, as he prepared to go back through.

“Neistah.” Valin said, laying the dead sprite carefully down on the rocks. ‘Come back to us.’

Neistah cast him a quick glance, nodded, and plunged through to the human world.

x x x x x x

“Fill it in.” John Hanan stood with arms crossed, staring at the pond across the street from the mansion. He had built the pond specifically in hopes that he would capture a Sprite, and he had. But that was over now, and the child he left behind would be raised human, and only human.

Little Norah had cried only briefly when they clipped the webbing between her fingers and toes, and carefully cut away the tiny fans behind her ears and on her ankles. Without them, she was human. She was a beautiful baby, with her mother’s green eyes and hair just a few shades darker, but still rich red, nothing like the green and black coloring of the father. Jim was the father now, the old man had to remember that.

Jim held Norah on his lap in the kitchen as Miriam fussed over her bath. The child loved water, no surprise there, but Miriam kept the baths brief and functional even after it became apparent that the child had no real need to be immersed in water, unlike the father. They had all been shocked when Norah’s webbing grew back a few months after it had been cut off. So the periodic cuttings became a part of the child’s routine.

“Hand her to me,” Miriam said, holding out her arms for the squirming baby. She washed Norah quickly and handed her back to Jim, who stood ready with a big towel. She didn’t talk to the baby while she dressed her; that was left for Jim to do, and Jim bounced Norah and spoke baby talk to her as she happily gurgled back at him. Jim was sure Miriam loved Norah; she was just still very young herself, and overwhelmed with the task of having a child to raise.

In the mornings, Miriam would stand by the entrance to the pond and stare across the water with the baby in her arms. She never said anything, and when Jim came out to get her, she went with him readily enough. That morning, when her grandfather came in after giving the order to fill in the pond, she smiled at him gratefully, and Jim finally realized that it was not longing that she had felt, gazing out over that pond. It was fear. Fear that her baby would follow after her father, and she would lose her, too.

x x x x x x

The bloodstains were gone, but in their place grew a single red flower. Neistah dropped to his knees beside it, sick with realization. The fuzzy barrier had faded, so the way was hidden to all but his people who understood the significance of that red flower. Was a death necessary to mark the way, or would a few drops of blood do? Neistah hoped it was the latter.

He left the flower, both as a memorial and as a marker in case he needed a way home quickly. Following the trail the other sprite had left, Neistah backtracked, wiping out what he could, and placing his own marks leading away from the newly-formed gateway. He picked up the trail of the hunters and made sure they stumbled across his own trail. It was too easy to slip into his old patterns of behavior.

The woods he found himself in were far away from Hanan’s woods. Neistah was glad of that. Too many humans had known about him there. These woods were closer to the stinking city that made things with iron. The other sprite, the one who had died, had been a fool for getting so close to that place. Neistah knew it well, and knew how to avoid its many pitfalls.

He knew these woods, too. Not far from where he now stood there was an encampment of sorts, filled with mutant outcasts from that very city that stank of waste and chemicals and corruption. He knew it because he had led many of them there. Now there was another reason he needed to keep the hunters at bay. If the hunters found their camp, they would kill the mutant humans as surely as they had killed one of his own.

There were lots of tricks he could play against these hunters. They were ruthless, for humans, and dangerous. But stupid, for one who considered the forest his home. Neistah was looking forward to playing with them. At least he wouldn’t be bored.