Sprite

They plowed through the underbrush like the humans they were, trampling the subtly placed trail markers without even being aware of them. Neistah sighed in annoyance. He shook his shoulder-length black hair back from his face and pivoted slightly to the right.

“What the--?” One of the two men who were following him stopped abruptly and stared at the apparition which had suddenly appeared in front of him. He waved at his companion to keep still. The other man froze as he followed his partner’s gaze across the forest path.

A youth stood insolently grinning at them, a green youth, tall, slender with cat’s eyes and delicate webbing behind pointed ears, and between his fingers and toes. A green youth!

With a yell, the first man sprang forward, arms outstretched, and captured—nothing. He blinked at his empty arms, then looked wildly around the wooded clearing. “Where is he? He was right here!”

“He went around that tree.” The other man pointed. “He can’t be far. Let’s spread out. We’re going to get this one!”

The two hunters stomped persistently through the last of the trees until they came to a stillwater pond. It was green and, standing on its edge, the youth did not look nearly as green as he had in the deep woods, merely gold with green glints on his webbing and in his black hair. His eyes, narrowed and slitted against the sunlight, were black as night.

The youth grinned, then turned and dove neatly into the scummy water. Green algae closed above him and there remained not a ripple on the surface to tell that he had ever existed.

“Quick! Get over to the other side of the pond—there’s no way out!” The hunters stumbled their way through the marshy edges of the main body of water, swearing as the muddy bottom sucked at their shoes.

When they were nearly to the other side, Neistah rose from the water, still in the same place where he had entered. His body was covered with bits of green, and he laughed as he caught the men’s superstitious thoughts. It wouldn’t do to have them so frightened of him that they wouldn’t follow. Neistah shook off the surface scum and started for the woods, making enough racket that even these human trackers should be able to follow. He heard a gunshot and flinched. They weren’t without their resources, either, as one of his own had learned to his cost.

Neistah planned to drown them as soon as he led them a little farther away, but circumstances prevented him from carrying out his plan. He steadily led the hunters away from the place where the spilled blood of the sprite they had shot with their iron weapons had opened up a gateway between the worlds.

Blood. Faerie blood had created a breach in the barriers that kept their world and the human world apart. It must have happened countless times over the centuries. Neistah refused to believe that each gateway was the result of an act of violence. He was almost tempted to cut his own wrist to see if his blood, spilled upon the earth, would seed another red flower. Was the way home truly that simple?

Neistah could not go back home yet. If this—persecution—of his own kind were truly his doing, because he had meddled in human affairs, then he needed to fix it before he could return. There was a river up ahead, not very deep, but dark with silt. It was the perfect place to end this game. Neistah waited until they spotted him before he dove in with a splash. They fired their guns into the murky water, not realizing that in the blink of an eye Neistah was already far away.

Unfortunately, the gunshots had alerted other hunters in the area and Neistah, who was already circling back, stopped immediately. He hung just underneath the surface, peering up through the brown water as several more men crashed through the woods, drawn by the sound of gunfire.

“We had him!” One of the hunters who had been trailing Neistah spoke familiarly with the other group who now gathered on the banks of the river. “I think I winged him, too.”

“You fool!” Another man, one Neistah had not seen before, snatched up a heavy stick and waded with it into the water. When nobody followed him, he glared back. “Well, what are you waiting for? If the creature’s injured, he might be close by. Grab a stick!”

“Hey, he’s our bounty!” protested the second hunter, grabbing a stick and hurrying after the other hunter, who had taken charge.

“Only if you find him first,” called another one, as he jumped into the water, stirring up the muddy bottom even more.

“Careful, careful!” yelled the first one.

Neistah took his chance to escape as the water churned all around him. He sped off, keeping as close to the bottom in the shallow water as he could go. Eventually the river widened and the brownish water cleared. Neistah followed it until he was sure his pursuers were far behind. The forest here was dark, thick foliage preventing the sun from reaching the ground. Neistah shook himself off and tried to get his bearings. He was still far too close to the iron city for his liking. There were no trails, just tangled underbrush which scratched at his legs even as he attempted to glide by without disturbing them. It was either that, or go back to the river which led right to the foul city.

A wave of desolation swept over him, not his own. Neistah paused, trying to pinpoint the thoughts he had picked up on. Not hunters. He struck out through the brush, heedless now of the broken branches he left behind. He came up on the source of the desperate thoughts suddenly.

Huddled together were three humans, none of them older than ten. One had tears and other things running down his face. Another, a girl who appeared to be the oldest of the group, stared dejectedly at the ground, while the third, the smallest, lay sleeping in her lap. The desolation came from the girl.

She looked up quickly as Neistah appeared, and gasped when she saw him. “Stay away!” she warned, jarring the little one, who woke up crying.

Neistah came closer. “I won’t hurt you,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice. It didn’t go well with his alien features, and the girl stiffened in fright, while the middle child cried even louder. “Shh.” Neistah put his finger to his lips. “You must keep quiet. There are hunters in these woods.”

“Are you—are you a mutant too?” The middle boy wiped his nose on his arm and stared at Neistah curiously. At least he had stopped crying.

Neistah knelt down beside him, ignoring the girl for the moment. “Are you?” he asked softly. These children did not look any different from the other humans that Neistah had encountered. If there were mutations, Neistah couldn’t see them.

“Yes, we are.” The girl spoke up defiantly. “Who are you?”

“Neistah,” Neistah replied. “Why are you out here all alone?” He had an idea why, but he wanted to hear them say it.

“We’re looking for the mutant city that’s in the forest,” the middle boy piped up again. The girl glared at him. “Do you know where it is?”

Neistah grinned, showing his sharp teeth, which made the girl, but not the boy, back up farther. “I do,” he said. “I can take you there, but you have to be very quiet.”

“Why should we listen to you?”

“Darla, is it? Darla, I’m like you and Max and Edwin here. I am different enough that the hunters would like to capture me, too. And I’ve been to the place you’re looking for.”

Darla’s eyes widened as Neistah recited all their names. How could he have known who they were?

Neistah tapped his temple. “I can hear you,” he said, still grinning. “Are you hungry? I can get you some food to eat before we go. Wait here.”

Darla nodded. All three of them turned hopeful eyes on Neistah, ready to obey the grown-up no matter how different he appeared. Neistah made his way back to the river, and caught several fat fish which he brought back to their makeshift campsite. These human children would never eat them raw, which was a pity, but the hunters were still far away and Neistah sensed no other nearby thoughts. He started a small fire and grilled the fish. The children gobbled them up, even the little one.

They were tired after their meal. Neistah wondered how long they had been wandering in these woods already. Darla started to gather up their meager belongings, a worn blanket, a cup they used to collect rainwater—smart children—a tattered doll. The little one, Edwin, reached out for the doll and Darla gave it to him.

“Sleep for a little while,” Neistah told them. “We’ll go when it’s dark.” He could navigate the dark woods better than the hunters, and with the children, traveling by water would be out of the question.

He watched them as they settled down to sleep, still curled about one another more for security than for warmth. There was not much different about them. The boy, Max, had a thin layer of hair over his arms and legs, and possibly over the rest of him as well. Neistah couldn’t see all of him. Was that enough to have him declared mutant? The youngest had extra fingers, six on each hand. Darla’s mutation wasn’t visible at all.

“What happened to you?” he asked softly, knowing she was not yet asleep. “Why did you run away? Where are your parents?”

“My parents did this to me,” Darla replied bitterly. “They didn’t want me. I have a hole,” she reached up and pushed her hair aside, “in the back of my head. It’s not normal, they said. They sold me to the factory when I was old enough to walk, about Edwin’s age. That’s where I met these two. Their parents sold them to the factory too. Nobody wants to admit they had a mutant kid.”

Neistah could hardly see the defect. There was a small indentation where no hair grew, but it didn’t mean it was a mutation. What was wrong with these humans that they would sacrifice their own children? “They put mutants to work in the factories?” he asked carefully.

“Only the kids, and only ones who don’t look so—strange.” She gazed at Neistah as she spoke. If Neistah had been a child in the iron city, he would have been killed at birth and never made it to the factories. He heard the unspoken thoughts clearly.

“What happens when you grow up?”

“Oh, we don’t get to grow up,” Darla said. “If we don’t die on our own, they give us to the hunters as soon as we turn eighteen. That’s why Max and I took Edwin and made a run for it. Sometimes, you can escape. Nobody really watches us. Where would we go, right?”

“Did you really think you could find the mutant city in the forest?” Neistah asked.

Darla shook her head. “Not really,” she whispered. “But it’s better to die out here than in there.”

Neistah reached over and patted her shoulder. “Then it’s lucky you ran into me,” he said, smiling. “Nobody’s going to die. Get some sleep. We’ll leave after dark.”

Even if Neistah had not already decided to stay in the human world, he would stay now. These children needed him more than his own people did at the moment. Tomorrow he would bring them to the mutant encampment and find out what had been going on there to cause this increase in hunters. And then there was the matter of the enslavement of mutant children in the cities. He could not just let that go.

x x x x x x

Jim threw down a piece of paper in front of the old man. “There’s been an increase in activity about a hundred miles south of your border,” he said. “You wanted to be kept informed.”

“Is it the Sprite?”

Jim shook his head. “There have been sightings. This one said a mutant bearing that description had been shot and presumably killed. No body was recovered, however.”

“Did you tell Miriam?”

“No, and I don’t intend to.”

“I agree. No need to cause her worry. We’ll protect Norah. No one will ever guess her parentage. For all our sakes, I hope the Sprite is dead. My selfish indulgence has come back to haunt us.”

The old man still insisted on calling Neistah a Sprite. He was a mutant, as was his daughter. No, Norah was not Neistah’s daughter. She was Jim’s little girl. And Miriam’s. A normal little girl, once her webbing was cut away. She would never know about Neistah.