Sprite

“Will!” Norah whispered urgently from her hiding place in the bushes. The mutant boy paused in his morning march to the factory, glancing around to see where the voice was coming from. Norah poked her head above the prickly green branches, and Will’s eyes widened in surprise. He slowed his pace until the rest of the group, including the nominal guard, had passed him by. There was little danger that a mutant would try to run away in broad daylight, so the guards tended to be lenient. After dark, it was another story. Any mutant caught outdoors after dark would be severely punished.

“What are you doing here?” Will whispered, waving one hand furiously to indicate Norah should not get up from her place in the bushes. “Do you want to get me whipped?”

“No!” Norah’s hands flew to her mouth and she lowered her voice. “I—can you meet me later? I want to talk to you—alone.” She cast a quick glance down the road where the rest of the mutant children trudged silently to the factory.

Will gritted his teeth and glared at the younger girl. “Why?” he asked belligerently. “I have nothing to say to you.” He turned away. “Don’t try to find me again,” he warned. “They won’t do anything to you, but they’ll probably kill me for coming near you.”

Norah bit her lip. She had risked a lot, hiding out in these scratchy bushes for a chance to talk to the mutant boy again. Her grandfather had not taken her back to the factory after that one time, trying, instead, to entice her with shopping trips and luncheons with friends who also had children near to her age. Normal children, who displayed the same haughty attitude towards the mutants they sometimes encountered in the city as did their parents. “Please?” she asked. She wouldn’t cry in front of him. “You’re the only one I know. I don’t have anybody else to talk to.”

“Please.” Scorn colored Will’s voice. “Only one what? A mutant? Go talk to your own kind.” He stalked off and missed the tears that did fall, now, uncontrollably, from Norah’s eyes. She buried her head in her hands to stifle her sobs. This was a stupid idea, she knew that. She couldn’t ever tell anyone her secret. Not even a—another mutant.

Ahead, Will caught up to the rest of the group. He determinedly marched to the factory steps. He paused, sighing. “Ed, I forgot something at the house. I’m gonna run back and get it. I’ll just be a few minutes. Tell them,” he grinned at the guard, a thin young man only a few years older than he was, “to start without me.” He clapped Ed on the shoulders and started back down the path, not waiting for the guard to give permission. They were old friends, as much as a normal human and a mutated one could be friends.

Ed called after him. “Ten minutes. Then you’ll be missed and there won’t be anything I can do.”

Will nodded, and jogged the short distance to the bush where he knew Norah hid. “All right, you’ve got ten minutes,” he said, reaching in a hand to drag her up. “We can’t talk here. Come with me.”

Norah quickly wiped her eyes with one hand, and averted her face so Will wouldn’t notice she’d been crying, but he never looked at her. He pulled her off the street into an alleyway between two buildings, then cut across the small space in back of the buildings until he reached the house where the mutants slept. He brought Norah in through the back door. It wasn’t locked. Mutants had nothing worth stealing. The inside of the three-story building was less dingy than the outside, but not by much. There was hardly any furniture in the common room—a wooden table, a few stools, a lamp. Will led her up the stairs to the sleeping area. There were two large rooms. Each room had several mats which had been pulled into one corner where they were stored for the day when not used for sleeping. Another corner held a pile of neatly folded blankets. Will sank down on the mats and indicated that Norah should sit on the blankets.

“Talk,” he said brusquely. “If they catch you in here, they’ll kill me. I don’t know what they’ll do to you.”

“I—“ Norah spread her hands. “I don’t come from Datro. I never met a mutant before.”

“Changeling. We call ourselves changelings,” Will said, softening a little. “Not mutants. Don’t say it in front of the normals, though.”

“I—won’t,” Norah said. “What makes you a changeling, exactly? I mean, I understand that it means you have something different from the—normals—like your hair, or, or tails, but what’s so terrible about that? You’re still the same on the inside, aren’t you?”

Will’s lips quirked. Tails? “You really aren’t from around here, are you? I don’t know if you could say we’re the same on the inside. I thought I was, once. My mother hid my deformity for most of my life. I grew up pretty normal, until she died. Then they found me, and found that I had been shaving off my excess hair, and just like that, I was taken away to the factory. I guess I was lucky. I was still young enough that they didn’t just kill me. They kill the older ones, you know. They’re scared the older mutants will get too strong and fight back. So no, to answer your question, I’m not the same as the normals on the inside anymore.”

Norah flexed her fingers. “What’s so bad about excess hair?” she asked, still staring at her hands.

Will laughed. “It’s different. The mutations still keep cropping up, no matter how hard the normals try to stop them by killing off the mutants as soon as they’re old enough to breed.” He stopped talking at Norah’s look of incomprehension. “How old are you?”

“Ten.”

“I’m trying to say the normals don’t want changelings to have kids and make more changelings. But it doesn’t happen like that. Most changelings can’t have children. And the normals keep on having mutations every now and then, and it scares them. They think that by killing us off, it will stop.”

“But why do they put you to work in the factories?”

Will shrugged his shoulders. “Work needs to get done. We’re cheap labor. Ask your grandfather.”

“What happens when you grow up?”

“Usually they give us really dangerous jobs that end up killing us, or we get accused of breaking some law, like talking to a normal,” he smiled faintly, “or sometimes we run away. Then they send the hunters after us.”

“I heard about hunters,” Norah said. She’d grown more and more horrified as Will spoke, imagining herself as one of the changelings in her grandfather’s factory. “My grandfather says they keep the forests safe so goods can be transported and people can travel between cities without worry.”

“Safe from what? Wild animals? Or safe from wild mutants? There are stories of mutants who have escaped the cities and live free in the forests. Someday, if I’m lucky, I’m going to try to find them.”

Norah sucked in her breath. “Is it true? Are there mutant cities in the forest? Where people can go and nobody will hate them because they are different?”

“I hope so. I’m already fourteen. In four more years, I’ll be too old to work in the factory. If I don’t get killed before then, I plan on running away to the forest. Once, when I was about your age, I met a mutant who was taking a group of us into the forest. He asked me to go with them, but I couldn’t leave my mother. She died not long after, and I was captured and sent to the factory anyway. If he ever comes back, I’ll definitely go this time!”

“Will you take me with you?” Norah asked.

Will burst out laughing. “Why would I do that? You’re not a changeling, Norah. You have a life here. Someday you’ll be running that factory. What would you do out in the middle of the woods?”

Norah started to cry again. “You don’t understand! I came from the middle of the woods! My Mama and Daddy and Papa live in a big house in the woods, and—I—want—to—go—home! I hate it here! I don’t have any friends, and they’re sending me away to a school in a few more weeks, and there’s nobody I can talk to!”

Bewildered, Will patted her shoulders. “All right, all right. Stop crying. I’ll be your friend if you stop crying, okay? You’re going to the boarding school up by the river? I know where it is—I’ll come see you sometimes, and then we’ll talk some more.”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble,” Norah said, but her eyes shone with gratitude.

“Nah. I’m good at sneaking around. I told you I did it all my life. But I’ve got to go back to work now, and you’ve got to go back to whatever it is you do all day.” He held out his hand, and Norah came across the room and placed her hand in his. He led her back downstairs, and through the back way to the factory. “You know your way home from here,” he said, and Norah nodded. Without another word, Will slipped inside the big factory doors.

When Norah got home, she found Emma waiting for her in the kitchen. “Where have you been?” the housekeeper asked, arms folded. “I’ve been worried sick!”

“Out for a walk,” Norah replied innocently. “Why?”

“Your grandfather was looking for you. Hurry, get your things. I left a bag on your bed. He’s bringing the wagon around now. You’re leaving right away.”

Norah’s eyes widened in dismay. “Now? But school doesn’t start for another two weeks!”

Emma came and laid her big arm over Norah’s shoulders. “No, dear, not school. Not yet. You’re going home first. The news came this morning. Your great-grandfather has passed on.”

It took Norah a minute to figure out what Emma meant. “Papa? Papa died?” She sat down suddenly. She was going home, but home wouldn’t ever be the same. Papa was gone. No more stories, no more fairy tales that would never come true. For the third time that morning, Norah burst into tears.

The trip through the forest with Grandfather was much different from the last trip she had taken with her father. Their wagon was enclosed, for one thing, and surrounded by four armed guards who rode in front and behind them. Norah couldn’t help thinking about what Will had told her. Were these guards hunters?

They took the main road through the forest and stopped at a designated rest area when it got too dark to continue. Norah wondered if there were other mutants out there, perhaps watching them at this very moment. The guards did not sleep, but Grandfather brought her into the small wooden hut that was built for that purpose. There were no other travelers at this rest stop, so they had the place to themselves. Norah told her grandfather that she didn’t need him to stay with her, and took the room designated for female travelers, while her grandfather slept in the main room. She tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Thoughts of Papa mixed with thoughts of wild mutants and vicious hunters until she sat up in bed, sweating and shaking. Even though it was hot, she pulled the covers up to her neck and stared at the dark ceiling until she finally fell asleep.

Her grandfather didn’t talk to her about Papa’s death, except to say that it had been peaceful. “He was old. It was expected,” was his only comment.

Norah’s Mama drew her into a big hug as soon as the wagon stopped in front of the wide front porch of Papa’s house. Mama had loved Papa, too. “I missed you,” she whispered in her daughter’s ear, stroking the braids which Norah now wore pinned in a circle around her head. “You’re so grown up.”

Norah giggled through her tears. “It’s only been a month, Mama. I missed you too.”

Her mother held her at arm’s length, so she could look at her. “Are you adjusting?” she asked, unable to say more in front of Allen Avery. Norah knew what she meant, anyway. She nodded.

“Norah is a joy,” Grandfather said, giving his daughter a rare hug. “I’m sorry about John, but maybe now you’ll change your mind and come back to Datro to live with me. Norah would like that, wouldn’t you?”

Norah wasn’t sure how to respond, but her mother beat her to it. “Father, you know I love you dearly, and while I agree it’s best for Norah to attend school in Datro, Jim and I both have decided to stay here. It’s what Papa would have wanted.”

Allen hardened his lips, but he didn’t reply.

Norah ran up to her room, meeting her little brother Adam on the stairs. In spite of her sadness at Papa’s death, she was happy to be home. Adam jumped on the bed next to her. “Where’s Daddy?” Norah asked, turning her head.

“He’s out riding,” Adam replied. “I wanted to go, but he told me I had to wait for you and Grandfather.” He sounded disappointed.

Daddy wouldn’t go out riding at such an important time as this unless something had happened. Norah quickly hopped off her bed and went to find her mother, with Adam trailing behind her.

“Hunters?” The muted voice came from the room at the back of the long hallway.

Norah stopped on the verge of entering Papa’s old study. Her mother and grandfather were talking. She put her finger to her lips and held her little brother back so she could listen.

“Nine of them. They swept through the southern entrance a few weeks ago, demanding that we let them through because they were tracking a mutant and it had come onto our land. Of course, Jim told them no, but they came anyway, threatening him with guns. Papa insisted on confronting them. I think that’s what led to his heart attack, but no one knows for sure.”

“Where are the hunters now? Did they capture the mutant? Was it on our property?”

Miriam looked up when her father said ‘our property.’ “They left without finding anything,” she said. “But Jim’s out there right now, making sure the borders are secure. He didn’t like that they gained entrance so easily. That’s one of the reasons we both think it’s a bad idea to leave now. We want to make sure those hunters don’t come back.”

“And what about the mutant? Was it the one they call ‘The Sprite?’

Norah’s heart thudded painfully. She strained to listen. There was a mutant nicknamed ‘sprite?’ Immediately, images from Papa’s storybooks came to her mind. She remembered the Sprite her Papa had shown her in the book. It had looked kind of like her, if she let her webbing grow. Did that mean there was someone else with her same mutation?

“No, definitely not ‘The Sprite.’” Her mother replied quickly. “That’s just a legend anyway. It was another mutant they were hunting, and they didn’t find it on our land. We told them so. Our land is protected. Mutants don’t come here.”

“It’s not just a legend,” Allen Avery said. “I’ve heard reports from reliable sources that the creature exists. It’s green and slimy, with great wings on its neck and legs. A swamp monster.”

“Well, there’s nothing like that around here,” Miriam said with a small laugh. “Thank goodness.”

Norah was relieved, too. She wasn’t green or slimy. Neither was the Sprite in Papa’s storybook. If she had to be a mutant—changeling, she reminded herself—she’d rather be one like the Sprite in Papa’s stories. But those were fairy tales, and her mutation was real.

Her grandfather brought her back to Datro a week after Papa’s funeral. Norah barely had time to get used to the heat and smell of Datro before it was time to begin school. Emma and the butler helped her move into her new room. Grandfather was busy at the factory and couldn’t come, which was just as well. Norah hid her razor in her jewelry box again. She would share the room with another normal girl from Datro, and would have to be especially careful not to be seen cutting off the excess skin that marked her as a changeling.

After Emma left, Norah wandered down to the river and sat on the grass at its bank, watching the water rush by. It would feel so good to put her feet in, but that was something she could never, ever do. The sound of the water soothed her, and she closed her eyes. Dinner would be in an hour, but until then, she had time to herself.

“Be careful you don’t fall in.”

Norah’s eyes flew open, and she twisted around. “Will! What are you doing here?”

Will grinned, and flopped down on the grass beside her. “I told you I was good at sneaking around.” He relented when he saw Norah’s face tighten anxiously. “It’s all right. Nobody knows I’m gone.” He slid around until he faced Norah. “I looked for you all last week, and when I couldn’t find you, I thought you had come here. I’ve been up here a few times, usually at night, but nobody was here, either. Then I heard about your great-grandfather. He’s the one with the house in the woods? I’m so sorry, Norah. I wasn’t sure you were coming back. When I heard you had returned, I was glad. So here I am.”

“Thank you, Will,” Norah whispered.