Sprite

“Can you find your way to Earl’s village now?” Neistah frowned at the rapt expression on Will’s face. Since he had brought the boy back from faerie, Will had been in a daze. Neistah should never have taken a human there; it not only poisoned the faerie land, but it also poisoned the boy’s mind. He would always yearn to return to faerie, and by his very blood, he could not. “Concentrate!” he snapped. “Can you find your way back or not?”

The hole Neistah had left out of necessity in Datro worried him. Will, just by his presence in faerie for a matter of hours, had destroyed a wide swath through the land. What if one of the humans from the factory had stumbled into the gateway before it faded? The human would die, of course; faerie protected its own. But before he died, he would irrevocably poison the land far past Neistah’s small ability to bring it back by his own lifeblood. Neistah had to return to Datro and close the gate.

Will shook his head and really looked around him for the first time since they had returned to mortal earth. Trees soared overhead, blotting out the sun. When had they left the farmlands? He took a moment to get his bearings. “Yeah,” he muttered, as he recognized the area. “I know where we are.”

“Then know there are hunters to the west of us.” Neistah pointed in that direction. “Don’t let them see you. You are one of ‘Neistah’s Sprites,’ are you not?”

Will smiled warmly at the reminder. “I am,” he agreed.

“Then go quietly and swiftly. There will be many hunters about in the next few days. Tell Earl. Find Pup. Tell him to spread the word. All of you must be on guard.”

Will’s face fell. “You’re not coming?”

“I have something to do. I’ll find you later.” Neistah didn’t like the relief he saw flash in Will’s eyes. His infatuation with all things faerie would fade with time and distance, which was another reason Neistah needed to leave, now.

Reluctantly, Will pushed on through the forest until he was lost to Neistah’s sight, but not his senses. The boy was strong. He would be all right.

Without Will to slow him down, Neistah easily covered the distance back to Datro in half the time. He ‘heard’ the hunters long before he encountered any physical sign of them, and avoided them effortlessly. It would have been fun to play tricks on them—and he owed them no small recompense for the mark of iron they had placed upon him, but that would have to wait for another time. Absently, Neistah glanced down at his arm which showed a faint white crease across the meat of the muscle. It had healed in his home waters, but he would always bear a scar. His lips twisted. How Valin would love that!

On the outskirts of Datro, Neistah paused. Foolish humans. They sent their warriors in pursuit, never thinking the wolf would come back to the henhouse. Neistah laughed at the image, and wondered idly if there would be time to check in on Will’s lovely young lady, or perhaps his other one, the red-haired girl he’d only glimpsed briefly in the factory before his wound had unexpectedly opened a door between universes and carried him and Will away. Unfair that Will should get two girls. Neistah remembered another human redhead he had known, and he grinned lasciviously.

First things first. Neistah did not relish going back into that factory full of iron, and not just the weaker, mixed metal he had become accustomed to during his sojourn in the mortal world. This iron was purer, and it made him literally sick. He detoured briefly, going into a nearby dwelling, and borrowed some human clothes, mainly to protect his vulnerable skin from the hated metal. He couldn’t do much about the proximity. Taking a deep breath, he eased in through the same side door he and Will had used earlier, ignoring the fact that it was locked. The wood splintered and the broken door swung open when Neistah applied pressure.

The factory was silent and dark, with not even a guard to patrol its empty halls. The darkness didn’t deter Neistah, who saw just as keenly as if it were daylight. There should be a pulsing, a sense of wrongness near the temporary gate he had opened with his blood. Neistah felt nothing. He stared at the spot, no longer a gateway, or one that was no longer active, in confusion. Blood gates were unstable and dangerous because, while they remained active, anything could pass through—human, faerie, animal. Even inanimate objects. Neistah had intended to remove the red flower which marked the entrance, but there was none. He had come here for nothing.

Better a wasted trip, than if Valin had discovered he had left an unattended gateway, no matter that he was wounded and fleeing for his life at the time. Valin wouldn’t have seen it that way. Grinning as a weight he had not even known he carried fell off his shoulders, Neistah slipped back through the useless side door, shedding the hated human clothing as he walked swiftly through the night.

Now where did that red-haired girl live? Surely close by. Neistah listened, hoping to catch some signature of the girl, but he sensed nothing. Perhaps the girl did not live nearby after all. A pity. Neistah made his way across town to the river. Without Will, he could travel much faster by water.

On the docks, several armed men milled about, clearly on guard. Of course. Datro’s Sprite was believed to be a water creature. The humans would be searching the river. Neistah avoided the docks, and entered the water closer to the girl’s school. He truly had come in a circle this time. Boats sailed up and down the river, but unless they went underneath the water, and not even then, they would never find Neistah, who was a real sprite. He hugged the bottom, shooting far past Datro and all its heavy metal. Even miles away, as Neistah broke the surface, humans hunted the riverbanks, still searching for Datro’s Sprite. Feeling confident in his own element, Neistah decided to give them what they were looking for.

He arched out of the water, letting his body land back with a splash and drawing every eye towards him. “The Sprite!” A chorus of voices shouted out. Neistah surfaced once again, suppressing a laugh. None of the brave hunters had set foot in the water. They scrambled for their weapons and brandished them threateningly from the safety of shore. Neistah knew, however, just how deadly some of those weapons could be. He dove beneath the water and arrowed away to a safe distance where he hung just below the surface, listening as the hunters searched the river in vain.

“Did you get him?”

“Is he alone? Where are the others?”

Others? What others? Neistah flicked his wrists, bringing him a little closer while still remaining underwater.

“He went back for the two mutants. Avery says they were taken the night the Sprite disappeared from the factory. They’re probably with him. Spread out and search the area!”

Neistah wondered if the mutants were the same ones he and Will had been searching for—Lou, the one who was called Datro’s Sprite? The one he had been looking for when he had been shot? This might prove interesting. He rolled himself quietly over the edge of the bank and melted into the forest behind the hunters. Eventually, they gave up trying to find him in the empty river, leaving just two guards while the remainder of the group pressed on, looking for signs of recent passage along the riverbank. They would never find any. Not Neistah, nor any of his changeling Sprites, would ever leave a mark of their passing. This so-called ‘Datro’s Sprite’ did, or had. This Lou apparently dumped escaped changelings along the river’s edge near the forest, trusting to the changelings of the forest to find and care for them. It was dangerous, and irresponsible, drawing the hunters down on all of them. That was why Neistah had gone to Datro in the first place, to find and confront this ‘Datro’s Sprite’ about the error of her ways.

Now it seemed that Datro’s Sprite herself had escaped into the forest. Neistah sighed. He had to go after her, before she led the hunters to the rest of the changelings. He left the hunters to their fruitless hunt, cutting back across the forest on silent feet.