Sprite

The pale green water swirled as Norah quietly circled close to the bottom of Anais’ pond. Neistah hung back at Lara’s insistence. When they had first returned to the green pond, Lara blinked in surprise at Norah’s agitated state, but quickly caught the gist of the problem.

‘She needs time to herself,’ she told Neistah.

’I’m not leaving,’ he replied. ’I am her guardian.’

Lara hid a smile. ’Fine, then we will wait for her over there.’ She indicated a secluded section of the pond, overhung by willow branches which created a green dome above the already-green water. Anais joined them not long after, and the two women had their heads together, murmuring softly.

Neistah lounged atop an exposed tree root, but his mind was focused on Norah. She was a funny girl. In the short time she had been here, she had shed her mortal façade and become a true sprite in every sense of the word. He could no longer doubt that she carried their blood.

Valin was an idiot. Why had he reminded her that she was not completely one of them? If he thought he would have her, and get more children on her, he was sorely mistaken. Not Valin, not Breyan either, although if Neistah had to choose it would be Breyan. Not himself, he realized with surprise. It wasn’t that the girl was not beautiful. With her high cheekbones and large eyes in a heart-shaped face, she could have passed for one of them. She was one of them.

Anais laid her hand on Neistah’s shoulder. ’Not Valin,’ she agreed, easily picking up his meandering thoughts. Because she was his mother and his Queen, Neistah took no offense. ’Not you, either. Perhaps, after all, none of us. Valin tries too hard, I think. He deeply regrets his failure those many years ago.’

‘Failure!’ Neistah was indignant. ‘Mother, he left you for the mortal world!’

Anais patted his hand gently. ‘I sent him there, Neistah.’

Neistah stared incredulously at the Lady. She gave him a sad smile and nodded her head. Still among the willow branches, Lara busied herself in braiding a belt of soft green leaves, studiously not listening to mother and son. At that moment, Neistah would have welcomed Lara’s calm perceptiveness.

‘There grew too few of us,’ the lady Anais sent on a thread meant for Neistah alone. ’You were the last, save the twins, and their birth tore apart their mother. Her consort followed her in death. He couldn’t bear to be apart from her. After that, no more children were born to us. We were dying, Neistah. Our blood grew too weak to sustain us in any place but our own.

‘So I sent my own true love to the mortal realm, which was poison for so many of us, but not for Valin.’

‘Why not?’ Neistah wondered, but at the same time he knew it to be true. Valin sickened from contact with iron, but he could touch it to some degree and not die. So could Neistah. ‘What was different about Valin?’

His mother sighed, and smiled again. ’From the beginning, Valin had mixed blood. In the bright beginning of time when the world of faerie and the world of man were much closer than they are now, our kinds were not so different. Valin was born with human blood as well as faerie.’

Neistah raised his eyebrows. His father was that old? ‘How much mixed blood?’ he asked, frowning. It explained some things, like why Neistah could touch iron even though it weakened him, and why he, like his father, was so drawn to the mortal world, but it didn’t explain enough.

‘A touch, no more,’ Anais assured him. ‘Your Norah has far more and yet she is so clearly one of us.’

Neistah felt relief. He enjoyed playing with mortals, but he shuddered at the thought of being one. ’You sent Valin to the mortal realm knowing, hoping that he would have a child?’

’Yes,’ replied Anais simply.

Neistah couldn’t process it all. His father had human blood—he had human blood, however diluted! And Norah, was she merely an experiment to strengthen faerie blood? He felt himself getting angry on her behalf. She didn’t deserve this.

‘No, she does not,’ his mother agreed. ’We didn’t know she existed. Valin’s human family were destroyed long ago. The ones that remained thought that Valin had done it, and they tried to kill him with iron. You know the rest. But some must have survived, some of Valin’s human children, for Norah to carry our bloodline.’

X X X X X X X X

Norah spent the next several days swimming by herself in Anais’ pond. She barely came out of the water, even to eat, until hunger drove her to seek out the offerings Lara placed on the shore within easy reach. Breyan had tried to find her when she first returned, but Anais barred him from her pond once again, over his very vocal protests. Norah heard him, inside and out, but she only swam deeper until she couldn’t hear him anymore. Only Neistah and Lara remained to guard her. Norah ignored them both.

Neistah lazed by the water’s edge, but he left Norah alone for the most part, except to glance mockingly at her, his thoughts closed.

“There are fish,” he commented, when she broke her self-imposed exile to take a bite of the fruit piled high on a wide leaf beside him.

It hadn’t occurred to Norah to eat the fish in the pond. She was human; she didn’t eat raw fish.

Neistah smiled predatorily. ’That’s because you never tried it,’ he sent. He rose from the shore and dove neatly into the water, circling once around Norah before arrowing off in search of fish. Norah hesitated, then followed him, curious in spite of herself. Neistah snagged a fat fish and shot out of the water to perch with it on the gnarly root of a weeping willow tree. Norah swam near. He tossed her a section of the fish. ‘Eat,’ he directed her, his mouth too full to speak out loud.

Dubious, Norah took a small bite. It wasn’t bad. She took another bite and smiled. She could do this. The fish actually tasted good!

’Of course it does,’ Neistah replied mockingly. ’Sprites eat fish.’

That was it. Was she a sprite, or was she human? Norah struck out for the far shore again, but Neistah was like a burr stuck to her side. When she climbed out in defeat, he climbed out and threw himself down next to her. Solemnly, he handed her another fish. ‘Eat,’ he urged. She was hungry, so she put aside her doubts and ate the fish. Her traitorous body enjoyed it.

“I want to go back.” Norah spoke quietly, her head down, using words so that Neistah wouldn’t catch what she was really thinking. She didn’t belong here; she was human, not one of them, certainly not going to have their children for them. She wasn’t ready to have anybody’s children. What if Valin was wrong? What if—what if Norah did not carry their bloodline as he thought, and was instead a true mutant, a child of the cataclysm like so many others, unable to have children? Just because her mother had been normal didn’t guarantee that Norah would be too, in that regard. But what if—what if Valin was right, and Norah was descended from him? A part of her fiercely wanted it to be true, so she could remain in this beautiful place among these beautiful people. And Breyan. But not if the only reason they all wanted her was because she could give them the children they could not have themselves.

Neistah grinned at her. He hadn’t missed her hidden thoughts at all. “You shouldn’t pay so much attention to Valin,” he advised. “You don’t owe us anything. If you want to go back, I’ll take you back.”

Norah sighed. Neistah understood her better than even Breyan. “It’s not that I don’t love this place,” she tried to explain. “I never knew such a place as this existed. But I’m not sure I belong here. There are people I left behind,” she said, thinking of Roselle and Will, and of her parents. What must they be thinking? By now, they surely thought her dead. Grandfather would have told them.

“I’ll take you to Earl’s village,” Neistah said. “It’s where you were headed when you followed me.” He gave her a crooked grin. “Do you regret following me?”

Norah’s eyes widened. “No,” she said, meaning it. “Do you regret it?”

“No,” Neistah answered in surprise, realizing that it was true.

Anais appeared, golden green in the pale light. She held out a cloth. ’You’ll need clothing to replace what you came with,’ she sent, smiling softly as she draped it over Norah’s shoulders, moving her hair out of the way. The cloth shimmered gold and brown, with firebright red at the edges. It was softer than anything Norah had ever worn before. Lara fastened it around her waist with a thin green belt, giving her a soft kiss on the cheek before she stepped back.

‘You knew I’d go?’ Norah asked in wonder, fingering the silken gown that pooled like molten metal around her ankles. Even Valin had contributed to the beautiful garment.

‘If you had stayed, I would have been more concerned,’ Anais replied. Neistah looked up sharply. ’Perhaps one day you will decide to return to us. Know you will always be welcome. This is your home as much as the other.’

Norah’s throat tightened, and she leaned forward to hug Anais. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Norah! Norah!” From beyond Anais’ pond, Breyan’s frantic shouting pierced the air.

‘He knows you are leaving,’ Anais said, and Norah wondered how, when she had only just decided it herself. ‘Will you see him before you go?’

Norah didn’t want to. She was afraid if she saw Breyan, she would change her mind. ’Yes,’ she replied, knowing she couldn’t do anything else.

’Norah!’ Breyan burst through the last of the foliage and stopped in front of her. He looked terrible, as if he hadn’t slept or eaten. Norah wondered if she looked like that, too, since she had barely slept or eaten in the last week either. He took another step forward and enveloped her in a fierce hug. Neistah growled softly, but he did not try to separate the two of them. Breyan stroked Norah’s hair as he murmured, ’Don’t forget me, Norah.’ He pressed something into her hands, and Norah glanced down to see what it was.

A red stone, polished and glowing softly with an inner light, lay in her palm, pierced through with a single tiny hole and threaded with a thin, golden brown string which Norah realized must be Breyan’s own hair. Each of them, save Neistah, had given her a parting gift.

‘Put it on,’ Breyan said, and he took it back from her so he could loop it around her neck. The stone hung warm and heavy between her breasts. It matched her hair exactly.

She blinked back tears, and hugged Breyan desperately. When he turned it into a kiss, Neistah moved forward to separate them. ‘I won’t forget,’ she whispered.

Breyan let her go. ‘I’ll wait for you,’ he sent, before he turned his back and slipped into the green pond.

Only Valin was missing. Norah wondered why he had not come to see her off. She followed Neistah out of Anais’ woods, away from the great lake and into a part of the forest she had never seen before. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked curiously.

Neistah turned. ‘Our worlds are connected by blood,’ he informed her. ’We are looking for a certain flower, a blood-flower I guess you’d call it. They only grow where the walls between our worlds are thin.’

Norah stared back. ‘A red flower?’ she asked, remembering the one that had grown, unbelievably, in the factory floor in Datro. She had stumbled upon them twice before in the forest. ‘There was a red flower near the spot where I followed you.’

Neistah nodded. ‘That was a gate. This is another.’ He gestured, and Norah immediately saw the distortion in the air which marked the passageway between the worlds. Neistah took her hand. ‘Stay next to me,’ he ordered as he began to walk through.

The way was not easy; it never was these days unless fresh blood was spilled. Then, the way gaped open for any and all to pass through, with unfortunate consequences for all. This gate was old. Neistah pushed through the fog, keeping a firm grip on the girl beside him, and in a few minutes he emerged in the human world deep in the heart of the forest.

This forest was tangled and dark compared to the bright woods of faerie. The air was crisp with autumn, and Norah drew in a startled breath. Summer had barely begun when she left. “Was I gone so long?” she asked.

Neistah shook his head. ‘Time runs differently in both places,’ he explained. ‘I tried to bring us out close to when we left.’ He shrugged, unconcerned with the small difference in seasons. ‘Speak this way,’ he cautioned her. ‘There are hunters in the forest.’

Norah glanced around apprehensively, and stepped a little closer to Neistah, who grinned.

‘How far is it to Earl’s village?’ she asked, thinking that Roselle, for one, would be worried sick about her.

‘Not far,’ Neistah said, walking off. Norah hurried to catch up. ‘Be careful,’ he cautioned. ‘Don’t scratch yourself and bleed all over the forest.’ He wasn’t sure if Norah’s blood was strong enough to open a gate, but it might. She didn’t need to know that, however. His eyes lit up in anticipation of the stir they would cause when they arrived at Earl’s village. This was going to be interesting.