Sprite

With a gasp of air, Neistah pushed through, finding himself standing in the middle of the woods, dripping wet. There was no sign of either Valin or Leane.

There went Valin’s theory. The only water that came through the barrier with Neistah was what clung to his own body. Glancing around, Neistah took his bearings. South, then, quite a distance from the great northern lake—or any other lake, it seemed. He wondered if Leane and Valin had gotten thrown out somewhere different. Valin had mentioned using his own blood to force a gate if he had to. Was that what he had done?

Neistah turned to look for the faint shimmer that marked the gate he had just come out of, but nothing remained but the cool, crisp Autumn day. That way was closed. Sighing, he started off, hoping to come across a familiar landmark eventually. He held little hope of finding a red flower to mark another gate. Those had been few and far between in recent years. Neistah was not too concerned. If he had to, he could always shed blood to create an instant hole in the realms. That was a last resort, however.

Valin and Leane could take care of themselves, and at any rate, there was nothing Neistah could do about their disappearance now. He plodded on. With any luck, he would soon stumble upon some hunters, or one of his own changeling patrols.

He heard a rustling in the bushes.

Valin stumbled out, seemingly disoriented. Like Neistah had, Valin dripped water, but only what covered his own body. “Neistah!” he said, “Where’s Leane?”

Neistah shrugged. “Your gate led us all to different exits,” he said. “Is that how it usually operates?”

“No!” Valin sat down heavily, clearly disturbed. “I swam for hours and couldn’t move any further,” he said. “Then the water spit me out—over there.”

They both looked at the bushes where Valin had appeared, but again, no telltale shimmer marked the spot.

“Your plan didn’t work,” Neistah pointed out. Valin glared at him.

By mutual consent, they both continued walking. Either Leane would find them or she wouldn’t. About an hour into their walk, Neistah spied a human hiding in the branches of a broad tree which still retained most of its leaves. The human hadn’t spotted them yet.

Neistah winked, and glided over to the base of the tree. This had to be a hunter; it wasn’t one of his changelings, who would never hide so clumsily. Valin hung back, willing to follow Neistah’s lead in this. Neistah slithered up the tree.

The human had a gun. Its dark metal gleamed in the pale sunlight which filtered through the leaves. Had he no idea how obvious that made him? ’Careful,’ he sent to Valin in case the elder sprite hadn’t picked up on it. ‘He carries iron.’ It would not be enough to stop Neistah unless the man actually shot him. Neistah hesitated, intending to knock the offensive gun out of the human’s hands. Just what was this hunter guarding so ineptly? From his vantage point up in the tree, Neistah scanned the surrounding forest. His eyes narrowed, and he slithered down the tree as silently as he went up.

‘I know where we are,’ he sent to Valin, backing away from the hunter who still was not aware of them. Neistah suspected that the man might not be a hunter after all. ‘Several years ago I came to this part of the forest. It is surrounded by a metal fence. The iron isn’t enough to burn us, but it’s not pleasant to touch.’

‘Then why did you go there?’ Valin asked.

Neistah shot him an annoyed glance. ’I didn’t know about the fence at the time,’ he replied. He did not want to reveal to Valin the circumstances of his being in this particular piece of woods. In the years since he had made his escape from that place, he had deliberately avoided the area known commonly as Hanan’s Forest. ‘Now, we just need to figure out if we’re within the fenced woods or outside of it.’

Valin raised his eyebrows and Neistah growled, ’Because there are no red flowers within the fenced woods.’ And it would be painful to cross the metal boundary.

Valin smiled. ‘There are other ways to leave should we so desire.’

Neistah had not known about the blood-link back then, either, not that he would have used it, then or now. His captivity had been—interesting. He replied sourly, ‘As good as the gate underneath the great northern lake?’

Valin’s grin faded. ‘That was an existing gate, not bound by blood but by desire. Are you sure you did not desire to come here for some reason?’

‘Desire! Why would I want to come here? What about you? The gate led you here too.’

Valin looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps, after all, this place is where my old human village once stood. That is where the gate used to take me.’

‘Your water idea didn’t work,’ Neistah pointed out once more.

‘Didn’t it? I wonder . . .’ Valin strode off, leaving Neistah to ignore him or to follow. Neistah followed.

Beneath the bush where Valin had entered this forest was a tiny pool of water which burbled gently at its center. Even as they watched, the pool widened. Valin smiled sharply. ‘What were you saying?’

Neistah didn’t see how transporting a lake to the middle of the forest was going to be any help at all in fighting the hunters’ fires, but he kept his peace. ‘Now what?’ he asked.

There was still no sign of Leane, leading Neistah to wonder what her desire had been. If it was what it usually was, she might be home already, enjoying the pleasures of her own kind underneath faerie’s placid waters.

They checked the spot where Neistah’s gate had sent him. Valin moved a small rock, revealing a tiny spring which widened into a palm-sized pool. Maybe it had been Neistah who had misunderstood. Perhaps the water would not manifest as a flood, but as a trickle, leaving them with not one, but two, and possibly three water sources nearby. It still didn’t answer the question: why were they here, and where was Leane?

“Did you plan this all along?” Neistah asked aloud, wincing as his words bounced off the surrounding trees, sounding loud in the silent forest. He lowered his voice. “Is that why you brought us to the great northern lake?”

Valin glanced at him. “Not purposely,” he said, deliberately keeping to vocal speech. Their brief moment of companionship had passed. “The water gate responds to desires, and one of us desired to come here.”

“Not me,” Neistah muttered, stamping off. The sooner he got out of these woods, the better. However, just a few minutes’ walk in the opposite direction had him stopping once more. There were humans ahead. More, he recognized this stretch of forest. ‘You might want to open a blood gate,’ he sent, reverting to silence so that the humans ahead would not be alerted to their presence. From what he could pick up, these were not hunters. Neistah scowled in vexation.

‘It’s too late,’ Valin sent, ‘unless you want your humans to stumble into it after us and die.’

“They’re not my humans,” Neistah muttered. Might as well get this over with. He continued forward, moving silently but not stealthily, giving the human guards ahead plenty of time to notice him and Valin.

“Who are you?” One of the guards challenged them. He stepped out from behind the trees, a gun pointed at the intruders. Behind him, two other guards stepped up, with guns leveled at Neistah and Valin respectively. The first guard’s eyes widened. “Are you Sprites? Some of Pup’s? How did you get in here?” He stared especially hard at Valin, who was definitely the more unusual of the two sprites, with his bright red hair and odd violet eyes.

Neistah bit back a grin. Valin tried so hard to blend in, and yet it was impossible, him being what he was. Neistah wondered again how he had done it long ago when he lived as a human in a human village. Were the people back then so stupid? These guards appeared to be, if they thought either one of them was one of Pup’s changeling sprites. Neistah’s own eyes widened. One of the guards was a changeling himself! “Who are you?” he asked in return. “You’re a mutant.” Oddly, the other two guards did not seem to be. Just the leader.

“Mack,” replied the first guard shortly. He had not lowered his gun. “Did Pup send you? No one is supposed to cross the boundary without permission.”

Neistah smiled, letting the changeling guard see his sharp teeth. It didn’t faze the guard at all; he bared his own teeth in an answering smile, and the guard’s teeth were even sharper and longer than Neistah’s. Well.

“You’d better come with us.”

Valin had remained silent until now. “Very well,” he replied. “Can you please point those things somewhere else? I don’t want you to accidentally shoot us. The consequences would be—bad.”

Mack eyed him suspiciously, but he motioned to the other two guards to lower their weapons. “Follow us.”

As they moved through the trees, Neistah got a bad feeling. He knew where they were going. What did Pup have to do with Hanan’s guards? He was supposed to be taking care of Norah in Neistah’s absence. Valin glanced his way, catching the stray though. ‘You have been here before?’ he sent.

‘Maybe,’ Neistah replied distractedly. “You said you know Pup,” he called to the guard. “Is he here?”

Mack nodded his head. “Pup goes back and forth. You’ll have to talk to the boss about it.”

Mack had a clear picture of the boss in his head. A little older, but still recognizable to Neistah. Jim. He wondered if it was too late to run away. Valin gave him another curious look, and Neistah scowled.

The big white house loomed as they came around the bend. Neistah noticed with interest that the adjacent pond was now gone. A wave of brown grass swept the place where it had been. The fence that had surrounded it was also gone.

“Wait here.” Mack left them with the two guards while he went around the back of the house to the other entrance. Neistah remembered it also from when they had first brought him to Hanan’s office, dazed and wrapped in a stinking wet blanket. He cloaked his thoughts as best he could so that Valin would not catch them, although Neistah had a feeling it didn’t matter. Soon enough, the truth would be exposed. He gritted his teeth.

Jim came around the side of the building with Mack. He stopped short when he saw Neistah. “So you are alive,” he said, his face clouding. He was hiding something, and Neistah was just on the verge of reading what it was when Valin exploded into laughter.

‘You were caught!’ Valin sent. ’You were caught! No wonder you knew so much about these woods. How long did they hold you? I assume you escaped without harming too many of them?’

Valin’s amusement sent a ripple of irritation down Neistah’s back. ’I stayed because it was interesting,’ he sent back. ‘I left when I got tired of it. Their iron wasn’t strong enough to hold me.’

“What are you doing here?” Jim asked, bringing their attention back to him. “Are you here to take Norah away? Her mother will be heartbroken.”

Neistah felt as if a bolt of lightning had hit him. He stared at Jim. “Norah? What do you mean? Did Pup bring Norah here?” Neistah was going to have words with Pup as soon as he saw the changeling. But that’s not what bothered him the most. “Her mother?” he asked. No, no, no. That couldn’t be right. “Norah is Miriam’s?”

“And mine,” Jim growled. “In every sense but one. We thought you were gone for good. Why did you have to come back?”

Valin’s attention sharpened on Jim. “You are Norah’s father? This is Norah’s home?”

Jim nodded mutely. He didn’t have to say anything else. Valin picked up everything he needed to know from Jim’s unspoken thoughts.

“We are not here to take your daughter away,” Valin said smoothly. “Can we go somewhere to discuss the matter? I would like to meet your Miriam.”

Neistah was stunned. Norah’s blood was from him? Norah was his child! How was it even possible? “Miriam? Did she—was she--?”

“You left her! Miriam was devastated.” Jim looked at him with disgust. “She got over it, but it took her a long time. Now you’re back and I don’t know what it’s going to do to her.”

Valin watched with interest as Jim and Neistah walked towards the house. The two of them had forgotten anyone else was around them. It explained so much. Norah was Neistah’s child. Anais would be so pleased. It was what they had wanted, what they had hoped for all those years ago when she had sent Valin to the human realm. A child of their blood, strong enough to revive their failing people. It would be interesting indeed to meet this Miriam, who must also have a touch of faerie blood in her veins to make it possible. This place was, indeed, the remnants of his old human village. And these people were his, by blood and by choice. No wonder both he and Neistah had been drawn to this particular place.

As they approached the front entrance, Pup and Norah came around the corner of the dirt road hand in hand. Norah’s eyes lit up. “Neistah!” she cried out, echoing ‘Neistah!’ in her mind. “And Valin, too! What are you doing here?”

As one, the group turned around to look at Norah. She started running, leaving Pup behind to trail bemusedly after her. She flung herself in Neistah’s arms, giving first him, then Valin, a hug. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

Just then, the front door opened and Miriam stood framed in the entrance. “What’s all the noise---oh, oh!” Her hand went to her heart and she fell heavily to her knees.

“Miriam,” Neistah said, reaching her first. “Forgive me. I never knew.”