Sprite

Lara’s hands flew over the loom she had produced from seemingly nowhere to do her weaving, as the other girls knitted away the winter months. Lara’s hair, cut short at the shoulders now, was tucked under a blue checked kerchief that Miriam had given her for the purpose. The cloth that slowly took shape under her competent hands was soft and gleamed faintly metallic, an optical illusion surely as it was made entirely of Lara’s own silky hair. Leane watched with avid interest as the material came to life.

Norah, who had been watching surreptitiously too, suddenly threw down her own knitting needles. The blanket she’d been making slid to the floor in a lopsided heap. “This is ridiculous! I’m going for a walk.”

Her mother raised her eyebrows. It was snowing again. Even Will’s group of Sprites had returned to wait out this latest storm. “Take a coat. And boots.” Miriam gazed pointedly at Norah’s bare feet.

They all thought she was going to find Pup again. So what if she did? Pup would go with her on a walk outside. He felt the same way she did. Restless. Bored.

Norah didn’t know what kind of lesson she was supposed to have learned by coming back to the mortal world. It didn’t seem to make a difference whether she was here or not. She missed swimming, and immediately felt guilty because certainly Leane and Lara must miss it too. But they sat contentedly with the other women, making clothes. Norah clenched her jaws in frustration. What good would that do?

Lara’s weaving would eventually become a pair of honey brown swimming trunks for Neistah. She’d cut her hair. Norah understood the significance. Breyan had once made fun of Norah, saying he would be happy to wear red trunks. At the time, she hadn’t known what he had meant. Norah’s hand came up to touch the braid that looped around her head. Unbound, her hair now reached her knees. She couldn’t imagine cutting it off.

The snow came up over the tops of her soft doeskin boots as she stomped across the yard to the bunkhouse. It was crowded with both Will’s and Pup’s patrols, as well as the men who worked for her father. Jim, she corrected herself. Neistah was her father.

“Norah?” Will came over to help her off with her coat. She shrugged out of it herself, but let him take it and hang it over the end of a bunk.

“Is Pup here?” she asked, scanning the room. Neistah wasn’t there, nor was Valin, the sprites preferring to keep their own company who knew where, although Neistah was often at the house lately, since Lara was there.

She saw her little brother Adam engrossed in a board game with Jordy. Adam considered himself one of the men now, and when he wasn’t out with Mack, he spent time with the changeling Sprites who were now a familiar fixture at the Hanan compound. Norah’s lips curved in a wry smile. How long before her little brother asked to become one of the Sprites?

“Jordy, where’s Pup?”

“Here I am.” Pup grabbed her from behind, making her squeak in surprise. His bad arm was out of its sling, and he wrapped both arms around her waist and nuzzled her neck just below her sensitive fins. Norah gently turned so she could look at him, careful of his bad arm. Pup kissed the tip of her nose.

Across the room, Will stared sullenly.

The other men in the room stopped what they were doing to watch, too, making Norah a little uncomfortable. Pup didn’t seem to mind. He led her over to his bunk and sat with her in the semi-privacy of the little alcove it created. Norah leaned against him, trying to block out the sight of Will, still staring from his bunk where he had hung up her coat to dry.

The door blew open, sending in a burst of snow along with Neistah and Valin, and for a little while the attention was off Norah. The two sprites shook off the snow from their clothes. Even Neistah wore human clothing now in the depth of winter. Norah couldn’t help wondering if it was because Lara was weaving him the garment that would tie her to him forever, so it didn’t matter if he wore something different while he waited.

Neistah caught her thought and grinned, but he didn’t deny it. His decision to don sensible winter clothing had the added effect of freeing the changeling Sprites to dress sensibly too. Except for Will, Pup, and a very few others, most of the changelings had a difficult time tolerating the winter weather in just shorts and long hair. But Neistah, being Neistah, couldn’t leave it alone. “Have you made your choice, daughter?” he asked, staring fixedly at Pup as he spoke. “Will we see Pup in red this spring?”

Norah’s face flamed as Pup looked at her in confusion. ‘No!’ she sent. ‘Not—’ Norah stopped, unsure of what she meant to say. It was so easy to forget Breyan when Pup was here beside her, and she’d always have a place in her heart that belonged to Will. Yet when she had been with Breyan in that other watery world, she couldn’t even think about anyone else.

“Leave her be. She’s young yet.” Surprisingly, help came from Valin, who perched on a lower bunk, one long leg propped up as he rested his arm across it. ‘Breyan wouldn’t mind—not like these two. He knows you will come back to him.’

That was the point. Breyan was so sure of it, when even Norah herself wasn’t sure! And how could she believe he wouldn’t care if she chose Pup—or even Will—as her mortal lover?

Pup said to Neistah, “You said she could choose,” reminding him of a long-ago conversation where Neistah had intimated to Pup that Norah was ‘one of his,’ or human. Neistah had obliquely given Pup his blessing to pursue his daughter, if that was her choice.

“I said she was still young, and not to make her regret anything she might choose,” Neistah answered.

Will looked away. Nobody had said anything to him.

Valin pinned Will with a hard stare. “You had her. You let her go. She is not for you any longer.”

“Just because I—“

“No, because you cannot be around us and know your own mind,” Valin answered softly. “It’s too late for you in many ways.”

Norah’s temper began to flare. How dare these men who purported to love her try to decide her life for her! “Forget it—this was a bad idea!” she said, lurching away from Pup as she made a beeline for Will’s bunk.

Neistah jumped out of her way with a laugh.

Adam and Jordy, their game forgotten in favor of this much more interesting show, stared after Norah as she closed in on Will, who also watched her warily, not sure what to expect.

“Don’t look at me!” she snapped, reaching past Will. Tugging on her coat, she yanked open the door and slammed it behind her, missing the way both boys’ heads snapped down, obeying her silent command as well as the spoken one. Will and Pup automatically glanced away, too. So did everyone else in the room.

Neistah , unaffected, exchanged a long look with his father.

Norah didn’t want to go back into the house. She pulled her coat tighter and bent her head into the wind as she walked through the snow to Leane’s pond. It showed as a faint depression in the surrounding snow. She sighed, pushing her hands down into the snow until she felt the smooth unyielding surface of the ice below it. How much longer before she could swim again?

‘Not long, in the scheme of things.’

Norah looked back. If anyone, she had expected Pup to follow her, not Neistah. ‘It feels long,’ she sent back petulantly.

‘You know, you ordered them to stay away,’ Neistah said, squatting down beside Norah. ’They cannot look upon you now, unless you will it otherwise.’

“What?” Startled into speech, Norah stood. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Mortals are susceptible to our influence,’ Neistah replied. ‘You told them not to look.’

’Oh. I didn’t mean it literally. I was angry. Neistah, why are you here still?’ When they could be back there, where it was perpetual summer, swimming instead of . . . this.

Neistah heard what she dared not even think. ‘Do you want to go back to faerie?’

‘I don’t know. I—’

“Norah!”

They both looked up at the sound of a voice callingt Norah’s name out loud. Pup was jogging steadily across the snow towards them. ‘I thought you said he couldn’t come to me until I wished it,’ Norah said.

Neistah shrugged. ‘It happens sometimes. Some mortals aren’t as susceptible to us as others. Pup must have fought it. Do you want me to send him away?’

Norah didn’t know what she wanted, except to swim. If she could swim, everything would make sense. ‘No, let him come,’ she said.

Neistah stepped away as Pup approached. He felt the pull of the water too. All the sprites felt it. It was not surprising that Norah felt it too. She was, after all, one of them. He watched the two of them through the curtain of falling snow. Let Norah have her mortal time. She would ultimately come back to faerie. Before that happened, however, there was a world to save.