Sprite
Chapter 39

Neistah came across their trail in late afternoon. The mutants from Datro had led him and the hunters quite a merry chase all unknowingly. The group—and it was definitely more than two—had chosen the most difficult paths, ones that weren’t really paths at all, through the heart of the forest. It was a wonder they hadn’t been eaten by something already. They had managed to slip by the hunters time and time again, although it had to be pure luck. These mutants left blatant signs of their passing all over the place.

Neistah curled his lip in disdain. Datro’s Sprite was either not very bright or she was deliberately careless. Either way, she couldn’t be allowed to continue.

He easily passed the group of hunters as they crowded over a cold campfire. They would follow the logical trail along the tiny stream that fed the great river, but Neistah sensed the mutants in another direction, across a deep ravine in an older section of the forest. He headed in the same direction, casting about with his mind for any stray thoughts.

There! He felt something, a girl. Was she Datro’s Sprite? Suddenly the thoughts cut off, almost as if she had sensed him listening.

“Lou needs to rest,” Norah complained, stopping in her tracks to look backwards. The young girl lagged behind them, carrying the few utensils they had made out of scraps of wood wrapped in her shirt. Summer had descended with a vengeance, and it was too hot to be modest.

Patrick lifted his face and sniffed the air. “There’s a lake ahead,” he said. “We’ll make camp there.”

Norah smiled tiredly. It wasn’t only Lou who was feeling the heat. For the past few days she’d had a terrific headache.

Neistah spied on the ragged group from a lofty tree branch. There were four of them. With a start, he recognized Will’s girl, the blonde Roselle from Datro. The boy gave him pause, as he rose from his haunches with an audible click, locking his hips so that he could maneuver on two legs instead of four. Neistah backed away cautiously, although he was fairly certain that he gave off no scent the boy would pick up.

The taller girl must be Will’s other girl, the one he had glimpsed briefly at the factory. What were they doing out here in the middle of the forest with escaped mutants? Neistah studied the remaining girl in dismay. She was a little thing, blonde like Roselle but definitely a mutant. In exhausted sleep, her six-fingered hands clutched Roselle’s for comfort. This child was Datro’s Sprite? No wonder she had been so inept at rescuing other changelings!

Neistah wanted to get a closer look, but the boy was too canny. He would have to wait for a better chance. Nothing about the sleeping girl indicated she was any sort of water creature at all. He felt vaguely cheated. He slipped away while the mutants set up their campsite.

Norah wandered down to the lake. She looked with longing at the inviting blackness. The buzzing in her head had gotten worse since morning.

That decided it. Quickly she shed her clothes and let her body slide gently into the water. Heaven. With a last glance towards shore—no one was watching—Norah submerged, then arrowed across the lake. Her body reveled in this element. She dove, exploring the depths as she had the length, faster than anything human.

The lake bottomed out at about thirty feet. Norah let the tips of her fingers touch the sand, then streaked upward and shoreward, surfacing at the same spot where she’d begun.

“Hey, it’s time for lunch!” yelled Roselle from the top of the hill.

Reluctantly, Norah climbed out, squeezing the water out of her hair as she walked back over to her friend, who wordlessly handed her the little jewelry box where she kept her razor. Roselle knew about the webbing, but the others had no idea of the extent of Norah’s mutation, nor would they as long as she was careful.

Later that afternoon, they all decided to take a swim. Norah kept her distance, explaining that she had a headache, and for a while, they left her alone. She sat on an outcropping of rock, knees hugged to her chest, and watched them splash in the shallows.

Norah felt rather than saw movement around them.

“Stop,” she said urgently. “There’s something out there.”

“It’s probably just a fish or something,” said Roselle. Then she disappeared. A moment later Roselle resurfaced, coughing and gasping for breath.

“Get out! Get out now!” Norah ran for the lake and waded in. That was no fish!

First Lou, then Patrick was pulled under and released. Norah thought she saw a flash of green, a mocking face. Her head hurt and her heart was pounding. In a minute it was her turn to be pulled under. But once beneath the water she stopped struggling. Her eyes widened as she saw what had hold of her—it was human—grinning fiercely. It was about to let her go as it had the others when she wrapped her legs around its waist.

He looked so surprised. Then Norah felt a tingling inside her head not at all like the buzzing she’d had for the last few days. She shook her head, her hair a red cloud in the water, and the creature twisted away and was gone.

Norah made a show of coughing as she broke the surface. Roselle quickly pulled her to shore and wrapped a blanket around her head and upper torso to hide the webbing that had appeared with Norah’s immersion in the lake. There was nothing she could do about the ones on her legs, so Norah sank down in the soft sand, folding her legs beneath her. She was white as a sheet.

“Are you all right?” asked Lou. “You were underwater for so long.”

“I’m fine. Just a little scared.”

“What do you think it was?” asked Patrick. “Did you see anything?”

“No, did you?” asked Norah, hoping he hadn’t. She still could hardly believe it. The creature in the lake was like her.

She retreated behind some trees to change. It felt wrong to cut off her webbing, now that Norah knew she wasn’t the only one to have such a mutation, but she did it, as Roselle kept guard, pulling on her boots over the raw spots on her ankles, and shrugging into her long-sleeved shirt again. She shook out their one shared blanket and folded it carefully before replacing it in her traveling bag.

“We’re moving our camp away from the edge of this lake. Get your things.”

Norah didn’t argue, and within minutes the four had broken camp and started hiking further into the woods. Norah didn’t mention the presence she felt that traveled with them. Something amazingly like laughter tickled at the edges of her mind, and for the first time in days, her headache was gone.

Neistah had to follow the girl. Will had been mistaken. The small one, Lou, could not be Datro’s Sprite. He had seen the group frolicking at the edge of the lake and decided on a little surprise. Instead, he had been surprised. It was the other girl, the red-haired one. What was she that she could hold him? He had tried to talk to her mind to mind but the girl did not respond. Human, then, but so like his kind.

He followed the little group away from the water. Norah, as her friends called her, was tall, slender, with masses of dark red hair that shrouded her face and hid her attributes from him—and from her companions as well. Her green eyes pierced the bushes as if she could actually see him standing there.

They camped where two stone fences intersected, much to Neistah’s amusement.

Norah picked up two rough wood containers and headed towards the trees. “I’m going to replace water,” she called.

Neistah watched her with interest. She headed straight for a small stream about a half-mile from camp. Neistah kept a safe distance behind her, watching intently as she knelt down and filled first one and then the other container.

The stream was not big enough for swimming, but the temptation to dangle her feet in the water was strong. Norah pulled off her boots, then froze. The boy from the lake stood in front of her, unmoving, smiling faintly.

Slowly she stood up, staring at his hair and skin which shone faintly green in the light. “Who are you?” she asked. “Do you live here? Why did you follow me?”

The boy smiled broadly and her headache returned full force. There was a disturbing quality to that smile. It was not friendly, not at all.

“Are you Datro’s Sprite?” he asked in return, scrutinizing her carefully. Her red hair was now braided and pinned up. She looked human, only human. “You should know you have caused all sorts of trouble for the changelings in the forest. You brought the hunters here.” He gave a derisive chuckle. “The sprites in this forest belong to me. You are not one of them.”

A wave of desolation swept over Norah. It’s true, she thought. I do not belong here. I don’t belong anywhere. I am alone. He is not like me after all.

The boy took three steps backward, hands moving involuntarily to his head. His eyes mirrored her pain.

Then he was gone, between one blink and the next, as if he’d never been.

Norah sat on the bank of the stream and dunked her feet into the cold water after all. It had been a long time since she had felt like that. It must have been seeing that boy, that creature of the water, so much like her Papa’s stories, so much what she wanted to believe. But he had warned her off, as clearly as if he’d called her a freak. Well, he didn’t know all of what she was either. She belonged to the water if to nothing else. He could not, could not take that away.

Angrily she jumped up, gathered the water containers and stalked back off to camp. Let him watch her, she thought. Let him watch out.

Watch out, indeed! Neistah had picked up every thought from the moment she had blasted him with her loneliness. He smiled wryly. So she belonged to the water, did she? Foolish human. This was proving interesting. He wondered briefly what kind of mutation she’d developed that made her so resemble his kind.

Four more days of searching brought the group no closer to replaceing a mutant enclave. Their lakeside scare had turned out to be the least of their troubles, for as mankind shunned the woods the wild creatures thrived there. Claws and teeth were more of a threat than vague dunkings.

“Probably it was a submerged tree root that got tangled in our clothing,” rationalized Patrick as they debated the matter. Four nights huddled around a fire listening to shrieks and wails had taken their toll.

“All of us?” Roselle was skeptical.

“I think it was a mutant,” stated Norah, staring defiantly out into the darkness.

“A mutant—all alone out there? But we never saw anyone.” Lou spoke softly. “Wouldn’t he have come to help us, to bring us to one of the changeling villages?”

“That could be because it was tied to the water—or maybe it really was a fish—or an otter,” said Roselle.

Norah knew that it wasn’t tied to the water any more than she was. “What if it’s been following us all this time? What if it is the thing that’s making all the noise and frightening us?” she asked, knowing perfectly well that it was true. But something within her stopped her from telling them that she’d actually seen the creature.

“Nonsense,” Patrick said. “What happened was days ago and far away from where we are now. I say we follow the river. It’s our best chance of replaceing other mutants like us.”

There is no one like me, thought Norah sadly. I’m fooling myself. But the thought of finally being near water again made her happy, and relieved. Now, fish boy, she told him silently, we will see.

And within the forest Neistah heard, and grinned.

The river was huge, easily as wide as Datro’s river far to the east. Norah felt the urge to test it depth, if not its length.

Neistah, too, felt joy at being near the water again. He had none of Norah’s restrictions of cloth and companions, and the wish became the deed. He was in the water the moment he saw it.

A moment later and Norah appeared at the edge of the river, slim and straight, her companions forgotten. Neistah expected her to dive in. Instead she slipped gently beneath the surface. He waited for her to breathe and strike out clumsily in the manner of her kind, but minutes passed and she did not appear. Alarmed, Neistah streaked for the spot where she’d entered the water. Gone. She was gone.

Norah was home at last! The cool water slid smoothly past her upturned face. She felt the fins behind her neck fan out to streamline her path through the water. Vision was never a problem in the murkiest depths, another facet of her mutation, she supposed.

After a while Norah veered sharply downward, then reversed direction and sped back to shore. She saw the water boy before he saw her and slowed herself down considerably. Telltale waves of motion bumped him and he twisted, ten feet under the surface, to stare at her in amazement.

‘I am called Neistah.’ The words rang in Norah’s head.

Norah halted with a flick of her wrists and slowly faced the youth. Even underwater his grin was disconcerting. It was like looking in a mirror, she thought. The same sloping eyes, only black, the same delicate webbing, the same ease in the water as he hung motionless.

‘I am called Neistah,’ the voice in her head repeated as he suddenly reached out to touch her. Norah, startled, arrowed for the surface but strong arms wrapped around her and would not let her go.

“No,” she mouthed, sending a stream of tiny bubbles towards the surface.

‘Say it in here.’ The boy tapped his head, briefly releasing one of her arms. It was enough.

“No-o-o!” screamed Norah, twisting violently away. Neistah heard the cry both inside and out.

Instantly she shot out across the river, swimming in the undulating fashion that was second nature to her. To her horror, the boy became her shadow, matching her move for move, grinning at her even as he flashed above and below her, circling her relentlessly.

And all the while a steady barrage of his thoughts pounded into her brain.

‘You can hear me. Talk to me this way. I know you can. I’ve heard you.’

This brought Norah to a sudden halt. The boy swam lazily around her, almost but not quite touching her. In all this time neither one of them had felt the need to breathe. ’When did you hear me?’ she thought angrily.

‘Now.’

At his mocking grin, Norah suddenly had to get away. She streaked away, and for a miracle, the boy didn’t follow her.

Norah waited until just before dawn, when all her friends were sleeping, before slipping quietly down to the river. She entered the water feet first where she knew it would be deep.

Let me replace him, she thought to herself. I must replace him. ‘—Fish boy—’ she projected as forcefully as she could, while thinking, this is ridiculous, no one can hear my thoughts. She took her bearings and arrowed out towards the middle of the river, arms tight to her side. ‘—Fish boy!—’

From the murky darkness that was really just the end of night, a blurred shape emerged and swam beside her. ‘You needn’t shout,’ he admonished her, grinning in the dark light. ‘And my name is Neistah.’ He swam uncomfortably close to her.

‘—Please—’ she thought at him. Neistah winced, and placed both hands on the sides of his head. ‘Please,’ she repeated, attempting not to shout in her mind. ‘I need your help.’

Neistah turned away. ‘Follow me,’ he commanded. He swam upriver for quite a distance, and she followed. She was pleased that it was fairly easy to keep up.

At a bend in the river, Neistah shot up into the air and landed, upright, on the far bank. Norah was confused for a moment when he disappeared so abruptly, but she noted where he had exited and swam cautiously to the surface.

Neistah grinned down at her from his vantage point on the shore. “Come out,” he bade her.

Norah flipped beneath the surface, circled for speed and flew in an arc out of the water to land, dripping, beside him. She grinned back.

‘You swim well.’ Neistah’s thoughts were cool and clear inside her head. Norah’s grin faded.

“Please. I need to ask you, are we alike?” Norah whispered the words, both wanting and dreading the answer. “I’ve been searching for a long time. I’ve met others who are different, but nobody who is like me. Are you the only one, are we the only ones?”

Neistah shook his head, cascading his green-black hair down his back and exposing long, pointed ears with delicate webbing fanning out behind them.

Norah’s eyes widened. She moved her own hair; revealing the transparent webbing which was now plastered tight to her neck.

“You look like me,” she said.

For the first time, Neistah felt uncomfortable. He averted his eyes, and replied, “Similar, perhaps.”