“What are you doing?” I demand of him. A boy, I decide, gills or not. “You have to take me back. Right now!”
“Ah,” the boy says with a surprised look. “You are Human.”
So like Harrow, they can understand and speak other languages. “And you are an idiot! What do you think you are going to do with me? Cook me up for dinner?”
They all find this idea immensely funny, save for one. A girl, I decide, recognizable for her body shape and the look of her hair, which is feathered and fluffed out. “We’re going to do what we want!” she declares.
I start to offer a retort and then stop myself. Realization dawns as I study them further. These are children! Maybe some of them are in their teens, but none of them is fully grown. This is some sort of game! These kids are playing with me.
“Can I sit up?” I ask the boy who talked to me first.
He nods. “Just don’t try to run away.”
I lever myself into a sitting position. “You shouldn’t have done that. If you had just come up to me and asked, I would have been happy to talk to you.”
“You were with a Watcher—whichever one it was. And a Watcher’s not about to stop for us. Besides, taking you away from him was fun.”
“Fun for the moment, maybe. But he will come looking for me.”
The boy shrugs. “Let him. What are you doing with a Watcher anyway? Where did you come from?”
“The prisons on the other side of Roughlin Wake. I escaped and had gotten as far as the eastern shore when he found me. He brought me here.”
“Are you a girl?” one of them asks abruptly.
“You can’t tell?”
“Not with your clothes on. Take them off.”
“I will not!”
“Why? We’ve never seen a naked Human before.”
They look genuinely curious—not that this changes anything. “If I asked you to strip, how would you feel about that?” I snap angrily.
It was the wrong thing to say. In mere seconds, they are all standing naked in front of me, waiting expectantly. Apparently they are used to shedding their clothes. Six boys and two girls; it isn’t so difficult to tell which is which. Their bodies are different in some ways, but not so different from those of Human kids.
“Now you,” the leader orders.
I shoot him a dark look and leap to my feet, hands curling into fists. “Not a chance. Put your clothes back on, and we can talk.”
Understand—I am not embarrassed to be naked. In the prison, our jailers stripped us of our clothes plenty of times—not because they wanted to ogle us but because they wanted to make sure we weren’t hiding any weapons. Being studied as if I were a specimen in a scientific experiment is nothing new to me.
On the other hand, I don’t like people telling me what to do. And now that I am free, I am not about to put up with anything I find offensive.
Still, they look so forlorn that I relent. Partially.
“I’m a girl. Trust me. You can look at me all you want, but my clothes stay on.”
A few exchange looks, some shrugs, and a scattering of grins, and they are crowding close. A few fingers poke at me, touching my hair, my neck, and my arms. I stand my ground, meeting their curious gazes.
“Look!” says one. “No scales or fins. No gills, either. She’s not a water creature. I don’t think she can even swim.”
Which is true, of course, but it’s starting to feel personal.
“She’s kind of white,” yet another whispers. “She looks a bit like a dead fish.”
“What should we do with her?” asks another.
No one seems to know. Apparently getting a closer look was as far ahead as any of them had planned.
“All right, that’s enough,” I say—and my tone of voice must carry enough of a threat, because they all back away. “Are you going to take me back to where you found me?” I ask the leader.
“I don’t know,” he replies. “Maybe you ought to come back to the tri-pad with us and let the others have a look. Most have never seen a Human before.”
I shake my head. “I am not an exhibit. You’ve had a chance to examine me, but Harrow will be looking for me. He won’t be happy when he finds me gone.”
The response is immediate. Murmurs of “Harrow?” are repeated in urgent voices. Everyone suddenly looks very worried.
“Hurry up, everyone, get dressed,” the leader orders. “We have to take her back!”
He is already pulling on his own clothes, and the others are doing the same. I stand there in confusion, staring. Once they are all dressed, the leader seizes my arm, trying to hurry me along. I yank free of his grip and push him down. “Don’t grab me like that!”
He leaps to his feet and starts for me, but a voice stops him in his tracks. “What is happening here? Zedlin, look at me.”
We all turn toward the voice. Harrow stands at the edge of the clearing, tall and lean and sharp-eyed as he looks from one to the other. The leader is stammering out an answer. “We didn’t know,” he said. “We just wanted to talk to her.” He shrugs, gesturing pointlessly. “We don’t get to see Humans very often.”
“So, youngling, in order to talk to her you brought her away from where I left her. And then?”
One of the boys starts to cry, and I realize suddenly how young they all are. Sometimes it is hard to tell with Humans, and it is the same with the Fae. But a couple are scared out of their wits—that much is clear. Even Zedlin seems frightened.
“It was my fault,” I announce suddenly, surprising myself. “They came across me, and I asked them who they were and what they were doing. Then we came over here—where there was space to visit—so we could talk. I should have stayed where you left me, but I was curious.”
Harrow nods. “You have to be careful about giving in to curiosity.” He is speaking to all of us now. “Sometimes it can get you into a whole river of trouble. But you all seem happy enough, so let’s leave it there. Auris, we have to go on.”
With a quick wave to the youngsters—all of whom look immensely relieved to be spared whatever they are afraid Harrow might do to them if I told the truth—I follow the Forest Sylvan back into the trees.
“Goodbye, Auris,” I hear Zedlin call after me, and a chorus of voices join in.
I smile in spite of myself.
* * *
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