Wood Sprites

by Wen Spencer

  He gave a little whimper. “It just that Joy is dreaming of cake and she’s wiggling her fingers and it tickles.”

  At times he said things that hurt Louise’s brain. How did he know that Joy was dreaming of cake? Was he somehow aware of her thoughts? How was he aware at all? He was a couple of frozen cells inside a magical egg-shaped thing riding on top of a magical generator within a robotic body.

  And how exactly was he feeling Joy wiggling her fingers? The storage bin didn’t have sensors.

  She petted his head to give them both something else to think about. He laid his head on her lap and thumped his tail.

  Jillian hadn’t noticed the exchange. She bent over her tablet, memorizing lines to the play. Between stealing the nactka and the embryos, they’d ignored the play but it was nine days away. It would have been less if the bombing hadn’t pushed it back.

  “We’re going to school,” Louise whispered. “And I know you’re going to have a lot of questions, but you need to not ask us any of them until we’re alone.”

  He whimpered again and sighed deeply.

  Louise felt bad for him. It would kill her not to ask questions all day. Maybe there were other ways of getting around him not talking. “Can you text?”

  “Yes! We can!” He’d gained more control over Tesla’s body over the weekend. His pointed ears dipped in worry. “Can we?”

  “Yes, you can text me.” She hugged him. “But you’ll have to be patient for me to answer. I might not be able to text you back immediately.”

  * * *

  Jillian surprised Louise by introducing Iggy to Nikola Tesla. He’d been waiting at the top of the station’s staircase. As usual, he went to pet Tesla even as he called hello to them.

  “Iggy, this is Nikola Tesla.” Over the weekend, it had become apparent that Nikola was their little brother, while Tesla was his robotic body. They’d debated on his last name. Should they use “Mayer” or “Bell” or “Dufae?” In the end they’d decided to use their biological father’s name, even though it was too dangerous to actually say aloud. “Nikola, this is Iggy.”

  Iggy paused with hand outstretched, a smile tugging at his mouth, as if he wasn’t sure if what she’d said was a joke or not.

  “We downloaded a personality and gave him a real name,” Jillian lied. “Say ‘hello,’ Nikola.”

  Nikola tilted his head in confusion and then leaned close to Louise to whisper. “We’re so confused. When can we talk?”

  Louise glared at Jillian for making things harder. Jillian rolled her eyes, indicating that she had a plan but couldn’t discuss it right now. Louise sighed and patted Nikola, “When we introduce you to someone, you can say ‘hello’ and ‘nice to meet you’ and such.”

  Nikola stared at her for a minute and then turned to Iggy. “Hello. Nice to meet you.” He looked back at Louise. “Silly old bear.”

  How did she get to be the bad guy in this?

  “Do you have your lines memorized?” Jillian changed the subject.

  “Yes. I think.” Iggy held up his left hand like it was a hook and waved it. “Spirit that haunts this dark lagoon tonight, dost hear me?”

  “Are you talking to us?” Nikola asked.

  Louise groaned and pulled him on ahead via the leash. “Why don’t you two practice in private?”

  “He wasn’t talking to us?” Nikola whispered.

  “No!” Louise whispered.

  * * *

  Flying Monkey Five was in their classroom.

  Louise had paused in the doorway at the sight of a weirdly familiar strange boy standing in profile in front of Miss Hamilton’s desk. His focus was on Miss Hamilton, letting Louise stare unnoticed as she tried to figure out where she knew him from. He was as tall as Iggy and slender without seeming weedy. Handsome and obviously rich, he would have been a perfect prince for Elle’s Little Mermaid princess.

  Prince Charming made her think of Crown Prince Kiss Butt, and, with a gasp, she realized who the strange boy was. She jerked backwards into Jillian, who’d been trying to convince Nikola to stay in their locker instead of exploring the new landscape.

  “What’s—” Jillian started to ask what was wrong and then yelped slightly in surprise as Louise caught her wrist and dragged her down the hall at a half run. “What’s going on? Where are we going?”

  Louise banged open the girls’ restroom door and pulled Jillian and Nikola in with her. Most boys would rather die than go into a girls’ restroom; she was praying that Flying Monkey Five was the same. But he was one of them: kidnappers and killers. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Louise opened her mouth to answer and then thought to check the stalls for anyone who might overhear them. She went down the row, swinging open the doors one after another. The metal doors clanged loudly in the tiled room.

  “Lou!” Jillian complained. “You’re scaring me.”

  “One of them is here. Flying Monkey Five. He’s in our classroom.”

  Jillian gasped and skittered sideways from the doorway, looking scared. Louise really wanted her to be the brave one, because if she wasn’t, it meant Louise would have to be the brave one, and she didn’t feel ready to be it.

  “What—what is he doing here?” Jillian whispered.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Louise paced in front of the sinks. The mirror reflected back her twin’s fear twice fold. “Esme warned us about the Empire of Evil, and he’s one of them. She said that they’re dangerous. He’s probably here to do evil things—like kidnap us or steal Joy or something.” She didn’t want to scare Nikola by adding him to the list of possible targets. It was suspicious, though, that right after they’d saved the last of Esme’s babies, the Flying Monkey had showed up.

  Jillian went into one of the stalls and shut the door and locked it. She stood in the stall for a minute before asking fearfully, “Do you really think so?”

  Louise forced herself to ignore the fear that was jittering through her. “Why else would he suddenly show up at our school?”

  Jillian unzipped her pants, pushed them down and sat on the toilet. She was stalling though—she wasn’t actually going pee. “How would anyone know about Joy? And even if they figured out how to open Dufae’s box—which I’m betting it would take them more than a few days to do—how would they know that Dufae or someone else didn’t take the nactka with Joy in it? It has been sitting around locked for nearly three hundred years.”

  “I feel weird,” Nikola whimpered. “What is this I feel?”

  Louise suspected he was afraid for the first time in his life. She hugged him tightly. “It’s okay. We won’t let anyone take Joy.”

  Jillian growled softly in the stall. “We’ve missed something if he’s here. We’ve never been fingerprinted, so they couldn’t have found us that way. We never showed up on the museum security system while the chest was at the museum. We erased everything at Dad’s work, so no one should even be able to link us to Esme or Dufae. Even if they did, they couldn’t know that we know anything about unlocking magical boxes.”

  “April knows,” Louise said.

  “She knows that Esme left us something, but we haven’t told her about being elves, or Dufae, or any of that, so she couldn’t have known we were going to take anything from the museum. And why would anyone suspect two nine-year-old girls of robbing a museum with magic?”

  “But the Flying Monkey is here,” Louise pointed out since it was undeniable.

  “The only reason he’d be here is . . .” Jillian trailed off.

  “Why?” Louise asked.

  “I don’t know!” Jillian stood and zipped up her pants. “I was hoping you’d answer the question.”

  Jillian came out of the stall and washed her hands.

  Nikola glanced back and forth between them. “We’re confused. Who is the Flying Monkey? Is he one of the men with the guns?”

  They hadn’t stopped to consider that Ming the Merciless might have robbed their house. It was a fr
ightening thought. “Maybe.”

  Because of the robbery, they had decided to bring everything irreplaceable with them to school, and that included the photographs. Louise dug them out of her backpack and flipped through six pictures. The third photo made her stop with a gasp.

  “What is it?” Jillian asked.

  Louise held out the photograph of the blindfolded woman. “Is this who I think it is?”

  Jillian frowned in concentration. “It might be her. I’m not sure.” She swore. “Our stupid genetic donor! Why give us a photo of a woman and then draw a blindfold on the picture so we can’t recognize her?”

  “Who?” Nikola moved so he could see the photo. “Oh, Anna Desmarais.”

  “How do you know?” Jillian growled.

  “Facial recognition is at ninety-six point three percent. The blindfold doesn’t cover all of the bone structure of the eyes, so the match is positive. We could be a hundred percent sure if we could see the eye fold and retina.”

  Jillian snatched the photograph out of Louise’s hand and read the words off the back. “Why did Esme write ‘Queen Gertrude of Denmark’ on this? Why not Anna Desmarais? And why did she use so many literary references? What does Hamlet have to do with Flash Gordon and the Wizard of Oz?”

  “Maybe Anna isn’t her real name,” Louise guessed. “Maybe Esme didn’t know anyone’s real names, only that they were using fake names, and guessed that they would change their names again before we would ever meet them.”

  “But why then call her father the king of Denmark? Is Edmond Desmarais Neil’s brother? Why would either one of them be king? Wouldn’t this be like Prince Albert and Prince Philip? If you married the queen, you don’t become the king! You stay a prince; your son is the one that becomes the next king.”

  Louise had no idea how to answer any of those questions.

  The bell rang, and they were now officially late.

  “What are we going to do?” Jillian cried.

  Louise fanned the photographs so she could see all of them at once. Other than the old vintage photographs and Esme’s cryptic labels, they had no idea who the people were or why Esme considered them dangerous. “We need to find out who they really are. Either we go back home or we go to class.”

  “He’s in class,” Jillian pointed out. “If we cut class, the school will call Mom and Dad.”

  Louise shook her head against that possibility. They needed to keep their parents safe.

  “We could do it,” Nikola said.

  “Do what?” Jillian said.

  “I don’t know . . .” Louise didn’t want Nikola to use his taser. She’d actually considered it for one second when Jillian asked what they were going to do. That would end badly. They were in deep enough trouble without adding assault and battery.

  “We can search databases for pattern matches,” Nikola said. “It’s part of Tesla’s programming.”

  “These are old photos. You might have to search back in some old archives to find matches.”

  Nikola nodded. “We will. It’s a little distracting. We’ll have to focus on it.”

  “It will be better if you stay in our locker. You’ll have Joy with you. The two of you together should be safe.” Or cause enough chaos to bring down the building. Louise really wished she felt better about leaving the two alone, but taking them into the classroom with the Flying Monkey seemed like a worse plan.

  * * *

  Once they had Nikola hidden, they walked slowly to the classroom, hand in hand.

  Louise listed out the reasons they had nothing to fear but fear itself. “They can’t know about the babies. They can’t know about the codex. They can’t know about Joy. So they can’t suspect us of being anything but normal fifth-graders.”

  “What about Lemon-Lime JEl-Lo?” Jillian whispered. “Nigel could have ratted us out.”

  Louise shook her head. “No, the photographs are eighteen years old or more. Flying Monkey is here because of something that happened before we were even born. Maybe why we were born—or at least why Alexander was born. The way our life has been going lately, I don’t think we can even guess what the hell is going to happen next.”

  Jillian hugged her tightly. “We’re innocent, normal fifth-graders.”

  * * *

  It was an act that they weren’t scared, so Jillian walked in first, giving the performance of her life. Louise followed, hoping that she wasn’t blowing it for both of them.

  Flying Monkey Five was still at Miss Hamilton’s desk. He glanced toward the door as they came in, and his gaze sharpened in interest. It took all of Louise’s control to keep fear off her face. She should look curious. An innocent, normal fifth-grader would be interested in a new kid. Oh, God, she hoped she looked curious.

  He did look like Crown Prince Kiss Butt. He had the same strong but nearly too sharp lines of his face. His hair was pale blond. His eyes were blazing green; it looked like he had to be wearing contacts to make them that vivid. He locked gazes with her, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

  Something about it made her angry. She didn’t know who or what he was, but she had spent a lifetime getting around people smarter than him. She gave him her best “I have no idea what you’re talking about” smile. As his smile faded, she felt stronger, like she’d already defeated him.

  She settled in her seat beside Jillian and ran her hands over the desk. The school had tried to keep them apart in first grade. It was a simple matter to lay siege to the adults’ patience and slowly but surely push for what they wanted: seats together. It had taken a month to wear down two sets of teachers, the principal and vice principal and both of their parents, but in the end they had won.

  Game of wits, she could win.

  “Class, this is Tristan LaClaire. He’s going to have a very hard time as there’s only a few days of school left, so please be nice to him.”

  There was already a desk for him as if produced by magic. Thankfully it was across the room, but still he had direct sight of them without needing to turn around.

  Elle put her hand up as Tristan settled into his seat. “What will he be doing during the play? All the parts have been taken.”

  Miss Hamilton considered. She probably thought about the fact that they were short on pirates but also knew that the pirates were losing popularity in her class as the rehearsals continued. A new student didn’t need an immediate strike against him. “He can be one of the Lost Boys.”

  “But we already have all the Lost Boys.”

  “We can have an unnamed one. It won’t be a problem.”

  Unnamed Lost Boy. Louise shivered slightly at how fitting that felt for the boy seated to her far right. Tristan LaClaire? She felt sure that wasn’t his name any more than Flying Monkey Five.

  He was here, reason unknown. The key to what he wanted might be connected to who he really was.

  * * *

  It was nerve-wracking to have Tristan, or whatever his real name was, in class. He was there, in the corner of her eye, no matter how hard she tried to ignore him. Every time she glanced his direction, he would meet her gaze and smirk.

  It was the smirk that annoyed her the most. He knew that she had no idea why he was there and was feeling superior about it. Worse, she couldn’t even guess. If her life didn’t include baby dragons and robots possessed by unborn brothers and books of magic, she could easily come up with a dozen reasons why Tristan was in their classroom. With all normal logic removed, though, it was dangerous to try and guess.

  In art class, they were doing team projects. Tristan was assigned to Elle’s team since they were short one person. Louise worked to ignore him, making it a point to sit with her back to them. Unlike class, though, they were allowed to talk in the art room.

  “I don’t think they like me much.” Tristan’s tone was more smugly amused than hurt.

  “They’re just really shy.” Elle surprised Louise by coming to their defense. “Until recently they didn’t talk to anyone. Which is kind of sad. They
’re actually very nice once they get over being too shy to talk.”

  “Oh.” He sounded almost concerned. Was he simply changing his tone because he thought that Elle was a friend of theirs? “What brought them out of their shell?”

  Louise nearly forgot how to breathe as she realized that Elle could spill everything. Their contact with Nigel made it clear that they’d put too much into the videos; anyone who watched them would assume that Lemon-Lime knew everything about Elfhome.

  “They joined the Girl Scouts.” Elle misled him brilliantly.

  * * *

  By lunchtime Louise was jumpy and short-tempered. She just wanted to lock herself in the girls’ restroom and scream. Jillian seemed fine, at least on the surface, but she’d retreated behind Peter Pan’s fearless personality.

  Still, Jillian flinched just as much as Louise when Tristan sat down at their lunch table.

  Zahara eyed him warily and asked the question that everyone had avoided all morning. “Why did you come to school so late in the year? We’re almost done.”

  “I’m on a fact-finding mission,” Tristan said.

  “Facts on what?” Louise forced herself to ask.

  “This and that.” He poked at his lunch. “How good the food is, for one. It made more sense for me to come now and see if I like this school enough to go in the fall than to wait until September and find out I hate it.”

  “You hate it, then?” Jillian dared to ask.

  “I’d have to be fairly shallow to make up my mind I hated something in less than four hours,” Tristan said.

  Louise was tempted to say it had only taken her four minutes to hate him, but she clenched her teeth against the impulse.

  “Why did you change schools so close to the end of the year?” Zahara asked. “Did your family move?”

  Something like pain flashed through his eyes, and he focused on his plate. “Yes. My father’s work keeps me moving around. I was in Pasadena, California. Bird-watching.”

  After all of Nikola’s “we” comments, Louise noticed that Tristan said “I” when he talked about moving and work. It seemed that, if he was telling the truth, he’d been in California alone. Who would send a nine-year-old alone to the other side of the country?