Wood Sprites

by Wen Spencer

  And this was the best plan he could come up with?

  Granted he had mowed these two down easily enough, but her spider-sense was screaming “this will not end well.” Louise stepped over Celine and grabbed a large sack of flour from the pantry shelf. She had only seconds before everything toppled to complete disaster.

  As if on cue, someone shouted, “We need help! The yamabushi is loose!”

  Louise ran into the kitchen, carrying the bag of flour.

  After the cave dark of the dank sub-basement, the kitchen was a sudden assault of light and smell. Every light was on, reflecting off the gleaming granite counters and stainless-steel appliances. The coppery scent of fresh blood mixed with hot spices and fried onions. Dirty pots and pans beside the sink with steaming water still running was proof that Crow Boy had taken the elves off guard. The fight had spilled to the other side of the kitchen, where he leaped and kicked and spun, fending off Nattie and three males armed with butcher knives. Shouts of “The yamabushi is loose” rang deeper within the house, and Louise could hear reinforcements racing toward the kitchen. Crow Boy was about to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

  Louise put the flour bag on the granite counter and quickly sketched a disperse spell onto the wrapper.

  Nattie snatched up one of the kitchen chairs and swung it hard at Crow Boy. It caught him mid-leap and smashed him down to the floor. The elves leapt to pin the boy to the floor.

  “Don’t kill him,” one of the males warned. “We need him breathing.”

  “Breathing, yes.” Nattie stomped down on Crow Boy’s left leg, and there was a sickening crack. “In one piece, no. Give me that knife.”

  Louise gave the flour bag a hard shove, sending it skidding across the polished stone. She shouted the trigger word. The bag exploded as all the particles blossomed in all directions like an instant dry blizzard.

  In the whiteout, Nattie cursed loudly. “Oh, shit! The wood sprites!”

  Flour was drifting down. When it settled it would be useless. Louise needed a spark to cause a dust explosion!

  Jillian screamed as Celine suddenly caught her from behind.

  “I’ve got one of them!” Celine cried. “The other one is here—”

  “Let her go!” Louise snatched up a skillet from the sink and swung as hard as she could at the female’s knee. The elf screamed and lunged toward her. Louise backhanded her with the skillet like a tennis racket. There was a satisfying clang as the stainless-steel pan connected with Celine’s face.

  Celine lost her grip on Jillian. Louise caught her twin by the wrist and dragged her away from the elf. Celine staggered backwards, glaring at Louise as blood seeped from her mouth.

  “You little breeding bitch,” the elf snarled and picked up a meat cleaver. “We only need one of you.”

  Joy reared up on Jillian’s shoulder. Her mane flared out, and the baby dragon breathed a blast of fire at Celine’s face.

  Celine’s scream was drowned out by a massive fireball as the flour hazing the air exploded.

  Louise felt the explosion quake the floor under her feet, but the flames rushed past, a swirl of orange and reds, not touching the twins.

  “Mine, stupid poopy face, all mine!” Joy stood on Jillian’s shoulder, mane bristling, muttering in anger as the firestorm raged around them.

  The entire kitchen was on fire. Flames crawled up the walls and raced across the ceiling. The stove erupted in a secondary blast.

  “We have to get out of here!” Jillian cried.

  Celine seemed dead, curled into a tight ball of burnt flesh. Her body, though, reminded Louise that Crow Boy was somewhere in the kitchen.

  “We need to find Crow Boy first!”

  They found him halfway across the room, crawling toward them instead of toward the blown-open door.

  “I was afraid you would be trapped.” He coughed as they got him up. Using his wings and a hand on either of their shoulders, he managed to balance and then half-hop, half-fly toward the door.

  “That was stupid!” Louise cried. “There were dozens of ways we could have gotten out of there without them even knowing we were free. Next time, wait until we tell you what to do.”

  He grimaced in pain. “I sincerely hope there isn’t a next time.”

  The three of them couldn’t fit through the shattered doorway at the same time, so Louise stepped through first. It took her outside the protection of Joy’s shields, and the sudden flare of intense heat and thick smoke made her stumble forward, coughing.

  She saw the gunman just as he saw her. She stared unbelieving as he raised his rifle and took aim at her.

  But then the male fell over, twitching.

  “Hooyah!” Chuck Norris squeaked as she fist-pumped. “Taser is in the mouse!”

  “Chuck!”

  Chuck waved her tiny hands. “I totally saved you!”

  Louise scooped up the mouse robot. “Yes, you did. Thank you.”

  * * *

  The detached garage had obviously been built to hold horse carriages. It was a massive, dimly lit building with heavy timbers supporting its barnlike roof. It housed a dozen sleek modern cars. The light of the growing house fire flickered through celestial windows over the bay doors. From deep pools of darkness, the light gleamed off polished chrome in pinpoints like demonic eyes.

  A box truck sat in the oversized end bay. Louise’s heart sank as she envisioned trying to find Tesla in a tightly packed truck. As they rounded the back end, however, she was relieved to see that the elves hadn’t started to load it yet. Carefully labeled boxes sat in stacks, obviously organized into groups. The Jawbreakers stood on one of the larger cardboard boxes, waving.

  “That was so scary!” The two broke into excited squeaking. “We were so scared. And Lou! Bang! That was awesome. And then boom! Better than fireworks!”

  “Are you in here?” Jillian asked.

  “Yup! Yup! We’re right here!”

  The box had been labeled: “Wood Sprites’ toys, possibly dangerous.” It had been sealed shut with strapping tape. Louise pulled out her Swiss army knife. While the mice all sang “Boom, boom, fireworks bloom” in four-part harmony, Louise cut open the box and folded back the flaps to reveal Tesla.

  The mice fell silent as Louise snapped open the storage hatch. The nactka was still safely inside. The twins breathed out with relief, and all the mice cheered. The elves must not have realized that Tesla had a hidden compartment.

  “What is that?” Crow Boy looked like he was going to fall over.

  “The most important thing in the world.” Louise closed up the hatch. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”

  “Lou.” Nikola tugged at her hair. “Put this mouse someplace safe and I’ll drive Tesla.”

  She tucked the little bundle of fur into her carpenter pants leg pocket. Tesla shook awake and wagged his tail. She hugged him tightly.

  “Awesome!” Jillian cried as she lunged into the box to pull out their tablets from deep inside it. “They’re still password locked. And our phones! Yay!” She dove into another box that was labeled: “Wood Sprites’ objects, unidentified, possibly dangerous.”

  “What is so dangerous about a soldering gun?” Jillian muttered, still half inside the box.

  “We need to go!” Louise scanned the cars around them. “We’ll take one of the cars and send the rest out to random addresses to muddy the trail.”

  “I say we take the Lamborghini.” Jillian pointed at the dangerous-looking sports car.

  None of the cars blended in with normal traffic. All the other vehicles were the tanklike limousines. The Lamborghini could outrun anything short of a helicopter and maybe even that. At the moment, speed and maneuverability outweighed everything.

  “Does it have self-driving?” She scooped up the Jawbreakers. “It is a Lamborghini.”

  Nikola tilted his head, which usually meant he was accessing another computer. “Yes, it has a self-drive option. It’s recommended to be used when the driver has been drinking. What d
oes taking in fluids have to do with driving?”

  “We’ll explain later,” Jillian said. “Can you disarm its security and unlock it?”

  The Lamborghini chirped and its doors opened. The garage doors all started upwards, gliding slightly on well-oiled tracks, preparing for a mass exodus of cars.

  Crow Boy wavered in place, looking like he was upright on sheer willpower alone. There were a dozen thin cuts on his arms, seeping blood. If he fainted, Louise doubted that she and Jillian could get him into a car. It took several tense minutes to get him across the large garage to the Lamborghini and into the passenger seat, wings and all.

  Only then did Louise realize that the sports car was much smaller inside than she had expected. There was no backseat and there was a stick shift between the two front ones.

  Nikola hopped into the driver’s seat and put his paws on the steering wheel. “Where are we going?”

  “River Edge Station.” Jillian scrambled into the car and straddled the divider between the seats. “Yves can track us via the anti-theft GPS on this.”

  “No.” Louise vetoed that. “We need to get Crow Boy to a hospital quickly.”

  Crow Boy murmured something about no hospital and flying under the radar.

  Louise ignored him as she eyed the crowded interior. The only place for her was on Crow Boy’s lap. She eased carefully in, making sure that she didn’t put weight on his broken leg. “The trains don’t come often enough to River Edge; we’ll be stranded at the station for too long.” She tried not to be scared when he wrapped his arms around her. Joy sat on Louise’s lap and glared up at the boy. “We’ll go into the city and have the car make a bunch of stops. They won’t know where we actually got out.”

  “Okay, the city,” Nikola said. The engine suddenly rumbled loudly to life.

  “Oh shit, it’s a combustion engine?” Louise thought only big construction vehicles were still run by gasoline.

  Nikola tilted his head. “To go we do this?”

  The sports car leapt forward with a roar and squeal of tires. They slid sideways through the turn of the driveway and raced toward the far road. Louise and Jillian both shrieked in surprise and fear.

  “Oh. Sorry.” The car started to slow.

  “No, don’t slow down now! Go!”

  “Okay!” Nikola bounced in his seat with excitement and they flew into the night. “Mapping quickest route to Manhattan.”

  Third star to the right, Louise thought, straight on toward dawn.

  * * *

  It was twenty miles to Times Square. They did it in nearly ten minutes, leaving black contrails of tire marks at every turn. They slowed down—slightly—for the Lincoln Tunnel while Nikola explained that he’d avoided the George Washington Bridge because it was congested despite the 3:00 a.m. time.

  Louise gripped tight the armrest built into the door, trying not to scream as they zipped past slower cars. “I thought that self-driven cars couldn’t speed.”

  “Speed limit is set by the road, not the car.” Nikola tilted his head back and forth as he communicated with outside computers. “Snow or ice or something could change the speed that the road can be traveled safely, so the car is told the speed limit along with all the other traffic data. We’re filtering the information as it’s coming from the road, leaving all the other factors constant but changing the speed limit upwards by sixty miles per hour.”

  Louise glanced at the dashboard, read their speed, and whimpered slightly.

  They slewed sideways into an impossibly rare parking space within view of the Times Square subway station entrance. They sat there panting as the car rumbled in idle.

  “So, where do we go?” Jillian whispered.

  “We need to go to a hospital for—for—Crow Boy.” Louise winced as she realized that they’d spent the last hour fleeing and not asking the most basic of questions, like “What is your name?”

  “We need to take him to a hospital.”

  “Which one?” Jillian made it sound like there might be several hospitals that specialized in boys with wings.

  Louise decided to focus on “boy” instead of “wings.” “Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.”

  Nikola took that as a plan, and the car roared as it leapt out of the parking space.

  The automatic door opened for them as they helped Crow Boy into the emergency room. He barely seemed aware of what was happening, and it took all their strength to get him out of the low-slung car, upright and moving. There was a woman at the admittance desk intently working at a computer while fielding phone calls. She chewed gum while listening to the other side of the conversation, shaking her head and saying “No. No. No” as she stabbed computer keys. She glanced at them, focused back on her computer screen, and then, with confusion spreading across her face, looked back up. She sat there, jaw dropped, piece of gum showing, as they limped up to her desk. Her name tag read “Martha.”

  The woman’s stunned expression gave Louise courage to swallow down her fear and say in Elvish, “Please, we need help. His leg is broken.”

  The woman blinked rapidly. “Um, please hold.” She stabbed a button on her phone and leaned back to call, “Gerri! Gerri!”

  An older woman appeared, summoned by the shouting. “Oh, that’s new.”

  Louise used Elvish to plead for help and then made a show of pointing at Crow Boy’s obviously broken leg.

  “They’re elves!” Martha claimed.

  Gerri frowned at Crow’s black wings and then at the bug antennae that the twins were wearing. As they hoped, the wings won out for close inspection, which was good because the antennae were just wires attached to bobby pins.

  “He’s not an elf.” Gerri didn’t bother to qualify the twins.

  “She’s speaking Elvish.” Martha pointed at Louise.

  “You understand what she’s saying?”

  “I only recognize the one line from The Queen’s Puddin’ Cake. The Lemon-Lime JEL-Lo video. She’s asking for help. I’m not sure what the rest is. His leg looks broken.”

  “Do you speak English?” Gerri spoke slowly and loudly. After a moment, she tried Spanish, which was easier to ignore. “Shit. Okay, we need a patient advocate. Also try to find some kind of translator; we’re going to need one.”

  * * *

  Louise half-expected to be told to wait in the waiting room but they were all shepherded into the examination area. It was only when she glanced at Jillian that she realized why: the twins were covered in bruises, soot, dirt, and blood. Celine might have broken Louise’s nose when she slapped her; certainly it had bled for a long time afterwards.

  The staff’s focus was on Crow Boy once they determined that the girls weren’t showing any signs of shock. They hooked him up to an IV and monitors. A security guard appeared and swept them with a metal detector and collected the Swiss army knife, to Louise’s dismay.

  After several intense minutes, they were left alone as various trauma nurses conferred on the other side of the curtain. They spoke in a fast mix of medical terms and possible legal ramifications. In addition to being children without parental permission for medical treatment, the nurses were debating the wording of the treaty with the elves.

  “But we really don’t know if they’re elves or not,” one nurse complained.

  Another one answered with, “We have to assume that their baseline might not be normal to humans and work from there.”

  In the examining area’s bright light, Louise could also see Crow Boy clearly for the first time. He eyed their surroundings with confusion. He hadn’t been fully conscious throughout the whole discussion of where to go and the drive to the hospital. The IV was working and he was growing aware of where they were. Despite the fact that he was much taller than them, he looked only three or four years older. The idea that he was a ninth-grader triggered a memory, and she realized why he looked so familiar.

  “What?” Jillian asked in Elvish. “You just got a ‘Oh my God’ look on your face.”

  “We’
ve met Crow Boy before,” Louise whispered. “The day after the explosion, he was at the . . .” Elvish didn’t have a word for “museum” and she didn’t want to use any English around the hospital staff. “He was at the gift shop with the girls who were going to buy that snow ball.”

  “Snow ball?” Jillian clearly wasn’t following.

  “The snow thing.” Louise mimed shaking the snow globe. There might have been a word for “globe” in Elvish, but she didn’t know it. “Tianlong Hao.”

  “Oh! Yeah! He was there with all the kids.”

  They turned to look at him.

  “But he didn’t have wings then,” Jillian pointed out.

  No, he hadn’t.

  “I-I-I remember you now.” Crow Boy spoke in fluent Elvish. He frowned at the twins. “You were with a beautiful black woman and you had your dog with you. I couldn’t figure out how you got the robot past security.”

  They both squeaked with surprise.

  “But where were your wings?” Jillian asked.

  “I can dismiss them—if there’s magic. On Earth, we need to pass as human.”

  “Were all those other kids tengu, too?”

  “Yes, I was escorting them to Pittsburgh. We’ve been sneaking our people to Elfhome where they could live free of the oni. We started within days of the first Startup, before even the oni realized the opportunity that Pittsburgh gave them. Years and years, carefully moving our entire race across three worlds. And then everything came crumbling down this spring. Shiroikage’s spy ferreted out where the yamabushi had hidden the Chosen line.”

  Shiroikage was what Crow Boy called Yves. By “spy” did he mean Tristan? The half-elf had said he’d been bird-watching in California before coming to New York. “Clever crows,” Tristan had complained. Had Tristan really been searching for tengu? “In Pasadena?”

  “Yes. We thought we could hide the Chosen line among the masses in Los Angeles. I was guarding Keiko and Mickey as they attended school. I managed to get them to safety, but their parents . . .” He took a deep breath, as if he were fighting off tears. “You should go. Leave me.”