Wood Sprites

by Wen Spencer

  “And this is really important.” Louise sent him all the pictures of the Dufae box copied from the AMNH’s server. “This was part of the exhibit. Sparrow took it back to Elfhome. It might look like a block of wood, but it’s a box. And it has eleven of these inside.” They had carefully taken pictures of the nactka inside a light box and erased all GPS tags on it. No one would be able to trace the picture back to their bedroom. “It’s really important that you find the box and get it back to Earth. If you can’t get it back to Earth, get it to the sekasha and have them open them.”

  “What are these?”

  Jillian opened her mouth, and Louise was suddenly overwhelmed with the sense that she was going to say the worst possible thing.

  “We’re not sure!” Louise cried before her twin could reply. “The elf that died in the French Revolution believed that they were linked to a powerful spell. He brought them to Earth where he thought they could be safely studied. We’re not sure yet what the spell does, but it would be very bad if they’re used.”

  “Sparrow took this box?” Nigel asked.

  Jillian gave Louise another dark look for telling the truth about the nactka. “She’s one of the anti-elves. She’s the one that set the trap for Windwolf.”

  “Sparrow? The viceroy’s secretary is the one that tried to kill him?”

  “Husepavua,” Louise corrected him. “We don’t have any proof. It would be our word against hers. She’s an elf—or pretending to be an elf—or something—and other elves are going to believe her first.”

  “You can’t tell anyone!” Jillian said. “We wouldn’t be telling you except we don’t know anyone already on Elfhome, and someone should be looking for the box and we can’t go ourselves.”

  Nigel’s eyes widened with alarm. “Ach, no, ye cannae do that! Ye are just wee lasses.”

  Apparently Nigel’s Scottish burr went into overdrive when he was extremely rattled. Louise felt guilty for alarming him. The truth was that if they went to Elfhome, they would be focused on finding Alexander. They couldn’t trust Nigel, though, with all of their secrets. They couldn’t tell him anything about her.

  “Here.” Jillian opened up her purse and handed him the whistle. They’d brought two just in case only one of them managed to make the meeting. “This is the gossamer call we promised you.”

  “You’ll need it on Elfhome.” Louise showed him how the tones could be changed by pressing his fingertips against the holes.

  Jillian pointed out the spell etchings on the call. “We’ve found a spell that works as an amplifier for the ultrasonic frequencies. It needs magic to work, but it will make the call’s range to be . . . well, we’re not sure of the range. We haven’t been able to test it, but we think it’s close to a thousand miles, or one mei.”

  “You’ll have to be careful on Elfhome not to blow it with anything metal in your hands—that could twist the magic, and the results could be bad,” Louise warned. “Here is a list of gossamer commands we’ve pieced together from analyzing video. It’s kind of like Morse code. We’re guessing on these, so don’t take them as God’s word.”

  “Thank you so very much. I never expected Lemon-Lime to be two little girls. You didn’t come here all by yourself, did you? You have someone . . . ?”

  “Our parents,” Louise said.

  “They’re here?” Nigel glanced toward the door.

  Louise jumped a little. “Someplace.”

  “But they don’t know about our videos!” Jillian said.

  “They don’t?” Nigel looked concerned.

  “They’re super-protective, and they were afraid that if we posted our videos, we’d pick up creepy stalkers. They’re not very computer smart, so they didn’t believe we could stay anonymous. We knew that if we were careful, no one could trace our posts back to us, so we—kind of—went around them.”

  Like Anna Desmarais probably would. Louise cringed inwardly.

  “So they don’t know how popular you are?” Nigel asked.

  “No!” the twins cried.

  “We didn’t even know,” Jillian grumbled. “We apparently use the Internet in a much different way than the average person. We know about all the social media, but we don’t hit those sites.” Until recently, they didn’t have anyone to be social with. “We do research.” Hack into secure sites. “And post our videos.”

  Embarrassed, Louise turned the conversation back to the whistle. “The elves seemed to be exploiting instinctual behavior with the gossamer call. Elves have stated that the wargs are bioengineered for war. If the elves found a way to make sound trigger certain responses in all animals, then this whistle might effect anything they’ve created.”

  “So it works on wargs?” Nigel tried the various finger positions.

  “We think it will, but the commands and reactions aren’t going to be the same as for the gossamer. You would have to use trial and error, and that could be dangerous.”

  Nigel suddenly lifted the call and blew on it.

  “No!” both the girls cried.

  Joy appeared perched on Nigel’s shoulder. She was smeared in frosting. “Who’s there?” She leaned in close to peer nose to nose at the man who had gone still with surprise. “Cake?” She held out a fistful of white cake.

  “Oh, you bottomless pit!” Louise cried and reached up to pry her carefully from Nigel’s shoulder. “What have you done?”

  “So hungry!” Joy crammed the cake into her mouth. “Nom, nom, nom.”

  “We fed you before we came.” Jillian tried to wipe the frosting off Nigel’s shoulder but only smeared it more.

  “Cake yummy!” Joy licked her hands.

  Nikola, who had been watching the door intently, suddenly announced, “Tut, tut, it looks like rain.”

  “Nikola!” the twins cried.

  “But-but-but mother is coming!” Nikola cried and then grumbled, “Silly old bear.”

  Both girls yipped in fear. They hurriedly opened up Tesla’s storage and shoved Joy into it.

  Jillian pointed fiercely at Nigel. “You saw nothing!”

  Nigel blinked for a moment and then said, “Yes, nothing, nothing at all.”

  “She’s using her phone to track me,” Nikola whispered.

  “Oh God, did she hear anything we said?” Jillian cried.

  “No, I don’t think so.” Nikola was torn between looking at the door and at Nigel, who was watching with eyebrows raised. “She keeps pushing buttons on her phone and swearing. I don’t think she knows she’s already connected to my command system.”

  Jillian caught Nikola by the leash. “Come on, let’s head her off. We can’t let her catch us alone in a room with a stranger.”

  Louise let Jillian go on ahead. She wanted to say good-bye properly instead of tearing off like a pair of headless chickens. “It was nice to actually meet you. Be careful on Elfhome.” She didn’t know what else to say; she had never had to say good-bye like this before. “Maybe we can get together when you get back.”

  “Yes, I would like that.” Nigel calmly pocketed the whistle. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask: what exactly did I just not see?”

  He meant Joy.

  Louise blushed hotly. “We’re not sure. We—we found her in the box before Sparrow took it to Elfhome. We think there are eleven more like her still inside it. You have to save them.”

  Nigel took a deep breath as he realized that saving the baby dragons meant facing down Sparrow with a small army at her bidding. “I will do my best.” He reached out and took both her hands in his. “You should tell your parents.”

  “Tell them what?”

  “Tell them everything. You two are very intelligent. Your videos—now that I know how young you really are—they’re just breathtakingly clever, but you’re just wee things, and I’m afraid you’re getting in over your heads. These are dangerous people you’ve stumbled into. You two shouldn’t be doing this all by yourself.”

  Louise huddled in the back of the car, hugging Nikola tightly. She really want
ed the whole night of bad to be over. The only good thing was meeting Nigel Reid, and Joy had totally screwed that up. It was one thing to hand over the whistle and tell him about Dufae’s box. It was another to show him Joy and forbid him from studying her closely. Now they had to worry that Nigel wouldn’t keep his word and pretend that he hadn’t seen the little dragon. That he wouldn’t follow his natural curiosity and try to find out their names and who they were and where they lived . . .

  At least there was some comfort that he would be on Elfhome in less than thirty days and a universe removed from them for months after that. She wanted to believe that they’d done the right thing in trusting him so much.

  Certainly if she didn’t trust someone, it was Anna Desmarais. The gala was supposed to signal the end of the war between her and their mother, but Louise got the distinct impression that it had been a false peace treaty. A new battle was about to break out, and it was going to be worse. Much worse. There was no word or look or action, however, that explained why Louise felt this so strongly. Anna had been polite, smiling, listening carefully to their mother’s conversation and nodding in response.

  Ironically their mother had judged their interaction with Anna successful enough to warrant forgiveness for sneaking Nikola into the gala. “I’m still mad that she cornered me for hours, but at least I knew you were safe with Tesla. Were you able to see Nigel Reid?”

  “Yes, we saw him,” they said.

  “He was awesome,” Jillian added without explaining that the man had dropped everything to spend time in private with them.

  Tell them everything. Louise felt as if disaster was about to crash down upon them. Nothing felt safe to say. She curled tighter into a ball and let Jillian answer questions about the face-painting and other things they’d supposedly done before their mother rejoined them. Before she knew it, they’d turned on to their street and were driving up to their house. They were one of the few houses with a basement garage instead of apartment. The big door sensed them approach and slid upward just as the car turned into the driveway. A light flashed on the dashboard.

  “Huh,” their father said as the car slotted itself perfectly into the garage. “Security system just crashed. I hope it doesn’t call the police.”

  The mother swore softly at her phone. “I can’t get it to respond.”

  “I’ll reset it from the keypad in the kitchen.” Their father hopped out of the door and trotted up the steps.

  “No!” The word slipped out of Louise. It tore something loose, and she was flooded with sudden certainty that if she didn’t stop him, she’d never see him again. She lunged between the front seats and slammed down on the horn. In the enclosed garage, the sound seemed like a sudden loud cry of pain. She beat on the horn, blaring it again and again.

  “Lou?” Jillian cried while Nikola yelped in surprise.

  “Louise!” their mother cried. “Louise! Stop that.”

  Louise leaned against the horn, pressing hard. It screamed warning even as shots rang out upstairs.

  “Warning!” Tesla barked in his deep Japanese man voice. “Intruders! Home security has been breached. Response code five! Secondary target requires assistance.”

  The car doors all opened, and Tesla sprang out. Louise followed.

  “Louise! Jillian! No!” their mother shouted.

  Sounding like a grizzly-sized dog, Tesla went snarling up the steps.

  There was an odd roar in the kitchen and a scream of human pain and another gunshot, this one sounding farther away.

  “Louise, get back in the car! George!”

  A moment later her father had swept her up and was carrying her back down the steps.

  “Nikola!” Louise shouted, and then she realized that it was the robotic dog responding, not her baby brother. “Tesla, cancel response code five! Nikola! Nikola come back!”

  Seconds later, she and her father and Nikola were all trying to fit into the front seat of the car. One of them leaned against the horn and it blared and everyone shouted in fear. And then the car was traveling backward out of the garage, horn still blaring, Louise, her father, and Nikola all flailing in the bucket seat.

  “Get in the backseat!” their mother shouted.

  Nikola tumbled into the backseat and Louise followed and the car swung around, its headlight picking out a man rolling on the sidewalk, his black shirt on fire. There were two more men getting into a black SUV parked two doors down.

  Then they swept past the SUV, and the gunmen were left behind them.

  * * *

  The house looked like a tornado had hit it. All the drawers and bookcases had their contents scattered on the floor. The little television screen in the kitchen and the big screen in the living room were both shattered. Random holes had been punched into the walls and furniture overturned, its lining cut.

  They had driven straight to the police station and then, with a squad-car escort, cautiously returned to the now-empty house.

  “It was dark, and it happened so fast.” Their father was recounting what had happened while they huddled together on the front porch. “One of the girls started to beep the horn, and then something small—like a rat—jumped onto my shoulder—and then there were these flashes at the end of the hall, like bottle rockets going off—and some people ran out the front door. When we pulled out, it looked like one of the men was on fire.”

  Their dad’s shoulders were covered with cake frosting. The rat obviously had been Joy. They’d been calling her a baby dragon—did that mean she’d actually breathed fire on one of the gunmen? Where was she now? Had she been hit by a bullet? She wasn’t inside Tesla.

  The two police officers had checked the house to make sure it was clear and were now collecting evidence.

  “Casings,” one cop said from near the door. “Nine millimeter. One, two, three, four—looks like a full clip. One lucky”—he glanced toward Louise and Jillian and changed what he was going to say—“dog.”

  The other stooped and picked up something on the kitchen floor. “This is a slug. Here’s another. Looks like it hit something and deformed.” They looked around the kitchen, apparently searching for evidence of ricochets.

  Louise wanted to search for Joy. “Can we pick stuff up or is this still a crime scene?”

  “You can clean things up, sweetheart,” the police officer said.

  “Aren’t you going to dust for fingerprints and . . . and . . . such?” their father asked.

  “They only do that on television. For a robbery where no one is actually hurt, we just file a report.”

  In unspoken agreement, the twins started to pick up in the kitchen. This was Joy; unless she was seriously hurt, she’d be near food. Their parents went upstairs with the policeman to assess the damage up there. She wasn’t in the pantry as Louise expected. Nor was she under the sink where they had hidden her cat food.

  “Where is she?” Jillian’s voice quavered.

  “Who?” Nikola had been pressed against Louise’s side since they arrived at the police station. “Joy?”

  “Yes, Joy.”

  “She’s in the refrigerator.”

  “How did she get in there?” Louise opened the door. The inside was almost as bad as the rest of the house. All the little Tupperware containers of leftovers had been torn open and licked clean. The fruit bin had little greasy handprints across the inside of the glass front, and only a few apple cores and some orange rinds remained. The baby dragon was asleep among the well-gnawed bones of the roast chicken. “Oh! Oh no! What a mess!”

  “I’ll clean the fridge. You get her.” Jillian swung the trashcan around to beside the open refrigerator.

  Louise scooped Joy up. Over the layer of frosting, she now had butter and various types of grease. She smelled of rosemary and garlic and chicken fat, with hints of oranges. The baby dragon yawned but otherwise slept through the quick warm bath in the sink with a large dose of dish soap to strip off the grease.

  “What are we going to tell Mom and Dad?” Loui
se cried as she quickly dried Joy with a clean tea towel.

  “That those men also took all the food in the fridge.” Jillian dumped the chicken bones into the trashcan and covered them up with the torn foam from the living room couch.

  “Why would anyone break into a house and steal leftovers? Mom and Dad are never going to believe—”

  “Why would anyone steal our toothbrushes?” their father said as he came down the steps with the police officer. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Was it an expensive electric toothbrush?” The cop made notes on his tablet.

  “No, they were just normal toothbrushes like you get at the supermarket. They’re—what, ten dollars? I don’t know. Who takes used toothbrushes?”

  “You got me,” the cop said. “First time I’ve seen it. So, what was in the safe in the bedroom?”

  “Just paperwork. It was basically a fireproof filing box. It had our passports and marriage license and birth certificates and things like that. God, what a nightmare.”

  “You’re alive and your family is fine,” the cop said. “Count your blessings.”

  Riding to school with Nikola Tesla Dufae was totally different than being with Tesla the nanny-bot. They’d learned that he was enraptured by any shiny new situation and would fall silent, satisfied to just look and listen. Once things became familiar, however, he started to ask questions. Sunday had been a hell of an effort to get him to stay quiet as their parents cataloged all that had been taken from the house. Halfway to the city, on the crowded train, the questions started.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We told you that you shouldn’t talk unless we’re alone,” Louise whispered as the high school student standing beside them glanced down at Nikola. She tightened her hold on his leash.