Wood Sprites

“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.”

That was what Tristan was doing? Or did he not know what happened after he found the tengu? He had asked Celine if Yves had captured Shoji; he’d left before the fighting started. Louise wanted to believe that Ming kept the slaughter from the half-elf. That Tristan was innocent by way of ignorance.

The curtain rustled back to admit a tall man in blue scrubs, ending all conversation. According to the ID badge clipped to his shirt pocket, he was Dr. Stefan Harmeling. He had a black Afro cropped short into stubs, dark brown skin, and tattoos tracing up his arms. “Jesús santisimo,” he whispered. He cautiously canted to the side so he could eye Crow Boy’s back. “Wings. Now I’ve seen everything.”

The children jumped slightly when the curtain rustled open again. It was only a nurse joining the doctor in the area.

“It’s okay. No one is going to harm you.” Doctor Harmeling smiled reassuringly and cautiously closed the distance between him and Crow Boy. “Let’s take a look at you and see how badly you’re hurt.”

Crow Boy scowled at him and then focused back on the twins. “Do you have someplace safe to go? You should leave now. Protect yourself.”

Jillian gave Peter Pan’s fearless laugh. “We, at least, have clothes on! You’re going to be naked when they’re done with you.”

And he’d need them to dismiss his wings, but when the hospital staff wasn’t paying close attention.

“They will follow,” Crow Boy said. “They are relentless.”

“First they’re going to have to put out the fire and track down the vehicles. We sent all the vehicles away from the mansion.”

“Well. . actually. . the truck is still there,” Nikola interrupted in Elvish. “It’s quite durable, so we’ve been using it as a battering ram. The rest we drove into the river; so it’s going to take them quite a long time to get them back.”

The doctor swung around to stare down at Nikola. “Jesús santisimo! Elfhome dogs can talk?”

The nurse carefully eyed Nikola. “It’s not a real dog. It’s one of those new very realistic nanny robots.”

“Perfect!” the doctor cried. “If it’s from Earth, it probably can translate for us.”

Louise winced. Nikola had never had to lie before. She wasn’t sure he knew how. He shrank back with a whimper as everyone in the room focused on him.

The doctor crouched down to Nikola’s level. “Hey, boy, do you speak English?”

Nikola whimpered again and looked to the twins and then looked at the doctor and then back to the twins.

“Dog, what’s your name?” the doctor said.

“Konnichiwa.” Nikola slowly stumbled over the Japanese, using his deep male samurai voice. “Boku wa Akita da.”

Strictly speaking, he was an Akita.

The doctor sighed and scrubbed his face. “Okay, we need a translator here as soon as possible and a child advocate. The fibula is fractured and this bruise has a tread pattern on it. Someone stomped on his leg to break it. If I remember my history correctly, the treaty forbids children from being removed from Elfhome, so I’m thinking that someone might be slave-trading them.”

He wasn’t that far from wrong.

* * *

Luckily the hospital didn’t have a translation device equipped to handle Elvish. They cycled a dozen human languages past the twins, three of which they were fluent in, but they pretended not to understand. The child advocate arrived and signed release forms so that Crow Boy could be X-rayed and MRI scanned. The test results triggered a phone call to the city zoo to summon a vet.

“This is so wild!” the vet murmured as the adults all eyed the test results.

Dr. Harmeling shook his head. “I’m not sure what the girls are. Their vitals are fine, so we don’t really have a reason to test them. But he’s definitely not human.”