Nevermor by Lani Lenore Page B

all, but her
hair was long, though it floated all around her ethereally.  Wren guessed it
might have been the air from her wings that kept it floating all about.
    “You are a fairy
inside there!  I knew it!”
    The lovely beast
didn’t seem to care for her commentary, moving again so that Wren could not
make her out.
    “You know, I’m
not sure how we got to be enemies, but yet I’m not entirely convinced that you
weren’t the one who encouraged me to sleep when I nearly fell into the machine
at the mill – yet I don’t suppose that’s possible.  You couldn’t have been
there.  Someone would have seen you.  At least, I did think I had seen
you before that…”
    The light kept
drifting forward and then moving back toward her.  It whispered to her as if to
say: come, come .  Wren was not sure she wanted to follow.  If she
had been leery of Rifter, she trusted this sprite even less.
    “Rifter told me
to stay here,” she said firmly, but the whispers only grew more rapid and
insistent.  The sound of them curled around her ears and slithered over her
mind like serpents.  She tried to ignore them but they wouldn’t go away.  Even
clamping her hands over her ears didn’t work, and then finally she couldn’t
take anymore.
    “Alright!” she
cried.  “What do you want to show me?  But I’m not going far.”
    The glowing bulb
seemed pleased by that and drifted off through the trees.  Wren was uncertain,
but she followed it.  It moved slowly ahead of her, truly making an effort to
go at a pace that she would be able to keep up with it.  Wren tried to keep
watch around her, unsure of where she was being taken.
    Not much more,
and then I’m stopping ,
she told herself.
    Just about the
time she was going to say that she wouldn’t go farther without Rifter, she lost
sight of the fairy.
    She wouldn’t
have thought that the light could disappear as easily as that, bright as it
was, but yet the fairy had simply vanished.  Wren looked around her, quite
unsure of where she should go now or even where she had come from.  The trees
were very large here in this portion of the forest, and everything looked the
same.
    Though she had
her suspicions that the fairy had done this to her on purpose, Wren supposed
she must give her the benefit of the doubt and ask nicely for her to come back.
    “I lost you,”
she called, but not too loudly.  “Where did you go?”
    At that moment,
part of a nearby tree reached out to grab her.
    An arm slid
beneath her throat and she felt something hard pressing against her temple.  A
jolt ran through her and she barely had time to acknowledge her panic before
there was a voice in her ear.
    “You have five
seconds,” it said quickly.  “Who are you and what are you doing here, or I put
a bullet through your pretty head.”
    “Wait! 
Please!”  She struggled against the arm, but it held her tightly.
    “That’s the
wrong answer.”
    Near her ear,
she heard the hammer of a gun click back.  Her eyes grew wide with panic.  It
was all happening so quickly!  She was going to die and this would be it?  No!
    “ Stop ! ” 
The word echoed back to her, and she realized that she wasn’t the only one who
had said it.  From the corner of her eye, she could see that Rifter had found
her – not a moment too soon and thankfully not one too late.
    “This yours?”
the one behind her asked in his direction, and Wren was simply praying she’d
get out of this.
    Rifter seemed to
like the sound of that, because he nodded.  “Yeah, that’s right.  Let her go,
Nix.”
    They know each
other ,
she thought with relief.  The arm holding her loosened, and once she was able
to break free, she went directly to stand near Rifter.  From there, she was
able to look at the face of the one who had nearly killed her.
    He had messy
blond hair down to his chin, stringy and damp.  He was not dressed in leaves
but in a brown cloak that hung over his lean body, camouflaging him.  The cloth
was