Sprite

Up high on a tree, sitting among the hundreds of emerald green leaves of the ancient oak, there was a spirit of the land. It had been seen in passing by countless humans over it’s equally countless years. Over that time, the humans it had seen had  called it many names; Fairy, fae, goblin, angel, demon,landvættir, kami, gremlin, and god. It’s favorite however had always been Sprite. The land spirit had felt the least weight of human preconception on that name, allowing itself more freedom then had it allowed some of the other names to take root into its essence, but it was unfortunately one of the names with the least amount of power with it.

This lack of power was what lead to some of the other names it was called: trickster and guide. While Sprite was fond of humans, and would help them in ways it could, Spirit wasn’t able to exert much force on the material. So, if a human child wandered off into the woods losing its parental guide; Sprite couldn’t pick the child up and bring it back, and it couldn’t make food for the child to eat, nor keep the child warm on its long trek. But it could move a few branches so the child wouldn’t see the berries that would make them sick and would instead find a few wild fruits, dropped by a sudden wind. Sprite could also cause some piled leaves to shift revealing an abandoned burrow that the child could huddle in until it was found. Not warm, but not earth cold either.

In this way it was guide, sometimes god or angel.

Sprite’s lack of direct power also didn’t stop it from protecting it’s wooded home when the other stronger spirits either had bigger dealings, or their power kept them out of the smaller spaces that humans sometimes wandered into. Sprite could not smite, calling down lightning nor raising up fire to destroy those that offended it. Sprite could not compel the large beasts of the land to descend on an axeman who had over extended his stay and taken more than they needed. Sprite could however cause that same logger to not find the tree they had marked that morning, obscuring paths once easily found and causing the water in their canteen to sour, forcing them home.

In this way it was trickster, sometimes goblin or demon.

On the day where Sprite was nestled in the ancient oak, it felt neither guide nor trickster. It only wanted to feel its feelings and explore them in kind as a light blue sky darkened both with clouds and the coming night. It was Sprite’s introspection that caused it to at first ignore the talking and laughing that drifted up to it from under the tree. The laughter that reached Sprite was like the musical ringing of wind chimes. After a few moments, the beautiful sound pulled the attention of the land spirit out from inside itself and down to the forest floor.

Standing under the tree were two humans, a man and a woman. The woman was the one making the beautiful ringing laughter, and she was doing it in response to baritone words from the man. Both humans breathed hard, their hike to get to this tree having been at least an hour, if they had taken the perfect path from where humans normally entered this forest. This concerned Sprite, in another hour it would be dark. While these humans were not children, Sprite had not seen them before, and it knew that even adult humans can get hurt in the dark in places they didn’t know. The spirit began to descend the tree, careful to not move the branches too much, lest the humans notice the leaves moving in ways the wind could not make them.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into taking a hike so late!” Laughed the woman, “It’s going to be dark in like 10 minutes!”

The man grinned sheepishly before replying.

“More like 30 minutes, well before we get back out of here.”

“Well it’s a good thing that I at least grabbed a light before we left.” The woman almost sighed un-shouldering one strap of her pack, and unzipping it.

“Oh I always carry a light while hiking, a few other things too.” Replied the man, mimicking the women's movements.

The woman pulled out a small metal tube that was about as long as her hand. Sprite recognized it as a device that humans would sometimes have while in his woods at night. The device would emit light from the wide end when a bump on it was pushed down. Sprite liked these new things a lot better than the burning logs humans used to bring into the woods, spitting embers and belching smoke that stung the eyes and noses of all of the things in the tree above it. After the logs came boxes of metal and glass, with small but bright flames on the end of threaded hairs soaked in a stinking water that instead of putting fire out, burned worse than even fat. Sprite once watched a bird try to drink from a pond that had the stinking water floating in it when a careless human dropped their light box. The bird hadn’t even made it back to it’s nest. Sprite liked these new tubes much better. No smoke, no embers, no stinking water. The few that had been lost the land spirit could lead new humans too and they would normally be very happy to take it back out of the woods. The man pulled out a similar metal tube from his bag, only the man’s was as long as his forearm and nearly twice as thick as the woman’s light.

“Geez, you lug that behemoth around in your bag on the off chance that you might get lost?” The woman said, still smiling but no longer laughing.

“Oh yeah, better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it.” The man said, this time laughing himself, a deep laugh with a smile on his face, but Sprite couldn’t see a smile in his eyes.

“Well, I guess that’s true. You got anything else in there that could help us?”

“Nothing we need right now.” The man said dismissively, closing his bag and putting it onto his back as he stood. “Let’s make the most of the light while we have it.”

The man looked around for a moment before starting down one of the deer paths cut into the undergrowth. Sprite shifted and moved further down the tree to the lowest branches. The path that man was on was not the fastest path out of the woods, and would in fact take the humans deeper into the woods before leading back out. Sprite jumped from the tree into the undergrowth, its passage making no sound and only moving a few leaves as if they had been hit by drops of rain.

Crouched low to the forest floor, Sprite glided up the path in front of the man. It looked around and saw what it needed, a dead branch reaching over the thin path. The land spirit took off like a shot to the tree that the branch once grew from, and with an ease that mortal creatures can never know Sprite scaled the tree. Once it reached the limb, Sprite put a gentle weight to it, and whispered to the spirit of the tree that it was time to unload itself of this burden. The tree, having known Sprite for its entire life, trusted it, and severed the piece of itself that had grown dry and had not known a bud of green in over a year. The branch fell with a resounding crack into the path of the humans.

“What in the!” The man shouted, taking a step back and looking up into the tree.

“Are you okay?” The woman asked worry tinting her voice.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” The man said looking back to the path and the branch in it. “Good thing I wasn’t a few steps ahead though, that would have knocked me out, if not killed me.”

The woman peered around the man, “It’s dead, so it’s probably lighter then you’d expect. You’d have a concussion and some scrapes, but I doubt it’d knock you out, let alone kill you.”

Sprite saw annoyance flash across the man’s face before he replaced it with a smile.

“Ah, you’re right I’ve probably been watching a few too many action movies. A knock to the head isn’t like a snooze button.”

The woman laughed her wind chime laugh and the man smiled. They both stepped over the branch and continued down the same path. Sprite watched them walk past the tree it was in, completely ignoring its warning. This confused it, as the humans should have taken pause at this sign that their path was a bad one and they should have at least considered a different path, but they didn’t even blink at stepping over the break in their route.

Sprite jumped from tree to tree then, staying a few trees behind the humans. It watched them make their way through the thin deer paths, and back onto the wider paths made by many humans walking through a place. It listened to them talk too. They spoke of the beauty of the sun set, the gold and reds painted into the normally blue and white sky. They spoke of a love of the forest and its animals. They even spoke of stories they had heard of the forest; dancing lights at night, children lost and found unharmed, shadows moving in the corners of eyes, and animals leading people to lost things. Sprite liked these stories, especially the ones that it remembered, even if some of the details were a bit wrong.

They also spoke of things that the spirit didn’t like as much. They spoke about their human homes, the works they did, and the state of their world. They spoke of a human gone bad that tricked and hurt other humans like the woman. Most of these talks Sprite did not understand, and what it did understand was either boring or upsetting.

Sprite tried a few more times to get the humans to turn around. First it moved some dirt out from in front of a rock that was on a hill leading down to the path. The rock rolled and tumbled down the hill hitting the path and bouncing off of it and off into the woods on the other side. The man simply turned to the woman and said a chipmunk must have knocked it loose while digging a tunnel.

Sprite’s second attempt was driving a snake before the humans. The snake slithered out into the path and lifted its head to the humans, forked tongue flicking out into the air, tasting their presence. This time it was the woman that spoke up, calling the cold blooded killer a garter snake, and gently tossing a pebble at it. The snake recoiled in horror at the assault, and quickly moved back into the undergrowth.

A third attempt, Sprite decided, would need to be much more spectacular. It gathered up as much strength as it could and it reached out, finding a nearby deer. The gentle spirit then sent visions to the deer, visions of a wolf behind it, and a howl. The deer startled and just as Sprite had hoped, it ran right into the human path and bolted down it, running right past the two humans. This Sprite reckoned would send the humans running back up the path to the old oak tree, where it could send them down the much faster and easier path.

When Sprite got back to the humans it seemed that it’s gambit worked, at least on one of them.

“Something had to scare the deer though, I know bears are rare here, but what if we run into one? It’s almost fully dark now, we might not see it until it’s right in front of us.” The woman said, her light on and pointed back up the path they just walked down.

“It’s a deer, anything could have spooked it. Hell, we could have been the ones to spook it, our voices echoing so the deer actually ran to us instead of away. A bear hasn’t been seen in this forest in years, we’ll be fine.” The man also had his much brighter light on, his pointed down the path he still planned on taking. “If we do run into a bear though, I have a few things that’ll help us. Don’t worry.”

The woman didn’t say anything for a few heartbeats, her eyes and light still pointed back. Sprite stayed as still as it could, trying to will itself the power to look into her mind and influence her like it did the deer, but the strength to trick a human mind was far beyond what it could muster.

Finally the woman sighed and turned her eyes and her light to the path the man had her walking.

“Alright, but if we hear even the faintest roar, I’m turning and running back up there and I’m leaving you behind to get eaten first.” It was almost a joke, but the sprite heard a cold edge to her voice that let it know she would indeed leave the man behind if needed.

Sprite knew there was a bear actually living in the woods right now. It could try and find it and wake it up, but then what. Lead it to the humans? Then the humans might actually get hurt, or worse, hurt the bear. No, Sprite decided against that idea. The humans were already close to the heart of the forest anyway, it was almost to the point where having them turn around would take just as long or longer then letting them move forward. Sprite resigned itself to this path and moved back into the trees to follow the humans and make sure they didn’t try to make any more mistakes.

Now that the sun had fully set and the night wind was picking up, Sprite moved a few trees closer, knowing that it's subtle movement would be covered by the dark. The humans were walking side by side again, talking more about their human world. The only part that caught the spirit’s attention was the man mentioning that the woman had no family left and that she lived alone. The man hadn’t said it in a cold way, but the woman tensed at the mention anyway. The man apologized and after a few moments the conversation had returned to it’s normal pace.

After walking long enough that the moon had risen above the trees, the humans reached the deepest part of the forest, a sharp cliff face looked down into a valley carved out by a river at the center. Across the river and valley laid more forest and for a moment the sprite thought that the humans planned to climb down the cliff into the valley to cross it, but the humans only stood, looking into the valley lit only by the light of the almost full moon. They looked for a few moments before turning to walk along the edge of the cliff, following a path Sprite knew would lead them out of the woods safely.

Sprite sat on a branch watching the humans walk away, and it decided it had done enough for them. They would make it to their world soon enough. It stood up on the branch and made to leave, when it saw the man slow down so he was behind the woman. The woman turned to see what caused the man to slow and when she did the man raised his metal light tube and brought it down hard on her head.

The woman crumpled down to the ground, crying out in pain and surprise. The man quickly hit her with the light again, this time on her back and he yelled at her. This made the woman cry out again and start crying.

Sprite was confused and upset. It did not understand what the man was doing. The woman hadn’t tried to hurt him, and he had been leading her, why would he attack her? The land spirit then watched as the human man took off his bag, opened it and pulled out something Sprite knew from merely the silhouette, a gun.

The man pointed the gun to the woman, still crying on the ground. She slowly stood up her whole body shaking as the man directed to her what he wanted her to do. First she took a small thin box of metal and glass out of one of her pockets, and she tossed it over the edge of the cliff. Then she took off the bag strapped to her, and handed it to the man. She stepped away from him, glancing around at the woods behind her. The man looked up to see her look to the trees and he quickly stepped forward and hit the woman with his light again, knocking her back to the ground.

With the third hit Sprite did not hear her cry out, but it did see a new dark wetness on the metal of the light. Sprite started moving forward again, to the humans, only now he didn’t quite feel like a guide.

The man had looked through the woman's bag and after removing a few things he tossed the bag over the side of the cliff. He then reached into his bag and pulled out some rope and a knife. The woman was moving on the ground still, slowly starting to have the world around her clear back up. She tried to stand but was hit with a wave of nausea when she tried to do so. The man walked over to her and kicked her arms out from under her, grabbing them roughly and twisting them behind her, shoving her wrists together as he wrapped rope around them.

Before he could bring the rope into a knot he heard a strange wind blow over him. He looked around quickly for anyone who might interrupt him. The only thing he saw though was a single brown squirrel sitting on a branch above him. Before the man had a chance to scoff at it, the arboreal creature lunged from the tree onto his face. The man let out a surprised yelp and stumbled backwards, where from under a large flat rock a large serpent struck out, biting into the man’s leg.

The man stumbled around, kicking out his leg and swatting at his face as the woman groggily rolled to one side, the untied ropes slipping from her arms. She looked at the strange attack on the man and noticed that at some point he had dropped his gun. She started to crawl to it, as quickly as her throbbing head would allow.

After a few moments of being bitten and scratched while smashing himself in the face in his blind attempts to grab the small rodent, the man finally got a firm hold on the thing and threw it back into the woods. His face free, he looked to his leg. Seeing the snake he screamed and grabbed it right behind the head. He then pulled it off of him. Looking at the serpent in the pale light offered by the moon, he could just make out that it was black rat snake, non-venomous.

The man sighed, breathing for a few moments to calm his heart. He walked to the edge of the cliff, ready to toss the offending snake to its death when he heard the distinct sound of a hammer being pulled back on a revolver. He turned and saw the woman, still on her knees, hands shaking pointing his own gun at him.

“You won’t be able to hit me.” The man sneered, “I bet you’re seeing double and stars still. The only thing you’ll do by firing that gun is piss me off and make me have to do what I was going to do even faster. You think you’re the only woman to get a little lucky?”

The woman started to cry again. The gun wobbling in her hands and she tried to steady her shot. The man barked a short cruel laugh and he shifted his weight to step forward, but as he went to move, the rock under him at the edge of the cliff suddenly gave way, and before the man could even understand what was happening, he was falling.

He dropped the snake as his arms flailed trying to grab something as he slid down. He managed to grab a few rocks, but all of them were too small or already loose and the rocks simply fell down with him. The woman blinked her surprise, stopping her tears. For a moment she had thought the man smited by some sort of god, simply removed from the world to protect her. But then she heard his scream, and the sound of his body breaking as he hit the trees growing out of the side of the cliff.

She crawled slowly over to the edge of the cliff. She could still hear faint cries from the man, groans of pain and shouts for help. She looked down the cliff side, the embankment not a shear dropped, but a very steep angle, and the valley floor nearly the equivalent of four stories below. The woman doubted she would have been able to see the man had he not landed on a stoney clearing at the base. From the looks of his body, he had hit nearly every tree on the way down the cliff. Had he had missed even one he most likely would have had enough speed to snap his neck on the rock, but instead he was still somehow not only alive, but conscious. His body broken and twisted, dark blood slowly pooling around him.

He must have seen her outline against the moon bright sky, as he started to weakly call out to her, begging for help. She wanted to spit down at him, to tell him no, but even though he was a monster, she was not. She was about to yell for him to stay calm, when she heard a sudden roar from down below. The man started to scream loader, crying now, begging for any help, even for her to shoot. She could only look on in horror as she heard another roar, louder this time, and then as if emerging from the rock itself, a large black clawed paw, the size of the man's chest reached out, and hooked into his flesh.

The man screamed out in agony, his already destroyed body being ripped even more, and in one quick motion, the beast pulled the broken man into its cave, out of sight of the woman, where the man’s screams were quickly silenced.

The woman shaking anew, crawled away from the cliff side. She then vomited onto the rock and started to cry again. She then felt something like a hand on her shoulder. She twisted her head as quickly as the throbbing pain from within it would allow, but saw no one. What she did see was the man’s bag, still sitting on the ground. As the woman looked at it, it slumped over, spilling some of its contents onto the rocks in front of one of the beams from the dropped lights. Glinting in the light was the smooth glass screen of a thin metal box. The woman’s eyes lit up as she crawled over to the box and picked it up, the box coming to life with lights of its own in her hands.

The next morning, Sprite sat in a smaller younger pine tree on the edge of the cliff overlooking the valley. This morning was loud. A large number of humans had arrived in the night, with bright lights, roaring metal steeds, and metal boxes that spoke with the voices of many other humans loudly saying horrible words like murderer, serial killer, and new victim. The woman had been taken away many hours ago, a group of humans having come into the woods with a special bed. They put her on the bed and pushed it and her out of the woods to the human world. These other humans were walking around looking at all of the places the man and the woman had been. Some had even gone into the valley, they waited for the bear to leave its den and then they shot it with the quiet gun used by some of the humans that walk the forest a lot. The quiet gun just makes the animals fall asleep for a while, it wasn’t fun, but at least they would wake up.

The humans then loaded the bear into a big metal box on one of their roaring metal steeds and took it away. Sprite hated when they did that, but it understood that they only did that to animals that were really sick or would hurt humans. A few humans then went into the bear’s den with bright lights and bags. They didn’t come back out with much.

Sprite looked over all of the humans in it’s forest, watching what they did. It looked like today it would not have to be a guide nor a trickster, which was good. After everything it did last night, Sprite just wanted to sit in a good tree, and think about what it was.