23. Fey Child Care 101
When they stepped outside the train station, Isaac was pleased to find it was night in the Woodlands. The sky above them was dark, but if one looked closely enough, they would realize that it wasn’t pure black but a rich violet hue. Stars were sprayed across the sky, all crystal clear and perfectly visible, a far cry from Chrowall City, where light pollution had effectively killed stargazing. The eight moons of the woodlands arced high across the realm, and Isaac could see small glowing lights rising from the leaves of the forest and from the waves crashing along the shore to the right. He turned left, facing the forest. Even if a dog-like equivalent happened to exist among the ocean creatures, transportation was a real issue.
A soft wind whistled past the two as they traveled down the dirt road towards the forest. Tall, perfectly green trees towered overhead, though the light emitting from their leaves meant it was never completely dark or impossible to see. The moss that climbed the tree trunks shimmered in the glowing lights, and the swaying grasses were iridescent in the moonlight.
Isaac furrowed his brow as they stepped below the lush green canopy, realizing he had no idea where to start. Mortimer seemed to sense his unease.
“We could ask one of the fey,” he suggested. “They would know best.”
Isaac nodded. He pulled up the map on his tablet and squinted at it. The soft light that filtered through the canopy took on an almost turquoise hue, making the tablet’s golden glow feel sorely out of place.
“Oh hey, there’s someone up ahead.” That was convenient. He paused, narrowing his eyes. Most of the fey were much, much deeper into the vast forest where their main kingdom was located; the one up ahead was quite isolated. “Be careful,” he told Mortimer. “There might be something up with this one.”
The half undead man nodded, and the two strode between the trees. The combination of grasses, flowers, and moss beneath them was so soft it felt like they were stepping on down as they moved. Finally, after ducking under a long branch that extended down to the earth as though trying to form its own roots, they found the fey in question.
Two things became immediately apparent. The first was that the fey, contrary to Isaac’s worst fears, looked fairly normal. The second was that the fey was a child. Isaac stopped mid step, staring into the small clearing where a young fey girl stood looking up at the sky through a gap in the canopy. His first instinct was to leave—there were many things he didn’t know how to deal with, and children were at the top of that list—but the fact that the girl was there alone gave enough concern for him not to immediately flee.
“Why did you stop?” Mortimer’s voice interrupted Isaac’s thoughts, and it was apparently loud enough for the fey girl to turn and look at them.
Most of the Woodland fey resembled the plants and animals found in their native home, while some of the ones who lived closer to the ocean took on a more aquatic appearance. This fey, however, belonged to neither of those categories. Large, dark amber eyes stared back at the two of them with the sort of blatant judgement that only children could get away with. Her fluffy hair fell in waves around her, and it shifted colors between red, orange, and gold so that it looked like a crackling flame when she moved. Her hair practically engulfed her entire frame, small as she was, though the child didn’t seem remotely bothered by the fact that her vision was probably at least one third blocked by fiery strands.
“Oh, a child,” Mortimer said unhelpfully. Said child stared at them with an uncanny amount of intensity, her large eyes unblinking.
“I didn’t sense you,” the child said bluntly. She pointed directly at Isaac, who didn’t know if he should take that as a compliment or not.
“Uh. Sure.” He sighed and stepped into the clearing. Now that the girl had seen them, there was no point in delaying. Might as well deal with this quickly so they could continue the dog search. “Look, are you here alone? Do you have parents?”
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“Fey don’t have biological parents,” Mortimer muttered from beside him. Isaac winced.
“Never mind. I mean are you lost or something?” He tried to sound reassuring, but his vocal chords simply didn’t contort like that. He’d never been good at dealing with children, not even after he’d started his cake business and began seeing them more often when he’d deliver cakes over to birthday parties and the like. Before that, Isaac rarely interacted with children at all. The few times he did encounter a child, Lloyd was always the one who knew what to do, who had a natural ease to him that could calm anyone down, young or old. Isaac clenched his fist slightly, shaking away the memories before his thoughts could be further derailed.
The fey child hadn’t put her arm down and was still pointing at him. “I am searching for something,” she said in a decidedly proper manner.
Isaac and Mortimer exchanged looks, and Isaac couldn’t quite hide the worried furrow to his brow.
“Okay, does anyone know you’re out here?”
The girl dropped her hand, and her expression finally shifted from that unnerving blank look to a slight frown. “It’s none of their business,” she said primly. Kids these days.
“What are you looking for?” Mortimer asked. The fey’s eyes shifted over to the man for a brief second, then back to Isaac without a word of acknowledgement. Isaac frowned, but Mortimer’s expression remained unchanged.
“Hey kid, it’s rude to ignore people—“ he stopped mid sentence as Mortimer held a hand out and shook his head.
“It’s fine,” he said calmly. “Fey are wary of speaking to undead. It’s part of their culture to ignore any undead they come across.” He paused. “Or part undead.”
Isaac frowned, unsure of how to feel about that. He supposed it made sense. It wasn’t really his place to judge, anyway. Instead, he repeated Mortimer’s question, and sure enough the fey child answered him.
“Something important,” she said. “I have to find it.”
“And what exactly is it?”
“Important.”
Isaac felt his eye twitch. This was going nowhere. “Look kid, is this thing dangerous or whatever?”
She shook her head. Well that was good at least.
“Okay, is the search dangerous?”
The fey was silent. Isaac groaned and pulled out his tablet. “That’s it, I’m finding the closest fey and they can help you with whatever this is.”
The girl narrowed her eyes, and she might have looked intimidating if she wasn’t less than half Isaac’s height and partially obscured by her fluffy hair. “You shall do no such thing,” she said with as much commanding intimidation as she could muster, which was more than expected from her tiny stature, but still not nearly enough to scare anyone.
Isaac frowned. “Look, you’re some random kid who just admitted you’re doing something dangerous. I’m not about to let you go off on your own.”
The fey scowled but didn’t retort, seeming to realize that Isaac wasn’t backing down. She continued to stare intently over at him with those big, unblinking eyes of hers, contemplative. Finally, her expression cooled into its prior blank state as she pointed at him again. “You shall accompany me,” she said.
Isaac paused mid button tap, hand left hovering in the air. “What.”
“You shall help me find this important thing. That way I shall not be alone.”
Isaac could feel his already thin patience quickly diminishing. “Look kid, I’m not going to—“
“Isaac.” The man in question paused, spinning around to face Mortimer. He was frowning at the fey child, who still refused to look in his direction. “It may be wise to do as she says. She’d likely run away if you called someone, and neither of us is especially fast.”
Isaac turned to the fey, still standing there stubbornly unmoving, then back to Mortimer. Finally, he heaved a long sigh. “I hate it when you make sense,” he muttered. The half undead man just smiled slightly in amusement.
Isaac moved to face the child again. “Okay, fine. We’ll help you with whatever you’re doing, but once you find this thing, you’re heading back to the rest of the fey.” He tried to sound as authoritative as possible, though he didn’t think he was particularly successful.
The girl nodded. “That is agreeable,” she said solemnly. She then immediately turned around and began trekking through the dense trees without a second glance back.
Isaac heaved a long sigh. He could already tell he was going to regret this.