“Stop!” screamed Lime. The hippocamp sheathed her fangs and turned one large, pale, unblinking eye to the trees.
“What are you doing?” hissed Slugsy. “She’ll kill us!” The hippocamp inclined her head, as though amused.
Lime didn’t know what she was doing, not really, but Erskine looked so small engulfed in the coils of the hippocamp, and she knew she couldn’t just fly away. “Let the human go,” she said, “or I’ll make you sorry you ever crawled out from the ocean!” Sparks spat from her mouth. She balled her fists tight so her hands wouldn’t tremble. “I’ll turn you into an eel and roast you! I’ll shrivel you up like a salted slug!”
“She’s never going to believe that,” said Slugsy, retreating into the leaves. “You’re crazy, Loner!”
“Don’t you dare tempt a fairy’s wrath!” cried Lime, ignoring her. “I’ll boil up this river and cook you into stew! I’ll send this whole wood crashing down on top of your oversized head! Let the human go and never, ever come back here again!”
The hippocamp chuckled. “What sights one sees on land,” she said. “What oddities: a little damselfly who talks like a conquering queen. Why don’t you show me these fearsome powers of yours, my damsel? I’ve never seen a river boil, nor a whole forest felled in an instant.”
“Don’t mock me!” said Lime. “I’m deadly serious!”
“Really?” said the hippocamp. “Then would you like me to treat you as a serious threat?” An invisible power plucked at the strings of Lime’s heart, and she heard music, each note as clear as water, as sharp as salt, and unspeakably, painfully beautiful.
“Cover your ears!” said Slugsy, but the song of the hippocamp pierced through flesh and bone, seeping through the runnels of the brain. The music flooded the deepest recesses of Lime’s memory, dredging up visions of the past, nostalgic sensations. There she was only a few days ago, in her ragged clothes, traveling through the roots of the world. There she was in the Library, in an austere but comfortable room, engrossed in a quarter-century’s reading. And before that…
The music grew languid and sweet, like nectar pooled in scented petals, like jewel-bright orchids dripping from the stalk. There was no more river, no more Woeful Woods. There was only golden sunlight rich as honey, and soft rain misting through evergreen leaves. Beneath the rainbow’s arc, the insects sang long-forgotten melodies, and branches swayed beneath the weight of flowers plump as grapes.
Lime curled in a nest of dried herbs and fragrant camphor, sheltered by the wings of her fellow fairies. All her clan were with her: the ones who had first found her when she was small and loved and petted her, the ones who had taught her all the secrets of speech and flight and magic. Bathed in the light of their bodies, enveloped in warmth and scent, she closed her eyes and sunk into their embrace.
“Sleep, little Lime,” the fairies cooed, in voices that were all one voice. “Sleep and forget those years of solitude. All is well, and all is as it was before.”
“Before what?” Lime muttered, sleepily.
“Before nothing,” the fairies said, rocking Lime in their arms, passing her from lap to lap. “There is no more before and no more after, only a perfect, golden now. Each day will flow into the next as sweetly as a stream of nectar, and the green things will grow, and the rains will fall gentle and nourishing.”
“The rain,” said Lime, her eyes fluttering open. “There was a storm.”
“Don’t think of the storm,” the fairies scolded, pinching her sides and tweaking her antennae. “Naughty child, coddled brat—don’t think of it!” Yet already the golden light of the sun had thinned to a sickly yellow. The rain fell fast and heavy.
“It can’t last,” said Lime. “It won’t last.”
“Don’t!” the fairies wailed. Lime broke from their arms and lurched upright.
“It won’t last,” she said, “because one day, a storm will come and tear me away from here, out to sea and out to the world’s farthest reaches. And I’ll wash ashore on that cold country where only the Origin Tree grows: where I’ll find a magnificent Library, but no more orchids, and no more family, and no more way back home—and I’ll be alone, alone forever!”
The clan of fairies dissolved in the pelting rain. The trees bowed low beneath typhoon winds, and the sea rose up to swallow everything. Lime floundered in the waves, gasping for breath and clawing at the water, but the ocean gripped her like the coils of a serpent.
Filling her fangs with venom, Lime buried her head beneath the hippocamp’s scales and bit down as hard as she could.
The honey-sweet music cut to a terrible screech. The hippocamp’s coils slackened. Lime tumbled onto the riverbank, and Erskine thudded beside her.
“Vile gnat!” spat the hippocamp. “Wicked little wasp!” The tip of her tail drooped uselessly in the mud, numbed by Lime’s venom. “I could have given you a peaceful death, but you’d rather struggle, would you, my damsel? I’ll crush you like the insect you are!”
Lime tried to fly, but the mud clung to her wings. The hippocamp lunged at her, a wall of grey bulk, inescapable as a tidal wave.
Before the hippocamp crashed to the ground, an enormous hand scooped Lime up and snatched her to safety. Erskine stumbled up the bank, clutching Lime protectively to their chest.
“What happened?” they said. “Why does everything smell like vinegar?”
“To cover up your thief-like stench,” snarled the hippocamp, rising from the mud. “You’ll pay for stealing my skin, adventurer!”
“Wait!” said Erskine, backing towards the trees. “I still have the skin. If you let me get it—”
“After it’s been defiled by your human hands?” said the hippocamp. “I think not!” She undulated closer, fangs bared and eyes gleaming menacingly.
Lime climbed out from Erskine’s fingers and perched on their wrist. “I thought I told you to slither back to the ocean!” she growled. “Or did you want another dose of venom?”
“Your fondness for this adventurer confounds me,” said the hippocamp. “What fairy would risk her life for a human? Do you have even the least grain of self-respect?”
“Fondness has nothing to do with it,” said Lime. “I just…”
“Just what?” said the hippocamp. “Illuminate me.”
“I just—It’s just,” said Lime, “if anyone has the right to kill this human, it’s me!”
“What?” said Erskine.
“Oh?” said the hippocamp.
“The human took an old dried-up skin you weren’t even using anymore,” said Lime, “and you think that gives you the right to season them up like a roast and eat them alive?”
“It’s a matter of principle,” said the hippocamp. “If I let one adventurer steal my cast-offs and live, more are sure to follow, each one bolder and greedier than the last.”
“That’s nothing,” said Lime. “Nothing at all. You know what the human did to me? They put me in a salt-shaker!”
“That sounds bad,” said Erskine, “but it was a really big salt-shaker. Like the kind you would put shaved Parmesan in? I thought it would be more comfortable.”
“You hear that?” said Lime. “They even admit to it!”
“And there are air holes already in it,” said Erskine, “so I figured, compared to a jam jar—”
“Contemptible!” said Lime. “Just terrible! I’m the one this human has wronged the most, and I’m the one who’s going to kill them, no matter what any sea-beast has to say about it!” She grabbed Erskine’s index finger and bit down: a dry bite, without venom.
“Why?” cried Erskine, eyes brimming with tears of pain.
“Pretend to die, idiot,” hissed Lime in Vernacular Fey.
Erskine, to their credit, caught on quickly. They fell to the ground like a sack of rocks and lay there with their eyes closed, breathing softly. “There,” said Lime. “It’s done.”