...

It was the sound of teeth cracking on knuckles that caught my attention. I had found a place to camp out, having tailed a pair of crumbs over to a local farmhouse to finish out my last case. They walked the streets all day, trying to lay low and failing. When dusk fell, they headed this way, and now they were punching up the farmhand’s face.

Sliding a hunting rifle from her case, I lined up the shot and let lead fly. The bullet hit the bullseye, and creep number one grabbed his shoulder with a yelp. Thug number two looked around with a snarl, fists at the ready. That was when my partner showed up, pistol drawn, and trained on his ugly mug. They traded threats, my partner an expert at this kind of dance. Thug two made for him and got a cheek of led from me as a result.

Creep one had recovered and put both hands up, ready to squeal on his boss. I saw him look up and open his mouth, only for a gunshot to cut him off. He slumped to the ground, my partner instantly ducking while I scanned the forest. There wasn’t a trace of anyone but us and the farmers.

My eye went back to my partner, relieved at the sight of Thomas moving without a hitch. He hadn’t taken a hit, and was checking on the farmers. With a smile, I packed up my rifle and slung the case over my shoulder.

We worked well together, Thomas and I. He made a great face for our snooper jobs because he was white as paint and had a set of danglers in the right place. I made a great shadow, because I was a dame with skin brown as the forest. But I was the one with the rifle, and he was the one with the heart. We worked well together.

Thunder rolled across the sky. The case was finished. Thomas knew the clean-up. Time for my favorite after-hours jig: an honest hunt. I preferred the serene set of nature and the calm concentration of a hunt to the bustle and noise of my city. I could never quite understand those who lived day in and out under cement and stone. Then again, I was a mix of two worlds; my father was a human true enough, but my mother was an earth spirit. I had chosen not to follow in her footsteps, a choice I questioned every sunrise.

I hustled into the forest, leaning into the hunt in order to refresh my instincts and aiming to find the way before the rain fell. I wasn’t too far off. The rain began as I found a trail of hoof prints. Following them led to a deer and fawn grazing among the trees. Rare, this day and age. They began to die out around here in the 30’s, and twenty years later you were considered blessed if you saw one. Settling into a crouch, I crept forward until I was in position and swung my rifle into my hands. I aimed. Took a steadying breath.

I hesitated. Once.

Once was all you ever got in life.

Something in the distance crashed, and the deer was gone, running into the forest with the little one on her heels. I tensed, shifting enough to look around. Heat rolled through the brush, though I saw no fire. Someone ran by. A human. Rain glinted off his shoes, a white coat splashed with mud. That was all I caught before he was gone.

With that, my hunt was blown. I glanced up through the rain to spot movement in the treetops. I blinked water out of my eyes once. Twice.

A shot rang out.

The walk back was cold and lonely. Not many folk out this time of morning. Not many with a reason to be. A small pair of squirrels were slung over my shoulder by the tails, my only show for the whole night. Not that it mattered. I was the only one eating wild game. Thomas was a lamb and did his best to eat clean.

The rain was clearing, a fog spreading across the streets as the sun came up. My office loomed from the mist, a solid brick blending into the shops around it. It was the closest thing I had to a home out here, the private office doubling as a bedroom with a rollout.

I got there first, dragging the rain in behind me. It may have finally stopped, but I was soaked through and couldn’t stop the parade of water leaving a dark stain of evidence as to my path.

My coat added a sloppy circle around the coat rack as I slung it into place, hanging the squirrels above it and sliding my rifle against the doorframe. I nabbed a dirty towel from a nearby chair and wiped down, squeezing the rest of the rain from my black hair. The sun finally rose outside the window, golden light catching in the thick fog. I could barely see the street below. I switched on the nearby radio and began to change.

Danny Kaye was finishing up Civilization when a knock came at the door. I closed my private office and went to answer. The man standing opposite was shorter than me, clean-shaven with brown hair dangling down to his cheekbones while his baby-blues stared up at me.

"Morning, Miss Becka!" he greeted me with a smile, placing his umbrella next to my rifle. He shook his coat off and slipped off his hat, placing them both on the coat rack. "How's things?"

I tapped the door with a knuckle, showing off the wide letters on the glass window that read “R. E. Beck”. “You know that isn’t my real name, Mr. Bayle. Just a bit of gobbledygook to throw off the fuddy-duddies and fat-heads so both of us can work and eat in this town.”

"I -- I know ma’am. And you know Becka is easier for me to say.”

I smiled and moved to one side. “I suppose Matoaka is a bit of a mouthful for you.” He nodded his thanks, ducking as he squirreled his way inside. “Although you’ve been working with me long enough to have figured out how to say it by now, haven’t you, doll?”

“You would think so,” he said, immediately going to the desk and eyeing the papers. “Yet ‘Rebecka’ has always rolled out easier.”

I swung the door closed, Thomas rifling through the papers. “Good job staying on the beam last night. How were the farmers?”

“Shaken, but good. No harm.”

“Close the case with them?”

He nodded, glancing up at me. “Easy as pie, boss. Especially since the pair attacking them are now both dead. Almost an open and shut case. They’ll be coming by to pay the last of our fee and give their thanks.”

“Then I’ll wait in the wings when they come, per usual.” I didn’t like the feeling of hiding, but this was part of the business. We got more clients once we made the switch and came up with a name that could be either of us, which meant more money came in on a regular basis. He never treated me like the other guys, mostly because he wasn’t like the other guys. He was fine acting the stiff gumshoe for the clients, and so was I as long as I got to wear the shoes.

I heard a shuffle of carpet by the door and started towards the back out of habit, assuming it was our client. They had us investigating a murder of an uncle, someone that owned a farm out near the border of cement and woodland. The police had written it up as a hunting accident, something I was able to disprove, mostly on the grounds that the uncle didn’t hunt and his farm was nowhere near hunting grounds. I had tracked down the triggerman and closed the case, but couldn’t shake the suspicion of something larger going on.

“Uh...Miss Becka?”

The stammer caught my next step, halting it from its goal. I turned to see Thomas kneeling by the door, poking at a small enveloped package. I joined him, giving it a quick check with my magic sense before touching it.

The contents were bits and pieces of a puzzle I recognized: reports about a recent string of farms closing down only to get bought by a local landshark company. Sitting next to them were pictures of several forest fires.

I dug around our desk, pulling reports I had already dug up on the fires. All began at night, with no specific start. There had been one a night for about three nights last week. They stopped as suddenly as they started. These new reports furthered a suspicion I was already building: the fires were in relation to the farms not selling.

While I stared, Thomas tossed another component onto the desk. A handful of reports from the company itself. Things I hadn't been able to get my hands on so long as I wanted to keep them clean. But these had showed up on their own.

I turned to Thomas. "Anything else?"

He held up a single page with a handcrafted note. "Take a close look," he read aloud. "You might find someone you recognize." He hesitated. "Someone you recognize?"

I looked again, asking idly, "What's the ink at the bottom?"

"Uh…" he scanned it before flipping it around, "J.Smith."

Hah. Anonymous. Luckily smoke never threw me from the trail. I scanned the pictures but found no overly familiar faces. A knock came at the door, and I barely noticed a poke at my shoulder.

"The clients," Thomas reminded me.

Ah. Right. That was my cue to keep up appearances and scram. I gathered the notes and envelope from my guy, taking it all into the back room to look over. "No new clients after them," I said over my shoulder. "Get the money and toss ‘em back."

He nodded, the doors taking turns opening and closing.

I spread things out on the floor, crossed my legs and sat. Someone I recognize…? There was no one. Not anyone overly familiar. I recognized some of the faces from the ones in town but only from flashes of exposure. I wouldn’t say I knew them.

My eyes slid from the faces to the forest. Trees sat stacked on top of another, the trunks bitten away by flames. The empty husks sat in the pictures, black and white and grey displaying the cruel nature of life. Smoke was rising from the branches in thick, black clouds, and…

Wait a minute.

I peered closer.

Got up.

Grabbed a magnifying lens, I fixed it over the corner of the mess. Among the blackened tangle of branches was a different kind of limb−the kind that belonged to an earth sprite. Someone had caught an earth sprite in the fire and subsequently killed it. How did I miss this?

I shook my head. Doesn’t matter. I shuffled through the papers and found where this photo had been taken, gathering a few things I might need. I needed to see the site; if this was intentional, it was murder on a different level. And I was one of the only ones who could follow these tracks to the truth.

The smell of destruction still lingered, even days after the fire had been put out. The blackened heart of smoke had stained the trees, the nubs, the soil, and it seemed to cloud the very sky. Dragging my sickened stomach along, I stepped into the hollow husks and began to explore. The sprite in me twisted in turmoil as I walked, but I had to know. There was something here if that letter was right. Something I missed the first time.

I didn’t see it until I was well into the destruction. Bending down to inspect the forest floor, I spotted a different kind of broken limb; it looked human. Didn’t make sense; they had accounted for all the people in the area, dead and alive. So this was humanoid but not human. A quick examination revealed a bark-like texture along the skin, including small moss pieces grown from the skin itself. At least...that’s what it looked like under the burn marks.

So the ‘someone I recognized’ wasn’t a person. The letter was referring to a fellow earth sprite caught in the fire. Which shouldn’t have happened, as they are among the first to sense a threat to their forests and usually flee. Sprites are better at healing than fighting. I had to wonder why this one hadn’t had time for either.

Something clinked under my fingers−something metallic. Numbness shot up my fingers, and I jerked back, shaking my hand and peering at the spot. There was a metallic cuff wrapped around the wrist, scorch marks running up and down the broad sides of the cuff. I tapped it again with a curious finger with the same result.

I heard footsteps behind me and grabbed the arm, yanking the cuff free and stuffing it into my coat pocket. Just in time.

“Excuse me,” the tone was high-bred. British. Snobby. “I do believe this area is off limits.”

I stood and turned, taking in a white tailored business suit and shoes so clean they looked out of place. Something clinked as he moved, watching me with haughty superiority between his bushy eyebrows and a nose to rival an eagle’s beak.

“Excuse me,” I echoed his pretentious politeness, “but the forest is open to all.”

He smirked. “Not anymore. This land was bought by my company after the fire. We offered to handle all the restoration, and the city heartily agreed.”

“And what company is that?”

Instantly whipping out a card, he held it out. “Virginia Co.”

I took it with a glance. “And you’re what? The representative?”

“David Ratcliffe,” he answered with a sniff. “I own the company.”

My eyebrows went up. “The big boss, huh?”

“Yes. And you’re still standing on private property.” He held out a hand to direct me away, trying to both escort me and shoo me. I went with it, having no real reason to argue; the body hidden among this wreckage was a signpost of which trail to follow, and this Ratcliffe had given me footsteps in the mud.

“David Ratcliffe,” I repeated the name to Thomas while sorting through my files. “Apparent owner of Virginia Co.”

“Oh,” he said, the pages from our mysterious tipper spread out in front of him. “They’re the land sharks that set up shop a few years ago...an offshoot of a company overseas, I think. And they’re the ones trying to buy up local farms.” He tapped me on the shoulder with a pile of papers.

Company reports. “So,” I mused, thumbing through them, “they’ve been putting money into buying up the land right outside of the city, including any farms still in residence.” I glanced at the location of all the farms that had been vandalized or had the owners suddenly die off and back at the Company reports. They had made bids that were ultimately rejected by the same farms. Suspicious coincidence, of course, but not enough for the local police to be concerned about.

“So...they’ve been buying up land and possibly committing crimes against those that won’t sell,” Thomas mused, thumbnail pressed between his teeth. “But what about the forest fire? And the sprite you found?”

I had been wondering about it myself. According to their records, all the places that suffered from wildfires had been bought up by the Virginia Company years before. The news articles in my own stores all boasted the Company declaring land preservation with each purchase. I was always bothered with big money buying up the forests inhabited by earth sprites, but had little recourse; very few humans knew about the world behind the curtain, and had proven they’d rather remain ignorant than admit they were at fault for a population’s decline. Both sides of my heritage were proof enough.

Regardless, it made little sense why they’d start setting fires on land they owned.

I shifted my seat and felt something shift in one of my pockets: the cuff I found. I turned my pocket inside out and let it clatter to the ground, catching Thomas’s interest. He picked it up and began turning it over in his hands, glancing up at me with eyebrows raised.

“What’s this?”

“Not sure; found it attached to the dead sprite. I think it might be the reason why it was dead.” Thomas dropped it with a startled look, and I shook my head. “No, not poison. I think it’s iron.”

“Iron? How can you tell?

“It blocks magic,” I explained, nudging it with a finger. Cold spread through the tip of my index up to my knuckle. “I’m not affected as badly, but it still gives me a chill the way no other metal does.”

“So someone put this on the sprite, and...it died?”

I shook my head. “No, but it kept the sprite from healing the forest. Probably kept it from healing itself after it was caught in the fire.”

“Which means whoever started the fire knows about sprites and how to stop them.” He said exactly what I had been thinking, which put a different spin on this whole case.

“Exactly,” I said, gathering up the papers and watching Thomas start to do the same. “I need more information.”

“What are our questions?” The response was automatic, and I was grateful. He was becoming a decent investigator−more of a partner than an assistant.

“The contents of the forests that burned,” I began, sliding the papers back into their folders. “What’s so important about them, about the farms that have been bought up. And, if we can, keep your ears open for humans that know about sprites and magic. We may be looking at something more serious than a human-on-human squabble.”

He nodded, standing and getting our coats. “I’ll hit the local spots. See if Meeks and Flint know anything.”

I took my coat, swinging it over my shoulders as I headed out the door. “Good. I’ll visit our friend in the forest and see if she can blow away some smoke.”

“Blue?” I called her name for the tenth time, wandering through the heart of the forest. “Where are you?”

A cold wind blew across my back, the hairs on my neck instantly rising from the chill. It was inexplicably cold for the season, and I knew why.

“Quit playing around, Blue,” I shouted. The wind grew to a low moan, enough to shake the trees and shower me with leaves. I shrugged my shoulders, turning around. “Alright, fine. I had a puzzle for you, but if you’re not interested…”

The forest immediately died down, the cold vanishing into a humid mist. Something formed inside the mist, not completely but enough to see a humanoid shape about as tall as a child, with small points of light emanating from where the eyes should have been. There she was: Blue. The resident wind sprite. “...puz-zle?” The word was whispered through the branches with the slightest brush of wind, a chill accompanying the breath. Blue stared, waiting.

I turned, hand on hip. “Forest fires around here. All the land was ‘owned’ by a company claiming preservation, so it’s hard to see why they’d set fire to their cause. The latest fire held the body of an earth sprite, iron cuff around the wrist. There are also humans getting harmed and killed when they won’t give up their homes to said company, which winds up buying the land anyway. Here’s the puzzle: is this a human-against-human problem or a human-against-sprite problem?”

"Both," she breathed. "Or neither. Related?"

"Everything's related," I snorted. "I'm just not sure how these events are related.”

A puff of air swished from one side to the other, Blue shaking her head. Or maybe that was supposed to be hair. “No. Related to you.”

“Me?”

“Nevermind.” A short sigh made the trees sag from the wind, Blue’s form wavering before coming upright again. “Company comes into forest where sprites live. Sprites cause trouble. Men leave, come back with cuffs to trap sprites. Remove the problem. They like removing problems.”

“So why the fires?”

“One problem they can’t remove.” Blue stumbled on that last word, her form shifting as the mist began to clear. “Old wound keeps coming undone. Open scratches. Some wounds must be burnt away.” The mist cleared, her form evaporating with a blast of air. “Bor-ring puz-zle,” the wind moaned. “Bohr-ring Puz-zle!!”

I was already on my way out, leaving the forest behind in a hurry. Blue liked puzzles, but if she found them boring enough she would throw a tantrum, sometimes in the form of tornadic cyclones. While she was busy wailing about my puzzle being a boring one, I was already on the path leading back to the city. She had given me some clues, but I wanted to see what Thomas came up with before trying to draw the complete picture.

Thankfully, we ran into each other in the middle of the street.

“Oh,” he puffed, “good, I found you.” Short gasps of air inserted themselves between words. Made me wonder what he was doing between here and there. “Meeks had...nothing. Wasted perfectly good...cookies.” He took a deep breath to steady himself, standing straight. “Flint was more help. He didn’t know anything about the fires, but heard something on the street about the Virginia Company hiding toxic waste in nearby forests−apparently to the point of poison. Flint remembers a few sick orphans in the house when he got there, and no one could pinpoint anything aside from said poison.”

“Interesting,” I muttered, “but it doesn’t really draw a complete image.”

“Except the sick ones warned him not to go in the forest or drink any water coming from the river. That’s how they got whatever they got.”

I nodded, motioning for him to follow. “Alright, then. One last bit of snooping and we should be able to see the bottom of this barrel.”

He immediately was a clip on my heels. “Where are we going?”

I tugged out a business card and flipped it to face him. “Where erosion likes to show itself: to the very head of the beast.”

The company building loomed near the edge of the forest like a tombstone marking the slow death of nature herself. The windows were carved into the industrial-looking front, gleaming like several pairs of eyes in the growing dusk. Paved stones led to the double-doors. An invitation into the unknown.

“Plan as usual?”

I nodded. “Plan as usual.”

Letting out a stern cough and tugging at the front of his duster, Thomas strode forward with me in tow. This world respected him more than I, and I was not one to leave an advantage on the table. He hammered on the doors until they opened, the secretary unmoved and unconcerned at his demanding to see the man in charge. She shook her head, tried to tell him Ratcliffe wasn’t in, but he insisted and managed to push past her. I played the part of the underling and apologized. She shook her head and ran after him, trying to stop Thomas’s tirade down the halls.

I took my advantage in quick succession with a quick glance around. The poor frazzled woman was tasked with keeping this base upright on her own, it seemed. No one to help her make the appointments, or keep track of the workers, or file all the necessary documents in a timely manner. A small cubby to the side was stuffed with stacks of paper, hidden away so that her desk remained clean and efficient.

I went to the wall-shelves and began to fish around for the company’s history, opening each drawer and flipping through the contents as speedily as I could, looking for anything that had to do with fires or poison. I may have missed several opportunities for evidence, as I could hear the scuffle down the hall escalate, other men’s voices adding to the mix.

Nothing. There was no hidden treasure, no secret information tucked away in the files to make my case. The closest I had was a small invoice of payments to someone who used to work for the city.

Wait. Wait wait wait...here was a small mark noting the purchase of a hunting rifle, same as mine. This company wouldn’t need a hunting rifle unless they planned on hunting, and I doubt anyone here liked to hunt animals.

The voices were coming closer. I pocketed the invoice and mark before stepping to the door, hands behind my back and waiting calmly.

“...last time I come here, you just see!” Thomas yelled behind him, the blonde secretary following him back to the door.

“...so sorry, I’ll see he gets notified of…” she hesitated, thick curls hugging her head like a straw-colored helmet even as she glanced back at her desk and at me. “...I’m sorry, I didn’t catch--”

“No need,” he said stiffly, adjusting his hat as he strode out the door. “We’re done here.” I gave a slight bow and followed him.

“So?” he asked as soon as we turned away from the monstrosity. “You find anything?”

I heaved a shake and sigh, hands slipping into my pockets. “Very little. No phone calls, no lawsuits, nothing except an invoice with no notes and nothing big enough to be considered a payoff. The closest I found was a note linking the company to the purchase of a hunting rifle, but no proof that anyone used it out of bounds.” I glanced at him out the side of my eye. His brows were down, and he kept looking behind us. “You?”

“Found some mud in Ratcliff’s office. Right on the edge of the forest, so it makes sense…” He shook his head. Hesitated. Looked directly at the land on the other end of the street.

“What is it?”

“The assistant...said he went out earlier and hadn’t been back. Missed a few calls. She seemed...almost worried. As if something was wrong.”

I followed his gaze, looking over the forest. “Let’s go back and ask.”

“What?”

I smiled as I turned around. “A good tracker has to understand what they’re tracking as well as notice their surroundings.” I paused. “Plus, it never hurts to ask.”

We got back with a few jogging strides, Thomas going back in without me. She would be more inclined to think she had to answer him, and I seemed to make her uncomfortable. I waited, looking back out over the land and watching an orange hue burn the sky into a golden dusk.

Wait.

Was that…?

I peered at the horizon, just above the nearby treetops. And I was right. A small trail of smoke was growing deep in the forest, curling like a thin tail wagging in the breeze. Fire. Someone had started a new fire.

Thomas emerged at a dead run, jabbing a finger at the forest. “He’s there, he’s there!”

We took off together, headed directly for the thickening smoke. The air grew hotter as we traveled, more humid as we neared an open angry flame. Small sparks had already licked at a few branches, the edges of the leaves curled in burnt agony. I slowed as we neared, spotting a flickering flame directly ahead. It raged and dimmed before raging again, as if someone were controlling its intensity. I motioned for Thomas to slow down and move around one side, while I moved the other direction.

I crept along, skirting the forest as best I could. I was keenly aware that my only weapon was my short pistol, good for close-up but not quite meant for longer-range shots. If this got ugly from a distance, I would be in trouble.

I got close enough to hear someone talking. No, two someones. Ratcliffe was there in front of the fire. I could see he was kneeling, bent over and cowering on the ground. But I couldn’t see anyone else around the fire. So who was the second?

“...told you, I didn’t know!!”

“Of course you didn’t,” the second voice seethed as the flame got bigger. “How could you? We don’t exist, remember?” A spit of flame separated, swirling out into the night and singeing the above branches.

Don’t exist?

Ratcliffe bowed, head scraping the forest floor, voice trembling under the weight of attempted humility. “I am...so sorry…about your family…”

Flames lashed out, striking him across the face. He grabbed at the burns and screamed, reeling back. “Don’t you talk about my family!!” the second voice screamed. “We happily lived in our forests until you came along and dumped a pile of toxic waste at our door!”

The fire began to spin, swirling faster and faster as the voice rose in pitch. “Because of you, my family’s dead. Because of you, I turned into this!” It raged into the sky, towering over him and bending around in a spiral. “Your poison soaked into my body and warped me, and the fire you used to try and kill me only made me this. Made me this!!!”

Oh. Oh no. Don’t tell me this was what I thought it was.

The fire died down until it was the size of a human, dimming until dark embers cascaded along a two-legged, humanoid figure. The body was twisted with burns like a roasted tree, the skin bumpy and wooden. Each movement creaked and groaned, the splintered remains of branches still sticking out from the back of its skull.

It was an earth sprite...or what used to be one. If I understood her raging monologue right, she was the evidence of Ratcliffe’s company dumping waste where they shouldn’t have. It crept into her as it had crept into the forest she guarded, and the fires nearby were a result of Ratcliffe trying to get rid of her.

A charred stump of a finger stabbed at him, fire beginning to burn again as she stated, “even after you found out what was wrong, who was trying to fix the damage you caused, you only used that information to latch an iron cuff around my wrist−to trap me, to bury me in flames. Me!” The fire grew along her arm and ate away her image. “You don’t get to play the hero tonight.” The fire swirled around her head. “You don’t get to walk away from me now.” It grew into a formless flickering mass. “You won’t bury me tonight! Because I’ll be the one burying you!”

I hesitated.

Ratcliffe needed to answer for his crimes. I needed to bring him to the humans, get him to confess to them. This was something the city needed to know. There was a right and a wrong way to handle this.

But in the world of magic, the world I grew up in, there was a different sense of justice. You did wrong, you paid the price. Usually with your life. The sprite was doing nothing more than any other sprite.

Except this fire. I watched as the flames got bigger, caught the edges of the trees. Her rage would soon be the start of a wildfire, and that would cost innocent creatures their lives.

“Stop!” I blinked as Thomas’s voice rang out, lashing through the trees. The sprite halted, fire dimming as Thomas emerged with a hand out as if he was trying to steady the flames. “Everyone just...take it easy.”

A blast of heat swept his way as the sprite screamed, “Stay out of this!”

His head poked up from where he ducked, carefully moving forward as he talked. “Easy...I’m only here for him.” A stray finger pointed directly at Ratcliffe, who had now shrunk his cries into muffled whimpers.

“And I’m here for his head!” Another slice of flame cut through the air. Thomas dodged again, rolling to his feet and keeping a calm face as he continued to advance. I pulled at the pistol attached to my belt, crawling through the forest to find a better vantage point. “First he poisons me, then he tries to kill me, then I heard that he was buying up forests to cover his tracks. Well he won’t get away from me that easily!!”

“That’s wrong!” Thomas called out, trying to halt the sprite’s anger. “His company is buying forests to help preserve the land!”

Fire shot out over Thomas’s head, the tree bursting into flame. I pulled at my pistol and crept forward as the sprite spat fire, screaming, “Wrong. Wrong! He’s trying to cover his tracks through lies, buying the forests and telling you he’s preserving them when all he’s doing is making sure no one can find out about his dirty past!” She spun around to Ratcliffe and advanced, flames spitting in every direction as she moved. The forest was catching, the heat beginning to press. “You don’t get to be a hero by burying your past!!”

She reached for Ratcliffe, who was worming away in a last attempt for his life.

Thomas began to run between them, drawing his own weapon. She didn’t budge. She was going to burn both of them. Kill both of them.

I squeezed one eye shut and took a steadying breath.

Once was all you ever got in life.

A shot rang out.

Rain. It always seemed to soothe me in one way or another−little drops of starlight falling, glistening in the dull glow of the moonlight like tiny angels, plummeting towards the earth.

I stood under a sheltering cluster of branches, in a tiny bit of nature away from the city. It was far enough away, the light in the distance like a foggy memory of hope. Hope for anything new. But nothing was really new these days, was it? Memories haunted the foggy rain as I stared at the ground, where a small ring of rocks marked the grave of the tortured earth sprite. The gunshot still pounded my ears, the echo of a decision I made daily to exist in one world over the other.

The exceptions were on slow days like today. Today I was forced into a corner. Forced to reconsider my efforts. To live as a human knowing it might come at the expense of the sprites. To live as a sprite knowing my world was constantly shrinking...and one day may be gone.

I stood in the small corner of nature, standing long enough to grow roots. Didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Only listened and thought of my mother.

Something in the trees moved. I tensed, shifting my stance enough to look over my shoulder. Thomas emerged with a small smile and an umbrella. He stood next to me and extended the plastic shelter, letting the downpour fill our silence.

“Ratcliffe,” I finally said, hands in pockets and staring at the grave. “Did he confess?”

Thomas shook his head. “Of course not. But the evidence did enough talking for the police.”

I glanced at his shoulder, captured against his body by a white sling. “Sorry.”

He shook his head again, droplets flicking out of the brown mess of his hair. “Don’t worry about it, Miss Becka. It was a one-in-a-million shot you tried to pull, and this,” he shuffled his arm, “helps tell the story that Ratcliffe shot me.”

“True. But I wish for her sake we could snag him for dumping poison in the forests.”

Thomas smiled. “Don’t count me out yet, Miss.” I shot him a suspicious look, to which he smiled wider. “I may or may not have found out who he’s been hiring to dump the waste for him. And I bet once we link his assaulting farmers to the land-buying and dumping, he’ll be sorry he ever set his sights on this forest.”

“It won’t change the damage he’s already done,” I sighed. “Or bring any peace back to the sprite he shot.”

“Maybe not, Miss Becka,” Thomas answered, looking back to the grave. “Maybe not. But maybe these events will get ripple beyond what we can see. Death isn’t always the end, not when it can bring about change for the better.”

I nodded, glancing up at him. “I suppose that’s true. As long as we make sure it's a change for the better.”

“I have every confidence in you, Miss Becka.”

We stood there a moment longer, listening to the rain, watching as it struck the ground. The strong smell of fresh earth wafted into the air. As we watched, a small piece of earth twitched in the center of the grave. My hand went to my pistol, but there was no need. In the very center of the sprite’s resting spot, something began to emerge. A single twig poked its head from the ground, unfolding in the damp of the night into a strong sapling.

I let out a small laugh. “The last of her magic,” I muttered.

“What?”

“An old myth my father told me once: ‘Bury an earth sprite in the ground, respectfully mark it with rocks around, the last of their magic is new life found.’ He used to tell me every time we visited my mother’s grave. I never knew what to make of it, but…” I shook my head. Looked up at my assistant. “Nevermind. Let’s go, Mr. Bayle; we’ve got work to do.” Turning towards the distant halo of street lamps, I walked out into the night fog.