"Do you like life?" Yurith asked as she led the girl by the hand towards the river by the forest’s edge. 

The girl didn't respond and it was unlikely that she could. A spell woven by a siren’s song was powerful. The girl trailed onward unaware of the wet grass soaking her feet through her heels, nor the fringe of her grey-blue prom dress was dragging in the mud or one dainty strap slipping off her shoulder. Bits of glitter from Yurith’s messy black hair were falling over her with each step, the sirens moss green dress adorned with shells clicking gently as they traveled hand in hand.

Kip sat on the opposite side of the muddy riverbank and watched them approach with interest. It wasn’t every day that you saw a siren with a companion, at least not here. 

Through history, humans mistook these graceful creatures for frilly mermaids or shameless bird-brained harpies, but real sirens were enchantresses who harboured broken souls. 

The sirens Kip knew lived beside the great open oceans of the human realm, waiting upon the rocks to entice the sailors until they slipped off deck and drowned so nicely. Being forced to live with careless humans did that to them.

"Or is my voice that sweet. Tell me I’m sweet," Yurith sang as they drew ever closer.

The ensnared girl had a particularly beautiful face. He wished that he could have seen her drowned, filled up with warm seawater. Then she really would have been a lifeless doll, floating with her hair splayed, colourful ribbons drifting, pale face to a pale moon. Like the moon now hanging over the city. 

How could he not think it? It was a kelpie’s born passion to see living things drown and for all his miserable life he had been stuck guarding this half polluted river that nobody would ever swim in because the current was too fast. 

"Why won’t you talk? You aren’t scared of me are you?" her voice drifted over again. 

Kip shook his head and looked down. It was a shame that he had to keep his position and listen to the rest of Yurith’s love talk. He wished that he hadn’t told his friend Oro to go on without him, but the woodland party being hosted by the other fey folk had sounded too good for him to hold his friend back.

Kip tried to remember what his friend had been saying before he left. It had been news that some old fey was starting a rally, not that it would ever change anything. City life had made his unseelie fey cousins stupid, to match their power hungry disposition, while the seelie fey, with their love of order, had blended into the corporate lifestyle. They should have just come to the party.

A pebble hit the surface of the water. Kip looked up. 

Yurith watched him with enough intent to make visible the flakes of gold in her murky green eyes. He might have been caught in their depths had her mouth not been fixed in a frown that showed her displeasure. Perfect he thought. Now look where his thoughts had got him.

"Would you please let me cross now," Yurith said annoyed. 

Kip hated that tone, but he didn’t want to be another puppet. He pulled himself out of the mud, onto his feet, and held out a wet hand. 

"My bribe," he said eyeing the human. 

Yurith tossed over a string of pearls. Kip wanted to complain, but it was one of the best gifts he had received all night. He tossed the pearls into the rushing waters, made a sweeping gesture with his hand, and stepped aside as the water settled into a glassy sheet. He raised his head and watched the hovering moon as he waited for his guest to cross, thinking of whom he might try to tempt with his new assortment to of gifts.

"Couldn’t you at least change for my momentous entrance?" Yurith's voice cut in.

Interrupted from his daze, Kip looked at her irritably. It was bad enough that she brought a human prize he could not touch, but if this small favour would get her gone then it was the least he could do. Kip’s human figure sighed and melted back into the riverbank. In place of the human figure a black colt rose from the mud. The colt made a show of straightening up and stood waiting as before.

At last satisfied Yurith took the hand of her human guest and crossed over the stilled surface of the river, leaving small ripples in wake of her footsteps. Kip watched the girl’s reflection as she passed. A longing for ghostly death filled his thoughts again. 

***

She walked not knowing why. The air on her skin meant nothing. The pull on her hand meant nothing. When she searched for a meaning one way her mind was jerked in the opposite direction. She stumbled over herself. Pictures of a forest she couldn’t connect started flashing in front of her eyes and she felt almost hopeful that soon she wouldn’t see and she wouldn’t think like this any longer.

***

Across town in an abandoned theatre that used to show productions of Othello and River Dancing, the so-called fey rally was underfoot. Really. Tarin had been standing in the shadows of the upper balcony, leaning against a pillar, for almost an hour because his friend and employer wanted information. Stupid idea. The bottoms of Tarin’s feet were starting to hurt. 

The crowd of gathered fey were mulling around the pit below the stage. Tarin could recognize each distinct type now. There were the gibbering, mouldy-headed redcaps; the tattooed blue skinned genies; the pixies stepping carefully to avoid damage to their long slender wings; tall and grey skinned ogres; and many more. None of them mattered as long as they couldn’t see him, but that was his problem. If he moved now they would see him so he had to send his obnoxious familiar, Baltane, to get his employer. It was a decision Tarin knew he would regret.

He was planning on how to explain this shortcoming when the metal door at the back of the stage finally opened and a smartly attired man wearing a white suit strolled out. In his right hand the man loosely held to a lacquered cane and his eyes were hidden behind black sunglasses, but the movement of his head showed that he casually glanced from side to side as he walked out to meet the gathered audience. Unlike the guests who had slipped into their more comfortable natural forms, this man held a very human appearance. He stopped at the edge of the stage to smile and raised a hand for silence.

Tarin had to give the man some credit for his showmanship. In a world that required the fey to blend in, human influence was the greatest weapon and this fey born man knew how to show it.

"As you should know," the man said now that the audience had quieted. "This group has organized to discuss the threat of the wizard community and the remaining high born fey as they now wish to connect their magic realms with this human realm we inhabit."

Here the man paused to give them time to consider this for themselves. For some, this was the first time that this information was confirmed. Such an event was not easy to believe, but nobody disputed it, not when they had all seen the lost fey who had one after the other appeared in the human towns and wandered haphazardly through the area crying and lamenting. The resident fey had been forced to take them in and calm them, else risk one of their kind being discovered and put on display. Even Tarin felt deeply for this tragedy, though he was not a fey.

Unfortunately, the man's speech was not so moving. As talk of betrayal and revenge continued it became clear that like all the other fey leaders Tarin had seen over the last few weeks it came down to one thing: someone had to die. There was not room for both sides, but this was exactly the sort of thing that his employer Naruze wanted to stop.

"And to preserve what little freedom we hold," the man concluded.

As the noise of the audience rose in discussion, Tarin looked up to see a young member of the basilisk clan slip out through the backstage door with a stack of paper.

Compared to his snake ancestors the child’s looks were diminished. The scales on his face were so minuscule that they could have been mistaken for a skin condition. For all their talk of discrimination it was interesting to see how they had blended in with humans.

The boy stopped at the front of the stage, still holding his stack of pages.

"As I am a person of little time, the specifics will be written into your contracts. In these difficult times we must be assured that we can rely on others."

Not willing to watch any further proceedings, Tarin moved along the upper balcony, keeping to the wall until he got to the door, and slipped past into the deserted entrance hall. There he remained in the shadows and checked the time on his watch. Naruze should be arriving any moment.

***

Tarins familiar was having fun. He liked to look into windows where he went. He liked to watch the people as they watched him. He knew that he looked single and modern and that his master, Tarin, couldn’t see him. He showed off in his ripped jeans, black pinstripe dress shirt, and a bowler hat thrown over his cropped blond hair. He liked people and he liked the city.

Lord Naruze didn’t pay any attention to Tarin's look-alike familiar who led the way towards the meeting, which was just as well since Baltane wasn’t in the mood to act serious. He did sort of feel bad for his master’s employer though. Despite Lord Naruze's knowledge of the city, he looked very out of place. He was short compared to the city people. A trait that must have come from his ancestry as a domestic feline. Then there were his clothes. Those black pants, white ruffled shirt, and long jacket might have been fashionable back with the fey, but they were too old fashioned for this place.

"Is it just me or do you think this city looks worse?" Naruze asked.

"I think it’s gotten better," Baltane replied. "Even business suits are looking sharp to my eyes. The styling of clothes to represent the inner self in the smallest piece is amazing."

He wondered how long it would take Naruze to realize he was not talking to Tarin, but a copy. Baltane had to hold back a laugh.

"I think these people are rather stupid if they think they can hide behind colorful appearances. This city is falling apart. It smells worse than those old smoked out wizard towns," Naruze told him.

 "I don’t think you’ve been to an old wizard town," Baltane remarked.

"True, but they’ll inherit this mess soon enough."

"If you hate it that much, why don't you burn it down," Baltane suggested.

As Baltane expected, Naruze stopped behind him and he smiled to himself. That phrase had been a giveaway. Oh, how he enjoyed conflict. The night crowds parted naturally around them, not realizing something was in their path. Beside them the bright lights of a small town theatre blazed, but no person dared to move past to enter.

"I could help set the fire," Baltane added as he turned.

Naruze sighed.

"You’re not Tarin," he said.

"I thought you would never notice. You really must be worried," Baltane said.

"Are you leading me in the right direction or am I now lost?"

Baltane looked from the dry cleaner across the street to the ancient theatre. He was tempted to say they were lost and opened his mouth to do so, but Naruze caught sight of the real Tarin through the theatre’s glass doors.

Naruze snapped his fingers and Baltane's temporary form burst into a cloud of dust. Now Naruze had a headache from all the bad commentary, but all jokes aside he turned and opened the theatre door.

Tarin was waiting inside. His clothes were similar to those of his copycat familiar except that his jeans were not ripped, his dress shirt was plain black, and he wore no bowler hat. He looked tired.

Tarin raised a hand to his temple as the experiences of his familiar became his own and Baltane started on a rant.

"I am so sorry," Tarin said.

"I can see you’re dealing with that, but could you at least warn me when you send him."

"I'm not a psychic and I'm really no magician either. I am afraid it's up to Baltane to speak for himself, else he wouldn’t say anything."

Naruze had moved his attention to the balcony door beyond.

"In there?" he asked.

"They're lining up to sign some paper pledge," Tarin informed him.

"Remind me to get rid of pledges and contracts when I start my ruling," Naruze told Tarin before pushing though the balcony door.

Out above the crowd he saw what Tarin had described. Many participants of the meeting were scrutinizing the piece of paper that had been handed to them, trying to figure out what the trick was while a small grouping of fey that seemed to have handed in their forms were gathered up on the stage chatting with the leader. Naruze knew intimidating when he saw it. This was not intimidating.

"Excuse me," he called loudly down to them. "If I could have your attention."

The conversation was quelled as the fey each turned to look at him. There was something about Naruze that drew people to him and made others feel that he was one of them. Tarin had always thought that his feline ancestry had something to do with it, but more likely the truth lay in the fact that Naruze had suffered through the same long exile with humans.

"It’s good to see you involved with each other again," Naruze told them affectionately. "The last I looked you seelie and unseelie watched each other with resentment, not willing to accept that we were, and are in the same situation."

Here Naruze paused to let them think it over and…

"Who are you supposed to be?" the man in the white suit questioned. He glared from the centre of his newfound group of followers.

…and to answer their questions.

"It doesn't matter," Naruze testified. "Knowing that will not make you listen. I just wanted everyone to know that we do not need to have a war. We can go on living quite comfortably here."

"What complete nonsense," the white suit scoffed. "Humans know nothing of our boundaries and the wizards will not tolerate us. They never have."

"The wizards need not be the ones to decide," Naruze said.

"Certainly not," the man in white said. "We won't let them live on our ground."

"And you will surrender our only advantage!" Naruze announced sharply.

"Which is what?"

"People will accept us. We may still be in hiding, but if people see the greed of wizards they will not think so badly of us. We can live the way that we used to, granting favours, providing mystery and excitement, and beauty. The wizards will be the only tyrants and we will be at peace. Fellow fey, please go home. I estimate a time of three weeks before these worlds are smashed back together. Don't make things harder than they have to be."

"So you will do nothing for us," the white coat said, "But offer us a secluded life in the forests like nothing ever happened."

"I will ensure that the world as you know it does not fall apart. Does that mean so little?"

***