Zach was already awake when Erica got there.

She knew he drowsed a lot, the spring chill that pervaded this region at the moment slowing his metabolism, although not nearly as much as their captors thought. As far as they knew, he remained quietly in his domed cage, sleeping most of the time around Gord's daily visits with food.

They didn't need to know that what they observed during the day was not necessarily the whole truth.

Erica greeted him with a quick smile, as they both circled around the rather barren cage to one spot in particular. It was hard to hide anything when the cage held, other than Zach, only a generously-large pile of straw for a bed in the centre, a spring at one edge that was the head of a small stream, a bottomless pit at the far edge to use as a toilet, and some knee-high grass and clover that was continuous with the area immediately surrounding the cage. The upper part of the dome had all the spaces filled by transparent glassy material that prevented the straw from getting wet during the intermittent rainshowers, but had there been any direct sun, it probably would have been dangerously lacking in shade. As it was, it was mostly just boring.

Erica set the silk bag she carried, slung across her body to rest on one broad hip, safely out of the way, then knelt. She gathered up the uneven chunk of turf that she had, with great patience and considerable time, been able to get her hands under and work free. It didn't have to be all that large, and it was too thick to roll properly, so she simply moved it aside. Zach did the same to a similar area of turf from within—that one had been both easier, with some help, and harder, since she'd had only highly awkward angles to work at, through and under the bars.

The soil below that was extremely loose, or at least it was now. Working from both sides, they scooped it out of the way, leaving a shallow gap under the bottom bar. It was a stupid design flaw, not having the bars extend under the surface, but maybe that would be more difficult with magic, or maybe they just saw no reason to believe their captive dragon had any motivation or energy for escape.

Zach slithered through easily, although Erica knew she could never have fit through such a tight space. They dragged the turf back into place on the inside, shoveled the dirt back, and replaced the outer turf as well. No point attracting attention. Since Zach often burrowed down into the pile of straw where he was hidden from view, no one should ever question whether he was still sleeping in his cage. He got to his feet, brushing dirt off his scales absently, and gave her a hug that she returned wholeheartedly, not even objecting to that snake-like tail curling around her since he was careful of her leafy skirt. Zach was less of an extrovert than Theo was—well, just about anyone was—but he still liked to be around people, and she knew it was hard on him to be alone so much.

Personally, she preferred long stretches by herself, and always had. With a few specific exceptions.

She and her older brother Adam had spent as much time as possible while growing up with their grandfather. He'd told them stories of seeing green people in the orchard and crops and garden, furry brown people around the livestock, and a blue woman in the spring-fed pond, and how from his teen years onwards he always left them small gifts. He was sure they knew he could see them, and yet seemed not to mind. Direct interactions were uncommon, very brief, but generally amicable if not outright helpful. He had a reputation for being extraordinarily lucky, which he was careful to neither brag about nor take for granted. His wife and children and other grandchildren thought he was harmlessly, if embarrassingly, crazy; Erica and Adam had listened in fascination and then, later, considered the abundant fertility and success of his farm in contrast with that of the neighbours. Even if they couldn't see green people, clearly something was going on.

From him, they'd learned about the deep magic of green life growing with utter joyous abandon, heedless of any attempts by mere fauna to impose boundaries or inflict injury. The ultimate alchemy lay in combining air, water, the sun's bright energy, and nutrients from the earth into more plant matter, the basis of life on their ball of rock in space.

The tiny plant forcing rock or concrete apart, the weed that returned as long as any fragment of root remained, the tree that grew contorted and precarious on the brink of a cliff, the scrubby growth that rapidly took over vacant lots and replenished the soil so more lush greenery could follow, wilderness reclaiming abandoned human buildings and settlements, plants clinging to life in desert and tundra and water and other plants and eavestroughs and windowboxes, microscopic or majestic... animal life depended on it all for food and oxygen and shelter and more, but seldom seemed to appreciate it.

Adam, after a messy divorce, had taken all that knowledge and his own skills with people and the contacts made at his earlier jobs, and had founded a greenhouse business, an hour and a half away. If his employees were puzzled at times by the actions Adam declared to be religious observance, they kept it to themselves or they left. He never saw green people, let alone interacting with them, but the gifts vanished—and the greenhouse thrived. The reviews online often noted how healthy the plants were that came from there.

In his seventies, their grandfather remained strong and independent, enough so to cling to the farm, though much of it he now rented a year at a time to others; the house, the pond, the chicken coop and run, the vegetable garden, those remained his. His response to suggestions that he should move had been met with adamant refusal and his insistance that if he was uprooted, he'd fade and die.

Just maybe, the fae blood in their family wasn't so far back, and his instinctive tenacity was keeping him alive.

She needed to get off this island. She needed to talk to Adam and their grandfather, to tell them the truth. The rest of her family would never understand, and she was going to have to find a way to keep it from them. She'd learned that much from the way they treated her grandfather. But those two, they'd be different, she was sure of it.

If she could even find a way to have that conversation, since with no lungs and no normal mammalian breathing, she had no way to vocalize anything. Was she going to have to write it? Type it? Ask Alison to come along as translator? If she could figure out how to do what the books had said about being able to voluntarily change back to midway, at least then she'd have a voice.

But first, she and her friends had to survive long enough to get home.

She retrieved the bag, which was a simple sling with a wide strap and a broad crescent-shaped body. In some light it looked greyish, but sometimes it refracted with rosy shades. Currently, it showed irregular lumps of all sizes, and she'd prefer that the contents didn't get excessively damaged before they reached their destination.

Des met up with them before long, stealing purring hugs from both along with affectionate cheek-swipes that made Zach roll his eyes, though he tolerated it. They were all learning to accommodate each other's natural inclinations and quirks, no matter how odd.

The three of them together could move more freely and quickly, without the need for constant caution that marked life here. It was improbable anything would challenge them, but Erica was confident that it would take a larger group of opponents to succeed than they were likely to encounter. Especially since, as they moved farther into the summer zone, Zach's metabolism began to speed up. That meant his gestures and movements went from something like human speed to very fast and precise, and his gaze snapped to track every hint of activity around them even though that was usually only the breeze.

Des looked down at the ground, and made a grumbling mewing noise of annoyance, shaking one broad black paw in distaste. Erica hadn't even realized they were close enough to the swamp for the ground to be starting to change, although now that she looked, the vegetation around them agreed that the soil was more consistently damp. Zach, as usual, paid no attention at all. His scales rinsed clean easily and nothing could penetrate them; his clawed toes, aside from being potentially fearsome weapons, gave him excellent traction on any kind of footing, and even the sorts of terrain that probably should have been uncomfortable in bare feet seemed to cause no discomfort. Her own bare feet were much less of an inconvenience than she'd feared at first, since she had yet to find even uneven rocky ground problematic, although the only reason she could come up with for herself was “because fae.”

The damp ground grew softer. Erica was certain that her mass was higher than a human of similar size, and she sank more and more deeply as they went on. Fortunately, being up to her ankles in wet soil actually felt rather pleasant to her, and she didn't mind the effort required to pull free.

Des, however, scrambled up into a tree, an elderly ash-leaved maple, and strolled along a heavy mostly-horizontal branch with such confident balance that she didn't fall behind at all, even when she leapt over to a branch of a pin oak and followed that to the trunk and out onto another branch. Aside from moments that she ran out of branches that were heavy enough to take her weight and horizontal enough to be useful, she stayed up in the trees.

“Wai',” Des said suddenly. “Somethin'... you hear?” She turned to scan the night forest, ears swivelling, as she sought to pinpoint whatever she'd heard.

It could be hard at moments to make out what Des was saying. Fairly-feline tongue and teeth combined with a human palate and lips and a larynx somewhere between didn't always work well. But with some effort, they could usually get it without needing to involve Alison. Plus, Des was getting better at working around the limitations, both in enunciation and in chosen phrasing.

Zach paused, listening intently. “Yes. Voices. Maybe trouble. Can't see. Where?”

Des pointed, already choosing a new branch to follow. Zach promptly changed heading along with increasing the length of his strides.

Erica shrugged and adjusted her own speed to keep up. If they did run into someone when Zach was already halfway to protective-mode, that was the bad luck of anyone who crossed him. She could fill in the rest easily enough, despite Zach's discomfort with vocalization after too many painful shocks: We have friends out here, we can't just walk away and hope it's not any of them. If someone is looking for trouble, they just found it. It obviously wasn't Suzi, since she'd be calling for help via Alison, but they were on the edges of the wisp swamp, and Paz or Orfeo could be around here even if their aquatic friend Dulce couldn't.

It didn't take long.

Will-o'-the-wisps were small, topping out around five feet, and thin, and almost as neutrally buoyant in the air as Theo was in the water. Erica had no reason to believe that they were physically all that weak or frail, but since they effectively lacked mass or leverage, that was little use. While they had a very effective non-physical defence against humans, it failed against other fae. Instead, when camouflage and alertness weren't enough, they depended on their ability to climb with speed a squirrel would envy and to run directly across treacherous ground that would bog down a pursuer.

That wasn't much help when one wisp was surrounded by five unfamiliar figures. They were highly diverse in appearance, but the body language suggested they were united by their enjoyment of their sport. Even the shortest was about the same height as the wisp while being several times as bulky.

The tallest, about Erica's height, was on the thin side, with skin that reminded Erica of rock, greyish and rough—and was, very emphatically, male. His spine bore a long uneven ridge from neck to coccyx.

One stood out in the dim light, though not as much as the wisp did. She was very beautiful in a stark way, slender and graceful. She was clad in a white robe that seemed to drift weightlessly around her lower arms and her lower body right to the ground, hiding her feet or whatever equivalent she might have; her skin was so white and fine that it was translucent, allowing a hint of the blood vessels beneath, though her long unbound hair was absolute blue-black, and her lips were bluish. Her eyes, the overall lines of her face, looked distinctly eastern Asian... Japanese maybe.

All were laughing as they poked and prodded the unfortunate wisp.

Their target made a frantic effort to leap high enough to escape a grab for its wing by the shortest, who was nearly as wide as tall, with little skin visible beneath long hair and long beard that were streaked white and grey, and somehow was wearing what might be a sleeveless leather tunic and pants.

It was dragged back down by a curvy and medium-tall female, her skin cornflower blue, who had four arms. Beside her, another female, her build rather athletic, partly covered with mottled skin and partly with dull scales that mixed graphite black and mossy green and shades of grey, laughed and seized the wisp's arm to spin it in place with a rough shove.

Miserably, the wisp wrapped both arms, which were in part bat-like wings, around itself in a vain effort at protection while they batted it back and forth. Under these conditions, the wisp was by far the most visible part of the scenery, skin softly luminescent with ever-shifting pastel colours, wings glowing with the same. A human would be quickly hypnotized, as Erica understood it, especially in dim light, but fae were immune. What passed for clothing, a wrapped length of shimmery translucent silk, offered little protection.

Erica heard Zach make an odd growling hiss. On a tree-branch, Des growled too, but it trailed into a feline yowl, a piercing battle-cry.

The five hostile fae paused, distracted from their game.

Des ran along the branch and jumped down, barely out of arm's length. She hissed, ears back flat and tail lashing around her hips, fingers hooked and showing off those claw-like nails.

Zach caught up only a heartbeat after Des landed, and crouched, one hand on the ground, tail swaying threateningly.

Erica shrugged to herself. She was all in favour of the rescue, she just hadn't expected them to move quite so abruptly. She circled around by ninety degrees and, while the aggressors had all their attention on cat and dragon, she simply reached between two of them to catch the upper arm of the frightened wisp. Since it had no weight, and she was significantly taller than most of the aggressive fae, it took no effort and only a couple of seconds to draw it sufficiently upwards and out so that she could put herself in the middle.

Her temperature sense worked a bit differently these days, but she was sure that the air felt quite a lot cooler right next to the woman in white.

The wisp curled into a very compact ball, hovering in the air at the height of Erica's chest, and wrapped its wings tightly around itself. Erica wondered why it wasn't using the chance to flee.

Just in case she needed to do more, she removed the bag and hung it on a broken branch where she could keep an eye on it but it should be safe.

“It's the newcomers,” the tall troll-like male said scornfully. “You don't want us as enemies.”

“Don't care,” Zach said. “Bullies. All talk. Try that game with me.”

Des spun in place and lashed out with both hands. Another of the aggressive fae cried out and stumbled back. This one, again male in defiance of the usual pattern, was a weird mix—his general outline was of a fairly fit and handsome man, aside from split hooves for feet and a short tail and curled horns, but his lower body was densely covered in chocolate and goldenrod fur and his upper body with cream and mustard scales. The scales must be tough, since there were two sets of dark streaks running from his collarbone on either side towards his solar plexus, but Erica saw no actual blood. Maybe his scales were damage-resistant, but clearly they were not proof against pain.

Trying to ambush a cat was unlikely to be successful. Maybe they didn't remember cats. Or maybe they were just that arrogant. Regardless, if there were more, even potentially, that could account for the reluctance of the wisp to venture off alone.

Were these the fae that Paz and Orfeo called “los malos” and had warned them about several times? That seemed highly plausible. Either of those two alone would probably be in trouble, and current behaviour suggested that they weren't inclined to live and let live. Really, against the whole group, even together Paz and Orfeo could be in trouble. “The bad ones” seemed like a reasonable name, but “bullies” struck her as simpler in English.

“Cowards,” Zach spat, and charged at the troll-like one with the spine ridge—and Zach, when he was warm, could move crazy fast. The bully screeched and backed up, and the two on either side, the four-armed female and the short sturdy dwarf-like one, moved forward to flank him.

By the time they did, Zach had already landed multiple blows on the leader, a mixture of fists and claws and the heels of his hands. Like Des against his own target, he couldn't seem to break that rocky skin, but the sheer force of them drove the bully back, away from his allies, before they had any chance to assist. That did put Zach between those two allies, but they seemed to be hesitating. Possibly they weren't used to effective retaliation. It didn't matter. She was sure Zach could handle that.

Erica would have heaved a sigh, if that were possible. Zach would have a very hard time forcing himself to fight even hostile fae bullies if they happened to be female, she was quite sure of that.

She seized the scaled female by one arm, dragging her into better reach despite struggles and some extremely profane language. Erica wasn't particularly fast, but she knew she was very strong. As soon as she could, she transferred her grasp to either side of the scaled fae's waist, her long-fingered hands spread wide on the rough skin. Being heaved into the air overhead made the scaled fae squeal, briefly interrupting commentary on Erica's ancestry and sexual proclivities. Erica threw her as far as she could, aiming for a patch of what looked like open ground. It was, as expected, one of the muddy pools; it was thick viscous stuff, practically quicksand although it generally seemed to be no more than about four feet deep. To her satisfaction, the bully went under completely on impact, probably getting a generous mouthful of mud. Her flailing attempts to escape and spluttered curses were not going to help her actually regain solid land, surely she knew that. On the other hand, one thing Erica did like here was the peace most of the time. No cars, no ringing phones, no construction, often not even voices, just quiet, although a few more animal sounds would've been pleasant. These aggressive bullies were disrupting that peacefulness and it was jarring. She rather hoped the other swallowed some of the mud.

The combat sounds nearby, screeches and hissing and growling, grunts of pain and thumping sounds as blows landed, well, those were neither Zach's fault nor Des'.

Something smacked across her lower back, making a resounding report as it connected with and broke across her built-in wooden corset—doing exactly zero damage. She turned, and found the four-armed blue woman dropping a now-broken stick and backing away from her cautiously. Erica contemplated what to do about her. Short of tossing the four-armed woman directly into the melee, there was no second handy patch of mud, and given how the other was sinking into the soft ground, she might be more dense than first appearances would suggest. Also, that extra pair of arms might complicate things. Erica wasn't at all confident that she could lift her cleanly or find anywhere useful to throw her.

It didn't really matter, there were other options. She strode forward, wrapped both hands around the other fae's upper arms, or rather the upper part of her upper arms, and simply kept walking in the direction of a large tree. Though the four-armed fae tried to dig her feet into the soft ground, she failed to get any significant traction, or at least not enough to be more than mildly inconvenient. Erica slammed her forcefully against the trunk of the tree and held her there, ignoring all the struggles to escape and the kicking and cursing. If Erica's feet were sinking gradually deeper into the wet ground, it didn't matter. It only made her even harder to move.

The lower pair of hands wrapped around Erica's forearms, and unlike the very human upper hands, these ones had fearsome claws.

They left only superficial scratches that filled in with clear fluid, although on normal animal matter they probably would have left bloody gouges instead. Erica shook her warningly, and when that failed, she thumped her captive against the tree again, not nearly as hard as she could, but just as a reminder that it was a possibility. The four-armed woman grunted.

“You can't talk?” the other said, rather breathlessly.

Erica shook her head.

“Did that mean, if I don't scratch, you won't beat me against the tree?”

Erica nodded.

“Fine. We've got a bit of a stalemate here. I guess I can go with that.”

That was a relief: they actually were capable of rational thought, at least. That didn't mean Erica trusted her, or had any intention of being less alert, but she did ease up just a bit on the pressure of her hands. The four-armed woman flexed her upper hands slowly.

“Thank you.”

Erica nodded, and turned her head far enough to get some sense of what was going on behind her. Zach had one clawed foot still planted warningly on the chest of the tall talkative male with the spine ridge, who was holding his rather large privates and groaning. Those might be less well-protected, since Erica thought she saw something dark and shiny-wet just above the troll's hands. Zach's tail was wrapped around the neck of the partly-furred partly-scaled one, who was on his knees and staying very rigidly still while sucking in air in very long shallow breaths. The short dwarf-like one lay sprawled motionless, possibly unconscious, which might have something to do with the gnarled tree roots protruding from the ground right around him.

The cold woman in white was still facing off against Des. Erica thought Des was trying to keep her away from Zach, actually, which made sense: Zach getting cool meant Zach getting slow and unfocused which meant Zach being vulnerable. Though the white fae lacked visible weaponry, other than long nails of a startling red, she was nonetheless the last one standing.

Then again, the ground under her looked like it was more hard and solid than it should be, with a thin cracked eggshell layer of ice glittering on top. The leaves on a branch that dipped down into her immediate personal space were shrivelling from the edges inwards, and the surfaces of leaves and twigs looked shiny. She took a step towards Des, then another, and her fingers flexed.

When she lunged, blood-red nails aiming for the vicinity of Des' heart, the cat fell back, ducking agilely out of the way. Then Des leapt forwards, partly-furred arms crossed at shoulder-height to block any further blows, and kicked, clawed paw spread wide. The woman in white grunted as Des connected solidly with her solar plexus.

The second kick slammed her backwards a step. Off-balance, she staggered, and that wasn't a good thing that close to another pool of muck. This one was less deep, which failed to matter since she landed bottom-first, her shriek choked off just before she disappeared entirely for a few seconds.

“Bullies,” Zach growled again. “Three to six. We win. Fuck off.”

“No' mess with our frenz,” Des spat, tail still lashing. She jumped lightly over the fallen dwarf and came towards Zach to lay a hand on his shoulder. “We go. No more ba' fae.”

The white-robed fae scrambled to get out of the muck that was freezing around her. The baleful look she cast at Des suggested that she was contemplating much more serious violence.

Zach hissed warningly at the ice fae, but let Des urge him away, in Erica's direction. As Zach's tail loosened and fell, the scaled-and-furred man drew air into his lungs in a huge rattling gasp, and his subsequent breaths were harsh and ragged.

“Le' go,” Des said to Erica. “No' worth more.”

She had a point. Erica shrugged and released her captive, who hastened away to offer the partly-scaled woman a hand, or several hands, to get out of the deeper pool of mud.

“You okay?” Zach asked the wisp, while Erica retrieved the silk bag and slung it back in place.

Interestingly, there was a second bag on the ground, a few feet away. She investigated, cautiously. It was some kind of coarse canvas, the same kind of thing that produce was sometimes sent to the wisps in. She looked inside.

Warily, the wisp uncurled enough to look at Zach.

“Not hurt?” he prompted patiently.

“We are Suzi's frenz,” Des said carefully. “We go see her. Yes?” She offered a hand.

The wisp hesitated, then unfolded rapidly, seized the nearest tree—which was the thin outer branches of the same one Des had jumped out of—and did a hasty hand-over-hand upwards into the foliage. Erica glanced up and saw light glimmer between leaves as the wisp bolted.

The bag held three pigeons, their necks at odd angles. Erica considered that for a moment. JC could probably do a lot but she doubted that experience extended to cleaning poultry from scratch, and cooking it without being caught would be a problem. It would, however, be a good meal for Des—people had been eating pigeons for a very long time, and these ones were plump and healthy-looking. There was another option: the other house fae, the “wild” independent ones. She was sure they knew how to deal with it, and they'd feed Des along with anyone else hungry who showed up. It would probably even help with good relations, as a bonus.

Zach shrugged philosophically, watching the fleeing wisp. “Scared. Happens.”

“They're scared of their own shadows,” rasped the one with scales and fur, scornfully. “Useless as allies.”

“Better than bullies. Go away. Only warning. Will kill next time.”

That seemed like a fast escalation. On the other hand, there were no laws here, no cultural values they could depend on. There was only anarchy with Isabel and the other humans nominally in control but it was very clear from out here that any such control was extremely limited. Day to day, it was every fae for themself, crowded into finite space filled with abundant but not unlimited resources and unable to entirely avoid each other. Which was only another reason to be grateful for friends she could count on to watch her back. Extreme force might become the only option, unpleasant though the thought was.

“Hey! That's ours!” the tall leader protested, when Erica slung the canvas bag over one shoulder.

“Ours now,” Zach said. “Go hungry, don't care.”

They should be able to find Suzi before too much longer. She got herself oriented and started in that direction, avoiding the patches of ground that she knew were traps, sticking to the bits that could take her weight. She heard Zach squelching along behind her plus the scrabble of claws against bark that meant Des was taking the high road again in a feline attempt at avoiding water.