"Duzi help me!" Cashel said. He spread his fingers wide. "Forgive me, mistress!"
The tiny girl grabbed his thumb to keep from being accidentally spilled onto the ground. She giggled merrily.
"Oh, I'm so glad to have company again!" she said, swinging on his thumb like an acrobat. "It's been so very long."
She tossed herself up in a full somersault that landed her again in Cashel's palm. He had to override the reflex that told him to close his hand when he caught something.
"I'm Mellie," she said. She spoke in a melodious soprano, not loud but certainly not the piping bat-squeak he'd have expected for the voice of someone so small. She grinned up at him. "What's your name?"
"Ah?" said Cashel. "I'm Cashel or-Kenset. Mistress? You're a sprite."
She nodded, looking critically down at her shoulder. She flicked away a strand of spiderweb she'd picked up in the bluebird nest. She was really quite pretty; indeed, beautiful if you ignored the fact that she wasn't any bigger than his middle finger.
"That's right," she said nonchalantly. She fluffed her hair with both hands. It was rednot the orange-red of human hair but a true deep red that would have suited a tulip better than a flame.
"But sprites are just stories," Cashel said. "They're not real, I mean. I thought."
Mellie stood and climbed his arm with the effortless speed of a squirrel. She seemed to weigh almost nothingeven less than a being her size ought to weigh. "Well, there aren't very many of us," she said. "I wonder if you have sprite blood yourself?"
Cashel laughed. "Oh, mistress" he said.
"Mellie!" she corrected tartly. "You're Cashel and I'm Mellie."
"Mellie," he agreed. He couldn't focus on the sprite when she was seated as now on his shoulder. That actually made it easier to carry on a conversation, since he wasn't distracted by the competing realizations that this girl is only four inches tall! and this girl is stark naked! "The difference in our size means, well, we couldn't very well be related."
Maybe sprites didn't understand human reproduction? Cashel felt a blush rising at the mere thought of trying to explain to someone who at least looked like a pretty girl.
Mellie's liquid silver laughter trilled across the moonlight. "Oh, Cashel!" she said. "Someone with your powers should know better than that!"
He felt her touch his earlobe. She was standing, her body a friendly warmth against the side of his neck.
"We used to come and go from your plane all the time," she said. Her tone was studiously indifferent to the meaning of her words, as though none of it was of any real importance. "This plane is so excitingvery different from our own."
She chuckled, but the infectious humor of moments ago was gone from the sound. "After a thousand years, though, 'excitement' isn't quite the word I'd use to describe it. Especially recently when I've been alone."
Cashel raised his hand. She got into his palm without urging; he brought Mellie in front of him where she could meet his frowning gaze. "You're a thousand years old?" he said in wonder.
"Much older than that, Cashel," Mellie said. She looked as though she might be eighteen; might possibly be as old as eighteen. "We don't age, you see. Though on this plane we can die. We can be killed, I mean. And eventually that's happened to all of us that I know of; all of us here on Haft, at least."
The sheep had settled down; Cashel's presence and the sound of his soft voice probably did as much for their mood as his shooing off the fox had. He glanced skyward, uneasily aware that a screech owl which ordinarily ate grasshoppers could make a meal from the tiny woman in his palm.
"Why don't you just go home?" he asked. "You said you could."
"The fox was very insistent," Mellie said, answering Cashel's thought rather than his spoken words. "Thank youbut I hope she's all right?"
"I hurt her vanity," he said with a shrug. "Nothing worse than that. She'd have given up and gone away pretty soon anyway, I expect."
He didn't believe anything of the sort, though the paddock post was hickory that the vixen couldn't have chewed through easily.
"Still," Mellie said, patting his palm with her own minuscule hand. Without changing expression she went on, "I said we used to be able to come and go. A thousand years ago when islands sank and the kingdom died, the paths got . . ."
She shrugged her tiny, perfect shoulders. "Twisted, I guess you'd say. The paths are still there and maybe they still reach my own plane, but in between they go through places that I wouldn't be able to go through."
"Yole sank," Cashel said, remembering Tenoctris' story. Should he talk to Tenoctris about seeing Mellie?
The sprite nodded. "Yole was one of them," she agreed. She went on, "Most people can't see us, but animals can. The fox was very insistent. I thought, well, that it might be over. And instead"
She beamed at Cashel, a pixie in all senses of the word.
"I met a friend!"
Cashel cleared his throat. He wanted to set Mellie back on the post or perhaps on the ground. Some place there wouldn't be a risk that he'd drop her.
"You know," he said, "you really ought to have a sword. Some kind of weapon at least. You could carry a thorn?"
She patted his palm again. "We don't use weapons," she said simply. "And as for a swordwe can't touch iron."
"Ah," Cashel said, feeling embarrassed. He'd turned down the sword Benlo offered, but only because he didn't think he'd be any use with it. The quarterstaff was a better weapon for him. If the drover had offered a big axe Cashel would've taken it. He'd used an axe many times, and a bandit would be no harder to hew than an oak tree.
"Well," he went on. "I need to be up in the morning"
It was already getting close to first light.
"and I guess you've got things to do too." Whatever did a sprite do? Did they even eat or sleep? "Would you like me to put you somewhere in particular?"
Mellie's face clouded. "Cashel?" she said. "I've been very lonely. Alone for the last hundred years, except for animals that . . . well, are animals. If you wouldn't mind terribly, could I ride along with you on your shoulder? I won't be any trouble. Your friends won't see me."
"Oh," Cashel said. His future a moment before had been a series of shutters through which darkness oozed. The shutters were flapping open, and light if not solid images lay beyond.
"I'd be very glad of your company, Mellie," Cashel said. "I understand what it means to be lonely."