Dockalfar by PL Nunn

dally.” She waved a hand in dismissal. “Go on. All of you. Silly creatures. Do you want the dark one to get you? Go.”
    The fairies shattered like glass, spilling into the forest in a hundred directions. Victoria had not realized how many there had been. She looked to the girl uncertainly. The girl inclined her head and loped into the wood. Victoria followed as best she could.
    ~~~
    The girl’s name was Aloe. She made it clear, on Victoria’s very first protest upon splitting from the fairies, that she was much better company than “those silly twits.”
    “What, do you want to while away the rest of your life dancing in their circle?”
    Victoria thought it not a terrible prospect, but refrained from voicing it.
    Aloe was very set in her opinions. Aloe was very good in the wood. Aloe was very circumspect in questioning a stranger that had stumbled into her wood. She mostly traveled in silence. Mostly, save for the playful cub which had unerringly found her way back to Victoria when even the dark assassin had not. To her vast surprise, Victoria found she was not unadept at following on paths that she would never had attempted on her own.
    They moved along the paths that animals would take, rather than those of men. Once Aloe practically kicked her feet from under her and crouched with one hand over her mouth and the other on the cub, while she waited for something to pass by that Victoria could not see. After a long time, they moved on. The silver haired girl walking with her hands clasped behind her, great eyes very thoughtful.
    “You’re not a Bakatu.”
    “No,” Victoria agreed.
    “You’re much too pretty. Almost normal,” Aloe declared, as if she had been certain all the time. “What are you then?”
    Victoria shrugged, rubbing the chill of her arms.
    “Just a girl. I’m not from here.”
    “Where then?”
    “Home. Far away I think. Earth.”
    Aloe looked at her blankly. “So what are you?”
    “Human.”
    The girl blinked and stopped. Her brows drew low over her eyes.
    “Well, that is a far place then. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a human.”
    “What are you?” Victoria only thought it fair to return the question.
    Aloe smiled, as if the answer were only too obvious. “Sidhe.”
    Victoria tested the word on her tongue. She looked critically at Aloe.
    Sidhe. Fairies dancing in a circle. It smacked of wives’ tales and legends. Of things too familiar in myths out of her own world. It made her uncomfortable, those familiarities. They walked in silence for a while, listening to the sound of the forest.
    The music was faint and far away.
    “The fairies were kind. I’d like to go back to them,” she said carefully.
    “No, you wouldn’t,” Aloe contradicted her. “They’re basically harmless, but they feed on the weak and the unwary. You’re both of those. I think.”
    Victoria found herself bristling. Aloe plunged on heedlessly.
    “They’ll suck the life right out of you. The music, if you want to call it that. They’re all right, I suppose, for a moment’s dalliance, but you have to be careful. Their dances don’t end. They liked you a bit too much. Your music must be potent.”
    Victoria did not comment. She watched a emerald green toad leisurely hop behind a concealing fern. Phoebe pounced on the hiding place with a kittenish growl. Came up with nothing but a mouthful of fern and a disgruntled expression. Victoria smiled.
    “I’ve never seen a gulun take to anyone before,” Aloe declared. “It makes me wonder what kind of magic you have.”
    “I don’t have any magic.”
    The sidhe shrugged. “How did you get here from the human place then? It takes great magic to do that nowadays.”
    “I was taken. I and my… fiancée. By an ogre and goblins and a spriggan.” She giggled at the way that sounded. Taken by an ogre. “Oh, and the assassin.”
    “Ciagenii,” Aloe corrected her. “It’s not just any old assassin we’re talking about. The fairies for all their