Good fences make good neighbours
Disclaimer: All of the characters belong to Holly Black and Ted Naifeh.
The birch's leafs were flowing in the wind, appearing prematurely golden in the late afternoon's sun. Birch the tree fairy (if that's what she was, for she tended not to talk too much about herself) gave Tam and Rue a slightly baleful gaze.
"Once upon a time," she said dryly, (for her, at any rate), "there was a nasty woman who wanted to get rid of her potential daughter-in-law. She managed to achieve it quite nicely with a cup of poison, not knowing that a birch tree grew on the poor girl's grave. When she did, however, and the birch tree's spirit revealed herself, it was too late. Nobody has ever learned how that woman died."
"I have," Tam said quietly. "In fact, I may have prophesized it to Aubrey – I tend not remember when I prophesize."
"I believe you," Birch admitted quietly. "I just never thought of myself as part of old Aubrey's court – and neither did he, most likely." She paused. "And what does his granddaughter say, by and by?"
"I don't know," Rue admitted quietly to her friend (relatively speaking). "You've read my mother's message for yourself. What are you going to do about it?"
"Can't you just say that I'm stuck to my tree and just cannot make it there?" Birch asked plaintively. "I'm not much for going underground, you know?"
"I've run into you in the school's corridors," Rue shook her head, "quite some distance away from the tree. That makes me doubt if my mother will believe your excuse."
"She won't," Tam agreed quietly. "Lady Nua is of Aubrey's blood: her knowledge runs deeper than the roots of your home."
"And now she's going to be lording, or ladying it over the rest of us folk, since she – and you, Rue, made Aubrey's dream come true," Birch said grumpily. "I never cared for this sort of thing, you know?"
"You're afraid that the other fairies will look down on you?" Rue pressed-on.
"No! Yes! No! Not that!" Birch was growing increasingly agitated, fluttering around them like some sort of a giant butterfly. "I never wanted this, you know? I was so sure that this will backfire in Aubrey's face, that things will return to normal, but you and your mother – your lady mother, pardon my slip – have actually made sure that we win. Well, we won, but let me tell you – without some humans to boss around things will become very boring, and we will turn on each other..." she trailed off and looked at Tam. "You better stay close to your lover, prophet-man, or else you'll find yourself in servitude, again."
"Speaking of servitude," Rue said wryly, "but my lady mother is running a meeting to address that problem, some if you're worried about it, you should come."
"She does? I mean, she is worried?" Birch asked quickly. "But she's- I mean, you're, you're high fey! You don't care about things like that!"
"She's been married to my father for what? Like forty years or so?" Rue shot back. "In the human world, that's quite a bit of time. I think she might've picked up a thing or two. Look, just come over and hear things out for yourself, please?"
"Fine," Birch consented, "but I'm warning you: from now on, it's no more Miss Nice Birch, got it?"
"Got it," Rue nodded solemnly in reply.
"She's gone! My Rue's gone!" Thaddeus Silver was inconsolable.
"Thaddeus, please!" Amanda put a consoling hand onto his shoulder. Unlike the usual, this was largely a hollow gesture, and both Thaddeus and Amanda knew it: though the humans had won, it didn't feel like it, and in Thaddeus' case it was worse: both Rue and Nua, his daughter and wife, were gone.
And so was the rest of the city, its streets and parks, benches and buildings – they all were gone, taken with the rest of the fairies as part of their new island home. The old, human inhabitants of the city had remained, having stayed on the other side of the 'cutting-away' spell, planned by Aubrey and executed by Rue...and them.
"Well," Amanda heard a rather uncertain, shaky voice of one of her former (or not so former?) "soldiers". "We've won? Hurray?"
"Put a sock in it, Keith," replied a different voice. "What have won, exactly? A strip of land on the coastline that can hardly be seen because of the trees? I cannot quite feel that we've done all that great, you know?"
"Hey!" a third voice joined in. "We fought to confirm our independence, and we got it!"
"No, the fairies got what they wanted and left, leaving us with nothing? And who's that 'we', anyways? I didn't stick a magical fairy dagger in the ground, now did I?"
"No, all you did was hide behind your girlfriend, while she-"
"She's not my girlfriend, she's my sister, and who's hiding? You, I suppose?"
As the arguments began to spread, Amanda quickly realized that her impromptu army was quickly devolving into a mob: an armed and confused mob with no enemy in sight, other than itself, which meant-
"Attention, everyone!" she blew loudly into the whistle. "The fairies might've been gone, but we still need to get out of the woods and back to civilization. Therefore, let's go!"
"Uh, excuse me, professor," Lucy (alongside Justin and Dale) had sidled closer to Amanda and Thaddeus during the whole argument, "but speaking of the forest – I think it came to us."
Slowly, Amanda looked in the direction where Lucy was pointing, and stared at the shambling horror that resembled a human-like parody, woven of ivy and vines, that was appearing from the darkness of the woods.
"Hello, Keith," the once-human Ann said.
To be continued...