Spooktober Stories: Amala Min

"Happy birthday, Amala! You're fifteen, right? Are doing anything to celebrate?"
Amala knew how she wanted to celebrate--she wanted to visit the tree that her grandmother had planted for her at her birth. But she couldn't tell Lizzy that for the same reason her mother forbade her from going to visit the tree. Lizzy was human. And so was Amala... mostly.
Amala's grandmother--her mother's mother--was a Sprite, and her husband had been ostracized for having a child with her, just like her human father had been disowned by his own parents for "falling in love with the gardener." At least they hadn't called her mother a demon--that's apparently what her grandfather had spat when he left her grandmother alone with a baby. 
Unlike her mother, Amala did not have a sprite's short stature or the thin lines on her skin that resembled the patterns of tree bark. Unless they knew her parentage, people would presume she was human. And Amala's mother preferred it that way.
Lizzy, of course, did know Amala's parentage, and asking about her birthday plans was likely a test, since most sprites spent it in the woods with their birth tree.
"No," Amala said, "just celebrating with... my father." Again, it wasn't like Lizzy didn't know who Amala's mother was, but it wouldn't help to bring her up.
"That's really not right. Fifteen is important. Even the dkun have traditions for it." Amala didn't react when Lizzy used the rude term for sprites. She'd spent years learning not to.
"Well, my father didn't."
"That's such a shame. My father took me hunting last year. My brothers, too, when they turned fifteen." She gasped. "We could take you!" She looked at the sky, as if scrutinizing the weather. "Tonight's not the best night for it, but in a couple of days, maybe?" She ran a comforting hand down Amala's arm. "Please? Let us do this for you. I'm sure your father would be thrilled."
Amala's father was not thrilled. "What are they hunting for? Are they going to be eating it?"
"I don't know," Amala repeated. Her father did not like destruction for destruction's sake. His own family had gotten wealthy tearing down the forests the sprites had once lived in, and he had dedicated himself to reversing that enviornmental harm in any way he could.
"You should go." Her mother, of course, was in favor. "You need to fit in better." Amala did not answer this because she knew her mother wasn't done yet. "Amala, you'd fifteen now. One day, they're going to make you choose..."
"Beetween you and dad, I know."
"And you need to choose your father. It's the only way they'll ever see you as anything."
From across the table, her father had gone silent. Amala knew he was holding his tongue, trying not to get in the way of his wife's advice. But her mother roped him in anyway.
"Don't tell me," she snapped at him, "you're going to say you don't care about status."
"I don't," he told her.
"Well it's easy not to care about status when it's handed to you in an ebony box."
"And status won't matter to anyone after the island has been decimated."
It was the same argument they always had. And it ended the same way. A breeze blew through the kitchen, despite the windows being closed, and her mother stood and left in silence. The one sprite gift Amala had inherited from her mother was her gift for wind magic. Her mother had trained her every single day until she had perfect control.
"If you can't control your magic at all times," her mother had said, "it will reveal itself when you least want it to. Strong wind magic can rip a man's breath from his lungs. You don't want the humans knowing you can do that. Better yet, you don't want them thinking you have magic at all." Despite what she said, Amala suspected her mother's real fears were that she might hurt accidentally hurt someone she cared about.
"Your mother's right." Amala looked up as her heart sank. As many times as they had argued, it had never elicited this reaction from him. "They're going to make you choose, Amala. And you may have to choose for survival." He waited to catch her eye before he spoke again. "I just don't want you to lose yourself in the process."
***
Amala met Lizzy and her brothers near the forest. One of the boys carried an axe. The other had a length of rope. "Is this what you go hunting with?"
"We're strictly catch and release," Lizzy told her, "The axe is in case we neet to chop some wood and start a fire. We should get back before the sun is done setting, but it's good to be prepared."
Amala looked west, at the sun sinking toward the horizon. "Why are we going hunting at dusk again?"
"It's the best time to catch them," said the brother with the axe. He had a bandage around his arm.
"Was that a hunting accident?" Amala asked, nervously.
He looked at it. "Superficial," he said, "You follow our lead, you'll be fine."
As they walked, Amala thought about what she would tell her parents after the trip. Her dad would certainly be happy that Lizzy and her brothers had no intention of killing anything. Her mother would be happy she was finally making friends--human friends. Her grandmother, if she found out about the trip, would wonder why she went to the forest and not to her birth tree. But Amala had never been to the forest before. She didn't know where her birth tree was.
She stopped suddenly, when he ran into one of Lizzy's brothers. He put a finger to his lips and pointed straight ahead. A few feet away was a sprite boy named Ash. He was the same age as Lizzy, almost to the day. They had been friends when they were little, until her mother had discouraged it. He was facing away from them, looking at a tree-an ash tree. It was probably about fifteen years old, she expected. And he was probably preparing to recite the Oath of the Forest.
"Perfect timing," Lizzy whispered as she and her brothers crouched low.
"What do you mean?" Amala asked.
Lizzy pointed toward Ash again. "It's right in front of you. Don't you see it?" Amala looked for an animal, but for the life of her, couldn't see whatever it was they were hunting. Lizzy sighed. "They do blend in with the trees, don't they?" And then it hit her. Ash was the animal.
Before Amala could do anything, Lizzy and her brothers had sprung on him. He fought against them, but it was three against one, and soon, Lizzy's brothers were holding him and down and tying him up. One of them--the brother without the bandage--had pulled a knife from his belt. He held the point under Ash's chin. "Now, here's what's going to happen: you're going to be a good dkun and not squirm while we cut down that tree, right? And if you think about telling else about this..." Both Ash and Amala gasped as the older boy turned the knife on himself and cut his own arm. "...I'll say you attacked me." He didn't need to add that it wouldn't go well for Ash.The other brother handed Lizzy the axe. Then he gripped Ash's hair, forcing him to turn towards his birth tree.
"Amala," Lizzy called, "You're missing it! It's not like he's going to hurt you. It's wizard rope. His magic is blocked." When Amala didn't respond, Lizzy walked toward her, still carelessly branshing the axe. "I'll let you have first swing."
Amala found her voice. "I don't want to."
"It's just a tree." Lizzy glanced at Ash, but continued walking toward Amala. "Oh, surely you're not siding with the dkun. I mean, you may be unforuntate enough to have some of that blood in you, but we don't hold it against you. You're not demon-marked. You don't even have magic. You can fight it." Lizzy was foot away now. She held out the axe to Amala with both hands. But Lizzy was wrong. Amala did have magic. And perfect control.
Lizzy barely looked up as a breeze picked up in the trees overhead. But she heard the knife fall to the ground. She turned to see her brothers gasping for air. She took a step toward them. "That's impossible! We used..." But she didn't finish the sentence. The axe fell to the ground and Lizzy sank to her knees as she clutched at her throat.
Amala walked over and picked up the axe. "I guess you should have used it on me." She almost smiled as Lizzy looked up, eyed wide in shock. "Now, here's what's going to happen: All three of you are going to leave this forest and never return." Amala leaned in close, so she and Lizzy were almost nose to nose. "And if you try to tell anyone about what happened, you'll choke on your own words." Then she let the wind go. All three of them gasped for air.
Lizzy stumbled to her feet and spat at Amala, who didn't flinch. "You are your demon mother's child, then."
Lizzy gasped again, as Amala took her breath for just one moment more. "No," she said, "I'm my father's."