I found him very quickly, for he was not trying to conceal his presence near the Border. I watched him through the intermingled thin branches and blood drop berries of a fly woodbine; he was sniffing and rubbing his face that was flushing poppy red. "Why can't he just go home or elsewhere?" I wondered, making a step to see what was going on. What a pathetic creature: his foot stuck in sneaky roots.

It was unusual to see a human child so close to the Hidden Sanctuary. Actually, he was the first human I saw in flesh. The elders told us we had used to barter with barbarian humans a long, long time ago, but they became too dangerous to deal with. I was born much later to remember the echoes of flourishing times when friendship between our races was at the peak of it; or wasn't I a spy in human settlements who, for their noble mission, was ready to cut the tips of their ears.

I felt a typical nutmeg smell of two young talps. If I were able to find a sobbing boy so effortlessly, they must have already called him a mildly hearty dinner. And now they are just waiting for me to mind my own business. They would not be so shy of my company if it were winter and they gained more weight. Maybe it was a good idea to let them eat him, I heard human people doesn't live long, and he doesn't look like a survive type. He resembled me a pale puffy mushroom: just one light touch and it would be smashed leaving nasty greenish mist. Even the weakest dryad child would look like a strong warlock in comparison with that toadstool.

"What are you doing here?"

I didn't start. Maple was older and thus heavier and less flexible. I heard her coming long before her question. I was sure a child must have heard her too, but he was still unaware of us staying so close, separated only by a shrub. The elders were absolutely right: humans are so weak and ungifted. Even two stupid undeads stepped slowly back having felt Mapel's strong magic aura.

"What shall we do with him?" I whispered.

"Nothing," Maple shrugged her shoulders indifferently. "We have not checked the southern meadow."

That day we were patrolling Borders. It wasn't my everyday work, that's why I tried to go all-out to impress the elders and talked them into making me a real guardian; to become a stupid forager or a fisher was not my life goal.

"But he is a human, and he is near the Boarder!" I raised my voice but immediately feared, lest he should hear us. Unfortunately, he did hear us. With renewed vigour, the boy started tugging his foot dressed in a strange white boot that looked like a solid white cream with stripes and strings.

"Come on, it's almost the end of our shift!" my friend was a bit irritated.

"Can't you see? He heard us. A human heard..."

"Nobody will believe him: a milksop is too small to take him seriously. Relax, that's not a big deal," she assured me in a maternal soft manner.

"We could bring him to the elders and question him," I suggested it like a good dryad who wanted to bring elders a trophy from her first patrol.

On the one hand, I didn't want to leave the child alone in the company of talps. On the other hand, no matter how weak and harmless humans might look, they are destructive creatures when they are older. I couldn't still forget their iron monsters I saw once when I was a little fawn. The bodies had no spirit inside or weren't enchanted but for inexplicable reasons were able to move and terminate.

"Just leave him alone. Somebody will find him eventually," said Maple, without having a grace to look at a trapped little human. "He's not our problem, Juni! Not a threat to the Sanctuary society to kill him or a dear guest to let him in. I don't want to spend the whole evening scribbling a huge birch bark of explanatory report for Daphne." She showed me her back, stepped into the closest fir trunk and disappeared with a familiar sound of cracking wood. I couldn't blame her to be so ruthless or indifferent to human troubles, unlike me she remembered the inglorious end of the flourishing times.

I hesitated. "If it's not a big deal, and nobody in his human kingdom would believe him, I would help him to vanish from this place," I took my long spear, put it on one shoulder like a wooden yoke and marched through the shrubbery. Regardless of the fact that I was a dryad, I was pretty bad at archery and never took quiver and bow with me. When I was a child and started learning the tricks of my trade, I realized that I wasn't meant to be a good archer. When my counterparts came home with preys that were killed with their arrows, I returned with an empty quiver and my game bag full of mushrooms, berries, and herbs. I remember my teacher and the rest of the group leaning to the nearby trees ready to jump in any moment when it was my turn to hit the target.

The child was mousy quite. I propped the spear against the tree, got down on my knees and patted a mischievous root like it was a deer croup. It trembled reluctantly, but untied the knot and let the boy go. The boy froze, still looking at me with his watery blue eyes; I frowned and snapped at him. It was impossible to stop laughing watching him running away like a human marionette under a witch's spell. I didn't expect him to be so disgustingly clumsy: he was stumbling occasionally and throwing up his scrawny little limbs.

"So pathetic," I sniffed and followed Maple.