I looked quickly around, expecting at any minute to be ambushed myself by a horde of miniature creatures with bows and arrows, but the ’sang patch was still. The little rootman and I had it to ourselves.

His eyes fluttered open again. This time they stayed open and I didn’t flinch back.

“Are… are you okay?” I asked. Stupid question. Of course he wasn’t okay. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“Arrows,” he said.

His voice was husky and lower in timbre than I was expecting from a man the size of a small raccoon.

“Lots of them,” I agreed.

“Need… out…”

I gave a slow nod. I could do that.

“Is it going to hurt you?” I asked.

“Not… as much as dying… from their venom…”

Great. Tiny poisoned arrows.

I pulled my knapsack over to me and took out the little pair of pliers I kept in it for when Root got himself a mouthful of porcupine quills. I hesitated for a moment, my hand hovering over a nearby twig, waiting for it to turn into a snake or who knows what. But it didn’t, so I picked it up and held it near his mouth.

“Bite on this,” I told him. “It’ll help with the pain.”

He made no response except to open his mouth. I swallowed quickly as I caught a glimpse of wicked-looking teeth. When I put the stick in his mouth, I heard the wood crunch as he bit down on it.

I moved closer and put two fingers on either side of one of the tiny arrows, grasped its shaft with the pliers, and pulled. He grunted and I heard the wood crunch again. I held the arrow up for a closer look. At least it wasn’t barbed, but the tiny heads were still going to hurt as I pulled them out.

He passed out again by the time I’d gotten a dozen or so out. I felt horrible for him, but at least it let me work more quickly. I didn’t have to wince in sympathy every time I pulled on one and saw the pain it caused him.

I counted the arrows as I got each one out and dropped them in a little pile on the ground by my knee. There were a hundred and thirty-seven in total.

Sitting back on my ankles, I reached forward and brushed some of the mossy hair from the little man’s brow.

“What can I do now?” I asked him. “Is there someplace I can take you?”

There was no response. He was still alive—I could tell that much by the faint rise and fall of his chest—but that was it.

I didn’t know what to do.

I assumed he had friends or family nearby, but though I called out for a while, no one answered. I soaked a bit of my sleeve with water from my drinking bottle and washed his brow.

I knew I couldn’t just leave him there.

“Hello! Hello!” I tried one last time.

Finally I made an envelope from a folded-up piece of paper torn from the journal Elsie was trying to get me to keep and carefully scooped the arrows into it, using a twig and the little wooden trowel I’d brought along to dig up the ’sang roots. I put it and everything else in my knapsack and slipped my arms into the straps. Then, leaning my walking stick up against a beech where I’d be able to easily find it when I came back to actually harvest some ’sang, I carefully picked up the little man and started back to Aunt Lillian’s.

It was a good two hours’ hike from the ’sang patch to Aunt Lillian’s. The return journey should have been quicker because more of it was downhill, but because of the little man, it ended up taking me a lot longer. I felt I had to be careful not to jostle him too much, so I went slower than I normally would. Root would have gone mad at my pace. Every once in a while I stopped to make sure the fairy man was still breathing, then off I’d go again, wishing I was a crow and could fly straight back instead of tramping up one steep hill and down the other.

All in all, it was a disconcerting trip. I kept expecting an attack by whatever it was that had turned the little rootman into a pincushion. No matter how much I argued against it with myself, it made too much sense that his enemies would still be out here in the woods with us somewhere.

That was nerve-racking all on its own, as you can imagine, but then from time to time, the little man would suddenly become nothing more than a heap of sticks and roots and whatnot in my arms. The first time it happened I pretty near dropped him. The bundle of twigs and leaves cried out—more at my tightening grip than the sudden movement, I guess—and then he returned, the bird’s nest of debris in my arms changing back into a little rootman.

“I’m sorry,” I said, but he’d already drifted off on me again.

It was kind of funny, if you think about it. For three years I’d been desperate to see one of the fairy people from those stories Aunt Lillian was always telling me. But now that I had, I couldn’t wait to get back to her house and be done with it. I just hoped she could figure a way out of this mess I’d found myself in, because I sensed that my troubles had just begun.