Free Wood Sprites by Wen Spencer

list.
    Louise glanced at her alarm clock. She had ten minutes until their mother expected them to be eating breakfast. She might have time to find a copy, especially if she got lucky and it was on one of their favorite sites. A band of anonymous hackers ran a data haven, posting information on Pittsburgh they’d “found” in undisclosed locations. As always, she made sure that she couldn’t be traced before dropping into the forum.
    The first post made her heart jump. The heading was “Looking for Lemon-Lime JEl-Lo.” She sat staring at it with fear. Should she read the post? Who in the world even knew that they visited this forum?
    Taking a breath, she opened the post. It was breezy in tone, meandering in points, and signed with a name that made her squeak in surprise.
    “What?” Jillian called from their bathroom.
    “Nigel Reid wants to talk to us.”
    “Nigel Reid? You mean ‘I just love Nigel’ Nigel Reid?”
    “I never said that!” She respected the filmmaker. He was her favorite naturalist. “But yes, that one.”
    Jillian squeaked, too. “Seriously? Talk to us?”
    “Yes. Well. Lemon-Lime JEl-Lo. He’s seen The Queen’s Pantaloons and wants to know if the gossamer call is real. He’s coming to New York to do the Today Show, and he wants to know if he can meet us.”
    “Meet him? Like in person?”
    “Generally that’s what ‘meet’ means.”
    “Are you nuts? You know that Mom and Dad would just freak if they found out that we were going to meet some old guy from the Internet. They’ll get him arrested as a pedophile!”
    “He wants to meet with a film-production company!” Louise cried in defense. “He doesn’t know Lemon-Lime is just two kids. If he did think we were kids, he probably thinks we’re in high school or college.”
    “Pfft, high school is just as bad. Besides, we don’t know if this is really Nigel Reid posting this. It could be anyone. We list him as one of our influences. By posing as him, anyone could hope to lure us out.”
    “It would be so cool if it was.” Louise went to Nigel Reid’s official personal site. How could they tell if he was actually the person contacting them and not a pervert using his name? “Nigel is going to be on the Today Show in like three weeks. We could go see the show.” Although “seeing the show” would really be standing on the sidewalk at the corner of 49th and Rockefeller Center with the crowd that gathered daily at the break of dawn.
    Jillian considered it. “I don’t know. Feels like a trap to me. How is he going to know we’re really us? A big sign that says ‘Nigel, we’re Lemon-Lime’? And if it’s not him that posted that? Whoever is trying to lure us out would have us cornered.”
    Jillian was right. They’d be out in the open for hours, with Nigel probably camping out in a green room. If someone was just using his name to lure them out, they could be in lots of danger. Although, no one knew they were two nine-year-olds. Lemon-Lime could be the group name for fifteen muscle-bound men—who liked Barbie dolls.
    But why would someone like Nigel Reid want to meet them? While no one else seemed to realize how the elves were controlling the great living airships, the clues were there if anyone started to look in the right place. All the research they’d done, anyone else could do. They’d sketched out a mock-up of a gossamer call along the lines of a dog whistle, but they had no way of knowing if it would actually work. They agreed that they were probably missing something important in the design. Magic existed, flowed, pooled, and was depleted. The elves harnessed it in countless ways but guarded many of their secrets carefully. Humans still didn’t understand magic well enough to quantify it or even determine its source. If the elves were combining an ultrasonic whistle with magic, then no, the twins’ call had no hope of actually working.
    Did Nigel think they had a working gossamer call?
    And why would he think