Free War for the Oaks by Emma Bull

a figure stepped into her path. Eddi thought for a fleeting moment that it was a drunk, a panhandler. Then it raised its smiling face—it was short—and she saw the silvery gray skin stretched across the bony features, the snoutlike nose and mouth, the double row of pointed ivory teeth that the curling lips revealed. It had milky-white eyes, like those of blind fish in deep water.
    The gray skin-and-bones arms came up. In the filthy, broken-nailed hands was a small double-curve bow of translucent white. The apparition sighted at her down the shaft of an arrow that glittered like glass and running water.
    She heard the absurdly familiar snarl behind her, just before the phouka struck her from behind. She tried to get her hands in front of her before she hit the sidewalk, and found a pair of brown arms there before her, cushioning the fall. Running footsteps rattled away down the sidewalk and disappeared.
    "Are you hurt?" said the phouka's voice next to her ear. Would he let her lie on the sidewalk and have hysterics? No, he had an arm around her and was hauling her up. "Come, sweetling, we can't stay here. They'll be calling out a flock of redcaps next. And your knightserrant back in the cafe are no doubt picking themselves up and summoning the police."
    For a moment she couldn't remember what he was talking about.
Oh. The Riverside
. "Did you hurt them?"
    "I tried not. Please don't just hang like a sack, my heart."
    Eddi got her feet under her. Then she started to shake. "That thing . . . they're really trying to goddamn
kill
me!" she gasped.
    "Shhh, shhh. They failed. You're all right."
    She realized suddenly that he had his arm around her. She stepped quickly away.

    Carla was standing a few feet behind him, her eyes enormous. "You!" the phouka said to her, as if it was enough insult. "The next time you assist in such a lackwit, ill-considered, dangerous little trick I shall knock you into your next life and regret it later, if then."
    "What
was
that?" Carla asked, and her voice broke.
    "That, oh my innocents, was the enemy. I'd expected they would find out soon," he murmured, more to himself than to them, "but Oak and Ash, not so soon as this."
    "Are they . . . are they all like that?" Eddi asked.
    "No." He looked down at her, and his eyes were sad. "The Unseelie Court wear many shapes, and have many powers. Not so different from the Seelie Court, indeed." Then he seemed to remember his anger, and took her by the shoulders. "Do you see, now, that I
must
stay near you? I am all that stands between you and the likes of that!"
    Eddi pulled away from his hands. "Well, goddamn, just how did I get along without you?" she snapped. Extra adrenaline was making her whole body throb. "The only reason the "likes of that' are after me is because the likes of
you
found me first!"
    He looked away. "That, unfortunately, is quite true." He bit off the end of each word.
    "So let me go."
    "I'm sorry." He shook his head. "I cannot."
    It was her turn to look away. On the sidewalk, she saw a spark of reflected light. She picked the bright thing up. For long moments, she couldn't tell what she was holding. It was the color of mica-flecked stone, but smooth as metal, heavier than it looked, and burning cold. A little shorter than one of her finger joints, it was an elongated cone, flattened at the narrow end. Then she realized what it must be: an arrow point.
    "Elf-shot," said the phouka, his voice colorless. "Had it found its mark, you would have felt a bursting pain in your head, and never a thing more."
    There was a buzzing in her palm. With a single sharp, sweet note, the little point shattered in her hand, and all three of them jumped. Nothing was left of it but gray dust.
    "Now, sweet," the phouka sighed, "will you come away? Or will you wait until they send another message of good will, and see if I can stop that one, too?"

    They went back to the car. On the way, the phouka paused long enough to break a green twig off a locust tree in