As he was thinking, a large figure in a tattered red hoodie lurched out of the crowd and came toward us, clutching a bottle in a sack. He looked like a homeless person, though I’d never actually seen one. I wasn’t too worried; we were on a well-traveled street, with a lot of witnesses to hear me scream should he try anything. He would probably ask me for change or a cigarette, and keep going.
However, as he got close, he raised his head, and I saw a wrinkled, bearded face with fangs jutting crookedly from its jaw. In the shadows of the hood, his eyes were yellow and slitted like a cat’s. I jumped as the stranger leered and stepped closer. His stench nearly knocked me down; he smelled of roadkill and bad eggs and fish rotting in the sun. I gagged and nearly lost my breakfast.
“Pretty girl,” the stranger growled, reaching out with a claw. “You came from there, didn’t you? Send me back, now. Send me back!”
I backed away, but Grimalkin leaped between us, fluffed out to twice his size. His yowling screech jerked the man to a halt, and the bum’s eyes widened in terror. With a gurgling cry, he turned and ran, knocking people aside as he fled. People cursed and looked around, glaring at one another, but none seemed to notice the fleeing bum.
“What was that?” I asked Grimalkin.
“A norrgen.” The cat sighed. “Disgusting things. Terrified of cats, if you can believe it. He was probably banished from the Nevernever at some point. That would explain his words to you, wanting you to send him back.”
I looked for the norrgen, but it had vanished into the crowd. “Are all the fey walking around the human world outcasts?” I wondered.
“Of course not.” Grimalkin’s look was scornful, and no one does scornful better than a cat. “Many choose to be here, going back and forth between this world and the Nevernever at will, so long as they can find a trod. Some, like brownies or bogarts, haunt a house forever. Others blend in to human society, posing as mortals, feeding off dreams, emotions, and talent. Some have even been known to marry a particularly exceptional mortal, though their children are shunned by faery society, and the fey parent usually leaves if things get too tough.
“Of course, there are those who have been banished to the mortal world. They make their way as best they can, but spending too much time in the human world does strange things to them. Perhaps it is the amount of iron and technology that is so fatal to their existence. They start to lose themselves, a little at a time, until they are only shadows of their former selves, empty husks covered in glamour to make them look real. Eventually, they simply cease to exist.”
I looked at Grimalkin in alarm. “Could that happen to you? To me?” I thought of my iPod, remembering the way Tansy leaped away from it in terror. I suddenly recalled the way Robbie was mysteriously absent from all of his computer classes. I’d simply thought he hated typing. I had no idea it was deadly to him.
Grimalkin seemed unconcerned. “If I stay here long enough, perhaps. Maybe in two or three decades, though I certainly do not plan to stay that long. As for you, you are half-human. Your mortal blood protects you from iron and the banal effects of your science and technology. I would not worry too much if I were you.”
“What’s wrong with science and technology?”
Grimalkin actually rolled his eyes. “If I thought this would turn into a history lesson, I would have picked a better classroom than a city street.” His tail lashed, and he sat down. “You will never find a faery at a science fair. Why? Because science is all about proving theories and understanding the universe. Science folds everything into neat, logical, well-explained packages. The fey are magical, capricious, illogical, and unexplainable. Science cannot prove the existence of faeries, so naturally, we do not exist. That type of nonbelief is fatal to faeries.”
“What about Robbie…er…Puck?” I asked, not knowing why he suddenly popped into my head. “How did he stay so close to me, going to school and everything, with all the iron around?”
Grimalkin yawned. “Robin Goodfellow is a very old faerie,” he said, and I squirmed to think of him like that. “Not only that, he has ballads, poems, and stories written about him, so he is very near immortal, as long as humans remember them. Not to say he is immune to iron and technology—far from it. Puck is strong, but even he cannot resist the effects.”
“It would kill him?”
“Slowly, over time.” Grimalkin stared at me with solemn eyes. “The Nevernever is dying, human. It grows smaller and smaller every decade. Too much progress, too much technology. Mortals are losing their faith in anything but science. Even the children of man are consumed by progress. They sneer at the old stories and are drawn to the newest gadgets, computers, or video games. They no longer believe in monsters or magic. As cities grow and technology takes over the world, belief and imagination fade away, and so do we.”
“What can we do to stop it?” I whispered.