Bodicea had moved quite a bit ahead of them and Tamara and William hurried to catch up with her. For a moment William lost sight of the sprite in the trees above, but the beating of her tiny wings left a trail of golden sparks - fairy dust, Will thought - and he spotted her again a moment later.
Bloody pixies. It's the pretty ones you've got to watch out for. I remember that much. There had been no pictures in the volume in which he had read about them, but one thing he did recall was that there were sprites that were hideously ugly, with fangs like those of a savage beast and eyes that burned a feral red. But the beautiful sprites were the ones that were the trickiest and the cruelest.
His eyes tracked Serena as she circled a branch far above and then darted ahead, gliding down so that she was now just ahead. The sprite hovered in the air and a moment later William saw that both Bodicea and Tamara had come to a stop. There were times when the ghosts were more ephemeral than others, times when all that lingered of them was a hint of body, a cool mist in the shape of head, shoulders and upper torso. Sometimes they were so translucent as to be almost invisible.
But William had never seen a ghost look so solid, so alive, as though Queen Bodicea were flesh and blood once again. So full of life did she appear, in fact, that propriety forced William to avert his eyes. He felt foolishly prim, like Lord Nelson, but he was, after all, a gentleman.
