They kept an eye out for any strangely behaving wildlife as they trekked through the woods. The jug of kerosene was heavy and sloshing in Dean's grip and the plastic handle wore a groove into his palm. By the time they arrived at the bridge, his leg felt bruised from where the jug had swung against it. Despite the discomfort, he couldn't help but notice the beauty of the scene that they were about to ruin.

The fast moving stream flowing under the graceful arch of the bridge, and a few purple flowers poked up through the boards.

He unscrewed the lid of the tin, Sam watching anxiously and tapping a bar of wrought iron on his leg with his good arm. Just as he was about to start pouring, an unseen force ripped the jug from his hands and sent it spinning through the air, trailing flammable liquid.

A hard shove from the same unseen person sent Dean sprawling in the leaf mulch. Charlie and Sam lifted their iron, looking about wildly for the invisible assailant.

Dean barely had time to recover before he was hauled to his feet and frog marched over to the stream. Strong, invisible hands grasped the back of his neck and forced his face down into the icy stream.

The cold water numbed his face, making it hard to think, even as he struggled. The person, faerie, whatever, must be incredibly strong, because Dean was hardly able to budge them. No matter how hard he thrashed, the hands were unyielding.

Just as black was starting to creep in, the pressure disappeared and he yanked his head out of the water, coughing and sputtering.

"You good?" Sam asked, without taking his eyes off the person who had suddenly appeared.

"Yeah" Dean wheezed, "just fine"

Sam had crept up behind Dean and the invisible person when his brother's head was thrust into the stream. One good, hard whack in the air just above Dean had collided with the attacker, and they fizzled into visibility.

It was a woman, at least, it looked like one, and she was tall and statuesque, with caramel skin and amber hair. She was dressed in fawn coloured breeches with brown boots and a dark green silk tunic. Gold rings glittered on her long slender fingers. She huddled on the ground, and Sam could see the skin across her forearm bubble and burn where the iron had touched.

Sam, Dean and Charlie said nothing as she painfully hauled herself up to a seated position, and pushed her curly hair back from her face, revealing pointed ears and elfin features.

"What the hell was that about?" Dean asked angrily, raising his iron club.

"You were going to burn the portal. I had no choice"

Sam stared at her incredulously. "You've been stealing people! Little girls! Innocent people… We had no choice"

The woman snorted, and climbed to her feet. Standing, she was almost as tall as Dean and she had an elegant grace about her that was similar to the ancient trees around her.

"Innocents" she spat, "do you have any idea what they did to our children? My daughter-my daughter was one of the children slaughtered. She was just fifteen", she broke off, tears in her golden eyes.

"We know. They died, but it was an accident. You've taken enough, it's time to stop"

"An accident? I know what it was. I was there. I watched helplessly as the children died. I was trapped in an iron cage, forced to watch as my daughter was goggled at and prodded at and raped by filthy humans before being murdered. Our curse was well deserved"

Sam swallowed as the faerie's venomous words washed over them. She was too far gone to reason with, he knew. From accounts he had read of the deaths, they were playing in the stream when a load of logs tumbled down on them. They were crushed instantly, and the shocked villagers hastily buried them, not noticing the pointy ears or any other faerie attributes.

According to this woman, it was deliberate.

"I'm sorry, so sorry, for what happened to your daughter. But it's been over a hundred years. You can end the curse, stop all this suffering. Stop taking humans"

She shrugged. "We cannot help it. They were marked. They marked themselves out for the portal. It was just a matter of collecting them"

"What do you mean, they were 'marked'?" Dean asked.

She pointed at the flowers on the bridge. "The flowers mark them. The portal simply draws them back. We set the curse, but we couldn't stop it if we wanted to"

She smiled, showing a flash of sharpened teeth. There was a sick roiling sensation at the pit of Dean's stomach as he stared at the teeth, knowing he was staring at something incredibly wrong.

"Besides" she went on, "who says we want to?"

Sam was thinking back to the first picture he had seen of Holly Fowl, a chubby cheeked little girl with a delicate purple flower in her hair… The faerie wasn't lying.

She smiled again, and then lunged at them, suddenly claw like finger nails extended. Charlie shrieked, swinging her club violently as the faerie flew at her.

The woman batted the rod away, hissing as her flesh touched the metal. She quickly recovered, darting her nails toward Charlie's face.

She didn't make it, because Dean swung his iron with crushing force behind it, catching her in the stomach.

The faerie curled around the pain, laughing harshly, before letting out a scream that tore through the forest, waking birds from their nests and snakes from their dens. Small foxes pricked their ears and a few deer headed to the source of the sound. In a few seconds, a veritable stampede of wildlife was heading towards the hunters.

At first, Sam tried not to hurt the animals, but that policy was abandoned as a squirrel slunk through the roiling mass of animals to sink its teeth into his ankle. He cursed, shaking his foot until the unlucky animal flew off into a tree.

The woman was still hunched on the ground, laughing, as the animals began to overwhelm the trio. She started to drag herself towards the bridge, getting stronger as she neared it.

Charlie saw her start to climb to her feet, and yelled across the clearing to Dean. He was beleaguered by a horde of badgers, but at Charlie's cry, he bowled through the angry mammals to where the faerie was beginning to cross the bridge.

He reached out, catching her arm and spinning her to face him. She threw a punch at his face, connecting solidly and ducking under the iron rod neatly. She was, Dean realized as he fought, a force of nature, like a hurricane or a blizzard. Impossible to defeat, because she just kept reforming and coming back.

Finally, after blow after blow after blow was thrown and accepted, Dean spotted an opening. He hooked his foot around her ankle and yanked, sending her to the ground.

She fell heavily, like a felled tree. Her hair spilled around her, and her golden eyes shone. She was afraid, he realized. He hesitated half a second before driving the iron spike through her heart.

The second the metal pierced her heart, the remaining wildlife stopped attacking, and slunk off.

Sam and Charlie hurried over, to where Dean rested on his knees beside the faerie corpse. His nose was bleeding, he noticed distantly, and he could feel small cuts all over his face from where her rings had sliced into his flesh.

"She really did a number on you" Sam observed, reaching down to pull him up, "are you ok?"

Dean shook his head numbly. "No, not really. She was so human, Sam. She just wanted revenge for her daughter. And isn't that what all hunters want, really? Revenge?"

"I know" Sam said quietly, turning away from her body, "I know, Dean"

"Well, I guess we're going to have to go back to town for more kerosene" Dean said after an silence filled beat, "she spilled all ours"

Charlie gazed at the sight of the faerie for a moment, before looking at the boys.

"I have an idea, actually" she said, stepping towards the bridge.

Sam and Dean's eyes widened simultaneously, and they both stepped towards her, knowing they would be too slow.

"It's ok!" she said, reaching towards the flowers. Very, very carefully, making sure that no part of her touched the bridge, she plucked the eight or nine flowers that grew up through the slats.

Charlie came over to where the boys stood, and sat at the faerie woman's head.

"The portal needs a victim, right? And they have to be marked by the flowers? Well, what if we send her through the portal? It was built for the abductions, but what if we could reverse it? Sending her through might stop it"

Dean frowned, considering. It might work.

"Ok" he told her, "but we come back tomorrow and burn it, just to be on the safe side"

Sam snorted. "Pyro" he muttered.

The two quieted however, when Charlie gently closed the faerie's eyes and began to weave the flowers through her mass of curly hair, her fingers careful.

Charlie's fingertips brushed the woman's skin, and it was still warm. Charlie could almost believe she was alive. Consciously, she knew the faerie had to be stopped, that it was evil for taking so many humans and doing god knows what with them, but in her heart, she couldn't help but sympathise.

She was so old, and consumed by an all-encompassing rage and grief over her daughter's death. She had allowed it to fester, until all that would satisfy her was more death, more misery.

Seeing the dead faerie now, her features were smooth and peaceful, her anger wiped away. Charlie finished, and stood, helping the boys move her to the centre of the bridge. She lay there for a moment, before shimmering, and fading, the bridge fading right along with her.

For a moment, a golden mist hung where the Seelie Bridge had been, before it dissipated, blowing away in the soft wind.

"Huh" Dean said, sounding disappointed, "we didn't have to burn anything"

The golden mist started to recondense, into the shape of a small figure, and Sam and Dean both tensed.

It solidified, the gold peeling away to reveal a young girl in a cotton sundress, her feet bare. There were smudges of gold leaf on her cheek bones, and she stood in the stream, staring at the adults.

Her proportions were not as childlike as before, she looked like a small adult, but she was still unmistakable, despite the sharp cheekbones and sylphlike frame.

There was something wild and mysterious about her, but not dangerous. It was the joyful, free, wildness of summer that possessed this girl, and Sam and Dean both grinned in relief as they recognized Holly Fowl.

Epilogue

Sam and Dean hurried Holly back to her parents, claiming that they had found her wandering in the woods. She corroborated their story, adding that she had simply gotten lost, and smiled at them with a hint of amusement in her brown eyes.

Her eyes and hair were flecked with gold now, and her ears lightly pointed. Luckily, no one noticed. They put her slenderness down to several days of wandering the woods with no food.

Sam and Dean knew that her time with the faeries, no matter how short, had changed her subtly. It was too soon to tell the consequences, but they had no doubt that she would lead a very interesting life.

The town decided to erect a new bridge to replace the mysteriously missing Seelie Bridge, and they named it the Midsummer Bridge, which made Dean roll his eyes and mutter about hippies and wiccans and yoga.

The Wiccan who ran the magic shop claimed that the faeries had protected Holly Fowl, and suggested that they rename the town Faerieville. This suggestion was hastily vetoed.

Charlie ended up abandoning her kingdom for a short period, in favour of going on a date with the local doctor, with whom she had become acquainted when she went in to have her ribs looked at. They went on a few dates, but Charlie ended up departing for a comic convention within the week.

And of course, Sam and Dean left the town in their review mirror just as fast as they could check out of Miss Maybelle's Bed and Breakfast.

The End

Thank you all for reading! So, a few things... Do badgers and foxes and elks even live in the same place? Idk, man. Badgers and elks just seemed slightly more impressive than fieldmice. If you enjoyed, or if you have some constructive critisicm, please review!