by N. D. Wilson
The man with the beard began to measure and count teeth quietly. When he finished, he lowered the neck back down, hiding the mouth, and rose to his full height.
“Bag, please,” he said, pulling off his gloves, and a lanky young boy with dark skin stepped into view, holding an open black leather bag. The boy couldn’t have been older than Lawrence, but Hyacinth was surprised at how serious he was, at how confident he seemed standing beside something so dead and monstrous and rotting. Or maybe she was reading him wrong. Maybe he was terrified but masked it well. No. Her first reaction was usually the right one. Beneath the confidence she didn’t see fear. She saw sadness, and anger, and something harder than hard at the core—a pressurized seed of strength that could grow him into an unbreakable man, or blow him apart before he managed to become a man. The boy almost frightened her more than the body.
Lawrence had quietly joined her at the edge of the loft. Now he nudged her, whispering, “He looks fun. I like him.”
Hyacinth almost laughed out loud. Clearly, her brother could see things that she could not. The boy looked fun to him, and that was that.
The big bearded man dropped his gloves and calipers into the boy’s bag, then took it out of his hands and stepped back, gesturing for the boy to take a look.
“Go ahead, Rupert. Tell us what you think.”
The boy circled the body slowly.
“Now what’s the point of this?” The voice belonged to Granlea Quarles. “I’ve seen enough.” Footsteps echoed across the plank floor below.
“Ms. Quarles,” the bearded man said, “you will kindly hold your tongue and stay where you are for the time being.”
The footsteps stopped.
The boy named Rupert clenched his fists and scrunched his face in a final moment of thought, and then addressed the bearded man directly with a playground British accent.
“He’s a big one, yeah? And he looks more human. But he’s the same type as the other three.”
“Three?” Albert blurted in surprise. “Where were the other three taken?”
“One north,” the bearded man said. “One east and well inland, and one climbed aboard a freighter five miles west of here. Yes, five miles out at sea. You understand, Albert, why we needed your assistance in the south. Our hands were full.” He focused on the boy. “What have we learned, Rupe?”
“Skulls minus brains—full of fluid and slime. Skin and muscles made of something like super-tough, fast-growing tree fungus. No nerve endings at all. Grown by someone, controlled by someone, and then abandoned to die and rot off to slime.”
“Or controlled by something,” the bearded man said grimly. “I don’t know anyone capable of growing mindless double-mouthed nearly indestructible hunters from fungus.”
“Fungus!” Granlea strode into view and nudged the gray body with her foot. “Fungus? This thing is a mushroom? Well, that explains the dogs paying the body no mind.”
“I don’t understand,” Trudie said.
“We rarely do.” The bearded man stepped forward. “How could we?” Together, he and the boy flipped the tarp up around the body. “Don’t bury him, just on the off chance that he could reanimate in soil. Fire will do the trick if you steer clear of the smoke. Might be best to just heave him off the cliff and let the tide take him.”
“But where did this thing come from?” Trudie asked. “Why was it here?”
The bearded man shook his head.
Trudie finally pulled away from her husband. “Do we at least know what it was hunting?” she asked.
“By the end,” Albert said quietly, “anything that moved.”
Hyacinth exhaled slowly. The monster under the tarp had erased her earlier fear and replaced it with another. She was no longer thinking about what her siblings had been talking about as she’d listened to them walking through the lightning trees. She wasn’t thinking about being left with Lawrence, or about camps or training or money. She wasn’t even thinking about the living room full of empty frames.
She was thinking about how much awful, twisted strength it must have taken to grow a living, man-shaped hunter like the one wrapped in the tarp below her. Hyacinth Smith—who by the age of ten could coax life back into a dried houseplant with just a few morning touches and whispers, who could, almost by her mere presence, turn a greenhouse crowded with decay into fruits and flowers in a single month—couldn’t even comprehend how much raw and brutal force would be required to shape any fungus at all into any shape at all. She wouldn’t even know how to try. Fungus was explosive, hidden in rot, a celebration in decay. Fungus was practically uncontrollable.
Well, she thought, clearly not for someone.
Someone very, very powerful.
Someone who needed or wanted brutal, mindless hunters.
Lawrence was still peering over the edge, but Hyacinth slid slowly back out of view, rose to her knees, and focused on breathing evenly. She needed to think.
Instead, through the light rising from the floor below, deep in the shadows where the barn roof met the far wall, she saw a boot. The boot rose to a knee, and a boy was leaning forward over that knee with the sloping barn roof just above his sloping back. A long knife hung loosely from his hand, and his filthy face was almost an exact match to the shadows around him. But his eyes had too much light for any shadows, and as Hyacinth looked directly into them, she saw the boy flinch in surprise at having been seen.
Hyacinth could have yelled in surprise or fear. She could have jumped to her feet and run in panic. Most people wouldn’t have blamed her. But she would have blamed herself. She swallowed and focused on another shape in the shadows, stretched out on an old horse blanket—the dark profile of another boy lying motionless on his back. He was sleeping deeply, or he was dead.
“Lawrence Smith!” Trudie Smith’s voice rattled in the rafters. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Lawrence jerked back much too late. Bashful, he looked up at his sister.
“Sorry, Hy,” he whispered.
“Go,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at him. “I’ll follow you.”
As Lawrence hopped away toward the stairs, kicking pigeon skeletons as he went, the boy in the shadows raised a finger to his lips. Hyacinth watched raw intensity in his eyes. She saw desperation. He wasn’t threatening her, but his look was clearly a command, not a request.
Hyacinth wasn’t sure what she should do. So she did nothing. She didn’t nod. She didn’t acknowledge. She made no promises of any kind. Whoever the boy and the body were, they had no authority over her.
Turning away, she followed her brother to the stairs.
She didn’t look back.
THAT NIGHT, THE SMITH family sat down for a meal of chicken, potatoes, and tension.
Albert and Daniel had knocked a dozen wasp nests off two ancient plank picnic tables and dragged them out in front of the house so they could watch the sun set into the Pacific over supper. No one liked the idea of staring at the dead lightning forest while they ate. For tablecloths, Trudie had used old bedsheets, and camp plates and cups had been brought out of the trailer to make enough place settings. Chickens had been discovered by Harriet and Circe out among the charred trees, and a bag of dubious potatoes had been pulled out of a cupboard. Hyacinth and Lawrence had scrubbed every single one of them in the old porcelain sink while Lawrence talked happily of monsters and Hyacinth’s mind wandered in urgent circles with no clear destination.
She thought about her father’s strange jobs for strange men, the long hunt for the fungus man, and the cliff collapsing just behind them as the storm was ending. She thought about Granlea and the lightning trees and her siblings talking about leaving her behind and the barn and the boys hiding in the loft and the dead body and the two guests who had come to examine it. Which made her think about her father’s jobs and the constant strangeness of the men and the Order he worked for, which took her back on the hunt for the fungus man, which placed her back in the trailer, which carried her back up the coast
in a dying storm as the ground began to shake and the cliff began to fall.
So she turned, and so she never seemed to arrive. Who were the Smiths, really? Who was she? What was she for?
When the potatoes had finally been peeled, her knuckles were bleeding in four different places, and she didn’t even notice.
The meal was the sort that Hyacinth would have normally savored—not for the food, but for the moment, for the scene, for the history of the occasion.
Yes, her mother’s chicken was nearly perfect and the gravy was plentiful and solemn and the potatoes were creamier and more poetic than any spuds Hyacinth had ever met. Butter laughed beneath sea salt, and gravy anointed them both.
They were seated around two picnic tables that stood end to end in front of a sunset on the sea.
But only hours before, Hyacinth had watched her father and a big bearded man poking and prodding a dead monster.
Yes, Albert Smith opened a bottle of wine he had been saving for eight years.
But there were two boys hiding in the barn, and one of them was hurt. Or dead.
Yes, the Smith family was sitting down for their first meal together at a home that was theirs.
But also for the first time, the Smiths would be separated. Harriet and Circe both had red eyes—Circe was angry, and Harriet was sad. Trudie looked exhausted and stunned, with hands scalded from cooking. Daniel had his head down and was barely eating.
And they were eating with two strangers who had come to see the monster, and a crazy old lady who clearly knew something about it but was refusing to talk.
In a family spun from laughter, only Lawrence was happy, and he was secretly feeding three dogs chicken under the table while making faces at the serious boy with the British voice.
Albert Smith raised a glass of wine. The wind rustled his hair as he rose to his feet, looking down the length of the tables at his wife. Hyacinth watched her mother sigh, tuck back her hair, and cross her arms.
The big bearded Viking was the only person at the table who immediately raised his own glass.
“A toast,” Albert said. “On this momentous occasion.”
Hyacinth picked up the yellow glass of ice water in front of her, its surface slick with condensation. Her siblings, even Lawrence, did the same.
“Bad luck!” the Viking said, and he set his glass down and clambered free of the table, grabbing the wine bottle as he did. Without asking permission, he grabbed Hyacinth’s water glass, chucked its contents, and poured her a swallow of wine before doing the same for her siblings.
His name was Thor, and Hyacinth couldn’t even pronounce his Norwegian surname. She supposed people named Thor who were as large as he was became accustomed to doing as they liked without asking.
“All right, then,” Thor said when he had finished, and he tugged his beard and bowed.
“Albert…,” Trudie said, eyeing her children’s glasses.
“It’s fine, Tru,” said Albert. “It’s good.” He looked around the table at his children, and Hyacinth saw more uncertainty in him than she had seen in a long time. As hard as his surface was, she could see intense emotion just beneath it. She could see it in the twitch in the creases at the corners of his eyes, in the tightness of his hard unshaven jaw, in the quick bounce of his Adam’s apple, and in the way he looked at each of them, settling on her the longest, before refocusing on her mother.
“Smiths,” Albert finally said. “We raise our glasses to your mother. She gave me the five of you. She gave me a life. In all of my drifting, she has bound us together, kept us sane, and kept us close—to her, and to each other.” He paused, and all the children looked at their mother. Trudie wiped her eyes quickly and forced a tight-lipped smile. “God knows,” Albert continued, “I haven’t given her much in return.”
Trudie shook her head. “Don’t talk like that. That isn’t true.”
“Oh, yes, it is,” Albert said, and he paused, collecting himself. Hyacinth had never seen him like this, and she knew her siblings hadn’t either. Daniel and Lawrence had turned to stone. Harriet and Circe were both wiping their own eyes.
Thor the Viking seemed uneasy. He was now staring down at his plate. Rupert did the same.
As for Granlea, chewing loudly, she helped herself to another serving of chicken and stretched across the table to snatch the gravy.
“For years,” Albert continued, “while I took us from house to house and place to place, your mother held us together. Now that she finally has a home of her own, we will be scattering. But I know, even scattered, she will keep us all close.”
The wind surged, lashing the tablecloths like flags.
“To Tru!” Albert said, and he drained his glass. Thor and Granlea drank with him. But none of the children touched their glasses.
“But why?” Circe asked. “Why scatter at all?”
“It’s only two weeks,” Albert said. “For now.”
“Your father and I are citizens of a unique society,” Trudie said. “There are opportunities and benefits that exist nowhere else. And rules. Expectations. Duties. If our children make no effort at all to participate in our society, then we will be cut off, and all of those things vanish. Your father’s jobs. The inheritance of this house.”
“Children need to leave their parents,” Albert said. “And you are talented children. You will accomplish great things and then come back to us, and we will sit here by the sea and listen to your stories. You will all surpass me. In everything. That is my prayer.”
“But who is leaving?” Lawrence asked suddenly. He climbed off the bench and walked to his mother. “Where am I going?”
“Mr. Thor will be taking Daniel, Circe, and Harriet to a camp for a couple weeks,” Trudie said. “Then they’ll come back here for a bit, and then we’ll take them to a huge estate on Lake Michigan for their real training. It’s where our Order is headquartered. And it’s where your father and I will be going for a couple of days, to explain about that mouthy monster and to finalize our ownership of this house. Mr. Thor will be kindly flying us in his airplane.”
“So I’m staying here?” Lawrence asked. “Alone?”
Trudie put an arm around her son.
“No,” she said. “You and Hyacinth will be here. Together. With the dogs. And Ms. Granlea.”
Lawrence looked at Hyacinth with wide eyes, his dirty freckled face full of worry. She tried to give him a smile, but she couldn’t. A smile would have been a lie.
“But I want to see the headquarters,” Lawrence said, his voice rising. “And I don’t want Daniel to go to camp. Can I go with him? Can I go to camp?”
“I’m going,” Rupert said, and Lawrence stared at him, shocked by the injustice. “But my parents are dead.”
Lawrence began sputtering and Circe launched into an interrogation of her father and Harriet pressed her braid against her lips and Daniel slowly stirred his potatoes and Hyacinth downed her wine with one gulp, blinked at the warm bitterness that flooded her mouth, and then stood up, taking her mostly full plate with her.
“May I be excused?” she asked her mother. “Please?”
Hyacinth felt her mother studying her face, looking for anger or sadness or disrespect. But Hyacinth knew that none of those things were there. There would be confusion, and there would be impatience to be somewhere else. She hated conflict. And she had more than enough things to process on her own. Trudie nodded and then hugged Lawrence, telling him that he was not allowed to cry.
Hyacinth turned her back on the sea and the sunset and climbed the stairs onto the porch, entering the house quickly, ignoring the empty frames and hurrying into the kitchen. In the kitchen, she scraped the dregs of the potatoes directly out of the pot onto her plate, and then she grabbed a mostly carved chicken carcass out of the roasting pan and set the whole greasy thing on top of the potatoes.
Then she slipped out the kitchen door, not letting it bang behind her, and hurried down the path toward the barn. She was wearing shoes this time, and she mo
ved as quickly as she could without dumping any of the food off the plate.
As she reached the barn door, the three dogs swooped down the path behind her, slobbering and panting. While Shark and Ray let their tongues loll happily, Squid put his ragged ears back and growled at the barn.
“Hush,” Hyacinth said, and she squeezed into the darkness and began to climb the stairs with the three dogs behind her.
At the top, she paused, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Light was no longer coming up from the floor below, but red stripes of sunset filtered through the cracks in the walls.
Shark and Ray snorted around the dusty floor until they were both sneezing on pigeon bones. Squid sat beside Hyacinth, with his ears up and his nose high.
“Hello?” Hyacinth moved across the loft, giving the hole in the center a wide and cautious berth. “I brought food. You must be hungry. I can look for medicine.”
She stopped, staring into the shadows where she had first seen the boy.
Nothing.
Careful not to dump the food, Hyacinth crouched and moved all the way back to where the roof met the low wall. Squid put his nose down and snorted past her. An old horse blanket was rumpled on the plank floor, and Hyacinth could see that it was blackened with blood, some of it still slick.
Squid lifted one paw and pointed at it cautiously.
“Where did they go, Squid?” Hyacinth backed away until she could stand upright. The barn loft was completely empty, and the disappointment she felt surprised her. Her life had enough strangeness to it already—no doubt Circe and Harriet were both being emotional at her parents right now, and Granlea was obsessing over lightning trees and planning to make more empty frames, and the Viking man named Thor was insisting that Albert and Trudie get on a plane as soon as the dishes were done. Or maybe before.
She wasn’t wrong. She knew she wasn’t. So why had she wanted the two boys to stick around so much? With everything else that was going on in her life, why did meeting them and asking for their story matter so much?
