by Emery Blake
“Can I help you?”
An older woman, tall, but beginning to stoop with the weight of age, emerged from a back room. She had a kindly smile. The wrinkles on her face evidenced a long history of kindly smiles.
“You have a wonderful shop. Are you the owner?”
“I am. My name is Helen Crabtree. You aren’t from around here, are you?” Her tone was inquisitive, rather than confrontational. You never knew how people in a small town would react to outsiders.
“No, I am just visiting. But I grew up not far away, over in Brunswick.”
“Ah, lovely town. What brings you to Friendship, young lady.”
“My name is Skylar. Actually, I am here about the attack that happened in the woods near here. The man who was killed. Do you know anything about it?”
Helen’s face transformed immediately. Gone was the welcoming smile. A skeptical frown appeared in its place.
“Why are you interested in something like that? You a reporter?”
“No, Mrs. Crabtree, I’m not a reporter. I am writing a book about the boundaries between nature and human settlement and I just wanted to learn more about what happened.”
“There’s nothing to tell. It was like the sheriff said, he was attacked by a bear when he was fishing.”
“Isn’t that strange, though? I grew up not far from here and I can’t remember hearing a single story about a person being attacked by a bear. Have there been any other incidents recently?”
I watched her eyes dart about. She was clearly uncomfortable talking about the incident. Far too uncomfortable for something as simple as a bear attack. Even if it was a rare occurrence, it wasn’t unbelievable. But there was obviously something else going on.
“Mrs. Crabtree?”
“Look, miss, if you want to buy something, let me know. But otherwise, I am very busy.” She walked back into the other room and closed the door behind her. I wasn’t going to get anything else out of her, but what she hadn’t said was very interesting. I needed to find someone more talkative.
Looking up and down the street, my eyes passed over a hardware store, a coffee shop, and several empty storefronts before they settled on a promising option, a hair salon. When I entered there were two stylists chatting with each other while a middle-aged woman sat patiently, waiting for the dye to add color to her graying roots. One of the women walked up to greet me. Her dark brown hair fell in tight curls to her shoulders, contrasting with her pale, heavily made-up skin.
“Have an appointment, sweetie?”
“No, I’m just walking in.” I figured it would be better to try a more circumspect approach. I was too direct with Mrs. Crabtree. “Do you do blow-outs? My hair is all messed up from driving all day.”
The stylist looked me up and down, assessing me in a way that made me feel very uncomfortable. In Inter-realm, there weren’t many salons for humans, so I had to make do with my own, admittedly limited skills. I had given myself hair-cuts before, but it never came out great. Most days, I just wore it back in a ponytail.
In truth, there were so many other ways that I felt out of place or insufficient that I hardly noticed my appearance. The judgement I felt from the stylist’s gaze brought back all my own insecurities. I was probably just projecting, anyway. Who knows what she was thinking.
“Of course, come on back.” She turned and ushered me to one of the empty chairs. “My name’s Alicia.”
“Skylar.”
“Have a seat, Skylar.” I complied, and she started running her hands through my hair. “What kind of style are you looking for?”
“Umm, whatever you think is best, I guess.” She nodded at me in the mirror. “I was planning on doing some hiking around this area, but I heard about the guy who was killed. Do you know anything about what happened?”
I had come to the right place. Alicia’s eyes lit up as she answered. “Oh yeah, Don Harper. Poor guy. I heard there were pieces of him spread over thirty feet. I wouldn’t go anywhere out there, if I were you. At least not ‘til they catch the bear that got him.”
“Bullshit,” the middle-aged woman with her hair in foil butted in. “Wasn’t no bear killed him. They just wanted it to look that way. I heard Don was murdered.”
“Oh, come on, Eileen. Who would murder him? And how would they have made it look so gruesome. I mean, there were parts of him that were eaten, for goodness sake.”
“It can be done,” Eileen nodded knowingly. “From what I hear, Don had been up to his ears in some shady deals. I heard he swindled old Mrs. Hennigan out of her life savings before she died. Her daughter was mighty pissed.”
“Please. Charlotte Hennigan butchered a man and spread his parts all over a forest?”
“I didn’t say it was her,” Eileen retorted. I kept quiet and listened. Most gossip revealed some truth, though here it was difficult to discern what that truth might be beyond the fact that the victim may have had enemies. At least they were talking. “He was a scammer. Always had been. He probably screwed over the wrong people, is all.”
“It isn’t right to speak ill of the dead,” the other stylist jumped in. Both of the other interlocutors looked at her, and she returned to her work. Alicia, who had yet to start blow-drying my hair, returned her attention to Eileen.
“If you are so sure he was murdered, then why haven’t you gone to see the sheriff? I’m sure he would want to know about some axe murderer in town.”
“He won’t listen. Hell, Don may have screwed him, too. He was always pitching some hare-brained scheme or other. And there is no shortage of fools in this town. Sheriff Cole included.”
I decided to push my luck and try to steer the conversation in a more useful direction.
“Whether it was a bear or a maniac with an axe, I would prefer to avoid the area where this happened. Do you ladies know where Mr. Harper was found?”
“Oh sure,” Eileen said. “Just north of town. He went out fishing in the early morning and didn’t come home in the afternoon like he was supposed to. It was his wife who found him out there. She knew where to look because he always fished the same spot in the river.”
She sat forward and turned her head, making her stylist miss with her brushstroke and apply the dye to her own hand.
“Maybe she’s the one who did it? Maybe Don was having an affair, or she was having an affair and her lover helped murder her husband!” Satisfied with her acumen, Eileen sat back in her chair.
Maybe it was just a bear attack after all.
Chapter Twenty-One
The tavern was dark, even though the sun was still high above the horizon. The walls and ceiling were covered with a patina of old smoke and decades of alcohol-tinged exhalations. Thankfully, nobody was smoking there when I came in. It was more crowded than I would have thought, but everyone was clustered together at the far end of the L-shaped bar.
A roar of laughter erupted before I had taken two steps inside. Above the low, guttural sounds of the men whose backs were covered in plaid shirts of various patterns, I heard a lighter, higher pitched voice. It must have been Kaia. She was invisible behind the circle of men around her, but as I got closer, she emerged, poking her head up as she leaned on the bar.
I noticed some of the men behind her angling their heads to get a clearer view of her backside. Kaia didn’t seem to mind. She caught one of them and winked at him, his face glowing red in the dim, dingy light.
“Skylar! Come have a pint with me. Come on boys, make room.”
The ring parted, allowing me to take a stool beside the Valkyrie, and then quickly closed again. I was glad my partner seemed to feel at ease, because I certainly did not. I was used to college bars, and while some of the guys could be pushy or annoying, there was a different feeling here. It wasn’t a good feeling.
“Barkeep, a glass of something light for my friend here. So, Tanner, wasn’t it? Keep going with your story.” Kaia turned to me, elbowing me in the ribs. “Tanner here’s got a theory about the guy that got killed.”
> “So, like I was saying before these jackasses started cracking jokes, there’s a guy, lives out in the woods sort of near where Don got killed. He’s a real strange character. Don’t come into town much. He grows his own food, mostly. Anyway, I heard that he was keeping a bear as a pet.”
One of the other men interrupted, a burly middle-aged man with black stubble across his broad face tinged with a bit of gray. “I have been hunting and fishing in these woods for longer than you’ve been alive, Tanner. I never seen a man who keeps a bear as a pet. Maybe if you’d ever really been out in the wilderness, you would know a thing or two.”
“Are you saying bears can’t be tamed, Pete? I mean, I saw a video of one in a Chinese circus riding a bicycle. You telling me they can do that, but somebody from Maine can’t keep one as a pet?” a third man interjected.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying Tanner here doesn’t have any idea who or what is out in those woods. Hell, this boy don’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”
Tanner stood up. The young man was tall, but lanky. “So, you know what I know and what I don’t know, is that right? I am tired of your shit, Pete. You have been giving me crap since day one. I am not taking it anymore.”
The burly man stood up as well and the two squared off. Kaia, nearly as tall as Tanner, put her hands on their shoulders.
“Now, boys. No point in getting all worked up. Let me buy you both another round and we can just forget about it.”
The older man looked over at her and nodded, but in his moment of inattention, Tanner cocked his arm back and delivered a blow to the side of his head, staggering him. I leapt off the stool and ducked out of the way. This was nowhere I wanted to be.
Kaia took a step back. From the expression on her face, she was having trouble restraining herself from jumping into the melee. Partisans of both sides started joining the fight and, in a moment, the whole bar had erupted in a brawl. Tanner continued to rain punches on the older man, who had covered his head with his arms to try to gain a reprieve and recover his footing. But Tanner didn’t give him an opening.
Finally, with a roar, Pete pushed away from the bar and wrapped Tanner around the waist, driving him down to the floor. I could hear the breath squeezed out of the younger man’s chest. Pete rose onto unsteady feet. Tanner lay on the floor, writhing as he tried to re-inflate his lungs. I looked over to Kaia who stood on the other side of the mass of drunk, fighting men. She shook her head and pointed to the door.
I was about to turn around and head for the exit when I saw a man grab a beer bottle. He aimed at one of Tanner’s friends and threw it. But the targeted man had ducked down to help his friend get up and the bottle flew past him. Right at the side of Kaia’s head. She was busy shoving away a combatant who had gotten too close. She didn’t see the projectile coming right for her. My breath caught in my throat and I reached out my hand from across the room.
My nerve endings prickled like I’d brushed a live electric wire.
The bottle shattered in mid-air. The shards of glass stopped as if they had hit an invisible wall less than a foot from Kaia’s face and fell to the ground. The man who threw the bottle stood, dumbfounded, staring at the broken glass on the floor. Kaia looked at the glass, then up at me, her expression unreadable. Then she strode through the mess of tangled bodies towards me.
One man stumbled too close to her and her elbow flashed out, catching him across the jaw. He dropped to the floor. Kaia grabbed me by the arm and escorted me out into the orange light of the late afternoon. Even when we were outside, she did not let go of my arm. She marched me straight to the truck.
“Get in,” she said, opening the driver-side door for me. I complied, still shaken from what I had seen, from what I had done. It was just like in the river. I felt a knot in my stomach. Was I really doing magic? I didn’t even know how to describe what I had done, and I couldn’t remember how I had done it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Don’t play dumb. Why didn’t you tell me you had magic?”
“I didn’t know.”
Kaia arched her eyebrow at me.
“I am serious. I don’t even know what I did.”
“Well, thank you for stopping the bottle, however you did it. But you may have put us in substantially more danger.”
“What do you mean?”
“There is something going on in this town. Something isn’t right. I mean, that fight back there, there was no reason for the whole group to erupt like that. I have spent a lot of time around violent people and that was ridiculous. I mean, there was just no cause for it.”
She was right, the men had been laughing and relaxed only moments before and then the slightest tension had set them off. Maybe Kaia was on to something.
“So why do you think my, magic, or whatever is putting us in more danger?”
“I don’t know. Just a feeling. But I trust my feelings and I am worried.”
We drove in silence the rest of the way to the motel. The desk clerk made a bit of a face when Kaia said we only wanted one room but didn’t say anything. Once inside, I collapsed onto the bed, my hands shaking. I felt all the blood drain from my face and I thought I might faint.
“Hey, you ok?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’m just a little weirded out by what happened.”
“You aren’t the only one.” She sat on the bed next to me and ran her hand over my forehead and through my hair. “Has anything like this ever happened before?”
I hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about what happened with the little kelpie at the river. I was still angry with Aiken for tricking me and felt a bit of a fool. But Kaia might be able to help. If I did really have magic, I needed to learn what it was and how I was going to control it.
So far, it had only worked to help protect others, but what happened when it didn’t go as I’d wanted it to. What happened if my magic hurt someone instead of saving them? I needed to figure out how to control it before that happened. So, I told her about the incident at the river. The Valkyrie listened patiently while I recounted everything that I remembered. She asked a few questions, but otherwise sat quietly. When I finished, she put her hand on my knee and smiled.
“Well, Skylar, I am not an expert on human magic, but I think I can safely say that you have a little more to you than you let on. We will have to talk to Finian, he needs to know, obviously, but he can also help figure out what kind of magic you have and point you in the direction of how you can learn to control it.”
She folded one leg on top of the other and started unlacing her boot.
“For now, though, try to keep it under wraps. You don’t know how to control that yet, I know, but the less attention we attract, the better. I want to find out what killed that guy, capture it, and get out of here with a minimum of trouble.”
On cue, there was a knock at the door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kaia motioned for me to go into the bathroom. I saw a tension approaching fear in her eyes. That, more than anything, was unsettling. If I hadn’t taken her seriously when she said my little magic display could get us into trouble, I did now. I shut the bathroom door and held my ear against it, straining to hear everything. I heard the Valkyrie open the door to the outside. Voices were muffled, but I could make out the basics. The knocker was a local sheriff’s deputy and he was looking into the fight at the bar, he heard that we were there.
“I just need a statement from you and your…friend. Where is she by the way?”
“She’s out, but she’ll say the same thing. We didn’t see anything. We were minding our own business when a scuffle broke out. We headed to the exit as soon as we could get clear and left. That’s it.”
Silence for a few moments, and then a different voice spoke. It was deeper than the first voice, older and raspier.
“I don’t think you were minding your own business there, miss. What I hear, you and your friend have been run
ning around bothering folk, asking questions.”
“Is it against the law here to ask questions, officer…?”
“It’s Sheriff Cole. And it is illegal to harass the innocent citizens of my county. So, I recommend that you and that other girl quit digging into things that aren’t your business. People round here have a right to peace and quiet and we don’t need anyone from, wherever you are from, to come in poking your nose where it don’t belong.”
I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing. If the sheriff only knew where we had come from, he would have peed himself.
“Sheriff, I promise you, we have not harassed anyone, if someone doesn’t want to have a conversation with me, I don’t press the matter. I don’t see how I’m not within my rights to just…”
“I’ll decide what your rights are in my county, young lady. Now you should start making plans to go bother people in someone else’s jurisdiction, or you will find yourself in a world of trouble.”
The two men had apparently walked away without another word because the next sound I heard was the door slamming shut. I wondered what galled Kaia most, being called ‘young lady’ or having to suffer such a clumsy attempt at intimidation.
I didn’t like being called young lady, it was demeaning, but at least I was actually young. I had no idea how old Kaia was, but I knew that Valkyries didn’t age at nearly the rate people did. She could have been more than a century old, for all I knew, even though she didn’t look a day over thirty.
I opened the bathroom door slowly and saw her pacing in the small space between the door and the wall. Her expression was grim.
“We need to work quickly, Skylar. Something isn’t right.”
“It’s just a local cop, Kaia. He’s not going to do anything. It was probably that woman from the second-hand shop. She acted kinda weird when I was talking to her, she must have called the sheriff to complain. And then someone must have seen us leave the bar right after the fight. I don’t see how this is a big deal.”
