by D M Fike
The batteries. I smacked my forehead with my palm. I had forgotten all about them yet again. Sipho would be beyond cranky having gone without her music for this long. If I wanted her help, I needed a peace offering. The nearest store would only take me a quick round trip, and I could be back in a half hour, tops.
* * *
The thing about hanging out in a valley between mountains is that you have a very limited view of the weather. It had been cloudy, damp, and chilly when I left the homestead, but then again, that pretty much defined the Oregon wilderness ten months out of the year. After I wisp channeled to the edge of the forest, I found myself walking along a remote highway, where the sky covered a lot more real estate. As I approached the unwashed windows of a dirty convenience store, ominous dark clouds swirled in the east.
Behind the counter sat Carol on a squeaky metal stool. Heavyset, she wore polyester pants and a lumpy shirt with a name tag with most of the black letters wiped off. Living in that eternal age somewhere between middle-aged and elderly, she sniffed as she solved her sudoku puzzle. The store had the absolute barest essentials: snack food that could last on sagging shelves for months, outdated camping gear, and various dusty essentials like cheap tools and napkins. The store became a little cleaner near the refrigerated pop and beer, which obviously enjoyed more sales. The cigarettes behind the counter were ordered and pristine, not a speck of dirt on them.
Carol didn’t even glance up from her folded book as she asked, “Hey, Ina. Out for one of your walks?”
Carol and her husband Dennis owned this shop. You always found one of them manning the place, although rarely together. I generally tried not to get to know people outside the shepherd community, but this being the closest convenience store to Sipho’s homestead, they eventually recognized me as a semi-regular. I had created a cover story for myself: I was a local college student who liked to hike the many surrounding trails, which explained why I would randomly show up without a vehicle to a place that looked like it served maybe five customers a day.
“Just in the area,” I confirmed. “Thought I’d pick up some batteries and a drink.”
Carol went back to scribbling as I found the AA batteries. One batch left, just within the expiration date. Perfect. I also grabbed a 20 oz. cherry cola from the refrigerator. I plopped them both down on top of the glass covering the scratch-off lottery tickets and rummaged around my shorts for the credit card.
A sizzle lighting up my pithways gave me only the barest warning of the incoming storm. Then a bright flash accompanied by a crash shook the building. I nearly jolted out of my skin.
“Whoa!” I cried, nearly dropping the card.
Carol belly laughed at my blunder. “Didn’t expect a thunderstorm, did you?”
I certainly didn’t. The forests may have more lightning storms than the coast, but it still seemed excessive for this time of year. “What’s up with the weather?”
Carol shrugged as she gave me a mobile reader to ring me up. “Forecast says we’re in for it today. Extends as far out as Bend.”
“Does it now?” The timing wasn’t great, but I couldn’t deny the familiar pull to follow the storm.
“It’s supposed to be bad,” Carol said as I secured the batteries in the waterproof pouch Sipho had given me. “You sure you should be out in this weather?”
“My car’s parked a few miles down the road at the trailhead,” I reassured her as I always did. It was my standard response, since I didn’t want her or Dennis to send someone out searching for me.
“Well, you take care of yourself today. Save your hiking for tomorrow. The storm should pass by then, and we’ll get sunshine for the rest of the week.”
Far from discouraging me, this heightened my urge to seek out the storm. Frustrated at my lack of progress with the cockatrices, I could at least wedge in some more lightning pith practice. I weighed my options as I downed the pop outside of the shop. I’d have to go now or miss the opportunity entirely. On the other hand, the vaettur infestation seemed like the bigger issue. Maybe I was just stalling.
Then the world lit up with streaks of glorious light above me. This time instead of flinching, I reveled in the spectacle, the thunder vibrating in my bones. I almost reached my hand up to absorb the pith but held back. Throwing lightning around a place like Carol and Dennis’s could set their livelihood on fire. Better to make a quick run out to the desert and catch a bolt where I couldn’t destroy anything.
* * *
Carol hadn’t been kidding about the lightning storm. The farther east I traveled through the wisps, the more intense the storm grew, strobing the morning sky above the trees. By the time I got to the edge of the Bitai Wilds, gale gusts upwards of 30 miles an hour sent a constant string of air soaring through my pithways.
It took a lot of willpower to ignore all that lightning as I searched for a relatively bare spot with little dry brush. I buried my phone under a large rock, excited to get on my way. Somehow, I knew this jaunt would be different. The storm beckoned me in a way I had never felt before, an instinctual pull I could not have ignored even if I wanted to. It crashed around me, but I had to find just the right spot to absorb the pith. I didn’t even bother drawing a dryness sigil this time, letting the rain soak me to the core. I needed to experience every single detail of the downpour, make it a part of myself.
And then the conditions all aligned. I found myself on a flat stretch with little vegetation. The storm howled at its apex, wind and rains as strong as they would get. The sky churned, lightning crashing all around me. I could barely count to five in between strikes, my ears ringing with their clamor.
It was now or never.
I lowered my center of gravity by skidding my feet apart, rubber-soled hiking boots digging into the dirt. As soon as I raised my hands above my head, the lightning pith jolted through me, as if waiting for me to accept it. Normally, this is when it would overload all my senses, making it hard for me to see or hear anything. I would try to hold on as best as I could before releasing it in an uncontrollable blast.
But none of that happened.
I didn’t feel anything at all. I might as well have been standing underneath a sunny sky on a windless day for all the lightning pith I absorbed. Frustrated, I stretched my fingers as far as they would go, as if I could just touch the storm and get on with it.
Loud chuckles broke through the clapping thunder. At first I thought I imagined it, but then it grew louder, emitting somewhere to my right.
Only a few yards away from me, an enormous red fox with ears half as long as a jackrabbit snickered. Large, clawed paws could swipe me in two. Her bright red coat sported a silver breast. Slanted eyes shimmered with merriment. But the thing that really caught my attention was not one, but two tails swishing behind her as she perched on her haunches.
“It’s you!” I yelled as I stared bug-eyed at the fox dryant. “I knew you were real!”
The red fox cocked her head at me.
“Who are you? What’s your name?”
The fox shook her head, backing away from me.
“Don’t go!” I cried. “I’ve been looking for you for years. The other shepherds don’t believe you exist.”
The fox continued to shake her head, back and forth. What I at first had interpreted as a negative reply was clearly something else. A nervous tic, maybe?
“You okay there?” I asked.
It was then that tendrils of blue-white light funneled down from the storm clouds directly into the fox. A strange glow gathered a few centimeters from her nose. It started out small, a firefly pinprick of light, but grew with each shake of her head, intensifying until it swelled into a fist-sized mass. As sparks sizzled on her snout, I realized with a gasp that she could channel the pith.
The fox controlled lightning.
The dryant finally stopped shaking, allowing the lightning ball to float mid-air in front of her snout. She blinked at me expectantly, so I took a hesitant step forward.
“H-how?
” I asked her. “How did you do that?”
The fox only seemed to grin, another set of chuckles sputtering from her mouth behind the ball of lightning.
I slowly held out my hand. “Can I try?” I asked eagerly.
Without warning, the fox threw her head back. The lightning ball arched through the air, and I ran for it, not realizing until I caught it that grabbing this object might not be my smartest move. I winced, closing my eyes, waiting for an explosion.
None came.
When I opened my eyes, the lightning ball had vanished, but I knew where it had gone. Its electricity surged through me but didn’t wreck me like it usually did. Instead, my hand went partially numb, the way it does when you sit on it too long. Constant pins and needles that smarted but didn’t cause too much pain.
I was holding lightning in my pithways in a controlled state.
I whooped, turning to the fox dryant. “How did you get it down to this manageable level?” I asked, stumbling over every word. “How could you absorb so little energy from the storm? What…?”
Suddenly, I didn’t have a chance to ask any more questions. A bolt of lightning from the sky, completely of its own volition, struck my tingling body. For a second, I believed I could absorb this new burst of energy. I channeled its raw strength, letting it mingle with the power already flowing through me. I thought I could wield it, control it like the fox.
But no such luck. The storm needed to remind me who exactly was in charge. Certainly not me, the rookie shepherd. Electricity clawed its way to every corner of my extremities, leaving a horrid emptiness in its wake. My muscles seized. My joints couldn’t move. I became paralyzed by the lightning’s need to break free. Everything went stark white in a terrifying blindness, and a booming thunder consumed all my internal organs.
Then black and silence.
CHAPTER 12
I WOKE TO a relentlessly sunny sky, the rays stabbing my eyeballs.
Blinking, I wobbled to a sitting position. My face, arms, and legs ached, but for some reason, the majority of my abdominal area seemed fine. It took me a few minutes to realize that I’d sunburned all the exposed skin on my body, probably on account of my exposure to the hot sphere of fire roasting me from above. Wincing, I sent what little water pith I had left to the reddest patches I could identify.
What had happened to the storm? And the fox? I had so many questions I wanted to ask the mysterious dryant who seemed to come and go with the lightning.
I glanced around in all directions. The sun’s position hinted it to be probably noonish, but I had arrived in the desert around the same time. That didn’t make any sense. The sun couldn’t have fried me that fast.
Aching and dazed, I had no choice but to retrieve my phone. In my sorry state, it took me an hour to locate the right rock. When I did finally find my burner phone, I couldn’t grip the damned thing with my sore hand. I had to resort to using both thumbs to press down on the power button and start it up.
Once the phone blinked alive, I stared in horror at the date. It indicated I had been knocked out for three days.
That couldn’t be right. I held the phone up to the sky. It received two bars of signal. I loaded up a date and time website. Sure enough, three days had since past from when I went chasing the storm.
“I am so dead,” I whispered as the reality of how much time had passed sunk in. Then another terrible thought hit me. I had left the cockatrice situation unattended for three days. Was Guntram still moping about the homestead? Who was protecting Ronan and the other dryants of the coast?
As much as I yearned to stick around to find that shifty fox dryant and figure out how I’d been able to hold a real ball of lightning, I had other priorities.
* * *
By the time I made it back to Sipho’s, it was mid-afternoon. I marched straight to the lodge, but Guntram wasn’t there. Figuring he might be healing at the hot spring, I grabbed a robe myself and marched down there. For being exposed to UVB rays seventy-two hours straight, my sunburn could have been a lot worse. I’m sure my pithways helped lessen the damage. Still, if I was going after more vaetturs, I didn’t want my face to peel off at any given moment.
Surprisingly, the hot spring was as empty as the lodge. I eased into the top pool anyway, soaking for fifteen minutes, just long enough to for my burnt skin to slough off, losing its papier-mâché texture. My cheeks returned to their normal color. I still felt stiffer than a high school student adding a tip to a meal, but I had the energy to function normally. I needed to find Guntram.
I threw my clothes back on and searched the premises. I checked the lodge again, the library, and even several of the surrounding fields hoping to find him meditating or practicing sigils. Nada. Only as I jogged to the forge to ask Sipho about Guntram did it occur to me I hadn’t noticed a single raven flying above the homestead.
I paused in mid-step. That meant Guntram was gone.
But where? I hoped Sipho might tell me, but when I noticed the closed barn doors of the forge, I knew she’d be gone too. Nur and Kam heard me approach and swirled around my waist like giant house cats. I absentmindedly patted their heads as I read a crude wooden sign hanging from a rusty nail.
“Out to Forage.”
As part of her duties, Sipho traveled periodically to gather necessary materials for her various projects. She could be gone from a few days for up to a week and generally left her kidama mountain lions behind to guard the homestead.
I rubbed Kam behind the ears, and a jealous Nur pushed his sister out of the way for his own round of affection. “I don’t suppose either of you guys know where Guntram went?”
They purred in response.
Once the felines grew bored of me, I wandered back to the lodge. Guntram’s last words echoed in my head. I never should have been your augur. He was pretty furious at the time. He couldn’t have meant it.
Could he?
I wandered back to the lodge room he’d been using the last time I saw him. The books he’d been reading lay mostly in a stack on the bedside table, although one had been left open on his bed as if he’d just gotten up to get a snack. Curious, I bent down over it.
It was a leather-bound journal with yellowing handwritten pages. Shepherds don’t read stuff in mass paperback form. A shepherd who lived a hundred or so years ago had written this book about a variety of vaetturs he’d encountered during his lifetime. Skimming through his old-timey cursive handwriting, I caught the word “cockatrice.”
Of course, Guntram had been working on our strange vaettur problem. I turned the page.
A charcoal sketch of an adult cockatrice jumped out at me. It looked just like the one I had banished from the whale’s mouth: ugly rooster head with nasty curling horns and hooked claws attached to triangular wings. Underneath, the shepherd had scribbled “a male cockatrice.”
The text on the accompanying page talked about cockatrice mating habits. This shepherd claimed that cockatrices formed lifelong partnerships with their mates and often raised young in their nests together. I raised an eyebrow at this. Shepherds don’t generally hang around vaetturs long enough to get a good sense of their reproductive cycles. Hell, we rarely identify them as male or female. We usually just banish them as quick as we can so they cause the least amount of harm to dryants.
“How could you know so much about their booty calls?” I whispered, flipping to the next page.
That’s when a second sketch appeared, this one of a similarly large cockatrice, every bit as gross as the first except without the horns. This cockatrice crouched protectively over a nest of large eggs in some sort of a cavern. The caption underneath it read “a female cockatrice.”
My heart quickened as a theory formed in my mind. Given the sketches, I’d definitely killed an adult male cockatrice on the beach. I’d since run into a lot of little cockatrices, most likely weak babies who didn’t have the power to defend themselves against defensive sigils and bust through a breach on their own.
What I hadn
’t seen was a mommy.
The book’s next paragraph confirmed my worst fears. It read, “I did not encounter the female cockatrice until after banishing the male. As far as I can tell, the female cockatrice’s role is to guard the nest while her partner hunts for food to bring back to the family. When her partner never came back, she too began to hunt, sometimes allowing her children to roam aboveground to forage for themselves. It took me weeks to locate them, largely because the other shepherds did not believe the tale of a family of vaetturs roaming our woods. The babies had grown much stronger in that time, but I did manage to banish them by destroying their nest.”
A nest? My skin crawled thinking about it. I read on. “While many shepherds now believe my story, most still dismiss this as an isolated incident. The countless other cockatrices that shepherds have banished arrive as lone predators. Still, let this be a cautionary tale for future generations who may come across such horrors.”
A cautionary tale. Understatement of the year. I read over the cockatrice section again, hoping for more clues on how to deal with this situation. There was a footnote in the section that talked about cockatrice nests. The author claimed that an offspring bit his finger during the nest banishment, and it took the digit weeks to heal. Since cockatrice bites from single vaetturs had never shown any special properties, the author wondered if families somehow possessed a kind of protective energy that poisoned shepherds.
I slammed the journal shut, mind reeling. Well, at least there was precedent now. No wonder Guntram’s arm refused to heal. And now all the little cockatrices running around made sense.
No doubt, Guntram had connected all the dots too. It had already been several days since I took care of daddy cockatrice, and this shepherd said the babies would only get stronger over time. Guntram would have searched for the nest to destroy it quickly.
But I’d been missing for three days. He had no idea where I’d gone, and I’d never disappeared for that amount of time. I shivered as I thought of how we’d parted, angry at each other. Even if he wanted to wait up for me, he couldn’t just sit on his laurels and do nothing. He must have decided to go looking for the cockatrice nest on his own. Injured though he was, he would have felt honor bound to finish this mission before it escalated.
