by Jae
“Like, stop at their place for two hours, ooh and aah over the tree, drink eggnog, and pretend to like their presents? This didn’t need to turn into an expedition, Lena.” That was a lie, of course. Everything Elena did turned into an expedition. It was part of the adventure of being married to her.
Elena twitched her shoulders and looked away from Joan. “I prefer not to see her in that house.”
“But it’ll be fine seeing her in your mother’s cabin? Elena, are you aware you’re being irrational?”
“You don’t know the woman. I’d rather not deal with her on her own territory. The cabin is mine—it’s ours,” she allowed. She nodded cautiously at Joan, the slip seeming to throw her off her rant. “I’m sorry?” She tried it out as if she wasn’t sure it would fit. “I know it’s a lot to ask. But it’s only three days.”
And that, Joan could tell, was as good as she was going to get. “It’ll be fine. We can pretend to be normal for a couple days.” She tidied the rest of Elena’s belongings into the suitcase. “Don’t forget the presents.”
“It’s snowing awfully heavily. I hope everyone’s going to make it all right.” Joan stared out the car window at the mountainside, which was already covered in a heavy blanket of white.
“Oh, they’ll be fine. It’s not like the airport here isn’t used to snow. It’s New York in December.” Elena handled the little SUV as if she were driving on a dry, straight road, gunning up the winding mountain trail. “We’ll probably have just enough time to get the cabin aired out and ready before everyone gets there.”
Joan had heard much about “the cabin,” a small mountain property that Elena’s mother—and later Elena—had used as a base camp for hunting bogeys. There had always been one reason or another not to go there—weather, a hunt, an event, anything. Now they were finally going, and they were going to share the place with their parents. Joan hummed “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” to herself and tried to be upbeat. “It’s lovely out here.”
“It is.” Elena’s voice softened. “I used to love coming out here in the winter. We’d practice tracking deer and rabbits, and there’d be a roaring fire in the wood stove and a pot of soup waiting when we got back home. It was like living in another time.”
Joan glanced at her wife. “It sounds beautiful.”
Elena flashed a bright smile. “It was. Mom taught me to hunt up here—not just deer and rabbits. This is where I took down my first bogey, too. I thought it was so big and nasty, but it was really just a little elf-thing. I’ve never seen another one like it, in all the years I’ve been hunting. Oh, here it is.” She lifted her foot off the gas and made a rather graceful fishtail.
Joan never would have seen the side road if they hadn’t been driving down it. In the snow, it looked like a very small gap in the trees. It curved around a large boulder—bigger than the SUV they were driving—and headed straight up a hill.
“There are wards all over this place, but if we’re lucky, I did things right, and they’ll recognize you.”
Joan raised her eyebrows. “From anyone else, Lena, that would be terrifying.” From Elena, it brought forth immediate other questions. “Ah—your parents? My parents?”
“Your parents are fine if you are; it thinks they’re part of you. My dad and the stepmonster have been attuned to the wards for years. They used to come up here when I was a kid.” She made a noise as if she was spitting out the whole idea while she navigated the SUV around a hairpin turn that bent the road around a giant oak tree. “It’s fine, Joan. I thought of everything.”
“I know you did,” Joan murmured. “And if you didn’t, I did. That’s why we’re a team.”
“You just think I’d let my stepmonster run into a kick-me ward for giggles,” Elena accused. The road was surprisingly smooth, but it was also heading upwards at an angle usually reserved for walls.
“Well, am I wrong?”
“If it wasn’t for Dad, I might. But if it wasn’t for Dad, I wouldn’t have any reason to hate her. Hold on,” she added.
Joan took her seriously, grabbed two handholds, and braced her feet.
Normal cars should not be able to do the tricks Elena put theirs through in the next few moments. Then again, their sturdy SUV had more charms on it than most crystal stores.
Elena and Joan had been working on it for years, and their mechanic had done the same more than a few times. Their line of work was hard on cars. They tried not to think about that more than they had to. It was hard to be married and be hunters. It was hard to have friends and be hunters.
“There.” Elena put the car in park and leaned back in her seat as if she’d just landed a head shot. The SUV was level again, but Joan pulled up the emergency brake anyway.
In front of them was the solidest looking cabin Joan had ever seen. No surprise; it was a hunter’s hideout. It was built out of what looked to be boulders up to shoulder height, and then out of very large rocks, topped with a slate roof.
“Nobody’s burning that down,” Joan murmured. She approved. They’d had to flee burning buildings a couple times. It was still on her list of all-time least favorite dates.
“Or sieging it, or shooting the windows out, or quite a few other things. Grandma built this thing to last, and she did a really good job of it.” Elena sounded justifiably proud. “It’s a good old shack.”
By Joan’s estimation, the “old shack” could probably comfortably hold eight or possibly eighty people for the duration of a heavy winter storm. “Grandma built big, too.”
“Well,” Elena shrugged, “she was part giant. What?” she added, at Joan’s raised eyebrows. “You knew my family was weird.”
“Didn’t we just hunt down a giant last month? Didn’t you tell me giants were horrible, nasty creatures without a speck of human compassion in them, a relic of a bygone era that could never be tamed?”
“You never met my grandmother. That just about describes her to a T. Come on in; it’s not like there are giants there now.”
Joan’s phone rang as they were hauling suitcases, groceries, and bags of presents into the cabin. She balanced it against her shoulder while she tried to follow Elena’s gestured directions. In Elena’s usual manner, giving those directions involved pointing in more directions at once than should be possible. The end result, as usual, was that Joan just went where she wanted anyway.
It seemed the New York airports weren’t as sturdy as all that. Her parents’ flight was cancelled, and the airports up and down the East Coast were closed.
“No, I understand,” she said as she re-emerged into the living room. “Stay safe, and Lena and I will visit you sometime when the snow stops. No, we’re safe. It’s Lena’s mother’s cabin; it’s very sturdy. I promise you, Mom, we’re not going to be buried in an avalanche. And if we are, well, there’s enough firewood here for a month or three anyway.”
Truth be told, if it weren’t for the tension of dealing with Elena’s father and stepmother, Joan wouldn’t mind being stuck in a giant stone cabin with her wife. The monsters probably couldn’t find them up here.
“No, Mom, it’s okay. I’m sure the gifts can wait.”
She glanced up to find Elena on the phone as well, frowning off into the rafters while she made impatient listening noises.
“Well, I’ve got to get to unpacking here, Mom.” She followed Elena’s gaze—oh. Someone had left a yeti-spear mounted to the largest beam. That did not speak of a calm life chasing down decimal points and scolding untidy accountants—Joan’s current cover story for family and other mundane acquaintances.
And, to either side of the yeti-spear, were the peculiar barbed nets they used when they chased down poltergeists. “We’ll call you on Christmas, and we can all sing carols by speakerphone.”
“…if you’re passing the firs, you’re about ten minutes away. Yeah, we just got here. The place is just like I remember it. All
right, Dad, I’m getting off the phone so we can start getting settled. We’ll see you in a bit.”
They hung up their phones and looked at each other. The place was dripping with weapons.
“I haven’t been here in a couple years,” Elena muttered. “I used it as a base a couple times, that’s all. Before you and I—”
Her hand wave took in everything that was their relationship, and Joan nodded, because when we just hunted together was too complex to go into when they had to make the place look tidy and sedate in nine minutes. Elena’s mother might have been a hunter—but her father had never been in the life, and her stepmother certainly wasn’t!
“I thought your mom used to bring family here.” Joan opened a cupboard in the small kitchen and cleared a space to stash the shorter and more damning things.
“Well, back in the day, yeah, and everything was a lot more tidy then. If you can get the guns on the back wall—you could probably do something with that fir garland we brought to cover the pegs—then I can get the spear and the nets. Most of this mess is my fault.” She dragged a sturdy-looking chair under the beams while Joan did as suggested with a collection of antique guns with modifications that would drive a collector to tears. Someone had screwed a semi-modern scope onto the top of an antique rifle, for one.
“Mom spent a lot of time up here, the last couple years. I’d come out and we’d hunt together, and then I’d go back to—to Pittsburgh, and she’d come back here. Then she died, and I just spent months up here.” Elena made a noise. “Our bags, Joan, quick. I didn’t notice until now; they have pistol bulges.”
“The grocery bags are safe, right? You didn’t pack anything too strange in there?”
“Nah, most of that is straight from the store or the pantry. First bedroom, all the way on the right upstairs. It was—it was mine as a kid. It will be incrementally less strange, knowing the monster is sleeping in Mom’s old bed than it will be to sleep there myself.” She paused, a long wooden knife in one hand. “Was that your parents saying they couldn’t make it?”
“The airport is entirely snowed in. From the sounds of it, the whole city is snowed in. So no Mom to buffer your stepmother. But, on the other hand, we only have to keep our stories straight for two people.”
“Which reminds me.” Elena pointed over Joan’s shoulder. “Consecrated boar spear…So, did you get that raise you were talking about the last time your mom asked questions?”
“I did, but it came with a whole bunch of extra responsibilities. You know how the school is—never pay for something you can guilt someone into doing for free.” They had long practice checking their lies against each other. “And what about that annoying co-worker that kept stepping on your toes?” Joan grabbed the spear from its place of honor on a low shelf and replaced it with a series of candles she’d packed for ambiance.
“You know what happened to Nathan. The werewolf in Santa Fe got him.” Elena twisted her lips. “Okay. Oh shit, that’s not a walking stick.”
“Leave it; it looks close enough. What are the odds your father’s going to grab it and discovered it’s a viper’s-head cane sword?” Joan headed up the narrow, steep stairs to the upstairs bedrooms. There were three of them, small rooms with large, plastic-covered beds. Everything smelled of lavender and cedar, mothballs and the faint aroma of church incense. “Try again with Nathan,” she called down. “You can’t tell your parents we last saw him inside of a werewolf’s stomach.”
“They’re pulling in the driveway. Where did you put the incense? The normal sandalwood stuff or the scented vanilla candles or—”
“Candles are on the shelf where the boar spear was. Incense is in the lovely kitschy burner, remember, your co-worker Natalie gave it to you in the office secret Santa. Matches are in the kitchen bag.”
Joan stopped in the doorway of the last bedroom on the right.
On the other side of the bed, something short and humanoid and vicious glared at her. “Elena? Does your house have—”
“Dad! Laura! Glad you could make it all the way up the mountain!” Elena’s musical, fake-friendly voice drifted up the stairway.
The creature was gone—or perhaps it had never been there. In all her years of hunting, she had never seen something so very much like an evil Christmas elf.
She shook her head. All the carols were getting to her. “Oh, is that your folks?” she called down. “Hold on, I’ll be right there.”
She dumped the luggage on the bed. She could worry about sheets and blankets and short elves later.
Elena’s stepmother, it turned out, was a slender, pale, brunette woman, about as far from Elena as you could get and still be in the general field of “woman.” She was also cheerful, with a pushy sort of friendliness that could be both endearing and irritating.
“Oh, I remember this place.” She didn’t so much talk as she sang over her shoulder as she bounced from place to place. Elena’s father, who was a couple inches shorter than his daughter, followed along behind her like a balloon on a string. “Don’t you, Fred? Back when we were all young and wild, and we’d come up here in the summer and go skinny-dipping in the pond back there? Oh, that was lovely. Don’t you remember? And Stephania would scold, she always loved to scold.”
Stephania was Elena’s mother. Joan noticed Elena tensing—but over her wife’s shoulder, she also noticed the trident-pointed arrows they used for hunting wendigo. The bow with them could be a decoration, maybe; the arrows were far more modern looking, and one of them had a smidge of blood dried onto it.
“Oh, I think it’s going to be a bit too chill for skinny-dipping on this trip,” Joan joked. She gave Elena a subtle push towards the arrows. “A winter like this, it’s hungry and frozen, just as happy to eat you. Like the old song, right? ‘Jack Frost comes nipping at your toes?’ Only this one’s down from Canada; it won’t stop at your toes.”
“Oh, you’re poetic,” Laura sighed. “I wouldn’t imagine an accountant would have such a musical soul.”
“She sings, too.” Elena cheerfully offered Joan up to the wolves. “Sing that thing you were humming on the way up here, Joan. It was lovely.”
Joan smiled brightly, because you couldn’t threaten murder in front of your wife’s parents. “How about over here by the hearth?” she suggested. They’d already cleaned up the hearth area. “The acoustics might be better.”
She glanced back at Elena as they crossed the several miles between the entryway and the hearth; Elena was tucking arrows behind her back one at a time, like a kid sneaking sweets.
“It seems so much more open than when we were young, doesn’t it, Fred?” Laura ran a finger over the mantle, where Joan had hastily arranged some fir boughs just minutes before. “Echo-y.”
“We sold a lot of the furniture when Stephania died.” Fred’s amiable expression went cold and warning. Interesting.
Joan cleared her throat and began to sing. She had a passable voice—nothing radio worthy, but she’d sung in school choir as a child, and for a while, in church choir.
“We wish you a Merry—”
“Oh, not that one.” Laura flapped her hands. “Anything but that one, please. It gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
Maybe she really was a monster. Joan smiled, made some apologetic noises, and started in on “O Christmas Tree.” She watched over Laura’s shoulder while Elena cleaned up the bow and arrows, tucking them deep into a cupboard in the small kitchen area.
“Lovely,” Laura murmured, when Joan finally ran out of verses. “You have a beautiful voice. And I bet this place will be beautiful again, with a little work. We brought you a few things to get you started.”
“Oh, we’re not—” Joan swallowed a gasp. There was another one of those awful things, a humanoid figure that came maybe up to Joan’s hip, climbing up the stairs.
“Oh, honey, this is the twenty-first century.” Laura set her hand on
Joan’s arm. “You don’t really think we were going to buy that ‘good friends who happen to be roommates’ story, did you?”
Joan coughed and tried to catch Elena’s eye. Elena, however, was glaring at her stepmother and glowering. “I don’t believe we ever said anything like that.”
“We might have, sweetie.” Joan draped her arm around Elena’s waist and tugged her close, camping it up a little bit for Elana’s stepmother. “Remember? Back when we were good friends—that happened to be roommates?”
“Oh, yes, back when it was—” Elena trailed off.
“Seriously, girls, you don’t need to pretend for our benefit.” Laura shook her head. “Fred and I are very forward-thinking. Aren’t we, Fred?”
Fred was looking at the mantle thoughtfully. “Mmm? Oh, forward-thinking. We were hippies, you know, Stephania and I and Laura and John. Back in the day. There’s not much you can do that will shock us, and it’s not like lesbianism is a new thing, you know.” He smiled over his wire-rimmed glasses. “I promise, your generation did not invent spooning or whatever they call it these days.”
There was another one of those creatures standing behind him! Joan coughed and hoped she looked nearly as embarrassed as she felt.
“Well, since you guys are familiar with this place,” she tried gamely to change the subject, “maybe you can help Elena and I get the kitchen set up. We brought enough food for a small army, but if we want a warm meal, I might need a primer.”
“Oh, remember the fondue we used to make?” Laura smiled warmly. “And then we’d feed it to each other, while we lay on our backs here on that big sheepskin rug that used to be here.” She flopped on her back in the middle of the plank-wood floor. “I miss that rug.”
“If you two are going to settle down here, you’re really going to need more rugs. You can burn enough wood to stay warm, sure, but this heap really heats up once you’ve hung some tapestries.” Fred looked around the building, once again narrowly missing sighting one of the elf-creatures. “Where did all of that stuff go, anyway?”
