by Sam Burns
Wade put the pictures down on the table next to the note and looked back at the mayor. “You’d have turned them over to us, and we’d have spent the rest of the day poring over them. By the time we had any answers, it would have been too late.”
“But they sent it to me. I was supposed to do something with it.”
“As much as I want to agree that this would have helped, Mayor Cormier, I don’t. Even assuming we believed this anonymous friend, knowing the thing might be out there wouldn’t have stopped what happened. We couldn’t have put the whole town on hold while we searched thousands of square miles of forest for a creature that didn’t want to be found.” Wade started gathering the papers up and putting them into the folder. “I’m glad we have this. It might be helpful now. But I don’t believe it would have saved Mrs. Anderson.”
“Someone sent that creature to Rowan Harbor hoping it would create havoc.” Devon leaned forward and picked up the flash drive as though he could see the video without looking. The world went a little fuzzy, as it often did when he started spewing the truth, so he opened his mouth and let it run itself. “He was testing the wards. He knew magical weapons would be stopped, but he wasn’t sure about ill-intentioned magical creatures. He wants to kill us all, but he knows he’ll have to work through the wards.”
“Why doesn’t he just tell people where to find us?” Wade asked, as though Devon weren’t being creepy at all.
“He wants to kill us himself.”
The mayor shivered violently at that. Devon and Wade locked eyes, and Wade nodded. “Then we stop him.”
Devon was pretty sure he was done, so he just nodded back. He handed the flash drive over, and Wade tucked it into the envelope.
Wade, in turn, held the note out to Devon. “I know you don’t control it, but humor me and give it a try.”
The paper was a little heavier than standard printer paper, and the letters were all in strong black fonts, like the creator had wanted to make it as easily read as possible. For a second, Devon just stared at it, sure it wouldn’t work. It only worked because he believed it would, so he shook his head and tried again, closing his eyes and focusing on the note and the intentions behind it. “She’s afraid,” he finally whispered. “He’s obsessed and angry, and she’s terrified. But he’s so arrogant, he’s attacking a whole town now. Maybe she can help them stop him.”
They all sat there and stared at the paper, maybe digesting the information, maybe waiting to see if Devon had anything else to say. Finally, Wade spoke up. “That’s good.”
“Good?” the mayor asked, raising an eyebrow at Wade.
Wade nodded. “We know whoever sent us this, she actually does want us to win. There’s a chance we’ll get more help from that corner, and next time we’ll be ready for it.”
Devon handed the paper back to him. It gave him an odd twinge, as though he didn’t want to let go of it. He wanted to help the person who had made it. She had tried to help them. Maybe it was self-serving of her, but she had a right to try to save herself. He was also sure that any help she gave was risky for her. He added the nameless woman to the list of people he needed to protect, and he could almost feel a new thread spring into being on the tapestry of Rowan Harbor. It stretched far to the east, and might be anywhere from Chicago, to New York, to London.
He didn’t almost feel it, he realized. He did feel it. “They’re east of here,” he told Wade and the mayor. “The woman and someone else, someone she needs to protect from him. They’re east of here, and they belong in Rowan Harbor.”
“I’ll ask Ms. Owens to be on the lookout for any similar packages,” the mayor said, nodding decisively and standing. “Maybe next time she sends something, she’ll give us a way to contact her. Or at least we’ll know to make use of it.”
Wade stood and turned to the mayor. “Do you need a ride, sir? I can take you down to the post office, or just home, if you like.”
The bell over the door jingled, and Annie Anderson poked her head in. “I’m sorry, am I interrupting? I didn’t know if the shop was open, but I wanted to stop in and see Devon.”
“You’re fine, Miss Anderson,” Wade told her. “I’m sorry for your family’s loss.”
Annie gave him a sad smile. “Thank you, Deputy Hunter. And thank you for bringing those kids back. It would have been the most important thing to Leah.”
Wade led the mayor to the door. Annie’s gaze followed them as they left, the mayor obviously in shock, and she turned to Devon when the door closed behind them. Crossing the room, she sat in the chair the mayor had vacated. “Will he be all right?”
“I think so. It’s just been a terrible week for everyone. I’m sorry about your . . . niece?” Try as he might, he still couldn’t work out how the huge Anderson clan interconnected sometimes.
She chuckled and nodded. “Little Frank is my nephew, so yes. I suppose technically you’re related to him too, since your grandmother married his brother—”
Devon threw up his hands in self-defense. “Please, no. I don’t think I can handle family-tree time. I just kind of put everyone with the name Anderson in one circle on the Venn diagram, and everyone else in town in a slightly bigger circle. Maybe we’re all Andersons somewhere along the line, even Max Smith.”
Annie seemed to think that was uproariously funny, and it took her a while to stop laughing. Devon supposed it was a little funny.
“Did you come in for yarn?” he finally asked. “Or just my amazing company?”
“I figured it out,” she announced, standing up. She walked over to where she had dropped her bag on the counter and pulled out a pair of socks. They were a delicate pale pink, and she brought them over for him to inspect.
They had what was supposed to be a sleek cable pattern running down one side, but it was as malformed as Devon’s cables.
“I made them when I was seventeen.” She sat back down and leaned in to look at them with him. “It was the fifties, I was still in school, and my family was talking about me finding a husband and settling down.”
Devon had no idea what he might have in common with a seventeen-year-old Annie. “No one is making me marry Wade.”
For a second, he thought she was going to laugh again, but she shook her head. “It’s not the talk of marriage, dear. It’s just stress. People have expectations of you, and it’s not sitting well, so your tension is a mess.”
“So I’m not the world’s worst knitter?”
“No, you’re not.”
“Wade’s moving in.”
The smile she gave him was blinding. “Well now, that sounds like an excellent idea. I’m sure that will help with some of your stress.”
“I thought maybe we’d get a cat,” he added, trying the idea out.
She nodded thoughtfully at that. “Another good plan. I’ve always found them comforting. Like you.” Then she stood and picked up her purse. “I’ve got to get down to the post office, but I wanted to stop by and give you those.”
“The post office? You’re not buying yarn online, are you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You can get anything I want. But I saw Vera Owens in the hospital on the night you got back, and she asked me to come down and refresh her on how to knit sometime.” She turned and looked around the store. “I wonder what color she would like.”
Devon picked one of their brightest skeins and sent Annie off with it, on the house, as a gift for the town’s hero. He didn’t stop smiling all day.
Vera had been right, of course. He couldn’t—shouldn’t even want to—fix her. She wasn’t broken. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to help a person he’d come to think of as a friend. If she was happy, that was what mattered.
Just after five, when the store had been empty except for him for more than an hour, he flipped the sign to “closed,” and sat back down in one of the chairs. He would let Wade help him upstairs when he got home, but in the meantime, he had something he needed to do. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his list o
f contacts. He hesitated for a long time before hitting the call button, and he was shocked that it didn’t go straight to voicemail.
“Hello?” the light, airy voice on the other end of the line answered.
“Hey, Mom. It’s been a while, and I just wanted to talk to you.”
9
There Is a Season
“You’re gonna glare at me if I ask why I’m invited again, right?” Cassidy asked the rest of the group as they walked through the woods. “I don’t think I’ve ever been out here before. And the trees want to see me?”
“Oak,” Jesse corrected. “Just one tree. And we don’t know why they want all of us, but they were very clear about it. You, Devon, Fletcher, Isla, and me.”
Cassidy looked at the rest of the group, then down at herself, and shrugged. “Okay. I mean, I get the rest of you. You’re all somebody. Important to the town and stuff. I’m just the bartender.”
Isla shoulder bumped her. “You’re as much ‘somebody’ as anyone else. Plus, you’re better looking than the rest of this lot.”
Cassidy preened.
“They’re really laid back,” Fletcher told Cassidy. “They don’t think of things the way we do, all social status and that kind of thing. I mean, if they did, it’d just be Jesse and Devon, right?”
Something about the group stuck in Devon’s mind, though. They were some of his closest friends in Rowan Harbor, and while he was close to more and more people as time passed, these four were the ones he went to for help. He didn’t know Cassidy as well as the others, but she’d been the one there for Jesse when he and Isla had been gone, and she and Isla had become close since Isla had returned to Rowan Harbor.
He decided that he needed to get to know Cassidy better. This meeting was important, however much Jesse and Fletcher were determined to say that it was just Oak being Oak, and that meant something about Cassidy.
Oak did everything for a reason, and this was no different.
The waterfall came into view and looked even more treacherous than usual, the river swollen beyond its usual banks. It had only been a week since the blizzard, but the majority of the snow had already melted. People were saying it was Oregon’s worst winter since ninety-three. Most of them weren’t aware of the one tiny part of the state where it had been the worst in much, much longer.
“I am pleased to see you all,” Oak said aloud from the small clearing near the riverbank that they favored. “Thank you for coming.”
Cassidy stopped stock-still and stared. “Fuck me. It’s a real live talking tree.”
“I am Oak,” they told her. “And I am pleased to meet you, Cassidy Simon. I know much of you, but it is better to meet face to face.”
She nodded.
“How was the storm?” Devon asked. “No one seems to have fallen.”
Oak looked around the brightly moonlit forest and then back to Devon. “The forest is well. I did tell you that the snow was not your enemy.”
“You did,” Devon agreed. They shared a long look, and Devon inclined his head, acknowledging that he remembered what else Oak had said. He wasn’t sure he would ever see rain the same way.
“So why are we here?” Jesse asked, as artless and straightforward as always. “I mean, I’m always cool hanging with my besties, but it’s still cold and mushy out here. No offense, Oak, but it’s not my thing.”
Oak smiled at him as though he were a precocious child, then looked back at Devon. “Would you explain?”
Everyone turned to look at Devon.
“Dude, you already knew why we were coming out here?” Jesse asked.
Devon continued looking at Oak for a minute, trying to figure out what they meant. A large, broken branch slid over the fall behind them, and he was reminded of their first meetings, in his dreams. “They’re the people you meant. When we first spoke. They’re the ones you meant when you said that I was the first to decide, and other people’s decisions would be based on mine.”
“The decisions of all in our harbor are now related to those first you made here, but yes. These are those to whom I referred.”
Cassidy gave a low whistle. “Whoa, fancy talk. What does this mean in regular English?”
Oak smiled at her, apparently amused. “It means that your choices are important to our harbor. The future of our home is in your hands.”
The whole group went silent. Jesse and Isla seemed confused, but Fletcher and Cassidy were downright terrified, from the expressions on their faces.
Devon could understand their fear. Who wanted that kind of responsibility? He turned back to Oak. “That’s not why you asked us here. There’s no reason to call us down here just to scare everybody.”
Oak cocked their head to one side. “Scare?”
“It’s a lot to take in, Oak, telling people they’re responsible for important things.” Devon wasn’t sure he expected Oak to understand, but he figured he ought to explain.
“Would they be happier in ignorance?”
“I think everybody might be happier if I wasn’t responsible for their town,” Cassidy suggested, and bit her lip. Fletcher nodded emphatically.
Oak walked over to look at Cassidy. They were of a similar height, but Devon didn’t know if there had ever been two more dissimilar people. “I do not believe so. I would not be happier.”
“How do you know?” Isla asked.
“I cannot tell you.” Oak looked downright mournful about that. The emotion was wrong for them and grated on Devon’s nerves like nails on a chalkboard.
He stepped forward and put a hand on their shoulder. “What can you tell us, Oak? I assumed you wanted to tell us something more detailed than that the town needs us.”
Oak nodded solemnly. “I am not aware of everything, and much of what I know makes little sense. Perhaps if I were human . . . but I am not.” They turned and looked at each member of the group. “There is an object of power. You require it.”
“What, like the book?” Fletcher looked even more wary at that idea than of taking responsibility for the town’s welfare.
“In a way,” Oak agreed. “That was also an object of power. This is a greater object of power. But it cannot be retrieved through normal means.”
“Normal means?” Cassidy asked. “What’s that?”
“It means we can’t just go down to the library and pick it up, I guess.” Jesse looked to Oak for confirmation of his hypothesis, and they nodded to him. “So we need to go on a magical artifact hunt? Is it something here in Rowan Harbor? Is it bigger than a breadbox?”
“What’s a breadbox?” Fletcher asked, confused.
Oak lifted their arms to get everyone’s attention back on them. “You will not find it. It is not to be looked for or found. It is to be earned.” The group went silent again, so Oak continued. “To earn it, you must be worthy. All of you.”
“We’re so screwed,” Cassidy muttered.
Oak looked confused, cocking their head and leaning toward her. “I do not understand.”
Jesse leaned toward Cassidy and whispered. “Oak and slang, Cass, not a good fit.”
“Thank you, but I am not confused by this language. If I understand, Cassidy Simon believes herself unworthy. This is not true. She, like all of you, has passed the first test.”
Everyone stared at Oak, and then each other. Devon asked what he was sure everyone was thinking. “When was there a test?”
“The test of past. Only this winter, you have all faced your pasts and overcome them.” They looked at each member of the group in turn. “You have stopped running away and decided that it is time to live in the present.”
Devon didn’t know how Oak could know the details of their private lives, but they must. He knew about the struggles of most members of their small group, and the words rang true.
He and Isla had stopped running away in a literal sense, come home, and accepted help to fight their demons. Jesse had been dealing with an abusive relationship, and Devon had his suspicions about Cassidy on that subjec
t. Fletcher’s past had been a special kind of awful, but he had faced it like a champion when it had been thrown at him.
“So we’re in a Charles Dickens book,” Isla said. She didn’t seem bothered as much as amused. “Should we be expecting ghosts? Present and future going to pay us a visit in our beds tonight?”
“Dude,” Jesse said, frowning at her, “you know Oak doesn’t get it when you say things like that.” He turned to Oak. “We didn’t know it was a test, Oak. What if we failed?”
“You did not. I do not believe you will fail. You are all what you are, and you are all what we need.” Oak looked at Devon meaningfully.
It only took a moment for Devon to understand. “Present. I guess I passed another test last week.”
“Killing a troll?” Cassidy asked, horrified. “I can’t do that!”
“Not the troll. Other stuff. Personal stuff.”
Jesse side-eyed him. “You mean like ‘my brother is packing his boxes at home’ stuff?”
Devon blushed and looked at the ground.
Oak reached out and took Cassidy’s hand. “The tests are not about defeating an external enemy. If they were, anyone could be deemed worthy. The tests are about becoming worthy. You must find strength in yourself. If you have it, you will pass.”
Cassidy drew herself up. “Well hell, I never ran away from a challenge like that in my life. Maybe I don’t wanna deal with things, but if Rowan Harbor needs me to step up, I can do it.”
Oak smiled and looked at Devon again.
Jesse looked from one of them to the other and frowned. “It can’t be that easy.”
“For you, it is not,” Oak agreed. “Neither was it easy for Devon. Everyone deals with the tests in their own way.”
“Wait,” Cassidy said. “What—”
Isla leaned in and whispered. “I think you just passed a test. Present. Stepping up.”
Cass looked momentarily confused but shrugged it off. “Hell, if I’d known it was gonna be that easy, I’d have offered to help ages ago.”
“That is often the way of such tests. They only seem difficult before you pass them.”
