by Logan Jacobs
“Hot chocolate!” Sorcha squealed when she picked up her mug.
“It’s hard to come by, so I save it for guests or special days,” Beth said with a smile.
We all smiled back at her, then took our first sip of the unusual beverage. I’d had chocolate candy a few times, though some of the old timers on the trail told me that it was so diluted it didn’t deserve to be called chocolate. And I’d heard about hot chocolate, as one of those high-priced treats that the rich drank while in their comfortable city homes. Still, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, though Sorcha’s excitement was reassuring.
So after a quick sniff, I took a small sip. The chocolate was somehow both bitter and sweet, yet lacked the acidity of coffee. It warmed me up without burning, and it left me wanting more as soon as I’d swallowed. And best of all, it made me happy. I couldn’t really explain why, but it was like sipping a cupful of good cheer.
“Wow,” Freya declared as she glanced up from her mug. I nearly laughed because she had a thin trail of hot chocolate across her upper lip, but then I licked mine and realized I did as well.
“I haven’t had hot chocolate this good in ages,” Darwin declared as he dabbed at his lips with a napkin.
“I can’t believe you have any,” Sorcha added. “Or that you would share it with us.”
“As I said, any excuse to enjoy some,” Beth laughed.
We sipped the chocolate for a few more minutes, and then Ignatius cleared his throat. He glanced at Beth, then set his mug on the table and ran a nervous hand through his hair.
“May we ask you some questions?” Ignatius inquired politely.
“Of course,” I said.
“We wanted to know about… mutants,” Ignatius replied. “Do you really believe they’re just humans?”
“They are,” Darwin insisted. “Or were.”
Ignatius and Beth exchanged a quick glance, and then it was Beth’s turn.
“But why do they attack people?” Beth asked.
“Now there’s a loaded question,” Darwin sighed.
“Not all do,” Sorcha quickly added. “Some have found ways to live among humans, and even in the mutant wastelands, we’ve seen that they can live just as we do.”
“But for many mutants, it’s a life spent in constant hiding,” Darwin continued. “And when they are outed, everyone who you thought was a friend suddenly hates you. The Magesterium then packs you up and ships you off to some horrible place and leaves you to fend for yourself. Understandably, most mutants end up hating the mages and normal people. So, just as people think it’s okay to kill a mutant, mutants think it’s okay to kill people because it’s just self defense.”
“Our elders have taught us that mutants are not descendants of humans, but demons that were unleashed into the world after the meteorite hit,” Ignatius stated as he stared at the mug that he pushed around the table in front of him. “That is the justification for killing them, even though the original teachings said that all such killing was a sin.”
“But surely mutants have been born here,” Sorcha said in surprise.
“They have,” Beth murmured, “though it is rarely discussed. The elders claim that the demons need the unborn child to enter the world, but it’s impossible for them to conceal their true nature after they are born.”
“So they kill them,” Freya guessed.
“They aren’t the only ones,” I pointed out quietly. “A lot of places do that.”
“Or just turn them over to the Magesterium, which amounts to the same thing,” Sorcha sighed. “I’m afraid that fear and loathing of mutants is a global problem.”
“But they are human,” Darwin added.
“That is what a small group of us feel as well,” Beth whispered. “But it is impossible to speak against the elders.”
“Like Jacob,” I mused. “I’ve noticed that everyone looks to him. That was rather brave of you, Ignatius, to speak up before Jacob could say anything else.”
“I had hoped we could discuss this,” he sighed. “It’s nice to know that there are others who share your beliefs.”
“And Michael?” Sorcha asked. “How do you feel about him?”
The two Amish exchanged another look, then both glanced in the direction of the hill where the angel’s strange house stood.
“He does protect us,” Beth acknowledged. “And he doesn’t ask for much in return.”
“Do you know much about him?” I asked. “Like, where he was born or why he came here?”
“You sound as if you don’t believe he’s an angel,” Ignatius said, though he had a smile as he said it.
It was our turn to exchange glances as the four of us tried to decide how much Beth and Ignatius would really be willing to hear.
“We think he may be a mage,” I replied.
“It would make sense,” Beth sighed. “Aside from the fire, there isn’t anything especially angelic about him.”
“Well, we’re happy to talk about this,” Darwin mused, “though I’m not sure why you want to. Do you want us to help you out or something?”
“You’ve already done that,” Ignatius quickly assured him. “No, this is simply an opportunity that presented itself. We didn’t have a chance to talk to you yesterday, and we thought you would be well away from here by this morning. When you stayed to help, well, it seemed like a chance to find out what you know about… mutants.”
“Some of us feel that we’ve drifted too far from the Book,” Beth added. “Your insights help us understand our own uncertainties.”
I polished off my hot chocolate while I pondered what Beth and Ignatius had told us. When I was done, I glanced out the window and saw that the weather had shifted again. The wind had died down and ice pellets no longer clinked against the window panes. Fat flakes of snow drifted lazily to the ground while icicles slowly grew along the eaves.
“I’ll go move the horses,” I announced as I stood up. “Before the weather changes again.”
“Need company?” Sorcha asked as she and Ignatius started to stand.
“No, stay here,” I replied. “No reason for all of us to get cold again.”
“At least take Barnaby,” Beth offered. “He always enjoys a walk, even in this kind of weather.”
Ignatius whistled, and a moment later I heard the clack of the silver dog’s nails against the hardwood floors. Barnaby appeared and looked around the kitchen. He spotted Freya and his head drooped, but at a signal from Beth, he stepped into the kitchen and went to the Amish’s woman’s side without any further protests.
“Hex is going to take you for a walk,” Beth informed the Weimaraner, who wagged his tail in response. “Behave yourself and don’t pull him all over town.”
“I’ll show you where the leashes are,” Ignatius said as he stood up.
The Amish man and I returned to the mudroom, where we retrieved our boots and coats. Barnaby stood patiently by the door, but as soon as Ignatius opened it, the Weimaraner charged outside and across the yard to a large drift. He flopped into the snow and started to roll around, as happy as any dog I’d ever seen.
When we reached the gate, Ignatius whistled again and Barnaby bounded toward us as the Amish man swung the gate open. While the Weimaraner sniffed the kennel yard, Ignatius sorted through the leashes and collars until he found what he wanted. He called Barnaby, and after a few more sniffs, the dog trotted over. Ignatius fastened the collar around the dog’s neck, then clipped the leash to the collar.
“Don’t let him boss you around,” Ignatius warned. “He’ll try to get you to wander all over town with him.”
“We’ll be back before you know it,” I assured the Amish man as I accepted the leash.
“Looks like Simon is back in the office, so you can go out that way,” Ignatius noted. “When you come back, you can just follow the path on the other side of the house. That will take you to the stables, and then you can just deliver Barnaby to the house. He’d rather stay there than the kennels anyway.”
Ignatius walked us to the office, where Simon sat at the desk with a cup of coffee in one hand and a pencil in the other. A notebook sat open in front of the dog breeder, and he barely looked up from his writing as we walked across the room to the door to the street.
As soon as Ignatius closed the door behind us, Barnaby bolted down the street and nearly pulled my arm from the socket as I tried to rein him in. It took me three blocks to bring the dog to a halt, and I was panting as I stood on the corner and glared at the dog.
“Beth told you to behave,” I growled.
The silver dog studied me, as if he were deciding how much he could really get away with. The Weimaraner started to tug on the leash again, but this time I was ready, and with the leash wrapped firmly in both hands, I kept him by my side until I was ready to move.
I looked around as I tried to figure out the shortest way to the church and saw that we weren’t all that far from the odd hill. I could just make out a pair of steps along the hillside which someone had shoveled clear recently, and spotted two women near the top. It looked like they were carrying covered trays, and I figured Michael had probably decided to have a snack of his own after his earlier display.
Curious, I tugged Barnaby in the direction of the hill, and though the dog stood stock still at first and refused to move with me, he finally decided that this might be interesting after all and started to walk beside me. We stopped at the bottom of the steps and peered up the hill toward the house. Despite the fresh snow, the place managed to look even creepier. Up close, I could see the skeleton of a dead tree in the yard, the boards that had been nailed over some of the windows, and the missing posts in the porch rail. Windows that hadn’t been boarded over had heavy curtains, all dark, that must have blocked out all the sunlight.
I saw the two women reach the porch and knock on the door. A few moments later, the door was opened from the inside, though I couldn’t see who had answered. Both women bowed their heads, then stepped inside. It looked like they had been swallowed whole by a giant mouth, and then the door slammed shut, and all that was left was the gray door and a few stripes of peeling paint.
Despite the obvious disrepair, I had the feeling the house was sturdier than it looked. There were no obvious signs of water damage, and the roof was still intact. The door was solid, the glass heavy, and the beams for the porch still stood straight. It was like someone wanted the place to seem derelict when it really wasn’t. Which begged the question, why would a messenger of the gods want to live in a place that looked like a deathtrap?
Barnaby let out a low-pitched bark that barely carried in the cold air. I glanced down and the silver dog gave me an inquisitive look, as if to ask if I really intended to climb the steps. After a moment’s hesitation, I put my boot on the bottom step, and when fireballs didn’t descend from the roof of the house, I risked climbing to the next step.
“You can’t go up there,” a voice warned me.
I jerked around in surprise, which left me tangled in Barnaby’s leash. I tried to keep my footing as Barnaby dashed around me, but the dog had discovered a new game which involved wrapping me in the leash as many times as he could.
The speaker finally whistled and Barnaby stopped. He wagged his tail, looked toward the speaker, then toward me.
“Barnaby,” I muttered as I tried to free myself from the dog’s trap.
“Only those who have been invited may visit the Angel Michael in his aerie,” the voice uttered.
I finally looked at the speaker and saw that the voice belonged to one of the older men. Not as old as Jacob, but he had white hair, a white beard, and a heavily wrinkled face. He scowled at me as I danced on the step as part of my efforts to disentangle myself from the leash, and I tried to dig up my harmless yokel smile in reply.
“I didn’t know that,” I finally said when I was dog-free once again.
“You cannot visit,” the old man reiterated.
It was clear that he wouldn’t leave until he’d seen me depart the area, so I tugged on Barnaby’s leash and offered one more smile to the Amish man as I stepped back to the street.
“No problem,” I assured the other man. “I was just trying to burn off some of Barnaby’s excess energy before getting the horses. I didn’t want him to get them excited.”
The man glared at me and then at the dog.
“That dog does not know its place,” the man finally declared.
Barnaby barked at the insult, then turned to look at me. It was clear our little adventure had lost some of its luster, so I nodded to the man, then pointed Barnaby in the direction of the church. Barnaby and I walked calmly away, though I could feel the old man’s eyes drilling into my back until we were finally out of sight.
“I hate being told where I can’t go,” I told the Weimaraner.
Barnaby barked in agreement.
Chapter 9
Barnaby and I returned to the house with both horses and all of our gear after only two more dog diversions. Luckily, the horses seemed more annoyed than fearful of the dog, and I was able to hold both horses with one hand while I tried to keep a lock on the silver dog with the other. If I was completely honest, it was the horses that finally got us back to the small stables, since they refused to follow the dog on any of his side adventures.
Once the horses were settled, Barnaby and I ran across the snowy yard and through the snow piled on the deck to the back door. Barnaby waited impatiently for me to open the door and squeezed through before I had it wide enough for myself. I sat down on the bench and peeled off my boots and outerwear before following Barnaby’s wet trail into the kitchen and then into the front room with the piano where I could now hear voices.
“Success?” Sorcha asked me as she looked up at my arrival.
Barnaby had gone straight to the Irishwoman and sat down next to her chair. Sorcha rubbed one hand down the Weimaraner’s back while he watched her with a devoted look.
“Success,” I agreed as I took an empty chair near the blazing fire and looked around the room. I hadn’t realized just how cold I had gotten during our walk, but my toes started to tingle as they came back to life, and I soaked up the heat and the smell of burning hickory like a thirsty man gulping down water.
Darwin and Freya were there as well, but neither Beth nor Simon were present. My companions were clustered in chairs close to the fireplace, though the flames put off enough heat that I was pretty sure the far ends of the room were probably toasty as well. Everyone looked cozy, though I could still sense tension in the air, and I saw that Freya had wrapped herself up in a blanket and pulled it over the back of her head, so that only her face could be seen.
“Where are our host and hostess?” I asked.
“Beth made up the beds, then went back to help Simon at the kennel,” Darwin replied. “Said they’d be back in time to walk to this gala with us.”
“Learn anything interesting while you and Barnaby were exploring?” Sorcha teased as she glanced at the dog.
“No one is allowed to climb the hill to Michael’s house unless they’ve been invited,” I replied. “And despite outward appearances, I don’t think the place is as rundown as it looks.”
“Why would he want it to look rundown?” Freya asked from the depths of the blanket.
“An old trick,” Darwin mused. “Keeps people from looking too closely at the place or digging too deeply into the financials. He could have a horde of gold in there, and no one would believe it.”
“And the Amish won’t ask questions about why their god’s representative would choose to live there,” Sorcha noted. “They wouldn’t dream of challenging the angel’s choice.”
“Well, most of these old religions encouraged people to be humble,” Darwin added, “so an angel living in humble conditions would fit in with that belief. I tell ya, this guy did his homework.”
“Bes
ides, if anyone did ask, he would just tell them that it affords him a great view of the valley so he can keep an eye on it at all times,” I added.
“Wonder what he’s got stashed in there,” Darwin pondered. “It’s not like the Amish have a gold mine somewhere or are digging for diamonds. But I’ll bet whatever it is would tell us something about where he came from.”
“And maybe how he found this place,” I added. “Apparently, he just showed up one day and said he had been sent by god, so he had to know something about the Amish before he stepped out of the woods.”
“Which suggests he’s local,” Darwin agreed.
“I’m still not ruling out the Magesterium,” Sorcha replied. “They’d have access to all that information, and they’d probably have copies of this book that the Amish use so Michael would know what to say.”
“I’ll just be happy when we can leave,” Freya sighed. “The way some of those men were looking at me after the fight gave me the heebie jeebies.”
“At least people like Beth and Ignatius seem more open-minded about mutants,” I noted.
“I don’t think they’re the majority,” Freya remarked. “And I don’t think very many of the Amish would even dream of challenging Jacob or the other elders.”
“But maybe they’ll be able to keep us safe for tonight,” Sorcha stated. “And then we can head for the trail first thing tomorrow.”
“And if it’s still snowing tomorrow?” Darwin pressed. “And the day after that? We could be here for days, or even weeks.”
“I vote we leave in the morning, unless there’s a blizzard,” I said after several minutes of silence. “The snow won’t be as heavy under the trees, and once we reach the end of the forest, we can find a safe place to camp. Heck, Beth, and Ignatius may even know of a place.”
“I vote we leave as well,” Freya insisted. “I’ll dig a path if I need to.”
“We have the horses,” Sorcha added. “We can use them to plow through the snow.”
“It’s unanimous, then,” Darwin announced. “We leave tomorrow.”
