He hesitated. They were safe behind the fence. But once they were out in the woods . . . It was unlikely that they would run into anyone before they reached the main park, and he liked to think if they heard or saw anyone approach, they would have time to hide her or turn back, but it was still an uncomfortable thing to do. He took off his baseball hat and wiped his forehead.
“Okay.” He opened the latch.
Beyond the fence were miles of parkland. It had been an idyllic place to wander as a kid. Ben had spent a good deal of his life in these woods, playing alone much of the time except when Mateo came over to hang out. He’d been a quiet only child, back when Andre and Amy lived with their mom on the East Coast, and he only saw them once or twice a year.
Ben closed the gate and turned around to face trees he knew well. Shae did not wait for him but plunged down the path, Hammer trotting along beside her. Ben looked up at a tiny pin of an airplane trailing through the cobalt sky. For a moment, the world was not filtered through his jaded twenty-four-year-old perspective, but something more expansive. Then he half skidded down as the path dropped and came back to himself. She was getting far ahead. He longed for a cigarette though he’d been trying to quit. There’d been few in a pack at the back of his dresser, but he’d consumed them all the day before in the few anxious hours before Andre came home. He wondered if there were more floating around somewhere in the house. He patted himself down out of habit and picked up the pace.
The trail soon grew narrower; clusters of sequoia rose higher and became denser. Shae blazed through, and Ben saw there really was too long a pause between her steps and too much space covered.
She stopped abruptly, and Ben caught up with her. “I used to hang out here all the time as a kid. There is a stream a bit further.” It was hard to tell if she was listening or not. She dropped her head back, closed her eyes, and stuck out a pink tongue that was too long and wagged it in the air. Hammer, who was a few feet ahead, trotted back to them, the baseball still in his mouth. Shae opened her eyes, turned to Ben, and said, “A dangerous one is here.”
He shuddered. He couldn’t look directly in her eyes, so he looked around her. Her hair was seafoam, and her skin was seamless. She was a paradox; she fit in the world, and she didn’t. Hammer nudged up against him. “What? What’s dangerous?”
When she spoke, he nodded at the words, but it was seconds before he comprehended them. The drug of her voice distracted him. “I had hoped it would die in the vortex, but a gray Unseelie followed me here. A bad one—a woodwalker.”
A breeze rolled through, stirring the tops of the trees. Great. Now she’s saying creepy shit. Ben knew he should be asking questions, but right then, he just wasn’t ready to know. He was trying to power through his hangover and not lose his mind. “Oh,” he managed.
“I’m going to look.” Shae tugged off her sleeves and dipped out of the shirt-dress.
Wings sprouted from her back. They were not feathered as a bird’s or powdery-velvet like a butterfly’s, but sinewy. And like a dragonfly’s wings, there were shimmers of glassy color: orange-pink, blue, and green. She pumped them back and forth a couple of times, hopped into the air, and was gone as smoothly and quickly as an errant balloon.
Ben sagged against a tree and whimpered. Hammer trotted around him in a circle and barked once before nuzzling up beside his legs. “Oh god, oh god,” he mumbled. He defended himself to Andre in his mind, What the hell was I supposed to do? Eventually, he straightened up slowly. “Okay.” He nodded and chanted: “Okay. She flew away, but it’s okay. She flew away, but it’s okay.” He rubbed Hammer’s head. “You saw it too, buddy? I’m not totally fucked in the head, right?” She said she was going to look. He reasoned she would likely return once she finished looking. She didn’t say she was going away. She was looking for a “dangerous one,” which she’d determined was nearby, after tasting it in the air.
Ben pulled out his phone and checked into the comfort of the real world. A European politician whose name sounded familiar had been killed in a car accident. There was a wildfire being contained several hours north. The hammering in his heart slowed at seeing the mundane. He needed to make the last payment on his keyboard; there were a few more “likes” on a picture of Hammer he’d posted. It occurred to him they’d not gotten a picture of Shae, and while it would have been a questionable thing to do, he regretted it now. If he and Andre never heard from her again, he would start to question his sanity.
Then he realized they hadn’t yet explained to her to stay out of other people’s way. What if she didn’t know her appearance was alarming? He started sweating. He picked up her dress and paced around in figure eights a few times before finally setting off in the general direction she’d gone.
Up in the trees, I wonder, what is my name? How could they take it from me? Surely it is still somewhere? And what am I supposed to do now? The Woodwalker could be a problem. And how am I supposed to collect the tithe? I won’t just bash their heads in with a rock, getting myself messy. I don’t feel like killing anyone. And I need more time too because they have to get their gifts first, right? It is all becoming confusing. I want to go home. I want nectar and music and mischief. This place doesn’t suit me at all. Though . . . at least there are trees. I sense the serious one is agitated, and I funnel the song to him.
The melody filled Ben’s mind again, and his panic eased. He reached the stream in a few short minutes as his head swayed, and his hands drummed his sides. He threw the ball a couple of times for Hammer and clambered awkwardly on a chunky boulder of a rock that he’d pretended was the fist of a giant when he was a kid. His dog waddled over to him. There were white hairs now all around Hammer’s muzzle and where his eyebrows would be if he’d had eyebrows. Ben scratched him behind the ears. He’d gotten Hammer as a month-old puppy, the summer of his eleventh birthday. Hammer was an old man now, but he usually still wanted to play catch even if he couldn’t last more than a few minutes. He padded over and found a comfortable-looking spot to sit.
Mateo texted. “You went to the show? Awesome! How was it? I’m jealous you saw NS.” Ben didn’t reply. He didn’t think he could partake in an ordinary conversation.
He was just about to call Andre and inform her that he’d lost their guest when Shae landed on a rock a few feet away. Hammer lifted his head, glanced at Ben, and then rested his head back on his paws. She was facing him so he couldn’t see exactly what happened when her wings retracted, but he got the impression of them closing like a jagged, Japanese fan, folding into neat ridges halfway down her back.
When their eyes met, he thought he saw a flicker of understanding. Maybe she gets it, he thought. She knows how weird this all is. He picked up a pebble and plunked it into the water. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“I caught its trail for a while, but . . . it hides.” She looked into the water as she spoke.“I didn’t know if you were coming back.” He tried to ignore the fact that she was naked again. Part of him wanted to grab her. He had the hopeful, slightly shameful feeling of a child trying to catch a butterfly or a little frog who kept hopping away. “Did you see anyone? Any people?”