Chapter 48 #2
Calder looked down at the opening. Then at me. Then back at the opening again. “You appear concerned.”
“I’m trying to decide if this is going to look graceful or catastrophic.”
“It will likely not be graceful.”
“Appreciate the honesty.”
He lowered himself carefully into the passenger seat with the same controlled precision he used everywhere else, except this time there was considerably more flannel involved and significantly less space.
His knees hit the dashboard. “This vehicle is extremely small.”
“It is literally an SUV.”
“It remains extremely small.”
I leaned against the open door, smiling helplessly while Calder attempted to rearrange several feet of limbs inside a space that wasn’t designed for him.
Eventually he managed to angle himself enough to fit.
Barely.
“You look folded.”
“I feel folded.”
I bit down on another smile.
Calder watched me with complete patience through all of it, like my amusement itself was worth enduring the discomfort, which did little to help my feelings for him.
Then his gaze shifted toward the roof. “There is glass above us.”
“Sunroof.”
“You intentionally placed windows in the ceiling.”
“When you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.”
“It is ridiculous.”
“Okay, woodland grandpa, let’s get your seatbelt on.”
His attention returned to me immediately. “My what.”
I reached across him carefully, trying very hard not to think about how close that put us—and I failed immediately.
Even sitting cramped awkwardly inside the SUV, he still felt overwhelmingly large beside me, warm and solid. The scent of pine and cold air still clung faintly to him beneath detergent and borrowed fabric.
I pulled the seatbelt across his chest.
Calder watched the movement closely. “It restrains you.”
“It keeps you from flying through the windshield.”
He considered that. “That seems poorly designed.”
“I didn’t invent cars, babe.”
Again, that tiny pause. “You continue using that word incorrectly.”
I snorted softly.
“No, I’m using it exactly right.”
Before he could argue further, I clicked the seatbelt into place.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “I dislike the sound it makes.”
“You sound ninety years old.”
“I am significantly older than ninety.”
“You know what? I’ll let you have that one.”
I shut the passenger door before he could continue dismantling modern engineering on a philosophical level and rounded toward the driver’s side still grinning to myself.
I slid into the driver seat and pushed the key into the ignition. The engine rumbled softly beneath us. Calder’s attention moved immediately toward the dashboard as the SUV came to life around him. A second later, the air vents kicked on.
He stared at the dashboard, the air ruffling his hair. “Why is the vehicle breathing on me?”
I glanced sideways at him, still trying to adjust to the sight of Calder sitting in the passenger seat of my SUV wearing my clothes like this was somehow normal. “That’s the air conditioning.”
“It seems aggressive.”
“You’re going to have a lot of opinions about modern technology, huh?”
“Most of it appears unnecessarily complicated.”
A few minutes later, we were on the road. The forest stretched endlessly. Calder stayed quiet at first, watching everything carefully as the road stretched ahead of us.
I could see him taking it all in—the windshield perspective, the speed without exertion, the low vibration beneath the seats, the strange intimacy of moving quickly while enclosed inside steel and glass.
His attention moved briefly toward the side mirror. “It changes your perspective without changing your position.”
“That is either the smartest or most cryptid way anyone’s ever described mirrors.”
“It is useful.”
“Humans love useful things.”
“You also invented ceiling windows.”
“Okay, wow. You’re never letting the sunroof go.”
The corner of his mouth twitched again.
Definitely progress.
I reached for the radio then, letting music fill the SUV softly as the road stretched ahead of us.
“Ends of the Earth” by Lord Huron drifted through the speakers warm and low, the kind of song that always sounded better driving through trees.
Calder listened carefully. “The structure is simpler than older music,” he said after a moment.
I glanced sideways at him. “You have opinions about folk music?”
“I have heard folk music.”
Right.
Again.
Ancient.
“The songs humans sang centuries ago carried differently,” he continued. “More voices together, less separation between performer and listener.”
Something about hearing him say that made my chest ache. “You miss it?” I asked.
Calder thought about that longer than I expected. “I think humans used to sing with each other more often.”
Well, that was unexpectedly devastating.
I turned the volume up slightly instead of answering right away.
A few songs later, when “Home” by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros came on, I caught Calder watching me again. “What?”
“You know all the words.”
“Yeah?”
“You appear emotionally committed to them.”
I laughed softly. “That’s because this is a road trip song.”
“That changes the emotional significance?”
“Obviously.”
Calder considered that seriously for a moment. “Humans assign categories to very specific experiences.”
“We really do.”
“And these categories come with music.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
He still looked slightly suspicious of the entire concept.
Then the chorus started again and I pointed toward him. “Okay. Your turn.”
“I do not know this song.”
“You know at least six words by now. I believe in you.”
He stared at me for a full second. Then, with complete seriousness and absolutely no embarrassment whatsoever, he joined me on the next chorus half a beat late.
The deep roughness of his voice wrapped strangely well around the song.
It distracted.
By the second chorus, Calder had the rhythm almost perfectly. Not the words, those he was still approaching with the careful concentration of someone trying to assemble meaning from sound in real time.
But the rhythm?
That he caught onto quickly.
I glanced over at him between stretches of road, still fascinated by the sight of him sitting in the passenger seat of my SUV while quietly trying to learn “Home” like this was somehow a normal thing either of us were doing.
“You are smiling at me again,” he observed.
“You’re singing indie folk music in a borrowed flannel.”
“That explanation clarified nothing.”
“It clarified everything, actually.”
The trees thinned briefly as the road curved west, opening the view enough for the last traces of sunset to spill across the fields beyond.
“These roads used to flood in spring,” he said.
I blinked. “You remember that?”
“Yes.”
“Like… personally?”
His eyes flicked toward me briefly. “My Heart.”
Right.
Fair point.
Still, hearing it said so casually kept catching me off guard because it wasn’t history to him.
It was memory.
“The roads were narrower then,” he continued. “Most were dirt. Wagons carved the first paths long before vehicles arrived.”
His attention lingered briefly on the trees beyond the road. “Different nations moved through this territory long before the roads existed.”
The way he spoke about them never sounded like a history lecture–it was pure experience.
“You knew them well,” I said quietly, not wanting to interrupt the intimacy of his memories.
“Some better than others,” Calder answered.
His voice changed slightly after that. Softer. More inward.
“The Ho-Chunk family I told you about stayed near this territory for many years.”
Right.
Her—the woman with the stone.
The woman who had seen him without fear.
“You learned their language too?”
“Enough to understand them,” he said. “Enough to listen.”
That sounded more like him.
Calder had spent centuries watching humanity from the edges of its world rather than inside it.
Listening.
Remembering.