Chapter 12 Sylvan Fowls
Sylvan Fowls
Sascia is thirteen and none too pleased about it.
She’s overplucked her eyebrows, broken out all over her forehead, and is currently being strangulated by her new sports bra—that seventh melomakarono really did her in.
Regardless, she licks off the last remnants of syrup from her fingers with a heaving sigh.
Next to her, Ksenya is opening her Christmas present to a chorus of oohs and ahhs from the rest of their family.
It’s a hot-pink pair of rollerblades, bedazzled with dozens of rhinestones spelling out her name.
Sascia and Danny exchange a glance. They both recognize the chip in the third wheel of the left rollerblade—it happened when Danny challenged Sascia to jump over a bench two years ago.
She got a sprained ankle and a crack on her rollerblade as a reward, as well as a month’s supply of favors from Danny.
Now, the shoes have been spray-painted and bejeweled, and passed off as brand new to Ksenya.
Danny’s gift was his dad’s old iPhone, and Sascia’s the latest book in her favorite teen detective series (six months after release and used, but who cares? The words are still there). Their baby cousin Martha got handknit mittens. And the adults got nothing.
The market collapsed after the Darkbeasts broke out of Shanghai, New York, and the Baltic Sea.
Sascia learned about it in school: the Great Recession of the 1930s, the financial crisis of 2008, and now, the Dark Panic.
She can’t remember exactly how Ms. Deluca defined the term, but she knows what it means.
It means that Aunt Sophia and baby Martha had to move back home with Sascia’s grandpa.
It means Athena’s Yard had to let staff go and Mama and Baba have to work double shifts seven days a week.
It means Danny had to quit swimming and Sascia has to be really careful about turning the AC on in the summer.
It means that adults get no presents at Christmas and kids get hand-me-downs.
Sascia takes Ksenya’s hand and leads her outside.
It’s not snowing, but the cold is crisp and flat in the air.
The woods perch around Grandpa’s house like a flock of solemn, sylvan fowls.
Sascia loves pines; she loves their resinous aroma and their needled foliage, the sound of pine cones crunching beneath her feet.
It’s the same woods where she almost drowned four winters ago. She drags her gaze away.
In her new (old) rollerblades, Ksenya holds tight on to Sascia and Danny for balance.
The three of them run up and down the driveway, where there’s no ice.
When their noses begin sniffling, Danny and Ksenya retreat inside for warmth, but Sascia stays behind to look for Ksenya’s shoes, which were carelessly discarded in favor of the rollerblades.
She finds the right one by the thorny carcass of Yaya Athena’s rosebushes.
Her eyes scan the dropping darkness for the other shoe; they trail past the bushes and the frozen ground, all the way to the woods.
There’s a figure standing there, among the pines.
Her heartbeat skids to a stop. Her breath puffs hot steam over her tightly wound scarf.
It always looks the same, this figure. Its face is hidden by the hood of a black cloak that glistens as though made of cut glass. It watches from a distance, and when Sascia approaches, it disappears.
“Sascia?” her father calls from the front porch.
She startles out of her reverie. She drops the shoe; it barely makes a sound as it hits the frozen asphalt of the driveway.
She could say: Look, Baba. Right there. It’s real. It’s watching.
She could say: Let me catch it and bring it to you, so you’ll know that it really exists.
Instead, she lets out a panicked, “Sorry! I was looking for Ksenya’s shoes.”
“The other one’s here,” he says. “Come, it’s getting too cold.”
Sascia picks up the right shoe, then fetches the left one from the bush her father pointed to. When she reaches his side, she can see his jaw is jutting out in a scowl. His gaze is trained on the spot she was just staring at, the spot where the figure in black stood.
Sascia doesn’t bother looking back.
She knows that the figure won’t be there anymore.