6. Forest
Forest
The flash of pain across Blondie’s face twists my gut. My chest constricts, ribs spiking into soft organs. I shift from foot to foot to ease the discomfort.
It’s the look of the lost. The look of someone who has had something irreplaceable ripped from her hands. It’s not the stall, though, or the contents.
“Um.” Blondie glances around again. “I need to get my keys. Otherwise we'll be breaking and entering our own house. And you should shower. Why don’t you meet us at our place in an hour? The address is—”
“Helene!” Concern sends Audra’s tone high. “Look.”
The troll has begun its decay, muscles hardening into stone. With its death, the last shards of vital life force evaporate, returning it to the earth. Pieces of bone crumble until nothing remains but a pile of rubble.
“There.” A grin spreads. “Your problems have taken care of themselves. Now, where are we heading?”
Helene stares at me, long, hard. “You sure you don’t want to shower?”
“Having the blood of your enemy on you is an honor. I’m alive. It is not.”
“Okay, fine. We’ll all stink up the house. Well, follow me.” Audra hurries off and cuts a path through the mess, her wheels treading over soft earth.
“Unbelievable.” Blondie shakes her head and takes off, stopping to glance over her shoulder. “I guess she’s right. Are you coming?”
Drying blood cakes in my scruff and I scrub a hand across my chin. “Yes, I am.”
“I don’t even know your name.” Helene scratches her head with a grimace. “I’m inviting a stranger into my house. A stranger with intimate knowledge of how to actually use an ax. You’re built like a lumberjack. Do you work in forestry or something?”
The word clangs, a tolling bell. “That’s my name. Forest. Now you know it, as well.”
“Forest.” The tense lines of her back soften. “I’m Helene Blake. And that’s my sister Audra. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
She turns, walking backward with her hand thrust toward me. Without looking where she is going, she is still competent, still graceful.
I take her hand and lift her knuckles to brush my lips against them. “Strangers no more.”
The blush hides none of her relentless hopefulness. It permeates her, moves her limbs, her stride confident despite the hitch from an injury to her ankle.
I reach for her to tug her closer and halt abruptly when Helene drags her hand free, catches up to her sister's wheeled chair and grips the handles.
“Pull me up. I can’t make it on my own,” she groans.
Audra grins, leaning into the wind. “Then let’s see what kind of horsepower we’re working with.”
“Horses? We have none around.”
Only toppled tents and a stiff breeze scattering the remains of battle.
“No car, either,” Helene says. “I’m sorry.”
Why is she apologizing?
“But it’s a brief walk to the house from here, I promise. Well, not short.”
I catch up to the sisters in time to watch the fascinating way Helene bites her lower lip. Her teeth pinch flesh until it pales and when she releases it, the pink returns.
My gut clenches, a flash of heat spiking between my legs. Desire widens my grin.
“I don’t mind walking,” I reply, tone gentling. “Although if you’d like help...”
Oh, to get my hands on her.
I trail off, and Audra chuckles, hiding it by ducking her head. “I think he’s offering to carry you. Hel.”
Hel? No. This woman is not Hel.
Helene is warmth and light. She is sunshine without shadows, like the smell of rain on wildflowers. The girl who brings you soup when you’re sick, even if she’s sick too.
I know it to my bones.
Night deepens on our march up the undulating hill. Vehicles clog the street above, the mundane and permeating stench of humans. Gasoline and sweat. Stale grease and refuse left too long to putrefy.
I glare at the mob of automobiles all tailgating to escape the field. Only Helene had stayed.
The cobblestones slicken with downed leaves and a hint of rainy mist rolling in from the mountains beyond. Yet the sisters maneuver along the curving road in a well-worn path, Helene’s slender fingers flexing on the chair handles.
Audra’s wheelchair chugs ahead, and the rain in the air is a soft patter, a whispered promise.
A few blocks brings the turreted roof of their home into view and Helene sighs with relief. “This is us,” she calls back to me. “I know it’s not much but the apartment is cheap, and I can walk to work.”
The house looms with a noble tilt, all faded grandeur. At one time, it was probably handsome—columns cracked, curling iron rails mottled through by rust, arching stained glass windows and towering gables.
Beneath the decay, there’s pride. It’s the kind of place with a name that demands respect. Up close, the rot and rain ruin the bones of this once-beautiful thing left to sag under the weight of time.
Something in me stirs like recognition and I take in the house with the eagerness of a man who wants to understand the facets of life.
The details are what’s important. I memorize them all.
It’s smaller than some of the buildings in town but still larger than any other house on the block. This stretch of the street boasts genteel decay while the opposite side has caved to the march of progress.
One-story modern houses. Interspersed storefronts.
I prefer ones like this. Right?
At least on the outside, they show their years well. The place needs manicuring. Even the evergreen bushes near the entryway are overgrown and thick, warped in places where order used to reign.
“Well, come on.”
Helene is already up the stairs, navigating the chair with stubborn strength greater than her size. The wheels scrape. Audra laughs through the winces ripped free with every bump. Does laughter make it easier somehow?
I don’t know them, yet the sight digs, protective, unfamiliar, wrong.
“You don’t want to get caught outside when the rain comes; you’ll miss out on dinner. It won’t be much, but I promise it will be better than being waterlogged,” Helene calls back.
I hover a step behind, hands twitching to help, though I can’t remember the last time I helped anyone. Not beyond today.
Helene catches her breath on the landing, the chair too heavy, the steps too narrow, and fumbles around for the keys.
“Here.” Audra tosses the ring to Helene. “You would have lost them.”
“Thanks. This stupid outfit has pockets but I—” Helene starts.
“You were doing gymnastics with a table leg. Yeah.”
“Great job, kid. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Helene’s voice is thin, determined, too alive for the air of this dead place. “Although we’re going to talk about your psychotic reaction to what happened. Mark these words on your calendar.”
I should help them. But I don’t offer, and she doesn’t ask, and I get the sense she wouldn’t want it.
Pride burns in her, glaring and bright enough to mask exhaustion.
The house sighs when she pushes the door open. An annoying familiarity about the two of them together, about the sister herself, clangs through me. What is it?
Why—
“Forest?”
Audra calls my name and I take the steps two at a time. “Yes, I’m coming.”
Inside, the foyer closes around us.
Wallpaper the color of bruises peels in long curls, the chandelier above clinging to its crystals like a queen refusing to admit she’s lost her crown. The place hums with old secrets in a voice between a whisper and warning.
Helene fumbles to lock the wheels on the chair. “Damn landlord. I know she’s a sweetheart but seriously, the draft? How many times?”
“There’s no way to plug the drafts,” Audra supplies.
I stop in the doorway, letting the house take my measure. It doesn’t like me here. I can feel it. At least they do.
Helene glances back at me once in a sharp, assessing manner, then holds out her arms for her sister. “We’re on the second floor. It’s small, tucked up the flight of stairs, but it’s clean.”
“I curse it every morning.” Audra is the cheerier of the two, stifling a groan when Helene helps her out of the chair. “I have a hard time walking. I do it, but my legs aren’t what they used to be.”
She grips the newel post while Helene angles the chair into a closet.
“Mrs. Anderson’s carved up the old place into boxes of apartments. I hate these steps and I hate watching Audra fight them but the rent’s cheap. And Anderson doesn’t ask questions. So come on up.”
The sisters mount the staircase with practiced difficulty. Helene fumbles for the keys a second time to unlock the door to their apartment, and the hinges moan.
I say nothing about the stains on the wood or the whisper of pipes in the background. The rooms here smell like old cedar and dust and yes, the wind cuts through the cracks in the exterior, a slow and reluctant breath.
A stack of books greet us from their entryway.
Here, the decay stops at the threshold, masked by the ripeness of Macintosh apples and cinnamon.
“I’ve got it from here, you go start dinner. Or shower.” Audra breaks away and lands heavily against the door to the left. A bedroom?
She smiles at me and my own features twist and lift with awkward slowness.
“Sounds good. I’m gonna scrub and change first, but Forrest, you can go inside and get comfortable. The sofa’s old and functional. I’ll be along in a minute to get you something to drink.”
“Sounds good,” I repeat.
The walls close in on me, the ceiling sinking by the second. I’ll be buried in this place. A flash of light from the panes ahead draws me forward one heavy step at the time.
The lodging is closed off, cramped, but the view—
“You should have said something,” I mutter.
Helene pauses at the same door Audra disappeared behind. “About?”
“This. It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.” She hesitates, then sighs. “Yeah, it really is something special.”
A sliver of moonlight skates the three mullioned windows, taller than they are wide. The second floor apartment affords a view of the odd angle of the street. To the left is the darkened front of Chapelwait Antiques.
Below, the arched roof of a small coffee roaster attaches to a patch of green resting for the season. And beyond—