Epilogue
He sat at his desk reading one of his old books while I paced the room.
It had been a few days since our manic flight home, with quick stops to reassure Hiroshi and grab our stuff from the hotel room in Cancun (mostly to avoid leaving anything potentially incriminating behind) and ship it all back to Tennessee.
The flight from there had been long but gave me plenty of time to learn how to migrate in goose form, which, although helpful when needing to get far away without detection, didn’t leave much capacity for carrying anything useful.
It also gave me time to think through the implications of being on the shit list of the world’s most powerful beings.
“Settle down, Corvus. You’ve given our enemies a lot to be afraid of. They won’t be coming by here anytime soon.”
“You don’t know that. They could be making armies of demigods to take us down as we speak.”
“I doubt that.” He smirked at me. “It’s illegal.”
“I’d feel better if we had a plan. Do you have someplace else we can go?”
“Someplace like this? Isolated, but close enough to get us everything we need? How do you like your new refrigerator, by the way? You never said.”
“Couldn’t we buy some land up north, someplace isolated?”
“Sure, but it’s so cold up there.” He turned back to his book, making me want to scream.
I raked my fingers through my hair. He turned the page, read for a moment, and then closed the book. Sitting back in his chair, he looked me up and down. “I like you wearing nothing but my shirts. It’s a good look on you. I like it almost as much as your freckles.”
I rolled my eyes, but since I had his attention, I came closer to him. “Tell me you have a plan.”
“Of course, I have a plan.” His smile was almost more maddening than his words. “Would you like to hear it?”
“Gggrrrgh.” My frustration came out like a strangled scream.
He pulled me to him and situated me on his lap, calming only the fringes of my fear.
“I’ve got a perimeter set a hundred miles in every direction.
You know the gong that sounds when someone comes up the driveway?
Well, it’s like that, only louder, impossible to ignore.
It would wake you from a drugged sleep.”
“So, then what? We know when they’re coming and turn into birds? We watch them as they look for us, and lay traps around the property? While they unleash mass bird exterminations?”
“Sure. It helps to have a year-round crow population we can meld into. We can spy on them and figure out what they are planning to do. And then, if we get bored, we can go to the Stag’s house, be Benji and Freya for a while.
You know, Jeep sex.” He waggled his eyebrows, breaking through my anxiety a little more.
“I just feel like after the show I put on in the cave, they’d be here pounding on the door.” For some reason, this nightmare vision came complete with pitchforks and primitive blow darts.
“Corvus, after the show you put on, none of them wants anything to do with you. You have done the impossible, brought a mythical being to life, and that was after besting Ixtab in her own house. They have been lulled into complacency by their own power. No one has challenged any of them in so long that they didn’t even know how to react to it.
They don’t even practice changing forms anymore.
” He shook his head, like this was the worst of their crimes.
“I bet they’re still dreaming of being burned alive. ” He chuckled, low and satisfied.
“How come you didn’t react? You just let me unveil my crazy plan when it could’ve gone wrong in so many ways.”
“You forget I can hear your thoughts. I knew what you were planning, and since it seemed like a good plan, better than any of the options I’d come up with, I wasn’t about to get in your way. I’m capable of not being stupid.”
“I need to learn how to think more quietly.”
“It came in handy back there, don’t you think? Plus, you needed time to change before they got you with the darts. I could do that much.”
“Tell me again how her powers work. That she could make me believe I was about to be eaten alive by a boa constrictor in the jungle?”
“Ixtab has developed the power of illusions. First, she breaks down your confidence. Once you are vulnerable, she can alter your reality temporarily. As soon as Chaac spoke, it broke the illusion.”
“But did I imagine the thunder and lightning?”
“No, he’s always been able to produce that.” He sounded wistful.
“You’re jealous.”
“It is not an overly useful thing to be able to do. Especially in a cave. Very irresponsible.”
“I could think of a few uses for that particular power.” And for the ability to trick someone into seeing what I wanted them to see, but then again, the degree of manipulation disgusted me.
He smiled and kissed me. “I have a question for you.”
I leaned back and looked him in the eyes. His face radiated satisfaction. “What?”
“You don’t mind being up here with me? No, wait, hear me out. I know you have friends and family you haven’t seen since coming up here. We could invite them to visit. I liked your friend Mindy.”
“Yeah, she’s great, and I miss her. Let’s definitely invite her to come up.
But no, in answer to your question, not only do I not mind being up here, I love it.
We both need a lot of quiet and nature around us, room to think.
I don’t miss the city at all. That was the one good thing about my childhood: being surrounded by nature.
The only thing I’d really like is better windows facing the courtyard.
I mean, the French doors are nice, but it’s so beautiful out there, and we can’t see it from here.
If we’re going to spend our time reading, learning languages, well, it would be nice to have that as our backdrop. ”
“Indeed, it would, Corvus. We will add more windows.”
“Okay, good.”
He looked ready to say something else when a ringing sound came from the walled-off portion of the house. We had been leaning into each other, flirting, but this made me pull back.
“Is that a phone?” I asked, incredulous.
He shrugged, not in any hurry to get me off his lap. I jumped off and looked toward the door at the back of his room, one I had never seen behind.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
With a sigh, he stood. “Fine. Wait here.” He opened and walked through the door fast enough for me to get only a glimpse of a dark room before shutting it behind him.
I paused, waiting to see if I could hear anything, but all I heard was a mockingbird outside in the courtyard.
I sat in his big chair, feeling like a child despite my goddess shape.
His chair had only a single, low bar in the back, leaving the rest open for his wings.
I wasn’t used to my wings enough to wear them casually around the house.
His kilt made so much sense, but it was hardly practical for me.
I’d need to get some halter-type dresses with an open back.
Maybe I’d order some the next time I went to the Stag’s house.
Despite wanting him to catch me in his chair, it wasn’t comfortable for my shape, plus the phone call made me nervous.
Instead, I walked over to the French doors and stared outside.
We hadn’t discussed much about our future beyond the simplistic idea of staying on the mountaintop for the next fifty years.
He seemed to think as long as we stayed put, they wouldn’t bother us again, but he wasn’t sure if that extended to me or not.
I disagreed. Just because he had offered this self-imposed exile, their rejection of it seemed more than clear, especially with Chaac ordering us both to be killed. It made us sitting ducks.
And who made Chaac the man in charge anyway?
Remembering Ixtab’s fury kept me up the last few nights too.
Nights I had spent in my own bed, since he hadn’t bothered to invite me into his.
Everything seemed so uncertain, despite the new refrigerator, which had been delivered while we were gone.
It was small enough that one strong person could have carried it up on their back.
A dorm-sized fridge, although roomy. The only real sign he wanted me to stay here, since I’d been too chicken to ask him for more details about how he saw the next fifty years going.
I sat down in my usual chair, the smaller one with the full back, and stared out the window.
What kind of man asked someone to spend fifty years with him in exile?
The branches and leaves shivered in the soft breeze, everything moving except the trunk of the tree and a large shape sitting on the lowest branch.
Lost in thought, my gaze remained unfocused, and the object didn’t register until I realized it should’ve moved with a particularly stiff gust of wind.
The soft browns, blurring its outline, sharpened into an owl.
The same damn owl that had made my first day as a crow so terrifying, or at least it looked like it.
About two feet tall, it had large feathers where its ears should be.
Round yellow eyes seemed to be watching me.
I had sunk so deep into my thoughts that the sound of the door opening startled me.
Without saying anything, he walked toward me and slumped down in his chair.
“Went that well, did it?”
He smiled at me and shook his head. “We can handle it.”
I waited, eyebrows raised. The owl hooted outside the window.
“Ixtab is coming. She wants to talk.”
Thank you for reading!