Chapter 3 #2
The wulver crosses the grass to me. He sniffs my knee with the middle head, then the left, then decides I am acceptable and turns his back on me entirely and returns to her. He sits down against her legs, positions himself squarely between the female and any danger that might arrive.
Ah.
That is not a beast being companionable. He is a guardian animal placing itself between an unarmed female and the only unfamiliar male in the vicinity.
Hannibal Hellstone has assigned his wulver to the human.
I find I approve. It is a correct decision, made by a male who understood that a soft, flameless human testing the preserve at night requires companionship.
Of course I should demand she leave, immediately. But all I can do is gaze at her perfect, wide hips and that thick waist. Margaret Reyes is mesmerizing.
And then she begins to pepper me with a series of questions about my instruments.
“What does that one do?”
“Thermal. It reads heat differential against the stone.”
“And that’s useful because…?”
“Because a warm body moving along the base of the wall leaves a trace for some minutes afterward. If something passes here at the third hour, I will know at the fourth.”
“What’s your false positive rate?”
“High. In this environment, unacceptably high. The stone holds the day’s heat unevenly. Foliage moves. Small fauna cross the array constantly.”
“So how do you tell the difference?”
“Mass. Gait. Duration. A rock lizard crossing the array reads as a spike. A being walking reads as a sequence. If the sequence is regular, I discard it as fauna. If it is irregular I flag it.”
She crouches down beside the tripod. “And this one?”
“That one is useless.”
She looks up at me. “Then why is it here?”
“Because I am thorough.”
Her lips twitch. Not quite a smile. She goes back to examining the housing and I stand above her in the dark like a fool and look at the follicles at the top of her head.
Hair, they call it. This strange human covering, shining and lifting slightly in the wind off the wall. I have known that humans have it since I was a youngling and I have never once wanted to know what it felt like until this exact moment.
I want to know what it feels like between my claws as I take her from behind.
I take a step back and pretend to check the audio corner.
The wulver attempts to put the left head into my open equipment case. I move the case. He attempts again. I move it again. The third time I simply look at him, and he stops, sits, and thumps his barbed tail against the stone with the expression of a beast who has decided to let me have this one.
Margaret takes my seat. “So what is the actual job description of a cryptozoologist on Tarvos?”
I return to the third thermal sensor, which I intend to set correctly this time.
“The popular understanding of my field is that it concerns the pursuit of creatures which have not been catalogued. That is not what I do. What I do is study why populations report creatures that are not there. Folklore is not evidence, it is cultural memory, transmitted and distorted across generations, and it always comes from somewhere. A creature in a story is very often an actual animal, badly observed, four hundred years ago, by a frightened being at night. My work is to find the animal underneath the story. I go where Hyrrokin are frightened and find out what’s really there.
Sometimes it’s nothing. Sometimes it’s real and nobody had bothered to look.
Either way, I’ve made sure the fear stops being useful to anyone who’d exploit it in a way that might harm other Hyrrokin.
The Skyggjar is simply the biggest one left.
The last major legend on the continent that hasn't been resolved either direction.”
“Hmm…So you spend your career proving things don’t exist?”
“I spend my career proving where the stories came from. It is not the same.”
“Isn’t it? And…Have you ever wanted to be wrong?”
“No,” I answer, not sure if that’s the truth or not. “They call me Smoke-Hunter,” I tell her.
“What?”
“That is what my colleagues often call me because smoke is what is left when there was never anything there. A male who hunts smoke is a male chasing nothing. It was coined at a reception by a Fellow who found himself very funny and now everyone calls me Smoke-Hunter. It’s even been shortened to Smoky Coalstone, or Smoky. ”
“Huh.” She considers it. “That’s the coolest nickname I’ve ever heard.”
I look back down at my screen so she cannot see my face.
“This is why you don’t have any assistants or interns, because of your field of study?”
I shrug. “And also, because I am the only Fellow who is not of nobility.”
Her lips purse.
“I prefer to work alone,” I tell her, which is actually true.
“So what are you specifically out here looking for?” she questions.
“Like I mentioned earlier, I am here to finally put to rest the legend of The Skyggjar.”
“I haven’t heard of that. I don’t know Hyrrokin legends.”
“It translates approximately as the Hidden One. In the northern variants it is the Shadow-Walker. It is the most prominent apex-predator figure in this region’s folklore.
Said to emerge once in a generation, at the dry-season alignment of the twin moons.
Said to be drawn to the first flames of young Hyrrokin, a child who has newly come into firestarting is supposed to call it out of the deep preserve. ”
“Charming bedtime story.”
“It is the bedtime story. Every grandmother on this half of the continent tells some version of it. I have catalogued seven regional variants and there are certainly more. The eastern version has it walking on all fours. The island versions do not have it at all, which is itself instructive.”
“And you don’t think it’s real.”
“I have specialized in Hyrrokin folklore for sixteen years, Ms. Reyes. In that time I have not located one fragment of physical evidence supporting the existence of the Skyggjar. Not a bone. Not a print. Not a single documented predation that could not be attributed to a known species. The literature is enormous and the evidence is nothing.”
“So you came out here, with all your fancy equipment, to disprove a bedtime story?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
I hate that sound. It is not a challenge. If it were a challenge, I would know what to do with it. It is the sound of a female filing something away for later.
It has gotten cold.
I brought a field burner out with me, because I intend to be at this wall until the fourth hour and because I am not an animal. I set it on the flat stone and crack my jaw and flame it alight without pausing.
She squeaks.
Actually squeaks — a small, entirely undignified noise — and puts her hand at her chest.
All three of the wulver’s heads flash flame at once in cheerful solidarity, which does not help.
“Oh, no not you too Skylo.” She is laughing now, batting at the air in front of her. “Nobody asked for backup.”
And I stand there in the dark looking at this female and remember that she has no flame.
Humans are born without fire and live their whole lives without it and die without ever once knowing what it is to warm themselves from the inside.
It is a sad disability. They cannot light their own way, warm their own dwellings or defend themselves with so much as a flash.
They are blunt and cold and they have to be given every fire they will ever have by something outside themselves.
A new thought roars to life. I want to be the male who lights her flames. And puts them out. All of them. Every fire she will ever need, for the whole of her life, lit, banked and tended by me.
I set the thought down.
“You should go inside,” I inform her. “It is cold and you cannot warm yourself.”
She crosses her arms. “Do you talk to everyone abruptly like that or am I special?”
My brow furrows. “You are cold.”
“Not really.” She gestures at the burner. “And what’s that for, then? Ambiance?”
“Traq.”
“You brought a stove into a backyard at midnight to make hot beverages?”
“I intend to be here until the fourth hour.”
“Right. Well, is there enough for two?”
“Yes,” I admit.
She smiles. “Then, there is no need for me to go back. I’ve got Skylo at my side and he’s basically a furnace. And I’ll have plenty of traq. And it’s obvious you need company.”
I exhale, realizing I must tell her my real reason for keeping her at a distance. “I have taken a vow,” I admit. “And this vow makes it difficult for me to spend time with you, alone.”
She blinks. “...Okay. What kind of vow?”
“I have taken a twelve-month vow of celibacy.”
Her eyes widen.