Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Vidar
“He went through the gate. At night. Without an adult?”
Steam pours from Hannibal Hellstone’s nostrils. Beside me, his son’s eyes go wide.
“Yes,” I confirm. “This did happen. On the fourteenth, after full dark, Dagr Hellstone left this domicile alone. He used the gate code and walked the preserve path as far as the first turn. He observed a bipedal figure, taller than a Hyrrokin male, at a distance of some nanco. Gold eye-shine. Then, the figure withdrew.”
I did not soften any part of it. Softening a report is how a report becomes useless.
“His account includes a low-frequency pulsing sound. That detail appears in none of the other five reports.” I set my tablet on the counter. “This is the most useful first-person testimony I have received in this consultation.”
And then the silence, and the steam.
Hannibal turns toward his son. “I gave you that code when you were eleven years old,” he thunders. His voice fills the entire kitchen. “For emergencies. In case of fire. In case something happened to your mother and me and you needed to get out of this house.”
Dagr says nothing.
“You were fourteen years old and alone in that preserve at night.” Hannibal’s barbed tail lashes once behind him and cracks against a cabinet. “And no being in this domicile knew.”
Margaret sits quietly beside the boy and she has not moved from her spot.
“I protect this community,” Hannibal growls. “That is what I do. That is what I have done every diurnal of my adult life. And my own son walked out of my domicile in the dark and I did not know? Where was the wulver?”
All three heads of the enormous animal let out whines of desperation.
Dagr doesn't answer.
“Dagr. Where was Skylo?”
“On Sela and Mitry’s door. I tricked him. He didn’t know I was gone.”
Hannibal closes his eyes.
“Nobody was going to look,” Dagr challenges. He does not cry and he does not apologize. “Everybody said the little kids were making it up. So I looked.”
Avery walks over and puts her hand on Hannibal’s forearm.
“Babe, he’s telling you now,” she says. “He kept it to himself for three weeks and then he told Dr. Coalstone and then he came in here and told you. No harm came to him. You might not agree with his risky behavior but let’s remember that he thought he was protecting the other kids in the community by going out there to get more information. ”
Hannibal breathes out. Smoke goes toward the ceiling.
He crosses the kitchen and puts one enormous claw on the back of his son’s neck and does not say anything for a moment. “You will not do it again.”
“I won’t ever go past the wall alone again.”
Hannibal releases him and turns to me. “And now we will have a community meeting with the Homeowner’s Board and you will update them on everything you’ve learned.”
“Yes,” I agree.
“Not only me.” He is already reaching for his tablet. “All of them. Every being in this community with offspring.”
We arrive together in Hannibal Hellstone’s vehicle and step out onto the sidewalk.
Margaret pauses to stare at the domicile of Bergelmir and Chloe Touchstone.
I have heard about the impressive Heimdall residence.
It is built amongst the drive that circles the central lake of the community, in a prime location.
And it is famously built to resemble a dragon.
Three stories of red and gold, jaws open at the peak of the roof, waves of yellow-orange flame carved down both sides of the structure.
“I’ve been to this community, I don’t know, eight times?” Margaret is walking backward now, looking up. “Nine? And I have never once been inside this house. I’ve driven past it and made a noise every single time.”
“It is formidable.”
“I think it’s amazing.”
We walk in beneath the fanned wings, which are gold-painted and tipped with metal spikes.
“The domicile is on the historical register,” Bergelmir Touchstone confirms as he holds open the door. “I am not permitted to remove the teeth. I have tried.”
Inside, the foyer soars up two floors.
The staircase banisters curve up in the shape of the dragon’s tail, faded green and gold, with a black barbed tip at the base large enough to sit on.
The beams are rough-hewn and dark. The fireplace at the far end of the front living room is tall enough for Bergelmir himself to stand inside, and he is not a small male.
Through the front windows there is nothing but lake.
“Everything in this residence has been faithfully restored by my bound,” Bergelmir says, catching the look of awe on Margaret’s face. “All of it.”
“I can give you a tour after the meeting, if you want,” Chloe Touchstone says to Margaret. “Avery told me you’d been dying to get in here.”
She claps her hands. “I would love that. I would love that so much.” Margaret glances over at me. “Can Dr. Coalstone come along too?”
Warmth again spreads in my chest at the fact that Margaret tries to include me.
I should not have her this near, of course.
In fact, I should be delivering this address to the Homeowners’ Association, alone.
But Margaret is better with children than I am, and she knows the members of the community better than I do.
And she is also a terrific communicator with a voice that carries well.
Not only is she fantastically beautiful and easy to be around, but she is also an asset in this situation.
“Of course he can,” Chloe agrees.
Overhead there is a sound like a small war. “Chloe has all four of Aegir’s offspring plus our own on the second floor,” Bergelmir explains. “A gourd-carving demonstration ended some hours ago and never dispersed. Bestla and the ancient one have the smallest ones in the sitting room.”
“Dagr was sent upstairs with them,” Hannibal confirms with a curt voice.
I let out a polite cough, to clear my voice. I’m now standing in front of the fireplace with the board in front of me. They are mostly all here, with a few exceptions. Aegir and Riley. Bergelmir and Chloe. Hannibal and Avery. Skoll. Idun. A tech billionaire and Team Molten Lava. No pressure.
Margaret takes a seat near the wall. “Good luck,” she whispers.
“The folklore is specific,” I begin. “The Skyggjar is said to emerge once in a generation, at the alignment of the twin moons in the dry season. It is said to be drawn to the first flames of young Hyrrokin.”
Nobody interrupts.
“The Royal Academy sent me out here because of the timing. Reports beginning nine weeks before an alignment are the only reason a Fellow was assigned to this case. In an ordinary season these reports would have gone to a wildlife officer and no further.”
I open my case and set out the four casts.
I explain the stride of one hundred and ninety against a hemisphere maximum of one hundred and ten.
A movement pattern across my equipment line that I cannot attribute.
And now a fourteen-year-old witness who claims to have seen a bipedal animal with a falsifiable acoustic detail.
“And my professional finding is that the creature does not exist,” I conclude. “I have specialized in this folklore for sixteen years and have never located physical evidence to convince me otherwise. But I do have new, anomalous data I cannot yet attribute and that is the entirety of what I have.”
Aegir leans forward. “Those two statements contradict.”
“They do.”
“Then which is it?”
“I have told you what the record claims. I have told you what I believe.” I look around the foyer.
“I believe there is no actual Skyggjar, but there is a legend that causes harm and needs to be ended. But there are also claims, that right now, while the alignment is happening, that there is an actual Skyggjar in your midst. You are entitled to hear both sides of the argument because it is your offspring and not mine.”
Skoll crosses his massive arms. “So that is why you took that ridiculous vow? In order to put an end to this legend?”
And there it is.
“Twelve months of celibacy,” Idun says, with something close to awe.
“He swore it in front of the entire council,” Bergelmir confirms. “Bane told me. It is in the permanent record.”
“Twelve months.” Skoll shakes his head slowly. “I could not do one month.”
Aegir sips his drink. “You could simply be incorrect about the creature and have given up pleasure mating for an entire year for no reason at all, Coalstone.”
They all start smoke-laughing, thinking this is enormously funny.
Hannibal does not join in the laughter; he is looking at Margaret.
Because Margaret Reyes is sitting nearby and the scent of her arousal for me wafts through the air.
Bergelmir does not change his expression at all. “This will be a very long ten months,” he remarks.
Smoke escapes my nostrils. I cannot prevent it.
“My recommendation is this…” I say, getting us back on subject.
“Do not cancel your human holiday, but do not hold it on the alignment. Move it one diurnal in either direction. This way, you will be covered either way. If I am wrong, and the legend is real and there is a Skyggjar, your offspring are safe. And if I am right, again, your offspring are safe.”
“No,” Riley Touchstone says.
“Ms. Touchstone—”
“The entire point is to have Halloween on the alignment, Dr. Coalstone. It happens once in a generation. Everybody on this planet is going to be outside that night anyway, looking up, eating, standing around in the dark with their families. That’s already happening with or without our holiday.
” She spreads her hands. “So I put Halloween on top of it. Costumes, candy, carved gourds, kids going door to door in the dark. On the one night the entire planet is already outdoors.”
“I understand the appeal—”
“Move it one diurnal and it’s a party in a gated community. On the alignment it’s the first public human Halloween on Tarvos and other beings can feel like they are part of the fun.” She shrugs. “You’re asking me to remove the only reason it works.”
“And nothing has happened,” Aegir says. “That is the part I keep returning to. Nobody has been harmed. Six offspring have seen gold eyes looking out of a jungle, that’s it.”
“Seven,” Hannibal says quietly.
“Seven. And it walked up to Dagr, made a sound and then ran away.” Aegir looks at me. “That is not a predator, Coalstone. Whatever else it is.”
“Nor do we know what it is,” Chloe Touchstone adds. “It could be a being in a costume.”
Several heads turn.
“I’m serious. There’s a human holiday in nine diurnals that is entirely about dressing up as frightening things and jumping out at beings in the dark, and this planet has been hearing about it for a month.
” She lifts a shoulder. “It could be somebody having a joke at our expense. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing anybody’s ever done. ”
“What do you think, Margaret?” Avery questions. “Do you think we need to cancel Halloween because it’s during alignment? Do you think the Skyggjar is real?”
Margaret straightens. She looks around the foyer. “I’m not part of Dr. Coalstone’s investigation. I’m not his colleague, I’m not on his record, and nothing I say in this room goes into his findings or onto my show. Ever. I’m a houseguest with an opinion and you should weigh it exactly that much.”
“Noted,” Bergelmir says.
“Okay.” She sits forward. “I do think that the statements from the children are important. I think we aren’t giving them the level of importance they should be allowed because they come from children.
But I think that their combined stories of golden eyes and Dagr’s recent sighting, are very important.
He gave a physical detail that isn’t in any of the other five accounts.
I’m not telling you what’s in that preserve.
But I do believe that something is going on. This isn’t nothing.”
The foyer is very quiet.
And I am —
I am proud of her.
“May I answer that,” I say.
Margaret waves a hand. “Please.”
“Six offspring in a single community can share a bedtime story. Every grandmother on this half of the continent tells some version of it, including a description of gold eyes.” I spread my claws.
“One of them sees an ambiguous shape in a canopy at night. The story is already available to attach to it.”
“That’s genuinely fair,” she says. “But answer this…what made the prints? And what was that sound that Dagr said it made?”
“I do not know yet.”
“Okay,” she says. And leaves it there.
It is settled in under a nanco after that.
The Board decides that the holiday will proceeds on the alignment.
Team Molten Lava will work that night, they will be at the perimeter, both gates, and the length of the wall.
This is not necessarily because there is a possible creature of legend in the preserve, but because a public event with a hundred offspring in the dark is a security matter regardless of what is or is not in a jungle.
And Aegir offers to pay for security.