Chapter 13 #2
The Skyggjar has not moved. It stood in the middle of a clearing, next to Dagr, watching the Hyrrokin take down the poacher who was trying to harm both it and Dagr. It remains as a hovercraft arrives and Vail is dragged off in restraints and flown away.
Finally, Dagr lifts his chin and hums at it once.
The Skyggjar answers him and then it turns and looks straight at Vidar.
One second. Maybe less.
The male who has spent so many years of his life telling anybody who would listen that this animal does not exist, stands at the edge of a clearing looking at golden eyes.
And then it’s gone, up, into the canopy.
Hand over hand over hand, unhurried, moving its weight to where the wood is strongest, and it disappears into the black without a sound and without breaking a single branch.
And the preserve comes back to life. Every click, rasp and call in the understory floods back in one enormous rush like somebody released a held breath.
Hannibal Hellstone crosses that clearing in about nine strides and takes his son in his arms.
Back at the Hellstone Residence, Avery makes traq for everyone assembled. Mitry and Sela are asleep upstairs.
The alignment has ended and the world has returned to normal.
And now there’s too much light in this kitchen after four hours of no shadows and my eyes hurt.
I’m exhausted and so is everyone else, but Dagr refuses to go to bed until he’s told us the whole story of what happened.
He doesn’t want to forget any detail. He’s at the table with a blanket around his shoulders and a cup he hasn’t touched.
His face is still chalk-white in patches where it hasn’t rubbed off, which is somehow the worst detail of the entire night.
Hannibal stands directly behind his son’s chair.
Avery moves to the table and sits across from him. Bergelmir’s by the door with his arms folded. Vidar’s at the end of the table with his tablet.
“Start wherever you want,” I tell him.
“I know dad said to not go out there again, but I was really worried about the Skyggjar on the alignment. I’ve learned how to hum at it, and I was going to go out and warn him to hide until after the alignment.
It was going to take ten minutes. I’ve done it before and it worked and nobody was ever going to know.
But this time a Gravian came out of the trees. He asked me what I was doing out here.”
“Did he give you his name?”
“Not then.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, you’re the one it came to before.”
“Oh hells, he was watching Dagr for weeks,” Bergelmir growls.
I nod in agreement. “And then what happened?”
“He pulled a weapon on me and told me to walk with him deeper into the preserve. Skylo came through the gate,” Dagr says, and this is where his voice starts to go.
“I didn’t know he’d followed me. He must’ve got off his lead.
And he went straight for Vail. And he shot him.
And Skylo went down and he made this noise and I couldn’t… I didn’t…”
“Dagr.” Avery’s hand is on the table. “You don’t have to—”
“I didn’t help him,” Dagr wails. “I just stood there.”
“There wasn’t anything you could have done,” Hannibal responds. “The poacher had a very powerful weapon. You did what you had to do until we came to get you. Your job was to stay alive until rescue.”
“Are you able to continue with your statement?” I ask. “Or do you want to wait to finish this until tomorrow?”
Dagr swallows. “I want to keep going. After he shot Skylo, Vail ordered me to start walking. He walked me in, really deep. He kept talking the whole time, saying nothing was going to happen to me and I’d be home in a few hours and he only needed me to do one small thing to help him get the Skyggjar to show itself. ”
“And then?” I ask.
“And then he told me to flame. He said that I was the thing that makes the Skyggjar come out in the open. I’m the bait. That’s why he took me and not one of the little kids, because it had already came to me once. So I hummed.”
“The whole time?” I ask.
“The whole time.” He shrugs. “Vail thought I was luring the Skyggjar by flash flaming but really, I was humming, telling it to stay away. Warning it that this was a trap. I was trying to protect it.” And then his face crumples for the first time all night.
“It came anyway. I did it for four hours. I did it right, exactly like the first time.” His voice cracks. “So why did it come?”
“I’m not certain,” I say, “but I think what happened is that you were making a distress sound in its territory for four hours straight, in a voice it already knew, and it came to check on you.”
Avery reaches over and pulls him into a tight hug.
Dagr’s asleep on the couch inside twenty minutes.
Avery gets a blanket. Hannibal sits down on the floor beside him with his back against the couch and doesn’t move.
And I go to find Vidar because I need to talk with him and decompress and also, I really, really need a hug.
But he isn’t in the kitchen anymore.
“Ave? Where’d Vidar go?”
Avery looks up from the sink.
“He left,” she says.
“Left where?”
“I don’t know. Twenty minutes ago, maybe? He took one of Hannibal’s vehicles.” She frowns. “He didn’t really say anything specific, just asked me for the loan of it and said thank you and then he went out the front.”
“He didn’t say where he was going?”
“No, sorry, and I was too brain dead to question him too much.”
So I stand in a kitchen at dawn covered in a tattered Halloween costume, with a pout on my lips.
Dagr is rescued and asleep on the couch. Skylo is being cared for in a med lab. A poacher is in Molten Lava custody. And an actual Skyggjar with golden eyes has returned to the wildlands, hopefully remaining remote.
And the one male on this planet I wanted to meet up with after all this chaos drove off without a word.
I do not cry, because I am extremely good at not crying. And I go upstairs to shower and change out of these filthy clothes.