Chapter 7 The Library Tree
Green sat up and found toast and coffee on the table where the rag moth had been. The coffee was still steaming.
Valentina had been there.
He ate the toast. It was homemade bread, two fingers thick. It tasted like butter and woodsmoke. The coffee was darker and stronger than he thought possible. He sipped it with his eyes closed and tried to remember the last time somebody made him coffee without money changing hands.
Even with the scent of strong coffee in his nose, he could still smell the rag moth. He wondered if the creature’s influence could linger on in more dangerous ways than a simple odor.
Stepping out into the frigid morning, he reflected on a life mostly spent inside climate-controlled spaces. Seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit had been an unnoticed companion for decades.
I’ll miss you, old friend.
He visited the outhouse. Washed his face in violently cold water from the pump and went to find Valentina.
He heard a muffled conversation from the tan camper and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
It was a cramped domestic space lined with utility shelves full of foodstuffs. There was a small kitchenette, a tiny writing surface scattered with papers, and a curtain separating what Green imagined was a sleeping area.
Valentina and Dancer were seated in two folding chairs.
Valentina had her narrow brass coffee cup.
Dancer had her plaid thermos. A thing that looked like ten pounds of chewed bubble gum, pink and lumpy with a smattering of various-sized eyes, pulsed rhythmically a few feet above the women’s heads.
Some of the eyes were liquid black, others had goatlike hourglass pupils.
Several eyes shifted to look in Green’s direction.
He froze and stared up at the blob.
Valentina cleared her throat, gave him a level stare, and shook her head. The look seemed to say, Don’t mention the hideous thing on the ceiling, as if it were a stain on the sofa.
Dancer turned to the newcomer.
“Howdy, Green. I thought I’d—”
She stopped short and gaped at him.
“What the hell?” she said.
Valentina sipped her coffee and said nothing.
Green’s heart sank.
“What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
He checked the ceiling just above his own head, suddenly afraid a second blob was approaching his scalp.
“Your face, pal. Your face is wrong.”
“Oh, yeah, I know. I look like crime scene photos.”
Valentina was still giving him that look. It was painfully hard to keep his eyes off the ceiling.
“Nope. Now you look like a mascot for paper towels or maybe an oat-based cereal.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Are you one of those rare diurnal werewolves?” Dancer continued. “You have to tell me if you are, otherwise it’s entrapment.”
Valentina swiveled in her chair and pulled an antique silver hand mirror from a drawer.
Green took it and studied his face. His eyes were no longer rimmed with bruises.
His nose looked healed, but noticeably less symmetrical than before.
And he had to assume that the cut on his chin had scarred over.
He had to assume because he had a thick two-inch beard that hadn’t been there the day before.
“Um,” Green said. “That’s new.”
“Mr. Green was working on a project for me last night. It looks like it had some unforeseen side effects,” Valentina said.
Dancer muttered to herself.
“Two of you. There are going to be two of you now. S’posed to be a quiet place. Easy on my nerves.”
Valentina pointed to a camp chair in the corner.
“Join us, Mr. Green. Ms. Dancer came to check on you. I was just confirming that you had not fabricated the story of our new arrangement.”
He glanced up at the thing stuck to the ceiling. It had sprouted several thin tendrils that ended in feathery structures that waved and curled in the air.
“Is it…safe to join you?”
“Yes, yes, come.”
Green pulled over a chair, positioning it as far away from the thing on the ceiling as he could without seeming impolite.
The sagging canvas left him a head shorter than Valentina and several shorter than Dancer.
He spared a scowl for the blob as he sat.
Dancer followed his gaze, apparently saw nothing, and shrugged.
He tugged at his new beard. It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed it. He just hadn’t thought it was new or unusual until Dancer mentioned it.
“How? My face, I mean.”
Valentina shook her head.
“We will discuss theories later. Ms. Dancer doesn’t want to hear us talk about business.”
She punctuated the statement with a glance toward the ceiling.
Dancer nodded.
“I don’t. I really don’t. With infinite warmth, I have talked over these sorts of things with Val here in the past and it’s a little like listening to somebody talk about a dream they had. Everything about it sounds interesting, except it slips off my brain like butter down a waterslide.”
Green smirked. Dancer was still Dancer.
“Thanks for checking on me. I’m alright. Relative to yesterday, anyway.”
He poked and pulled at his new whiskers as he spoke. He couldn’t help it.
“Not to worry. Like I said when you arrived, neighbors look after neighbors out here. Of course, I never would have guessed you and Valentina would hit it off so hard.”
“And why is that, Ms. Dancer?”
Dancer shot Valentina a sarcastic look.
“Because you’ve been here as long as the camp, a thing that itself doesn’t make sense when I say it out loud, and I’ve seen you host a guest exactly zero times.”
Valentina sipped her coffee. She looked small and birdlike next to Dancer, who filled the space like a grizzly in its den.
“It simply was not called for in recent years.”
“By the by, I’m walking out on conversational thin ice here, but were you able to help Green with his…whatever it was? Incident?”
Valentina looked at Green to answer.
The wolf was still out there and the acorn tugged on the hem of his thoughts every six breaths, but he was no longer homeless, rudderless, and alone.
More or less.
“Yes,” Green said. “She has helped. And she’s been very generous.”
“I guess so,” Dancer said. “Room and board and a job? Pretty good terms for these woods. Pretty good terms for anywhere, I’d venture to guess. Not that I go in for such things. My last job involved mucking out stables and those horses acted like I was a mountain lion disguised in pants.”
Dancer pulled a full-sized mug from her jacket pocket and offered it to Green.
“Sassafras tea?”
“Please.”
She filled the cup from her red thermos.
He took it and found it earthy and soothing and kinder going down than Valentina’s coffee.
How much of civilization beyond sidewalks and streetlights is built on sharing food, drink, and shelter?
Dancer looked from Green to Valentina and back again.
“Two peas in a pod. Wonder of wonders. Anyways, besides checking on our newest neighbor here, I wanted to mention that I’m putting in a supply order with Aisha down in Hickory.
Radio or drop off a list if you want anything.
I’m putting in the order tomorrow morning.
Winter ain’t here, but I expect it’s brushing its teeth and combing its hair. ”
“Yes, of course,” Valentina said.
“I know, I know. You know your business out here. ‘Don’t tell your mother how to milk a duck,’ as my dear ol’ mom liked to say. I’ll get out of your hair.”
Dancer stood, making the camper look like a dollhouse.
Her face was entirely too close to the pulsating anomaly eyeing her from four inches away. One of its waving tendrils nearly grazed her ear. Green gripped the arms of his chair and tried to look unconcerned.
“Green, it is sincerely good to see you whole and hearty. And wearing appropriate headgear to boot.”
“Thank you and…likewise?”
Dancer grinned.
As she exited, Green touched the crown of his head. Dancer’s hat was there, itchy and shapeless, but he could have sworn he had been hatless when he looked in Valentina’s mirror.
The camper door shut with a click.
He took another sip of tea.
“Oh, she left me her mug again.”
“Ah. She must trust you to return it to her then. I believe it harkens back to a number of customs that dictated when you leave a friend’s presence you must first find a reason to meet again. Ms. Dancer is often surprisingly old-fashioned.”
“She’s surprising in all sorts of ways.”
“Indeed. So, Mr. Green, I expect you have some news for me?”
“I do, but what the hell is that thing on your ceiling?”
Valentina looked up.
“It’s a lesser phobophage. A fear-eater.”
“And it’s on your ceiling because…?”
“I have cultivated a relationship with it. Symbiosis. It mitigates my troubling dreams and general anxiety and I keep it fed.”
He leaned forward and studied the thing. Its wet eyes blinked at asynchronous intervals.
“Why does this seem less terrifying than when I walked in?”
“As I said, it eats fears. You are sitting within its radius of influence.”
“What’s its name?”
“Again, it’s a lesser phobophage.”
“You didn’t give it a name?”
“This creature isn’t my pet, Mr. Green. It’s not a puppy.”
“Blobert. That’s a good name.”
Valentina grimaced.
“No.”
“And Dancer really couldn’t see it? That still feels so bizarre.”
“It’s the nature of what we do.”
“Seems a little lonely for Blobert. Part roommate. Part living antianxiety medication. I think Dancer might like the little guy.”
He had a sudden, hopeful flash that not all cryptonature was menacing or lethal. There was this odd medicinal blob. There was the glowing deer simply trying to escape a predator. It wasn’t all hunting wolves and deadly insects.
“Ridiculous. Don’t anthropomorphize. Now, I assume I found you asleep this morning because you have answers for me?”
“I do.”
He passed his notebook to Valentina and filled in every detail of his wake for the rag moth. The story felt less harrowing while sitting beneath the phobophage.
If she was impressed by Green’s cool head or blindsided by the method of the moth’s departure, she had an impressive poker face.