Chapter 11 Trust
Over the next few days, Valentina started her camp basics training as promised.
It was a dizzying array of subjects ranging from solar panel maintenance to splitting and stacking firewood.
Some of the skills seemed modern. Others felt anachronistic.
They used an old tin throat lozenges box stuffed with cotton scraps and wedged in a bed of smoldering coals to make char cloth for catching sparks from flint and steel.
They covered navigation with a map and compass.
They used a post-hole digger to excavate a privy pit near Green’s camp.
They did laundry creek-side with a washboard and ringer.
They took inventory of winter provisions and discussed best practices for food storage, preservation, and thwarting mice.
Green was certain he couldn’t retain the information at the pace with which Valentina delivered it, but he thought he understood her motivations.
She was trying to build him up, trying to make him feel less like a guest and more like a resident in his new life.
Information, he was beginning to understand, was Valentina’s love language, her currency of care.
During the lessons, he could feel her trying to keep cryptonature out of the conversation. When he asked about their work and the lingering threat, she would only say, “I am not ignoring the subject, but this is the best use of our time at present.”
As afternoon of the third day arrived, the lessons culminated in new housing for Green.
He moved from the cot in the cabin to an insulated structure with a corrugated metal roof, a wooden plank floor, and a modern wood-burning stove that you didn’t need a pot holder to open safely.
The structure seemed new, but he couldn’t recall whether it had been there the day before.
The place was small and smelled like sawdust. It was ugly. He loved it.
He named his new home “the shed” and, if he thought he understood Valentina’s motivations for the days’ lessons before, moving into his own space allowed him to feel the wisdom behind her plan in a much more real and immediate way.
That morning, he understood her reasoning intellectually. Now, he understood emotionally.
He looked around at his cramped storage closet of a home and felt that he had been invited in off the porch of his new world and given a seat by the fire.
Valentina often seemed to have all the human warmth of a lichen-speckled stone jutting from a mountain lake.
Yet, as Green stretched out on his new cot and studied the manufacturer logos on the foil-backed insulation tucked against his metal roof, he reflected that human warmth is as varied as the people who keep it alive.
Outside, the shadows grew long. Evening was coming. The things that waited for evening were coming too.
For days, Green had received a “not now” when he tried to talk about the death stalking the mountainsides.
It had been a hectic but peaceful respite, and he could feel it coming to a close.
Valentina had left him to situate his belongings in the shed.
With the dark only a few hours away, he felt a pull to get back to business.
He heard the library tree hatch thud closed.
Apparently, Valentina had a similar impulse.
Green climbed the spiral log stairs to the library, trailing his fingertips along the oak’s bark as he went.
He lifted the hatch and stepped inside. Valentina was already seated at the little table by the trunk, tinkering with the polished wooden broadcast box.
With its side panel open, it looked like a cross between an antique radio and a hamster cage full of colorful, transparent tubes.
The tubes housed tendrils of something pale and fleshy.
“Time to get back to cryptonaturalist work?”
Valentina shut the box.
A light flashed amber above a toggle switch.
“Yes, Mr. Green. We have two messages and I’ve been waiting on several responses to inform our next steps. I haven’t been idle during your studies.”
She handed Green a sugar cube. He dutifully placed it in the fungal hand of the network administrator as it bloomed from the space beneath the floorboards. It withdrew in eerie silence and a dusting of spores. He retrieved the little broom and swept the mess through the gap by the bark.
She flipped the switch.
“Val, this is Clara.”
The voice carried the grit of a long life or a heavy smoker.
“I didn’t want to make you wait, but I’m still doing research on my end. Thought I’d shoot over my first thoughts. I’d try will. I’d try water. And I might try matter stitching, like the Heinze brothers did on that epistemological sinkhole in Pataskala, Ohio.”
Valentina shook her head at the box.
“Anyway, more to come soon. The boys are taking me to catch the archive train and see what I can dig up there. I’ll be in touch.”
She clicked the switch off and sighed.
“I’ve tried water and will. I’ve tried stitching.”
“Teacher, can you give me a hint of what we’re talking about?”
“Closing the Hole in Nothing. That was Clara Rodriguez. She has made a special study of various rifts and portals, so I asked for her opinion. You’ll recall, I explained the principle behind stepping through to close it from inside when we visited the hole.”
“I remember. And I remember all the reasons that’s a terrible idea in this case.”
“As I said, there are other, less dangerous methods. Running water through a rift sometimes closes it. Water has many properties we do not fully understand. The stitching she mentioned involves moving objects in and out of a rift rapidly, which can cause a collapse from overtaxing the system. Unfortunately, I tried both of those options after my initial observations of the hole.”
He looked around at Valentina’s collection of books, journals, and artifacts.
“I guess I’m a little surprised to hear you asking for advice. Didn’t you tell me you’re the most knowledgeable cryptonaturalist when we first met?”
“That’s not how knowledge works, Mr. Green.
A foundational strength of humanity is our diversity.
Diversity of thought, experience, and perspective.
That strength is meaningless if we don’t ask each other for help.
Unshakable confidence in one’s own ability and judgment is the surest sign of a fool. ”
“Okay, well, what about the other thing she mentioned? Trying willpower?”
“Yes, I also made a minor attempt at willing it shut as well, though it might be worth it to try again. Intending a semi-corporeal doorway shut from the outside is more art than science, but it has been done.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing he had something useful to contribute.
“I don’t know if it’s connected to the wolf, but I know I’ll rest easier when it’s gone. I warned Alf and Jerome to stay away, but I’m not sure they took me seriously.”
Valentina nodded.
“There’s a second message.”
She turned back to the broadcast box. She flipped the switch again.
“Ranger Reem. Ranger Station Orion. Calling Valentina Blackwood. Ranger Cheng asked me to call you first. There’s been another death in your area and…it appears to carry the same markers as the deaths at Kinkaid Cabins.”
Green slumped into a chair and felt his stomach drop. His thoughts filled with dead black eyes, crisscrossed with pine needles, staring at him with painful absence.
“The body of an elderly man was found on the outskirts of Hickory, not far from Iverson’s Run.
Time of death unknown, but if the pattern holds he would have died last night.
Continuing to monitor for updates. We received your supplemental materials on the birds you collected.
Analyzing now. Please call in any new developments on your end.
And…Valentina…if there’s anything more we can do, don’t hesitate. ”
The box clicked and went silent.
She rose and retrieved a map of the area, unfolding it on the little table.
“The attacks we know of happened here, here, here, and here.”
She made four circles in pencil.
“Your campsite. Mr. Cartwright. Kinkaid Cabins. And now here at the edge of Hickory.”
She drew a tiny X.
“This is the location of the Hole in Nothing. You’ll notice it is nearly in the center of the four incidents.”
She drew a broad circle around all her marks.
“I would estimate we are dealing with an area of around twelve square miles. Thus far, it is a fairly small area of effect.”
“That doesn’t sound that small.”
“Out here, it is quite common for twelve square miles to include very few human structures. There are only two structures left in this immediate area that make likely targets if our predator is actively seeking human victims.”
She drew two more circles.
“A seasonal Girl Scout camp, which is currently unoccupied, and a small stable that boards horses. There is also the Count and Countess gas station and the nearest edge of Hickory proper, but the emergent pattern suggests that the attacker prefers dark and seclusion. I think the stable is a likely next target.”
Green felt his pulse increase from a walk to a trot.
“Okay, what do we do?”
“I plan to keep watch at the stable tonight. I am not asking you to join me.”
“Of course I’m going to join you.”
Valentina smiled. This wasn’t her mechanical smile. This was her fairy-tale witch smile.
“Ah. I believe you do, in fact, understand the dangers involved, so I will not make the choice for you.”
He imagined staying in his shed while Valentina was off in the dark woods alone trying to prevent another body from arriving at the Hickory morgue.
He thought of sitting on his cot, unable to sleep, wondering if his new mentor would return.
Part of him wished he could stomach a night like that. But he couldn’t.
His hand dipped into his pocket and closed around the acorn.
“I’ll go. I don’t want to, but I will.”
“My feelings exactly, Mr. Green.”
“Do we warn the stable owners?”