Chapter 15 Temple of the King #3
“We apologize. We are not used to seeing you struggle so. We remember you as one who cheerfully baffles others.”
Green grimaced and felt tears coming into his eyes.
“Perhaps a test,” the Crow King suggested. “Place it in your pocket and see if it feels like your acorn.”
It seemed utterly pointless, but he also couldn’t think of a better option. So, he placed the acorn in its customary place.
He rested his palm over the lump, feeling the shape of the acorn through the denim. It felt correct. The tightness in his throat began to ease.
“Well?” the Crow King asked. “A result?”
“It…feels right.”
“There you are.”
“But…was this the same one you tossed from the roof?”
“It’s the one in your pocket, isn’t it?”
Another corvid laugh like thunder.
“Seriously. Is this the same acorn?”
“Consider the lesson. Stop trying to give away your power. Make the choice. Believe in the choice. You used the word ‘magic.’ Human, we will tell you this. The magic of this world is more reliant on meaning than objective reality. Fact may be a found thing, but meaning is a crafted thing. It requires your participation, your choice. If you require that acorn to be magic, then you must make it so.”
Green rubbed his eyes and shook his head.
Above the king, thousands of crows flew in a great spiral radiating outward from their lord. The Crow King looked up at his court, then back to Green. A blue fire flared to life in each of his nostrils, sending a rising braid of dark smoke up into the coming evening.
“We cannot remain here much longer. Not while remembering our manners.”
Green suddenly felt very small and very conspicuous.
The king tilted his head and looked down at Valentina’s library.
“For your teacher and for our future friendship, we will say more than we might wish.”
Green felt something odd in the pit of his stomach, like he was in an elevator that couldn’t quite decide on a speed or a direction. Gravity was misbehaving.
Stretching high over the treetops, the king spoke up into the chaos of dark wings above him. The number of crows had multiplied many thousandfold. Looking at the shifting sea of ebon wings above the king, Green couldn’t imagine that many crows existed in the world. At least, not this world alone.
“It is not always in our power to decide what a thing is…But what a thing means? That power may often be claimed.”
The Crow King stood erect and fully extended profound wings that flooded the sky with perfect, starless dark.
“When the time comes, make the choice. Be the choice. Craft the magic you need. A beacon. An anchor. A wellspring of courage. Trust yourself in the crafting.”
There was a moment of total darkness.
The king’s voice faded into a distance that was somehow more than physical. His final words seemed to come from within Green’s skull.
“If you find yourself struggling on the doorstep, remember, desire may move us as sure as blood and bone and wing.”
Then, he was back on the library roof.
The oak leaf at his shoulder finished falling, spinning down to land on the hatchway beneath his feet.
“Mr. Green!”
Valentina’s muted voice came through the hatch.
High above, a half dozen crows croaked with laughter.
There was no handle on the topside of the roof hatch, but it didn’t matter. Valentina threw it open the moment he stepped aside. She was red-faced and her heavy breath puffed white like a steam engine.
“Get. In. Here.”
He frowned and followed her in. The hatch fell shut behind him.
“You wanted to help and now you are actively antagonizing me? Did you forget the few rules by which I asked you to abide?”
She leaned on the back of a chair. Her breathing had become more labored.
“No. I thought…I thought I had discovered something useful.”
She glowered.
“And did you?”
Green sighed.
“Not really. Maybe? It’s hard to say.”
“Do you have any idea what you risked going up there?”
“I mean, I kind of riled up the Crow King, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Valentina raised her brows and shook her head.
“You are…a remarkable…infuriating individual. Do you know that?”
“If it helps, he said he likes your style. I mean, that was the general sense of it, I think.”
Valentina knuckled frost from her lashes.
“Mr. Green, if you knew half of what I knew about that creature…”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t know because you didn’t tell me.
You were awfully quick to lecture me on openness yesterday.
Can’t help notice you didn’t mention the giant crow living above your camp when I told you my story of falling in front of the bus, ya know, the story with a giant crow in it? Remember?”
She sighed.
“I was bound by certain promises. And, odd as it may sound, the entity you met above the library was not at the top of my list of suspects for the time-bending black bird you described. That creature typically disdains direct intervention.”
She motioned for him to sit and joined him. Green told her of his experience with Catskill and his previous encounter with the Crow King newly deciphered with the wolf’s help.
Valentina looked at the ceiling, then back at her apprentice.
She looked exhausted.
“That crow…That creature is monumentally dangerous. Elementally dangerous. I have had dealings with it in the past and we have something of a formal arrangement now. It is…one of the protections of the camp I mentioned earlier.”
She shook her head.
“You should be reading journals and going on tiny outings to study glass mice and shadow flies. Not this.”
“I’m…sorry? I guess?”
“You know,” she said, “there is an old, long-debunked theory that supposed cryptonaturalists create the cryptids they observe, that their interest manifests the reality. It’s the ‘spontaneous generation’ of antiquated cryptozoology theories.
It’s absurd and yet you make me revisit it. You are an engine of coincidence.”
“Uh, point of fact, it’s your roof. And that bird is your pal.”
“Bird? Pal? Think again, Mr. Green. The Crow King is a bird the way Everest is a rock and troubling alliances do not pals make. You should remember that.”
Valentina looked terrible. Her face was waxen and she kept raising trembling fingers to rub the frost from her eyes.
“Do we have a plan for tonight?”
“Yes. I am afraid we do. Can you feel your connection with the wolf?”
He reached his thoughts toward Catskill and found him awake and eating something bent like a question mark, stitched into the stone of a cave wall. The mountain guardian was excavating his prey with stone-crushing thrusts of his horned muzzle.
Green winced.
“He’s…eating breakfast, but Catskill will be available to help when we need him. The fawn is not on the mountain yet.”
Valentina’s frozen sigh hung in the air like a ghost.
“I won’t tell you not to trust that creature, in fact I would suspect it may be incapable of breaking its explicit oaths, perhaps even of uttering falsehoods, but you should avoid the mistake of prescribing human thoughts and motivations to it.
It is not your pal. It is not your pet nor your assistant. ”
“I think he can help us. How could that be a bad thing?”
“Still ‘he,’ is it? Fine. He, then. I am simply trying to warn you of a common pitfall related to inexperience with cryptids. Many hidden life-forms possess uncanny intelligence and the ability to communicate with humans. It can be rather intoxicating. It leads some young cryptonaturalists to fall into what is sometimes called the ‘imaginary friend fallacy.’ A whimsical name for a too-often lethal misunderstanding of cryptonature. Catskill is not human. In fact, he is more than just not human. He is also not mortal in the conventional sense. In my experience, removing a mundane life-cycle creates an entirely different mental framework for actions and priorities.”
You would know.
“Didn’t you recently tell me that immortality isn’t a thing in nature?”
“I’m not suggesting he’s eternal. I’m suggesting his kind of mortality is so entirely different from ours that his moral and epistemological frameworks are beyond our capacity to grasp.”
“Okay, I can acknowledge whatever that’s supposed to mean, but right now I appreciate there being someone else on the team who can get closer than a hundred yards to the glass fawn without…”
Dying
“…being injured.”
“Listen to your word choice. ‘Someone.’ Be mindful. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Understood, but my point stands. If the fawn comes for us while you’re willing shut the hole, we’re going to need Catskill’s help.”
Plus, if I was wrong about this acorn in my pocket, I might not survive another encounter long enough to say, “I told you so.”
“About that. I prepared the poultice and have concluded my supplemental research on rifts in time-space. I am as prepared as I can be to make another attempt to will the hole shut. As Clara said, proximity may be a factor. I need to get closer…without inadvertently going through.”
Valentina’s shivering intensified while she spoke.
“Did you learn anything about ending the fawn’s effect on you? Short of kicking it out of our universe, I mean.”
“I’m afraid not. It is difficult to know how the fawn continues to exert a hold on me. I could try to momentarily leave this dimension through a number of means, but that carries its own raft of potentially deadly consequences. Too risky when I cannot guarantee the result.”
“Yikes. Okay.”
“I would try simple geographical distance, but I am in no condition for a crawler ride.”
“You mentioned them before. Do I get to know what they are yet?”
Valentina waved a hand like Green was asking a tediously simple question.
“They are subterranean creatures that can bend space and will barter passage with humans they trust. It is an efficient, if unpleasant, way to travel the world and there is a crawler tunnel node below this very camp. It is a large part of the reason I chose to base myself in this location.”
Green thought of the tiny locked shed with the orange door he hadn’t been given access to and pictured a ladder leading down and down into the dark.
“What if I went with you? Could I help?”
“Absolutely not. Do not break my rules again, Mr. Green. Crawlers aren’t a Greyhound bus.
You acclimate them to your presence and intent slowly to earn their trust. A surprised crawler is vicious and unpredictable.
In fact, when they recognized my scent and not yours, I fear they would assume you were the payment I offered for passage.
As I said, concerning your associate Catskill, do not make human assumptions in dealings with cryptids. ”
She couldn’t understand. Catskill was not a business partner. Catskill was family. He was not making assumptions. There was no need to assume. He and Catskill had lived each other’s lives. What deeper understanding was there?
“I know your stance on cars, but what about a more traditional mode of transportation? We could walk to my Prius this minute and be six hundred miles away by morning.”
“No. Crawler rides and dimension sliding have the virtue of letting me go far and return in the space of a few hours. The solution cannot be to shirk all responsibility and abandon the mountain to the glass fawn. There is no one else here who can do what we can. I can bear this misery long enough to do what needs done. We must focus on the disease, not the symptoms.”
Valentina coughed frozen vapor into the air.
“Alright, so where does that leave us?”
Her eyes trailed down to Green’s hip.
“Mr. Green, look at your hand.”
He was grasping a fistful of denim with the acorn in its center.
“I think you should unburden yourself of that object. You know as much as you are going to know about it. Give it to the earth.”
He released his grip with an effort and crossed his arms.
“I’ll deal with it eventually. I really think we need to focus on you right now. You can’t keep this up. You look…rough.”
“No, I can’t keep this up.”
A resignation that looked an awful lot like doom settled on her face.
“God. You’re gonna go through that thing tonight?”
“I certainly do not relish the plan. But we work with what we have. The fawn will be on the hunt again any moment. My hesitation may mean another victim. If the choice is between falling off a cliff or into blackberry thorns, you choose the thorns.”
A hole in reality that might turn you into a fine mist is nothing like blackberry thorns.
“Wait, look, we still have time. It’s not fully dark yet. It’s still only…”
He pulled his phone from his pocket to check the time, a habit from an old life.
The text notification he ignored earlier was on the screen.
It was from Alf.
Hey, bro. Station closed tonight. Technical difficulties. Moths are involved. Don’t ask. We’re camping at the Hole tonight. Like ya said. Gotta guard it from the tourists. Solidarity, brother. Be sociable. Come drink a beer. Bring that six-pack you owe me.
Green’s skin crawled.
“What is it?” Valentina asked.
Green texted back.
No. Don’t go there. I’ll explain later.
A red exclamation mark appeared next to the text.
Message not sent. No service.
“Shit.”
He clenched his teeth and looked up into the gray, bloodless face of his teacher.
“I think we need to go now.”