Chapter 22 Gone but Not Forgotten
Valentina and Dancer sat beside the cabin hearth toasting bread on long forks and drinking cheap wine from tin mugs.
Valentina pointed.
“That is too close. You are going to burn it.”
“Ah, my word, do forgive me if I’m not used to toasting my bread in this very modern, normal, and typical way you’ve chosen. Gosh, maybe if I had remembered to bring my own long bread fork, I’d be having more luck…you absolute wing nut.”
Valentina smirked.
“Glass houses, Ms. Dancer.”
Dancer raised her mug to her host and Valentina clinked her own against it.
“Is this a funeral, Val? I mean, is this funerary bread I’m toasting? Is that why we’re drinking wine? Wine seems like a church drink to me.”
Valentina watched the fire. She had told Dancer the story of Green and the fawn a year earlier, but the story did not answer this question.
“I suppose,” she said. “Perhaps it should be. He is more absent than if he were simply dead.”
“Hell’s bells, Val. If you’re gonna say stuff like that, you really need to let me switch to whiskey. I brought some.”
Valentina pointed at the fire and Dancer saw that her bread had charred black.
“Aw, crackers.”
She drew out the fork, examined the smoking wreckage, and tossed the slice into the embers.
“You know, if those solar panels of yours aren’t powerful enough to operate a toaster, we can run electric out here. I’m sure I’ve offered before.”
Valentina handed her a new slice of bread.
“I have all the electricity I need, thank you. Toast it slowly.”
Dancer grimaced through a sip of wine and skewered her new slice.
“I get that wine was all they had in Bible times or whatnot, but, not unlike toasters, the technology has improved in ways that might surprise you.”
She crossed her legs, propped her toasting fork on the toe of one boot, and positioned her bread too near the fire again.
“Green was nice, wasn’t he?” Dancer said. “The sort of nice that seems like it isn’t taking much effort to perform.”
“He was.”
“ ’Course, he was scared witless half the time I knew him.”
“He was that, too, yes.”
“That makes the ‘nice’ part all the more special, don’t it?”
Valentina nodded.
“But, good gravy, I almost clapped him in a headlock and marched him straight back to civilization after he came near freezing to death on his first night car camping. Then again, I might have acquitted myself similarly if he had met me back in whatever city he was from.”
She shuddered at the thought.
“God forbid,” she added.
“Mr. Green managed things that people in my profession may strive their whole careers to achieve, and he did them accidentally.”
Dancer laughed.
“Yep. That sounds right. You gotta hand it to him though. He owned his haphazardness. Like, you ever meet somebody that you just know gets out of bed each morning trying to win something when what they really need is to learn something?”
“I think that describes a great many people, yes.”
“Well, he wasn’t that.”
“No, he was not.”
Valentina was silent for a moment.
“I still cannot believe how often he wore that hat you gave him.”
Dancer scoffed.
“Jealousy does not become one of your age and wisdom. I can scarcely believe that a woman who possesses such an august collection of bread-toasting forks fails to recognize elegant headwear when she sees it.”
The cabin door was propped open. Wind sent a trio of oak leaves scraping along the packed-earth floor. The air was October chill and smoke, wine and toasting bread.
A small interruption in the breeze tingled the back of Valentina’s neck and she turned to the door.
There, at the knife-edge of sight, the horned wolf waited, white skull hanging in the dark distance.
Valentina stood.
She looked at Dancer, then back to the door.
The wolf was gone.
“Val? What is it?”
A crow cawed somewhere high in the branches.
Valentina’s eyes were sparkling.
She walked to the wall and retrieved another camp chair. She unfolded it and placed it fireside between her own seat and Dancer’s.
“You expecting somebody?”
Dancer threw an arm over the back of her chair and looked out into the night.
Valentina held up a hand for silence.
Then, he stepped inside.
Dancer gasped.
Green paused, smiled, and touched the brim of his hat.
He looked scuffed and sun-ripened, but not much older. His beard was wild. His eyes were deep shadow and moss.
Valentina shook her head.
“I cannot believe you did it,” she said. “Did you find another doorway?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Green said.
His voice was different, a mix of accents she couldn’t place. He walked forward, setting Dancer’s bent and weathered cup on the rag moth’s table.
“How did you manage it? Where have you been for the last year?”
Green stroked his beard.
“A year, eh?”
Valentina narrowed her eyes.
He ran his hand across the tabletop. She watched the motion. A woven bracelet of blooming, multicolored flowers shining like stained glass hung at his wrist, tinkling against the wood. The design was familiar, a protection against southern bramble leeches.
“Mr. Green. How?”
His expression grew distant.
“Well, a century and a fair amount of help from new and old friends didn’t hurt,” he said. “But, as usual, nature did most of the work.”
He took off his hat and moved as if to hang it on an invisible hook. The hat hovered, then swung across the room with a hornet’s buzz before perching on the top corner of a metal shelving unit.
She watched him, struggling with a rare loss for words.
Green cocked his head. Something seemed to draw his attention through the wall, up toward the boughs of the library oak. He smiled and nodded a greeting.
Returning his focus to the cabin, he looked around him like a man stepping into a storybook. Dancer continued staring, open-mouthed as he settled into his camp chair and reached for a toasting fork.
Finally, Valentina found her voice.
“A century?” she asked.
Green grinned at his old teacher.
“Bit of a detour. I took the long way back.”