Chapter 13 #4
It was only when I tripped over the lip of the door and found myself on hands and knees in the aisle that I remembered I hadn’t eaten or drank anything that wasn’t poison in more than a day.
I was too exhausted to stand, so I propped myself against the wall to rest for a moment, finally registering the shaking in my limbs.
Not for the first time, I wondered when I had become so weak, when the whole world of magic had narrowed to hinge on a single person who opposed me. Also not for the first time, I wondered if I’d made a mistake refusing the devil’s offer.
But then it would be his, I thought. He wants to own it, just like the pastor does. You would save the sanctuary just to lose it.
I pressed my head back against the wood to ward off the looming prospect of the sanctuary’s destruction. Nothing had happened yet, and I was not helpless; whatever was coming, I could still stop it. I hadn’t resisted the devil just to lose to a man.
When I’d recovered a little strength, I heaved myself up and went slowly to the house.
The fawn followed me inside, and without any energy to spare, I didn’t protest. I had no appetite—another side effect of the poison I’d forgotten—but I forced myself to drink a mug of water and eat a slice of bread.
I stank of sweat and smoke, and blood rimed the inside of my nostrils and the back of my teeth.
After a few minutes, I realized the kitchen stool was even less comfortable than usual, and I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my phone.
There was a hairline crack in the corner of the screen and the battery was completely dead, so I fumbled for the charger and plugged it in.
Moments later, it began to buzz almost nonstop, and a flood of delayed voicemails came through.
Colors fuzzed at the edges of my vision as I fought back overwhelmed tears.
My barn was nearly full already, and I was in no fit state to drive or handle stressed wildlife.
And yet, the last thing I needed was to give Chief Broder a reason to go running to the board about my negligence or come snooping around on the pretense of a welfare check.
There were sixteen voicemails. I refused to think about the implications for the future, that this would simply be my entire life if I didn’t find a way to fix what was broken, and focused on each one individually.
I hoped some of them were only questions, but as I went through them, I found they all wanted me, in person.
The tone of the calls was different too—I’d always had my fair share of entitled suburban mothers demanding that I come down immediately to get rid of whatever creature had intruded on their white-picket paradise, but many of them were concerned for the animal’s wellbeing.
These voicemails, though, all had the same theme: I needed to resolve this issue or remove this pest or help with this nuisance before they called an exterminator.
I had no choice but to go down the hill with a set of traps.
As I stumbled down the porch steps, I thought about calling Christine to come drive me; my depth perception was variable at best and I was still seeing things that weren’t there.
But of everyone in the friend group, Christine was the one least likely to let the matter lie, and she’d probably insist on taking me to the hospital instead.
I drove myself, creeping down along the winding road with my hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel and cold sweat bathing my neck.
There were a few times when all the earth seemed to fall away from the road, leaving nothing but a narrow ribbon hovering in midair, and I had to stop and wait for the hallucination to pass.
When I got into town, the road remained still in favor of the houses sliding away and then toward me like game pieces on a tipping board, but that was easier to ignore.
I kept hoping the belladonna would relinquish its hold on me, but as I went on to the rest of my calls, it became clear that it wouldn’t go lightly.
I dug a battered old baseball cap out from behind my seat to help hide my eyes and pulled on a pair of gloves to hide my berry-stained fingers and thorn-scratched wrists, but there was no disguising that I struggled to follow the simplest conversations.
“Look, it says ‘wildlife relocation’ right there!” one man said, thrusting his phone at me. I flinched away from the brightness of the screen, my mind racing to remember what we were talking about. I’d given him my spiel about exterminators, but that felt like it was a hundred years ago.
“They all say that,” I answered, even though I feared I was repeating myself. “They just drive them outside of town and dump them. The animals can’t find food or water, or they get attacked by the animals who already live there. They don’t stand a chance.”
“I don’t see how that’s my problem.” With that, he stormed back up the steps into his double-wide.
I ended up having to make four more trips up and down the hill, each time with a new animal.
That brought my total count to twenty-five, and as I carried my last new charge into the barn—a woodchuck who’d been attacked by a dog—I realized I’d already filled every available space, except one.
The door to the fawn’s stall was wide open, and I remembered I’d taken her to the house and left her loose and unsupervised.
Cursing my own stupidity, I worked a hasty sleep spell over the woodchuck, just enough that I could get her wounds shaved down and treated with feverfew, then arranged her comfortably in the fawn’s empty stall with food and water nearby.
I hurried to the house, almost tripping up the stairs when the whole porch seemed to recede in my vision.
The cabin was undisturbed. It was a complete mess, of course; I’d had neither time nor energy to clean it.
But all was quiet, and the fawn had commandeered my jacket for a bed, curling up in its flannel lining and sleeping deeply.
I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her, and some sense of purpose returned to me, soothing my harried soul like a balm.
It was short-lived. No sooner had the tension eased from my shoulders than my phone rang again—a borderline hysterical woman who had just fished a rabbit out of her in-ground pool. There was nothing to do except drive back down.