3. Rowan
ROWAN
LOCAL MAN FURIOUS ABOUT RING LIGHTS
The moss is cooler here, where the shadows of the old cedars stay thick and damp even in the height of summer.
Beneath my palm on the stone shelf, the mountain is a slow, rhythmic pulse.
It’s a quiet day, or it should be. In the upper meadow, the bees are working the fireweed, their buzzing a steady vibration that matches the thrum in my marrow.
This is my work: checking the boundaries, tending the hives.
I silently manage a world that doesn’t know it’s being managed.
Much like the weather, humans are temporary, loud.
Eventually, they’re gone. My species has watched them from the fringes for centuries, leaning into the shadows when they pass, letting their eyes slide off us like rain off a waxy leaf.
It is an effort of will, a constant, active pulling of the veil, but it has always been enough to maintain the peace. Until now.
I’ve lived through three cycles of the great rot, two of which included the white fire, and even those disasters haven’t been as detrimental to the forest as what I’m experiencing now.
A sharp, mechanical whine cuts through the canopy.
It’s a thin, mosquito-like sound, but heavier, more aggressive.
I don’t need to look up to know it’s a drone.
The air ripples with the displacement of its plastic blades, a frantic disturbance that sends a squirrel chattering into the higher branches.
This is the fourth one this morning. The mountain is beginning to feel less like a sanctuary and more like a stage.
I move north, my boots making no more sound than a falling needle.
It isn’t magic, not exactly. Although, I suppose knowing where the earth is soft and the twigs are brittle is a kind of magic on its own, but I’ve had three hundred years to practice.
As I crest the ridge, I see two men in neon-orange vests, standing in a clearing that was utterly silent an hour ago.
They have a tripod set up, and on top of it, a circular light glows with a cold, artificial brilliance.
A ring light. In the middle of an ancient cedar grove.
“Okay, bro, just walk toward the dark spot and look scared,” one of them says. He is holding a phone on a stick. “The Bigfoot Hotline said this is a high-activity zone. We get the shot, we get the clicks.”
I watch from the shadows of a hemlock. One of the men stumbles over a root I’ve known since it was a sapling and lets out a theatrical gasp.
The man is a terrible actor. Nothing about his expression says he’s afraid.
The ring light reflects in his glasses, two white circles that make him look like a confused owl.
I could reach out and snap the tripod with one hand.
I could let out a mimic-call of a mountain lion that would send them sprinting back to their SUV in a cloud of dust and terror.
Then they’d have real fear on their faces.
But I don’t do any of that. That’s how legends grow, and legends are loud.
Loud is the last thing I need. I simply wait, my breath slow and shallow, until they tire of the mosquitoes and the lack of monsters.
They pack up their plastic gear and leave, dragging their boots through the dirt, leaving a trail of crushed ferns and empty energy drink cans.
After they’re gone, I pick up their trash.
The cans are blue with a stylized lightning bolt.
Modern irritants are always so brightly colored.
The problem is the girl at the lodge. Wren Cassidy.
She returned here after going to college, studying art history.
I remember her grandfather; he was a man of few words and a deep respect for the property lines.
I remember her father, too, a man who walked the trails as if he had been born on them.
His wife had respected the forest, as one should.
But the daughter is different. She has lit a digital beacon with this hotline she started.
It’s a siren song for the bored and the desperate, and it’s vibrating through my forest like a headache that won’t go away.
I sense the shift in the forest before I hear her.
The birds go quiet in a specific, rolling wave, marking the progress of something heavy and clumsy.
It’s a hiker’s rhythm—heel-heavy, arrhythmic, lacking any sense of the ground’s intent.
I know it’s her. She has a way of walking that suggests she’d rather be anywhere else, preferably somewhere with a paved floor and a ceiling that doesn’t leak.
Leaning against a trunk, I pull the concealment tight around me.
I am bark. I am shadow. I am part of the landscape she will never see.
She’s wearing boots that are too big for her and a frown that looks permanent as she trudges over to the trail camera I moved yesterday.
I watched her father install these devices; I know their blind spots better than the people who manufactured them.
I moved this one because it was pointed directly at a game trail the elk use, and the flash makes them skittish.
Wren doesn’t know that. All she knows is that the camera isn’t seeing what she wants it to see.
She mutters something under her breath about “pixel density” and “useless hardware.” Her sharp voice carries a dry edge I find strangely tolerable compared to the screaming tourists.
She isn’t a believer. I can tell by the way she handles the equipment.
There’s no awe in her touch, only the frantic competence of someone trying to stop a leak in a dam.
The woman is running a scam. A marketing gimmick.
My existence has been reduced to a line item on a balance sheet.
The subtle approach has failed me. Centuries of patience have been exhausted by three days of ring lights and lime-green footwear encroaching on my territory.
I wait until she’s finished fiddling with the SD card, her back turned to the deep brush, then I drop the concealment.
It feels like stepping out of a cold stream into the sun, a sudden, sharp presence that demands to be noticed.
“You need to turn it off.” My voice, rusty from disuse, is a low rumble that sounds like stones grinding together in a creek bed.
She spins around so fast she nearly trips over her own feet.
Her eyes go wide, and I expect her to scream.
I expect the frantic fumbling for a phone, the panicked retreat that I’ve seen a thousand times.
I am seven feet of mountain-bred muscle and I haven’t shaved in a week.
I am intimidating by design. The human spirit folds in on itself when it comes face to face with me.
“Jesus!” she gasps, clutching her chest. She doesn’t scream or run, just glares at me with an intensity that is genuinely surprising. “You scared the hell out of me. Are you trying to get shot? This is private property.”
“The hotline,” I say, ignoring the threat. “Turn it off. The people are a problem.”
Once she’s regained her footing, she looks me up and down, her gaze lingering on my height before moving to my face with a clinical sort of irritation. There is no fear in her eyes. No, all I see is annoyance. It is the most insulting thing I have experienced in at least a century.
“The hotline is fine,” she snaps. “And who are you? One of the conservation guys? You’re not wearing a uniform. And you’re trespassing. My family has owned this land since the nineteenth century, in case you missed the big wooden sign at the gate.”
“I’m aware of the sign.” I move a step closer, letting my shadow fall over her. I’m used to people shrinking when I do this. It’s a physical fact of my nature. “The tourists are disturbing the hives. They’re leaving trash, and they’re loud. Turn off the hotline.”
She doesn’t shrink. If anything, she leans forward, her jaw tightening.
“Listen, Smokey. I have a lodge to save. I have bills that don’t care about your hives or your peace and quiet.
If you don’t like the tourists, stay off the marked trails.
It’s a big forest. I’m sure you can find a cave somewhere to brood in. ”
I stare at her. She’s small, her head barely reaching the center of my chest, and she’s currently lecturing me on the management of my own territory.
I feel a strange, hot prickle of confusion.
Humans fold. That’s the rule. Once they see my size, they find a reason to be elsewhere.
This woman is standing her ground over a piece of plastic and a marketing strategy.
“This is not a joke,” I say, my voice dropping an octave. “The forest is pushing back. You are making it a target.”
“It’s a business, not a target,” she counters.
She points a finger at me, her nail bitten short.
“And unless you’re here to book a room or report a missing hiker, you’re interfering with lodge operations.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have three more of these cameras to check and a very long hike back to a desk that actually has Wi-Fi. ”
She turns her back on me and starts walking away, her boots thudding against the dirt in that same, clumsy rhythm. She doesn’t look back to see if I’m following or check to see if I’ve vanished. She simply dismisses me as a local crank, a minor obstacle in her quest to monetize the shadows.
I pull the veil back over myself, the concealment sliding into place like a heavy cloak. I watch her go until she’s nothing more than a flicker of flannel between the trees. My heart is beating faster than it should be, but not from anger. It’s something sharper, more jagged. Bewilderment.
I have spent three hundred years being a force of nature. I have been the shadow in the corner of the eye, the sound that can’t be explained. Even the wolves respect me. And yet, a woman with an art history degree and a broken trail camera just told me to go find a cave.