11. Rowan #2
“Noted. I’ll update the How to Gift Bigfoot section on the website. Fruit, no. Industrial-grade hardware, yes.” She nudges a small, foil-wrapped square that sits a few inches away from the bananas under a fern frond. “What’s this?”
I inhale, smiling at the smell. Dark chocolate, walnuts, and a heavy hand with the butter.
Marge’s brown cakes. This is a delivery from a friendly acquaintance, not an offering.
I pick it up, the foil crinkling in my hand.
It’s still slightly warm, which means Walt must have come through here less than an hour ago, doing ‘maintenance’ on the trail markers.
I unwrap it and take a bite. The richness hits my tongue, a concentrated burst of human comfort that I have no logical reason to enjoy as much as I do. I chew slowly, the world around me sharpening. Marge’s brown cakes are one of the few things that make the modern era tolerable.
“Well?” Wren asks, crossing her arms. “Is that a crime too? Or does Bigfoot have a specific exemption for baked goods?”
I don’t answer as I tuck the rest of the brown cake in my pocket and start walking again. Some things aren’t up for negotiation. Some things are simply part of the arrangement, settled long ago in kitchens that no longer existed.
“Hey! You can’t just eat the evidence and walk away!” she calls out, scurrying to keep up. “Was that one of Marge’s brownies? I recognize that specific shade of foil!”
“We’re almost at the cameras.” I can feel the shift in the forest’s weight. It is becoming crowded. The human footprint is expanding. Even here, I can feel the heat of their vehicles at the trailhead miles away, the vibration of their voices carrying through the root systems below the earth.
As we cross the clearing near the North Ridge, we pass a trio of three hikers.
They’re young, dressed in brand-new outdoor gear that still has the fold lines from the packaging, all of them staring at their phones, occasionally looking up to scan the trees with a desperate, hungry intensity.
One of them, a man with a beard far too manicured for the wilderness, stops and squints at me.
“Whoa,” he says, his voice dropping. “Hey. You’re that guy. From the forum. The Hotline Hottie.”
Pure, cold static surges through my veins, and I hear Wren’s sudden, sharp intake of breath beside me.
“I think you have the wrong person,” she says, her voice shifting into a professional, slightly high-pitched chirp.
“He’s just our... trail consultant. We’re doing a survey.
Very boring. Lots of moss counting. You guys should check out the creek at the South Ridge trail.
We’ve had a report of a very large, hairy something-or-other near the falls just twenty minutes ago. ”
The hikers don’t need a second invitation. They practically sprint toward the South Ridge turnoff, their phones already out to document their impending encounter with a shadow. I wait until they’re well out of earshot before I turn to Wren.
“Hotline Hottie?” The words taste like ash in my mouth. “What is a hottie?”
Wren looks at her boots, then at the sky.
She looks everywhere but at my face. “It’s...
it’s a term of endearment. For someone who is...
aesthetically pleasing to the digital masses.
” She grimaces. “Someone on Instagram posted a grainy photo of you in the gift shop last week. It went a bit viral. People like your... rugged, silent-protagonist vibe. It’s part of the brand! ”
“I am not a brand,” I snap. The bark of my true nature presses against the inside of my skin, a low-level thrum of the Guardian wanting to simplify the situation with a roar. “I am a secret. If they recognize my face, the secret is dead.”
“They don’t recognize your face, Rowan. They recognize a vibe.
To them, you’re just a character in the story I’m telling.
As long as we keep the story moving, you stay invisible.
Trust me.” She steps closer, her hand hovering near my arm but not touching.
“I know what I’m doing. This is why I’m here. To be the buffer.”
I look down at her. That sudden surge of anger recedes, crowded out by a strange, persistent empathy.
Wren is fighting a war she can’t win, using nothing but words and blurry photos to hold back a tide of human curiosity that has been building for a century.
She’s trying to protect me, in her own frantic, noisy way.
“The buffer,” I repeat as I turn back to the trail.
We’re at the camera site now, a small clearing where I had deliberately turned the lens toward a particularly uninteresting pile of rocks two days ago.
I adjust the bracket, the metal cold against my palm.
I can feel her watching me, her silence finally carrying a weight of its own.
“I’ll fix it,” she says softly. “I’ll post a debunking of that photo tonight. I’ll say it was a local actor. A cousin of Walt’s. People love a hoax within a hoax.”
“You enjoy the lying,” I say accusingly, but there’s no bite in it. I move to the next camera, my movements falling into a steady, practiced rhythm.
For the next hour, we work in a strange, functional shorthand. I adjust the hardware; she checks the memory cards. I point out the fresh deer tracks that she should avoid stepping on; she tells me about the best lighting for ‘mysterious’ silhouettes.
By the time we start the hike back down, we’ve found rhythm with each other. I keep her from tripping; she waits patiently while I stop and listen to a bird call. We’re two gears from different machines, grinding against each other until the teeth finally catch.
When we reach the trailhead, the parking lot is full. A fleet of SUVs sit like shiny, metallic beetles on the gravel. I step back into the shadows at the edge of my territory. Wren stops at the gravel’s edge, looking back at me.
“Same time tomorrow?” she asks. She looks smaller now, the weight of the lodge and the bank and the internet pressing back down on her shoulders. “I have some ideas about a wood-knocking soundscape I want to run by you.”
“Tomorrow.” I touch the brown cake in my pocket. “Bring twine. And tell Marge the brown cake was... acceptable.”
“Acceptable. Right. I’ll translate that into ‘Guardian-speak for the best thing he’s ever tasted’.
” She gives me a tired smile and starts toward the lodge.
I watch until she’s on the porch, a small figure moving through a world that’s too loud and too fast, trying to save a ghost she had only just met.
The silence of the deep timber rise up to meet me like a familiar breath as I retreat deeper into it.
I have work to do, and for the first time in a very long time, I don’t mind that the day started five minutes late.