14. Wren
WREN
EVERYTHING THIS MAN KNOWS IS WRONG
Barnaby Jones is wearing a vest with so many pockets I’m reasonably sure he could house a small ecosystem in it.
He stands at the head of the lodge’s common room, bathed in the glow of a projector that’s currently displaying a grainy, sepia-toned slide of a cedar stump.
Barnaby, however, doesn’t see a stump. He thinks the stump is a territorial marker left by a solitary male in his prime.
I lean against the back wall, arms crossed, trying to keep my expression neutral.
Beside me, Rowan is a tectonic plate disguised as a human.
He’s opted to stand in the shadows, his massive frame nearly vanishing into the wood paneling, but I can feel the heat radiating off him.
It’s a dry, mounting pressure, like a forest before a lightning strike.
“Now, notice the horizontal fracture at the four-foot mark,” Barnaby says, the red dot of his laser pointer dancing over the picture of a piece of rotten wood.
“One might mistake it for natural decay, but it’s a deliberate wood knock.
Our research suggests they use these to communicate across vast distances, often signaling a desire for a mate or a warning to encroaching rivals. A linguistic bridge, if you will.”
Rowan shifts, the floorboards groaning under the weight of his sudden, rigid posture. I steal a glance at him. His jaw is so tight I’m surprised his molars haven’t turned to dust. His eyes are fixed on the slide with the kind of intensity normally reserved for blood feuds.
“Research,” Rowan mutters. His voice is a low vibration that barely carries to my ear, but it’s thick with a centuries-old disdain that makes my skin prickle. “He called a fallen branch a linguistic bridge.”
“Hush,” I whisper, nudging my elbow into his side. It’s like hitting a granite cliff, but he doesn’t move. “He’s a PhD in Crypto-Zoological Anthropology. Respect the credentials, Honey Man.”
“He’s a PhD in making things up to fill the silence,” Rowan says, his voice gaining a dangerous edge of clarity. “That stump was hit by a falling hemlock during the spring thaw three years ago. I saw it happen.”
I suppress a snort. The common room is packed with the Cryptid Response Unit types: men and women in tactical fleece, nodding along as if Barnaby is reciting the Sermon on the Mount.
They’ve paid a premium for this Masterclass in Hominid Behavior.
When Barnaby suggested doing the lecture here, I hesitated, but the mower needs a new belt, and Marge and Walt need to be paid.
“Furthermore,” Barnaby continues, clicking to the next slide, which features a diagram of a very muscular, very naked ape-man crouched by a stream.
“The Sasquatch is a strictly solitary creature. The males are fiercely territorial, spending ninety percent of their lives in total isolation. They avoid all social contact, even with their own kind, except for brief, violent mating windows.”
Rowan actually scoffs. It’s a wet, derisive sound that makes a woman in the third row turn around and shush him. He doesn’t even notice her. He’s leaning forward now, the concealment influence he usually projects feeling thin, frayed by the sheer friction of Barnaby’s confidence.
“Solitary males,” Rowan repeats, the words landing like stones. “No.”
“He’s the expert, Rowan,” I murmur, my heart doing a strange, fluttering dance against my ribs. It’s partially the thrill of the lie and partially the way Rowan’s proximity seems to pull all the oxygen out of my lungs. I swallow a laugh as I say, “Maybe you just haven’t read the latest journals.”
“I am the latest journal,” he growls. “That man talks about me like I’m a mountain lion with a personality disorder. We are social. Just like humans, some are more social than others. I wouldn’t be standing here if I weren’t social.” Every time he says the word social, he sounds more disgusted.
I clap my hand over my mouth before a giggle can burst out of me. Rowan claiming to be social is the funniest thing I’ve heard in weeks. As far as I know, the man speaks to me and sometimes interacts with Walt and Marge.
Barnaby clicks to another slide. “Communication is key to understanding the beast. They communicate through wood knocks and high-pitched whistles. They use the trees as instruments to broadcast their presence.”
Rowan looks like he’s about to either storm the stage or spontaneously combust. The internal monologue in my head, usually a sharp, marketing-driven list of tasks, has narrowed down to a single, hyper-focused observation: Rowan Warden is currently losing an argument with a projector, and it is the most endearing thing I have ever seen.
“Sometimes,” Rowan snaps, “we’re just telling you to stop hitting our trees with your clubs. It’s annoying. It wakes the birds.”
The room falls silent as he stops speaking. Barnaby squints into the shadows of the back row, trying to locate the source of the interruption. I freeze, my hand instinctively reaching out to grab Rowan’s forearm. His skin is hot, his muscles coiled like springs.
“Who said that?” Barnaby asks, his voice pitched in that faux-calm tone people use with toddlers or the mentally unstable. “Do we have a skeptic in our midst?”
I squeeze Rowan’s arm, a silent plea for him to dial back the ancient-guardian-wrath. He glances at me, and for a second, the frustration in his eyes wavers. He looks baffled, genuinely hurt that his life’s reality is being sold as a sequence of aggressive, lonely malfunctions.
“Just a local,” I say, raising my voice as I step forward, keeping my body between Barnaby and Rowan’s looming silhouette. “He’s very... protective of the flora. He thinks the wood-knocking research might be biased toward the human perspective.”
Barnaby chuckles, a patronizing sound that makes Rowan’s jaw tick. “A valid concern, my friend. But we must rely on the data. The wood knocks are consistent with primate territorial displays. It’s science.”
“It’s a headache,” Rowan mutters, but he allows me to pull him to the side exit.
He’s still vibrating with a low-frequency hum of irritation, but he’s following my lead.
He lets me guide him out onto the porch, where the night air is cool and smells of damp earth and the pine needles he treats like family members.
The door closes behind us, muffling Barnaby’s transition into Scent Marking and the Alpha Musk. I lean my back against the wood and blow out a breath. The silence is a physical relief, until Rowan starts pacing.
“Linguistic bridges,” he says, throwing his hands up. “I’ve lived through numerous forest fires and floods, and I’ve never seen anything as devastating as that man’s slide deck.”
“I don’t know,” I say, leaning my head back and watching him. “I thought the diagram of the naked ape-man was a nice touch. The artist really captured that brooding isolation you have going on.”
Rowan stops pacing. He turns to look at me, the yellow light from the lobby window catching the sharp line of his nose and the shadow of his stubble.
He looks rugged, exhausted, and profoundly put-upon.
His Don’t be an Assquatch T-shirt is stretched tight across his chest, the cartoon Bigfoot on it looking far more relaxed than the man wearing it.
When I gave him the shirt a few days ago, he actually laughed, and the warm sound of it is still rushing through me even now.
“You’re enjoying this,” he says accusingly, though the edge in his voice has softened into something closer to resignation. “You brought me here to watch me suffer.”
“I brought you here so you’d know what we’re up against,” I counter, pushing off the door and taking a step toward him.
“Knowledge is power, Rowan. Now you know that if you want to find a mate, you just have to find a rotten stump and hit it four times with a stick. It’s much more efficient than whatever you’ve been doing for the last three hundred years. ”
He stares at me, his expression flat. Then, a slow, reluctant tug of a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. It changes his whole face, smoothing out the ancient creases of his forehead and making him look like a man who might actually enjoy a joke.
“I’ve been doing it all wrong,” he says, his voice dropping an octave. “No wonder I’m so lonely. I’ve been using words and honey when I should have been focused on causing structural damage to the timber.”
I laugh, the sound bright and easy in the dark.
We’re standing close now, the air between us charged with the lingering adrenaline of the lecture and something else, something heavier that I’m trying very hard to ignore.
His height is a constant, physical fact that makes me feel like I’m standing at the base of a monument.
I have to tilt my head back just to meet his eyes.
“Exactly,” I say, my voice a little breathless. “You’re just a solitary male with a territorial display problem. It’s not your fault. It’s the science.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then slowly moves back up to my eyes.
The teasing glint in his eyes fades, replaced by a stillness that feels more intimate than the laughter.
He reaches out, his hand hovering near my shoulder before he catches himself and drops it.
The movement is small, but it says everything about the distance he’s trying to maintain and the way it’s failing.
“Why would they want to find a nine-foot predator?” he asks, his voice suddenly soft, sincere, and a little bewildered. It’s a genuine inquiry from a creature that has spent its entire existence trying to be the space between the trees.
I look away, out toward the dark line of the forest. “Because people are bored, Rowan. And because the world feels small and figured out. They want to believe there’s something left that hasn’t been mapped or cataloged.
They’re looking for wonder, even if they have to call it a monster to make it fit in their heads. ”