16. Rowan #2
Wren looks away, her jaw tight. She doesn’t speak for a long time.
I can see the gears turning, her mind replaying the years of struggle through this new lens.
She isn’t angry—she’s mourning a version of history where things might have been different if someone had just known the right name to call.
“You’re the first one to come looking in a very long time,” I add. “I didn’t think there were any of you left who remembered how to shout.”
She looks back at me, a small, sad smile touching her lips. “I didn’t know I was shouting. I thought I was just being a nuisance.”
“You were,” I say, the banter returning like a familiar coat. “You still are. But it’s a focused kind of nuisance. I’ve grown accustomed to it.”
She laughs, a light sound that breaks the tension of the afternoon.
She pushes off the log, brushing the bark from her pants, and starts walking again.
The domesticity of us moving through the brush together feels earned.
It’s a bridge we’ve built out of a business agreement and bad trail cameras, and it feels more solid than the stone of my house.
As we get closer to the lodge grounds, she stops and turns to me, her eyes narrowed in a way that usually means she’s been reading something she shouldn’t.
She takes a step into my personal space, her nose twitching slightly.
She looks like a predator trying to catch a scent, which is a ridiculous image given our respective sizes.
“What are you doing?” I ask, pulling back slightly.
“Research,” she says, stepping closer. She sniffs the air near my shoulder, her expression one of intense concentration. “The internet says you’re supposed to smell like a wet dog dipped in sulfur and left to rot in a dumpster. It’s a very specific profile.”
She leans in closer, her face inches from my chest. I freeze, my breath hitching as the scent of her—shampoo and sweat and the faint tang of old paper—washes over me. She sniffs again, her nose brushing the fabric of my t-shirt.
“You don’t smell like sulfur,” she concludes, looking up at me with a triumphant grin. “You smell like pine needles and... is that beeswax? And something else. Something clean. Like the air right before it snows.”
I stare at her, mortified. My face feels inexplicably warm. It’s not a feeling I’m used to. “I wash, Wren. I am a Guardian, not a garbage heap. And please stop smelling me. It’s highly undignified.”
“I’m conducting a scientific audit,” she says, her eyes dancing with mischief. “The public has a right to know that Bigfoot uses artisanal soap.”
She turns and heads toward the lodge, her stride bouncy and full of a confidence she didn’t have this morning.
I watch her go, the scent of her still lingering in the air between us.
I am a creature of ancient habits and century-long silences, but as I turn back toward the shadows of the trees, the forest feels a little too quiet without the sound of her voice.
My skin feels like it’s humming as I touch the line of my jaw where she leaned in close, wondering what it would have felt like if her lips had brushed against me instead of her breath.
I have lived for centuries in the stillness, but for the first time, I find myself looking forward to the next time she decides to be a nuisance.
I don’t follow her all the way to the porch, keeping watch from the safety of the thickest hemlocks as she navigates the gravel lot.
She stops to wave at Walt, who is busy trying to convince a tourist that, no, the Bigfoot Scat in the gift shop was actually just chocolate-covered raisins, and then she disappears inside.
The lodge swallows her, and I’m left with the silence of the mountain—a silence that suddenly feels less like a sanctuary and more like a void.
I turn back toward my own territory, moving with the practiced invisibility that had served me for centuries.
Now that Wren isn’t with me, I can give my full attention to the boot print, that jagged scar across the peace I’ve spent decades cultivating.
Someone is getting closer. The nudges aren’t enough anymore.
The subtle redirections that usually sends hikers stumbling back toward the well-marked trails are failing against the sheer, mindless persistence of the modern world.
These tourists document the woods, mapping every inch with a cold, digital precision that doesn’t leave room for shadows.
When I reach the creek where I crushed the print, I inspect the earth.
The boot print isn’t the only thing marring my territory.
There’s a deep, metallic scrape on a nearby stone, the kind of mark left by a tripod leg or a heavy camera rig.
Narrowing my eyes, I study the surrounding area.
There is more than one boot print. The leaf litter here has been trampled, disturbed by multiple sets of boots.
They’re looking for the ‘man’ they saw on the hotline’s page, the one the internet has started calling the Lodge Giant.
They aren’t looking for a monster, but an employee.
It’s a terrifyingly human sort of interest, and I know, with the certainty of the coming winter, that my isolation is a fraying thread.
I stand, my gaze traveling up the ridge toward the hidden mouth of the hollow.
I told Wren the truth. The arrangement required the Cassidy family to seek me out.
But as I think of her sniffing my shirt, her eyes bright with a humor that felt as vital as the spring water, I realize the terms have shifted.
I’m not just a neighbor anymore, and she’s not just the record-keeper.
We are something messy and undefined, a partnership built on a foundation of fake phone calls and real secrets.
I reach the slab of granite that serves as my step and paused.
The air is cooling, the first true frost of the season whispering through the needles.
I have lived through a thousand such changes, watching the weather turn and the families rise and fall like the tide.
But tonight, as I pull the heavy oak door shut and listen to the latch click five feet above the floor, the house feels too large.
The chairs are too tall, the ceilings too distant, and the silence no longer a comfort.
I sit at my table, the air still smelling faintly of the coffee Wren didn’t finish, and wonder if Florence Cassidy ever realized that the name she gave me out of spite would eventually become the only thing I had that felt like it belonged to me.