Chapter Seventeen Gordon and Andrea
The call comes at midnight. Chopin bolts across my chest and over Andrea’s sleeping form.
“I traced him over to the woods behind Blue Moon Lake. You said to call before approaching. Do you... Do you want some of us to stand by?” Alban says, voice tired.
My brother has been found. My brother, who could be here alone, injured, or here for blood, with a pack of trolls, maybe a family of his own, eager to make an example of the “human-lover.” Or eager to learn from him?
I shake my head. “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Jakob Minegold and Gloria are out that way. Have them look for a flare if things go wrong.”
“Got it.”
“And if anything happens—”
“If you think something might happen, then Duncan and Genesis are going to stay up in the air over the woods to have your back,” Alban says sternly, naming the two gargoyles who by default help out at night since they’re stone in sunlight.
Unlike trolls, that’s just temporary, and they become flesh and blood each night.
I think about the burden and risk others might face—and then I think about Andrea’s smoke-stained, tearful face when she thought I was dead. If I were really, truly dead, she would be in so much pain. “Yes. They could watch the woods from the sky. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Lieutenant,” Alban says.
I hang up and kiss Andrea on the forehead. “I will be right back,” I whisper.
“Love you,” she mutters into her pillow.
“Love you,” I reply, and Chopin gives me an indignant “Mrp!” from the floor. “Yes. You, too.”
Andrea: Where the hell are you?
I can’t text while I’m driving, but now that Andrea is up, I call. “I’m on my way to meet my brother.”
“Without me?” she screeches.
“Yes. In case he is murderous and violent. If he is not, I will take him to my cabin. Our cabin.”
“Okay. And if you can’t?”
I hesitate, but then a light flickers on in my brain, mirroring my solution.
“I will keep him in the woods, away from others. I will have backup. I will keep him there until sunlight. If he is truly good, the sun won’t hurt him, and he won’t rush to get away from it.
If he is evil, the sun will do what it has always done, and eliminate creatures of darkness.
If he turns to stone, I will place him in the back of the truck, and I will drive him out to where the Pine River meets the larger Chenango.
I will bury him in the water and stones. ”
“I’ll come with you. Either way. I’ll be waiting at the cabin at daylight, and if you call and tell me it’s safe, I’ll have a huge bunch of pancakes ready for you guys.”
“You shouldn’t have to cook. This has been an ordeal.”
“I’m sorry, but there’s no way I’m not cooking for family.
I might not be the daughter my mother wanted, but I’m the one she raised, and I still know that when family comes to town, you feed them,” Andrea says, voice bright and sassy, hiding something thick and tearful underneath.
“And... And if it’s just you and the statue in the truck, I’ll pack sandwiches.
We can go out to the river and take a picnic.
Say some words over him. Tell a good memory? ”
I drive past the White Pines Estate, heading for the forest and lake behind it, public land that adjoins the sprawling 1920s mansion and grounds. Good memories. Good memories?
I cannot find any right now. “I will call. I love you.”
I stop my truck beside Alban’s car and get out.
Alban looks tired and not at all like his usual handsome white-collar model-meets-lawyer.
At least the other night he looked somewhat rested.
Now, he looks stubbly and haggard. He passes me a crystal that flickers like a disco ball, bright silver beams blinding me until I close my fist over it.
“The brighter it is, the closer he is. You sure you don’t want me to—”
“No. I do not. I want you to sleep. I see Duncan and Genesis are covering the sky.” My eyes point heavenwards, and then back to the crystal. “Into the woods.”
Alban nods. “Be safe.”
In the woods, it’s black and spooky, even for someone like me.
There are things in the woods, they say, things that are ancient and don’t care to be known.
There is a herd meeting place for the local centaurs, the ones who usually stay isolated, and I know that even beyond the lake there is another unnamed pond somewhere in these woods, where a few Selkies and Kelpies make their home.
And they don’t usually welcome visitors.
Well, neither do I. They will have to make an exception.
I stomp through the woods, announcing my presence. I let the strobing crystal guide me, and try to think over the crunching of underbrush and broken branches and my high, shivering breathing.
There aren’t caves in this part of the woods, not that I know of, so when I suddenly see a hillock of branches and leaves and my crystal stops flashing and stays steady, I figure that I’m in the right place.
“Brother?” I call softly.
Nothing.
“Brother, it is Gordon!” I say more boldly, arm slowly starting to pull back, head on the swivel. If he was here with good intentions, he’d greet me, wouldn’t he? I brace for an attack.
It never comes.
A lanky, creeping form emerges from the shelter with wide eyes in a thin face. “Gordon?”
“Hugo!” I gasp. Emotions are swirling again. My brother is here. My little brother, the one who I had little hope would survive, the one who was more like me than the others. My little brother is here—and he looks unwell. Hungry. He moves unsteadily, uncertainly.
“Am I asleep this time?” he whispers, holding back.
“Are you asleep? No. You are awake. You can tell, because you’re talking to me with your eyes open,” I point out.
Hugo laughs—a sound I never heard in all of my life, not from him.
He was too soft and small to be a brute and laugh at others’ pain.
He was usually bearing the brunt of cruelty, and there was nothing to laugh at.
“Well, I thought I was awake before. I was so tired, Gordon, so tired, and then there was a beautiful woman with wings, and reddish skin, and white hair, lots of it... And we were talking about Pine Ridge, just sitting on the rocks, talking until I felt like I was strong enough to stand and keep going. Only then—”
“Then you started to feel weaker, not stronger?”
“How did you know?” Hugo asks, carefully creeping forward.
“Long story. What happened?”
“I told the lady, Blanche —her name was Blanche, I think—that I felt sick and I needed to go find my brother. Only then I woke up—and I wasn’t on a rock, I was on the ground in the woods, and the woman was really there.
She was crouched over me, and I shouted and threw her off, and she...
” Hugo pats his arm and neck. “She gouged me with her claws and vanished with smoke and fire! I didn’t know what to do!
Mother always said Pine Ridge was for human lovers and careful actors.
She talked about how the bad monsters came here and secretly had basements full of human corpses to feast on, all the while pretending to play nice. ”
“Mother is wrong. Mother is wrong about everything, but especially that. Pine Ridge is a good place, and yes, sometimes bad influences come here. They do not get to stay. Why are you here?”
Hugo moves forward again, and his arms start to rise, but then fall quickly.
A hug. My brother wanted to embrace me. I think. Or it could have been an attack, but he decided I was too ready for him. Needs the element of surprise, perhaps.
“I came because... Because I don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s just Mother and me now.”
“What? Where are Matthew and Randall?”
Hugo twists his bloodied shirt in nervous hands. His skin is covered in tiny cuts and scrapes, signs of a troll living off the land for a long time. The jeans he wears only come to a few inches above his shin, revealing bony ankles above large, bare feet.
“Well... Matthew left a few years ago, looking for work when the factory started requiring identification papers from all the workers. He said he’d come back. Said he’d send money. He didn’t.”
I don’t know if that’s good or bad. It’s certainly selfish, and that’s exactly how “good trolls” act, according to Mother.
“Randall... Randall and Mother started looking for stranded drivers, and...” Hugo gulps.
“That’s when I ran away the first time, but I came back after a few weeks of hiding, not able to find work, and not really sure how to—to do anything.
” Hugo gives me a miserable, guilty look.
“I found Randall turned to stone about five miles from the meat processing plant where Dad used to work sometimes. I’m betting he got hit in the head with a tire iron or maybe one of the people he stopped had a gun.
He was sprawled out, on his back, as if he’d passed out or fallen, and I guess he wasn’t able to get home before the light came. ”
“I see. So you ran again.”
“Well... Not at first. Because... Well, she’s my mother. I thought I had to take care of her, even if she hated me.”
“That’s very noble,” I manage a little smile, some of my unease leaving. “But there is no good that comes from caring for and nurturing wicked beings if they don’t express even a small interest in changing.”
Hugo hangs his head. “She also told me that if I ever left, she would hunt me down and crack my bones for marrow and eat my eyeballs for dessert.”
“Ah. That’s an effective threat.” But he ran. I size up my little brother. He is not so little now, but still pitifully thin for a troll. “You braved her threats, I see.”