Chapter 6 Baz
BAZ
Baz bounced awake with a bright, fresh sense of purpose. He had bedded down on the floor of the old store in his sleeping bag, and sunlight shining through the windows brought him awake at an early hour. He got up, stretched, and went outside to see what the town was like in the morning light.
He wasn’t the only one up. Once outside, he heard the sound of hammering from down the street. It sounded like either Lexie or Declan were hard at work fixing something.
The whole town was going to need a massive amount of repair. He didn’t think he’d realized what a huge job they were signing up for. It was going to be impossible to fix every building in town. Some were too badly damaged to save; others needed work that would require equipment they didn’t have.
And then there were the wild shifter clans.
Somehow it hadn’t even occurred to him that they would have strong opinions on people moving into the town.
It was clear that no one else had thought of it either, including their parents when the land-purchase deal had originally been made.
Technically, the town wasn’t on shifter land; therefore it shouldn’t have been a problem. Clearly the forest shifters disagreed.
Listening to the hammer blows ringing through the clear morning air, Baz wondered whether he ought to stop the others from doing any further work until he was able to speak to the forest clans more formally.
He discarded the idea reluctantly, because there was nothing else for them to do—just sit around and wait?
None of their repairs at the present time were making too much of an irreparable change to the town.
Uncle Alec probably could talk to the wild clans on their behalf.
Baz knew that his uncle, the Pinerock clan alpha, had regular dealings with them.
But no—the whole reason for coming out here was to establish themselves as an independent clan, as independent adults.
They couldn’t rely on their parents to solve every problem for them.
For all the wary caution of the wild shifter they had talked to last night, he felt optimistic about the potential of the town to serve as a bridge between the wild clans and the human world.
They just needed to prove that they could do it—to the wild bear shifters and to their families.
“Baz! Hey!” Lexie appeared, wearing a toolbelt. Her hair was wet from a wash and twisted into a single braid, looking like it had been finger-combed. “Can you come help me move some stuff? I’m shifter-strong—” She flexed, making a muscle. “But this stuff is heavy.”
Baz soon found out that by “heavy” she meant “actual anvil.”
“Are you keeping this?” he asked as they dragged the anvil from the center of the old smithy’s floor, where it had occupied pride of place, to one side.
“Of course I am! I’m planning to repair vehicles in here.
But I don’t see any reason not to learn blacksmithing as well.
I already know some of the basic principles.
Remember when I made a knife out of a leaf spring as a present for Uncle Gannon in shop class?
If we’re going to be dealing with the wild clans, it’s not like they’ll have much use for a mechanic, but they might really need a blacksmith. ”
Baz imagined his cousin with the sleeves of her plaid shirt pushed up and smudges of soot on her face, banging a knife blade on an anvil. Yeah, that was a picture he could easily see.
“Do you think the wild clans are going to drive us out?” Lexie asked more quietly, as he helped her relocate some crates that felt like they were full of lead—and probably did contain some kind of metal; they clanked when they moved.
“We’ll be all right.” Reluctantly, he added, “If we need to, we can go back to your dad and Uncle Alec, and have them carry on the negotiations on our behalf. They respect Uncle Alec a lot.”
Lexie had a sour look on her face that reflected his own thoughts. “I don’t know about you, but as much as I love Mom and Dad, I really don’t want to go back and tell them we couldn’t hack it.”
“I know. Especially since it took us all of a day to get into trouble,” Baz sighed. Together, they dropped a clanking, rattling crate on top of another. “What the heck is in here, anyway? I know the silver mine is completely tapped out, but do you suppose there might be some silver left in town?”
“Let’s find out,” Lexie said. She pried open the top.
The crate was full of rusty nails.
Lexie laughed. Baz ruefully picked up a handful of his “treasure.” Most of them were bent. “So much for that. Think these will be any good at all for our repairs?”
“I bet we could get some use out of them somewhere.” Lexie took a handful, examining them. “I can go through these and sort out the ones that are in good shape. Oh, would you look at this? At least some of these are authentic handmade nails.”
“Are they rare?”
“I mean, not really, but you don’t see them around much anymore.” Lexie scooped out a few more. “I think some of these might have been made on this actual anvil.”
Treasure after all, perhaps. At least for her. Baz grinned and wandered off as she continued to enthuse over a crate of nails.
By midday, Baz had the generator set up over at Lexie’s machine shop so they could run an air compressor and use power tools.
Everyone in the group had experience with construction projects, as they’d all helped out on their family ranches.
Fern was less experienced than the others, and Maida—had she been here—barely knew one end of a hammer from the other.
But Baz, Lexie, and Declan could all easily handle basic repairs.
Which meant there wasn’t much for Baz to do as a foreman.
Declan made it clear that he didn’t want anyone’s help, Lexie (covered in sawdust and cobwebs) was about as happy as he’d ever seen her, and Fern had turned her attention to giving her cottage such a brisk spring cleaning that Baz halfway expected to see bluebirds twittering around helping her carry stuff.
He was getting used to the layout of the town.
It really was very small. Some of the other old buildings that might be fun to fix up were the old livery stable Fern had pointed out yesterday, a saloon that looked like something out of the Wild West, and a boarded-up clapboard church.
And there was still the mysterious wishing well to find, if it even still existed.
What he decided to do instead was solve the mystery of the possibly inhabited cabin once and for all.
He thought about bringing some kind of gift—a sort of housewarming present?
Reverse housewarming? If there was someone staying in that cabin, clearly they were going out of their way not to be noticed; probably they expected to be chased out.
He would like to be able to offer something to make himself seem like less of a terrifying landlord come to call, and more of a neighbor.
But he didn’t even know what sort of person he was dealing with.
One of the forest shifters? A passing camper?
Something else entirely? He’d had the feeling ever since they got here that there was something a bit different about this town.
However, anything that left behind a wet bar of soap was no nature sprite.
So he decided to take the direct approach.
Approaching the cabin, he wondered if he was going to find out that the mystery guest had left in the night. The cabin’s door was tightly closed, no sign of smoke from the chimney, a general air of abandonment about the place.
Baz hesitated, then knocked. “Hello? My name’s Baz. If anyone’s in there, you’re not in trouble. I just want to meet you.”
There was no answer.
He tested the door. Technically, it didn’t have a doorknob; instead there was an old wrought-iron handle.
But something was definitely blocking it from the inside.
It seemed to have some kind of inner latch or deadbolt, which meant there had to be someone inside, unless there was some way of locking and unlocking it from the outside.
Baz examined the door more closely. He noticed a string dangling down, coming from a small slot in the door. It was almost invisible against the weathered wood.
Baz gave the string a little tug. He felt resistance on the other end.
What is this? he wondered.
He pulled harder. There was a sense of something moving, and abruptly, he felt the resistance loosen. The door moved a little on its hinges. Baz gave it a tug, and this time it swung easily.
Aha! he thought. He had read about this kind of thing in books about the pioneer days.
There was a latch on the inside of the door, which could be raised or lowered into place from the outside by pulling on a string—a poor man’s lock.
When a person was at home, they could make it secure by pulling in the string, and then leave it dangling out when they were gone.
It was no good against humans, but would protect the interior of the cabin from marauding bears and other wildlife.
So there was no real mystery here, just a cabin whose last owner had locked it and then went away.
Still, kind of odd he hadn’t noticed the string yesterday—almost as if it wasn’t dangling out then. Could he have missed it?
“Hello?” he said, pulling the door open.
The interior of the cabin was about what he’d expected, one small but snug room. There was a single window with panes of dirty glass above a rough-hewn table, a pot-bellied stove, a wood bed frame and a couple of other pieces of homemade furniture.
And he could instantly see that someone was living here. Not a sylph or nature sprite, but an actual person. They weren’t home right now, but there was a sleeping bag unrolled on the bunk and a pack sitting on a rough wooden chair.
Baz took a quick step backward. “Sorry!” he said reflexively, then got hold of himself. The cabin was clearly empty of its occupant.
But Baz didn’t think they had been gone long.
Nothing had dust or cobwebs on it. There was an electric lantern beside the bed, and a portable camp stove, the kind that worked off a small can of fuel, sitting on top of the rusty iron stove.
A towel was draped over the back of the chair.
It looked as if the owner had just stepped out.
Had the person gone? Had they encountered some kind of trouble?
He heard nothing alarming nearby. The only noises were the cheerful, upbeat sounds of his cousins at work.
Lexie had brought a portable music player with her, and he could hear the distant strains of one of the classic rock songs she liked.
Now and then came the thump of the air-compressor-powered nail gun.
As he stood there listening, Baz was hit with a sudden, powerful sense of danger, so strong that it made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He spun around, searching for anything out of place. He had never experienced anything like it, an urgent awareness that something was wrong now.
He had heard that it was possible for a clan alpha to sense when members of the clan were in danger. He wasn’t sure if that was what was happening now, or if he even was enough of an alpha yet for it to work, but he did know that something was very badly wrong.
Someone was at risk.
He turned and charged toward Main Street. “Lexie!”
“What are you bellowing about?”
The old forge’s double doors stood open, flung wide to let sunlight in and dust out. Lexie stepped out with a hammer in one hand and a handkerchief tied around her head to keep dust out of her hair. “What’s got your tail in a twist, cousin o’ mine?”
Lexie was clearly all right. Baz whirled in place, looking for the rest of his small clan. “Where are Fern and Declan?”
“Declan’s going full Schoolyard Rock over there.” Lexie pointed with the hammer, and Baz turned to see Declan up on a ladder, nail gun in one hand. Maybe he was going to fall? But he looked perfectly secure.
Baz spotted Fern a moment later. She was crouching on the boardwalk, pulling weeds into a bag to dispose of later, with wildflowers going into a carefully curated pile.
His clan were all fine. He turned again, surveying the street. Danger might be approaching them from any direction. But he saw nothing, not even storm clouds piling up above the mountains. The day was clear and bright, puffy clouds floating in the sky, absolutely idyllic.
And yet he knew something was wrong.
Lexie tapped his shoulder lightly with the hammer. “What is the matter with you?”
“I don’t know,” Baz said slowly. He was starting to relax with the visible evidence that his friends and cousins, his clan, were all safe. Maida, perhaps? But it didn’t feel distant. It felt urgent and now and here.
Fern jumped up suddenly from the boardwalk. Dropping a handful of weeds, she ran to Baz.
“Something’s wrong,” she said, staring at him.
Baz took her by the shoulders. “Yes!” he said. “What is it, Fern? Can you tell me? Can you—see? I can’t feel anything beyond a sense that something bad is coming. Something dangerous.”
Fern gazed at him for a moment, then closed her eyes. Lexie looked worriedly at both of them.
When Fern opened her eyes again, there was a strange clarity in them.
“Her,” she said. “It’s not us. It’s her.”
“Her who?” Lexie demanded. “Maida? Is Maida okay?”
Fern shook her head. “Not Maida.” She looked into Baz’s eyes with her clear, strange green ones. “You know who, and you know where she is. Go find her.”
That was all it took. Something deep inside him did know, and Baz spun on his heel, and took off running, barely aware of Lexie’s exclaimed “What? Who?” fading behind him.