Chapter 25 Arden
ARDEN
By daylight, the town was just as Arden remembered—as of course it would be, since she hadn’t even been gone a day. It seemed strange, baffling even, that so much had changed so quickly.
She and Baz had spent the night in the store, with their sleeping bags zipped together into one. Now Baz was up on the roof with Lexie, checking the storm damage, and Arden went to retrieve her things from her cabin.
She was packing up when Fern knocked on her door. “You aren’t leaving Windrock?” Fern asked anxiously, looking around the bare interior of the cabin.
“No, I just need more room. This was lovely while it lasted, but Baz has invited me to move in with him.”
Fern giggled. “You’re going to be living in the store?”
“The storekeeper’s quarters, actually. It’s behind the store, and it looks nice. Baz says the roof leaks a little when it rains, but he and Lexie are fixing it.”
“Want any help carrying things?”
“I would love that, thank you.”
She hadn’t realized that she had acquired so much stuff since she’d been here. The cups and other pottery alone took up both Fern’s hands, and if not for having brought the sleeping bag down the day before, Arden would have despaired of cramming everything else into her pack.
They walked back together in the fresh morning sun. The sound of hammering echoed down the street. Declan and Maida were up on the windmill, working on it. The blades turned a few notches with a creaky squeal, then stopped again.
“Wind power?” Fern called up to them.
“Hey, it’s free!” Maida shouted back down.
“Do either of you know anything about windmills?”
“Hands-on learning,” Declan replied.
“Have fun and don’t fall.”
“I can fly,” was Declan’s response. If mentioning his shift form in front of Arden bothered him, he didn’t show it.
As they continued on along the boardwalk toward the store, Arden asked, “Is Maida a dragon, too?”
Fern started to answer. Then she paused and her forehead wrinkled for a moment.
“Fern? Are you all right?”
“Oh ... yes.” Still, Fern almost missed a step on the boardwalk, and Arden had to steady her. “Uh, no. She’s a bear.” But she sounded oddly unsure about it.
After the bustle and commotion and even danger of the last few days, Arden found that it was a simple and beautiful pleasure to settle into a long, peaceful day with absolutely nothing that she had to do.
She gathered cleaning supplies and spent a few hours in the storekeeper’s house, where she scrubbed floors and windows, collected what few musty, mouse-damaged fabrics remained and made a trash heap outside for later disposal, and then started setting out her own things.
The row of old crockery on a windowsill was the first thing she set up.
There was an old iron bedframe that she didn’t think she could move by herself, but that was going to either need to go, or get a good de-rusting and a proper mattress on it.
Up on the roof, Baz and Lexie clattered around for hours, creating ominous banging and cracking noises, occasionally sounding like they were about to fall through. Arden looked up nervously whenever dust sifted down, but so far it seemed like the hammering was the worst of it.
The day stretched before her, long and golden. Breakfast had long since worn off. She ate a granola bar from an open box of them on Baz’s store counter and wandered out into the street.
It was a lovely, peaceful afternoon. Music was playing somewhere.
It wasn’t Lexie’s usual classic rock; instead it was melodious and haunting.
Arden looked up at the newly installed satellite dish sticking up above the roof of Lexie’s machine shop, and realized that with satellite phone and internet, they now had the ability to stream music as well.
It made the place feel a little less isolated, but it was also nice to have the sense of connection to the outside world.
Arden stood on the boardwalk and felt something inside her slowly unclench, a tight knot of worry that had been there for so long that it had almost become part of her. And now she felt it relax.
She didn’t have to hide. She didn’t have to run. Grant was no longer looking for her, and everyone here knew exactly who she was, and they were all okay with it. Or at least, if not precisely okay, then they were willing to accept her anyway.
With the sun warm on her shoulders, she walked up the street toward the sound of the music. Down the hill, she heard the distant goats bleating. Birds were singing in the trees.
Arden had assumed that the music-listener would turn out to be Fern or Maida.
It wasn’t until she reached the end of the street with the windmill that she realized the person listening to it was Declan.
He was sitting on one of the wide rungs halfway up the windmill ladder, legs swinging and a small speaker sitting beside him, playing those beautiful, melodious tones.
It was meditation music, nothing at all like what Arden would have guessed he’d listen to; she would have expected heavy metal or punk.
She started to walk away, but Declan looked down and said, “It’s nice out here, isn’t it?”
Arden paused. “Yes.” Resting a hand on the windmill structure, she looked up at him. “Did you and Maida make any progress?” She was going to ask if they’d gotten it working, but since the blades weren’t turning, the answer was clearly no.
Declan shrugged. His usual leather jacket was off, leaving him in a black singlet with bare shoulders and arms. “Not really, but it isn’t urgent. It’s just a way to pass the time.”
Arden didn’t get the feeling that he hated her being here, so she sat on the bottom step.
Declan and his sister really were different from the others, she thought.
She could sense the way that Baz, Lexie, and Fern all loved this place, as she was coming to love it herself.
Declan and Maida were more reluctant. And yet, in his own way, Declan seemed just as committed.
It was to protect Windrock, Arden knew, that he had tried to drive her away.
She didn’t really want to bring up the topic, with the two of them having a moment of relatively comfortable companionship for the first time since she had been here. But at the same time, if they were both going to stay, she felt that they needed to resolve it somehow.
“Did you and Baz work out what you needed to?” she ventured.
Declan snorted a short, unexpected laugh. “Oh, you mean with our drag-out brawl in the mud? Honestly, I guess ... maybe. He’s got the makings of a pretty good alpha. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with every one of his decisions on principle. I’ll still tell him when I think he’s wrong.”
“Every leader needs someone to do that,” came a voice from an unexpected direction.
Fern strolled out of the woods behind the schoolhouse. Arden had no idea how long she’d been there, but in a town full of shifters, she supposed she was going to have to get used to people appearing and disappearing randomly.
“I hope we all do that,” Arden said firmly. “And I doubly hope that you don’t think I’m giving Baz my support just because he’s my—” She hovered briefly on the edge of saying the word; it still didn’t come as naturally to her as to the shifters. But it was true. “—my mate.”
“Don’t worry,” Fern told her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Nobody thinks that. And you’re right. We’ll all tell Baz when we think he’s wrong. And,” she added, looking up at Declan, “when we think he’s right, too.”
Declan gave a soft huff, but he sounded more amused than annoyed.
“Anyway, I’ve got something for both of you,” Fern went on, unslinging her arm from around Arden. She reached into one of her skirt’s large pockets and came up with a handful of small, bright objects. “Oops!” She bent down to grab a couple that had escaped.
“What are these?” Arden asked, hastily bringing up her other hand to catch the fistful of bright, woven loops that Fern deposited into her hands.
“Friendship bracelets!” Fern said. She fished a few more out of her pockets. “There are plenty for each of us to have one, with some left over for new people. And of course I can make more if you don’t like any of these colors.”
Arden vaguely remembered some of her middle school friends making friendship bracelets.
It wasn’t a thing she had realized anyone did anymore.
But she was still deeply touched to be included.
There were a variety to choose from, including some with bright clashing colors, and others—more appealing to Arden’s artistic sense of color theory—that stayed within certain realms of the color spectrum: green and brown, blue and purple, orange and green.
“I’m not wearing any of those,” Declan said from above them.
“Those aren’t for you. I made yours specially.” Fern had held one back, and she waved it above her head. Arden looked up and saw to her amusement that it was black and gray, matching the monochrome color palette that Declan seemed to prefer.
“Oh, fine,” Declan said with a not very convincing show of reluctance.
Fern pattered up a few steps and stretched to hand it to him. Meanwhile, Arden agonized over the different colors and finally chose a charming autumn-toned one.
“Come on.” Fern tugged on Arden’s arm. “Let’s go give everyone else theirs.”
Lexie selected one of the clashing many-colored ones; Arden got the impression that, although flattered, she didn’t really care what it looked like.
Baz laughed and picked out a green and brown one that Arden privately thought reflected his hazel eyes.
Maida pored over the handful until the others got impatient, as if it was the most important decision in the world, and finally asked if she could have two, “so I can wear them with different outfits.”
By now, afternoon was lengthening into evening. Baz brought armfuls of dry wood and heaped them in the street, and soon a bonfire was crackling. With all the brush-clearing they had been doing, there was plenty to burn.
“You know,” Lexie said as she carried out two camp chairs, “at some point we’re going to need a different location. This is only working because we don’t have actual traffic yet.”
“Problem for future us,” Baz declared airily.
Maida looked toward the woods. “Are those people from last night going to come back, do you think?”
“If they do,” Baz said, “we’ll invite them to sit down and eat with us. This place is for everyone, not just us.”
After their parents’ visit, and with the addition of the propane-powered refrigerator, there was a wider variety of food.
Still, for tonight they decided on camp food and soon had a pot of baked beans bubbling in the coals.
Baz passed around chilled drinks from the fridge, beers for most (Arden took one, trying to remember the last time she’d had a cold beer by a campfire) and a soda for Fern in deference to her recent head injury.
“To us,” Baz said, raising his beer. “The Windrock Clan.” He leaned his shoulder against Arden’s, a stripe of warmth in the growing cool of the evening. “And all who join us.”
“Hear, hear,” Lexie said loudly, and the others joined in, quietly in Declan’s case, but the agreement was there.
Heat baked off the fire on Arden’s face.
The new friendship bracelet rested cozily against her wrist, the sort of thing that she could never have worn to any of Grant’s fancy parties—nor did she care to.
Her jeans were dusty from the day’s cleaning and ripped at the knee where she’d torn them on a nail.
She hadn’t had a shower. She guessed that she was a mess. She wouldn’t change a thing.
Maida opened a bag of chips and passed them around.
Lexie had just finished mixing up a pan of instant cornbread and set it in the coals to go with the baked beans.
Arden was already starving. She couldn’t imagine enjoying any fancy gourmet dinner half as much as a plate of beans and cornbread, seasoned with smoke and the hunger that came from good honest work.
And she couldn’t imagine being happier anywhere than sitting here with these people, in this place.