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For once, I don’t think this actually has to do with my grandfather. Yes, that looked like magic there at the end, but there was no way Grandfather knew I was going to run away, much less that I’d come this direction and happen upon this tree-man. Is he an elf? Some kind of fae?
Are there other magical creatures out there besides my family? Well, and my best friend Sabra, who’s a witch. Sabra and I are always theorizing that other beings or spirits might be able to break into this plane like my ancestors did. Just because we hadn’t personally run into any didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Grandfather Vlad had stories of running into… things, not that he ever got specific. But he always tried to have a good witch around in his employ for just such occasions.
I bite my bottom lip.
Maybe I should let whatever creature this is alone. He’ll do much better if he never gets entwined with my family.
But as I back away, ready to flee in the opposite direction, I take one last look at him. He looks so weak. How long has he been sitting against that tree? I didn’t see him at first because he looked like he’d become part of the tree he’d been there so long, an unending bed of moss and ivy covering him, crawling around his chest up the tree trunk.
He doesn’t seem to have much energy, either.
Maybe I’m not the only one who’s run away to the middle of the forest because I don’t have anywhere else to go.
In the end, it’s not so much a decision as an impulse. I can’t just leave him here.
I step forward, heft him into my arms—he barely weighs anything, and what weight he has feels like it’s mostly caked on mud and plant matter—and I start jogging.
On my way in, I ran past a remote cabin maybe twenty kilometers back, so I head in that direction. He’s motionless in my arms the entire time.
I hate having to drop him at the doorstep of the cabin once we get there, especially when his eyelids flutter, and I read what I think is distress when he realizes I’ve brought him to a building. He starts shaking his head and mumbling, “No. No people.”
“Hush,” I hiss at him as I knock on the door. “I’ll get rid of them.”
His eyes pop open wide, those shocking translucent gray irises flashing, but at least he shuts up.
A man in country attire opens the door. With a shotgun in his hand. He threatens me in the local dialect and gestures for me to get off his property.
“Is your wife home?” I ask him back. “Bring her to the door. Along with anyone else in the house.”
His eyes go blank in the familiar way they always do when I apply blood compulsion on someone, and he immediately drops the shotgun to his side and nods.
“Mariana,” he calls.
A woman’s voice calls back from the other room, along with a yelled something about how he’s a fool and she’s not even dressed.
But he demands she come again, and several moments later, a grumpy older woman with a handkerchief around her head and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth appears beside her husband.
“Hello,” I smile at the both of them. “Please leave and don’t come back for a month. Go take a lovely holiday.”
Her angry expression drops, and her eyes zone out. I barely even have to think about applying the compulsion these days; it’s such second nature when dealing with outsiders.
I pull out my wallet and give them more money than they probably see in a year. But it’s the pressure I put behind the words that has them both walking directly out of the house at my command as the husband silently accepts the money. They head down a little path toward the road beyond.
I watch tree-man’s eyes follow them and come back to me. “How?”
I roll my eyes. “You aren’t the only one with magic. Now come on, let’s see if they’ve got a hose somewhere out here.”
I scan the side of the house and sigh, seeing the water pump in the little overgrown front of the yard. “No such luck,” I tell him. “This is going to be cold.”
“If I leave you here, will you be here when I get back?” I ask him.
He only looks at me, unmoving, and I narrow my eyes.
“Stay here,” I order, adding compulsion, more focused and stronger than I bothered on the couple. Still, will it work on him? Sabra has learned to shield herself against me, something we practiced, but my grandfather Vlad is the only other person it’s useless against. I can even wield it against my many, many uncles.
I hurry inside the small two-room cabin and get what I need, including swiping a plate of still-steaming stew off the table. Good timing. We got here just in time for dinner.
When I get back outside, I take a quick breath when I see tree-man has made it halfway across the yard, dragging himself in a pathetically slow army crawl away from the cabin.
