Page 13 of His Human Believer

Vidar unfolds a second chair and sits down next to me. “I have taken a vow.”

“Oh yeah, sorry.” I shake my head. “You said that earlier, and of course that’s a big deal. Tell me more. What does this vow of celibacy entail, exactly?”

“Two months ago, I stood before the full council of the Royal Hyrrokin Academy and swore the Vow of the Empty Hearth. It was witnessed by every Fellow in the chamber and entered into the permanent record under my own name. It is a twelve-month vow of complete celibacy. I am not even allowed masturbation to find relief.”

“You can’t even touch yourself?” I bite at my lip. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“Because the legend does harm. The Skyggjar is not a harmless story. Families still keep the old protections. Children are told the dark wants them, that if they flame at the wrong hour something will come for them. There are households in this region where offspring are not permitted outside during alignment, and offspring who believe, genuinely, that this is because something will take them. I have been called to three separate incidents in my career in which a frightened being entered a preserve at night with a weapon and did not come out again. Three. I have documented one instance in which a fire beast, an endangered animal, a protected animal, was destroyed by a landowner who was entirely certain it was a Skyggjar. There are collectors in the outer sectors who would pay a fortune for a Skyggjar claw. And there are beings willing to go and look for one. That trade exists because the story exists. It does not require the creature to be real. It only requires that the question remain open. A story that is not true still kills. So I will retire it, properly, with evidence.”

“And what does the vow have to do with this?”

“The vow is a protective custom. Any scholar who goes into the field during an alignment intending to find the Hidden One is expected to observe it.” He shifts his weight. “Sixteen years I have studied this legend from archives and interviews. That requires nothing of a male. Reading is not hunting. The custom has never once applied to me before. But I am here because your human holiday you call Halloween, is on the same night as the alignment. The alignment comes once in a generation, Margaret. I am forty years old. There will not be another in my working life.” He looks out at the black canopy. “The reports at this wall began nine weeks ago, before the alignment. That is why the Academy took them seriously. And that is why I am standing here.”

“So you swore the vow⁠—”

“The day the consultation was confirmed. Two months ago.”

“Why does it have to be for a whole year?”

“Because it is meant to be a difficult vow of endurance. I do not believe a word of the folklore behind this vow, but if I break it, every finding in that paper becomes something my critics can dismiss. A single failure of observance and the entire investigation is a commoner’s sloppy work, and the story survives, and it goes on harming beings.”

“So you’re doing this to keep being safe.”

“Yes…Margaret.” He growls. “You need to leave and return to the house. If you stay out here for too much longer, I will find it difficult to not try and talk you into my bed.”

I chuckle. “You think I can’t say no? I’m not afraid of you.”

His barbed tail flicks behind him. “I can be very persuasive.”

“Oh, I imagine. But, you’ve taken a vow, yes and I’m telling you that I’ll take a vow too. I vow, that during this whole case, during the entire time you’re here on Tarvos and tied to your vow, I will help you maintain it. I won’t flirt with you. I won’t try and touch you. And if you try and do the same to me, I’ll cut you off with a very mean-sounding voice.” I smile. “I won’t let you break your vow, Vidar Coalstone. I want you to win at this as much as you do.”

Smoke drifts, very slowly, from one nostril.

“There are conditions, though,” I add.

He snorts. “Of course there are.”

“First, I don’t agree with you.” I fold my arms. “About the Skyggjar. I know you have all your reasons you consider very valid to think the Skyggjar is nothing more than a harmful legend, but six kids told the same story in the same words about their sightings. I’ve built an entire career on the principle that when that happens, you listen, and I’m not ready to call it folklore. I’ll listen to your evidence but I’m not there.”

“That is acceptable,” he says. “That is, in fact, correct methodology.”

“Second, your findings will stay clean because I’m not here as an investigator. I’m here as a friend.”

“Agreed.”

“And…”

Skylo lifts all three heads off the ground at once.

Every head comes off my ankles in the same motion, three snouts swing to the same point in the canopy above the wall, and the barbed tail stops moving entirely.

The jungle has stopped making noise. Between one breath and the next, every small rustle, click and call in the understory has cut out at once. The only sound left in the entire world is the low hum of the resonance meter.

Every hair on my arms stands up. “Vidar.”

“I know.” He has gone completely still.

The motion array chirps. Vidar is at the readout in three strides. I’m right behind him.