Page 35 of The Girl Who Cried Bigfoot

I’m halfway through a particularly unhinged voicemail about a bipedal wolf sighted near the interstate when the front door creaks open. I expect a guest, or perhaps Marge coming to grill me about where I spent the night, but it’s Walt. He’s carrying a crate of supplies, his face a map of weathered concern that doesn’t quite hide the knowing glint in his eyes. He sets the crate down near the desk, the heavy thud echoing in the quiet lobby.

“Bridge held,” he says, wiping his hands on his overalls. “Mostly. Needs some tightening on the north cables, but it’ll stay. You look like you went through the wash on the heavy cycle, Wren.”

“The storm was a bit more enthusiastic than the weather app predicted,” I say, leaning back in the creaky office chair. I grab the chocolate bar I keep in the top drawer for emergencies—today is a code-red emergency—and snap off a square. “Rowan helped with the trail shelter. We’re all buttoned up for the season.”

Walt nods, a slow, deliberate movement. He doesn’t ask for details, and he doesn’t push. He’s lived on this land long enough to know that the Guardian doesn’t just help with trail maintenance unless something significant has shifted. “He’s a good man. In his way. Stubborn as an old hemlock, but steady. My grandfather used to say the mountain only lets people stay if it likes the sound of their heart. Seems it’s getting used to yours.”

I chew the chocolate, the sugar hitting my system like a divine revelation. “I think it’s just tolerating me for the marketing potential, Walt. But I’ll take what I can get.”

Chuckling, he heads into the kitchen, leaving me alone with the humming servers and the fading morning light. I glance at the hotline again, and one entry catches my eye. It’s a shot of a massive, blurred shape moving through the trees. To the internet, it’s another piece of the legend, another blurry Bigfoot for the conspiracy theorists to dissect. To me, it’s just Rowan, probably on his way to check a beehive or mutter at a particularly offensive clump of moss.

I feel a sudden, sharp pang of something that wasn’t hunger or hormones. It’s the weight of the secret, yes, but also the lightness of it. For the first time, the lodge doesn’t feel like a sinking ship I was desperately trying to bail out with a thimble. It feels like a home that’s being guarded, not just by an ancient forest spirit, but by the choices I’m making to stay. I close the laptop. The laughter from the hike is still humming in my chest, a private joke shared with the mountain itself. Standing, I stretch until my spine pops, then go to find Marge. I’m in the mood for a very large breakfast, and I’m not going to explain why I’m smiling.

19

ROWAN

NOBODY CONSULTED HIS INSTINCTS ABOUT THIS

The forest holds the kind of stillness that only comes when the earth is exhausted from a night of screaming. I breathe in the smell of wet cedar and the cold, mineral scent of churned mud. My boots make a rhythmic, heavy sound against the saturated ground, a steady counterpoint to the shorter, lighter steps behind me. Wren is laughing, a low private sound that works its way into my chest like a slow-burning ember.

She’s limping slightly, a minor hitch in her gait that most humans wouldn’t have noticed, but I feel it in the way the ground received her weight. Her father’s boots are too large, the leather stiff and unyielding against her ankles. She hasn’t complained since we left the trail cameras on South Ridge, but the mountain doesn’t lie about pain. It vibrates through the soil, a tiny, persistent frequency of discomfort.

I stop where the trail dips toward the creek. The water is high, a churning vein of silver and brown that’s jumped its banks by nearly three feet. The footbridge is visible downstream, anchored and solid, but the shortcut we’re taking requires crossing at the flats. Usually, it’s a sequence of dry stones. Today, it’s a foot of rushing runoff over slippery granite.

“Wait,” I say. I don’t turn around because I know exactly where she is, the heat of her presence a constant pressure against my back.

“Oh, come on, Rowan. I can make that. It’s just a little splash.” She steps up beside me, her face flushed from the hike and the lingering adrenaline of the morning. A damp strand of hair is stuck to her cheek, and her eyes are bright, far too bright for someone who claims to hate hiking.

“You’ll slip,” I say plainly. “The moss is underwater. It has no friction.”

“I have lived in the Cascades my whole life. I think I can handle a puddle.” She shifts her weight, preparing to lunge for a half-submerged rock. It’s a foolish move, driven by that stubborn Cassidy pride that’s been irritating me for so long.

I don’t argue. I don’t have the patience for it. I reach out, my hands finding the familiar curve of her waist. I lift her before she can protest, a practiced motion I’ve performed half a dozen times over the last few weeks. It’s an efficient, logical solution to the problem of her pace and her lack of appropriate footwear.

Usually, when I pick her up, my mind is occupied with the logistics of the trail. I think about the state of the hives on the south slope, or the shifting migration patterns of the elk, or the precise amount of energy required to maintain the concealment veil if a drone appeared. She was a task. A responsibility inherited from a ledger and a blood-debt.

But the water is loud, and the air is thin, and the smell of her—salt, rain, and the faint, sweet scent of the honey I gave her—is suddenly an overwhelming weight. My hands have memorized the shape of her waist. I feel the give of her jacket, the solid strength of her ribs, and the way she instinctively leans into my chest as I step into the cold current.

The thought hits me then. It’s a physical blow, a sudden fracturing of a wall I never even knew was there. For centuries, I viewed humans as weather. They were storms that rolled in, loud and destructive, then vanished. They were seasons of drought or seasons of plenty, temporary shifts in the landscape that require management but never inclusion. They passed through. They always passed through.

Wren Cassidy isn’t passing through.

I stop in the middle of the creek, the water swirling around my calves, tugging at my boots. Wren feels heavy in my arms, not with weight, but with permanence. She isn’t a storm. She is the ground itself. She is a geographical feature I neglected to map, a mountain that grew up in the middle of my territory while I was looking the other way.

The intimacy we shared the night of the storm—the heat, the joining, the way her breath had hitched against my throat—wasn’t a lapse in judgment. It was a surrender. I let her in, not just into the shelter or into my house, but into the space where I keep the secrets of the timber. I gave her my name, and in doing so, I gave her a tether.

I’m no longer a solitary observer. I’m part of a binary.

My hands start to shake, a biological rejection of the realization. My instincts, honed over hundreds of years of isolation, are screaming at the violation of my own borders. I spent my entire existence ensuring that nothing human could leave a mark on me, yet here I am, carrying the mark of her hands on my skin like a brand.

I put her down on the last flat rock before the bank, my movements jerky and abrupt. It’s a clumsy exit, a betrayal of the grace that usually defines my every step.

“Rowan?” She stumbles slightly, her boots splashing into the shallow water at the edge. She catches herself on a low-hanging willow branch, her head whipping in my direction. “What happened? Did you hear something?”

She’s looking for a drone. A threat from the outside world. She doesn’t understand that the threat is standing five feet away from her, vibrating with the sudden terror of its own heart.

I wade out of the creek and stand on the mud, the moss beneath my feet feeling thin and unreliable. I don’t look at her. I look at the lodge in the distance, its leaning sign a tiny, ugly monument to human fragility. It should be an eyesore. It should be an irritation. Instead, it looks like a destination.