Page 29 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“You’re right,” said Sally. “That sounds fake. But I’ll allow it.”

“So he couldn’t call me, and I couldn’t call him without risking damage to my reputation. And I was angry, because he didn’t tell me about his deal right away. He didn’t want me to feel like I owed him for saving my life. So I thought he was cutting me off for no reason, like he was punishing me for getting hurt. And I went off to school, and he stayed here, locked inside this house.” I waved my hands. “Maybe he’ll want me to reclaim my family home once he’s had some time to get his footing back. It’s a year-to-year lease, we’d have to wait twelve months at the absolute most before we could move. Or maybe he’ll feel the way I do, like the good times we had here outweigh the bad parts.”

“So you couldn’t call each other. What about the mail?” asked Sally.

“My father didn’t like Thomas. Thought he had come to Buckley to abduct me, drag me back to Britain, and force me to join the Covenant against my will, and he refused to see that I was always going to be my mother’s daughter, and I was never going to turn into the mild-mannered, accommodating princess he wanted. So he ‘helpfully’ agreed to mail Thomas’s letters, and they never reached me, and my letters to him never reached him, and we both thought we’d been abandoned. For years.”

“How the fuck did you wind up married?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Long, long story. Wasps killed my father, I thought they were going to kill me too, I didn’t want to die without banging the man I’d been in love with since I was a teenager, so I came here to screw him senseless before I made my last stand. I did, and then I did, and I didn’t die, courtesy of the mice, and I came back and he dug the wasp eggs out of my back, and then I just never left.” I gave him an unabashedly fond look. “I never left. He told me about the terms of his deal eventually, and then I married him, and yelled at him a lot for thinking I’d have been willing to do that out of obligation, and we got five years of happily ever after before the crossroads took him away from me. Oh, and he quit the Covenant. Right around the time he sold his soul. Guess he didn’t want to risk them showing up and finding out how weird things were getting around here.”

“Okay,” said Sally. “But what about—”

The doorbell rang.

I stood, scattering tailypo in all directions. Sally rose from the floor, her grasp on her spear shifting from casual to anticipatory. I glanced back at her. “No stabbing,” I said. “We are currently in a no-stabbing phase of our lives. I’ll let you know if that changes.”

She scowled at me, but lowered her spear.

I opened the door.

The redhead on the porch would have looked perfectly normal in any crowd, as long as she wasn’t expected to remove the overstuffed down jacket encasing her arms, shoulders, and back in a puffy layer so thick that the actual shape of her was all but obscured. She had a large foil pan in her hands, a paper bag perched on the top. She blinked at the sight of me, and blinked again as she looked past me into the house.

“You were serious,” she said, sounding faintly awestruck.

I smiled. “Hi, Cynthia,” I said. “Come on in. Don’t mind the mess; we just got back. The mice are on time-out, so they’re not going to swarm you.”

“That’s good to know,” she said, and stepped inside moving with an incredible lightness. She looked Sally up and down, clearly taking her measure, and barely glanced at the couch before heading for the kitchen.

The very tip of her tail dangled under the hem of her skirt, only visible once she had turned her back to us. I wasn’t sure Sally would even notice it, since she’d never dealt with a Huldra before. I followed after Cynthia.

“Is that all?” I asked.

She set her pan on the counter, removing the bag before unsealing the lid. “Dinner tonight is barbequed spare ribs—from a few of the dire boars that wander around near the swamp, not from anything you wouldn’t want to eat—with baked beans and cornbread. I’ll swing by at closing with peach cobbler, but it won’t be ready for hours yet.”

A tailypo scampered up to investigate what she was doing. She dipped a hand into her coat pocket, producing a hard-boiled egg and forking it over. The ring-tailed pest chirped and ran off with its prize, taking up a place atop the china hutch and shoving the egg into its mouth as fast as it could physically manage.

“Oh, now you’ve done it, they’ll all be coming in here to beg for treats,” I said. “But seriously, Cynthia, what’s going on? You seem pissed.”

“What’s going on is that you’ve been on an impossible mission for fifty years, and I’ve supported and encouraged you, because I’ve always known it was futile.” Her voice was low and tightly controlled. She glanced from the tray of ribs and beans to me, eyes flashing. “I’ve always been here. Patient and kind and keeping things on an even keel, and never telling you what a terrible idea this was, but Alice, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a terrible idea.”

I stared at her. Cynthia shook her head, and continued.

“You bring that man here, back to Buckley? Back to the place where my mother’s trees are growing? Where your trees are growing? I thought your happy ending would be eventually coming home and marrying the Galway like the widow you were, not hauling a dead man out of the grave. The Covenant’s been sniffing around the edges of this continent since your damn granddaughter went on live TV and declared a fucking war. More than sniffing around on the coasts. They just haven’t made it this far inland yet. You really think they’re not watching this place, now that they know they didn’t manage to kill off your whole family? You really think they’re not going to notice him? You’ve put us all in danger, Alice, so you could play house again.”

“I thought you’d be happy,” I said, voice small. “He was . . . You were his friend. You’ve been my friend. You made sure the mice and the tailypo were fed while I was gone. You . . . you took care of me.”

“I was hoping if I took care of things long enough, you’d come to your senses, not do the impossible,” she said, turning to face me. “If you’ve put this town in danger, if you’ve put my people in danger, I don’t know that I’ll be able to forgive you.”

“I’m not calling the Covenant, and neither is Thomas,” I said. “Sally’s new to all this, but she’s not going to do it either.”

“See that you don’t,” she said. “You’ll have groceries in the morning, and cobbler when I get off shift. I’ll make a social call in a few days, when I’ve had time to calm down and we’re not all dead.”

“I appreciate it,” I said, somewhat stiffly. I’d been expecting a joyous reunion, not a borderline accusation that I was putting the entire township in danger by doing what I’d always been very open about trying to do. This was only a surprise because apparently even Cynthia, who had been my ally since the beginning, hadn’t been able to believe I was going to accomplish it.

Finding out that people don’t have any faith in you sucks. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but apparently not.

“Have you called your family yet?” she asked, with less open accusation in her tone.