Somewhere, a barred owl hooted his territorial “who cooks for you” call.
A log popped in the fire.
He stayed tense, his eyes on Valentina’s shoulders, ready to snag her when she fell.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
A gust of cold wind whipped through the trees, parting Valentina’s hair and showing a paper-white line of scalp. Green shifted his weight from foot to foot.
He risked a check on Catskill.
He saw the fawn rolling down the side of a steep ravine like a luminous pearl. The wolf raced behind, down a near-vertical surface. Both creatures were unaffected by the landscape, but Green’s stomach turned as he pulled his thoughts away.
When his mind stepped back up to the window of his own eyes, Valentina was looking at him.
Her face was drawn and haggard.
“It’s not working. I’m going to get my pack. I may need it if I arrive somewhere unexpected. It’s time I step through and close it.”
His throat tightened.
“Wait, let me try. I haven’t tried yet. Give me some of that poultice.”
“Mr. Green, look at me. It wouldn’t do any good. I have had practice with this sort of thing and I am getting nowhere. Your job here is to monitor the fawn.”
“What if we tried together, side by side?”
She shook her head.
“My vision is beginning to tunnel. Even if closing the hole merely deposits me back here, whole and free of the fawn’s influence, I may have already waited too long to survive these injuries.”
“And if you experience one of that thing’s more extreme effects?”
“Then it won’t matter, but within the scope of what I can control, I will prepare for the more hopeful outcome.”
Green couldn’t help imagining his teacher transformed into a plume of greasy smoke or sun-bleached bones clattering to the ground as she stepped through.
Even then, what if it doesn’t work? What if she sacrifices herself for nothing and the hole stays open, and the fawn stays and kills again?
“I am going to get my pack. In order to will the hole shut from inside, I need to be conscious. I told you to prepare yourself for this.”
“I’m just asking if we’ve tried everything.”
“No, of course we haven’t, but I am dying. Others may be dying. And…it’s more than that.”
“What do you mean more?”
“I mean that wolf in your head is this ecosystem’s primary immune response to an invader like the fawn. Like a white blood cell attacking a bacterium. And that response is failing. There is a reason that the glass fawn has only been seen a handful of times. Whenever it squirms its way into our universe, nature rejects its presence. That rejection is breaking down here.”
“If Catskill had more time, maybe he could break the stalemate.”
“He doesn’t. Neither do I.”
She wrapped herself into a hug and stood shivering in the dark.
