“You can see this?”
“Yes, and it looks like it’s going to escape.”
She put a stopper in the vial just before the crawling thing reached the top and rose to deposit it on a shelf beside a dozen identical vials.
“Parasite. The last of them, I believe.”
She took her seat again and met his eyes.
“Are you alright, Mr. Green? You appear injured. Your shirt is soaked with dried blood. You mentioned a wolf of some kind?”
Something about Valentina’s attention felt weighty, like he was being billed by the minute, though the cost and currency were unspecified.
“No. I’m not alright. Something like a wolf attacked me. Only it was huge and it had a horn. And it spoke. But not with words. It was a monster. I mean…subjectively.”
Valentina’s eyes smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her lips.
Anger flashed in Green’s mind like distant lightning. She wasn’t taking him seriously.
“I almost died last night. A man a little way down the roaddiddie. Yes, I get why you don’t like the word ‘monster,’ but you weren’t there. You didn’t see it.”
“I heard about the man. Kyle Cartwright was his name.”
She looked back at the moth, then at her guest. She appeared to make a decision.
“Come, Mr. Green.”
She retrieved two camp chairs and unfolded them near the stove. She gestured for Green to sit. It was too warm so close to the hot iron, but Valentina held her hand toward the heat and closed her eyes, relishing the warmth.
She turned and took a narrow cup from the floor and pulled a long-handled brass vessel from the edge of the stove using a pot holder. She poured a very dark drink into her cup. She didn’t offer any to Green.
Noticing his attention, she said, “Coffee, Mr. Green. Turkish style. I’m afraid I only have the one cup. I wasn’t prepared to entertain. Please, proceed.”
He told her everything he could remember about his first night. Valentina didn’t look particularly surprised or sympathetic, but she watched him with the steady focus of a kestrel studying a meadow for movement. When he finished, she looked up at the low roof, as if gazing into the attic of her memory.
“The deer you saw is known. Some call it the glass fawn. Othersname it the ghost deer or the fairy deer. Its discovery and place in oral and folk histories is a bit muddled, but your description is consistent with what I recall. The pale light. The transparent body. The half dozen other recorded encounters more or less match yours, I believe. You’ll notice the article ‘the’ in each of the common names. Most assume it to be a singular creature. One of a kind. If memory serves, it has been seen on three continents, but never any simultaneous sightings.”
“Six encounters? That’s all?”
“Six is a generous record compared to some cryptids, Mr. Green.”
“Cryptids? Like…bigfoot?”
“Hidden creatures. Often presumed to be myth by laypeople.”
“Is it dangerous? The glass deer, I mean.”
“Glass fawn. It is a living creature, so I don’t doubt it is dangerous in certain contexts, but nothing I recall suggests that you would be a prey animal for it, if that’s what you mean.”
“Yeah, that’s very much what I mean. And the wolf? What’s the wolf called? Pretty sure I’m a prey animal for that thing.”
“That question is going to be your responsibility, not mine.”
Green’s fingers defensively searched for the acorn in his pocket.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Valentina folded her hands together and tucked them under her chin. It made her look like a contemplative praying mantis.
