Valentina smiled. This wasn’t her mechanical smile. This was her fairy-tale witch smile.
“Ah. I believe you do, in fact, understand the dangers involved, so I will not make the choice for you.”
He imagined staying in his shed while Valentina was off in the dark woods alone trying to prevent another body from arriving at the Hickory morgue. He thought of sitting on his cot, unable to sleep, wondering if his new mentor would return. Part of him wished he could stomach a night like that. But he couldn’t.
His hand dipped into his pocket and closed around the acorn.
“I’ll go. I don’t want to, but I will.”
“My feelings exactly, Mr. Green.”
“Do we warn the stable owners?”
“I wish we could. Consider how that would appear. Two odd people warning of odd things in the midst of investigations into strange deaths. There have been warrants for my arrest before. No great obstacle, but still a nuisance and a potential hindrance to our work as well as to Ms. Dancer.”
Green made a mental note to ask follow-up questions about Valentina’s outlaw past at a more appropriate time.
“Moreover,” she continued, “what would you warn them to do? Keep a lookout for an invisible threat that we ourselves don’t fully understand? I don’t see how they could move all the horses by nightfall. No, their best protection now is our vigilance.”
“And…what do we do if we see the wolf…or the fawn attacking? Are we supposed to, I don’t know, kill it?”
Valentina sniffed.
“No. Wildlife mitigation, I believe, is the modern terminology. We annoy it. We chase it off. We determine what it wants and remove the attraction. My apprentice, intelligence means options. It means we don’t have to make the brutal, ill-advised decision to kill off a part of the world we neither own nor comprehend. We mitigate the risk.”
“That makes sense, but what if it decides to mitigate us right back?”
Valentina shrugged.
“We adapt. Perhaps we flee and regroup. Perhaps we neutralize its ability to do harm. It is natural to fear the unknown, but what world are we shaping if we attempt to destroy anything that we view as a potential risk? Empathy and curiosity take more courage than blunt force, but it is the wiser long-term path.”
“I get it. But it also sounds like the more dangerous path.”
“Indeed. Dangerous and worthwhile.”
“And if we become the next victims?”
“Orion Station will see to it that other cryptonaturalists continue our investigation. Examine your motivations. If your principles always align with the safest path, can it truly be said that you have any principles beyond self-preservation?”
The horned wolf’s muzzle pressed in through the silence following Valentina’s question, shattering it in a rain of glass.
“That feels like a question that has different answers depending on where you are sitting and what is trying to kill you.”
“Does it? Perhaps. But this is not the first time I have risked my body to protect a principle. It gets easier with practice.”
She patted his arm and stood.
“Now, I have some preparations to make. While I do, I want you to read something.”
“Study? Now? Really?”
“You have an hour. I have my tasks. You have yours.”
Valentina ushered Green to a chair and selected a thick rust-colored binder.
“Begin with this one,” she said. “It is a journal by a cryptonaturalist who began her career in 1948. Clara Rodriguez.”
“Is that…the same Clara who left the message?”
