It called me “not-man.”
“Well, maybe it couldn’t kill me. Somehow. Maybe like the fawn.”
Valentina’s expression hardened.
“Just so. That brings us back to the answer you owe me. Mr. Green, I have a suspicion that there is something you have not told me. Perhaps it involves that ‘something’ you mentioned urging you toward the mountains when we first spoke. I also have a suspicion that whatever is in that right pocket of yours is involved.”
Green’s hand moved to the acorn, then quickly away. Valentina watched the motion.
“It seems you have not been entirely open with me. As you may have gleaned from Clara’s journal, trust must be a key facet of our arrangement. Trust and community are essential to our work.”
He swallowed.
“I understand.”
“Well, then, to my question. No living person on record has gotten as close as you did to the glass fawn and survived. Nor witnessed rag moth caterpillars, for that matter. So, kindly explain to me why you are still alive.”
Valentina took a seat and folded her hands in her lap.
Green felt the weight of her attention, the same weight that pressed on him at their first meeting.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the acorn.
It sat on his open palm.
Valentina studied it, then raised her eyes back to his.
“Go on,” she said.
He groped for the memory of his not-quite-death and felt the same psychic jolt that always demanded payment when he tried to think of it. Some part of the machinery that kept him grounded in reality coughed black smoke. The huge, black bird perched on the no-parking sign laughed its cawing laugh and it seemed to be mocking both his past and present pain.
“I…almost died.”
“Keep talking.”
He told her about the bus, his vision of approaching tires. About the otherworldly bird. About the ridiculous acorn that was suddenly in his pocket and in his thoughts. He told her how that event unspooled the rest of his life and how he decided to rebuild it. He tried to express what it cost him to talk about it, to think about it.
“The memory hurts. That was…almost the end of me.”
“Are you sure it was almost? Perhaps you did die.”
Green just shook his head. He felt a sudden urge to vomit.
“Interesting. That is one more first to add to your tally. I have not heard such a story before. Although, there are a number of large avian cryptids that might match your description of the black bird. I wonder…Perhaps that creature gave you the acorn.”
“Why would a giant bird bring me an acorn?”
Green swallowed, willing his stomach to calm.
Valentina cocked her head like an owl, glancing at the library roof.
“Perhaps it was a bribe. Or a purchase.”
It was too much. He stood too quickly, knocking the journals to the floor. He took three staggering steps toward the hatch beforecollapsing forward to dry heave on hands and knees. The sheer, hideous terror of the memory kept hammering him as he tried to clear his head.
“Stay there,” Valentina said.
He didn’t feel like he had much of a choice.
