Green looked at Valentina.
“Maybe we should keep watch here. I didn’t know there were so many others at Candle-Fly.”
Valentina shook her head.
“No, as I said, I have other protective measures here, though the events at your campsite have made me question their current efficacy. Still, I believe Wildwood Stable is the most vulnerable.”
Dancer caught Green’s eye and smiled.
“I don’t even think she’s being like that on purpose. She just drops mystery grenades into the conversation on pure reflex. Wildwood Stable, huh? Yeah, I guess they’re pretty isolated. Alright. I better be off now if I wanna visit everybody before dark and get Archimedes to bed on time. Safe travels, neighbors.”
Valentina and Green walked into the trees to the crunch and squeak of Dancer turning her wagon and heading back down Moss Man’s Row.
Valentina walked faster than usual, forcing Green to exert continuous effort to keep up.
The speed of travel and the earnestness of the errand stretched the minutes. There was a kind of pressure in the woods. Green considered asking his teacher about it, but couldn’t find the words he needed. It was slippery, a sensation he couldn’t articulate.
Wildwood Stable was a sloped, grassy rectangle carved from dense pinewoods on a winding mountain road. A weather-beaten, T-shaped barn stood in a broad field. The barn shadowed a practice ring in front and a chain of linked paddocks out back. A little white house was tucked off on the eastern edge beneath the skirts of pine boughs. The property was a conspicuous lake of evergreen among a valley packed with autumn-brown oaks and sugar maples. Valentina and Green arrived under a western sky the muddy red of drying blood.
“You haven’t said much about it,” Green said.
The pair stopped in the deep gloom on the edge of the wood and looked out over Wildwood, then made their way toward the hillside.
“About what, Mr. Green?”
“The acorn. My story. The giant bird. Any of it.”
“I suppose I am still mulling it over. You have added yet more unknowns to the landscape. Between the wolf, the fawn, and your own peculiarities, you are entering the field of cryptonature in a singularly unusual way. It requires consideration. It’s hard to say if you are profoundly fortunate or profoundly unfortunate. There are so many unanswered questions.”
He glanced at his teacher, feeling a shapeless suspicion that theremustbe more she could say. She was a small, gray-haired woman walking through the dusk. She was also a collection of multiple lifetimes studying the most obscure knowledge imaginable.
They walked around the practice ring, keeping to the far side from the house. Green ran his hand along the rough split rail fence, looking at the hoof-pocked earth. Beyond, he could see a lamp shining in a window. Two red pickups sat in the gravel drive next to a little city of horse trailers.
They moved past the paddocks and up the slope. Night was gathered under the trees. It seemed to wait for some signal to rush into the fields beneath the open sky.
“I will have to broadcast an update about the nature of your encounters,” Valentina said. “We can’t, for example, allow our colleagues to assume it is safe to observe rag moth decay, not until we know more about your unique circumstances.”
“Maybe be a little vague about my situation in the broadcast, okay? At least until I understand more about what happened to me.”
“Why? What is the root of this caution? I can see no reason to keep your condition a secret.”
He winced. Thinking ofhis conditionstill brought a jolt of fear and pain. The subject, like the memory, had teeth. He wished he had smuggled Blobert along in a backpack.
He spoke through clenched teeth.
“There’s just so much I don’t know about myself. I mean, for example, am I, like, immortal now?”
“No.”
“Wow. You answered that awfully quickly. Is the question that weird? I survived the moth and the wolf or fawn or whatever. And you certainly seem to be immortal.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I most certainly am not. We have never, in the whole of human history, discovered a single permanent, unchanging life-form in nature. Never. That long-standing truth will not end with you or me. And believe me, I have aged considerably, just not at the typical rate. And you, maybe your mortality is somehow tied to that acorn, or to the bird you saw, but acorns and cryptids are likewise not built for forever.”
“Okay. That feels right.”
“What feels right, Mr. Green?”
“That my mortality is tied up with the acorn somehow. I don’t know. It feels so important. I can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe this little nut really is a matter of life and death.”
