The light grewgolden as the day passed through afternoon into evening. After unpacking a few things for the night, Baz wandered through the town one last time before dusk. He walked by the cabin with the closed door and the trampled grass. The bar of soap he had placed on the woodpile was gone, and he smiled to himself.
Was the mystery person still here? There was no light in the window. Baz thought about knocking, but decided not to bother them tonight, if they were even still there; perhaps they were long gone. He felt no sense of danger.
Still, he was intrigued by this small house and its mystery in a way he couldn’t quite explain.
Something you want to tell me?he asked his bear, but as usual, he got no answer. He knew some people’s shift animal talked to them, including most of the older generation in his clan. But his bear never did. He just got glimmers through their connection, urges and suggestions that seemed to come from something almost outside himself, but not quite.
He had heard that a shifter’s animal was not a separate part of them; it was their deepest, most instinctive part, the intuitive and strongly emotional soul that reacted beyond conscious thought, reaching down to a person’s most primitive and automatic hindbrain. The shift animal knew things that the human mind did not. Maybe it had noticed something about this crude cabin that he hadn’t—but if so, Baz couldn’t imagine what that might be.
“Good night,” Baz said quietly. He walked away.
The sun was setting above the mountains, casting the town into shadow. Feeling an alpha’s pull to monitor the wellbeing of his new little clan, Baz took a circuitous route back to the store that let him check in on where everyone had settled down.
Lexie had picked the old blacksmith shop. When Baz came upon her, she had opened the building’s big double doors forair and light, and she was happily poking around the old forge, anvil, and other supplies, completely in her element.
Declan was across the street, in ...
“Is this a schoolhouse?” Baz asked.
The building looked exactly like an old-fashioned schoolhouse from an illustration in an old book. It was a small, square clapboard building, with a cupola on top, still retaining traces of white paint. The windmill, visible from all over town, was behind it.
“I like it,” Declan said, rather defensively. He had the door open and was sweeping the floor with a broom that looked like it had been chewed on by mice. “You’re living in the general store, no reason why I can’t have this.”
“If we meet any kids, Deck, we’ll send ‘em your way!” Lexie called.
Baz contemplated the incongruous thought of Declan as a teacher. Oddly, once he started thinking about it, he found it not at all inconceivable. Declan had always been pretty good with kids; it was with adults that he was hostile and reserved.
“Looking great,” Baz said, and went off to find Fern’s new cottage.
She was across Main Street from the store, on a side road called Prospector Place. As soon as he saw the house, Baz could see why she had picked it. The paint was faded, but it looked like it had once been robin’s-egg blue with white trim. It was as small and cute as a dollhouse, and even resembled one, with gingerbread trim and open shutters. Unkempt roses spilled around the door, and he supposed the trees growing wild around it, some still showing vestiges of spring blooms, were the orchard she had mentioned.
“Hi!” Fern called, waving from a window. “I can’t believe this is still in such good shape. It isn’t going to need much work at all. Are you sleeping in the store tonight, Baz?”
For some reason his thoughts drifted immediately back to the locked cabin.
“I think I might,” he said, pulling his mind away from its sideways drift. “I like it there. And every town needs a general store, right?” He could picture it suddenly, as if the image had dropped into his mind from somewhere else entirely: the iron stove glowing with heat in the corner and a few comfortable chairs around it, the shelves fully stocked, busy townspeople going in and out, stopping to chat and gossip and have a cup of coffee.
“Better you than me,” Fern said. “A quiet house in the woods, that’s what I want.”
Baz thought of the cabin again. Was it what someone else wanted? He shook his mind away from that thought, puzzled by the intensity of it.
“Come in and see my house,” Fern suggested.
He was getting a tour in the growing dusk when Lexie showed up, wiping her dusty hands on a shop towel. “Hello!” she called. “Do we want a bonfire? Declan and I collected a pile of dry wood while we were cleaning up.”
Fern clapped her hands. “I think there are marshmallows in one of the boxes.”
“And hot dogs in the cooler,” Baz said. “The good kind.” He looked up at the sky, streaked with sunset colors. “We can make plans for tomorrow, because it’s going to be a busy day.”
And investigating that mysterious cabin just might be one of his priorities.
ARDEN
With darkness creepingbetween the buildings and the group of newcomers all safely gathered on Main Street and no longer wandering through the town, Arden dared unlock the door and slip out of her cabin.
First she went to the creek and filled a cooking pot and her canteen with water, adding some purification tablets. There wasn’t a lot else that she needed to do. She had a small camp stove and food in her pack to last her for a few more days.
But she found herself drawn to the newcomers and their friendly camaraderie. After watching them and then listening to them all afternoon, she felt a little less intimidated. They seemed nice. Maybe she could go introduce herself.
