Sam LaCroix (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
necroslacker) wrote2013-11-17 09:10 am
necroslacker) wrote2013-11-17 09:10 am
seattle ; sunday ft
“Kell wasn’t joking,” Sam panted, stopping to pull out his canteen to drink. Pello offered Sam his handkerchief, and even if it hadn’t been covered in filth and spots of … something, Sam wouldn’t have accepted it. Everything Pello owned fell into the category of “I don’t know where that’s been and I don’t particularly want to, either.”
“No, thanks,” Sam said. “Got my own.”
Pello tucked his away without using it. He wasn’t sweaty, despite the uphill climb and his beer gut. Ramon, who had come as my escort and additional muscle in case Sam had needed it, wasn’t breaking a sweat either. They'd also brought Taco, who was bounding from rock to fallen tree and racing through the dappled sunshine in blatant disregard of the leash law. The sunlight and fresh air, Sam figured, would be good for him, but he'd been fed before they left. Sam didn’t want him taking down Bambi on our first trip to the great outdoors. He sprang merrily after a butterfly and didn’t look winded in the slightest.
“Hey, what gives?” Sam asked. “Why am I the only one suffering here? There’s no way in hell Pello is in better shape than me.” He quickly added, “No offense meant, Pello.”
The satyr grinned lecherously in Sam's direction. “I get plenty of car-di-o.” He punctuated the word with some questionable thrusting.
“Okay,” Sam said, making a face. “Never do that again. And I call bullshit. So serious answer, please.” He took another swig from my canteen while he waited. It had taken them over an hour and a half of driving plus a ferry ride to get to Olympic National Park. They’d been hiking and walking for over an hour on a wandering trail, and Sam was beginning to wonder why whoever we were meeting hadn’t just come to us like everyone else.
The air felt somewhat cooler underneath all the old-growth pines towering above the group. Despite, or perhaps because of, everything going on, it was really nice to get outside. Another butterfly flickered by, floating past a mass of ferns to a small open nook. Sam decided he'd have to come back here when he wasn’t concerned with his friend’s murder and his own potential demise at the hands of his pack.
Pello gave a half shrug. “I am at my best in the forest. This is where my power lies.” He affectionately patted the thin, peeling white bark of the paper birch next to him.
“So if we were urban hiking?” When Sam caught his blank look, he added, “It’s exactly what it sounds like—hiking through city trails.” Downtown Seattle had steep hills that were appealing for that sort of thing. Not that Sam did it. He wasn't much of a hiker, urban or otherwise. A leisurely stroll through the woods? Yes. A ten-mile uphill death march? No, thank you.
“I would be in your sorry state,” he replied with a grin.
We started moving again, and Sam snagged a few huckleberries off a bush while they walked. When he were younger, Sam's parents would take them out hiking and camping all the time. If he and Haley were good, and if they were diligent enough about picking—but not eating—enough huckleberries, my mom would make pancakes in a griddle over our fire. There were few things better after a day of hiking than waking up to pancakes with those tart red berries. Bellies full, they'd spend the rest of the morning sitting on downed trees or large boulders by the lake, fishing for rainbow trout.
Sam flicked a berry at Ramon. “What about you? You’ve never been what I’d call a forest denizen.”
Ramon grunted. “Maybe not before, but I am now. Besides, after weeks of trying to keep up with the pack, I’ve just got more endurance for this kind of thing.” He thumped his chest with one hand, Tarzan-style.
Sometimes, if Sam wasn’t thinking about it, he forgot what had happened to his best friend. That they'd both changed over the spring. The remembrance was always followed by a wash of guilt. He was born to be this way, but Ramon’s state was completely Sam's fault. He’d gained it by trying to save Sam's scrawny ass.
Sam flushed and looked down, concentrating for a moment on the crisscrossed formation of roots at his feet. “Right,” I mumbled. “Sorry.”
Ramon either didn’t want to talk about it or felt that apologies weren’t necessary, and he didn’t answer.
“I’d forgotten how pretty it is out here. We should come back. You can bring Dessa and I'll be an obnoxious third wheel since I've got no one," Sam joked though it sounded forced. "Tres romantic, right?"
Ramon looked back at him and shook his head. He looked like he wanted to say something about the sad state of Sam's lovel ife but Taco jumped back onto Sam's shoulder and distracted them both. It was probably for the better.
Pello was leading, and once they’d gone a few minutes in and the trail was out of sight, he paused to take off his necklace. The odd-looking charm he usually kept around his neck was actually a purchased glamour—an object that changed the perception of the people around you. It made it possible for the satyr to live in an urban environment. With it, he looked like a dirty, overweight, dreadlocked skeezeball hanging out in one of the parks sleeping under trees or hitting on underage girls. To me, he’d always looked like a washed-up Dead Head with his flip-flops, ripped jean cutoffs, and stained Hawaiian shirt open and framing his rounded gut.
Without the charm, he looked exactly the same until you got to the gut, below which you found fur and hooved feet instead of the usual scrawny legs and sandals. Unfortunately, he felt more comfortable going pantsless. On meeting days, Ariana made him wear a Utilikilt that she had purchased for him so she wouldn’t have to see anything she didn’t want to or worry about where his naked ass had been. Her next goal was to get him to utilize the kilt’s “modesty snaps,” or at the very least learn to cross his legs. It was an uphill battle.
Sam knew he wouldn’t have cut off-trail without Pello. He wasn’t that experienced as a hiker, and the woods were full of lots of things that weren’t fuzzy bunnies and happy butterflies. As he was thinking this, the forest gave me an example in the form of a seven-foot thorny menace referred to as devil’s club. It’s an aptly named thorny plant, and it can grow in large, dense clumps that Sam didn't recommend walking through unless you are a masochist or happen to have a sharp machete on your person.
Sam was well versed on this plant. His mother cultivated some of it behind her house. Devil’s club is related to ginseng, and it’s used in a lot of herbal remedies. Despite being a literal pain—Sam had spent a good deal of my childhood nursing wounds from harvesting that plant—it was kind of beautiful. The leaves resemble those found on the maple, and they can grow really big. In the summer, the plant blooms with these tiny flowers that later turn into bright red berries.
They tried to slip around the plant, but even though they were aware of it, everyone got a few things tangled in its leaves. One particularly thorny bit snagged Sam's arm and drew blood. He hissed at it as he pulled the leaf slowly away from my flesh. It was a slow process because Sam didn’t want the plant leaving any barbs behind, and he knew from his mom’s garden that the plants are actually quite delicate. He didn’t want to harm it, even though it was making him bleed. Sam started lecturing it under his breath as he detangled himself.
“Sorry, guys,” Sam said, focusing on my task. “This is going to be a second.” Getting no response, he glanced up at his companions. Both of them were about five feet away, their backs to a large conifer. They managed to both be looking up with identical looks of amazement on their faces. Taco, concerned, had climbed up onto Sam's shoulder and was eyeing his battle with the plant.
“What?” That was all he needed, something else going wrong.
Ramon licked his lips. “The plant.”
“What about it?” Sam asked, frowning.
“Look at it.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing.” I went back to my careful extraction. Apparently I’d snagged part of my backpack on it as well.
“Dude, chico, look up.”
Sam paused in his extraction and did what he was told. The giant plant was … cowering. Yeah, Sam wasn't even kidding, that’s what it looked like: a giant, leafy, scolded child. And that’s what he'd been doing exactly—scolding it. Sam stood there for a moment, surprised and bleeding and a little amazed. He'd seen ill-mannered plants act this way around my mother sometimes.
When Tia LaCroix walked through a forest, you could bet nothing snagged her favorite shawl. This plant was treating me like my mother. But why now? If Sam had a bit of witch in me, why hadn’t it come out earlier? He gave a mental sigh. Yet another question to put into the “hell-if-I-know” pile.
While Sam was staring at the plant, a giant crow—and giant was a definitely apt descripion—landed on a branch above him. Sam had never seen one so huge. Taco hissed at it. The crow seemed unimpressed.
“Holy shit,” Ramon said. “That thing could carry off babies.”
Pello stared at the crow thoughtfully. “Crows are harbingers and omens. Big juju stuff.”
“My mom said a ton of crows showed up at my birth. She said one was the size of, well, that.” Sam nodded at the crow. “She even named me after them—my middle name is Corvus.”
“Well, then, I suggest you be nice to it,” Pello said, and he turned and started walking farther into the trees.
The bird was uncharacteristically quiet, apparently happy with its silent vigil.
“Ramon, can you get that container out of my bag? The one we packed for Taco?” It was full of roast chicken and sliced ham. Ramon handed a chunk of ham to Taco so he’d stop looking at us in an accusatory manner, then placed a particularly large chunk of chicken on a branch for the crow. The crow didn’t move, but Sam felt they’d done enough, so he repacked my bag and wiped his greasy fingers on my shirt.
The crow apparently appeased, Sam returned his attention to the devil’s club. “It’s okay,” he told the plant. “I’m not mad. It was my fault. You were just protecting yourself.” The nettle, slowly, as if expecting a blow at any moment, started to pull away. Sam winced, an involuntary hiss escaping his lips. The plant immediately snapped back to where it had been. Not ideal. Sam repeated, as soothingly as he could, that it was still okay, and then he slowly pulled his arm away from the spines. My skin was bloody and irritated and stinging, but he'd had the forethought to put some of his mom’s balm in my backpack, so once he'd rinsed it, it would be okay.
The plant still looked … scared. Sam knew plants don’t have faces or expressions or anything, but it still managed to convey that emotion to me.
Sam patted a leaf gently. “Good boy,” he said. The plant perked up. He smiled and gave it another pat before stepping away. The devil’s club pulled itself taller, its leaves spreading a little farther out, its tiny flowers opening up a bit more. If the plant were a person, Sam would have said it was puffing itself up with pride. With a grin still fixed on his face, Sam backed away.
“Let’s get out of here before anything else odd happens.” Ramon and Sam started walking again, ignoring the giant crow and the weird plant as best we could.
They caught up with Pello and stopped under a big tree somewhere in the middle of the woods. Sam was completely lost by now, so hopefully nothing untoward would happen to Pello while they were out here, or Sam would have to learn to live off the land. He settled into a cozy spot amidst the roots and drank some more from my canteen.
“So, who or what are we meeting here, again? And is there anything I need to know? Like, for example, anything I might blurt out that could be found offensive?”
“I’m sure you’ll do fine. We’re very understanding.” Sam turned at the sound of the deep voice and saw … hairy kneecaps. He looked up. And up. And then he swallowed hard. “We do have some river nymphs, though. Pretty harmless for the most part, but they can be temperamental. Not nearly as calm as the dryads.”
Ramon, who'd been sitting next to him, was having a reaction that was very similar to Sam's. They were both staring with a glazed look at the biggest guy they'd ever seen. He was about as tall as Ed, but where Ed was lean, this guy was built … well, the term brick shithouse comes to mind, though he'd never quite understood what that meant. He was big in scale, not just tall. And he was covered from head to giant toe in reddish brown fur. Oddly enough, he was wearing an olive green forest ranger’s uniform.
Ramon whistled. “I bet you would’ve made a mean linebacker.”
The hairy man smiled, and his teeth were like giant off-white boulders. Realizing he'd been staring, Sam tried to stop, but he couldn’t. “You’re a, um…” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it. Even after all I’d seen and all the creatures he’d met, he was unbelievable.
He chortled at my reaction, then squatted down in a movement slightly more monkey than man and offered Sam a hand, palm up, like you do with scared animals sometimes so they can smell you, which is both weird and a good way to lose a finger if the animal is scared. Sam gave him five instead. That really tickled him, and he tousled Sam's hair while continuing to chuckle. “I believe the current moniker you’ve given us is Bigfoot. We’ll just leave it at that.” He helped Sam stand up. “But you may call me Murray.” He tapped the cursive stitching on his shirt. It said MURRAY. Go figure.
Somehow the mundane nature of his name helped Sam pull his brain back together. “Is that your actual name?”
He helped Ramon up. “No, but my language is hard for hashmuk to say.”
Sam tried to repeat the strange word he’d said, but it was oddly guttural and accented, and he couldn’t repeat it. I gave up. “What is … whatever you just said?”
“Hashmuk. It is what we call your kind. Roughly translated it means ‘skittish naked badger.’”
“Funny,” Sam said. “We’re usually compared to monkeys.”
He scratched his chest. “Never seen a monkey.” He motioned for everyone to follow. They fell in behind him, Pello introducing us as we walked. Though Sam could tell Murray was slowing his pace for us, he still had to jog occasionally to keep up. He led us to an open area by a stream and motioned for the group to sit.
They spread out by the stream, unpacking our respective lunches carefully. Murray got out his lunch—some fruit and what smelled like smoked salmon.
“If I ask you some questions, do you promise to not throw me in that stream?” Sam asked. Murray nodded and kept eating.
“Are you actually a forest ranger?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t that cause problems?”
He pulled a long chain out of his pocket. At the end of it dangled a charm similar to Pello’s. Ah. “So you just look like one of us to them, eh?”
The slowly spinning charm caught Taco’s attention. He started to stalk it, his ears flattened to his skull and his tail twitching. Murray, an amused smile on his face, twirled the necklace some more.
“Better put that away,” Pello said through a mouthful of food. “Otherwise that chup there will bite right through it.”
Murray shrugged. “I can always replace the chain.”
Pello shook his head. “No. Chup as in chupacabra.” At Murray’s blank look he added, “If he bites it, the magic will be toast. They’re disruptive.” Murray quickly stashed the necklace, but handed a piece of salmon to Taco when the little guy let out a dismayed chirp.
All the stuff James had said about Taco clicked into place. That was why Douglas didn’t want them around—who would if one snap of the jaws would undo any magic you’d been working on? Not anyone sane which was why Sam guessed they wanted Taco around. Not a sane one in the bunch.
Murray patted the pocket where he’d put the necklace. “Yes, well, at any rate, it works fairly well. They think I’m a very large man with a strange diet. Often I am referred to as a ‘health nut.’ Occasionally, I buy snack treats as camouflage. Cheetos work well, as I can get the neon powder everywhere but not actually have to eat them.” He shuddered.
“How can you not like Cheetos?” Ramon asked.
“How can you like them? They are not food, and they smell wrong.”
“I like them,” Pello said, raising his hand.
Murray snorted. “I have seen you eat old tires and tin cans. I do not consider you a good spokesman for Cheetos.”
Sam settled into my spot in the grass. It was days like these that reminded him why he loved the Northwest so much. The sun was warm and pulling out the smell of grass and clover. The thick scent of some kind of flower wafted over. The combination with the sound of the stream burbling and a slight breeze rustling the trees made him aware of the life all around. The idyllic moment built a fierce joy in me, and Sam welcomed it. For a brief spell, he forgot about Brannoc, Haley, Natalie, Brid, murder, the Council, and death. He felt the warm wind and the grass under me. It was wonderful.
And like all perfect moments, it couldn’t continue. Sam took his sandwich out of its container with a sigh. James had prepared everything carefully, making sure that he knew to pack everything out and not leave a single scrap behind. Not that Sam would have anyway, but now he knew why he was so insistent.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Murray eyed me knowingly.
“I can certainly see why you like it here,” Sam agreed.
Ramon leaned back onto his elbows. “Yeah, man. Beautiful.”
Sam rested his sandwich on an upturned lid and pulled out a container of fruit salad. “But I doubt you had us come up for the view.”
“Wouldn’t that have been nice, though?” Ramon asked quietly. He wasn’t looking at us, but gazing out over the stream instead. Sam knew what he was getting at. Seemed like everyone wanted a little piece of us lately.
“So what can the Council do for you, Murray?”
He didn’t answer right away. He examined his food carefully, like he was trying to find something inside his grapes that might help him out. “I am part of what you might call an experiment.” He plucked a dark purple grape. “That’s not quite right. Part of a flagship program, maybe would be a better way to put it. Whatever term you wish to use, I am one of the few of my tribe to try and blend with yours. For a long time, we tried to remain apart. We kept to the woods and watched your kind from a distance. We were happy this way, but with the forest shrinking and the hashmuk coming closer, we couldn’t stay hidden much longer. Your kind propagates so quickly.”
“Yeah, we’re like bunnies that way.” Sam said.
He grinned his too-big teeth at me.
“So is the program not working?” Ramon asked.
Murray shook his head. “No, it is actually working quite well. We’ve found several forestry positions to our liking. My brother is planting trees for a nonprofit, and his wife helps monitor and conserve the local salmon population. It is most satisfactory.” His voice was full of pride as he said it.
“Wonderful,” Sam said, stabbing a piece of pineapple with a fork. “But I’m assuming you didn’t call us out here just to give a status report.” He looked around at the clearing while he chewed. “Not that I’d mind if you’d do so occasionally.”
Murray nodded. “Indeed, it has gone so well that others are willing to try it. To live closer to town.”
“Then what’s the prob?” Ramon asked.
“We … in order to live with your kind, we need something we have never needed before. We need money.” He patted the pocket where his charm was. “Besides the glamour, which hides our physical differences, we have to purchase a second one to obscure our scent during certain … seasons.” Had his face not been covered in hair, Sam would have sworn he was blushing.
“Seasons?” Ramon looked as confused as Sam felt.
Pello flopped down by Sam and stole a piece of his fruit salad. “He means rutting season. His kind gives off quite the pheromone-laden stench in the springtime. You know, it’s how they attract a mate.”
“Ah,” Sam said. “I can see how that could be problematic.”
Murray nodded emphatically. “Your kind either complains or gets a little too … friendly.” He frowned at me. “My cousin Gary tried to work for UPS. More so than the rest of us, he is comfortable in urban settings. He seems fascinated by your culture. The combination of his scent and their infamous uniform, well, it was just too much for some humans. For a species that ignores its sense of smell so heavily, you certainly perk up for that sort of thing.”
Ramon grunted. “I’ve always wondered about those uniforms. I mean, they shouldn’t be attractive … all that brown, but somehow they are.” He plucked at his own shirt. “Maybe I should apply for a job.…” He mumbled the last bit almost to himself.
Sam gave a shrug. “Like I said, bunnies. I assume you’re not making enough at your jobs to pay for the charms?”
“Most of us, no. And besides the charms, we have to purchase food since we don’t have enough time to gather it anymore. Then there’s lodging, clothing, and we must pay for your paperwork.”
“Paperwork?”
“You need things like social security cards and IDs to work. Kind of hard to get those things when you were born in the forest and have no paper trail.”
“Oh,” I said, “I see. Legal stuff. So what, exactly, do you need help with?”
Murray shifted around uncomfortably. This was hard for him, I think. “We wanted to see if maybe the Council would give us a grant? My brother, the one who works for the nonprofit, learned that sometimes the hashmuk government gives money to things that will help out other hashmuk.”
“And you wanted to see if the Council would do the same for its people, yes?”
“Yes,” he said, and his voice was passionate now. And since he was arguing for something that would help his family and friends thrive, Sam guessed that made sense. “If only the Council would help with our charms, we could manage the rest.”
Sam considered this. His request wasn’t outlandish. He didn’t know how much the charms cost or whether or not the Council did grants. But if it would help Murray and his people, Sam didn’t see the harm. He looked at Pello. “Do we do grants?”
“I imagine so,” Pello replied thoughtfully. “We’d need to bring it before the entire Council, though, to see what we could do.”
“Well, yeah, I figured.” Sam stood up, brushing off his hands as he did so. Sam stuck one out toward Murray. He grabbed it with a grin and shook it. “I will do what I can for your people,” Sam promised.
His smile widened. “I know you will.” Then he pulled Sam in for a bear hug. While he was squeezing the life out of Sam in a happy fashion, he considered how things might go if the Council denied his request. This embrace might turn quickly into another kind, one that Sam wouldn’t walk away from. And as he tried to spit some of the Bigfoot hair out of my mouth, Sam considered, should the situation sour, sending Pello to deliver the message for him. Cowardly, perhaps, but death by Bigfoot didn’t seem appealing, either.
They started packing up then, and Murray pulled me aside. “There was something else. It might be nothing, but you remember that cousin I mentioned?”
“Sexy Gary?”
“Yes, well, after the job with UPS … failed, we transferred him closer to the city. He works for the parks department out there. Anyway, there’s an area he oversees that has been feeling some general upset. He’s not sure what’s going on, but it’s like something nasty moved into the neighborhood, and it’s causing a ripple effect.”
“You want me to look into it?”
Murray nodded. “He’s not sure what’s out there yet, as he hasn’t isolated the source, but he says whatever it is, it feels unnatural.”
Sam scribbled his number on a scrap of paper and handed it to Murray. “Okay, have Gary give me a call, and I’ll see what I can do.” He thanked me, and they finished gathering their gear. When Sam looked over at Ramon, he noticed he had a wistful look on his face. He’d never been what Sam would call the outdoorsy type, but judging from the expression he was wearing, it looked like that had changed. Sam wondered if that was another side effect of his transformation or just a naturally occurring thing. Was it his choice or brought on by the new life Sam had shoved on him?
Murray walked us back toward the trail. He shuffled nervously, and Sam could tell he had something else to say.
“Spit it out, Murray. I promise I won’t bite.” As if to emphasize this, Taco chose that moment to climb up on his shoulder, curl around his neck, and pass out. The hike had him all tuckered out.
“I have already asked for so much, but I was wondering if you’d do me one last favor? There’s a volunteer here—he’s been helping me over the last few weeks—who wanted to transfer over into Gary’s territory. I would drive him myself, but I figure you’re already going that way.…”
“You want us to give him a ride?” Sam thought about the size of our car. “I’m not sure he’ll fit.”
“He is not like me. He is like you. Hashmuk.”
Sam nodded in understanding. “Sure, I mean, we’re already going that way.” He took a sip from my water bottle. “Murray, you could have come in to the Council to tell us all this. Why didn’t you?”
He managed to look a bit sheepish. “I figured it would make a better argument if you saw what you were investing in.”
One big arm swept out to take in the whole forest.
And it was beautiful, but he was missing the point. Sam shook my head at him. “No, man. I mean, yeah, the forest is great, but we wouldn’t really be investing in that,” Sam said. “We’d be investing in you and your people, and I think you guys would have been enough. This,” he said, doing a smaller imitation of the arm wave, “is just a wonderful by-product.” Sam patted his shoulder. “That being said, I won’t mind hauling my cookies out here for future discussions. It’s loads better than sitting in a chair in the back room of a pub, even if it is a nice pub.”
A few minutes later, they broke back onto the trail. Waiting for us was an older guy, probably about my mom’s age, with summer-tanned skin and darker hair. He hopped up when he saw us and dusted himself off.
“They will take you,” Murray said.
The guy grinned, still dusting off his shirt. “Thanks. You don’t have to take me all the way to the park. There’s someone in the city I’d like to visit first.…” He’d been shaking hands with the others, but trailed off when he got to Sam. Despite his somewhat awkward staring, Sam grabbed his hand to shake it and … suddenly understood why he’d stopped.
Even though he’d been out in the summer sun, his hand felt cold to me. Ice cold. Necromancer cold. And when he finally spoke again, a few things fell into place.
“Samhain,” he whispered. He was bigger and the hair was darker, but the resemblance was undeniable, though it still took Sam a minute to place him. Not that surprising, since Sam hadn't seen him since he was a baby.
“Uncle Nick,” Sam replied. We stood there, locked in an incredibly awkward moment. The silence dragged on and on and on. “I’m not sure how to react right now.”
Ramon snorted. “Good thing you have me, then.” And he punched Sam's uncle straight in the eye. He was a trifle enthusiastic about it. Nick crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
“You might have hit him a little hard, Ramon.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, picking up Nick and chucking him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “Still getting used to my new strength. Only meant to tap him one, you know?”
Sam patted his arm reassuringly. “I’m going to buy you the biggest milkshake we can find, oh, buddy of mine.” Nick’s head wobbled in agreement as Ramon adjusted his inert form on his shoulder. Maybe not the homecoming Nick was imagining, but he’d kind of earned it.
Murray looked confused, and Pello looked worried.
Ramon gave a one-shouldered shrug in response. “He hasn’t been the best uncle to my boy here.”
“But we’re still taking him with us?” Pello asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Ramon said. “We just had to get that out of the way first.”
Sam grinned.
Murray looked first at Ramon and then at my stupidly grinning face. “You seem like such nice boys, but I think that, in the future, I will try not to cross you.”
“I can honestly say that’s probably very wise of you,” Ramon said, returning to his march as he began whistling a merry tune, Nick’s head bobbing in counterpoint the whole way.
[NFB, NFI, OOC is okay! Taken from Necromancing the Stone. Warning for: post length! Everything else is pretty harmless.]
“No, thanks,” Sam said. “Got my own.”
Pello tucked his away without using it. He wasn’t sweaty, despite the uphill climb and his beer gut. Ramon, who had come as my escort and additional muscle in case Sam had needed it, wasn’t breaking a sweat either. They'd also brought Taco, who was bounding from rock to fallen tree and racing through the dappled sunshine in blatant disregard of the leash law. The sunlight and fresh air, Sam figured, would be good for him, but he'd been fed before they left. Sam didn’t want him taking down Bambi on our first trip to the great outdoors. He sprang merrily after a butterfly and didn’t look winded in the slightest.
“Hey, what gives?” Sam asked. “Why am I the only one suffering here? There’s no way in hell Pello is in better shape than me.” He quickly added, “No offense meant, Pello.”
The satyr grinned lecherously in Sam's direction. “I get plenty of car-di-o.” He punctuated the word with some questionable thrusting.
“Okay,” Sam said, making a face. “Never do that again. And I call bullshit. So serious answer, please.” He took another swig from my canteen while he waited. It had taken them over an hour and a half of driving plus a ferry ride to get to Olympic National Park. They’d been hiking and walking for over an hour on a wandering trail, and Sam was beginning to wonder why whoever we were meeting hadn’t just come to us like everyone else.
The air felt somewhat cooler underneath all the old-growth pines towering above the group. Despite, or perhaps because of, everything going on, it was really nice to get outside. Another butterfly flickered by, floating past a mass of ferns to a small open nook. Sam decided he'd have to come back here when he wasn’t concerned with his friend’s murder and his own potential demise at the hands of his pack.
Pello gave a half shrug. “I am at my best in the forest. This is where my power lies.” He affectionately patted the thin, peeling white bark of the paper birch next to him.
“So if we were urban hiking?” When Sam caught his blank look, he added, “It’s exactly what it sounds like—hiking through city trails.” Downtown Seattle had steep hills that were appealing for that sort of thing. Not that Sam did it. He wasn't much of a hiker, urban or otherwise. A leisurely stroll through the woods? Yes. A ten-mile uphill death march? No, thank you.
“I would be in your sorry state,” he replied with a grin.
We started moving again, and Sam snagged a few huckleberries off a bush while they walked. When he were younger, Sam's parents would take them out hiking and camping all the time. If he and Haley were good, and if they were diligent enough about picking—but not eating—enough huckleberries, my mom would make pancakes in a griddle over our fire. There were few things better after a day of hiking than waking up to pancakes with those tart red berries. Bellies full, they'd spend the rest of the morning sitting on downed trees or large boulders by the lake, fishing for rainbow trout.
Sam flicked a berry at Ramon. “What about you? You’ve never been what I’d call a forest denizen.”
Ramon grunted. “Maybe not before, but I am now. Besides, after weeks of trying to keep up with the pack, I’ve just got more endurance for this kind of thing.” He thumped his chest with one hand, Tarzan-style.
Sometimes, if Sam wasn’t thinking about it, he forgot what had happened to his best friend. That they'd both changed over the spring. The remembrance was always followed by a wash of guilt. He was born to be this way, but Ramon’s state was completely Sam's fault. He’d gained it by trying to save Sam's scrawny ass.
Sam flushed and looked down, concentrating for a moment on the crisscrossed formation of roots at his feet. “Right,” I mumbled. “Sorry.”
Ramon either didn’t want to talk about it or felt that apologies weren’t necessary, and he didn’t answer.
“I’d forgotten how pretty it is out here. We should come back. You can bring Dessa and I'll be an obnoxious third wheel since I've got no one," Sam joked though it sounded forced. "Tres romantic, right?"
Ramon looked back at him and shook his head. He looked like he wanted to say something about the sad state of Sam's lovel ife but Taco jumped back onto Sam's shoulder and distracted them both. It was probably for the better.
Pello was leading, and once they’d gone a few minutes in and the trail was out of sight, he paused to take off his necklace. The odd-looking charm he usually kept around his neck was actually a purchased glamour—an object that changed the perception of the people around you. It made it possible for the satyr to live in an urban environment. With it, he looked like a dirty, overweight, dreadlocked skeezeball hanging out in one of the parks sleeping under trees or hitting on underage girls. To me, he’d always looked like a washed-up Dead Head with his flip-flops, ripped jean cutoffs, and stained Hawaiian shirt open and framing his rounded gut.
Without the charm, he looked exactly the same until you got to the gut, below which you found fur and hooved feet instead of the usual scrawny legs and sandals. Unfortunately, he felt more comfortable going pantsless. On meeting days, Ariana made him wear a Utilikilt that she had purchased for him so she wouldn’t have to see anything she didn’t want to or worry about where his naked ass had been. Her next goal was to get him to utilize the kilt’s “modesty snaps,” or at the very least learn to cross his legs. It was an uphill battle.
Sam knew he wouldn’t have cut off-trail without Pello. He wasn’t that experienced as a hiker, and the woods were full of lots of things that weren’t fuzzy bunnies and happy butterflies. As he was thinking this, the forest gave me an example in the form of a seven-foot thorny menace referred to as devil’s club. It’s an aptly named thorny plant, and it can grow in large, dense clumps that Sam didn't recommend walking through unless you are a masochist or happen to have a sharp machete on your person.
Sam was well versed on this plant. His mother cultivated some of it behind her house. Devil’s club is related to ginseng, and it’s used in a lot of herbal remedies. Despite being a literal pain—Sam had spent a good deal of my childhood nursing wounds from harvesting that plant—it was kind of beautiful. The leaves resemble those found on the maple, and they can grow really big. In the summer, the plant blooms with these tiny flowers that later turn into bright red berries.
They tried to slip around the plant, but even though they were aware of it, everyone got a few things tangled in its leaves. One particularly thorny bit snagged Sam's arm and drew blood. He hissed at it as he pulled the leaf slowly away from my flesh. It was a slow process because Sam didn’t want the plant leaving any barbs behind, and he knew from his mom’s garden that the plants are actually quite delicate. He didn’t want to harm it, even though it was making him bleed. Sam started lecturing it under his breath as he detangled himself.
“Sorry, guys,” Sam said, focusing on my task. “This is going to be a second.” Getting no response, he glanced up at his companions. Both of them were about five feet away, their backs to a large conifer. They managed to both be looking up with identical looks of amazement on their faces. Taco, concerned, had climbed up onto Sam's shoulder and was eyeing his battle with the plant.
“What?” That was all he needed, something else going wrong.
Ramon licked his lips. “The plant.”
“What about it?” Sam asked, frowning.
“Look at it.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing.” I went back to my careful extraction. Apparently I’d snagged part of my backpack on it as well.
“Dude, chico, look up.”
Sam paused in his extraction and did what he was told. The giant plant was … cowering. Yeah, Sam wasn't even kidding, that’s what it looked like: a giant, leafy, scolded child. And that’s what he'd been doing exactly—scolding it. Sam stood there for a moment, surprised and bleeding and a little amazed. He'd seen ill-mannered plants act this way around my mother sometimes.
When Tia LaCroix walked through a forest, you could bet nothing snagged her favorite shawl. This plant was treating me like my mother. But why now? If Sam had a bit of witch in me, why hadn’t it come out earlier? He gave a mental sigh. Yet another question to put into the “hell-if-I-know” pile.
While Sam was staring at the plant, a giant crow—and giant was a definitely apt descripion—landed on a branch above him. Sam had never seen one so huge. Taco hissed at it. The crow seemed unimpressed.
“Holy shit,” Ramon said. “That thing could carry off babies.”
Pello stared at the crow thoughtfully. “Crows are harbingers and omens. Big juju stuff.”
“My mom said a ton of crows showed up at my birth. She said one was the size of, well, that.” Sam nodded at the crow. “She even named me after them—my middle name is Corvus.”
“Well, then, I suggest you be nice to it,” Pello said, and he turned and started walking farther into the trees.
The bird was uncharacteristically quiet, apparently happy with its silent vigil.
“Ramon, can you get that container out of my bag? The one we packed for Taco?” It was full of roast chicken and sliced ham. Ramon handed a chunk of ham to Taco so he’d stop looking at us in an accusatory manner, then placed a particularly large chunk of chicken on a branch for the crow. The crow didn’t move, but Sam felt they’d done enough, so he repacked my bag and wiped his greasy fingers on my shirt.
The crow apparently appeased, Sam returned his attention to the devil’s club. “It’s okay,” he told the plant. “I’m not mad. It was my fault. You were just protecting yourself.” The nettle, slowly, as if expecting a blow at any moment, started to pull away. Sam winced, an involuntary hiss escaping his lips. The plant immediately snapped back to where it had been. Not ideal. Sam repeated, as soothingly as he could, that it was still okay, and then he slowly pulled his arm away from the spines. My skin was bloody and irritated and stinging, but he'd had the forethought to put some of his mom’s balm in my backpack, so once he'd rinsed it, it would be okay.
The plant still looked … scared. Sam knew plants don’t have faces or expressions or anything, but it still managed to convey that emotion to me.
Sam patted a leaf gently. “Good boy,” he said. The plant perked up. He smiled and gave it another pat before stepping away. The devil’s club pulled itself taller, its leaves spreading a little farther out, its tiny flowers opening up a bit more. If the plant were a person, Sam would have said it was puffing itself up with pride. With a grin still fixed on his face, Sam backed away.
“Let’s get out of here before anything else odd happens.” Ramon and Sam started walking again, ignoring the giant crow and the weird plant as best we could.
They caught up with Pello and stopped under a big tree somewhere in the middle of the woods. Sam was completely lost by now, so hopefully nothing untoward would happen to Pello while they were out here, or Sam would have to learn to live off the land. He settled into a cozy spot amidst the roots and drank some more from my canteen.
“So, who or what are we meeting here, again? And is there anything I need to know? Like, for example, anything I might blurt out that could be found offensive?”
“I’m sure you’ll do fine. We’re very understanding.” Sam turned at the sound of the deep voice and saw … hairy kneecaps. He looked up. And up. And then he swallowed hard. “We do have some river nymphs, though. Pretty harmless for the most part, but they can be temperamental. Not nearly as calm as the dryads.”
Ramon, who'd been sitting next to him, was having a reaction that was very similar to Sam's. They were both staring with a glazed look at the biggest guy they'd ever seen. He was about as tall as Ed, but where Ed was lean, this guy was built … well, the term brick shithouse comes to mind, though he'd never quite understood what that meant. He was big in scale, not just tall. And he was covered from head to giant toe in reddish brown fur. Oddly enough, he was wearing an olive green forest ranger’s uniform.
Ramon whistled. “I bet you would’ve made a mean linebacker.”
The hairy man smiled, and his teeth were like giant off-white boulders. Realizing he'd been staring, Sam tried to stop, but he couldn’t. “You’re a, um…” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it. Even after all I’d seen and all the creatures he’d met, he was unbelievable.
He chortled at my reaction, then squatted down in a movement slightly more monkey than man and offered Sam a hand, palm up, like you do with scared animals sometimes so they can smell you, which is both weird and a good way to lose a finger if the animal is scared. Sam gave him five instead. That really tickled him, and he tousled Sam's hair while continuing to chuckle. “I believe the current moniker you’ve given us is Bigfoot. We’ll just leave it at that.” He helped Sam stand up. “But you may call me Murray.” He tapped the cursive stitching on his shirt. It said MURRAY. Go figure.
Somehow the mundane nature of his name helped Sam pull his brain back together. “Is that your actual name?”
He helped Ramon up. “No, but my language is hard for hashmuk to say.”
Sam tried to repeat the strange word he’d said, but it was oddly guttural and accented, and he couldn’t repeat it. I gave up. “What is … whatever you just said?”
“Hashmuk. It is what we call your kind. Roughly translated it means ‘skittish naked badger.’”
“Funny,” Sam said. “We’re usually compared to monkeys.”
He scratched his chest. “Never seen a monkey.” He motioned for everyone to follow. They fell in behind him, Pello introducing us as we walked. Though Sam could tell Murray was slowing his pace for us, he still had to jog occasionally to keep up. He led us to an open area by a stream and motioned for the group to sit.
They spread out by the stream, unpacking our respective lunches carefully. Murray got out his lunch—some fruit and what smelled like smoked salmon.
“If I ask you some questions, do you promise to not throw me in that stream?” Sam asked. Murray nodded and kept eating.
“Are you actually a forest ranger?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t that cause problems?”
He pulled a long chain out of his pocket. At the end of it dangled a charm similar to Pello’s. Ah. “So you just look like one of us to them, eh?”
The slowly spinning charm caught Taco’s attention. He started to stalk it, his ears flattened to his skull and his tail twitching. Murray, an amused smile on his face, twirled the necklace some more.
“Better put that away,” Pello said through a mouthful of food. “Otherwise that chup there will bite right through it.”
Murray shrugged. “I can always replace the chain.”
Pello shook his head. “No. Chup as in chupacabra.” At Murray’s blank look he added, “If he bites it, the magic will be toast. They’re disruptive.” Murray quickly stashed the necklace, but handed a piece of salmon to Taco when the little guy let out a dismayed chirp.
All the stuff James had said about Taco clicked into place. That was why Douglas didn’t want them around—who would if one snap of the jaws would undo any magic you’d been working on? Not anyone sane which was why Sam guessed they wanted Taco around. Not a sane one in the bunch.
Murray patted the pocket where he’d put the necklace. “Yes, well, at any rate, it works fairly well. They think I’m a very large man with a strange diet. Often I am referred to as a ‘health nut.’ Occasionally, I buy snack treats as camouflage. Cheetos work well, as I can get the neon powder everywhere but not actually have to eat them.” He shuddered.
“How can you not like Cheetos?” Ramon asked.
“How can you like them? They are not food, and they smell wrong.”
“I like them,” Pello said, raising his hand.
Murray snorted. “I have seen you eat old tires and tin cans. I do not consider you a good spokesman for Cheetos.”
Sam settled into my spot in the grass. It was days like these that reminded him why he loved the Northwest so much. The sun was warm and pulling out the smell of grass and clover. The thick scent of some kind of flower wafted over. The combination with the sound of the stream burbling and a slight breeze rustling the trees made him aware of the life all around. The idyllic moment built a fierce joy in me, and Sam welcomed it. For a brief spell, he forgot about Brannoc, Haley, Natalie, Brid, murder, the Council, and death. He felt the warm wind and the grass under me. It was wonderful.
And like all perfect moments, it couldn’t continue. Sam took his sandwich out of its container with a sigh. James had prepared everything carefully, making sure that he knew to pack everything out and not leave a single scrap behind. Not that Sam would have anyway, but now he knew why he was so insistent.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Murray eyed me knowingly.
“I can certainly see why you like it here,” Sam agreed.
Ramon leaned back onto his elbows. “Yeah, man. Beautiful.”
Sam rested his sandwich on an upturned lid and pulled out a container of fruit salad. “But I doubt you had us come up for the view.”
“Wouldn’t that have been nice, though?” Ramon asked quietly. He wasn’t looking at us, but gazing out over the stream instead. Sam knew what he was getting at. Seemed like everyone wanted a little piece of us lately.
“So what can the Council do for you, Murray?”
He didn’t answer right away. He examined his food carefully, like he was trying to find something inside his grapes that might help him out. “I am part of what you might call an experiment.” He plucked a dark purple grape. “That’s not quite right. Part of a flagship program, maybe would be a better way to put it. Whatever term you wish to use, I am one of the few of my tribe to try and blend with yours. For a long time, we tried to remain apart. We kept to the woods and watched your kind from a distance. We were happy this way, but with the forest shrinking and the hashmuk coming closer, we couldn’t stay hidden much longer. Your kind propagates so quickly.”
“Yeah, we’re like bunnies that way.” Sam said.
He grinned his too-big teeth at me.
“So is the program not working?” Ramon asked.
Murray shook his head. “No, it is actually working quite well. We’ve found several forestry positions to our liking. My brother is planting trees for a nonprofit, and his wife helps monitor and conserve the local salmon population. It is most satisfactory.” His voice was full of pride as he said it.
“Wonderful,” Sam said, stabbing a piece of pineapple with a fork. “But I’m assuming you didn’t call us out here just to give a status report.” He looked around at the clearing while he chewed. “Not that I’d mind if you’d do so occasionally.”
Murray nodded. “Indeed, it has gone so well that others are willing to try it. To live closer to town.”
“Then what’s the prob?” Ramon asked.
“We … in order to live with your kind, we need something we have never needed before. We need money.” He patted the pocket where his charm was. “Besides the glamour, which hides our physical differences, we have to purchase a second one to obscure our scent during certain … seasons.” Had his face not been covered in hair, Sam would have sworn he was blushing.
“Seasons?” Ramon looked as confused as Sam felt.
Pello flopped down by Sam and stole a piece of his fruit salad. “He means rutting season. His kind gives off quite the pheromone-laden stench in the springtime. You know, it’s how they attract a mate.”
“Ah,” Sam said. “I can see how that could be problematic.”
Murray nodded emphatically. “Your kind either complains or gets a little too … friendly.” He frowned at me. “My cousin Gary tried to work for UPS. More so than the rest of us, he is comfortable in urban settings. He seems fascinated by your culture. The combination of his scent and their infamous uniform, well, it was just too much for some humans. For a species that ignores its sense of smell so heavily, you certainly perk up for that sort of thing.”
Ramon grunted. “I’ve always wondered about those uniforms. I mean, they shouldn’t be attractive … all that brown, but somehow they are.” He plucked at his own shirt. “Maybe I should apply for a job.…” He mumbled the last bit almost to himself.
Sam gave a shrug. “Like I said, bunnies. I assume you’re not making enough at your jobs to pay for the charms?”
“Most of us, no. And besides the charms, we have to purchase food since we don’t have enough time to gather it anymore. Then there’s lodging, clothing, and we must pay for your paperwork.”
“Paperwork?”
“You need things like social security cards and IDs to work. Kind of hard to get those things when you were born in the forest and have no paper trail.”
“Oh,” I said, “I see. Legal stuff. So what, exactly, do you need help with?”
Murray shifted around uncomfortably. This was hard for him, I think. “We wanted to see if maybe the Council would give us a grant? My brother, the one who works for the nonprofit, learned that sometimes the hashmuk government gives money to things that will help out other hashmuk.”
“And you wanted to see if the Council would do the same for its people, yes?”
“Yes,” he said, and his voice was passionate now. And since he was arguing for something that would help his family and friends thrive, Sam guessed that made sense. “If only the Council would help with our charms, we could manage the rest.”
Sam considered this. His request wasn’t outlandish. He didn’t know how much the charms cost or whether or not the Council did grants. But if it would help Murray and his people, Sam didn’t see the harm. He looked at Pello. “Do we do grants?”
“I imagine so,” Pello replied thoughtfully. “We’d need to bring it before the entire Council, though, to see what we could do.”
“Well, yeah, I figured.” Sam stood up, brushing off his hands as he did so. Sam stuck one out toward Murray. He grabbed it with a grin and shook it. “I will do what I can for your people,” Sam promised.
His smile widened. “I know you will.” Then he pulled Sam in for a bear hug. While he was squeezing the life out of Sam in a happy fashion, he considered how things might go if the Council denied his request. This embrace might turn quickly into another kind, one that Sam wouldn’t walk away from. And as he tried to spit some of the Bigfoot hair out of my mouth, Sam considered, should the situation sour, sending Pello to deliver the message for him. Cowardly, perhaps, but death by Bigfoot didn’t seem appealing, either.
They started packing up then, and Murray pulled me aside. “There was something else. It might be nothing, but you remember that cousin I mentioned?”
“Sexy Gary?”
“Yes, well, after the job with UPS … failed, we transferred him closer to the city. He works for the parks department out there. Anyway, there’s an area he oversees that has been feeling some general upset. He’s not sure what’s going on, but it’s like something nasty moved into the neighborhood, and it’s causing a ripple effect.”
“You want me to look into it?”
Murray nodded. “He’s not sure what’s out there yet, as he hasn’t isolated the source, but he says whatever it is, it feels unnatural.”
Sam scribbled his number on a scrap of paper and handed it to Murray. “Okay, have Gary give me a call, and I’ll see what I can do.” He thanked me, and they finished gathering their gear. When Sam looked over at Ramon, he noticed he had a wistful look on his face. He’d never been what Sam would call the outdoorsy type, but judging from the expression he was wearing, it looked like that had changed. Sam wondered if that was another side effect of his transformation or just a naturally occurring thing. Was it his choice or brought on by the new life Sam had shoved on him?
Murray walked us back toward the trail. He shuffled nervously, and Sam could tell he had something else to say.
“Spit it out, Murray. I promise I won’t bite.” As if to emphasize this, Taco chose that moment to climb up on his shoulder, curl around his neck, and pass out. The hike had him all tuckered out.
“I have already asked for so much, but I was wondering if you’d do me one last favor? There’s a volunteer here—he’s been helping me over the last few weeks—who wanted to transfer over into Gary’s territory. I would drive him myself, but I figure you’re already going that way.…”
“You want us to give him a ride?” Sam thought about the size of our car. “I’m not sure he’ll fit.”
“He is not like me. He is like you. Hashmuk.”
Sam nodded in understanding. “Sure, I mean, we’re already going that way.” He took a sip from my water bottle. “Murray, you could have come in to the Council to tell us all this. Why didn’t you?”
He managed to look a bit sheepish. “I figured it would make a better argument if you saw what you were investing in.”
One big arm swept out to take in the whole forest.
And it was beautiful, but he was missing the point. Sam shook my head at him. “No, man. I mean, yeah, the forest is great, but we wouldn’t really be investing in that,” Sam said. “We’d be investing in you and your people, and I think you guys would have been enough. This,” he said, doing a smaller imitation of the arm wave, “is just a wonderful by-product.” Sam patted his shoulder. “That being said, I won’t mind hauling my cookies out here for future discussions. It’s loads better than sitting in a chair in the back room of a pub, even if it is a nice pub.”
A few minutes later, they broke back onto the trail. Waiting for us was an older guy, probably about my mom’s age, with summer-tanned skin and darker hair. He hopped up when he saw us and dusted himself off.
“They will take you,” Murray said.
The guy grinned, still dusting off his shirt. “Thanks. You don’t have to take me all the way to the park. There’s someone in the city I’d like to visit first.…” He’d been shaking hands with the others, but trailed off when he got to Sam. Despite his somewhat awkward staring, Sam grabbed his hand to shake it and … suddenly understood why he’d stopped.
Even though he’d been out in the summer sun, his hand felt cold to me. Ice cold. Necromancer cold. And when he finally spoke again, a few things fell into place.
“Samhain,” he whispered. He was bigger and the hair was darker, but the resemblance was undeniable, though it still took Sam a minute to place him. Not that surprising, since Sam hadn't seen him since he was a baby.
“Uncle Nick,” Sam replied. We stood there, locked in an incredibly awkward moment. The silence dragged on and on and on. “I’m not sure how to react right now.”
Ramon snorted. “Good thing you have me, then.” And he punched Sam's uncle straight in the eye. He was a trifle enthusiastic about it. Nick crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
“You might have hit him a little hard, Ramon.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, picking up Nick and chucking him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “Still getting used to my new strength. Only meant to tap him one, you know?”
Sam patted his arm reassuringly. “I’m going to buy you the biggest milkshake we can find, oh, buddy of mine.” Nick’s head wobbled in agreement as Ramon adjusted his inert form on his shoulder. Maybe not the homecoming Nick was imagining, but he’d kind of earned it.
Murray looked confused, and Pello looked worried.
Ramon gave a one-shouldered shrug in response. “He hasn’t been the best uncle to my boy here.”
“But we’re still taking him with us?” Pello asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Ramon said. “We just had to get that out of the way first.”
Sam grinned.
Murray looked first at Ramon and then at my stupidly grinning face. “You seem like such nice boys, but I think that, in the future, I will try not to cross you.”
“I can honestly say that’s probably very wise of you,” Ramon said, returning to his march as he began whistling a merry tune, Nick’s head bobbing in counterpoint the whole way.
[NFB, NFI, OOC is okay! Taken from Necromancing the Stone. Warning for: post length! Everything else is pretty harmless.]