A shriek shatters the ethereal stillness, jolting Ansel from the reverie.
“Vaelin? VAELIN?”
Ansel runs, heart pounding, adrenaline surging. He runs along the path, the boy’s voice distant. He passes a smashed trail cam. His hackles raise at the stupidity of it, but perhaps Vaelin perceived something similar.
The boy’s panicked cries grow clearer, leading him off-trail, through brambles that tear at his clothes and steal his hat.
The forest opens up, poplars standing back. A sacred space for the cedars rising in the middle.
This is it. This is what the vision had portended.
He’s already breathless from the run. The twilight canopy steals what little air he has left. The ringing centers in his head again, this time much louder, almost singing.
Vaelin writhes on the ground, something with large silvery wings and a feathered tail.
Ansel lunges and pulls a snarling bird of prey off the boy. It snaps its beak at him, sinking into the meat in his hand. He heaves it away. The raptor screeches, catches itself in mid-throw and ascends out of sight.
“HOLY SHIT. What the fuck was that?” The words spill of his mouth before adrenaline can subside. Already wounded, Vaelin crushes away from his violent voice.
Talons lacerated Vaelin’s hands, face, have torn his shirt and part of his ear looks gone. His eyes wide, terrified. The boy hasn’t entirely come back to his own head yet.
Clarity slams into Ansel like Thor’s hammer to an anvil. Awareness crashes into his mind.
“Oh god.”
Time slows down.
“Vaelin.”
The boy looks like he’s in shock.
“I’m sorry.”
But trust is broken.
Ansel sits cross-legged, bows his head, and holds out his hands in receptive submission. He can say nothing; only action matters. Demonstrating inaction shows the youth the elder is receptive.
Vaelin’s breath races, hitching then not. The boy has remarkable control.
He scoots backwards, bewildered.
Frowns.
Pitches forward, eyes covered in blood from his forehead.
It takes a moment for Vaelin to calm.
His wail of pain pierces the stillness.
“Come here, come here,” says Ansel, straightening slow.
Collapsed on the ground, Vaelin watches Ansel with a cautious wonder one would give to a stranger who suddenly knelt to pray.
“I am…so sorry,” he says, his heart as full as if speaking to another child. To Elke. Too late for her. Not too late for him. “Come here, let’s look at that.”
Vaelin’s tears mix with blood. “It hurrrts! Why do my tears hurrrrt?”
Salt in the wounds.
Ansel reaches slow for the boy who finally allows the touch, briefly before shrugging it away.
Ansel swallows hard, feeling the lacerations of rejection.
I am never drinking again.
The tone in his head shifts from a song to a whisper.
Ansel digs in his pocket. There’s a little, but not enough. Stitches will be needed for skin hanging from his forehead and something done about his missing upper left ear.
“Can I touch your face for this?” he asks Vaelin, showing him the Polysporin.
Vaelin blinks hard, trying to hold it in. Then nods, looks down.
“Here, you get your hands.”
The boy flinches as Ansel gently rubs the ointment onto what he can on Vaelin’s forehead, cheeks, nose and chin. Vaelin’s raptor encounter will leave him disfigured.
“I think I found that porcupine,” says Vaelin, agony in his voice.
Ansel smirks, gentle this time. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I was exploring in here and this thing landed on me from the sky.”
Ansel exhales. “Didn’t know we had those here.”
Vaelin’s expression shifts from fear to something deeper.
“You know, up until now, I thought this place only showed me things,” Vaelin murmured, before looking through pain at Ansel with an easy friendliness that filtered into all the places that Elke had once been.
And, for the first time, Ansel saw recognition in the boy’s face. Vaelin wasn’t alone in his head anymore. There was someone else.
Ansel pauses. “What do you mean?”
Vaelin’s voice is calm, certain in a face bloody with hurt.
“It sees us. This place I mean. It calls us. That’s why Larkwood Lane was built here.”
Ansel’s gut tightens. His thoughts war between skepticism and knowing, while Vaelin’s words settle inside, in tune with his bones.
“You really see things here?”
Vaelin nods. “With my eyes closed, I see the tree breathing. With them open, I see lights dancing.”
Ansel hesitates. “Like when you hit your head?”
“No. Like your WiFi heatmap—but moving, jumping branch to branch.”
A familiar memory stirs. Ansel had shown the kids electromagnetic mapping once.
But.
“There are no EM fields here.”
“I know.” Awe in Vaelin’s voice.
Ansel swallows hard.
A caress of cool wind sifts through the Grove, the trees still.
He’s been to sacred places before like churches, cathedrals, ancient libraries where the weight of history sat in the air like incense. But this place is alive.
Something watches. The gyrfalcon?
“I saw it too.”
“Saw what?” asks Ansel.
“Uhhh,” the boy pauses. “The shield with Othala and Algiz. It exploding.”
His head bows a little, his voice dark with shame. “That’s why I broke your cameras. It didn’t want them there anymore. I don’t know why.”
Desecration?
Ansel licks pursed lips. The truth was a salve. Lingering, background fury vanishes like fading sparks from embers. He still thinks stupidity was involved, but now there’s understanding.
“Let’s get you to the hospital.”
Vaelin sighs. “Mom’s not gonna like that.”
“She’ll have to.”
They move toward the exit. Ansel glances up. The towering cedars feel like a cathedral. Shadows move in the branches. A subdued light…dances?
Not just sunlight.
He looks down, grounding himself.
“Did you see that shield at the driveway entrance?”
Vaelin frowns. “I only saw it in here,” he says, his finger pointing at his forehead, but Ansel sees it pointing at a deep laceration.
A cry from a meadowlark echoes through the grove, sending a shiver down Ansel’s spine he can’t hide.
The trees part. Sunlight spills through.
A siren wails in the distance.