Chapter 6
“Who called?” Radlin Thorvik asks the EMT as his son is loaded into the ambulance. Lilja sits beside Vaelin, unsure how to touch his swollen face.
“Automatic call, sir. Not directly placed.”
“How does 911 get calls from nobody?”
Ansel steps outside. “Probably my electronics. Motion sensors flagged an anomaly.”
Radlin turns to him. “Run me through this, Ansel. What happened?”
The EMT gives Ansel a look. Handle this. The ambulance doors close.
Radlin lingers. Ansel knows he won’t leave Vaelin alone.
“I’ll drive you in,” Ansel says.
Radlin climbs into the hybrid. His family doesn’t have a vehicle. He’s grateful, but still confused.
“A grove of cedars?” Radlin scoffs. “It’s all poplars and oaks.”
“I don’t know exactly where. I was running blind.”
“Good thing you got to him. I’ve seen flying squirrels here but never nests. They’re aggressive when cornered or defending.”
As Ansel drives, he checks the rearview mirror. The shield is gone. Just… gone. Like it was never there. He stares, willing it to reappear, but they turn down the road and leave it behind. High up on a telephone pole, a gyrfalcon watches them disappear down the snowy gravel roads.
“Radlin, give this to Vaelin when he’s ready. I suspect he will want it.” Ansel hands a framed photo of Elke over. Beneath the photo paper bulges a folded shape in relief, too deliberate to be accidental.
At the hospital, Ansel explains again. Lilja listens, warm, receptive.
She touches his arm, her face warm with awe. “Thank you. For sharing your visions, Ansel. The meadowlark—just, wow. I can’t explain it, but…that feels guided.”
She pauses, thoughtful. “Larkwood Lane has fulfilled its purpose, hasn’t it? We’re changing.”
“Emberwood,” Vaelin murmurs from the hospital bed. His bright red, swollen face held slits of re-emerging aquamarine. His voice is groggy, but firm. “Emberwood Sparks… for the shield. And Elke.”
Ansel’s stomach drops. The name rings like a bell he’s never heard but has known forever. Déjà vu hums beneath his skin.
“I like it,” he says.
Radlin hesitates. “You hear from Miriam? Think she would believe any of this?”
Ansel shakes his head. “She doesn’t know.”
Radlin exhales, crossing his arms. “We haven’t talked since Elke.” He shifts his weight. “I can’t imagine losing a little girl. But today could have been worse. Thanks for being there.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” Radlin sighs. “While harvesting wood today I started thinking about robots that could differentiate between trees to cut and those to leave and could replant seeds. I don’t think about stuff like that. I don’t have time to daydream. Usually, I focus on how much wood will be needed for these long winters. But today, things got real. What do you call them? Ah—an inflection point, I think?”
Ansel nods, thoughtful.
Radlin studies Vaelin, something vulnerable in his face. “If something happened to me, like it did to Vaelin, we’d be screwed. I don’t know what we’d do.”
He clasps a scarred hand to Ansel’s shoulder. “I don’t know what you’re doing right now but, you know, if you’re around, please help him. Get him interested in things. You’re good at that. I’m no good at sharing knowledge. I’m always working. The kind of homestead I have takes work. I just…do things. Things that need doin’.”
Ansel nods. “I hear you, Rad.”
Radlin nods, turns, walks into the room. “How you doin pardner? Those painkillers kick in yet?”
Vaelin raises a thumb.
Ansel observes Radlin’s large, scarred hands. Hands that cradled a son, chopped wood, planted seeds, and clasped his shoulders. Whatever constructed for the future couldn’t serve just those who had always been served. It had to work for the people whose hands had built everything in the first place.
He notes Radlin’s tough, weathered face. Soon, he would be out harvesting wood. The man had no vacations or sick days; without wood for fire, they would be cold. Ansel now understood these limitations better.
Guilt lingers. He built machines to work for him. Why hadn’t he thought about bringing them here? Radlin’s daydream fans an ember. His brain whirs, assembling a blueprint.
His mind drifts back to the Grove.
The moment Vaelin had stared into him, those aquamarine eyes shifting, spectral, seeing deep within him. A moment where they both shared pain, but also a connection of caring and comradery.
Then, This place sees us. It calls us.
The trees had felt ancient. Aware, even. He still doesn’t understand why he dropped his phone, his watch, his key fob. Why he obeyed. Like an admin override on his physical body. It still unnerved him.
Maybe the Grove wasn’t just some wooded anomaly. Maybe it was connected into something else.
Something that didn’t want to be seen.
The divorce, the house, lawyers, and the loss of Elke are painful but feel somewhat distant. More pressing matters occupy his mind now
Idling, Ansel scrolls through the trail cam network.
The last working cam shows him walking. Stopping. Then the feed fizzles.
CORRUPTED DATA FILE. E-OF. SENSOR OVERLOAD.
Ansel stills. Wait. Overload?
Was Vaelin breaking them… or had something else refused to be seen?
He scrolls through the logs. The same second the file corrupts, a heat signature spikes with a pulse, gone too fast to be human.
A sharp breath pulls through his nose. His heartbeat drums.
Leave the mystery. Do the now.
He shakes his head, dials Marvin.
“Marvin? So, I watched Ghost in the Shell last night. You remember that convo we had? About autonomy?”
“…Yeah?”
“I’ve got a project idea. Something big.”
“…Alright, I’m listening.”
“I was in the woods today, thinking about ecology, non-locality, and—look, I can’t explain all of it yet. But—
Want to build some robots?
There’s things that need doin’.”