Chapter 2: Ill Wind

Aisling Lingren

I was as restless as the rough March wind. The raw breeze made spinning my aunt’s mixed cattail and nettle fibers an exercise in frustration, much like visiting home. Sitting by the front door of my dad’s fortified apartment building, I watched my extended family clean the killing field gardens. I dropped and wound my spindle over and over and over. Bits of cattail fluff blew away with every fall. The damn stuff’s good insulation, but too short to spin on its own. My aunt had carded nettle fibers in with the fluff for support, but some of those fibers hadn’t been well-retted and were over-stiff for hand-spinning. The mix was both too fine and too coarse, and barely held together.

 

No one wanted me in the garden. Green thumbs ran in the Lingren side of my family, but I was just good at killing things. When Aunt Dahlia saw me pulling up her naturally reseeded amaranth seedlings, she banished me to the front steps. The spinning basket held nothing I could murder, she said, and if I couldn’t tell weeds from reseeds, then I could be useful away from her “babies”.

It was probably another subtle dig about me becoming a spinster. I was a twenty-four-year-old grad student in a field no one wanted to hear about, and “too opinionated” to have serious dating prospects. I mean, whatever. But she brought up our Duty to Maintain Humanity every chance she got, and I was utterly sick of it.

Not exactly something I could help with, anyway.

I glanced at my dad, sixty-something and enthusiastically shoveling last fall’s organic detritus into a rusty wheelbarrow. Dead beanstalks, old potatoes missed at harvest, and all winter’s untidy muddle had been cleared into a fresh compost pile. Cover crops had been turned under and chickens set loose to scratch and manure the whole place, excepting, of course, any now-carefully protected reseed patches. Just lovely to learn my family trusted the poultry more than me in the garden. Aunt Dahlia had passed out hundreds of little pots to go into every South-facing window on the building, full of tiny seedlings ready to grow as big as the spring sun could make them. We couldn’t count on frost-free nights until June, but when summer comes, Minnesotan gardeners hit the ground running. Supplies don’t always get through anymore, and sometimes there are things outside the security fence. The garden needed to produce, and it did, enough to hold the family through at least a two-week siege.

I know, because one happened when I was fourteen.

Spin and drop, spin and drop, wind strong thread for weaving warps… do something useful, Aisling, don’t glower at your family… spin and drop, spin and drop… spin and drop dead of boredom…

The siege happened just a few weeks before Mom died. We’d been visiting my cousins and got stuck in the compound while cryptids howled and gibbered beyond the fence. When the food was almost gone and Mom’s medicine supply long exhausted, we finally got a night as black as pitch. I slipped out into the dark, taking just a kitchen knife. By dawn, gore dripped from every inch of my skin and hair, and I knew who the worst monster in the night really was.

And I’d rather be out in the dark again, surrounded by rabid rat goblins, than dealing with another heaping helping of familial disapproval!

I dropped and wound my spindle, hating how stuck my life was. Desperately, pathetically, I wished something, anything, would happen.

Then a sheriff’s squad car pulled up outside the front gate, and I cursed my stupid wishing roundly.

“It’s an ill wind,” I heard my aunt Thelma say, looking at the sky and then at the car. “Blowing in ill news.”

Sudden sunlight slipped through the blustering clouds. It gilded the car’s bolted-on armor and re-bar window guards, and seemed to give the sheriff and his deputy brief halos. They had welded an old snowplow to the car’s front as a battering ram, and a tuft of bloody, unnaturally orange fur stuck to the bottom, neglected whenever it last got hosed down. The skull of some toothy, four-horned cryptid grinned from where a hood ornament should have sat.

Did I screw up? I wondered as my pulse started pounding. It did that every time law enforcement came around. The choker binding my illusions seemed to tighten around my throat.

We scrubbed the jackhammer after dismembering that corpse. With bleach!

I set my spinning carefully into its fiber basket, spindle on top to hold the roving down, and readied myself to fight or flee… or, more likely, just keep hiding.

I hate hiding.

A sleek, expensive little hybrid electric car slid into the space behind the sheriff’s car, and my cousin Trey slipped out of the driver’s seat. He was a few months younger than me, lean and blond and handsome in a spare way, and his only redeeming qualities involved using guns well. He pulled one out of the back seat, some sort of assault rifle, and grabbed ammo with his other hand. Then he sauntered casually over to the sheriff’s window, juggling bullets between his fingers.

Sheriff Rudy hit his siren for a second, turned it off, and then hit it again. That code meant, “Threat, but not imminent, come out for info.”

No, I decided. If they thought they were arresting a sketchy local superhero, it wouldn’t be local law and my worst cousin stopping by. It’d be a full surprise military raid, with everyone the remnant army could pull in.

The sheriff said something to Trey that made him smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. My cousin made a joke and slid ammo into the big gun. I glanced around at my family. No one looked too worried. They didn’t know about my stuff, though. If my issues ever came to light, the resultant catastrophe would sweep up all of us, and they had no clue. It needed to stay that way. They drove me crazy, but they kept me human too… as much as anything could.

I can’t let them get hurt.

Someone sat up in the back seat of the sheriff’s car, and I could feel the Radiance swirling around her before seeing who it was.

Well, that explains Trey’s presence.

I wondered how many executions had paid for that shiny car of his. Our broken world necessitated messes, but the sheriff still held an elected position. Slaying a monster actively tearing up humans was one thing; pulling the trigger on some teenager just starting to Change, sobbing and begging for mercy, was another. I mean, some more stable strangelings lived out brief lives as prison labor, but over half got shot as their Cascade started.

The neighbor kid put her face to the window, more vulnerable than I’d seen her since her dad walked out, years and years ago. Vicki’s expression that of someone stepping in front of a firing squad.

No. Not her.

I used to babysit Vicki Marweg before I left for college. She was due to graduate high school in June, with a full military scholarship already lined up. Radiance twisted and turned in the air surrounding her now, invisible to everyone here but me. It’d take a miracle to keep her human long enough to get her diploma now. Vicki’s little sister fled into the building, yelling for their mother. My stomach sank into the dirt under my bare feet. There were too many witnesses. Helping her could out me. Outing what I really was could get my whole family executed. Treason Against Humanity was an automatic death sentence, after all, even if I was technically just the result of it. I didn’t think even my dad had realized what Mom was, though; he could be amazingly oblivious. Almost the whole family was guilty of Contact with an Elsecomer because of her, also an automatic death sentence. None of them knew, and I had to keep it that way.

Let some Way open, I prayed to the god of my mother’s people. Silver branches shook within me, futures and potentials knotting together and fraying apart. I stood up and followed the path they presented.

My kin and neighbors had put down their shovels and rakes and gathered around the front gate. It was late afternoon, and their work was almost finished, anyway. I glanced up at the building’s roof. A twelve-year-old second cousin was up in the sniper nest, .22 rifle in hand, peering down to see what was up. The gardens double as a killing field, enclosed space in which we can shoot anything before it gets too close to the building. The fortifications aren’t high end, just eight-foot chain link fences with lines of barbed wire strung along their tops. Another length of chain link lies flat on the ground outside to prevent digging. The fences mostly keep out the whitetail deer that’d eat the gardens, but they slow down cryptids nicely too. Probably the steel they’re made of does more than the actual barrier they present, but it works well enough.

Most of the residents were already outside for the work party, and the rest filtered out as I watched. My dad and a couple of my adult cousins, some of their horde of kids, and the few sets of neighbors that weren’t close kin gathered by the gate. I mean, Stinkwood’s tiny; they were probably relatives. I just didn’t know how close.

Which is why I don’t date in town anymore.

Vicki’s sister and mother came running out the door and straight to the front of the crowd.

I kept myself to the back.

Sheriff Rudy opened his door and climbed out. He was a bit of a good ‘ol boy: paunchy, past his prime, and fast with a gun… but nothing else.

“Well, folks, gotta bitta bad news,” Rudy said, ambling over. Trey and Deputy Jenkins stayed over at his car. “Seems some contaminated food got passed out at a track and field meet over in Carlton. Already had one Change, and a half dozen other kids need to be kept under observation for a bit. Miss Marweg here’s one of ‘em. So this all’s just a precaution, but her family needs to get her an overnight kit. Anyone wants to say goodbye, just in case, you all actually have a chance for once.”

There was a moment of horrified silence. Vicki’s mother collapsed to her knees.

“Who Cascaded?” one of my kid cousins asked. Julian was about to graduate high school himself. He probably knew whoever it was.

“Sara Little,” the Sheriff answered. I heard a couple of gasps from the crowd. She was Vicki’s best friend, and they were together most of the time; everyone here knew her. “She got away into the woods, headed into old Jay Cooke Park. Sounds like she’s turning into something big, dunno what, so we’ll assume she’s gone troll and is in the Hunger. Got a buddy with dogs coming over from Hermantown; we’ll find her. Lock the gate after we leave, though, and keep someone on watch till you hear she’s down. Standard precautions.”

Not Sara too, I despaired.

“Ma’am, can you please get up?” the sheriff asked Mrs. Marweg. “Your daughter’s fine so far, and she needs you to pack an overnight kit for the quarantine cell. Everyone else, go say whatever you need to.”

The crowd shuffled over to the sheriff’s car, and Rudy’s deputy rolled a window down for people to talk to Vicki. Then he got out. He caught my eye and nodded for me to join him.

That way, whispered hidden silver leaves.

Deputy Luke Jenkins had been in school with me and my crew; well, a senior when we were mostly in eighth grade, and we got him in some hella trouble at one point. He was a decent guy, though, one of those too-rare cops who actually wanted to protect people. He’d just seen too much of what I really am. I had to play it cautious. I settled my basket over my arm and slipped out the gate.

Just another local human girl, I thought, trying to wrap normalcy around me. Old flannels and farmgirl braids and calluses from chopping her own firewood. Just that, and nothing more.

Trey saw me checking my reflection in the car’s window and rolled his eyes. Idiot. If he wanted to think I was sweet on Luke, let him. Guy’s another cousin (third, twice removed, I think) and law enforcement was definitely not my type. Anyway, Luke was married and had a toddler. My illusions were holding; that was all I’d needed to see. I looked as harmless as anyone does, living after the end of the world like we do.

Not that the bondage warrior look ever took off here. Minnesota’s weather would either freeze or burn your bits off if you tried it, somewhat seasonally dependent.

Waste of a good apocalypse.

Mostly, we all just looked really poor. That’s what really happens when everything falls apart. I mean, kudos to the sheriff for what he’d done with his car. If I hadn’t needed to be invisible, I’d have tricked out my pickup like a total road warrior. Seriously, I’d killed much cooler monsters than Rudy had.

Life in the fucking wardrobe…

“Afternoon, Dusty,” Luke said, using my highschool nickname, and nodded towards the girl in the back of his car. “So…”

“Can I get something for her?” I asked. “Or for you?”

He gave me cop eyes. I tried to seem like I had no idea what he was implying, but it’s hard to look innocent to an officer who’s previously cuffed and booked you. I mean, in my defense, I did not start any of that shit on prom night.

Sure ended it, though.

“She gonna go?” he asked, too quietly for anyone by Vicki to hear. Trey glanced up sharply. I glared at my cousin and he shrugged and looked away.

“Think that’s in fate’s hands now,” I said.

“I’m not asking fate,” Luke answered. “I’m asking you.”

Dammit. He does know something.

“Been only five years since the invasion that no Stinkwood kids Changed,” he said quietly. “And we both know what years those were.”

The ones I was in school here. And it was completely inaccurate to say no one Changed then; more like, no one visibly Changed.

I had hoped no one noted that. Dammit. I stared at my feet.

“Heard about what you’re studying now,” he said. “Monster biology, dissections. I’m heading over to join the Duluth police force next month. They said they’ve got a grad student who comes in and consults with them on cryptid forensics. Wasn’t surprised when I heard it was you. So…”

He nodded to Vicki.

Dammit.

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “She’s gonna go.”

“Anything you can do ‘bout that?”

“Asking the monster biologist?”

“Asking the local witch.”

All things considered, Luke thinking I’m just a witch is probably a good thing.

I kicked the ground and nodded, pulling my drop spindle out of the basket.

We can make this look like human witchcraft. That’s doable. Everyone here knows I’m more or less a pagan, anyway. It’s one of the few things I’m not closeted about.

“Hey April!” I called over to Vicki’s little sister. “Come over here.”

“What’s going on?” she whispered. She was a scrawny little kid, with enormous eyes and over-thin cheeks. “Can you do something?”

“Maybe. Get me some hair from Vicki’s head and ask her exactly how tall she is.”

She blinked at me, then bounced up with sudden hope and ran to the car. Guess it wasn’t just the deputy who thought of me as the local witch.

“Luke,” I said quietly. “If this works, I don’t know if it’ll be permanent. I’ve never been able to totally stop a Radiant infection, just slow ‘em down.”

And sometimes shape them. But we’re not going to say anything about that.

“I’ll monitor her,” he said. “She’s the only one of the quarantine group I felt was gonna go.”

“Got your own sense for that?” I asked. Trey’s ears sort of twitched. Luke shrugged noncommittally. Okay. If he was protecting his own issues, he’d be quiet about mine. And he had a kid. These things intensified with every generation. He’d guard his family.

April came running back, some long, dark blond hairs clenched in her little fist.

“She’s five foot eight,” she breathed, handing me three hairs.

“Good,” I said, laying them across my left wrist. I took the first one and aligned it with my spinning fiber. Eyes closed, I cautiously opened my connection to the Tree that Grows Between Worlds, the source of fae magic, and reached into the Radiance sparkling around Vicki. With the heavy steel all over the car, it wasn’t easy, but it felt… doable. I spun the spindle and dropped it, Vicki’s hair twisting in with the long nettle fibers and short cattail fluff as it fell. Three times I dropped and wound the spindle, adding a blond hair with each fall, spinning the Radiance writhing into Vicki through the thread. Then I pulled off the last six feet off the bobbin end, running the thread through my mouth to wet the yarn and set the twist.

“Cut this two inches shorter than my feet,” I said to April, holding an end of the thread up to the crown of my head. “I’m a little taller than Vicki.”

She pulled out a little pocket knife and sliced the end of the thread. I wound it up around my hand, set the spindle back in its basket, and knotted a little loop into one end of the yarn. Then I went over to the car and waited for a chance to talk to Vicki.

“Hey kiddo,” I said when I finally got up to the window, like I used to back when I babysat her years ago. “Heard you’re going running in some dangerous woods. Mind if I give you a little luck-wishing to help get you through?”

“You’re the one who likes running in the woods, Dusty,” she said, her eyes bleak. “But you always got us back out. Sure.”

“Put your hand out the window.”

She put it cautiously between the bars. The steel didn’t seem to bother her yet, a good sign. I set the thread I’d spun against her wrist, and finger-crocheted a little bracelet with the yarn, binding the flow of Radiance pouring into into her through the string. Her incipient Change slowed with every twist and knot.

“How long are they keeping you for?” I asked casually.

“Three days,” she said. “I… I kind of feel something. Like that tingly electric feel is fading.”

“That’s probably good,” I said, like I was operating on hope and guesswork. “So what happened?”

“Sara’s family got a package of charity food,” Vicki answered. Her hand went to the little unicorn pendant Sara gave her for her tenth birthday. They’d worn matching ones ever since. “There were some pemmican bars in it, a venison and cranberry mix. Nobody in her family likes cranberries, so she brought them to the meet. Most of the team tried them, but she and I were the only ones who actually liked them. Then suddenly she doubled over and started screaming, and when she looked up at me, she was growing tusks and sprouting black fur all over her body. When she realized what was happening, she ran into the woods. On all fours.”

A fast Change, and a bad one, then.

“Well, she didn’t hurt anyone, that’s something,” I said.

“Dusty, can you find her?” she whispered. “Can you help her? I remember your… friends… in the forest.”

“Vicki, I…” I said. “I don’t know. I can go for a run tonight. But I’m heading out of town for a couple days tomorrow, and…”

She stared at me with those needy puppy eyes that got me to do things for her when she was little.

“I’ll do what I can,” I finally said, tying the bracelet closed around her wrist, too tight for it to come off easily. “Good luck in quarantine.”

I stepped away and back over towards Luke, stuffing my magic back under wraps, making myself as human as I could. It felt like I was cutting off my fingers.

“You shine when you’re doing magic,” Luke said quietly, and tapped his forehead. “In here, I see it. What are you?”

“The village witch,” I said, a wave of despair washing over me. “Oh gods, I can’t take losing people like this.”

He nodded bleakly, understanding. We just stood there for a moment, our shoulders drooping. No matter what we did, it wasn’t enough. Then he nodded and strode off to have a word with Trey.

I need to get out of here.

My pickup was parked down the block. I tossed the spinning basket in the front and grabbed something from under the passenger seat. Then I turned away from the safety of fences and walls and crowds and just ran.

I heard my cousin say something disparaging behind me, and then I was out of range.

Well, fuck him. Trey’s just an asshole.

Now, to really take care of things.

My magic stetched out from me, igniting the bondnet links in my mind.

*Guys, I think we’ll have another Runner for the Underhill Railroad to transport tomorrow,* I projected into the mental network I share with my strangeling friends, the ones people don’t realize Changed back in high school. Like me, they hid their fae sides. All of us lived closeted lives, deep “in the wardrobe”, pretending to be human.

*Who?* Rigs sent back. *I can see about finding a second canoe.*

*We’ve probably got too many for just one now, anyway,* Coral added. *We’ll be slow in the water, and there’s still ice on the river. It’s a bad combo when we also have to get past Division 51.*

*Sara Little,* I answered. *Sportsball’s friend, the one I had you track down the Black Panther film for five years ago. I’m off to talk to some owlies about finding her.*

*You’ll need something to trade,* Rigs reminded me.

*Already got it.*

Losing it was going to suck.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Buy here