3. Cricket

A curling wisp of steam rose from the teacup, tickling Cricket’s nose with dandelion and lemon—her cousin’s favorite blend. She hunkered down in her blanket, gritting flat teeth as her cousin’s wife tugged on a bandage, wrapping it tightly around her hoof.

“Ow,” she said. It didn’t hurt, but aside from the intermittent chirps from a walkie-talkie on the table, the kitchen was too damned quiet. Her cousin’s wife had barely spoken a word to her, at least not directly. She’d had a full-on conversation with a tall, bird-like woman who introduced herself as Nurse Almaden and helped Cricket into a bathtub, gently scrubbing her clean before prodding her ankle and hoof. For the nurse, her cousin’s wife had loads to say, most of it concerning care for Cricket’s hoof and not to tell anyone she was here.

But for Cricket herself? Only terse commands like, “get dressed,” and “drink this,” and “stop moving.”

So she said, “Ow,” trying to get something other than cold anger out of Mac.

“Sorry.” Mac tugged on the bandage and pressed the edge down with her thumb. “She said to wrap it tightly.”

“Any tighter, and you’ll cut off blood flow,” Cricket grumbled.

Mac glanced at her, and her features relaxed. She gently lowered Cricket’s hoof to a footstool. “Sorry, Crick. I just—you scared the hell out of me. What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for my cousin,” she said, raising the teacup and inhaling the herbal scent. A hint of peach teased beneath the lemon and dandelion, adding a subtle sweetness. She took a sip, letting her eyes drift closed as warmth rushed down her throat. Oak and ivy, she was tired. “Tried to get here last night, but that storm blew in, and I had to take the ridgelines to—”

“What was so important that you ran the ridgelines in a storm?” Mac shot up straight in her chair.

“I need to talk to my cousin.” Cricket set the teacup down a little harder than necessary, sloshing hot liquid onto the table. “Someone keeps buying up the land in Green Bank and forcing us out of our dens, but no one will listen to me when I suggest moving. They’re happy to get shoved into less and less space until we’re forced out altogether, and yesterday, I saw the assessor out there marking trees.”

“Trees.”

“Yes, trees. They only do that when the land has been sold, which means we have to move again, but there”s nowhere else to go. And the noise!” She rose to her feet, wincing as the weight came down on her injured hoof—a small sprain in her ankle, the bird nurse had said, and smaller injuries along with a crack in the hoof wall. Gripping the chair back, she glared at Mac. “They start up before dawn and work into the night. We can’t even leave to forage or patrol the border without risking getting run down by their trucks, and they’re not even from here. They’re all outsiders thinking they can move to our mountains and–”

“Cricket.”

She sighed, glaring at the table. “I thought if I brought my cousin back, maybe they could talk to the family. You know how they are; they don’t listen to anything I say. My parents still think I’m the little doe that fell through with them fifteen years ago. I thought, with my cousin, we could prove it’s safe outside of Green Bank and, I don’t know, get everyone to move away.”

“Ramble’s not here,” Mac said, naming Cricket’s cousin as her attention drifted to the window. “They went down to Elkins yesterday morning for supplies. No idea when they’ll be able to get back; the roads are closed from that storm.”

“They go into town?” Her ears pricked forward in surprise.

“Of course, they go into town; we’ve lived here for a decade.”

“How long did it take for people to ... to ...”

“Get used to them?” Mac finished. A soft smile overtook her face, and she patted the table, urging Cricket to sit back down. “A summer.”

She eased herself into the chair, blinking her eyes at an unfamiliar burn. “And no one tries to hurt them?”

“Why would they?” Mac asked.

“Because we’re different,” she mumbled. And they were. Others had dropped through to this earth at the same time as Cricket’s family: wolven and naga, thunderbirds and gnomes. A hundred different creatures, all of them integrating with the humans and finding a place for themselves while, for whatever reason, the faun had kept to the woods, cloistering around Green Bank and befriending the locals—people who had clung to the Monongahela Hills since settling there centuries prior, or the kinds of people who sought the peace of the radio-free zone and an escape from the noise of modern living.

Mac chuckled and shook her head. “You came here asking for help to prove it’s safe. How can we help if you don’t even think it’s safe?”

“It’s not my fault I’ve been stuck in Green Bank!” she protested. “And you’ve met the family; they won’t move.”

“Always wondered why,” Mac said. “Every time we asked, Ramble’s dad said they weren’t old enough to know.”

“My father says the same thing.” Cricket released the chairback and knocked it with a fist. “But I can’t just wander off and leave them there. The assessor is already out marking the trees, which means it’s only a matter of weeks, maybe days, before they start clearing the woods. I need everyone to be somewhere safe, and Ramble’s letters talk about how safe it is here.” She waved her arm toward the gingham-curtained window and the camp beyond. “I just need them to come back and talk to our parents. ”

Mac stood and crossed the kitchen, grabbing a towel to clean the spilled tea. “Well, I’m glad my wife thinks our home is safe.”

Cricket pointed at her. “That’s sarcasm. I know what sarcasm is.”

“Clearly,” Mac replied. She tossed the towel on the counter and leaned against the edge, arms crossed. “It’s not just Elkwater, you know. A lot has changed since your family got here. Maybe it is time you wandered out of the Monongahela.”

“Now?” Cricket straightened, her ears pressing tight against her head. “I just said I can’t leave—”

“No, not now, dingbat.” Mac rolled her eyes and waved a hand at Cricket’s hoof. “You’re not fit to go anywhere. Ramble would kill me if I let you wander off on an injured hoof, and I can’t drive you until they get back with my truck.” She pressed her lips in a line, gaze dropping to the bandage wrapped around Cricket’s ankle. “How did you do that, by the way? Aside from being dumb enough to run the ridgelines in a storm.”

“Oh.” She stretched her leg out, gripping her calf with her fingers, absent the metal caps. Half of them had fallen off in her tumble down the hill, and the rest sat in a pile on the kitchen table. Her felt-covered fingertips pressed back slightly, the flexible extra knuckle all faun had giving way under the pressure. “Something chased me.”

“What?” Mac hollered. “Why didn’t you start with that?”

“Because it’s the Monongahela, there’s loads of monsters out here,” Cricket argued. “I told that camper, the one who found me.” She racked her brain for any details she could remember, but her head had been foggy, pain and exhaustion overriding any sense. What she did remember was crystal clear: sky-blue eyes ringed in dark eyelashes and a reddish-orange halo of bright auburn friz escaping from a long, thick plait. “The fox-haired one, didn’t she tell you?”

Mac pinched between her eyes, lips moving silently in what Cricket realized were numbers. She was counting numbers to calm herself down before talking again. Like Cricket was some hours-old doe staggering in a field.

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Yes, it’s a big deal, Cricket.” Mac tore her hand away, glaring at her. “I run a camp with children in it. I have a responsibility to keep everyone here safe, and you’re telling me something chased you all the way from Green Bank?”

“Not all the way,” she protested. “I think I lost it when I fell and twisted my ankle.”

“Did you get a good look at it?” Mac asked. “Some of the staff are from the hills; maybe they’ll know what it was.”

Cricket shook her head. “Not a good one, no. It was real dark; I only caught glimpses in the lightning.”

“And?”

“Big.” She shivered involuntarily, recalling how tall the thing had been—tall and broad and fast. “Like Kane big.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Kane? WWE Wrestler? The guy is huge.” At Mac’s blank look, Cricket laughed. “And you’re telling me I need to get out more?”

“If your sole knowledge of modern pop culture is the WWE, then yes, I am.”

“And the Spice Girls.”

“Christ, Cricket.” She shook her head, but a tiny smile curled the corner of her mouth. Static crackled from the walkie-talkie, and a gravelly voice came over the speaker.

“Hey, Murray, you’re needed on the field.”

Mac groaned, grabbed the walkie-talkie, and pressed the button on the side. “Be right there, Aksel. Do I need the Gator?”

“Uh…” Aksel responded. Discordant blurts followed, drowning out a second voice bellowing angrily. “Yeah, probably. One of the naga got tangled in a Sousaphone.”

Mac pressed the walkie-talkie to her forehead, once again counting silently before responding. “On my way.” She clipped the walkie-talkie to her belt and pointed at Cricket. “Get some sleep. There’s food here, but if you get bored and want something other than granola and peach rings”—Cricket’s ears perked at that—“the dining hall is the long green building at the center of camp, and Almaden left you a crutch.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the front door where a crutch was propped and, Cricket assumed, the camp beyond. “Dinner bell’s at six; Cooky preps for all diets, so you won’t have a problem finding something you can eat.”

She grabbed a set of keys from a hook and pulled a baseball cap on over her short, shaggy hair, hesitating at the door. Rapping knuckles against the frame, she twisted at the waist to address Cricket. “You can stay here as long as you like. You know that, right? We’d love to have you.”

Cricket could only nod, caught off guard by the offer. The welcome. Not that it was unexpected from Mac. The woman had always been so easy-going around Cricket’s family, and she’d seen first-hand how Mac doted on her wife. The two were still crazy about each other a decade into their relationship. It gave Cricket a thrill of hope that maybe, maybe, if she brought her cousin home to talk to their parents and the rest of the family, they could convince the faun to leave Green Bank before they were pushed out altogether.

“I’ll, um, consider it,” she mumbled, offering Mac a weak smile as she stepped onto the porch, pulling the door shut behind her.

Sleep came easy once Cricket had assembled a pile of blankets and pillows and beat them into something resembling a nest. In no time at all, she was startled awake by a loud, electronic blaring through the camp. She shot upright, bleating as pain ribboned up her injured leg, and collapsed against the side of the guestroom bed. Scrabbling nail-less fingers against the mattress, she hoisted herself onto the bed, gawking out the window as human and inhuman alike tore down the center path of the camp.

They manifested from the woods and filed out of cabins and buildings. A lumbering, bipedal figure in gym shorts sauntered across the green, chatting with the gnome on his shoulder while a young woman jogged up beside them. Three human boys spilled out of a tan building, the last one holding the door open for a dusky-furred creature with gossamer wings tucked in close. A pair of shifted wolven leaped over one another, yipping at each other’s heels and barreling into a naga and another human. The boy wrapped his arms around his serpentine companion, sweeping her out of harm’s way as the wolven yowled their apologies and darted into a long single-story green building halfway down the center path.

She watched in awe as the display of full and healthy integration played out before her. No one was staring. No one was pointing or threatening the inhumans. They were … together, coexisting in a way her parents told her the faun never could. Seeing it play out before her, Cricket had to believe there was a place for her family. If this is what Mac had achieved and what her cousin so staunchly defended, why couldn’t Cricket have it, too? Why couldn’t she live with humans and others like her? Why not move from Green Bank and—

A figure caught her eye, walking paces behind the crowd. A long plait of fox-red hair hung down her back, swinging lightly with the sway of generous hips in a floral skirt. Arms tightly folded and shoulders hunched, she waited at the base of a short flight of stairs as the last of the campers entered the green building—the dining hall.

Once alone, the camper dropped her arms and rolled her shoulders in a gesture Cricket recognized—she was preparing herself to deal with something, but what? What could anyone have to be nervous about in a paradise like Elkwater Music Camp?