Chapter One Lennox

I look at what’s left. An army surplus blanket, one of my speckle-covered notebooks with a pen tucked inside, and whatever is in my old canvas book bag. I haven’t even used it in months. I don’t know if there’s anything valuable inside.

Marlow hasn’t fared much better. He has his leather Harley-Davidson vest, a tarp, and whatever he has in a big blue gym bag. His is probably better stocked. He travels more—which might be a blessing right now.

“Damn.” Marlow looks at where we used to live. The lightning strike struck the biggest elm in the strand, and the bare trees, dry and tough from a historically dry winter, went up like matchsticks.

“It’s gone. The whole strand. The whole woods!” My throat is full of tears. I don’t care. It wasn’t just home. It was my work, my hobby, my passion. It’s not like anyone pays me to take care of the trees, but as a mothman, it isn’t like I could go over to the West Virginia Department of Forestry and hand in my resume, either.

“Well. It’s a big state. Spring is coming. Plenty of trees in the woods. Race you to see who can make a new nest!” My brother pounds me on the arm, his steely gray feathers at odds with my crow-black ones.

“Make a new nest? Here?” I shake my head, red eyes blinking back tears. “Marlow, no. This place isn’t for us anymore. It’s... stagnated. The humans know it, too.”

Marlow’s face is tight. “Humans are all idiots, and you know it. Let ‘em leave. Then we’ll rule the woods like we used to.”

My antennae droop. My brother is the stupid kind of fearless. As our mother used to say, he’s missing the bone in his head that tells him to avoid danger.

“We mothmen won’t reclaim the area. The mining companies will move in. If not them, the mega marts and mall complexes. The new developments. Whether it’s progress or purgatory, we’re going to lose.”

Marlow gives me a long, cold look before laughing. “You read too much, smarty wings. ‘Progress or purgatory.’ Ha. So what are you going to do? Make yourself your final cocoon and wilt away?”

I take a deep, patient sigh. Being the brains of the family (what’s left of it) has some benefits. I’m used to dealing with Marlow’s childishness. I’ve always been the mature “older brother” even though we’re the same age.

“I think I want to go to a community that welcomes our kind.”

Strong fingers tighten on my wrist before I can even cry out in pain. “You will not go to a CrossRealms, you idjit.”

Whoo. Idjit. When the country drawl pours out like that, I know Marlow is close to losing his tough facade—and his temper.

“I’m not looking to fight evil vamps and demons! I like to prune trees, not whittle stakes. I was thinking someplace peacefully paranormal friendly.”

Marlow snorts. “Not too many places around here like that. Thinking of crossing the ocean and hiding out in the Hebrides? I’d love to see you scrounge up money for airfare. Or did you plan on those wimpy little wings carrying you over the Atlantic?”

Yes. He’s being a jerk. He’s being a jerk because he’s scared and upset. I try to remember that. I try to count to ten, but I can only make it to three before I snap out, “No! Like Moonlight Bay or Pine Ridge! Yeah. Pine Ridge. It’s a little closer and a little warmer.”

My brother’s wings flare open, gray and red and angry. The markings on his wings are like eyes, black and crimson scowls on gray. They’re subtle enough that in the darkness of a moonlit night or a dense forest, humans just see flashes of shadow.

“You’re going to leave our home? Coward! Deserter!”

Calm. Calm. Calm.

“There is nothing for us here. Come with me. Come with me and help me start a new home. We aren’t going to thrive here. What happens when there’s only one of us left? We just die out?”

“We’ll meet someone. Someday.”

“Out here, we’re monsters. Up there, we’d be citizens. You know. Eventually.” My antennae flatten down to my head, and my wings droop. Mothmen aren’t social creatures. The idea of making friends and interacting scares me so much I could molt.

Marlow says nothing.

He knows I’m right. There is no chance of us saving our kind out here. No chance of mates. There are other mothmen and mothladies out there, scattered few and far between, but all of them have fled the cryptozoologists, crazy hunters, and curiosity seekers that have chased us to the edge of extinction and deeper into hiding.

Why have we stayed here in the wildest wilds of West Virginia?

I’m too scared to go.

He’s too stubborn to leave.

What’s more, Marlow isn’t afraid to mix with people. Of course, he can only do it a few times a year, late at night during the huge festivals where they come to “celebrate” the mothmen most attendees don’t truly believe in. People dress up like us (well, like bad imitations of us), watch grainy footage of turkey buzzards, and have parties. Marlow waits until these conventions have turned into bacchanals of monster fans and girls wearing tight tank tops with catchy slogans like “I’m Mad for Mothman” and “Mothman’s Monster-Fudging Mate” and stuff like that. Then, he slips into the crowds. People love his “costume.”

And if you believe his stories, those mothman chicks love it when he “keeps the suit on” while he satisfies them.

I would die. What if it was a trap? What if those girls find out it’s not a suit and I end up dried and preserved on the world’s biggest pushpin in the mother of all butterfly collections?

I’m dying right now, just thinking about making a move far from everything I’ve ever known, far from tradition, roots, and maybe...maybe someplace in this state, there’s one of my kind that I haven’t discovered yet. If I leave, I never will.

A shower of sparks and a loud crash startles both of us. Charred trees are crashing and falling like dominoes in the wind as drenching rain begins—too late to do any good.

“There is nothing left here,” I repeat firmly.

“You are a quitter and weakling.” Marlow glares.

“You aren’t going to out macho me! If I don’t ‘quit’ this place, our whole family will die out. Up there—there might be one of our kind.”

“Like she’d pick you.” He snorts, scoffing at my timid hopefulness.

“Yeah, I’m sure she’d rather have you, stud. Why don’t you come with me? See what kind of mothman the ladies prefer?”

“Don’t you try that dang smartass reverse psychology on me, Lenny.”

“Don’t call me Lenny. I hate that. And it wasn’t reverse psychology, you idiot! That’s what you do when you don’t want the person to do what you said! I do want you to come with me! That was bait .” I turn away in exasperation, my dark, solid black wings fluffed up in anger. “Hillbilly hick with wings.”

A hard tackle takes me down.

“Heard that!”

As our home and world crash down around us, my brother and I fight in the wet mud, beating the tar out of each other until we’re laugh-cry-cursing in the chilly late February air.

“Damn. Where was this rain hours ago when it would have saved us?” I shiver, wiping mud from my face.

Marlow lies next to me, panting. “I know, right.”

We both sit there, getting drenched. It’s the only way we’ll get clean.

Finally, Marlow yanks me up. “Aw. Go if you want. Yankee.”

“Don’t you do that. You know we’re not northern or southern. We’re mothmen. Come with me, Mar. Please? I really don’t want to leave you behind.”

“Lenny.” He heaves a deep sigh that ripples the feather-like hairs that make up our “fur.” “If I don’t stay, there won’t be anything to come back to when you can’t stick it up there in New York, with all those eight million people.”

I wince like he landed a blow. “Eight million? Are you sure?”

“Heard it on the television in the back of the bait shop.”

Another tree crashes, this one revealing an eerie orange glow. The fires are still burning, even in this wet, misty fog that’s covering the mountain. Another lightning bolt sizzles the air, and we have nowhere to hide, no nests, no nothing—not anymore.

Unless I’m brave enough to make something new.

“I’m going. If I don’t come back home by Christmas, you gotta come up there and find me, okay?”

“Deal.”

We stand, awkwardly gathering our stuff as the rain starts to come down harder and faster. “Do we hug?” I ask, arms dangling like limp windsocks.

“You big sap.”

But Marlow hugs me anyway.