I had named the Fox Man south of the St. Lawrence Clodd as opposed to Todd, so I knew how the story of The Fox and the Hound ended. Whatever the starting relationships were, it would be time to grow up and move on. I sensed that in the atmosphere before anyone spoke: when I regained consciousness days later, as the sun sank in the west over a lake in La Verendrye Wildlife Reserve, and I looked at my long shadow and the shadows of the crowd gathered around my supine form, I sensed that I would be told to leave by some communal decision. I had served my purpose.

In a way it was like my old human life. I kept in contact with no one from elementary school, high school or university, or previous jobs. People came and went out of my life as dictated by the obligations of school, and then work – freedom from school and work meant going home and relaxing, alone. Outside of my family the only people that I really ‘liked’ were creative types, especially comedians. I think I would have tried being one if I had been able to exchange some engineering IQ for charm, charisma and stage presence.

Calling out the spirits, even just as a thought inside a cracked skull, had apparently been enough to perk their ears: there was a raccoon, and a fox, and overshadowing them both was a young kitten of the kind that I had dreamed about, scaled and spined and hulking like an adult grizzly. The underwater panther cub was purring with closed eyes in the orange light, its eyelids trapping an inner gold. A raven was perched on the cub’s head, and so was a dove – from Gisant, I knew with a flash of preternatural insight. At a distance from the animals Deer Woman was scowling, folded up with crossed legs and arms, half fawn and half Mexican.

I had been set to rest some distance away from the patch of rock where Nocome and I had met, pulled carefully down a slope below the krummholz trees, through brush cleared by a sporadic stream that was dry for now. The land sank away to a lake and the sunset with a sudden drop that surprised me as I carefully looked back, orientating myself, aware that it would be easy to throw me down for quite a tumble. I had not been redressed, so now I discovered as I tried to rise how tattered my clothes were – they had not recovered from the ‘woodchipper’ experience, and I had recovered only enough to wake up and move around a bit.

“He finally made it,” Fox Man said. “We’ve been gathered in this family photo for sunset twice already!”

“Thanks for keeping her off me,” I muttered, jabbing a thumb at Deer Woman.

“We all thought that you would die in her belly,” Deer Woman hissed. “I didn’t count on you having so much pent-up lust of your own to mix with the spider’s poison!”

The giant spined cat-thing grumbled, opening its eyes a little wider, beaming me with two yellow orbs that made me squint worse than the setting sun. It raised and shook its head to clear away the dove and the raven, which swirled about unhappily before landing by the fox and raccoon. It made eye contact.

The pupils inside those glowing eyes were two black slits more than a foot long, and it commanded my own pupils with what seemed to be literal magnetism. Its words were so deep that they were on the cusp of being incomprehensible.

“I am young but my people are old, and we set the jurisdiction in this land that all obey, even the newcomers from across the saltwater.”

“So … you’re the one who will … see me out?”

“To send you back south, where the new people live without trees,” the giant being agreed. And then it closed its eyes, apparently done talking, and set its chin back down on its paws.

Raccoon Man piped up, clapping his avatar’s paws together.

“Some more explanation is in order, I think, for we took much more out of you than a few vows would normally buy. You exorcised a great evil from the land, but you must leave because that evil is now inside you. It will strengthen in the winter, weaken in the summer, but never die. After Nanabozho Raven is the oldest of us, and he told us the way of it: what you kill first as a monster – not in a duel and not in mere self-defense or out of survival like a man – that is defining. Vampires who fancy themselves civilized take great care in choosing the right first victim that they devour in that way – for knowledge, for strength, for ‘worthiness’. In your case … well, this is very strange, and could end very poorly.”

Fox Man added, “But it will not end poorly here.” The voice didn’t quite match the voice I had heard before.

Raven called once, the sound dry and avian but also with a note of correction. “That’s something out of our hands, his and ours. Come the first winter, we should see who controls this body, and where it feeds. Except for the great lynxes and thunderbirds none of us could confront Nocome in person, and she knew to avoid the lakes that were portals down or portals out, or the trembling mountains. My bait, Gisant’s wound, the skinwalker’s two poisons – the help Azeban and the Fox Man south of the river gave were unrelated, but she might not know or care. We’re all candidates for her revenge.”

Discarding my ruined clothing, I was slowly opening and sorting through my pink backpack. Their words affected my mood and my face but not my hands, which mechanically moved, getting back in motion. I was sore and stiff from yet another long stretch of unwilling rest.

“So … that old Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark version of the wendigo was close,” I muttered. “A voice in the wind, making people crazy, into another wendigo. I understand wanting me out, though that seems rather irresponsible of your guys to let me leave with this timebomb in my – my heart, or soul, or whatever. If you are all guardians.”

Deer Woman tried to get some of her old attitude back. “Think of yourself as a toxic waste container. We thought you’d just hurt and poison her on your way out, and then she’d be weak enough for us to handle permanently, which is … very complicated. Above your education.” I kept my face flat, and she looked annoyed. “Now we’re improvising. Killing you here and now would just release her to settle in another body next winter. Release it, for Nocome was only the most recent host of something that’s even older than myself. And in between hosts, we’re not likely to find it in its incorporeal form.”

I made a point of turning away from her, looking at the others. “But letting me return to civilization is acceptable? I’m imagining a giant feeding frenzy if I ever enter a city.”

“They aren’t so helpless,” the dove said. It was a woman’s voice and not Charles Gisant’s, though maybe this was his ‘secretary’. “In these times most monsters of any folklore are relegated to the wilderness or else to an underground existence with a code of conduct that keeps their activity discreet – if anything like Nocome entered a new city, its denizens of day and night would work against her. Yes, it is like the criminals and the police hunting the child murderer in M.”

“Stop reading my mind,” I groaned.

“But there’s a better reason to evict you,” Raven said, hopping down to zip up my backpack, hurrying me along. “At the moment of this first true kill and feeding you were known to the one who sired you, and now she can begin to see you. And others of her race. Rivers and other obstacles will dull their remote vision, but in time they would come here in force to either enlist or destroy you, depending on the politics and leadership of the clan and the ‘hiring situation’. Their business does not belong in this land.”

I let their words swirl together in my head for a moment, completing my change of clothes. Very old jeans, a shirt with some forgotten band’s name on it – a true child of the 80s.

“So it’s just a preference for me blowing up in another vampire’s face rather than out here, if I do blow up.”

The underwater cat grumbled, rising out of its sleep for another brief moment. “Yes.”

“You guys handle your problems like a bunch of humans,” I muttered.

Chapter 32: Cats and Birds

Image credits: Michel Teiten (sculpture by Bill Reids), Bernard Spragg, John R. Neill