The Iron Thorn

23 The Miskatonic Woods

“IF IT’S A long story, we should go out on one of these woodland trails,” Dean said after we reached the foot of the drive and he’d smoked his Lucky Strike down to the nub. “Get ourselves some privacy.”

“What about the ghouls?” I said. “Isn’t it dangerous?”

“Hey, now,” Dean said. “You’re with me, Dean Harrison. Finest guide east of the Mississippi and north of the Carolinas. And right now Dean Harrison wants to go somewhere where he doesn’t have to listen to anyone talk about baseball or wonder if their shoes make their ankles look fat.”

“You’re terrible,” I said. “Bethina’s a good girl.”

“Never was too interested in the good ones,” Dean said. “The sinful ones are more fun.”

“We’ll go,” I decided. I wouldn’t have agreed even a day ago, but after the horrible scene with the notebook I was feeling downright impulsive. I had to get out of Graystone before I screamed. It was my father’s house, and I knew now that I wasn’t welcome there.

The ever-present fog lay light, and I even caught a bar of sunlight as we walked down the narrow country road switchbacked into the side of the mountain before turning off onto a trail that snaked away into the bare-branched forest like any of the paths in Nerissa’s tales.

The crows watched us from their perches in the naked trees, eyes like glass.

“They never leave,” I said. “They just stay around the house. It’s eerie.”

“Corvids are smart birds,” Dean said. “They stick where there’s food and shelter and where nobody sprays buckshot at ’em. They watch and wait with the best.”

“In Lovecraft, they use the ravens to spy and take you away,” I said. “This is too similar. I don’t like it.”

“Crows don’t take from you,” Dean said. “They give your soul wings.”

My mouth curled. “Well, who took you for a poet, Dean Harrison.”

He ducked his head, his hair loose and falling in his eyes. “That book you had at breakfast.” His boots scuffed the dirt of the path. “I take it that has something to do with this vanishing act you pull?”

I stopped walking, and swung in front of Dean so he had to stop too. “I trust you,” I told him. “Implicitly. I barely know you, but I trust you with the truth. Am I wrong to do that?”

“Some cats would say ‘undoubtedly’ ”—he grinned—“but I’m no blabbermouth, Aoife. If I were, Cal would have punched my lights out days ago. For my ‘familiarity.’ ” He quoted the last word with his index fingers.

I ignored the gibe at Cal. “Day before last, I went exploring in that old orchard behind the grounds. I got lost in the fog and I …”

We walked again, picking our way over rocks and tree limbs, and it was a good twenty yards before I could get my courage up.

“I stepped through a fairy ring.”

Glimpses of the old stone walls and a fallen-down farmhouse were visible through the mist, and I focused on them instead of panicking because Dean wasn’t speaking.

The crows called to one another, inkblots against the mist, spattered across the tops of the trees ahead. They were definitely following us.

“Hold up,” Dean said. “A fairy ring … you mean a hexenring? An enchantment circle?”

“You know that name?” Surprise negated my worry that Dean would finally decide I was too far-fetched for his taste.

“I’ve heard of them.” He didn’t look interested in my tale any longer. His mouth was set and the frown line had appeared between his eyes. Dean was angry, but with me or a secret something I couldn’t tell.

“I got caught up in the ring and the mist,” I continued. “And I swear, Dean … I wandered right into the Land of Thorn. A fairyland.”

Dean whipped his gaze from left to right across the trail, into the trees on one side and the old farmhouse yard on the other. His hand went into his pocket, the right one, where he kept his switchblade.

A wind ruffled the hairs on the back of my neck, and the tree branches stirred, a clacking like hungry mouths as the branches scraped.

Dean snatched my arm. “We can’t talk about this out in the open.”

“What in the—” I started, as he dragged me down the lane toward the skeleton of the house. The roof had caved in and the floor gaped down to the root cellar. The crows increased their volume as Dean dragged me.

“Just walk,” he murmured in my ear. “Try to look natural. We’re just a boy and girl, out for a stroll.” He let go his vise-tight grip on my arm and slipped his hand into mine instead.

I glanced at the trees again. The wind had ceased as quickly as it had been born, and the trees were still. The shadows under them looked longer, the bare branches sharper, and I felt the blurriness in my head that had overtaken me just before Tremaine’s hexenring had spirited me to the Thorn Land.

“Just a boy and a girl,” I agreed. My fingers locked tighter in his of their own accord, and I was reassured when Dean squeezed.

“Walk,” he whispered, lips against my hair. “And don’t look back until we’re inside the house.”

Soon enough we reached the doorway, devoid of a door, and ducked inside. An ancient, moldy table and chairs still stood in front of the fireplace, as if rot had overtaken the house at terrible speed, forcing the inhabitants to flee.

Dean let go of my hand, flexing his fingers. “You’ve got a grip, princess.”

“I do when I’m nervous,” I agreed. “You don’t think I’m nutty for any of this? For saying I saw the Kindly Folk, and that—”

Dean pressed a finger to his lips. Around the house, I could still hear the crows, scrabbling and fussing in the trees.

“I know it sounds crazy.” I lowered my voice so our conversation didn’t reach outside. “But I met one of the Folk, talked to him. His name’s Tremaine. He was awful.” I shivered.

Dean nodded, as if he’d been listening for something. “The black birds are watching out. For now. As for this Folk, I suppose he wanted something.”

“I … Why would you say that?” I blinked at him.

“The Folk always want something,” Dean said. “It’s the magpie nature. They see shine in someone or something and they have to steal it and keep it.”

I decided I could pry how Dean knew so much about the Folk out of him later. For now, it was enough that he believed me.

“Well,” I continued, “we made a bargain. He said he’d tell me where Conrad’s gone if I used my Weird for his ends. I’m going to do it, and then I’m going to find Conrad. There doesn’t have to be anything sinister about that.”

“Aoife …” Dean took both my hands and sat in one of the chairs. The floor of the farmhouse creaked ominously. “You trusted me to tell this much and I’m going to give you the same trust now, right?” Dean peered outside again. “What I’m saying, Aoife, is that in all the stories I’ve ever heard, you can’t trust the Folk. Treacherous, tricksy, terrible, every one.”

“Those are stories,” I said. “You’ve never met the Folk. I have. I don’t really have a choice but to do what they say.”

“No one’s met the Folk and lived to tell,” Dean argued. “Otherwise, there’d be more than stories. Break it off, Aoife. I’d say the same if you were dating a deadbeat.”

“You’d say that if I were dating anyone.” I smiled. Dean didn’t return it.

“Listen, princess. No one’s debating your smarts. Those, you’ve got in spades. But I maintain, you shouldn’t deal with the Folk. Nothing I’ve ever heard tells they want to do you a good turn.”

“I have no choice.” My good mood dissolved like the sunlight as more mist rolled in over the farmhouse. “He threatened you, and Cal, and if I don’t do as he asks, I’ll never find Conrad.”

Dean’s jaw twitched. “I ain’t afraid of virals and I sure as gears grind ain’t afraid of some grody paleface who skulks in mist.”

“I am,” I said frankly. “I don’t have a family, Dean, except for Conrad and I don’t have any friends in Lovecraft if I go back, besides Cal and you. I’d never forgive myself if you ran afoul of the Folk on my account.”

“Tremaine, that’s his name?” Dean grumbled. “At least I know which one of those pasty bastards asked for a boot in his ass.”

I’d thought I was alone for my entire life, and more so when I discovered the truth about my family and its Weird. But Dean’s angry, twitchy insistence on hearing stories of the Folk and his accepting my words without a thought weighed on me.

I could fret about what his reaction would be to a suggestion that he was something more than a simple heretic, or I could ask him his truth in return for mine. My throat tightened, but I stilled my hands and looked at my reflection in Dean’s hard, silvery eyes. They were like hammered steel, steady and unwavering. You’d think twice about messing with a gaze like Dean’s.

“Dean,” I said, rushing out the words before I lost nerve. “I know that you’re like me.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Like you how, princess?”

“You can find lost things and you never get lost yourself,” I said. “You can make lamps light without fire. You know about the Folk and you don’t say boo to the idea that I might have powers every normal person in the world insists are impossible. You’re uncanny, Dean. You see the world the way it really is, not like the Proctors tell us it is. You see it like my father did.”

Dean shied away with a jerk, dropping my hands. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Aoife.”

“I do,” I whispered, holding back the sharp jab that his pulling away gave me. “Dean, tell me the truth. Please tell me that I’m not alone.”

“I want to say I can help you, princess,” Dean told me. “But I can’t. All I can say is turn back, forget this and go home. But you won’t, because you’re you.”

“Do you have a Weird, Dean?” I’d had an inkling when he’d done the trick with the lamp, and his behavior since hadn’t changed my suspicion, only strengthened it. The question hung between us, filled up by the sound of sirens and the yelling of the crowd. I wished he’d just answer me, even if he was furious—his quiet was agonizing.

“I have a knack, I guess,” Dean said at last. “I know true north wherever I am and when something’s lost and needs finding it calls out to me. But tricks like what your old man has—no. I’m not a special kind of guy, Aoife.”

Rain had started, stippling the floorboards of the old house and drumming on the half-ruined roof. “So you knew all this time the Weird and the Folk were real and you just stayed quiet and let me thrash around on my own. Some pal you are, Dean Harrison.”

He rubbed his forehead with his first two fingers. “Listen. You can’t force it out of the blood. Either it wakes up or it doesn’t. You can wish and dream all you like but the Weird chooses you, not the other way around.” Dean jammed another cigarette in his mouth and lit up. “If I’d’ve said something, you would have had Cal bash my face in as a heretic loony before we’d taken two steps outside Lovecraft.”

My anger at Dean’s withholding nearly made me smack him, but I restrained myself. Dean was right, even if he infuriated me. Before I’d found the journal, I would have thought him mad, as everyone said I was. “I suppose,” I granted him, glaring. “But that doesn’t make lying to me all fine and good.”

“I was just trying to—” Dean started, but I hushed him with a gesture.

“Look, I know,” I said. “I know and I understand. But promise me you won’t ever do something like that again. Promise me you’ll trust me to handle it.”

Dean still didn’t move, staring into my eyes as if he could see the secret origin of the universe in them.

“This world …,” he sighed finally. “It ain’t a nice world, Aoife. It’s not clean or easy or kind. In a lot of ways, it’s worse than living with Proctors marching over you.”

“My life wasn’t so great before I came here,” I muttered. “Trust me.”

“You accept this, you can never go home,” Dean said. “You can never work with those machines you love. You can never be anything but a heretic to all of those nice, rational folks back there in Lovecraft. Because trust me on this, princess: they will turn on you faster than ghouls fighting over a corpse. That something you’re willing to give up?”

I drew back, feeling like he’d slapped me. But I knew, even as I felt my eyes get hot and wet, that he was telling the truth. I could never go back. The Proctors would arrest me. I’d be lucky to be locked up with Nerissa after what I’d found here in Arkham.

I couldn’t be inside even half a house for another second. I bolted, out into the rain, nearly turning my ankle several times as I raced through the forest.

Dean caught me easily enough, his long strides carrying him along with the heavy thump of steel-toed boots. “Aoife, for the love of grease and gears, hold up. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laid it out so bluntlike.”

I slowed, reluctantly. “You’re right, Dean. That’s the whole problem. I wrecked my life over a fantasy.” Just like everyone had always insisted I would. “I should just give up this ridiculous notion of the Weird and everything now before I get you and Cal executed in Banishment Square.”

He frowned. “Giving up ain’t like you.”

“Dean, you’ve known me for a week. You don’t know what I’m like,” I said. “Cal’s got family to bat for him—he can go back to the School of Engines with a slap on the wrist. Even you can fade back into the Rustworks—you’re clever and wicked enough.”

Dean rubbed the back of his neck. “What about you, kid?”

“I’ve got nothing,” I said. “I’d have to turn myself in and pray to the Master Builder for mercy, like a proper Rationalist.”

“Is that really what you want?” The trail looped and started back up the incline toward Graystone. It seemed much longer going up, and the fog welcomed us with open arms.

“No …” I kicked a stone. “Of course it isn’t, Dean. I want to believe that I can do things a normal girl could never dream of. I want to rescue my brother like a heroine in a story. But stories aren’t real. What’s real are the Proctors, and they’re going to find us eventually.”

“Are you afraid of them?” Dean said quietly.

“Of course I am!” I threw up my hands. “Aren’t you?”

“I think there’s worse things than being locked up for heresy,” Dean said. “Much worse. And one of them is being so scared of it that you just sit and wait for them to find you.” He stopped and seized me by the shoulders. “You’re the first person I’ve met who won’t sit and wait, Aoife. Don’t change on me now. Please.”

The mist closed, and for a moment, Dean and I were alone. In that moment, it was easy to nod my head, to promise, so Dean’s smile would come back to his lips.

Because I did believe my father. And I wanted, more than anything, to not need the life I’d abandoned in Lovecraft.

“I won’t,” I said to Dean, and gently moved his hands from me. “I won’t give up. I promise you.”

Even if not giving up meant sacrificing everything. I’d come too far now to look back.