Excerpt from Shadow of the Antlered Bird
April steps out of the car into the night, surrounded by silence. That music still plays on the radio, but the silence is all around her, and louder, somehow, than the music. Soil crunches beneath her feet, and her feet sink in.
She notices something on the ground. She is not sure, at first, if it is an animal or an unusual clump of sod, but then it unfolds into a child, on the verge of adolescence, with straight hair and night-black skin, or it seems that way in the shadows. His eyes seem to faintly glow, like a distant star. The child squats, hunched forward, naked, in the woods. His skin looks streaky, like he has rubbed himself in coal, and a tuft of grass seems to grow from the back of his shoulder.
“Who comes to visit Bucca?” the young boy says.
“Your name is Bucca?” April asks. “That’s wild. My roommate’s name—” and then she stops. She sees an eerily expectant, hungry look in the boy’s bright eyes. “She likes to wear black too.”
The child chuckles, and the laugh shimmers down his back. “And you?” he asks. “How should I call you?”
“April,” she answers. “Do you live out here?”
She finds his smile unnerving from a child. There is something about it that seems to tell her she ought to be in on the joke, but she has no idea. “You are wise,” he says, “not to give your actual name.”
“That is my name,” April protests. “I can show you my license if you want.” She reaches for her wallet.
“That will not be needful, fox-haired girl,” he says. “I shall call you April, as you wish. But I shan’t be fooled.”
April looks at him, annoyed.
“Why have you come here?” the child asks.
“I don’t know,” April answers. “I mean, I stepped out of the car, and you were there.”
“Why have you come here,” the child asks, gesturing with his hand to the woods around.
“I don’t know,” April answers again. “My friend is in trouble.”
“What do you seek here, ‘April’?” the child asks.
“I’m not seeking anything,” April says. “I’m here because of Tam.”
“Very well then,” the boy says, annoyed. “What do you want?”
April leans against a very large tree. “How should I know?”
“What do you want?” he asks again, insistent.
“I don’t know,” April says. “A chance to sleep in my own bed?”
He smiles. “I could make you a bed of moss and forest grass, if you so wish.”
April takes a step backward and crosses her arms. She wishes she had a jacket to pull over her breasts. “Aren’t you a little young for me?”
He smiles and stands up. “I am older than I look.”
April keeps her eyes fixed cautiously on his face. “How old?”
He rests his hand on the trunk of a very large tree. “I watched this tree grow from a sapling. I saw it sprout from a seed in the ground. I was not young then.”
April steps back, her hands in front of her. “Whoa. Did I miss a memo or something? Suddenly everyone’s magical, or immortal? Is that the new fashion?”
He steps closer to her, and it is plain that her words did not please him. “The grave, as well, is a soft place to lie down. And I assure you, you will feel no discomfort there.”
“You’re awfully morbid,” April says.
“Why have you come here, ‘April’?” he demands again, and for the first time April notices how sharp his teeth are. She gasps involuntarily.
“I—I don’t know,” she says, stepping away. She wonders if she could make it back to the car, if she ran now. “My friend—he’s in trouble. He needs help.”
“What concern is this of yours?” asks the sharp-toothed child.
“What concern—?” April says. “He’s my friend. He could die.” She steps backward. Her foot hits a root, and she stumbles back against a tree trunk.
“As could you,” the child says, suddenly right in front of her, his face just inches from hers. “Is that unimportant?”
“Oh God,” April answers, turning away. “Oh God, please no.” She closes her eyes and crumples into a ball, her shoulder scraping against rough bark.
“Do you value his life above your own?” he asks above her.
She opens her eyes, and he is still standing, stretched out at length, with his right hand clutching a branch well above his head. “I don’t know,” she says. “No. . . Look,” April says, “when someone’s in trouble, you help them out.”
With a fluid motion he swings into the tree by the one arm, and squats there above her, balancing on the branch. “And it matters not to you whence the trouble came?”
April scrabbles backwards on the ground. “Of course it matters. But not right now.”
He smiles. “But how can you find your way clear when you know not the source of your trouble?”
April struggles partway to her feet, leaning on the tree trunk with one hand. “So,” she says, “if I want to help Tam, I have to find out what’s going on—why this guy is after us?”
He smiles, then climbs higher in the tree.
“Am I right?” April calls up after him. “Is that what I need to find out?”
His feet disappear above her among the shadows of branches. “You had best return to your conveyance now,” he whispers down.
“Am I right?” she demands again.
“You had best return,” he repeats, “before your enemy overtakes you.”
“Oh,” April says. “Oh shit.” She leaps to her feet and turns, and awakens sharply in the darkness in the front seat of the car.
