I hung up and stopped beside Sindari. The forest here was much darker, even though it didn’t appear any denser, and blue sky was visible through the pines and firs towering over us. The sensation of mist licking at my skin hadn’t diminished. If anything it was stronger.
Did you lose the trail?
No. Sindari pointed his nose toward large sasquatch footprints. The trail disappeared between one step and the next, but he didn’t seem puzzled. They went into a sanctuary, I believe. There may be traps inside, so I waited for you.
A sanctuary?
The forest ahead appeared no different from the forest behind, at least to my eyes. A raven squawked from a branch, and a squirrel ran across the pine-needle-strewn ground. I did have the sense that I didn’t want to keep going forward, that I should look elsewhere for a trail through the forest.
That is my guess. I’ve encountered them before. The elves used to make them when they visited worlds to protect their settlements from hostile native people and animals. Sometimes, it’s only an illusion to keep others from finding them, but sometimes, there are magical traps.
Elves? Would they still be here? Living with the sasquatch? I rubbed my head. And what do I do if elves are behind this?
I doubt they are. It’s likely they had an encampment here at one point and left it, but the magical protection remains.
I hope that’s all it is. I couldn’t imagine why elves would be responsible for all this, but the thought of arresting one disturbed me. They were my people, even if I’d only ever met one. If I encountered more, I would want to ask them questions about the power I supposedly had, not be on the opposite side of the law from them.
I will lead the way and attempt to suss out traps. Sindari walked forward.
How good are you at sussing out elven traps?
Not as good as I am when dealing with lesser species.
Ah.
He disappeared between one blink and the next, and I gaped at the empty air. Are you still there?
Yes. Inside the sanctuary. Come.
Assuming he would alert me if he’d fallen into a pit trap, I followed in his footsteps.
A strange feeling came over me, like a blanket of moisture gathered all around me, but then lessened again as Sindari came into view. A thick mist made it feel like I was out on the Olympic Peninsula on a foggy morning, not in the forests of northern Idaho. Even the foliage was different, with dense groundcover, including bedewed ferns, their long fronds stretching over the damp earth. Trilliums, star flowers, and violets bloomed in the shadows. We’d entered not only a magical sanctuary but an entirely different climate zone.
The stench of the sasquatch filled the heavy air, making my stomach want to heave its contents. I tried to breathe through my mouth.
Sindari led me up to another cairn, this one more natural than the other, with moss and ferns growing up from dirt wedged between the boulders. We climbed it, and when we came out on the top, a settlement of a sort came into view.
There weren’t any signs of modern civilization or even fire pits, but dozens of these cairns dotted the area, with cave openings in the fronts. Sasquatch sat inside or wandered in and out of the larger ones. Blackberry and elderberry bushes grew cultivated at one end of the camp, and a sasquatch shorter than I—a young one?—was gathering berries into an old burlap sack. Signs of salvaged human tools were all over but nothing that looked freshly stolen from Harrison. Some of the buckets and garden hoes could have been a hundred years old. None of them had been fashioned into anything I might recognize as a goblin contraption.
I glanced at Sindari. I don’t sense any magic aside from the power of the sanctuary itself. Do you?
No.
I’d hoped to spot some artifact or magical gizmo that was blatantly controlling the sasquatch and coercing them to go into town and wreak havoc, but there was nothing. If I arrested any of these creatures, Willard would be underwhelmed. They might be the ones scaring the townspeople, but they weren’t the masterminds. No way.
I scooted away from the top of the cairn. Even though I didn’t make a sound, one of the sasquatch looked in my direction. A male with ancient, deep brown eyes. He tilted his head slightly but didn’t alert the others to my presence, nor did he give chase as I scrambled down the back side and trotted away with Sindari.
Maybe it would be worth staking out this sanctuary to see if they get any visitors, I said once we were outside in the brighter native forest.
As a woman of action, stakeouts were my least favorite thing, but if goblins were using these guys, they would have to come collect them at some point, right?
As a skilled and experienced hunter, I have the patience to spend days waiting for my prey if needed.
Your charm only lets you stay on Earth for six hours.
Then you’ll have to take my word for my patience.
And wait out here alone. I curled a lip, envisioning a long boring day.
Perhaps Lord Zavryd will come so you don’t pine with loneliness.
I’m sure a dragon lurking at the border here would make the goblins rush to visit.
I didn’t have any other leads, so I did my best to hide my tracks, then climbed a tree to settle in to watch the area.
17
My phone buzzed as I was settling into my tent, the campground much quieter tonight. I’d spent all afternoon perched in a tree, watching the borders of the hidden sasquatch community, but no goblins ever made an appearance. A couple of hikers cutting through from the lake trail to the main road had walked right past the area without noticing anything amiss. Without being aware of it, they had put a curve in their route to avoid the border of the sanctuary.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, recognizing the number from the vacation house and doubting Amber was calling me to talk about boys. If she and Thad wanted to call, they had their own cell phones. My technology-disdaining mother was probably disgruntled that the phone at the house wasn’t rotary.
“Hi, Val. I wanted to make sure you got back and weren’t caught in another trap.”
“I’m at the campground. I found an old elven sanctuary—that’s what Sindari thinks it is—that the sasquatch somehow found. They make their home inside. It’s probably how they’ve avoided notice all these years.”
Years? More like decades and centuries. When I’d done a little research the night before, I’d found that people had been glimpsing sasquatch and reporting sightings since before white men had settled the area. Maybe sanctuaries like that dotted the Pacific Northwest—or the entire world—and that explained how the sasquatch had remained around but their existence unproven.
“Were there ferns inside? And lots of moss and elderberries and trilliums?”
“Yeah, it was more like the temperate rainforest than the climate here. How did you know?”
“A few months after we met, and he’d decided he trusted me, your father took me into the one his people were staying in. At the time, I didn’t know it was a temporary encampment for them, that they were here studying our people and hadn’t always been on Earth. They had houses built into the treetops with magical bridges connecting their decks and platforms. Even if the magic hadn’t kept people out, one could have walked under the trees without ever knowing they were up there.”
“Some authors and game designers will be delighted they got elves right.”
“I’m sure I wasn’t the only human who was ever invited to visit. The stories came from somewhere before they were in games. Was it misty?” She sounded wistful.
“Yeah. No elves though. Just extremely stinky sasquatch.” I sniffed my palm and grimaced. Even though I’d scrubbed myself in the campground shower with my multiple loofahs, a faint sasquatch odor still clung to me. It was worse than dragon aura—at least dragon aura didn’t smell.
“Too bad. I’m sure Eireth would be depressed to see me now that I’ve aged forty-some years and he probably doesn’t look more than a year older, but I’ve missed… oh, him, yes, and their culture. It was so much more like what I prefer than what we have—especially these days. I’ve often regretted not going back with him. It wouldn’t have worked out—his kin implied that he was expected to marry an elf and have fully elven children—but sometimes, I wonder if I might have been allowed to at least live among them and if maybe I could’ve earned a place in their world. A place to belong.”
“Mom, have you been drinking?” I didn’t mind her opening up to me, and she would tell stories if prompted, but it was unusual for her to reveal her feelings. I wondered if something was wrong. She hadn’t learned she was dying, had she?
“Just one glass.”
Ah ha.
“One glass of what?”
“It’s a port that the girlfriend brought along.”
It amused me that Shauna was “the girlfriend” to Mom, even after a couple of days of staying together. Did anyone actually like the woman? Besides Thad? I hoped he did. And that she was good to him and wasn’t a gold digger. I knew Thad had his house in Edmonds paid off—a house on a large lot with a view of Puget Sound—and plenty of money from stock options from the tech outfit that had gone big before he’d left to start his own company. He seemed to be doing well with that too. And if I’d been able to dig up that information online, some girlfriend could too.
“Port is strong, Mom. You’re only supposed to have a little glass of it.”
“Are you lecturing me?”
“No, I’m advising.” Normally, I wouldn’t even advise, but I worried this was a bad time to be inebriated. Even though I hadn’t sensed Shaygor for a while, and Zav occasionally flew into my range, I knew that dragon wasn’t done with me. Hopefully, Amber was using my charm regularly and he didn’t know where she was. I, on the other hand, was lying on my back in a completely unarmored tent.
“When did we get to the age where you’re allowed to do that to me?”
“I’m not sure, but you can advise me, too, if you want.”
“Really? Then you should get married, have more children, and give up being an assassin.”