The Association

by A. K. Caggiano

  Penny nodded. “You’re fighting a monster, and you’re gonna win!”

  Pauline chuckled. “She’s in a sort of morbid phase.” There were a number of darker drawings on the walls, but nothing quite as ominous as her own gift.

  “Thank you so much, Penny.” Ivy held it to her chest. “I’ll treasure it.”

  Chapter 12

  Before she’d cleared the stairs, Ivy popped the pastry into her mouth. It gave her a pleasant rush but wasn’t enough this time to distract her from the unease she had about that drawing. Sure, kids had kooky imaginations, and it wasn’t like she was prophetic or anything, but Ivy wondered, with everything Penny had likely seen, were there snakes that big in the world? Maybe even in the very lake behind the condos?

  She glanced between two buildings to see ripples of moonlight over the dark water, the waning moon still large in the sky, and she shivered.

  “Oh, hi there!”

  The voice came from somewhere in the shadow behind her, and she swung around. She was directly under one of the lamps along the sidewalk, and the lumbering figure headed toward her was obscured. Her mouth full of honey and crust, she was unable to call back to the stranger. She wouldn’t be able to scream either.

  The man stepped into the light, and in the same instant, tripped. Ivy jumped back with a muffled squeak as the boxes he’d been carrying clattered to the ground, but the accident-prone Hunter Proctor somehow managed to stay up on both feet this time. If nothing else, he sure was clumsy.

  But in the light, she could see he was at least a few other things too. Tall, broad shouldered, handsome, and not even sweaty this time. Not that she’d minded that before. Hunter Proctor looked down at the boxes, defeated. “Third time’s a charm, I thought, but here we are.”

  “At least you’re consistent,” Ivy chuckled after swallowing the last of the pastry. She ducked down to help him gather what he’d dropped. The packages were all wrapped neatly in brown paper and tied up with twine, addresses handwritten in a fanciful, silver script, the return a stamp reading Proctor’s Proactives, Potions, and Prestidigitations.

  “Sorry about before.” He balanced a small stack in his hands. “And I guess the time before that too. It’s Ivy, right?”

  Ivy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at the memory of him falling in front of her car. “That’s right. And you’re Hunter?” She pretended to have to search for the name in her mind as she moved to place the other boxes in his arms but stopped. “Oh, your face, it looks great!” Then she quickly cleared her throat. “I mean, it’s not swollen anymore. That was fast!”

  “Well, that’s what Proctor’s Sting, Bite, Scratch, and Vitriol Ointment can do. Not that, uh, I’m trying to sell it to you or anything, that’s just what it’s called. We make stuff. My family, I mean.” He looked off into the distance and screwed up his face like he was hearing his own words and judging them. The verdict didn’t look good.

  “I can see that.” Ivy gestured with the packages, but instead of handing them off, kept them; he wouldn’t be able to stand there much longer with them on top of his own pile. “Mrs. Proctor gave me a little bottle of something actually. For calming nerves?”

  He squinted at her. “Did it have a name?”

  Ivy thought back to the container. “No label.”

  “Careful.” He raised a dark brow. “I mean, it won’t kill you or anything, but she likes…testing things out on people.”

  Ivy swallowed. “Oh, noted.”

  “So, welcome to Avalon!” He shrugged wide shoulders, his smile genuine, familiar even with a dimple on one side, and she grinned back. “It’s a pretty nice place usually, but things are a little weird right now. Well, you know. Hopefully, everyone’s been welcoming.”

  She laughed under her breath. He had no idea. “Oh, yes, definitely.”

  “You didn’t move in right away, though, right?”

  Cocking her head, she squinted at him.

  “With your…husband? He was here before you for a few weeks, I thought.”

  “Oh!” Ivy shook her head veraciously. “No! Absolutely not my husband. Oh, god.” She made a gagging sound. “That’s my brother, Oakley.”

  Hunter brightened. “Oh, really? Dad said we were getting two sylvan, so I just assumed.”

  “Yeah, I don’t have a husband,” she said, perhaps a little too quickly, but couldn’t help herself. “Or, like, a boyfriend, or anything.”

  “Oh, good.” Hunter coughed. “I mean, you don’t want to be married to your brother.” He pulled a face and groaned, then gestured to the picture she’d sat on top of the boxes in her hands. “You’ve been to see Penny, huh?”

  She took a step closer to show him the drawing more clearly. “Yes, she’s really good. If a little macabre.”

  “Wow.” He bent down to see it better. “You must have made a good impression. You get to battle a basilisk or something. Last week she slipped a drawing under my door of me getting chased by a swarm of wasps or something.”

  Ivy laughed. “You were running from them?”

  “Yeah! I was not the hero of that picture, not like you are there.” He smirked. “But that’s okay, she just sees me as the nerdy warlock next door, I guess.”

  She chuckled again, and then saw him readjust his arms under the packages. “I’m sorry, you probably want to put those down.”

  “Oh, uh, yeah, guess I should—” he craned his head toward the block of condos.

  “It was nice to meet you.” She pushed up onto her toes and popped the two extra boxes on his pile.

  “Maybe I’ll see you around?” He was smiling back at her, then he frowned. “Well, I mean, I know I will—we live in the same neighborhood—but hopefully under better circumstances.”

  “I’ll try not to run you over if you don’t…sick bees on me.”

  He laughed a little harder then. “It’s a deal.”

  Ivy walked away feeling like a jackass. What the hell did that even mean? She glanced back over her shoulder to watch him climb the stairs to number 440 beside Pauline’s place. He didn’t pull out keys, just waved his hand from under the stack, and the door swung open. Her mouth fell open just the same as the door, only snapping shut when she caught him glancing back down at her. Quickly, she turned and hurried off into the evening toward home.

  Chapter 13

  The noisiest place in all of Avalon Estates had to be the dwarven compound in the place called the enclave. Set in a valley, farther back from the main streets of the community, an unmarked gravel road led out to an expanse of land dotted with tiny houses, the forest swooping out and around. With all the pomp and intricacies of the homes around Gingko Loop, the houses here were only different in that they were about a third as large. They were brick and stone A-frames with arched doorways and stained-glass windows, and they were adorable. Ivy would have stopped to admire them, but there was that noise—a racket really—of clanging metal, hefty thuds, and of course boisterous voices.

  Dwarves, Safiya had told Ivy, were not just little people. They were a specific group of beings who traced their ancestry back to the stone men of the mountains. She didn’t explain who the stone men were or what mountain exactly, but Ivy thought maybe it was better if she didn’t know. Because they’d once been stone themselves, dwarves were particularly good at ferreting out ore and minerals, and then crafting those things into even better things with their innate tinkering abilities. She also suggested they never slept, but Ivy wasn’t sure if that was hyperbole or an actual effect of their condition.

  Ivy was slated to meet Tharman at his workshop that morning, but he had no address. Instead she was expected to know it “as soon as she saw it,” but the valley was littered with lean-tos and workbenches, and stout, ginger-bearded people scurrying about everywhere.

  She got out of her car and waved at the first dwarf she saw, a slightly darker shade of red to their beard, uncombed and bushy. The man simply squinted at her and kept on his way, a sack slung over his shoulder.
Ivy shrugged and started off down the path that led deeper into their neighborhood.

  The homes were set back off the road, beyond them fields of tall grasses and few trees before the forest proper. Between the homes and the road were additional buildings, some completely walled off, others open air, and dwarves were working in most of them, loudly. They chatted and laughed, and their tools set the air alive with a sort of industrial music she was surprised she couldn’t hear from the street.

  One of the workshops that was just up against the road was particularly open, with a simple back wall for hanging metal tools and a roof for blotting out the sun. Beneath it, a dwarf was hammering at red hot metal, a fire burning behind him. Ivy started to sweat just looking at it.

  “Excuse me,” she tried between rhythmic swings, but the dwarf didn’t look up. She tried a second time, louder, and the hammer stopped, the face turning toward her, then slowly up to meet her eyes.

  A woman, Ivy was surprised to see, as her body was as big as any of the men and perhaps even more muscular. But she was beardless, with round lips and heavy lashes. “I ain’t seen you before.”

  “Hi, I’m Ivy,” she put out her hand, but the dwarf barely glanced at it, still holding her tools with dirty gloves. “I’m here to see Tharman. Could you point me in the right direction?”

  “Oh, for president.” She nodded like it made sense now, cracking a smile. She was missing two of the more important teeth. “All the way down there’s his shop. Can’t miss it. You’ll know it when you see it.”

  Ivy thanked her for the directions despite that they had been little more than a simple thrust of her head down the road. The rest of the dwarves were just as preoccupied with their work, but they would look up at her now and again with something like suspicion in their eyes. It was only the children who didn’t bother to look at her, a small gaggle of them climbing all over an intricate jungle gym and taking turns pushing one another on swings to see who could jump from the highest height.

  Ivy turned the corner and discovered they’d all been right: she knew Tharman’s when she saw it and would have even if not for the quaint sign hanging over the entry that read “Beryleaxe Sundries.” It sat at the bottom of the valley where the road turned and started back toward the main street. At its back was another, disused road that led away from the whole compound. It was two-storied with a black shingled roof and a proper porch out front, but what made it stick out most from those around it was that it was built to average human scale.

  Ivy admired the pattern carved into the trim around the door before entering and setting off a bell. The sounds of the valley were shut out with the door behind her, her ears filled up instead with the ticking of many clocks. They lined the back wall of the place, mesmerizing with the movement of many pendulums, hung on the wall behind the counter. Each was unique in style and material, but something told her they were all done by the same craftsman.

  The rest of the shelves and glass cases around were filled with jewelry, silverware, and even weapons. Higher up on the walls, long swords were hung, and lined up beneath them tall staffs topped with huge gemstones. Ivy had never seen the orb everyone talked about, but she imagined it might sit nicely strapped to the head of one of those.

  “Well, if it isn’t our resident assistant to the president.” Tharman popped out from behind a tapestry hanging behind the counter. Despite that it was at elbow height for Ivy, he comfortably rested his own elbows on it as well, the tallest she’d ever seen him.

  “And one of our candidates for actual president.” She smiled then looked around again at the shop—because that’s what it was, a proper shop. “This place is really something!”

  “Isn’t it, though?” Tharman crossed his arms over a puffed out chest. “Built it all myself, of course, and had a heavy hand in a lot of the goods.”

  “You made these things? They’re beautiful!” She ran a finger along a dagger that was laid out on a soft pillow atop one of the glass counters. The blade was serpentine-like, and the metal was green. “But I’m…confused. Is this, like, your house?”

  Tharman grunted. “You wouldn’t-a been confused twenty years ago!”

  Ivy agreed that five year old her would have probably not been confused so much as thrilled to be in a place like this, but she felt like that wasn’t what he was getting at. “Why’s that?”

  “Beryleaxe Sundries was open to the public back then. Not, you know, the general public per se, but charmed folk came to see me from far and wide to get their hands on my goods.”

  Ivy thought about the disused road leading away from the back of the store. “What happened?”

  “Vlcek,” he huffed, his mustache furrowing. “Closed Avalon up like a drum more permanent-like. Now someone wants to come look at a piece I gotta get em approved with old Greg at least three days ahead of time, and you know he don’t approve just everybody.”

  “Oh.” She noted the vitriol in his voice. “So your shop is by appointment only now?”

  “For now.” He smirked. “Until I’m president, of course, then we’ll be back in regular business.”

  Ivy pulled out her laptop and placed it on the counter. “So, is that the platform you’re running on then?”

  “Right to work. I like that.” He nodded enthusiastically. “We’re opening up the borders again, as it were. And I’d like to expand things a bit beyond the valley. We have a whole crew lined up to build more workshops and houses just over the back ridge, and I got an interested, distantly-related clan looking to relocate. We’ll need to take down some of the trees here and there, but they’ll get used! Nothing goes to waste around here!”

  Ivy cocked her head. “Oh, Safiya had mentioned something about Oakley being lucky he could buy one of the few houses for sale. She made it sound like you guys don’t do a lot of new builds.”

  “Again, for now.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her. It seemed fairly obvious why he would want to get Rufus out of the way, and they were sitting in a room full of probable cause.

  “That might make a few residents unhappy,” she cautioned—he wasn’t being diplomatic at all. “How do you expect to win their vote?”

  “I don’t need em.” He waved his hands and stuck out his tongue from his mass of red whiskers. “I got enough of my own kin here, and there are plenty of like-minded beings out there. All this protection nonsense. For who? We’re protecting the humans more’n ourselves anyways. I say build a kennel out back and be done with it.”

  Ivy’s eyes went wide. Did he mean for the lycans? She wasn’t sure she wanted clarification.

  Tharman went on, describing to her what he would do, his private work intermingled with the association tightly. He could talk a great deal, and Ivy let him, hoping for a clue about the morning of Rufus’s death, but he was a stickler for the one subject. Eventually, she cleared her throat. “You seem really busy, are you sure you’ll have time for the presidency?”

  “All I’ve got is time.” Tharman held his hands out, the clocks covering the back wall ticking away with his laughter.

  “I suppose so.” She managed a light chuckle along with him.

  “You see, I can pop forward to a meeting when I’m not tired with this fella, and I can wind it back and get myself an extra five minutes here or there.” He was pointing at the biggest one in the center of the wall, a glass case over its face with a small lock hanging from the bottom she hadn’t noticed before.

  Ivy leaned over the counter, then looked at his face for signs of another joke. “Really?”

  “Made it myself.” He tugged on his suspenders and rocked back and forth on his heels. “Very rare, very powerful stone inside. Found it, oh, about a hundred years back now.”

  She sat back and snapped her laptop shut. Now she knew he was joking.

  “Tiny chip of a thing, only works for a couple minutes at a time.” Tharman leaned forward then, surprising her with his ability to lower his voice as he pointed at her closed laptop. “Now the business is out of the way,
you know I gotta ask: what are you doing about our little problem?”

  Ivy’s skin prickled, his eyes trained on hers, beady, holding her there. “Our,”—she licked her lips, mouth dry—“Our problem?”

  “The damn chickens!” Tharman’s fist came down on the counter and made her jump. He was grinning when she opened her eyes. “Rufus’s stupid flock is all over. I mean, look!” He disappeared for a second then popped back up and dropped a hen onto the counter next to him. It pecked at his hand as he pulled it away. “They been getting out more and more lately, driving me mad. They find their way into the valley, and they’re too fat to fly back out!”

  She doubted that specifically, but she couldn’t argue with the bird on his table. “Sorry. Safiya’s been trying to round them up. They got out the day of, apparently.”

  “They keep laying eggs near the forges. Last thing we need’s a gaggle of cockatrice chicks, setting fires and attacking everything that moves.”

  Ivy stowed her computer and carefully slipped her fingers under the bird. It let itself be lifted with only a little fighting back and the loss of just two feathers. “Cock-a-what?”

  “Cockatrice. The one’s bad enough. No more!”

  “Right.” Ivy cradled the chicken with one arm and slipped her bag over the other shoulder. “I’ll let Safiya know.”

  “I’m building something,” he said, pointing at her like it was a warning. “To send those things back where they came from.”

  “Yes sir,” she said, offering him a little salute. “We’ll get right on it.”

  “Yep.” He crossed his arms, leaning back. “I knew I liked you sylvan folk.”

  Ivy thanked him for his time, though apparently it wasn’t all that special as he gestured to the clock and laughed again. Then she carried the hen out and across the compound, the dwarves not looking at her any more strangely than when she entered chickenless.

  Tharman, it seemed, had more motive than anybody, and despite how petty it was, she seemed to be carrying the biggest one. She placed the chicken on her passenger seat and started back off for the clubhouse. Safiya would know what to do with her, and if nothing else—Ivy sighed—she herself would be at Rufus’s house that night.