Restless Shadows, Waiting Roads

by Yolande Kleinn

"In a manner of speaking." Eli hesitated, the barest pause, and then admitted, "I have been here a very long time."

  "How long?" Caleb asked, then bit his tongue. His mother had recently explained that it was rude to ask adults their age.

  But though Eli didn't answer, he didn't look to be offended. "Longer than you," was all he would say.

  Caleb hesitated, then. He felt wary, not of Eli, but of his own place here. He was trespassing. He had thought these woods special and secret and his, but he hadn't been first at all.

  Eli's dark eyes narrowed. "What is it?"

  "I'm sorry," Caleb said, scuffing one boot on the hardwood floor.

  "Whatever for?" Eli looked genuinely perplexed, and the expression made Caleb feel both relieved and uncertain.

  "For... for exploring without permission?" Caleb felt foolish. "I didn't know you were here." That wasn't exactly true, but Caleb didn't know how to explain, and so he held his tongue. When Eli's flummoxed expression softened to fondness, the guilt in Caleb's chest eased at last.

  "I do not mind. You are always welcome here, Caleb." Then, in an even kinder tone, Eli said, "You're still shivering. Please sit. The fire will warm you soon enough."

  Caleb realized only then that he was still shivering. He glanced up, and saw Eli gesturing towards one of the tall chairs by the fire. The cozy room was slowly bringing warmth back to Caleb's limbs. He paused, considering, then toed off his boots before crossing the room. The plush carpet felt wonderful even through his socks, and he was almost sad to climb up into the chair.

  The fire didn't give off the intense wall of heat that it should have, but it was still pleasant. Caleb curled into one corner of the chair and tucked his coat more tightly around him.

  Eli followed eventually, folding down into the other chair with such thoughtless grace that Caleb couldn't help staring. Eli let long minutes stretch in silence, and then at last, leaned towards him. Elbows braced on his knees, fingers steepled before his mouth, Eli spoke almost too quietly to hear.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I'm scared," Caleb admitted, startled to realize it was true. He didn't fear this room—or this man, stranger though he was—but the blizzard outside. He feared the disorientation capable of turning his beautiful woods into something unknown and dangerous. Even more, he feared for his parents, who were surely searching for him in the dark right now. They didn't know the paths like he did. What if they got lost or hurt?

  "You're perfectly safe here," Eli said, puzzlement raising his eyebrows. "On my word, I will let no harm come to you."

  Caleb believed him. There was something serenely earnest in Eli's face that brooked no hint of doubt. But the reassurance wasn't enough to quiet the simmer of other fears beneath Caleb's skin.

  "My parents," he said helplessly.

  The confusion cleared from Eli's expression, and he shook his head. "They're well enough, and the forest should help them stay that way. You needn't worry."

  Again Caleb believed him, and the raw anxiety in his chest fell quiet.

  "Did you save my life?" he asked, suddenly curious.

  Eli blinked at him, startlement narrowing his midnight-dark eyes. "I suppose I did. Does that trouble you?"

  "No." It wasn't quite a lie. Caleb still fidgeted when Eli's gaze sharpened knowingly, and it took him several seconds to speak past a throat gone dry. "Thank you."

  Though Eli's answering smile was small, the fondness of it transformed the cool lines of his face into something alarmingly beautiful. He didn't look quite human now, and Caleb wondered if he was imagining the way Eli's skin seemed to glow with pale light.

  He was tired suddenly, more tired than he had realized, and his eyes might have been playing tricks on him. He was warm now, and his limbs ached with fatigue. His eyelids wanted nothing more than to droop into exhausted sleep.

  "You're welcome, little one," Eli murmured, smile widening across his face. "Who knows. Perhaps one day you'll do me a favor in turn."

  Caleb couldn't fathom such a thing. His muffled mind could think of nothing he might be able to offer. What favor could he possibly do for a man who could conjure light in the palm of his hand? Surely that was magic. Caleb had nothing so impressive to proffer in exchange.

  His eyes were trying to close of their own accord, but Caleb struggled to keep them open. "When the storm is done and I can go home... Will I see you again? After?"

  "I expect so." Eli rose from his chair and faced the fire, turning his back to Caleb. Eli's spine was rigidly straight as he stood before the hearth, one hand outstretched towards the flames. Caleb could see only the barest sliver of his profile, of the way the fire cast harsh shadows across his face.

  Without shifting his stance, Eli peered at Caleb over his shoulder. His eyes held cryptic weight. "Sleep, little one. I will watch over you."

  Caleb didn't want to sleep. He wanted to stay awake and keep company with his strange protector. He blinked against the overwhelming weight of his own eyelids, and saw that Eli had turned to face him. Eli's eyes were no longer impenetrably dark. They glowed around the edges, a smooth, shimmering green even brighter than the firelight.

  A soothing melody crept into Caleb's ears and snuck beneath his skin. It was only as the last of his wakefulness faded that he realized where the music was coming from. Eli was singing, words Caleb didn't recognize and couldn't understand.

  The sound followed Caleb into sleep, weaving into the very fabric of his dreams as the rest of the world fell away.

  *~*~*

  Caleb woke, not to reassuring firelight, but to sunlight glaring off tall snowdrifts and stabbing uncomfortably into his eyes.

  He sat up slowly, disoriented and addled. He wasn't curled in a tall chair, or surrounded by the gold and green warmth of Eli's sitting room. There was no hearth, no soft rug, no walls or candles or sconces.

  There was no Eli.

  Caleb was alone in the snow, curled at the base of an oak that could have been the largest in the entire wood. He was just beginning to shiver. The cold hit him suddenly, seeping into his skin through his jacket and snow pants. His boots were on his feet. And above him, through the leafless branches of the enormous tree, he glimpsed patches of blindingly blue sky.

  He thought at first that he was imagining the sound of his name. The wind was sedate now, nothing at all like the ferocious storm that had caught him last night. When someone called his name a second time, louder and closer, Caleb recognized his mother's voice.

  "Mom," he shouted back as loudly as he could, and rose unsteadily to his feet.

  "Caleb?"

  Then there were other voices, all converging. He could see movement through the trees now, and hear not just voices but heavy footsteps tramping over snow-muffled ground.

  The group emerged from the trees, his mother at the fore, and closed on Caleb in a wave. It wasn't just his family, he realized, but an entire search party. Strangers. Police. His mother reached him and knelt, grabbing him by the shoulders and then crushing him close in a hug that squeezed the air from his lungs.

  She bundled him in a heavy blanket and insisted on carrying him, like a much smaller child, back through the woods and up the hill. They weren't so far from Caleb's yard after all, impossible though it had been to find his way back the night before. An ambulance waited in the driveway, and dozens of people filled the yard.

  Inside the house, tracking snow everywhere, his mother had to let him go for the paramedics to check him over. There was a period of confusion, then. Everyone seemed prepared for the worst. Caleb knew he shouldn't be warm and unhurt, not after a night in a blizzard-blinded forest, certainly not after waking in a snow bank. The adults were clearly taken aback.

  "He's... he's fine. No sign of hypothermia, no frostbite. Nothing. He's not even shivering."

  Of course he wasn't shivering. Between the heavy blanket and his frantic mother clutching him close, any hint of cold had fled well before they reached the house.

  "It's a miracle," his dad
said. He had appeared from outside while the EMTs were checking Caleb for harm. Now, as the rest stepped away, he scooped Caleb tightly into his arms.

  It wasn't until everyone else had gone that Caleb tried to explain to his parents. He didn't want to tell a house full of strangers about Eli, but surely he could tell his family. He told the story as clearly as he could, about the stranger who had found and protected him. He left nothing out, not the magical light in Eli's hands, not the bright glowing green of his watchful eyes. His parents listened, patiently attentive, but when he was done they only shook their heads.

  "There are no mansions in the forest, big guy," his dad said. "No one lives there. It's just wilderness."

  "Eli does, though," Caleb insisted. "He found me in the blizzard. He kept me safe."

  "That's wonderful, sweetheart," his mom agreed, but the shadows in her eyes said she didn't believe him.

  He already knew that he was in bigger trouble than he'd ever been in before. The next day, when frantic relief had worn away enough to discuss punishment, his parents grounded him for the first time in his life. They never left him alone in the yard again; they knew better now. And though Caleb wanted more than ever to go back out into that forest—to find Eli and thank him properly—they never agreed to take him.

  It was only two months later that they moved out of the lonely house in the countryside, into an apartment near the center of town. The apartment was too small for a family of their size, but they made do for several months. His parents wouldn't give him a proper answer when he demanded a reason for the move, but Caleb knew it was because of him. They didn't trust his forest. They didn't trust him to stay out of trouble. Or maybe they believed him, just a little, about the mysterious someone living there, and since they hadn't met Eli themselves, they were afraid.

  It hardly mattered why. The result was immutable. Caleb was nine years old, and he couldn't return to his forest alone.

  At the end of the school year, Caleb's father accepted a promotion that took them to an entirely different state. They left South Dakota and settled in warmer climes, leaving the forest well and truly behind them.

  *~*~*

  Caleb grew, as children tend to. He made friends at his new school; he studied and played and sprouted taller. He wasn't grounded forever, and he never again gave his parents such cause for fear. Even as a teenager, he was cautious and always called to check in before they could start to worry. He refused to put those lost, terrified expressions on their faces again.

  He didn't forget his woods, or his eerily beautiful stranger, but most days he knew that Eli's warm hearth hadn't been real. An impossible manor in an empty forest, appearing like magic to protect him from the storm? No, Caleb knew his parents were right. He'd been damned lucky. Anything more was just imagination and dream, a scared little boy crafting a vivid fairytale in the face of his fear.

  Unglamorous reality never quite stopped him wanting to return, but he knew better than to ask. His parents would never allow it. Any mention of Chester still put pinched looks on their faces and shadows in their eyes, and they certainly wouldn't take him themselves. By the time Caleb was old enough to buy his own car, he couldn't think of a reasonable excuse to go alone. He knew almost nobody in Chester; elementary school classmates weren't the sorts of acquaintances you just called up for a visit. Making it a road trip with one of his friends was equally out of the question. There was nothing there to make it a convincing destination, and something always stopped him from explaining the real reasons he wanted to go.

  The forest was still his in a way. Eli belonged to that forest—or the forest belonged to him—and that made him Caleb's, too. Even if he wasn't real. Even if Caleb knew damn well that his own desire to return was nothing but a childish whim.

  Real or not, Caleb dreamed of Eli often enough that he never forgot the man's face. The night of his sixteenth birthday, those dreams abruptly changed their tone. He woke in the middle of the night, too warm beneath his sheets, his head spinning with the slowly fading jumble of heat and skin.

  It wasn't the first time a dream had left Caleb aching and hot and wide awake. It was, however, the first time Eli had been the one beneath Caleb's hands.

  At sixteen, Caleb was already one of the tallest boys at school. By seventeen he had gained another two inches, putting him at six feet tall, with bulky shoulders and a sturdy frame. At eighteen, Stanley Grant beat him out for captain of the senior high football team, but Caleb didn't begrudge his friend the victory. It gave Caleb a little extra time to stay on top of his schoolwork, a fact for which most of his teammates chided him with good humor. That same year he cropped his hair short, buzzing it close to his skull. When he looked in the mirror after that, it was a man staring back at him, not the ridiculous kid he was accustomed to, and he never let his hair grow long again.

  By graduation that spring, his college of choice had offered him two separate scholarships—sports and academic—and he left for school with all the fanfare of a youngest child finally facing the world. His forest was well behind him now, as far from his mind as it had ever been, but still there was Eli. He snuck into Caleb's dreams, pale and tall and fiercely distracting. Always with that quiet, eloquent smile on his face.

  There were mornings Caleb woke and believed, for a few exultant seconds, that someone so vivid must be real. The fact that he wasn't gnawed at Caleb, a constant ache that he did his best to ignore.

  He never had trouble finding companions to distract him from his implausible dreams. Even when his sophomore year snuck up and took away his place on the college football team, his options were still plentiful. He dated frequently, mostly women, sometimes men. Never seriously, and never for more than a couple of months. Even when he determined to try harder, his relationships always fizzled somewhere between getting physical and getting serious. Eventually, he had to acknowledge that the common factor was him, and he stepped back from the entire game. He had other things to focus on, between his studies, his communications degree, and his gig at the school paper where he did several jobs at once. Somehow his dating life didn't seem like much of a sacrifice.

  Graduation came like an avalanche, his first job snowballing after it, and three years passed with startling swiftness. A busy schedule did wonders to keep him from thinking about childhood foolishness. He wasn't looking for excuses to return to his forest any longer. He could simply go, answerable only to himself, but he never considered it. He was an adult. He had plans and responsibilities, and there was no good reason to go back to a town he hadn't seen since he was nine years old.

  Then Chester, South Dakota announced a job opening for city communications manager. It was pure chance that the information came across Caleb's desk. He wasn't looking for a new job. Hell, the position was a sizable step down in salary from his current post. He had no reason to consider the gig, let alone apply for it, but he sent his resume anyway.

  That night he dreamed more vividly than ever. No uncoordinated jumble of heat and hands this time, but stunning clarity as Eli came to Caleb's bed, wearing nothing but a cryptic smile. His skin was cool beneath Caleb's hands; his dark eyes alight with a wild green glow. Caleb woke from the dream panting, cursing aloud at waking just shy of the finish line. He barely hesitated before sliding his hand beneath his boxers to finish the job himself.

  *~*~*

  He returned to Chester in August. Joanna flew out to help him move, but his parents wouldn't come near the place. They didn't come right out and ask if he'd lost his mind, but he knew they weren't pleased. He doubted any of the vague reassurances he offered them went far towards easing their worry. There was no changing this course now that he'd set himself on it, and it was a tangible relief to read the welcome sign as he drove in at the wheel of a rented moving truck.

  Their old house on the edge of everything was long gone. It had been demolished years past, according to the real estate agent Caleb spoke to. Caleb was reasonably sure he wouldn't have bought the place, but he found himse
lf disappointed just the same. There was something dissatisfying about the apartment he moved into, even though it was almost twice the size of anywhere he'd lived since college. It was right at the center of town, just off the intersection of Broadway and Main, and from his front window he could see nothing but small town streets.

  He made it almost a week before the itch beneath his skin carried him past the outskirts of town. His car didn't like the dirt and gravel roads that lead to the stretch of countryside calling Caleb's name. He navigated as much by guesswork as by trying to follow the hand-sketched map the real estate agent had given.

  Somehow Caleb found his way without a single wrong turn.

  The lot was even emptier than he'd expected. From a distance, he couldn't tell exactly where the house had stood. The fence was gone, leaving nothing but scattered trees that set off faint memories in Caleb's head. There was still a reluctant stretch of driveway along the ground. The asphalt had cracked and crumbled, and plant life grew through it in patches. Caleb parked his car there anyway, pocketing his keys as he exited into jarring heat.

  Humidity itched immediately at his skin, and he ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. The clouds above were tinted the sickly gray of an approaching storm as Caleb crossed the yard towards the wall of trees.

  He entered the forest despite a dry rumble of thunder.

  Intuition guided him over thick undergrowth and uneven ground. It wasn't memory exactly; he didn't know where he was going. But he could sense this place beneath his skin, reassuring and familiar. He could feel the strange sensation that the forest itself was watching him, just like when he was a child. When he glanced back over his shoulder he couldn't see his car any longer. The woods were too thick behind him, the terrain hilly and uneven. Caleb wasn't concerned. He would find his way back soon enough.

  Even without wildly drifting snow to set the scene, he recognized the clearing where he'd woken after the blizzard. The murky sky above was now visible only in patches, glimpsed through gaps in the heavy foliage. Here below, heavy shadows fell across the thick green of the forest floor. An enormous oak stood almost directly ahead. Its trunk was at least a meter wide, and it towered above the surrounding oaks and pines. The sight of its wrinkled bark and high branches knocked images loose in Caleb's mind, painting them so vividly that at first he thought he was imagining the figure approaching him.