by B. G. Thomas
Then Kevin went down to the basement and his storage unit, and even though he’d spent a long day going through “stuff,” he knew he couldn’t hope to sleep until he’d sorted through all his camping gear to find everything he might need. Luckily he had Pack, one of the very apps he’d invented, to help him remember anything important he might need. On a whim, and a silly whispered feeling, he went ahead and brought his Coleman lanterns even though the cabins had electricity. It wasn’t like he didn’t have room in his Hulk-sized truck….
It would be so different going to Camp and not sleeping in a tent. He’d never slept in one of the cabins, although he’d been in some of them for little parties and such.
And the one time he’d had sex with someone from Festival, which had been a total mistake. Kevin had been nothing but a one-night stand, and the next morning the guy was treating him like a red-headed stepchild. Kevin had almost left Festival and gone home.
But no, he loved that land. The Land. And it was the Land that he was going for. Not a cute little guy who needed to be just as alone as he did. He had no clue why he’d been so affected by the news that Wyatt would be there.
Just because he’d harbored a little crush maybe….
I do not have a crush on Wyatt!
“You have such a crush on him!” That had been Domi Dearest, one of his favorite people from Festival. And a man who was happy that Kevin didn’t want to talk all the time. Didn’t Stepper and Gentle Ben do more than enough talking?
“Hodor,” had been his quiet response that day, like all days. Hodor. His Faerie name. The one that someone had given him because he so rarely spoke. Kevin had seized on it and even enjoyed it. “Hodor” was a perfect way not to have to say anything.
Domi had just rolled his eyes. “Don’t even try to deny it. Do you think I’m an idiot? I see it. The way you look at him.”
Kevin hadn’t said anything then, just held out a glass when Greg, bartender extraordinaire at the Domi Dearest campsite, asked if anyone wanted refills.
And when he was leaving, Domi leaned in and said, “Wyatt could do a lot worse than you. Maybe you should steal him away. I can’t stand Big Sir. He is such a fucker.”
Kevin hadn’t said anything to that either.
And he needed to stop thinking about Wyatt. Wyatt was going to Camp to get his head together. For solitude. So was he.
It could be fun.
Fun? You aren’t going to Camp for “fun.” You wanted to get away.
Nice, then. It could be nice.
And if he did see Wyatt, what was wrong with that?
Which only sent his heart racing again.
Be careful, Kevin…. He’s just broken up with a man he’s been with for years. Howard—and he grimaced at the name—is probably part of what he wants to get away from.
The last thing Wyatt needs is my company, he thought.
And I’m going to Camp to get away from everything. To get away from people and decisions and responsibility and hurtful memories. Not to be with people.
But that doesn’t mean if I see him wandering around I can’t invite him over—if he needs to talk. It would only be polite.
When he got to bed an hour or so later, it was with such a feeling of anticipation that he was sure he would never get to sleep. But sleep did come. And it was the best rest he’d had in weeks.
CHAPTER TWENTY
FOR SOME reason Wyatt didn’t tell anyone he was back in Terra’s Gate, not even Sloan. He pulled up into the driveway—all the way to the back where he most probably wouldn’t be seen—instead of parking on the street like he usually did and began packing for his trip. He didn’t call work either. Katherine expected him to be gone several days. Why call her? Why give her more drama? Hadn’t he been responsible for enough of that lately?
No. Going to Sanctuary without telling anyone would make his trip even more… special. What did the nun call it in The Sound of Music when Maria needed to be alone? Seclusion. Yes, that was it. He would be in seclusion.
So he packed. Then, once again, Howard ruined his mood.
Packing sucked.
Wyatt had spent years making sure that he—they—had everything they could ever possibly need for their camping trips. Everything had been in tubs and a stacking plastic set of drawers. From the everyday stuff like bedding, air mattresses, Off! mosquito spray, and tarps to all the more unusual things that made people admire his campsite: fun party lights to decorate the camp, immensely long extension cords to reach the cabin down the hill so they could have power, camp chairs that had little side tables for food and drinks, a collapsible bar, a solar charger for cell phones, bear flags and garden statues, a terrific collection of music, and more. But when they had to split it between them, it ruined everything. Not only was he missing some summer necessities, he’d also lost some treasures. Nothing he would need for his winter sojourn, but big ugly reminders of what he didn’t have anymore.
No! I won’t let him ruin this! I won’t.
But it was true. Howard had ruined everything. He had ruined Wyatt’s dreams. He had taken away the home that Wyatt had spent so many years making just perfect—or close to. They had been nearly there. And gods, what was next summer at HQMF going to be like when he was camping in their old tent and Howard had the pop-up camper that had sprung right out of Wyatt’s dreams?
There he went! Thinking of Howard ruining everything—again.
He refused.
So he packed, and he made a list of the necessities he would need the next day. He checked the cabinets, and he made a few meals. His chicken salad, some boiled eggs, some hamburger patties—he would use the stove on the cabin’s porch for at least one dinner and to heat water for instant oatmeal and stuff like that. He’d pick up a loaf of bread and sandwich meat and chips and such at the Walmart that was twenty minutes or so from Camp. He had a cooler, although it was a small one, and—Hey!—a tiny little microwave, smaller than a toaster oven. That would work. He wouldn’t need to heat water on the wood stove.
He got online and bought some e-books for his reader, a Stephen King novel and some romances. He made sure to grab his dog-eared copy of Eat, Pray, Love and a few other standbys—Scott Cunningham for sure. Christopher Penczak’s Sons of the Goddess. And Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance.
And his bearskin. That was one thing he would have actually fought Howard for—tooth and claw. Thankfully Howard didn’t even want it. It was important to Wyatt. For many reasons, one of them knowing that the bear hadn’t been hunted down and killed. It had been a beloved performing bear from some old traveling small-time circus. The owner wanted to keep his bear around. Then he died, and sometime after that the circus had gone out of business, and Wyatt had been in the right place at the right time and gotten the skin for a steal.
After Wyatt had done all the packing he really could, he decided to sit and watch Friends. He laughed, and for a while that chased the shadows away. He even slept decently.
The next morning Wyatt packed his Mini Coop and headed out early. He wanted to get settled.
Walmart went uneventfully, and he got a bright idea and bought some boneless chicken wings from the deli, all cooked already and so good they didn’t even need to be heated up. For some reason Howard had always hated them, and so it was one more thing that Wyatt could do at Camp that wouldn’t be Wyatt and Howard. It would be just Wyatt.
It was weird making the final leg of the journey. He was used to all the green. He was used to the tunnel of overreaching branches that campers always had to drive though in that last few hundred feet before pulling into Camp. Of course, there was no green. Just branches that looked skeletal and gave him little shivers. He drove past Iggy, or Yggdrasil, the name that someone in the founding years of Camp Sanctuary had given to the huge, eighty-foot-tall tree that grew just past the front gate. It too looked dead, although Wyatt knew it was only sleeping.
Wyatt drove up the steep hill to the secondary level of Camp, where he could register and check in with G
ryphon. He’d no sooner climbed out of his car when the very man he was looking for came out of the dining hall, a building off to Wyatt’s right, and strode up and gave him a big hug. He was an older man of indeterminate age who looked to Wyatt like he could be anywhere from forty to sixty—it was hard to tell. He was thin, but fit, with many lines on his face but no sagging skin, and with no gray in his brown hair but plenty in his well-trimmed beard. “Wyatt! Merry meet! It’s so good to see you.”
Wyatt hugged back and let himself sink into the warm embrace. Gryphon gave good hugs, and right now Wyatt needed one. Especially if he was going to withdraw even from Sanctuary’s caretakers and go into “seclusion.”
“Let’s get you settled,” Gryphon declared and went right to the car to help Wyatt unpack. With the caretaker’s aid, it was an easy two trips to the third cabin heading up the north trail from the buildings that made up the hive central of Camp Sanctuary. The kitchen/dining hall, the Main Hall (where most meetings and such were held), and the shower house. Wyatt had had many a midnight shower there with friends. Again, he was struck by how different Camp looked without its green foliage. Gray, quiet, slumbering. He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake coming here.
And sure enough, Gryphon had laid up a big pile of firewood under the front porch and plenty inside the cabin so it would be at least a day before Wyatt needed to bring any in.
“So it’s just me and you and Saffron?” Wyatt asked as Gryphon started the fire in the woodstove (doing even that for him; so nice).
“Well, for today anyway. And tonight. You’ll have company tomorrow, though.” Then before Wyatt could even begin to get concerned, Gryphon assured him that the other guest would be staying in North One, and since the shower house’s water supply was shut off for the winter, there was a good chance Wyatt wouldn’t even see him. The other guest was looking to be alone as well. “A lot of people come to Camp to heal.” He hugged Wyatt again. “And I hope your time here does that. Or at least starts it.”
“Thank you, Gryphon.”
“Saffron wanted you to know you’re invited for lunch. One good and for sure hot meal while you stay.”
Wyatt declined. He wanted to start his Seclusion right away. Already he was giving the word a capital S in his mind.
So Gryphon went on his way.
Even though it was the same relative size as all the other cabins, it looked so much bigger inside. It was the only cabin in Camp that was one big room instead of two separate halves. He thought of Dr. Who’s TARDIS and giggled, then set about making the cabin his own, at least for a few days, by draping sarongs over the lamps and making his bed—the only real bed, a double, in all of Camp—with old bedding and his bearskin rug. The Green Man and pentacle tapestries he used for bedding he’d bought from the guys who sold the sarongs he’d draped over the lamps, something they did each summer at Festival. He’d only considered using one of the bunks for a second, because even though the bed was big enough to remind him he was in it all by himself, somehow he thought one of the smaller beds would be worse. He set up his CD player and put Celia to playing. He loved her music, and she would surely set the magickal mood he hoped to capture while he was here.
He checked the wood cookstove on the front porch and saw it was ready as well. There was wood already inside—Gryphon was a wonderful man. Wyatt also moved the garden bear statue he’d brought along and left on the front porch just so, wanting it perfect. Bear Spirit now watched outside, and with the skin on the bed, Wyatt knew that same spirit watched inside as well.
Strangely he began to yawn at that point, even though it was only early afternoon. But then, in the last few days, he had made two long trips on the road, packed for Camp, unpacked and set up his cabin, and perfected bears inside and out.
Why not take a little nap?
So he lay down and promptly fell into a deep and long nap.
WYATT AWOKE a surprising three hours later, alarmed when he saw the time, relieved when he opened the door and saw it wasn’t dark yet. It would be soon, though; it was that time of year. He had something he wanted to do.
So he bundled up in coat, gloves, hat, scarf, plus one more thing, and headed down the north path, which followed the main road up the steep hill to the camping plateau above. When he reached a major bend in the path, he crossed the road and entered one of his favorite places in all of Sanctuary—Pax Place. He hadn’t been here since Sinthesis, a Faerie he’d known for years—and one of the first to make him feel welcome at Festival—had performed a handfasting here last summer for a young couple. It had gone long, longer than anyone had expected, but it was so beautiful that Wyatt had no room to complain. What could have been done to make it shorter? It was perfect, and if that young couple stayed together longer than the promised “year-and-a-day rule,” then it would be a night they both would remember forever.
Imagine…. Forever….
Pax Place, like everything else at Camp, looked different; however, the branches over the path that led to one of Camp Sanctuary’s sacred spaces were so tight and tangled, it was like traveling down a narrow hallway of some Tolkien Elvin dwelling. The illusion was only altered by the presence of gold-painted Egyptian statues placed along that path: first two human-looking guards and then a pair of Egyptian gods. What thrilled him, though, was when the path opened to the twenty-foot circular clearing. As on the path, the branches above were so intertwined it was like the trees had decided to lend themselves to building a church—but a church of nature rather than some man-made creation. Wyatt had always thought the place beautiful with its canopy of leaves. But this looked somehow divine.
Wyatt stood for the longest time, taking it all in, feeling the power and the peace of the place. He wished it were warmer and camping were allowed here. He could only imagine what sleeping in this sacred space would be like—what dreams might come.
But it was getting chilly as the sky darkened, and Wyatt still had things he wanted to do.
He went to the stone-walled fire pit and saw that this was the only place Gryphon had not stocked. Luckily there was a big pile of broken branches set off near where the path diverged from the main road, and in only about fifteen minutes, he managed to bring back enough wood for the fire he planned on starting in a few days. When he had arranged the wood to his satisfaction, he took the last item he’d brought to Pax Place and draped it over the pile. It was one of Howard’s big flannel shirts. He’d snuck it away in one of his boxes the dreadful day he’d had to move from his home. Foolishly, he had planned then to sleep with it. So he could smell his lover—ex-lover—in his lonely nights.
But now he knew it was time to get rid of it.
He would burn it. He would burn it in this sacred place.
WHEN WYATT got back to the cabin, he found fried chicken and rolls on a foil-wrapped plate lying on the small dining table in the center of the room. There was a note.
Start your healing journey with a full stomach.
Love,
Saff
Saffron. Wyatt smiled. He loved Saffron. She was as integral to Camp Sanctuary as anything. As sacred. Like some kind of pagan Mother Teresa. Both she and her husband were as important to everything that was Sanctuary as anything—Pax Place, Sunflower Ridge, Serenity Lake, Gaea’s Haven, Green Man Grove.
It would be a perfect start for his time here. He’d had her food before. She was a wonderful cook.
So he sat and he ate and he read some Eat, Pray, Love, and he cried a little bit, but not much.
He listened to Celia and some Christine Kane and was hit once again by lyrics. Words that he knew he’d heard a hundred times, but today, now, meant so much more….
I’m in this church
Running down the aisle
My heart is broken
My-my dress is torn….
Seasons changing on me now
Wait for the flowers to grow, yeah
Seasons changing on me now
Watch for the roses in the snow
Like the
Universe had made sure he would hear the right songs in the right time. Like a message of hope.
Snow was coming.
But it wouldn’t last forever.
That’s what he had to believe.
That the roses would bloom again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WYATT WOKE up late in the morning feeling surprisingly good. Better than he had in months. As good as or better than the evening he’d done the Yule ritual with his friends. There was a touch of loneliness, but it was strangely okay. Like it was supposed to be. “Seclusion” was what he was after.
He got a tiny smile as he thought of something. It was like the first few times he got fucked. It hurt… but that was part of it. Like being born, somehow. And for some reason that was what this loneliness felt like. A little sad, but as if…. As if something was waiting for him. Waiting just around the bend.
For months now he’d hung on to the necks of close friends (and he’d had friends to hang on to despite what Howard said!), hung out with acquaintances (and he had far more of those than he’d ever realized), played his music so loud it made his ears hurt (but it drowned out Howard’s mocking voice), worked extra hours (the money helped), and played endless hours of Netflix (comedies, because the few depressing horror movies where everyone died at the end turned out to be a mistake). It was time to spend some time alone and to have a little silence.
Or mostly silence.
Wyatt pushed the covers back, sat up, and gave a little shiver. The fire had burned down, leaving a chill in the air, and as he climbed out of bed, he was glad he was wearing socks. He usually slept naked. Wyatt grabbed a couple of logs, opened the little metal door on the old-fashioned wood-burning stove (his grandmother had once had one like it, only twice as big), and shoved them inside. With some coals still glowing within, he figured it wouldn’t take long before the fire got going again.