“Have you been down here for long?” she asked. The fox nodded its rusty head.
“I would like to speak to you,” she paused, considering her options. The bats were terrified of her leaving the cave. Now it was her turn to be afraid.
“If I remove you from your cage for a moment so you can change, will you promise not to run away?” The fox paused, blinking slowly at her before nodding.
“If you are lying to me, and you run away he will probably find you again. And I might get in trouble.” She said, her voice wavering.
Again, the fox nodded.
“Okay. I’m going to open the cage now. Please do not bite me.”
She slid the lock down until the creaky door popped open. The fox slowly stretched out of the cage until a man was sitting in front of her. A man was perhaps an inaccurate description. His skin was still smooth and rounded with baby fat. He had a long, prominent nose and a thin toothy mouth. His hair was a deep dark brown, almost black as it gently curved down past his ears. Briar had assumed he would be a redhead. His skin was a rosy brown.
“Hi,” She said quietly. There was no polite way to talk to someone who just shed their skin to be naked at your feet. For once she did not try to ask for a name. He probably didn’t have one to give.
He cleared his throat. “Hey.” His voice was high pitched, but threatening.
“Why did he put you down here?” Briar wished she could know this information without letting him out of the cage. He could very well be crazy. Or an asshole.
The boy snarled, upset that she would even ask. “Does it matter? I need to get the fuck out of here.”
“What did he do to you?” she asked again, her voice soft against his harsh tones. He hesitated, looking away from her. “I won’t say anything to him.” She added.
“I wandered too close to here. I saw you out on the porch and realized you might be one of the missing girls.” He finally said.
Her heart beat faster. So people were looking for her. He had lied. She felt like an idiot. Of course they were looking. Aster would have told them what happened.
“One of them?” she asked.
“Yeah, you aren’t the only one out here I’ve heard,” he said.
The memory of the cave brought back the smell of human rot. The terrified bat, hoping she would be quiet and go back behind the door. There was another girl out there. Briar had a feeling he had used the lock on her door.
“I went to go tell the authorities where you were staying, but that asshole caught me. I’ve been here for days. He barely feeds me,” the fox said.
More than a little of his anger was geared towards her. She backed away, fear plain on her face. He was just the right kind of desperate to be fearful of. What did he have to lose?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Well? So can I get the fuck out of here?” He stretched his fingers against the floor. His body was lithe. If the lighting was better she could count all of his ribs. She tried to stop staring.
“No I can’t…” Her voice trailed off. His expression turned from anger to fear.
“If I let you go he will know that I know. If he knows he might lock me up like he did you,” Briar whispered desperately.
“Well then let’s go.” He stood quickly, wobbling. He did not seem in any better condition than her. He reached out a rough hand to pull on her sweater. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
She remained on her knees. “My leg is broken, I’m weak. I wouldn’t last a day hiking like this. I need more supplies, I need to get stronger.”
“Oh come on,” he said.
“I think I know where the other missing girl went,” she said. “I think she was more like you than like me.”
“Was?” He asked.
“I don’t know that she escaped.” Briar pointed out. “I tried to ask some woodswalkers who live in the cave he could have held someone in. But they wouldn’t talk to me.”
“They probably didn’t want to get in trouble with him either.” The fox said.
“I’m going to see if I can get my friend to talk with them. If they have any insight into how the other one escaped it could really help us.”
She began to stand up, her legs cramped from sitting at odd angles. She looked down at his captive, now hers in her eyes.
“Please try and make less noise down here. If he hears you too much he may do something about that,” Briar said. She wanted to do more than just silence the thumps. She wanted to scream, she wanted to add her own noise.
She looked between the boy and the cage. The longer they sat staring at each other the harder her heart thumped in her chest. He needed to go back into the cage, she needed to leave. Her lips stretched into a grimace, tears burning unshed.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispered instead.
“It’s okay,” he replied. “You don’t have to ask.”
He curled back into himself. His flesh shrank and melded together. The fur that grew back was glossier and more full than it was before. The fox walked back into the small cage, barely able to turn back around to face front. He rested his muzzle against his black paws and closed his eyes.
As she slid the lock back into place she knew her life there was over. She shed her feelings for him as if shedding a second skin, shrinking the extra mass smaller and smaller within herself. There was no place for them here.
She wished more than anything that the fox was lying. But regardless of whether he was or not, there is never a good reason to have another person in a cage in your basement. That much she knew at least.
She had to find out what happened to the person behind the waterfall. Whatever was their fate could very well be hers. If they escaped, she could possibly do the same. If they left by other means, there may be no hope left for her.
There was something inside her that wondered why he did not just kill the fox. Why risk keeping him? A few days ago she was imagining living here forever. Now, she was wondering why her lover did not kill his hostage in the basement.
Remember the Rope
Hot puffs of air escaped her lips as she struggled to tie the rope around her thickly padded waist. She was going to find her friend and she was going to find some answers. The sun was still up, but its power was draining fast, casting creeping shadows through the clearing.
If she had any hope of escaping this she needed to know how the other one managed to escape. Whoever she was, she was her only hope. Whoever this poor soul was had the courage she did not. The thought of trying to leave made her hands sweaty.
The bats may not have wanted to talk to her but she doubted they would deny Pepper. She had something about her that made her easy to talk to. That was the bulk of her plan. All she had to do was tell the sweet rat what was going on and things would at least be set in motion.
What happened after that?
She should have asked her where she lived when she had the chance. Not that Pepper would have had an address to give her, but anything was better than searching the forest alone. She was attempting to go in the same general direction she ran into her the first time she had tried to find her. Every moment she spent alone was a precious thing.
She crutched her way through the thicket of trees slowly, scanning ahead as she went for signs of life. Every few feet she looked over her shoulder, checking for tangles in her lifeline as if she would run out of air with any kink in it’s flow. With every check more of the rope was lost in the growing gloom.
Briar felt her breath squeeze out of her. The rope constricted around her waist, digging into her despite the layers between her and its rough surface. She turned, startled by the sight of the taut rope leading off into the pitch black. She had run out of rope, and there was still no sign of Pepper.
“Pepper?”
She was alone. Another thought rattled to the surface. He should be awake soon. She chastised herself for going while he was asleep, not while he was hunting.
She attempted to walk ba
ck the way she came, but it was much more misleading than she anticipated. Despite the simple path she had taken the rope before her was tangled in all sorts of ways.
In the deathly silence of the forest she could hear him draw nearer long before she saw his eyes. Her chest heaved with heavy horror at every snap of twig. She stood no chance of escape, she thought. No matter how far she managed to walk away he would always manage to find her. She wondered if he was tracing her footsteps in the dark, or tracking her by the sound of her heartbeat.
Then, she remembered the rope.
She could feel the insistent tug on her lifeline grow more wild as he grew closer. One particularly sharp tug sent her down to her already scraped knees. Briar let out a quiet groan. His nude form finally reached the light of her lantern faster than she could imagine.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked.
She supposed he tried to sound worried, but it was poison in her ears. He reached down with stiff arms to lift her up. He did not apologize for pulling her down.
“I’m exploring,” she said.
It was a weak excuse. She should have thought of something before she decided to leave. Anger boiled beneath her skin. She wrung her hands behind her back to sooth their rage. She wanted to hit something.
“How many times do I have to tell you it is not safe for you here? You can barely walk unassisted,” he said.
She self-consciously slouched, favoring her broken leg. In truth, she felt almost normal at times.
“You expect me to live here forever? Then I will have my freedom,” she lashed out. This time she did not regret her words. She only regretted not saying more.
He took a step back, snapping a twig under his bare foot. He had not heard her speak that way to him. “Okay,” he finally let out.
“Okay,” she said in return, the fire in her voice extinguished by the approval.
“Did you find anything interesting in your… exploring?” he asked.
He would not meet her eyes. She was not used to this sort of submission. She felt like a dog being given its own leash to hold.
“Not really,” Briar answered. “I didn’t even run into any other woodswalkers.”
“Yeah I expect you wouldn’t,” he remarked. Briar wondered what he meant, but desperately did not want to ask. “Why do you have the rope?”
“I want to make sure I could find my way back home.” She leaned in to kiss his cold lips. He finally smiled, wrapping an arm around her waist. He quickly untied the rope to let it fall to the leaf litter.
“Then let’s go home?” he said, as if it was her choice. She nodded.
She took one last look at the rope as he carried her into the cabin. She had a feeling that it wouldn’t be there the next time she needed to leave.
***
Briar waited until the man was well and truly asleep before slipping from his bed. His eyes fluttered open briefly, watching her as she stumbled slowly to the bathroom. As she turned to close the rickety door behind her he was already breathing heavily.
She slipped off her borrowed clothes, standing nude in the puddle of sweaty cotton fabric. The cold morning air through the window danced across her clammy skin. She leaned heavily against the empty window frame. The world outside was quietly weeping, sending drops of rain to splash against her breasts.
She opened the bathroom door as solemnly as someone opening the door to a funeral home. The man did not stir from his nest. She wondered how someone can sleep so comfortably with a boy in a cage eight feet below him.
She put on the first item her hand touched, a thin cotton slip that smelled faintly of gasoline. Briar walked out into the too bright world. Just as she predicted, her rope was conveniently missing. There was too much risk in seeking out her friend without a way back.
Briar had one option, to hope that whatever it was that compelled Pepper to stop by told her to do so now. She practiced walking around the barren ground around the cabin, stretching her legs. She had a lot of walking ahead of her, if she managed to escape.
Every further piece she seemed to fit into place created a more violent puzzle. His actions with her, his words with her, did not fit with what she was learning. Could she have known earlier? She scraped through every interaction, every word from the moment she learned of the woodswalkers.
Briar had seen no more welcome sight than the small white rat bounding across the slick clearing. By the time Pepper had arrived Briar was thoroughly soaked through her cotton slip. She took a panicked look from Briar’s shivering form to the cabin behind her.
“To the woods, then?” she whispered. Briar nodded.
No distance seemed far enough. She was tempted to tell her to keep going, to take her out of these woods. But she was in a soaked scrap of fabric, and she still had a fox to save. If she would have to die in her escape, she would prefer if it had meaning. Finding a dry spot in a forest of rain and mud was no easy task. They settled on a grove of particularly dense trees.
“What happened?” Pepper asked. “What did he do?”
“Why do you think he did something?” Briar asked. It was true, but she didn’t know that. She wanted to think she kept her face neutral, but now she was not sure.
“People don’t go walking around in the rain for happy reasons,” Pepper said. “What did he do?” She repeated, her voice softer.
Briar broke down all at once, rushing through what she had discovered in the previous few days about the new member of the household. When she finished she was not sad, nor distraught, but angry. Her long nails dug into her thighs through the thin material of her shift.
The silence after was louder than her outburst. Pepper shifted from foot to foot, her arms wrapped tight around her chest. “Wow,” she said finally.
“I have to help him escape. But I can’t until I can escape too,” Briar said. “Right?”
“There is no telling how he could react if he knew you knew,” Pepper agreed. “Although it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t know something is up already.”
“I’d rather not think about that,” Briar said irritably. “I need your help.”
“Anything,” she said. Briar could tell she meant it. Her heart ached for the sweet girl.
Briar described where the waterfall was to the best of her ability. She wasn’t always the best at giving directions, even when everything was laid out in simple city blocks. Pepper paused for a moment before nodding.
“I think I know where that is, why?” She asked.
“Behind the waterfall is a cave. It’s his second home,” Briar said. “In there-”
Pepper wrinkled her nose. “What? Why?” She interrupted.
“Why what?” she said.
“Why does he have a second home? From what I’ve heard owls only have one nest and even then it’s only when they are preparing to have children. Nesting, I think they call it.” Pepper trailed off. She winced, mouth open as if to continue. She does not. Briar was glad she didn’t.
“There was someone else there, someone like me I think. Not a woodswalker,” Briar said. “But they aren’t there anymore.”
“Oh.” Pepper winced again.
“I tried talking to the bats who live on the ceiling of the cave but they did not want to tell me anything,” she said.
“You want me to go see if they are more willing to talk to me?” Pepper asked. Briar nodded. “Consider it done.”
Pepper began to walk her back towards the cabin. Every step was slick and difficult. It seemed easier to just lay down and slide her way back at that point.
Briar wanted to cry, wanted to beg her not to leave. She was filled with such a sense of dread she felt she might collapse. “Please be careful Pepper,” she said instead. She hoped it would be enough.
“Don’t let the lack of natural color fool you. I am a sneaky little thing.” Pepper shook her hips.
***
Briar landed heavily on her knees in the all encompassing darkness. She hoped there would not be another mark.
She cursed quietly as she felt the floor around her. She had forgotten her lantern somehow. She used the glow of his amber eyes to find her way to the cage.
“I can’t see,” she whispered.
She groped the cage desperately trying to find the latch. Before she could fully swing open the cage door the fox exploded outward, landing on top of her. He was panting, stale breath on her face.
“So?” he asked. His voice was thick from dehydration.
“I’m having someone go ask the woodswalkers in the cave what happened to the person who was held there,” she said.
“When are they coming back?” he asked. Even with all of his weight on her, Briar could still breathe easy. She wondered if he was even fed every day he was down there.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I need to go home,” he said, more to himself than her.
“I told you we need to leave at the same time. I need supplies, information,” she said. Every time she had to say it she hated herself a little more.
“If you let me go, I could run to town fast as hell and get help.”
His eyes grew brighter for a moment. That idea appealed to him. She doubted in his state of malnutrition he could run fast enough. He didn’t run fast enough to save himself when he was at his best.
“The help wouldn’t make it here before he could get back, even if you could make it that fast. Which you couldn’t, since you would be doing it in your human skin,” Briar said.
“Well, fuck.” The fox blurted out.
His renewed thoughts of escape quieted down. Briar could almost see his mind slowing down beneath his greasy dark hair. She wished she had even a fraction of the hope he held.
“I’ve been wondering, why has he kept you down here for so long?” she asked. “No offense, but if I was a mythological man protecting his stolen human woman I would just kill the witnesses.”
“Well I’m glad it wasn’t you then.” He sighed. “At first he just panicked and put me down here. After you insisted there was a noise going on he came down here to finish the job.”
“I’m sorry,” she said for perhaps the tenth time.
Pluck (The Woodswalker Novels) Page 13