Sunshowers - Part Sixteen
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
The rain flutters in wild, windy gusts against the windows. It’s a much cozier sight now that we’re safely inside, gathered in the dry warmth of the ranger’s outpost. The fire has been lit, since the power went out again. It casts a rich orange-gold glow over the room, made brighter by the grey day outside.
I catch Aiden’s eyes with mine, dropping my voice to a whisper. “I don’t understand what happened, babe.”
He’s sitting with me at the breakfast table near the kitchenette. Tucker offered us a few towels, and Aiden used his on his hair, which turned it into a sweet, sexy mess. My flannel and Noah’s hoodie are drying by the fire, and our muddy hiking boots are drying off by the door. Thankfully there’s a soft rug beneath this table for me to bury my toes in.
“I’m not sure what happened, either,” Aiden answers softly, a little knit of confusion between his brows. “The Witch jumped Nolan before, and she didn’t take pity on him last time.”
“Or did she, maybe?” I whisper back. “Nolan said he laid down and curled up, and when he looked up again she was gone. All she actually did was scare him. She didn’t even tamper with his memory of what happened.”
Aiden looks over at Nolan, who’s been placed back in the armchair by the fire. His knees are pulled up to his chest, his hands wrapped around his bare feet, his light green eyes wide and dazed. He told Tucker he just needed a minute to calm down, so Tucker left him alone. But I can see his concerned eyes darting to Nolan every now and then as he talks to Noah instead.
Aiden’s gaze comes back to me, his eyes a little tired from the effort of the magic he did earlier. He quietly explained on the way back that he didn’t spend as much as it looked like. The initial breaking free was what took a lot of power. After that he was using the Witch’s power, which he took and turned around on her. Good news, because it means she lost a lot of magic. Clearly the strain of using up this much is causing something about her to break, if not completely yet.
We all startle and look at the door of the outpost as it opens, but it’s Ralph stepping back in out of the rain. He toes off his hiking boots, closing the door after himself.
“No sign of her,” he says softly, dropping to sit down at the table next to me. “Think she’s gone. For now.”
Aiden and I sit back in relief, and Ralph lets his sharp sage-green eyes drift to Nolan. He gives a subtle nod at him, catching my eye.
“Is he okay?”
“I think so, yeah. Just shaken up, and tired from passing out. He said he doesn’t really remember anything after running up the hill to help us.”
Ralph nods slowly, drumming his fingertips against the table. Aiden and I can tell he’s busy thinking through everything that happened, so we leave him alone, glancing over at Tucker and Noah again. Noah is holding his inky hands out to the warmth of the fireplace, talking to Tucker over his shoulder.
“Heard about the rockslide and what happened to your heart, man,” he says sympathetically. “I’m sorry. Can’t be easy.”
“Aw, thank you,” Tucker says gently, waving a hand at him. “I’ll own sometimes it isn’t, but the whole situation gave me some unexpected gifts, too. Forced me to slow down, take the ranger’s job. I never even realized what a busy and stressful life I was leading before, driving a Peterbilt full-time.”
Aiden and I look at each other sharply.
“Oh my god, Jamie,” Aiden whispers, a teasing grin coming over his face. “He’s a trucker! Go see if he wants to take a shower with you. Make all your dreams come true.”
“Shut up!” I whisper, blushing and kicking him beneath the table. “Jesus, though, seriously. A beardy, chubby, silver stag trucker, interested in frogs and snails? This man is gay catnip.”
Ralph lifts his eyebrows. “That’s what makes up gay catnip?”
“Why do you want to know, Ralph?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe so we can lure you back in if you go wandering off on your own again, Keane.”
“Okay, well, don’t worry about that. Aiden is gay catnip, too, just a different strain.” I suppress a laugh at the beaming, blushing smile that flashes across Aiden’s face at that, then add - “But yes, I stand by what I said. Look, Noah’s feeling the effects.”
Noah certainly is being more quiet around Tucker than he normally is around new people, listening to him with a shy, nervous smile on his face. Ralph and Aiden exchange a swift little grin when they see it.
“I don’t blame him.” Aiden breathes out a deep, soft huff of laughter. “If I was Nolan, I’d probably have fallen in love with Tucker by now.”
I bite my lip, then look at Nolan, who’s watching Tucker as he talks to Noah. His slender shoulders are nervously drawn up and in, his fingers fidgeting with the fabric of the armchair.
“Hey, Aiden.” I gently push my mug of tea aside, catching his eye. “That last blast of magic the Witch threw at us… I don’t think she was trying to do anything specific, but she hit me and Nolan, and - I think she might have copied one of his memories into my head.”
Aiden sits back in surprise, then silently offers me his hand. I let him draw the connection open. He frowns when he senses a bit of illusion magic lingering in my head. I sense him reaching to undo it, and quickly catch his wrist with my other hand.
“Can you make me not remember it at all? It was private.”
“I…” Aiden winces apologetically. “Sorry, Linden. If you remember seeing it, I can’t really take away your memory of that. Not without attempting some more complex memory magic, so. You mind remembering?”
“It’s - no, I guess not. But take it away anyways, even if I remember. It’s his. I shouldn’t have it.”
Aiden’s eyes sparkle with a subtle swirl of shining magic. The presence of Nolan’s memory disappears, but Aiden was right. I can still clearly recall it. I think that’s the best we can do, though.
Aiden quickly blinks the magic out of his eyes as Nolan suddenly gets up and stumbles past us, headed for the door. We all watch him in alarm, but Tucker doesn’t seem to see any cause for alarm, so no one gets up to stop him.
Nolan pushes the door of the ranger’s outpost open, then sits down on the front step and puts his feet in the wet grass. He hugs his knees, sitting silent.
He just needs some air, Tucker mouths at Ralph, who just shot him a questioning look.
I hesitate, debating with myself. It’s possible that Nolan just wants to be left alone, and Tucker is showing Noah the book he’d mentioned earlier with the illustrations of frogs and snails. I’m tempted to go over and see if there are any pictures of the winged pelagic snails I’ve been planning to teach Ellen and Emmett about.
But I end up crossing the ranger’s outpost to Nolan.
He looks up as I step outside, close the door after myself, and sit down on the step beside him. We’re protected from the rain by the roof overhang of the outpost, but still getting a few droplets blown across our faces by the wind.
Nolan doesn’t seem to mind. He’s taking long, deep breaths of the rainy air.
I don’t say anything about the memory. But it’s there, in my mind, as if I was there myself…
~~~~
The bed is a twin, which Tucker had to detach from his own twin bed when Nolan moved in.
It’s smaller than Nolan’s bed back home, without the opulent sheets and sleek, hotel-ready quilts that somehow don’t provide any warmth. The sheets on this twin bed are soft flannel, and spread over them is an old plaid comforter, fleece-lined. Instead of the cold, flat pillows Nolan uses at the hotel, he’s been given a mound of feathery softness that Tucker had been using as an extra pillow for himself before now.
And instead of staring at a wall of very uninteresting designer wallpaper, Nolan is gazing out from his bed at a jar of wildflowers standing on the sill of one of the open windows. The flowers, and the curtains stirring in the breeze, and the moonlit forest beyond.
The ever-present phantom of the ghost he saw is in the back of his mind, like always. But despite that, despite everything that’s happened lately… Nolan is swept up in a strange, beautiful kind of excitement. His heart is streaming it off faster than he knows how to cope with. He doesn’t care about the so-called luxuries of the hotel that he’s given up, not in the slightest.
He looks around at the bedroom, and smiles to himself in happy disbelief.
Free, he writes in the new journal that Tucker offered him when he moved in. Finally free.
It’s been a few days, and he’s written that in there a few times, but he still can’t believe it.
Tucker is still out in the front office. He said he needed to wrap up some paperwork, but he always stays in the front when Nolan is showering and getting ready for bed. He only comes to take his own shower and get into bed some twenty minutes after Nolan is finished, sometimes more. Maybe he wants Nolan to have some privacy, or something. Nolan isn’t sure.
Maybe it’s just because he’s not in a rush. Everything moves so slow around the ranger’s station. That’s kind of how it has to be, for Tucker’s heart. Occasionally, on his day off, Tucker goes down into Port Sitka and goes out on a boat to do some deep-water fishing. That’s what constitutes the busiest, most exciting type of day he has.
Nolan doesn’t mind that one bit, though. The peace, the calm, the slow pace of life at the outpost - he needed it more badly than he ever realized. Here a person can think before they do and say things, be on their own for a long time if they want, journal uninterrupted, spend some time just sitting quietly and listening to the rustle of the big, rich leaves of the trees outside. Have unhurried conversations, unhurried meals. Unhurried everything.
Today, for the first time, Nolan went along on one of those fishing days with Tucker. Now he sees the appeal of those completely. He liked joining Tucker’s long-standing ritual. Coffee and a warm pastry from the bakery in the chilly early hours of the morning, then down to the docks and out on the boat. A cold ride at first, until the sun suddenly separated from the horizon and sent its beams down through the salty air to warm their faces.
Nolan expected to be bored during the actual fishing part, but the captain of the boat was an old friend of Tucker’s, a grizzled old sailor who’d told everyone in town his seafaring stories so many times that nobody wanted to hear them anymore. He was content telling them over and over again to Tucker while they go out on these trips, but he seemed delighted to find an untapped, attentive audience in Nolan. Nolan’s life experiences have been mostly limited to the hotel and books. He was happy to sit with his feet in the water and listen closely. He transcribed a few of the stories into his journal later, although he’s not sure what for.
After the trip was fun, too. Lunch in one of the cafes on the seafront, a walk on the beach. His face gained the pleasant feeling of a slight sunburn, something he’s not used to. Later they stopped for a snack from a falafel cart, something Nolan had never tried before. Then back to the outpost, the one place where Nolan gets those rare, precious moments of pure peace.
He’s finding himself in one right now. He was sitting up in bed, quietly writing in his journal. Now his pen has stopped on the page, and his heart has stopped in his chest. He’s holding perfectly still, listening.
After a moment he slips out of bed, with a perfectly silent tread honed to perfection over his years at the hotel.
The office has been swept and cleaned up for the night. The lights are off, but the parks logo slowly bouncing around on the screen of the computer provides a gentle glow. And the front door is open to the night sky, which adds to the starlight spilling in through the windows. The air tastes of the nighttime forest, with the faintest lingering trace of weed from the bowl Tucker smoked earlier.
Tucker is sitting on the step, his face turned out to the quiet, sleeping forest. He makes a big, soft silhouette in the doorway with his old guitar resting on his knees. He’s playing slowly, softly, his husky voice singing over the gentle plucking of the strings.
He must have the lamp with him, because a warm glow plays over him as he plays his guitar. The soft rustling of the leaves joins his deep voice in the soft warmth of the summer night. The crickets add their choir beneath, and before Nolan knows it, he’s standing with his forehead resting against the doorframe, goosebumps dancing up and down his arms, his heart thudding hard and floating at the same time. Sweet, pure peace takes him over, like the sleep that comes with a cozy dream. He sways where he is.
Tucker plays and sings more and more softly, slower and slower. Then slower still, until the song quietly falls out to a stop. The last few notes drift off like the last few droplets of a rainshower. The forest keeps up its music, though. The whispering leaves, the chirping crickets, the croaking of the frogs, the distant wind over the mountains. Tucker sits still for a long moment, listening.
Nolan watches him until he reaches for the lamp. Realizing he’s about to come back inside, Nolan swiftly snaps back into the present and makes a swift retreat back to his bed.
He silently closes his journal, clicks off his pen, sets both on his night table, and climbs back into bed. He pulls the comforter over himself and lays still.
After a moment Tucker’s soft footsteps break the quiet of the bedroom.
“Nolan?” he whispers. “Are you asleep?”
Nolan pretends he is, although he’s not totally sure why. It’s just… Tucker said that in the tone of voice he uses when he wants to talk to Nolan about something serious. But he sounds nervous, too, really nervous.
Nolan has no idea what Tucker could want to talk about that would make him sound like that, but his own heart is already beating so fast that he doesn’t know if he can take talking about anything. That wild, restless excitement is back, overwhelming him, making him all nerves.
There’s a hesitant silence, and then the sound of Tucker moving to his bed. Nolan opens his eyes, then hastily closes them again, having caught a glimpse of Tucker taking off his clothes and letting them fall to the bed, pausing to push a hand over his rich, silvery-black beard.
Nolan keeps his eyes shut tight, but he lets himself steal another quick glimpse when Tucker comes back. Glowing a little from his shower, wearing his navy blue sweatpants. Holding what’ll probably be his last cup of tea for the night, in a clear glass mug.
Tucker pauses and holds up the mug to the window, watching the way the moonlight dances through the amber liquid inside. He’s always taking time to notice little things like that.
Nolan suddenly changes his mind completely, for no reason he can explain to himself. He sits up in bed, pushing his hair out of his eyes.
“Hey, Tuck,” he murmurs softly.
Tucker turns around sharply in surprise, lowering the mug. “Oh - Nolan! You’re awake.”
He comes over and sits down on Nolan’s bed. His warm weight presses the old mattress down and nearly sends Nolan sliding towards him. Nolan hastily catches two tight handfuls of the bedding, but he’s already moved an inch or two closer to Tucker than either of them intended.
“You got some color today,” Tucker observes, his husky voice full of warm fondness. “Suits you. Makes you look less like you belong in that hotel.”
Nolan glows inside.
He’s always hated the way his mom talks to him. There’s this special voice she reserves only for him that makes him feel as if he’s a child, and not a particularly bright one.
Tucker also has a special voice just for Nolan, but it couldn’t be more different, and it couldn’t make him feel more different.
“I never realized how little I’ve actually been to the beach or the ocean,” Nolan admits. “Considering I’ve lived in Port Sitka my whole life.”
“Plenty of time to remedy that,” Tucker tells him warmly.
Nolan smiles nervously, not sure what to say.
“I haven’t seen the Captain so pleased in a long time, either,” Tucker laughs quietly. “Nice of you to listen so closely to his stories.”
“I thought he was interesting,” Nolan protests.
“Really? God help us, don’t tell him that the next time we go out. He’ll get too excited and crash the boat.”
Nolan laughs a little, and Tucker smiles, then adds - “Suppose I should just shut up and be grateful, really. You listen to my stories like that, too.”
Because I love them, Nolan nearly answers.
“You can always tell me about anything,” he says instead, smiling timidly at Tucker. “Anything you want.”
Tucker hesitates, blinks a few times. He flashes a quick little smile back at Nolan, then drops his gaze to his tea.
“Have you - have you thought at all about the future, Nolan? What you’ll do after things are calmed down and sorted out?”
Nolan loves that. Tucker’s easy assurance that eventually everything will calm down and be sorted out. Nolan is much less sure. He has deep-seated fears about that ghost he saw in the forest. It’s actually taken his mind off of the nightmare of his brief stint as a cop, and the terrifying experience of finally making his permanent exit from the hotel. The ghost is much more urgent, much more important than any of that.
He’ll have to stay here until something can be done about the ghost, but - beyond that? The future? Nolan hadn’t thought that far ahead.
His mom had always been the one to make the plans for the future. The ominous ones Nolan was hearing about lately are part of what prompted him to finally make his own plans to get away. There’s been a lot of talk about Nolan ‘doing his duty as a man’, which he began to suspect, with increasing horror, meant getting married and filling the hotel with grandchildren for her to boss around. She had started bringing women around to the hotel recently on the pretense of having their mothers over for lunch. Without fail they were young, well-off, unmarried women from the church, purity rings on their fingers and all.
The idea that Nolan’s mom would even end up choosing this for him… it was officially, finally too much. That future looked to him about as tempting as placing his foot directly in a bear trap.
But still, she had always made the plans. Somewhere along the line Nolan had given up on even trying to make his own.
“I mean… I should stay here until we can figure out what to do about the ghost,” he whispers to Tucker, then blushes a little.
Tucker doesn’t laugh, like everyone else. He only furrows his brow at Nolan slightly, gazing at him like he’s trying to figure him out. “Okay…”
“But after that, I don’t know.” Nolan picks nervously at the bedding, shrugging his shoulders, not looking at Tucker. “Mostly I’m just afraid about it.”
Tucker tilts his head to the side in surprise, then smiles understandingly. “About the future?”
“Yeah, like… I don’t know what I’m going to do, or even what I’d want to do. I should know by now who I am, and what I should be doing. But I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m going. Maybe it would be less scary if I actually felt capable of something, but - seriously, what have I accomplished, and what capabilities have I proven myself to have? Am I basically just a blank slate, after living at that hotel my whole life? Is that what…?”
He shuts up quickly, feeling like he’s said too much.
But Tucker is gazing at him with the softness and understanding his deep brown eyes always seem to have.
“You know,” he says softly, after a moment. “I felt sort of similar, after what happened to my heart. Not exactly the same, but… when you know your time might be cut short without warning, you - you desperately want to get everything you ever wanted, and accomplish everything you feel you were meant to, and perfectly. Because it could be your last try.”
Nolan stares at Tucker, trying not to reveal with his eyes the deep ache that cuts at him from within whenever this topic comes up.
“But the thing is, Nolan,” Tucker goes on quietly, speaking quickly as he catches the anguished expression in his eyes, “Just living free, spending your days happy, being able to look back and say you lived a good life doing what you love, with people you love - that’s one hell of an accomplishment. That’s what I’m trying to do out here, because - it turns out that’s which one mattered the most to me.”
Nolan swallows, twisting a piece of the comforter around his fingers. “But how do you know how to find…?”
“You just gotta try things,” Tucker tells him earnestly. “Find what makes you happy, and stick around it. Accumulate a lot of good moments, even if they’re little ones, as many as you can. The rest works itself out. Or - that’s my hope.”
Nolan stares deep into Tucker’s eyes, almost incandescent with their sweet, gentle warmth, their inner glow.
“What makes me happy…” Nolan repeats vaguely, only half aware that he’s talking.
Tucker pauses, then adds - “But if you do want to get out there and accomplish something else, then - you can, Nolan. I’m sure you can. Everyone around you has been putting you down, all this time. You have no idea what you could do with some actual support, right?”
Nolan stares gratefully at Tucker, his heart knocked around in his chest like a rowboat on two hundred foot waves.
“Thanks, Tuck,” he manages unsteadily, after a long moment. “Why’d you ask, though? About the future? Did - did someone else apply for the job here, or-?”
“Oh, no, no no no,” Tucker interrupts hastily, waving a hand at him. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want. Please.”
Nolan manages to fight back some of that glowing smile, but he can feel his mouth twitching. “What did you want to talk about, then?”
Tucker hesitates, blinking fast, then gives himself a shake and flashes Nolan a smile.
“Nothing! Just - just wanted to check in. Remind you that you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. You - you’re not getting bored, are you? I know most of your books are still at the hotel, but I’ve got some old Stephen King paperbacks around here somewhere… yeah, there’s 'Salem's Lot, on the shelf right up there.”
Nolan grins maniacally, unable to stop himself.
“Stephen King!” he blurts out, making Tucker draw back in confusion and surprise. “My mom would never, ever let me read anything by Stephen King! That’s an author in league with the Devil, you know.”
He immediately sits up on his knees in the bed and reaches up to the shelf to take down 'Salem's Lot. Tucker laughs when he sees the enthusiasm, then quickly falls quiet as Nolan braces himself with a hand on his shoulder, dropping to sit back down on the bed again.
His shoulder supports Nolan’s weight like Nolan is a feather. He’s such a big, sturdy man, with such a warm, steady presence. Nolan doesn’t understand why a man like him wants to keep a wispy little scrap of a human being like himself around, but he doesn’t ask. He’s just grateful.
“I’m not bored,” he adds, realizing that was a question he doesn’t want to miss answering.
Tucker smiles, relieved. He gets to his feet, straightening his shirt out over his soft belly. “Alright. Well, I - I’ll just let you get some sleep. I know it’s been a trying week for you, to say the least.”
Nolan is trying not to think about it. He actually forgot about all that stuff, and he’d like to keep it that way, just for a few more blessed minutes. He violently shoves it back as it tries to push its way into his mind. It’s easier when his focus is on Tucker, which it very much is as he flashes Nolan a sleepy smile, makes a toothbrushing gesture, and slips out into the hallway.
Nolan waits until he’s gone, then takes out his journal again. Next to the little sketch of the jar of wildflowers in the window, he writes:
Tucker
And nothing else. He stares down at the page in silence, his pen hovering just above it. There’s a big blot of ink where he forgot his pen earlier, when Tucker was singing.
He sits there in silence until Tucker comes back into the room and sprawls out on the other twin bed.
“Did you take your meds?” Nolan asks, causing Tucker to immediately get back up out of the bed again.
“Ugh, I forgot again, and I even laid them out, too! Thanks, Nolan. Appreciate it.”
Nolan watches with relief as he takes what he needs for his heart. “No problem.”
“Need more time with the light?” Tucker yawns, offering Nolan the solar-powered lamp.
They’ve been having to use it pretty often, with the power wavering on and off. Nolan accepts it from Tucker, but switches it off and sets it down.
“No, I - can’t write anything else.”
“Okay,” Tucker mumbles sleepily, burying his bearded face in the pillow and his muscled arms beneath it. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” Nolan murmurs, still marveling at how nice it is to get to hear that from Tucker every night.
He waits until he hears the soft, grumbling snores from Tucker’s side of the room, then silently slips out of the bed. The summer night is full of warmth, but he pulls on some socks to quiet his footsteps before he takes the lamp and slips out of the bedroom.
He does a slow, meandering journey around the office, using the soft glow of the lamp as he peers out through each of the windows for a long time. Eventually he opens the front door and sits on the steps where Tucker was before, gazing out at the moonlit trees. He stares until his eyes ache, but there’s no sign of the ghost.
He crawls back into bed and switches off the lamp again right as the sun starts coming up. It’s gotten cold, so he snuggles deep under the comforter, then watches the first of the sunlight slowly slide down the wall of the bedroom like honey, until it kisses Tucker’s beard.
Nolan closes his eyes. Exhausted, but mostly relieved they made it through another night without the ghost showing up and frightening Tucker. He’ll do this for however long it takes before that thing is explained away, or until he’s sure somehow that it’s gone. He knows that Tucker’s heart couldn’t take a sight like that.
And right now, for Nolan, keeping Tucker’s broken heart safe from any further harm is the only accomplishment that matters.
~~~~
I guiltily shake Nolan’s memory from my mind, trying to press it back into some corner where I can forget about it. It’s difficult, though. He’s sitting on the same step, staring out at the forest with the same searching gaze.
I have a quick, silent debate with myself, then decide that there’s nothing good to come from telling Nolan what I’ve seen. There’s not even a way to explain without bringing magic into the equation, although…
I find myself studying Nolan as he stares quietly out at the trees, his slender arms wrapped around his knees.
“Hey, Nolan… can I ask you something?”
He shoots me a nervous, sidelong glance. “Sure, but I might not know the answer.”
“You said you hope Noah gives the hotel the same treatment he gave the cop car.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, it was me you saw doing that.”
“Mhm, but you said on the drive back to the hotel that Noah made you do it.”
True, but I said that thinking Nolan would assume I didn’t mean it in such a literal sense. I know I was acting and talking exactly like Noah, but still. It’s a strange assumption to jump to directly, and Nolan didn’t even notice himself making that jump.
Now that I think about it more… if someone saw something they couldn’t explain out in a dark forest, wouldn’t a ghost be one of the last explanations they’d jump to? I’d guess that Nolan doesn’t drink or get high, but still, there are a thousand other reasons why someone might glimpse something seemingly inexplicable in the night, out in the woods. I’m sure most people would think my imagination ran away with me, or someone is pranking me, or - I don’t know. Probably anything else, before deciding that a ghost was the explanation to take back to the police.
Nolan, I’m realizing, has that quality about him. The one I’m noticing in Ketterbridge people as Aiden tells more of them the truth about who he is.
It’s not like they always thought magic is real, or ever would have predicted it. But if you grow up with it happening around you, always just out of sight, and everyone else in your town, for generations, came up the same way… when you understand that there actually is magic, it makes some strange sort of sense. In some subconscious way you’ve accepted it already. I think so, anyways. Everyone who’s learned the truth about Aiden so far has taken it pretty well in stride, considering what a revelation it is.
But Ketterbridge has an unbroken line of Guardians to explain that. Port Sitka, on the other hand, has gone without a Guardian since the ‘60s. Well before Nolan was born. I can’t help but wonder where he picked up this quality.
“One more question?” I ask tentatively.
Nolan nods again, brushing some rain off of his face. “Yeah?”
“Is this the first time something strange, like this, has happened to you? Something you couldn’t explain? Or has it happened before?”
Nolan looks over at me sharply, his eyes widening in surprise.
“I… sorry, I just - yes, actually. Sort of. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it recently…” He trails off, shrugs his shoulders. “Realistically it was probably nothing.”
“You can tell me,” I answer earnestly. “It might help us take care of the - what you saw. I know what you saw today is real. You can tell me what you saw in the past, I’ll believe you.”
Nolan lapses into uncertain silence for a moment, then begins tentatively -
“It’s… it’s just one of those things that happened so long ago, when I was so little, that I can’t really tell if I made it up, or if it was a dream, or what really…”
He fades off, swallows hard, then forges on.
“When I was a little kid I used to get these really bad nightmares, right? I used to sit up in my bed shivering for hours after, couldn’t sleep at all. I’d turn on a few lights if I thought my mom wouldn’t notice, but it didn’t help.”
I try not to wince sadly at Nolan. From what I know, a little kid’s first instinct after a nightmare is to climb into bed with their parents, but it sounds like Nolan found it preferable to stay in his room alone rather than go be with Wendy.
“Sometimes I’d wake up screaming,” he admits, blushing in embarrassment, plucking at the rain-wet fabric of his shirt. “And, um… eventually, I thought that something out in the forest - heard me? I started to think there was someone outside of my window. This woman who looked like - like the forest grew her. She had a staff with crystals or something in it, and moss growing on it. She’d come up to my window. She said I could tell her about my nightmares, that it would make me feel better.”
Nolan trails off, shrugging his slender shoulders again.
“So I just… did. I’d tell her everything, and she’d listen, and look at me like I mattered, which was really nice of her. Then she’d say these comforting things, and disappear. And once she left, I… I couldn’t remember what my nightmare was, anymore. So I’d fall right asleep. She started showing up every time I had a nightmare, and the same thing would happen again.”
I stare at Nolan in startled silence, frozen with my arms wound around my knees.
“It stopped when I got a little older,” he adds quickly, as if to reassure me that he’s not delusional. “I barely even remember it now. I honestly think I would’ve forgotten about it completely or decided it was made up, except - I wrote about it in my journals whenever she had been there. So it was something real to me, at least at the time. Imaginary friend, I’m guessing. I didn’t have too many in the way of real ones.”
My mind is working so fast right now, leaping from realization to realization before I can even process any of them. Without a word, I surge to my feet and give Nolan’s shoulder a grateful slap. He watches me in confusion as I rush back inside.
Aiden and Ralph are still at the breakfast table. I catch both of them by their arms as I go past, dragging them to their feet.
“Tucker, is it okay if we step into the bedroom for a second?” I ask breathlessly. “We just need to have a quick chat.”
“Sure, but take the lamp with you. Power’s been on the fritz.”
Ralph catches it up quickly, noticing the expression on my face. He leads the way into the back bedroom, leaving Noah to keep Tucker distracted.
“What happened?” Aiden asks softly, as soon as I’ve shut the door behind us.
I switch on the lamp, which casts a circle of gold around us in the cool darkness of the bedroom. “I think I just figured something out! A couple of things, actually!”
In a rushed whisper, I hastily relay everything that Nolan just told me. Ralph and Aiden listen with interest, then exchange a baffled glance with each other, then look back at me as I keep talking.
“Aiden, Rose said that she ended up with memory magic as her mastery by accident, remember? Because she used to make her sister forget her nightmares, when they were children!”
“Yeah?” Aiden asks, slightly alarmed by how quickly I’m speaking without pausing for a breath.
“The illusions are Rose’s creations! They’re made with her magic, from her mind! So, wouldn’t it make sense that if somehow the Witch heard Nolan having terrible nightmares, she’d instinctively-?”
“Oh,” Ralph murmurs, closing his eyes as the light dawns on him. “Oh…”
“She’d show up and make him forget,” Aiden realizes out loud, his blue eyes widening. “Just like Rose would have done.”
“That’s probably how the Witch ended up specializing in memory magic!” I blurt out. “Almost the same way that Rose did!”
“So the Witch breaking out of her territory isn’t a new thing,” Aiden murmurs, his brows furrowing. “She found a way to do that years ago, to get to Nolan… maybe because she could sense him from afar…?”
“I could see that,” I answer breathlessly. “The illusions were technically designed to scare, but more than that, they were designed to protect, right? The Witch lost the Tree, which is what the six illusions were supposed to be protecting. She didn’t have anything to protect, anymore…”
Unless, with her supernatural hearing, she sensed a lonely soul in need of her help. Maybe that’s what caused her to break free from her original territory. She is made of Guardian magic, after all…
Ralph narrows his eyes, thinking leaps and bounds ahead of me. “That explains why she took mercy on Nolan and nobody else.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but he’s probably right. It’s possible that it wasn't just pity that stopped the Witch when Nolan collapsed in front of her. Maybe it was a split second of recognition. Did she realize that he’s the little boy she used to visit and help, all those years ago?
“So she used to visit Nolan when he was little,” Aiden says quietly, half-lost in his thoughts. “She stopped when he got older, probably because she knew he’d start remembering it more clearly. It’s not like she could spend the magic every time to remove herself from his memory. She didn’t know he was journaling about what happened and would remember anyway, so that makes sense. But it’s a far leap from that to - this. She really got this corrupted, in that amount of time? After making it from the 1960s to the time when Nolan was a kid, staying herself the whole way? What he described sounds nothing like what we’ve seen of her.”
Ralph has fallen silent, his head bowed as he turns everything over in his mind. He looks up suddenly, shooting Aiden a thoughtful look.
“Aiden… can you freeze her again, the same way you did before?”
“I don’t really know how,” Aiden admits, wincing apologetically. “It’s not like I cast a spell to freeze her. I just turned her own spell back around on her.”
Ralph nods firmly, like it’s decided. “Do the same thing again the next time we face her. I think we need to get her talking again, find out-”
He breaks off as I look sharply to my side, where Kasey just appeared.
She had tried to follow the Witch from where we had our skirmish. I didn’t really expect too much to come of that, but Kasey is out of breath, wide-eyed with excitement. Aiden hastily slips the ghost glasses out of his pocket as she lets out a breathless spill of information.
“Jamie - I found her, I saw her! She was going really slowly, by her standards. Leaning against the trees a few times, like she’s exhausted, or something. I easily could’ve kept up with her, I only lost her because of the damn fog!”
Ralph exchanges a meaningful look with Aiden once I finish conveying all that. He looks up quickly as the door opens, but it’s Noah, who’s clearly wondering what we’re all doing. Ralph lapses into silence for a second, then closes the door Noah left open and beckons to all of us.
We all draw in closer. Aiden and Noah automatically put an arm around each other, like they’re in a huddle during one of their high school soccer games. Ralph and I both join it without thinking, so now we’re all in a huddle, with one of my arms and one of Aiden’s hovering over Kasey’s back.
“What-?” Ralph begins, once he realizes what happened. “Actually, nevermind. Let me cut that pointless line of inquiry off before it can go anywhere. Everyone listen up.”
“Is that Kasey?” Noah shivers, feeling her arm folded around his back. “Tell her she’s cold, Jamie.”
“Comes with the spectral territory. Deal with it, babe.”
“Again, Noah, you can tell Kasey anything you-”
Ralph gives the entire huddle an exasperated shake. “Didn’t I just say everyone listen up?”
We all fall into sheepish silence, listening.
“Seems to me like things have finally turned around,” Ralph murmurs, quietly and seriously. “We’re the ones doing the hunting, now.”
Noah hasn’t been brought up to speed in the slightest, but he immediately, confidently asks - “Where do we find her?”
“At the hotel,” Ralph answers firmly. “There’s no power left at the ranger’s station worth stealing, but the lights are still on at the hotel. Maybe it didn’t seem like enough to be worth taking before, but the Witch knows she needs it now. Road is out, and we can’t spend Aiden’s magic drying it up, so we’ve gotta hike back there ASAP.”
The weather is growing darker and wetter outside with every minute, the wind tearing through the trees with increasing ferocity, droplets starting to smack hard into the windows. This isn’t a particularly off-putting sight to a group with a Heliomancer, though. We all nod in agreement.
“Kasey, Noah, we’ll fill you in on the way. Seems like we’re actually hunting this thing to help it.”
“Aw, really?” Kasey smiles brightly. “That’s why we hunted Will, too. Team Ghost Office tends to end up doing that.”
“When we get to the hotel,” Ralph goes on, “Don’t anybody do anything weird to attract attention. We need to-”
“Um…?” comes a voice from behind us. “What are you guys doing?”
As one, we lift our heads to find Tucker standing in the doorway, staring at our team huddle in confusion. Definitely noticing the gap we’ve left for our invisible team member, which I’m guessing makes the whole thing look extremely weird.
“Nothing,” Ralph says breezily, as we all hastily drop each other and straighten up. “Just getting ready to head out. Thanks for all your help, Tucker.”
“No problem,” Tucker says, bewildered, watching as everyone files back out into the office.
I hesitate for a moment, lingering in the bedroom. The plaid quilt on Nolan’s bed caught my eye with its vivid red color, red like the pomegranates Aiden brought home on Yaldā Night.
'Salem's Lot is on the night table beside the bed, with a bookmark tucked into its pages. Despite my best efforts not to think about it, the memory of Nolan’s that I was accidentally given rises to the surface of my mind.
“So this…” comes Tucker’s deep voice from behind me, drawing my eyes to his face. “This is all real? Your team, and…? You guys are seriously hunting the thing Nolan saw?”
I can’t really lie, so I just give my shoulders a small shrug. “Please don’t say anything to anyone about it, though.”
Tucker stares at me, then glances over his shoulder in the direction of the office, looking a little dazed.
“So it’s not just that Nolan is having a nervous breakdown, or something? I mean, I wouldn’t blame him, after living in that hotel for so long… and I always feel like he’s not getting enough sleep.”
I’m a little surprised that that’s what Tucker is focused on, instead of the other part. The part about the so-called ghost being real.
“No, he’s - all there,” I answer gently. “To our knowledge, anyways.”
“Well, good,” Tucker murmurs, pushing a hand over his silvery beard. “Not that I’d have minded, if it turned out he was a little crazy. That would be okay. I’d just worry about him more, that’s all it’d mean.”
I bite back a smile, twisting my fingers together as I watch Tucker. He’s looking at Nolan’s bed, and doesn’t seem to realize he said any of that last part out loud to me.
“Tucker,” I begin slowly, tentatively, unable to help myself, “Do you think maybe, um…”
“Jamie,” Noah calls, leaning back into the bedroom, knotting half of his hair back. “You coming? We’re kind of working against the clock, here.”
“Yep, sorry!”
I quickly follow Noah out into the office. Tucker snags the old guitar at the end of his bed and follows us.
Nolan is still sitting on the doorstep, despite the increasingly stormy weather. I pull my hiking boots and my flannel back on, then go out around him to join the others, who are waiting just outside.
Nolan has been through a lot today. He seems to have decided, in his daze, that what he should do is plant himself right here at his lookout spot and remain on watch indefinitely. It’s like that burning, protective determination is the last thing he’s holding onto. He looks beyond exhausted, but he holds on tightly to the step, forcing himself to stay upright.
“You guys be careful,” he says raggedly, pushing his wet hair out of his face so he can look up at us. “Maybe try to avoid Hanely and Grimm. I’m sure they’re not in a good mood after their, um - talk with my mom. Assuming they’re still around. Do you think the hunt is canceled, with the weather like this?”
“Even if all the hunters go home, I doubt those two will,” Ralph answers, with a glance over his shoulder at the forest. “They’re not gonna let things end like that. They’re gonna want someone or something to bring back to their Chief. They know they’re screwed otherwise.”
Nolan hesitates, then blurts out softly, worriedly - “They will arrest you just for annoying them, and make up a charge later. The only reason they haven’t done it yet is probably because there were too many other people around-”
He breaks off, blinking in surprise as Ralph gives his shoulder a reassuring slap.
“Yep, we know. Don’t worry, we’ve got experience dealing with cops. Plenty, actually.”
Nolan takes a look at the calm smile on Ralph’s face, then the devious grin on Noah’s.
“Oh, dear,” he laughs weakly, pushing a hand through his dark brown hair. “Okay, just - just be careful. I’ll be here if you need me.”
We all call out our goodbyes, then regroup and set off for the path leading out of the grove.
I glance over my shoulder after we’ve gone a few paces, hearing some soft noise behind me. Through the heavy fog I can still see the ranger’s outpost, where Tucker just sat down on the couch inside and started gently playing his guitar, singing softly.
Nolan’s tensed-up mouth relaxes as the music drifts out to him. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the doorframe, taking a quiet little moment of solace.
I watch for a second, then turn and catch Aiden’s hand, slipping into the invisible halo of heat keeping us dry from the heaviest of the rainfall.
Without looking back again, Team Ghost Office sets out into the storm.
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