Chapter Text
My wolf darted noisily through the trees behind me in an attempt to emphasize his impatience while keeping distance from the foul smell I had bestirred. I gave the putrid muck deep in the composter a final stir, and shut the wooden lid. The weather in Buck Forest had been mild during summer, which had brought far more visitors than anticipated. This was a good thing considering the park had to shut down for so long after the forest fire. I would no doubt be sent out here to dig a new toilet hole before next spring. This was not the most glamorous task, yet I would gladly put up with it over guarding recreation-heavy areas where I’d get yelled at by drunk idiots after dark.
I stood and stretched, wincing at an old twinge in my shoulder, and returned to the UTV where I took a moment to thoroughly cleanse my hands with disinfectant wipes. Despite the morning chill, I had worked up a sweat, which slid down my temples and beaded inside the confines of my N95 mask. I pulled it off, and threw wipes and mask into the partially full garbage bag in the back of the UTV. It was barely nine in the morning and I was ready for a break.
I peered out into the tree line to find Nighteyes. Don’t let the hikers see you.
Do you take me for a pup? You should be more concerned about the pack that sometimes ventures near here.
You’ve seen a pack?
I can smell them. Faint, but closer than ever. Are you quite done?
Wolves in Buck Forest. I would need to look into that later. While they have occasionally roamed into the more remote acres of the park, they had not been seen regularly this far south in over a century. Likely displaced by the fire, as many creatures were.
Yes, I answered belatedly, turning on the UTV. But I was called back to the station while you were traipsing about.
I thought we were heading to the lookout. The prey are more plentiful there.
Apparently I’m needed for an escort. Some local folk singer wants to camp out in the closed area.
Sounds intolerable.
Supervisor Kettricken will be joining us.
I felt his disgruntled old wolf emotions shake away like water from his coat. His excitement coursed along our bond as he bounded through the ferns in the distance. I continued down the trail, leaving him to traipse. He would find his way to me.
Ranger Kettricken was the new park superintendent. Her years of experience as a district ranger in the Jhaampe National Park made her invaluable here, despite what Regal had forewarned. His brief role as superintendent of the Buck Forest National Park ended when he was carted off to jail. All of his accusations against her fell apart. Her inexperience in a temperate rainforest environment mattered far less compared to the rampant smuggling and poaching under Regal’s own watch. Not to mention his role in the fire that destroyed acres upon acres of the forest. Kettricken’s stewardship was indeed vastly superior.
Even so, the reports of bizarre activity had only increased since the fire.
Visitors and rangers alike had always reported odd experiences, but these accounts were far more frequent now than I could ever recall. Claims such as a pervasive sense of being watched, or even lured off trail. They’d see ghostly lights deep in the woods, or hear footsteps following them only to find no one there. Kettricken had shown me the Reddit posts and Yelp reviews where visitors claimed they heard their names whispered outside of their tents, or shouted from a distance in the dead of night. Too creepy there, won’t be going back. Two stars. There were also glowing reviews excited about an increase in UFO and Big Foot sightings. Old folk tales of cryptids and ghosts are as abundant here as any other deep wilderness, but this was a lot.
One recent report, however, had kept me on edge. A hiker claimed to hear a strange static sound, like radio noise, coming from the direction where the old lookout tower used to be. Even when no radio was in hand. They also claimed to hear music and conversation mixed in the static. It unnerved me, because I had been to that spot several times while helping with fire recovery, and heard nothing. Yet in my countless nights as lookout at that tower before it was destroyed in the fire, I would often hear the music and conversation just as in the report. But its source was rather mundane: My standard issue service radio. I refused to speculate that it was something supernatural. There was always a reasonable explanation, though I managed to find an excuse not to ever investigate. I supposed that some part of me did not want to know the answer, or feared that it would stop if I knew. I had my wolf after all, and I could not explain that if I tried. Least not to myself.
Despite these ominous reports, I felt at ease here. The forest breathed around me in leaf-skittering, limb rustling peace. Birds sang to each other across the canopy as I drove past. Chipmunks and squirrels bounded through the underbrush, stirring leaf litter to stash food. I took the opposite route back along the loop so I could take care of any trail or campsite issues along the way. Naturally, there were plenty, such as left behind baggies of dog shit, single-use toothpicks scattered at tent decks, and general fire pit untidiness. Some kid left a couple toy gnomes on a mossy log. Plastic, regardless of its shape, was not good for the environment, and so into the trash bag they went.
As I was finishing up, my radio began to spill static. A few seconds of dead air followed. I waited for some kind of announcement or weather call. I was still quite a distance from the station, so my radio was set to scan. It could be an official request, or any random visitor in the park with a radio. I dared to even consider that it could be someone in particular. Someone who was not in the park at all, at least not here in the same way I was. But I had not heard from him in months. Why must I hold my breath every time my radio did something strange? He was gone along with the tower. It was nothing.
Nighteyes focused his impatience at me from the woods nearby. I finished securing the trash bag to the UTV and climbed into the seat.
What is it, brother?
Nothing, let’s go.
I gripped the steering wheel, ready to move on, when soft music lilted through the radio speaker at last. Conversation and laughter joined in, as if my radio picked up the goings-on of some ghostly world. I braced for his voice. Yet I was nowhere near my old lookout. As always, just when my ear was on the verge of recognizing the song, it went silent. I waited for more, feeling profoundly ridiculous as a hiker worked their way past me.
I held down the talk button once they were clear. “Badgerlock listening.” I paused. “Repeat message.”
A warble of sound rose and faded off to a distant hum. “There you are,” came the familiar voice, dream-like and echoing. “My friend in the tower on the hill, neath a sky full of stars.”
My heart turned over. Had it been months? Or a year? I glanced around to make double certain that I was alone. “I’m down in the woods now. Cleaning up rubbish.”
“Ah, no less glorious an endeavor at your hands, I’ve no doubt.”
I wanted to remark how long it had been. I wanted to ask why he disappeared, and if he was safe wherever he was. “This is an odd time,” I said instead.
“All times are odd between us, my refuse avenger, and I am ever pleased to hear your voice.”
I did not know what to say. I felt stunned to finally hear from him, as though my earlier thoughts had summoned him to me. All of the things one would do to greet an old friend were unavailable to me. I could not see him or—
“Have you no greeting for me, Fitz?”
Fitz. That name he had given me long ago. “Fool,” I said, mouth dry. “It is good to hear your voice again.”
The Fool laughed, half flattered, half incredulous. “I’m afraid you may think differently after this rather important warning. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Seapurge grows in our glade once engulfed by fire. Gather—” Static swelled to cover his words. I winced and waited. “For the time being, do not eat anything you have not prepared yourself.”
“Seapurge?”
“Yes. Loves wet environments. Long stalks, umbrella-like clusters of little white flowers. Surely you know it?”
I sifted through my mental catalogue of the native flora. “Water parsley, you mean?”
“If that is what you call it there.”
Water parsley was mildly poisonous. Traditionally used as an emetic. In the same family as carrots, but so was hemlock. I turned the volume down on the radio as a pair of hikers moved past. They were too engrossed in conversation to acknowledge me, but one could never be certain. When I turned the volume up again, the Fool was speaking.
“…keep it—“ more static. “Do not eat—“ the static then became so bad that I feared I had lost him.
“You’re breaking up.”
“—by a friend,” he said. A moment of silence followed, then he drew breath to speak. “I risk a lot to bring you this message. I believe your life depends on it.” His jesting tone was all but gone. It was like listening to an entirely different person.
“Gather seapurge from the glade,” I repeated, anxious. “Do not eat anything prepared by someone else. How do you know it’s growing there?”
“I do not know how I know,” he said in the tone I was more accustomed to. “I simply know that you need to know, and now you know.”
“Is there some reason I must go on a foraging quest? Can I not ‘gather’ an emetic from the medicine kit on Myblack?”
“Your vehicle is named thus?” The Fool laughed, and I found it strangely grounding even with his archaic manner of speaking. “Ah, it might work, but that is not how I saw it. I do not think that is the way it will go.”
I strained to make sense of everything as the fae music drifted back into the fore. Then he was gone. I called to him, but there was no answer, and my radio remained silent. Well, shit.
I recalled the very first time we spoke over the airwaves as boys. He had delivered a strange riddle then. Tom tames terrier terrors, taste triumphs. I knew what each word meant on its own, but all together, I could not guess what I was supposed to do with it. Until a woman named Grace had lost her dog while camping one night, and feared he had been abducted by a cougar. She was right to be concerned—it had been the season for hungry cubs. I found the dog cowering in a hollow log from a territorial squirrel. I was able to lure the terrier with a treat. It was not until I was well away from her that I recalled the riddle.
I preferred our philosophical musings and private banter, or listening to him weaving or carving while I looked out over the forest canopy. Alone in the quiet lookout suited me most. It was one of my favorite things about this work. But ever since I discovered his strange signal as a child, I looked forward to his company. Even though a voice in a box was all he could be.
I drove back to the ranger station where I slipped through a side door to reach the break room, mind ever circling around the Fool’s dire message. There was no time to investigate, so I would have to rely on his words making sense when they were meant to make sense. It had worked out that way in the past. For now there was enough time to wash up and eat before this musician showed up. I suspected it was the same one I met at the Stuck Pig the other night. She’d been overly friendly to the point of flirtation. Keenly interested in my involvement in the rescue effort during the fire. So many questions. I tried to make it obvious that I was uncomfortable with her writing a song about me, but I don’t think she took the hint.
Ranger Kettricken entered the break room a few minutes later, greeting me with a solemn nod. She quietly prepared a cup of tea, then stared out of the window over the sink. “Supposed to snow overnight,” she said.
“A light dusting to an inch.”
“I heard. Isn’t it on the early side for snow?”
“At least it should be clear for the next several hours.” She blew on her tea and took a sip. “Starling will meet us at the Withywoods gate. We’ll escort her to the campsite, and then it’s a short hike to the glade for us. Should give us plenty of time to investigate.”
I was about to confirm the plan, but the look in her eyes as she turned around made all words scatter. They were clear blue as ever, yet weary and beset by dark circles. Her fair hair had been pulled back in a simple tail without plaits woven on either side. How could I have been so forgetful? Her wedding anniversary with Verity was yesterday. Two years had passed since he walked out into the forest never to return alive. He had been missing for weeks before the fire, which had only made the search more dangerous. Rescue efforts became nigh impossible as we were stretched so thin. We finally found him seeking refuge in an abandoned quarry. He was disoriented from exposure and barely conscious from inhalation sickness, but the burns had ultimately taken his life. His arms were gloved to the elbows in third degree burns, as though he had deliberately shoved them into the fire. There was no other way to make sense of it. It was all still too painful to recall, and so I turned my mind away from the memories.
“You haven’t been out there since, have you?” I asked. “We can push back. I’ll call the director.”
Kettricken shook her head. “I will be fine. We aren’t going out so far as the quarry. Anyway, it must be done. We need her.“
“Do we need her today?”
That got a laugh, though I was not trying to be funny.
“Yes, we need her today,” she said. “I keep forgetting that you don’t have social media. Her last song about the voices in the woods went viral, and it has people excited about visiting the park. She’s probably already hiking to the gate now.” She paused thoughtfully, then added. “We are so close to our goal for the new lookout tower.”
“We can figure out a different way than escorting some local celebrity. It’s not safe yet anyhow.”
“Starling is more than a local celebrity, Tom. She’s a folklorist who faithfully documents the history of this land and the people here.”
“She embellishes to a supernatural degree.”
“Well, that is inevitable,” Kettricken said, gesturing as though to emphasize that I was being obtuse. “She’s telling stories, it’s also meant to entertain and make you feel things. Truly, am I explaining music to you?”
“But, Bigfoot? Aliens?”
She smiled over her cup of tea. “Does it hurt to wonder about those things? It’s not that, though. She wants to write about the fire and, well, your heroic rescue efforts. Don’t look at me like that.”
I glared at the ancient break room microwave instead. “I was not the only one out there.”
“Yes, but you went in there seemingly unafraid. You found stranded hikers; it was like the fire parted for you. You saved a whole campsite of twelve people single-handedly. You and your wolf.”
I shook my head. “Your efforts were no less heroic.”
“Most of my crew died. I’d been called in from a completely different park. I wasn’t used to search and rescue in forests like this. Regal was right to question my experience then.”
Our eyes met over our poor excuse for a lunch. I shook my head. “You made us believe in what we do here again. After so long dealing with mismanagement and federal neglect. You reminded us that the land is worth protecting so that people may experience its wonders for generations.”
“That’s what I feel Starling will do for us too, just in a different way. Long after we are gone, music outlasts us.”
We were quiet for a few moments, each of us drawn inward by memories of that time and reflections of what the future might hold.
“The fire itself was two years ago,” Kettricken said, her soft voice wavering slightly. “Ranger Hod reports that recovery has gone well and parts of it can be opened to permitted hikers for the fall season. You’ve escorted researchers out there yourself. Starling just wants to write a song or two.”
I listened, knowing better than to argue when she found her cause to defend. I took a bite of my sandwich and chewed thoughtfully, hating all that Superintendent Regal had gotten away with here. The fire was not even his doing, not directly. Forged Industries had swept in, claiming they had ‘valid existing rights’ to the land. Regal paid off someone at the National Parks Service to approve the claim, and then gave them unfettered access to the section of the park that had eventually gone up in flames. Kettricken had an undeniable influence on the park’s recovery, but she so often overtaxed herself. Regional Director Chade did not witness the day-to-day sacrifices she made. He was behind walls all day in downtown Buck, doing paperwork and orchestrating the various tasks needed to keep multiple regional parks working. If anyone could convince him to back off, it would be me. Maybe. Convincing Kettricken, however…
“They say it could take decades to fully recover,” I said, hoping she’d relent. “It’s a sensitive habitat now. There’s still a danger of trees falling. Erosion damage allowed storms to wash out huge swaths of trails. I don’t think it’s wise to push for opening it up so soon even for permits.”
“Even so, the rest of the park needs the visibility. We have yet to return to pre-disaster attendance, and we need all the resources we can get if we want the forest to be even half of what it was before.” She leveled a firm gaze my way. “It was my idea.”
And with that, I was defeated. I sighed, letting her know it.
Kettricken began to delicately open a yogurt cup as though it was a practice in meditation. “I only have one hesitation, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“What is it?”
She ate a spoonful of yogurt before answering and closed her eyes for a moment. It must be damn good yogurt. She finally continued. “The ongoing connection issues with the repeater tower in that district. This will sound strange, but when I’m connected to it, sometimes I hear eerie music playing and distant talking as if it’s picking up a social gathering somewhere. When I try to respond, I find I’m not connected to anything at all.”
My stomach clenched. I wanted to know with a sudden intensity whether the Fool spoke to anyone else. Whether he spoke to her. There were many nights I sat in that old lookout talking to him only to find my radio was not connecting to anything, just as she described. The music that played like a callsign before he spoke to me had never been exactly the same over the years, but I could certainly say that our strange… companionship predated the fire. I looked down at my partially eaten sandwich, my mouth turning sour as I recalled his earlier message. I pushed the sandwich away, frowning.
“There’s also the disoriented hikers,” Kettricken was saying as she stood and cleaned up her lunch trash. I tried to focus on her words, but felt so rattled that I barely could. “Do you think they’re connected?”
“If we connect that, then should we consider connecting all the other weird shit out there?” I asked. “I had a camper tell me she found an arrangement of bones outside of her tent in the morning. Another got lost looking for Bigfoot’s dimensional portal to Alpha Centauri. So many people see ghosts or aliens.” I absently folded the wrapper back around the bitten sandwich. “Have you heard anything else on the radio?”
“Hmm.” She paused by the door. “There’s the usual ham radio gatherings where they talk about their equipment for hours, or the ones trying to make contact with aliens. Kids having fun in the park on walkie-talkies. I’ve overheard a lover’s forbidden dalliance until things got a little risqué.”
“I never suspected you for an eaves dropper.”
Kettricken made no reaction, though her pale cheeks went blotchy. “I endure it while monitoring whether there’s anything actually dangerous going on out there.”
“The sacrifices you make.”
“Of course.” A faraway look entered her eyes. “Ever since…,” she cleared her throat and shook her head. “I take it seriously.”
I knew she was thinking about Verity, and how it was believed he followed some mysterious message he’d heard on the radio that ultimately lead to his death. I had been quiet then too. I never wanted reveal to anyone that ever since childhood, I had sought connection on this otherworldly frequency. The Fool claimed to not know of what Verity had heard, but admitted he was not the only one who made use of this network of ‘silver wires,’ as he named it. I stood and threw away my lunch, resigned to make a packet or two of oatmeal for myself before we headed out. In an attempt to reset my brain for work, I listed off our agenda.
“Meet Starling out at the gate, escort her to the campsite, investigate the reports of strange activity where the lookout tower used to be, come back here, do an ungodly amount of paperwork, go home.”
“I will go home. You will go to your reassigned lookout.”
“That is my home.”
She smiled. “Ah, fantastic. I thought Chade put a volunteer out there.”
“He did.”
Her eyebrows rose. “I won’t ask.”
“I didn’t kill him or anything,” I said, amused but also concerned about my reputation. Slightly. “He’s just out there a few hours during the day.”
“I envy you up there. Out there. Wherever it is you go. Interacting with the public all day is tiresome work, which is why I’m excited about this new opportunity to expand my duties.”
“You’re welcome to go out and stir the pit toilets for me anytime.”
“Of course. Just tell me when.”
I was not serious, but she certainly was. I did not blame her for wanting a break from overseeing and interpretation tasks, but the way she treated everything in her life like a new opportunity to endure some penance worried me. At least she appeared to be in better spirits now than when she arrived. She headed down the hall toward her office while I stood there with a mug of claggy oatmeal, somewhat dreading how this would go. I did not want to be the subject of a song, especially one that would ‘go viral.’ Privately, I wished for heavy snow. Possibly the only thing that could deter what was about to unfold.
I parked the UTV at the Withywoods gate. Though not a proper trailhead, enough service vehicles had been out this way that a makeshift lot had been created before the small waypoint sign. I pretended to check my radio connection while Kettricken slid on her ranger hat and climbed out.
Starling had already arrived, and was chatting with a random hiker who seemed a little starstruck as they continued on their way down the adjoining trail. I did not see an instrument, but she did have a well-stuffed rucksack leaning on the bench by her legs. Her curly black hair was pulled back in a ponytail with a turquoise bandana, and she wore practical hiking attire. A green winter coat also lay draped across the top of her pack. She watched us furtively, eyes practically twinkling, as she drank from a water bottle. Kettricken went to greet her.
Nighteyes lingered in the distance, annoyed that he could not join us until after Starling was situated. Reluctantly, I got out of the UTV, secured it, and headed to unlock the gate.
“What’s this snow nonsense I’m hearing about?” I overheard Starling ask, followed by the snapping shut of a water bottle lid.
“They’re calling for a light dusting tonight,” Kettricken said, checking Starling’s permit. “There could be up to an inch. Have you camped before in those conditions?”
“I’ve camped in all sorts of conditions, but normally with other people.” Starling hopped down from the picnic table and gathered up her belongings, taking extra care with her pack.
As they conversed, I looked out over the scarred wilderness beyond. The immense Douglas firs had survived, their trunks still partially blackened from the passing flames. The remains of smaller trees—yew and maple—were like charred spikes thrusting upward from regrowth. In the summer, it was vibrant and green here. Every emergent sapling of the lost trees was a ray of hope among the ashes. I recalled escorting the land surveyors soon after the fire. It was a devastating sight. All of the places my father had once cared for, gone in one overnight blaze. I nearly could not take it, thrust back into the sweat-drenched, barely breathing moment. Heat pressing all around me as I carried a young girl to safety through leaping flames. She had died in my arms. The fire had taken so much. I had found remains of a bear and her cub, a research project meant to study a rare species of moss, the burned husk of a forgotten cabin built in the 19th century, and of course the fire lookout where my father spent the last of his days. I was just a boy when he—
“Badgerlock?”
Kettricken’s voice snapped me out of fully tumbling into the pit of my memory.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
I gave the green metal gate a nudge, and it swung open with a shrill whine. Kettricken and Starling walked through. I locked the gate behind us.
“Campsite is about an hour up that way,” I said, gesturing down the path. “You’ll see the area you’re looking for marked with orange flags.”
“You don’t want to join me?” Starling said, head tilted down to study her phone. Her gaze cut up to meet mine and she smirked at my expression. “Relax. I’ll call if I need anything.”
“Not on that you won’t,” I said. I would be surprised if it had any signal at all.
She unclipped a small radio from her belt and waved it at me. “Will this do?”
Kettricken watched us, head tilting slightly. “We’ll walk with you, then we must split off to look into an official park matter.”
As we journeyed onward, the wind picked up, rustling trees around us. A bank of clouds began to gather to the southwest. I checked my radio and had to adjust the dial to make sure I was connected to the repeater tower nearby. A spike of static crescendoed as a result. The faintest tracery of music played. I quickly turned down the volume and lagged behind the two women.
I held the speaker to my ear, listening intently. There it was, growing steadier as we continued onward, then it began to dim, overtaken once more by static. I stopped. This would be about where we’d need to branch off to head for the site of my former fire lookout.
“I’m going to look into something down this way,” I said. “I’ll catch up with you.”
Kettricken slowed and faced me, ear tilted towards her own radio. She made a face and began to fidget with the interface. The sound of dead air laced with tiny pops of static rose before she adjusted the volume. “Oh, strange. My volume was turned way down.”
Starling peered over at us curiously. I could practically see her writing sheet music in her head and did not want her to get any strange ideas.
Kettricken clipped the radio back in place. “All right. I’ll be in contact when I’m on the way. Meet you down there.”
I nodded, and left them to their discussion. More like Kettricken listened while Starling went on about her experiences here. I headed down off the trail and through a deer path between two giant fir trees. The sound of their conversation faded off as distance built between us. It was not long before I saw a grey shape streak through the ferns toward me. Nighteyes emerged, alert.
I thought the queen would be with you.
Kettricken?
She is queen of this forest, is she not?
She is the supervisor of the park. Not quite a queen. She will meet up with us at the clearing.
She will always be queen to me. He slipped off through the underbrush ahead of me.
Now away from the others, I turned up the volume of my radio. The closer I drew to the former fire lookout clearing, the more distinct the music became. As before, my radio was not connecting to any repeater tower. I was so used to this that I simply clipped the radio back in place and let the music play while I carried on with my task: finding water parsley in the glade once engulfed in fire.
Nighteyes rejoined me, but promptly became distracted by something on the ground and proceeded to roll around in it making all sorts of snorting and snuffling sounds. I tried to ignore it, ear pinned to my radio in hopes the Fool might pay me another visit. At last I found a patch of bobbing stalks topped with spindly umbrellas of white flowers. They grew in a dense patch along the bank of a small stream that skirted the area. I gathered it by the roots and slipped a couple plants into a pocket on my utility belt.
I wandered uphill to the center of the glade where the lookout structure once stood, and thought to reach out to the Fool myself. I had not done so before in broad daylight out in the open. But this was where we would communicate before it all burned down. Many nights I spent up in the lookout, a mug of tea warming my hands, the Fool’s voice and mine the only sounds save for the wind over the treetops. My current lookout was a district over from this one. The view was no less incredible, but I rarely heard from him, and then he was just gone.
I held down the talk button. “Fool? Are you out there?”
I waited. Light dipped and the air cooled around me as clouds passed over the sun. After a span of silence, I tried again. Silence. This was absurd. But as I stood there, staring into the middle distance, my surroundings began to shift.
I set down my rucksack, feeling lightheaded. The world seemed to turn under my feet, trees wheeling around my head. Then, as solid as if I had stepped into the room, I found myself in a circular lookout with a high ceiling. The view from the tall windows was the same as my view from the fire lookout that once stood here, but inside was a rather different place all together. A small bed covered in colorful quilts and pillows lay across from me. Next to that was a shelf filled with books and other peculiar treasures and devices. I spun slowly to take it all in. A loom held a beautiful weaving that looked like a sunset. There were instruments and maps, candles and plants, and neatly arranged carvings in various shades of wood. At the center of the room was what appeared to be a fire finder. But as I drew closer, its surface was painted with an elaborate celestial map. I could not explain it, least of all to myself, but I felt I had somehow entered the Fool’s tower.
“Fool?” My voice was weak, barely above a whisper. The air felt thick and strange. I should not be here. The sound of a small fountain caught my attention. It was nestled in a cluster of plants with spilling vines. Inside the water basin, a little silver fish winked in the light from the window. How could all of this possibly fit into such a small space? I went to a window and peered out. On the ground outside, I saw a figure lying in the grass. It was myself.