This follows Branson Gulch Blues, Part III, Part II, and Part I…
There came well known sounds that required no investigation. The garage opening. A truck pulling in slowly, a rough idle turning to silence. The muffled whump of a door closing. The garage closing, its terminus leaning into a resounding echoey thump.
Grandpa walked in from the garage looking exhausted. He glanced at Nana, then to the table set for dinner, and sighed contentedly. Yet, he shook his head sadly, patted Rory on the head, and headed upstairs without saying a word. His boots lightly thumped up the stairs, and each foot fall sounded like he carried a weight that he wanted to put down, but simply couldn’t.
“What’s wrong with Grandpa?” Rory asked.
Nana looked concerned for a fleeting moment, but smiled brightly in spite of whatever she was thinking about. “He had a long day… I am sure he just needs to shower and have a nice long sleep and he will be his normal self in the morning. And tomorrow is Thanksgiving! Aren’t you excited to see your parents?”
Rory fiddled with his napkin.
“Rory?” Nana pressed. “Aren’t you excited to see your Mom? Your Dad?”
Rory came to a sudden conclusion as if his mind was being driven by someone else. “No.”
“No?” Nana grinned as she put the finishing touches on the salad at the kitchen counter. “Why do you say that?”
“I can’t leave. I don’t want to leave? I…” Rory furrowed his brow, and his napkin tore. “I am confused. Mad. Thats it. I’m mad.”
Nana put the salad on the table, next to the bread, and squatted next to Rory. She pulled him into a hug. Rory hadn’t realized he was crying, feeling the wet tracks smear against his cheek was a surprise.
“Hey, hey, hey, no crying in Nana’s house,” Nana whispered and held him tightly. “You have to go home with your parents, love. It is ok to miss Grandpa and I. We will see each other again.”
“But what about the… the…” Rory waved his hands around.
“Oh is that what you are worried about? The Touch? Think of it as a present, Rory. You are at the start of an amazing journey… but, for right now, you are only a kiddo. Enjoy it. Be a kid! We can worry about the other stuff down the road.” Nana pulled away but kept her hands on him. She looked in him over carefully. “In a few days, it won’t feel as strange. And in a few months you will barely remember why it felt weird in the first place.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Nana patted his head. “Let’s eat! Then maybe play… a game?”
Rory’s eyes lit up. “Sorry?”
“Sure. We can play Sorry. I am just glad you didn’t pick Monopoly.”
“Monopoly?” Rory amended with a grin, wiping at his eyes absentmindedly.
“Hey mister. You said Sorry first. Sorry it is.” Nana teased.
After a light dinner and a game (Rory won, of course), Rory got ready for bed. He said his good nights, falling asleep quickly. And like magic, he rolled over and discovered it was four in the morning. He laid in bed, unable to find the blanket of drowsiness again after waking up to a very early morning yet to find the sun. The wind outside was insistent upon itself, informing the neighborhood that a front was moving in. The uncharacteristically warm weather was about to turn and the chilly nights were only going to get colder.
It was not the wind that kept Rory up. It wasn’t the creaking of the house, nor the scrape of the tree branches, nor the shifting call of the wind blowing through the eaves, measured from a fierce howl to a muted muttering. It was the unseen Cockatrice deep in her fortress of tree stands.
Rory felt it through and through. He had to see the cockatrice. He felt it deep in his bones as if it was calling to him. Her. Wella. Wella had to be calling to him on the wind. Rory thought it over. Turning it over and over in his mind. If he was super slow, super sneaky, and stayed upwind… he would be safe. Mrs. Givins had mentioned that Wella was lethargic. But once the weather changed, that would opportunity would be gone. Because she would have to warm up to keep her eggs protected.
First thing in the morning, he could sneak into the stand of trees. He could make sure everything that had happened in the last few days was… real. It didn’t feel real. It felt strange, like he was having a fever and just hadn’t woken up yet. Rory wasn’t sure, but that sinking feeling that it was all his overactive imagination made his stomach flip over. He wanted it so badly to be real. Any of it. All of it.
Rory slunk out of bed and changed his clothes in the dark. He had to take his pants off and put them back on when he realized the pockets were on his butt. His jacket was in the mud room, and then he could sneak his bike out of the side garage door. The door was quiet enough. He tied his sneakers and tip toed towards the kitchen, the mud room, and the promise of escape through the mud room door.
He slid down the hallway, and the shadows were familiar, safe. The walls held their secrets and the pictures hung kept their vigilance in the early morning silence. Only the roof made any protest, and it was a complaint to the winds of the sky, not the house beneath. Rory turned into the kitchen to find Nana sitting in a chair in the dark, dressed and ready to go outside.
“About time,” Nana whispered. “Did you put your pants on backwards the first time?”
He had, but he didn’t want to admit it. All he said instead was, “Nana?”
“If you want to see Wella, you must listen to me. And you obey me. If I tell you to stand still, you stand absolutely still. If I tell you to run in front of me, you run in front of me. If I tell you to fall to the ground and play dead, you play dead. Understood?”
“Really?” Rory whispered.
“Yes. Really. Promise me.”
“I promise.” Rory nodded once as if he was signing in blood.
“Good. Grab your coat. Here are some of Grandpa’s old gloves and hat. Bundle up.”
Rory did as he was told and Nana pulled the weird twisted walking stick from the hall closet.
“Out the side door,” Nana waved him forward. “Let’s try not to disturb your grandfather.”
They walked out the gate and towards the sidewalk. Nana laid a hand on his shoulder.
“What?”
“Grab here,” Nana lifted his hand to grip the walking stick.
“Uh, ok?” Rory clutched the walking stick below his Nana’s hand. He wasn’t sure why or even how two people could operate a walking stick at the same time.
“Alright. When I tell you step forward, step in time with me. I will count. Three, two, one… step.”
Rory lifted his foot and when he put it down he stumbled forward as if he had been pushed. He was dizzy.
“Take a deep breath. Let me know when you are caught up.” Nana laughed lightly.
Rory looked around and realized they were not one step down the sidewalk, but at the end of the street. “What? How?”
“Turn toward the Gulch. This way. Ready? Three, two, one… step.”
Rory lifted his foot forward and stumbled again, trying not to let go of the stick and instead using it to balance. Now they were no longer at the end of Nana’s street but a mile and half down the path to where it branched towards the Gulch.
“Better. See? You are a natural,” Nana winked proudly.
“How?” Rory reiterated.
“Energy is prevalent. It abounds. We can harness energy to do all sorts of neat things. Like farwalking.”
“But its not speeding us up?”
“More like tricking the world that this step and our next are in the same stride. Like folding a piece of paper, we fold the way forward. It snaps back and we alight over the hump.”
“That is why it feels like I am falling in the direction we are facing.” Rory thought it made sense. It was consistent to how it felt, the stumble as his foot touched the ground, like running too fast down a hill.
“Good observation. Let’s see here,” Nana licked her finger and lifted it into the air. “Breeze is coming in front the north today. The prevailing is typically west-by-northeast. So we will need to go into the stand from that side of the Gulch. Ready? Three, two, one… step.”
Rory stumbled forward, but was able to maintain his balance better than before. “You far can you walk like that?”
“The longest step is about five kilometers. Past that will lead to… injuries.”
“Five kilometers?” Rory raised an eyebrow.
“About 3 miles.” Nana continued. “You could walk a very long way in a single day, but most of the time, taking a plane or a car is easier. Now. Stay close, stay quiet. Try to step where I step.”
“Ok.” Rory nodded once again, but this time if felt as if he was about to march into battle.
The sun was an hour or two from cresting the horizon, but the moon was full and reflecting its light brightly through the trees.
Nana stepped down into the gulch, the wet dead leaves allowed her to gracefully slide down the side of the hill in relative silence. Rory copied her and discovered that is was easier than he had thought. As he slid, the smell of old leaves and rotting wood assaulted his nose heavily as if it was mist sulking against the ground, upset it had been launched towards the open sky. A pressure slid over his ears and he felt a faint ringing as if he had heard a firework go off days ago.
“Nana?” Rory whispered and pointed to his ears with confusion on his face.
“I will explain later. Keep moving. Stay close.” Nana started creeping between the trees, waving her hand near her knees.
Rory realized she must have had her cadaceus, doing something to the ground at her feet. From here, it looked like she was waving off invisible mosquitos from attacking her kneecaps. Rory stayed a step behind, putting his feet in her wet footprints. The ground was not frozen, but it could have been in places, the leaves were firm underfoot as if they were carved from wood.
Nana walked for what felt like fifteen minutes, pausing occassionally, holding an open palm out towards Rory’s chest as if she was preventing his movements. He realized that he only thought that he was stopping of his own accord, he tried to lift his hand, but it was like it was tied at his side. Nana side-eyed him as she shook her head and he did not dare to try again.
He heard Wella before he saw her. It was like a humming noise, deep and resonant amongst the trees. He could almost feel it more than he could hear it, as if a part of him was also her, vibrating in time. Nana knelt at a tree and slowly Rory crept up next to her to look.
There was a nest. It was set into the ground as if it had been dug out, and the edges of the nest were formed by woven branches and sticks. Each looked like it had been sharpened to points, but Rory realized they had been chewed, like how a beaver takes down a tree. Each stick had been carved away from the tree it belonged to. In the nest, curled in a tight circle, a feathered form laid in a tight circle, a brightly plumed head tucked under one wing. The plumage was brown and white, with streaks of red feathers forming a pattern of lines radiating from her shoulders.
“She is beautiful, isn’t she?” Nana whispered lightly at Rory’s ear.
Rory nodded and realized his mouth was hanging open. He closed it slowly, and a branch moved along the edge of the nest, and a clump of feathers followed. It was her tail. It settled around her in the nest, like a soft sigh. The skin was not the snake skin he had imagined. It was supple and brown, more like the skin of a cow, with small bristles… but Rory noticed they were larger at the clump. They were feathers. Tiny little feathers. Her breathing was so slow, and that was what the vibration in the air was. She was purring like a kitten. He grinned.
Nana smiled and leaned over again. “She hasn’t thermoregulated yet. She is going to be very sleepy… nestled in like that. I think we are can get a little closer. You want to take a peek at her clutch?”
“Is it safe?”
“No.” Nana shook her head solemnly, but her eyes were bright and shining in the early morning twilight. The sky above was shifting to a dark blue, and somewhere to the east, a glimmer of sun was near cresting. “But you will never get a chance like this again.”
Rory thought it over but found himself nodded enthusiastically regardless of what his brain concluded. He discarded it before a decision even formed.
Nana stood cautiously, and waved her hand at her knees again. She stepped very carefully, but her steps were completely silent. Not even her clothes made noise. Rory stepped were she stepped and they crept up nearer to the nest.
Wella was not some small snake crossed with a chicken. She was much larger than she had appeared from the trees behind them. Her side went up slowly, and Rory realized it was like a car door raising into the air and then falling back down for a long stretched pause before rising again. Wella was larger than any dog he had ever seen. Her legs looked powerful, and the end of her foot, a long bone white dagger from the middle toe, cocked upward. From here it looked like it could slice through anything. Her wings were draped around her like a cloak, hiding most of her form, but with each step he realized that anything that Wella wanted to eat probably did not stand a chance.
His gut dropped. He had been crazy to think he could do this on his own. He would never stray off the path ever. Never. Ever.
Nana pointed excitedly. At the edge of Wella’s neck, just under the wing, Rory could make out two oblong shapes. They were a dull red color, speckled with white dots. He glanced at the eggs, then up to Wella’s face, most of which was still buried under her wing.
The eye facing him was open. And staring right at him. It did not blink. It did not move. The eye looked like it was made of crystal, bright red of a stop sign, with a corona of blue at the edges. The colors were in a spoke pattern in her eye, each radiated outwards from the black iris. And it beheld Rory with careful scrutiny.
Rory snatched Nana’s hand and dared not to breathe.
Nana made eye contact with Wella, and squeezed Rory’s hand lightly. “Bow slowly. Look at the ground. Now.”
Rory immediately bowed, ducking his head slowly and holding his glance at the edge of his boots.
Nana squeezed his hand again. “You can look up but keep your face pointed down.”
Rory raised his eyes to come face to face with Wella. Her head was only feet away from his own. Her beak was the length of his arm, its edges scalloped like a carving knife. Wella’s head swung back and forth between the two of them, and Rory could feel her exhales over his neck. Wella was sniffing them. He was being measured and weighed by a dragon.
Finally, Wells made a soft chirp as if deciding something and put her head back under wing. She did not close her eye.
“Back up, slowly. Once we get to the trees we can turn and walk the way we came. No running.”
Nana pulled him along gently, and sequestered him behind the nearest tree. The cockatrice did not move.
“This way, Rory.” Nana walked slowly, retracing her steps. Rory did exactly what he had been told. He glanced back occasionally, but there was no movement from the nest hidden there.
The sunlight above finally shifted the sky to a purple and a flutter of pink upon some far off clouds. Rory’s heart felt like it had been going a million miles an hour, and yet his feet felt like he was walking on air.
Nana took his hand and put it on her gnarled, knuckled length of walking stick. “Three, two, one… step.”
Rory stumbled forward and found himself on the gravel path at the top of the embankment. Rory felt like he had just stepped off a roller coaster. “Nana?”
“Yes, dear?” Nana’s face was bright, and her eyes reflected the dawn.
Rory exhaled heavily. “Best. Thanksgiving. Ever.”
Nana laughed brightly as the birds in the trees seemingly agreed.