Page 2 of Faun Over Me

This was stupid, this was so stupid. Every faun knew you never ran from a predator once sighted. It only delayed the inevitable. Still, Cricket ducked under branches and leaped over roots, tripping over her own hooves and splashing across flooded streams. She didn’t risk looking back, didn’t want to see how close the monster may be, or worse, find that it had vanished altogether, returned to stalking her silently and unseen. So she ran through the pain in her leg, scrabbled upright when she fell, and let thin, whip-like branches snap at her back.

Rocks and stones scraped her knees; her denim jacket snagged on twigs and thorns. She shrugged it off, wriggling free from brambles and lurching forward. The metallic tang of blood rose over the aether of the storm, and Cricket mentally cursed the trail she was no doubt leaving behind. She should stop and find a place to hide. Wait out the storm and the monster, but to stop now meant certain death.

The rain halted abruptly, the wind died down, and another roll of thunder rumbled ominously overhead. Silence followed, the woods utterly still and calm. Only her rasping breaths and stunted hoof beats punctuated the night.

The dim glow of electric light sparkled through the trees—a house or a gas station.

Humans. Help.

Cricket risked a glance back, missing the upturned root. Her hoof caught, and she tipped off balance, landing hard on her shoulder and rolling down a hill. The lights whirled and spun, trees twisting as lightning strobed across the sky.

Her head jolted against a fallen trunk, and the last thing Cricket heard before the darkness closed in was a single, mournful howl.

2

Avery

“They’re just kids, Avery.” Director Murray leaned back in her chair, the wicker creaking as her weight settled. “Treat them like you would any other band geek battling acne and raging hormones.”

“I do!” Avery leaned forward, wringing her hands together in her lap. “I mean—I’m trying to. I’ve just never been around this many mons-” At Director Murray’s raised eyebrow, Avery caught herself. “Inhumans.”

“See? You’re getting better already.”

“But that’s the problem, Director Murray,” she whined. “I keep slipping and offending them, and then I second-guess myself for the rest of the class. How am I an effective teacher if I can’t even speak appropriately to them?”

“Well, first of all, stop thinking of our campers as a ‘them.’ We’re an ‘Us’ at Elkwater Music Camp.” Director Murray spun the gold ring on her finger, frowning slightly. “Second of all, you’re an incredible teacher and an even better musician. I wouldn’t have offered you the job if you weren’t; and third, for the love of God, stop calling me Director Murray.”

Avery opened her mouth, closed it, then muttered, “I still don’t know why you hired me.”

“Because you were the best-qualified candidate.” Director Murray’s frown deepened. She sat forward and placed her elbows on the desk between them, hazel eyes pinned on Avery. “Because you applied.”

“But—”

“No more buts, Avery,” she sighed. “You graduated from the composition track at Messiah. You’re a poly-instrumentalist who spent the last four summers counseling at a band camp in Virginia, which, come on. You couldn’t have applied to work for me earlier?” Avery opened her mouth to argue, but at the director’s pointed look, she decided the question was rhetorical. “I should probably be asking why you finally did decide to apply for a job here.”

Avery’s only response was a quiet squeak.

“You knew we were an integrated camp when you applied, Avery, and that told me you were the right person for the job.” Director Murray smiled and eased back, gesturing to the framed pictures decorating the walls. Happy teens grinned in one photograph with their arms slung around wolven and naga. In another, gnomes sat on the shoulders of human boys, tiny fingers poised on piccolos and flutes. A group of musicians—furred, scaled, and fleshy—perched on logs and tree stumps around a fire, mouths frozen open in song. Photograph after photograph of musicians of multiple species marching in a field, collaborating on music, and grinning in the dining hall. So unlike the childhood she had known and entirely the one she had desperately wanted. “Stop being so hard on yourself and focus on what’s most important: these kids are here to learn. From you.”

Avery smoothed the front of her skirt and scuffed the toe of her white tennis shoe along the worn woven rug, feeling the weight of Director Murray’s gaze on her. “I’m just scared that I’ll—”

“Ah.” The director stood, setting palms on the desk and leaning over the paperwork she had been reviewing when Avery knocked on her door. “There it is.” Her eyes narrowed, darting over Avery in quick assessment. “That’s your father talking, Payne. Not you.”

“I—”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of in this camp. Everyone here earned their spot through talent and hard work. It’s what we all have in common. Think about that, yeah? These kids earned a place, just like you earned your job as my Assistant Director.”

Avery dropped her eyes to her lap, staring at the grass stains on the knees of her skirt and biting her lips to keep from blurting the truth: that she’d only applied for the job after an argument with her dad. That she was piggybacking on Director Murray’s reputation for churning out top-tier musicians and using this job to get a spot in Carnegie Mellon’s graduate program. That she was using this camp and the director’s goodwill to further her own aims, and was using this summer to live the life she never got to. That she couldn’t sleep at night because of the guilt and fumbled chords during the day because she was drowning under the pressure. That the storm last night had seemed to mimic her own inner turmoil until she thought she was going to burst. That she—

“I know you grew up in an area that was … affluent,” Director Murray continued. “I did, too; I know how close-minded it can get, but you’re here, regardless of your reasons for applying. That matters.”

Avery swiped the back of her hand under her nose, blinking tears away before raising her head. Director Murray had resumed her seat, fingers laced on the desk. Though her face was calm, her mouth closed but soft, there was a tension in her arms and shoulders. From her years spent as a camper, a counselor, assistant director, and finally director, Director Murray was tanned and lean, toned in the way of an Appalachian thru-hiker. She kept her shaggy pixie cut swept back from her face, the ends of the short style bronzed from the sun. Small lines clung to the corners of her eyes and mouth, earned from summers on the field and evenings spent laughing and smiling.

Avery wondered what it was like to be so carefree when surrounded by so many mons—no. Inhumans.

Back home, in Harrisburg, it wasn’t exactly rare to see them, but just as Director Murray said, she had grown up in an affluent area, surrounded by people who looked, spoke, and existed like her: human, white, and Christian.

Elkwater Music Camp was the furthest from home Avery had ever been, not in terms of distance but in lifestyle and culture. Messiah wasn’t an integrated campus, and whenever she traveled to Philly or New York with her family, they were ushered from their car to the hotel, paraded about like a Christian Right Von Trapp Family, and ushered out of sight. The most diversity Avery had ever experienced was from playing softball as a teenager. Even then, the team was entirely human, as were those of the other private schools they played against.

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