Page 11 of Faun Over Me

“What the heck happened?”

“Something chased me,” she said, clearing the bush and rolling onto her back, panting as she spoke in short sentences. “Was walking. Stalked me. Chased me here.”

“That explains the crutch.” She gathered the two pieces, tucking them under her arm and extending a hand for Cricket. “Come on, let’s get you to the nurse.”

She stared at her hand. “What are you doing?”

“I’m helping you.”

“I don’t need your help,” she argued.

“Right, so that whole thing with the bush just now was part of your plan?” At Cricket’s silence, the girl snorted. “Thought not, come on.” She waggled her fingers—slender with neatly manicured nails— and Cricket took her hand. “Up we go.” With a tug, again displaying a deceptive strength she never would have expected from the soft-looking girl, she hauled Cricket from the ground. Just as easily, her arm was slung across the girl’s shoulders, and she slid her arm around the middle of Cricket’s back. The difference in their heights—the girl was at least four inches shorter—made it oddly comfortable. Still, she grunted, staggering under Cricket’s weight before starting them into a slow, hobbling walk. “You’re heavier than you look.”

“So glad we ran into each other. Really, this is a delight,” Cricket muttered.

“No! It’s just that you’re so lean.” As if to demonstrate, the girl curved the flat of her palm around Cricket’s ribcage. The press of her fingers did something funny to Cricket’s chest, and she bit her tongue, pinning her eyes on the trail ahead. “I didn’t expect—”

“Me to be a real, live, breathing inhuman?” She glared at the girl, and her ears, flattened against the side of her head, twitched in anger. “Guess I shouldn’t expect anything more from a human.”

“Avery,” the girl said in a low voice. Her fingers twitched, and Cricket was suddenly hyper-aware of everywhere their bodies touched: how the softness of Avery’s upper arm cradled her back, the cushion of her rounded shoulder, and the smooth, supple feel of her skin. “If you’re going to insult me when I’m trying to help you, you can at least use my name.”

Cricket’s ears pressed harder against her head, and she pinched her lips together, her nose uncomfortably dry. They shuffled in silence, save for intermittent grunts whenever her hoof was jostled and the ragged sawing of their breaths. When the camp buildings came into view, she said, “Crick.”

“Not for a few more feet, but there’s a bridge,” Avery answered.

Cricket glanced at her, beyond confused, and held her tongue until, sure enough, they came across a small, arcing bridge over a gully and narrow creek. “Oh,” she said dumbly. “No, I mean, my name—Crick. Cricket.”

Avery glanced at her, the hard expression she’d worn since leaving the wood softening. The crease between her eyebrows eased, and if Cricket didn’t know any better, she’d say the edge of her mouth curled up.

She readied herself for a barb or a joke, but instead, that ghost of a smile broke into a full grin.

“It’s nice to meet you, Cricket.”

6

Avery

“You were where?” Nurse Almaden’s beady eyes widened. She blinked, and then twitched her head to the side in a very birdlike manner, assessing the pair.

“The woods,” Cricket muttered. She gripped the edge of the counter and slid her arm off of Avery’s shoulders. Soft, downy fur tickled the base of her neck, and she shivered, hugging her arms around herself. “I went for a walk.”

“You split your hoof!”

“That happens all the time.”

“And sprained your ankle,” Almaden squawked.

Cricket shrugged and made a soft sound that sounded like “meh.” She hobbled to the chair and collapsed into the cracked, worn leather. Dropping her head back with a relieved sigh, she stretched her arms and groaned in a way that had Avery spinning to stare out the window.

Classes and practice were done for the day, and campers wandered through the middle of camp, laughing with their friends and fiddling with instruments as they made their way to the cabins. In the hour before dinner, Avery usually headed to the practice rooms and lost herself in music, dancing her fingers over a keyboard or chasing a melody on her guitar, working out all the tension of her day in a melodic world of her own. Any filing or scheduling she needed to do for Director Murray could wait until after lights out when the camp was quiet and the night calm, but she found herself antsy to complete something. Anything. To achieve something instead of wandering aimlessly in the chords of an unnamed song.

“Sss, ow.” Cricket hissed behind her, that raspy, rusty voice sizzling in Avery’s ears.

“Apologies,” Almaden muttered. “But you did this to yourself.”

“I was bored.”

“Your cousin gets bored, but I never see them being stupid about it,” the nurse clapped back.

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