Page 6 of Faun Over Me

“Now?” Cricket straightened, her ears pressing tight against her head. “I just said I can’t leave—”

“No, not now, dingbat.” Mac rolled her eyes and waved a hand at Cricket’s hoof. “You’re not fit to go anywhere. Ramble would kill me if I let you wander off on an injured hoof, and I can’t drive you until they get back with my truck.” She pressed her lips in a line, gaze dropping to the bandage wrapped around Cricket’s ankle. “How did you do that, by the way? Aside from being dumb enough to run the ridgelines in a storm.”

“Oh.” She stretched her leg out, gripping her calf with her fingers, absent the metal caps. Half of them had fallen off in her tumble down the hill, and the rest sat in a pile on the kitchen table. Her felt-covered fingertips pressed back slightly, the flexible extra knuckle all faun had giving way under the pressure. “Something chased me.”

“What?” Mac hollered. “Why didn’t you start with that?”

“Because it’s the Monongahela, there’s loads of monsters out here,” Cricket argued. “I told that camper, the one who found me.” She racked her brain for any details she could remember, but her head had been foggy, pain and exhaustion overriding any sense. What she did remember was crystal clear: sky-blue eyes ringed in dark eyelashes and a reddish-orange halo of bright auburn friz escaping from a long, thick plait. “The fox-haired one, didn’t she tell you?”

Mac pinched between her eyes, lips moving silently in what Cricket realized were numbers. She was counting numbers to calm herself down before talking again. Like Cricket was some hours-old doe staggering in a field.

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Yes, it’s a big deal, Cricket.” Mac tore her hand away, glaring at her. “I run a camp with children in it. I have a responsibility to keep everyone here safe, and you’re telling me something chased you all the way from Green Bank?”

“Not all the way,” she protested. “I think I lost it when I fell and twisted my ankle.”

“Did you get a good look at it?” Mac asked. “Some of the staff are from the hills; maybe they’ll know what it was.”

Cricket shook her head. “Not a good one, no. It was real dark; I only caught glimpses in the lightning.”

“And?”

“Big.” She shivered involuntarily, recalling how tall the thing had been—tall and broad and fast. “Like Kane big.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Kane? WWE Wrestler? The guy is huge.” At Mac’s blank look, Cricket laughed. “And you’re telling me I need to get out more?”

“If your sole knowledge of modern pop culture is the WWE, then yes, I am.”

“And the Spice Girls.”

“Christ, Cricket.” She shook her head, but a tiny smile curled the corner of her mouth. Static crackled from the walkie-talkie, and a gravelly voice came over the speaker.

“Hey, Murray, you’re needed on the field.”

Mac groaned, grabbed the walkie-talkie, and pressed the button on the side. “Be right there, Aksel. Do I need the Gator?”

“Uh…” Aksel responded. Discordant blurts followed, drowning out a second voice bellowing angrily. “Yeah, probably. One of the naga got tangled in a Sousaphone.”

Mac pressed the walkie-talkie to her forehead, once again counting silently before responding. “On my way.” She clipped the walkie-talkie to her belt and pointed at Cricket. “Get some sleep. There’s food here, but if you get bored and want something other than granola and peach rings”—Cricket’s ears perked at that—“the dining hall is the long green building at the center of camp, and Almaden left you a crutch.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the front door where a crutch was propped and, Cricket assumed, the camp beyond. “Dinner bell’s at six; Cooky preps for all diets, so you won’t have a problem finding something you can eat.”

She grabbed a set of keys from a hook and pulled a baseball cap on over her short, shaggy hair, hesitating at the door. Rapping knuckles against the frame, she twisted at the waist to address Cricket. “You can stay here as long as you like. You know that, right? We’d love to have you.”

Cricket could only nod, caught off guard by the offer. The welcome. Not that it was unexpected from Mac. The woman had always been so easy-going around Cricket’s family, and she’d seen first-hand how Mac doted on her wife. The two were still crazy about each other a decade into their relationship. It gave Cricket a thrill of hope that maybe, maybe, if she brought her cousin home to talk to their parents and the rest of the family, they could convince the faun to leave Green Bank before they were pushed out altogether.

“I’ll, um, consider it,” she mumbled, offering Mac a weak smile as she stepped onto the porch, pulling the door shut behind her.

Sleep came easy once Cricket had assembled a pile of blankets and pillows and beat them into something resembling a nest. In no time at all, she was startled awake by a loud, electronic blaring through the camp. She shot upright, bleating as pain ribboned up her injured leg, and collapsed against the side of the guestroom bed. Scrabbling nail-less fingers against the mattress, she hoisted herself onto the bed, gawking out the window as human and inhuman alike tore down the center path of the camp.

They manifested from the woods and filed out of cabins and buildings. A lumbering, bipedal figure in gym shorts sauntered across the green, chatting with the gnome on his shoulder while a young woman jogged up beside them. Three human boys spilled out of a tan building, the last one holding the door open for a dusky-furred creature with gossamer wings tucked in close. A pair of shifted wolven leaped over one another, yipping at each other’s heels and barreling into a naga and another human. The boy wrapped his arms around his serpentine companion, sweeping her out of harm’s way as the wolven yowled their apologies and darted into a long single-story green building halfway down the center path.

She watched in awe as the display of full and healthy integration played out before her. No one was staring. No one was pointing or threatening the inhumans. They were … together, coexisting in a way her parents told her the faun never could. Seeing it play out before her, Cricket had to believe there was a place for her family. If this is what Mac had achieved and what her cousin so staunchly defended, why couldn’t Cricket have it, too? Why couldn’t she live with humans and others like her? Why not move from Green Bank and—

A figure caught her eye, walking paces behind the crowd. A long plait of fox-red hair hung down her back, swinging lightly with the sway of generous hips in a floral skirt. Arms tightly folded and shoulders hunched, she waited at the base of a short flight of stairs as the last of the campers entered the green building—the dining hall.

Once alone, the camper dropped her arms and rolled her shoulders in a gesture Cricket recognized—she was preparing herself to deal with something, but what? What could anyone have to be nervous about in a paradise like Elkwater Music Camp?