The Things We Water

“Do we need to go over the plan again?”

With my hands around the steering wheel, I glanced over my shoulder to find Sienna and Duncan cuddled up in the back seat of my truck. Sienna was holding a red toy I’d never seen before that he was gnawing away at. The cutest part was that they both looked like there was nowhere else they would rather be. A few hours ago, it had been Matti in the back with Duncan sprawled across his chest, both of them snoring away. Sienna had recorded a video of them, giggling under her breath while she did.

It made me so happy. Duncan loved the attention. Loved the love. And my friends loved him right back. There was that saying about how it takes a village to raise a child, and it had clicked, on a different level, how much sense that made.

Which was why I had told my friends that same night we went to them that I wanted to take him to the ranch. The fact that they didn’t argue and tell me that I should move closer and raise him with them around said everything. It wouldn’t work, and it wasn’t safe. So it hadn’t exactly been a surprise when Sienna had bumped my shoulder, and Matti had said, “I already texted Henri.”

And that was how the four of us had ended up in my truck, pulling my travel trailer across state lines two days later. We drove and drove—Matti and I swapping every couple hours—eating up mile after mile between Chicago and wherever we were going in Colorado. Matti had entered a latitude and longitude address in the navigation. If this community was as quiet and secluded as he’d made it seem, why would it have a real address?

Surprisingly, it made me feel a hell of a lot better that the people who lived there would go to these kinds of extremes.

I didn’t know how they made it work, but I figured that was something I’d find out when we got there in… fifteen minutes, according to the app. I hadn’t let myself get nervous. Either they let us stay or they didn’t. I either found someone who wanted a family enough to marry a stranger… someone like me… or I didn’t.

It wouldn’t be the first or last time someone did it to live there, Matti had reminded me.

If there was anywhere in the world where it would be normal to marry a practical stranger, it’d be at his cousin’s ranch.

But as the tree lines along the road got thicker and the evergreens got taller and wider, the scent of magic filled the cabin with so much potency, despite the fact the air-conditioning was blasting, I had started to wonder what exactly we were driving to. Matti had warned us the magic here was strong, but I’d thought he’d been exaggerating. This was the same person who had held his hands three feet apart to describe a spider he’d found in one of the men’s bathrooms at a gas station. It took most of my concentration to focus on driving and not pull over and stick my head out the window.

If Matti noticed how hard I was gripping the steering wheel, he didn’t call me out on it.

“Nina?” The sound of my friend’s voice brought my attention forward, away from the magic outside. He was sitting in the front passenger seat, and he had been since our last stop when we’d switched drivers so he could eat a hot dog—a hot dog that I’d just about begged him and Sienna not to buy.

Just looking at it had made me feel like I was going to end up with an upset stomach.

I relaxed my grip around the steering wheel. “No, we don’t need to go over the plan again. I got it.” We had gone over it twice already, but I got that this might be our only chance. “When we get there, you’re going to do all the talking. I’m going to leave my bracelet on until they ask me to take it off, and we’re going to do the same with Duncan’s collar.”

It wasn’t that complicated. Just… important. Our acceptance hinged on so many things that were outside of my control that it made me itchy.

It was either going to work or it wasn’t.

I squeezed the steering wheel again. “You haven’t been back here since you moved away?” I asked him, realizing I wasn’t sure he’d ever mentioned returning to the place where he’d lived for a few years.

“Not since I left at eighteen. There wasn’t anything here for me, other than Henri,” he answered. “Most kids who grow up on the ranch eventually leave. Some come back, but the majority don’t. At least that was the case back then. You grow up here, want to see the world, and then you come back, or you don’t.”

“And you didn’t.” Like his dad.

“Fuck no.”

Sienna and I both laughed.

“I know you don’t know the comforts of food delivery and next-day shipping, but it’s everything it’s cracked up to be,” he explained. “First time Henri took me to Denver, my brain almost exploded.”

“Next-day shipping,” I groaned with a laugh. “Spoiled.” Where we’d grown up, the nearest fast-food chain had been thirty minutes away. Our town had had two gas stations. It had been that kind of small.

“Yeah, yeah, but that’s why I think you’ll do just fine out here,” he noted, like I had another option.

As long as they don’t hate me on the spot, I thought but didn’t say out loud.

Matti reached back between the console, and I could only imagine he was petting Duncan. Or feeling up Sienna. “It’s going to be fine.”

He sounded like he believed it.

“If things don’t work out, we’ll come up with another plan. Find another community. I can only take a few days off right now because I have a meeting I can’t miss, but in two weeks, we can try something else. I heard a rumor a while back that there’s a place in Alaska….”

That struck a long-forgotten bell in my head. Before I could ponder it too much, I leaned forward. Something moved in the distance, darting across the road. It sure as hell hadn’t looked like a deer.

Blinking a couple of times, I watched the same spot, knowing I hadn’t imagined seeing things. Something else crossed the road. It was smaller. Fluffier.

“Matti….” I trailed off.

He stopped talking about Alaska. “Yeah?”

“I swear I just saw a centaur baby.”

He leaned toward the passenger window, his attention on the side mirror.

“No, through the windshield.” Letting off the gas, I slowed us down just as something even fluffier, white, and on four legs ran by. I pointed. “I’m pretty sure a centaur baby and two little wolves just ran by.” I pulled the truck and RV over to the side of the road and put it into park. The road hadn’t been busy since we’d turned on it off the county highway. There had been nonstop signs about it being a dead end, about there not being national forest access, but….

Matti was already unbuckling his seat belt.

“They probably shouldn’t be running around in the middle of the day, huh?” I asked as I started to unbuckle my seat belt too.

He shook his head, hand going to the door. “No, they shouldn’t.”

Turning, I looked at Duncan who was still on top of Sienna, his long ears grazing her lap. His attention was sharp. I’d been so relieved when he’d finally woken up at their apartment, bright-eyed and acting like himself, minus his Sleeping Beauty reenactment. “Si, will you stay with him while I help Matti find the kids?”

She wrapped her arms around her little buddy, her light green eyes widening. “The baby is safe with me, but we’ll get out and sit by the tree line. I’ve seen too many videos of people getting hit by other cars when they’re parked on the shoulder. I’ll hide him with my jacket and his blankie.”

I blew a kiss at Duncan and Sienna as I reached for the door. “Be right back then.”

But I froze the second I got out of the truck.

Wow, I thought, filling my lungs with the fresh air and the magic entwined in it. That was… wow. It felt like goose bumps but inside my body. Like smelling your favorite scent in the world but better.

Matti was already waiting though. He took a long inhale, swiveling his head from one side to the other before tipping it to the left. He was trying to find the kids, not absorbing our surroundings like I was. Did it not affect him the same way? His sense of smell was about a hundred times better than mine….

“They went that way.” He pointed. “How young did they look?”

We crossed the well-maintained road and came to a stop at a chest-high predator fence that Matti somehow climbed over effortlessly despite wearing spotless sneakers that didn’t look very comfortable and pants I called khaki, and he argued were toffee, whatever that color was. No Trespassing signs were posted along the fence, and another sign claimed there was video surveillance. Too dang bad. I stood there and looked up and down the length of the fence before holding out my arms toward Matti on the opposite side. He grabbed them and took most of my weight as I used the fencing as a wobbly staircase to the top, and then he slowed down my fall as I jumped off.

“The centaur looked like a boy, maybe? He might have been about the size of a baby deer? I think he might have only had two legs, but it happened so fast, I’m not sure. The wolves… one was bigger than Duncan, and the other one was bigger than that one, I think.” Real descriptive, I knew, but it had happened so fast. I hadn’t expected to see any magical babies running around this soon.

He frowned but nodded, his nostrils flaring wide. “Badass kids.”

“Right? Who goes exploring away from home in the middle of the day?” I slid him a look that he returned with his own and a smirk. We had, so many times. Almost every weekend until he’d moved away, probably. “They looked too young to be on their own—’ I stopped myself and snickered. “I sound like an adult and a hypocrite, but you were bigger than them when we went on adventures without telling our parents where we were going.”

Matti’s chuckle was one of the most familiar sounds in the world to me. “They could have found us if they wanted, and snakes were the only dangerous thing around us back then. There’s a hell of a lot more things out here that can hurt these kids.” He glanced at me. “There are fences that surround the areas close to where everyone lives. They shouldn’t be this far out.”

Way to backtrack.

But total safety wasn’t guaranteed anywhere. I wasn’t going to worry about it. “Matti, the magic here is so….” I took another big whiff of the air. It was hard to describe what it smelled like, much less how it felt.

Matti had more than once tried to explain how scent signatures came across to him, and it had been like someone trying to explain advanced physics when I was struggling with middle school science. “It’s rich. It smells really good.” The hairs on my arms agreed. Every part of me, really. It was clean and wonderful and… it shot a shiver down my spine.

“Some of the elders used to claim that a part of the meteor landed around here.”

I glanced at him, surprised, and yet not.

He kept going. “There are parts of the property that look and feel like nothing else. You’ll see.” He pointed to the right, and we moved in that direction.

Just in this section of forest, sensing the invisible weight surrounding us… I understood what he was saying. Duncan and I had stayed in South Dakota a while back, and at the time, that place had felt special. But the magic there hadn’t been anything like here.

I took another lungful of it, a jitter running through my body afterward.

“I like it,” I told him quietly, peeking up at the looming branches overhead before he nudged me to the right with his shoulder. I wasn’t sure what to think about the little smile he gave me when he did it. This must have been what every character in every sci-fi movie, discovering a new planet, must have felt like—awe, wariness, and maybe more than a little hope.

We sped up, and I tried my best to listen for voices, but it was almost impossible with the birds in the trees singing the songs of their people as loud as possible. We had just crossed a narrow creek when Matti palmed my shoulder and pointed again.

Straight ahead of us were two furry pups and what might have been a centaur baby… or whatever the goat versions of them were called. The name was escaping me at the moment. But that didn’t matter, because the three small beings were in a half-circle, and towering over them was a creature that looked like… well, like a… swamp thing?

The kids were cowering though, and I didn’t need my friend’s nose to know they were scared.

I met Matti’s eyes, and he frowned just as the green thing growled, “Too far from home, children. Too small to be away from your protectors, eh?” The thing’s lips peeled back into a smile straight out of a dentist’s nightmare, revealing sharp, dark teeth that definitely needed a cleaning. Probably braces.

“You’re… you’re on our land,” the centaur/goat replied in a voice that was just as childish as I’d imagined. It wobbled and went to a whisper, back and forth, high and low, with every word. He wasn’t a baby-baby like my donut, but I didn’t think he was a tween yet either.

“Your land?” the swamp creature answered with a laugh that made me real uncomfortable. I wasn’t scared, but I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t want to be near it. It was humanoid shaped, easily six feet tall, and even had what I would call hair—hair that was very long, hadn’t seen a brush or shampoo in a few years, resembled seaweed or slimy grass, and was plastered to its cheeks and body. Its textured skin was various shades of green.

Was it wearing a long skirt?

I’d studied mythology over the years, but I couldn’t recall a single green-skinned being off the top of my head.

The smallest of the pups—the white one—lunged at the swamp thing’s reply, baring its teeth, growling, the hair along its spine standing straight up. It was bigger than Duncan, who was still travel-sized, but my god, the puppy didn’t give a crap that it was squaring off with something about a hundred times bigger. The brave little wolf was freaking nuts.

The swamp-looking thing, though, wasn’t impressed from the way it leaned down and snarled right back at it, the sound ferocious.

The mini psycho didn’t give a crap. It lunged again, baring more teeth with every ounce of spirit in its body and more. It was so mad and cute at the same time.

I wanted to give it a hug and congratulate it. It wasn’t easy being brave. Standing up for yourself and others didn’t come naturally to most people, myself included. My neck was still sore because of it too.

“I’m gonna eat you first!” the green creature snarled.

I looked at Matti who raised his eyebrows, and I did the same right back just as the green-colored bully growled so loud I was surprised leaves didn’t fall off the branches they were clinging to. The sheer volume of it made me flinch. Even Matti reached up and covered his sensitive ears with a scowl.

That was settled then.

My best friend pointed at himself, then at me; the question silent but hanging there. But what was Matti going to do? Fight the thing in front of the kids? He might be one of the most easygoing people in the world most of the time, but under that trimmed mustache and those khaki pants, lived a predator. And like most werewolves I’d ever known, there were a handful of things that could make him tap into that other part of his personality that he usually kept stashed away. In that moment though, he was dressed to go boating, not to get into an altercation with a forest monster.

I didn’t like to hurt people, but I didn’t like bullies even more. And nobody messed with children. Over my dead body would that go down.

Only feeling a little resigned, but mostly irritated at this jerk, I held up my finger between us, silently volunteering for the job of intervening to help, earning me a smile of surprise.

Matti was bigger and stronger than me, there was no denying that. I was strong enough to hold a growing puppy in one arm for a decent amount of time, and I could usually carry all my grocery bags from my truck to my trailer without breaking a sweat as long as it wasn’t a long distance, but I was nothing like my werewolf friends. At five foot six, I was slightly taller than average. My strength was normal, I didn’t have sharp teeth, and I kept my fingernails pretty short because I hated when they got so long I accidentally bent one.

But… sometimes you didn’t have to use a sharp weapon or your physical strength to win. And I could say that, other than the two incidents with the people who had tried to take Duncan, I’d been able to get out of almost every unfortunate situation I had ever been in without resorting to other options. Like Hercules had his strength and mermaids had their beautiful but deadly songs, I had resources too.

Because, if this had been Duncan, I would hope someone would protect him from something dangerous.

And that’s what I told myself as I started walking toward the little group, calling out, “Hi, hello!” even though I was pretty sure I was close enough now that they could hear me crunching over branches and leaves despite the sounds of wildlife around us.

The green swamp thing’s attention snapped over to my direction, and it bared its teeth again. Two of the poor kids yelped; the little centaur/goat thing jumping between the two smaller pups, while the crazy white one growled for its life, snapping its teeth from behind the goat being. Kind of rude, but I guess I understood I was another stranger in a place I shouldn’t be, and they were already scared.

“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you, kids,” I said calmly as I approached the group slowly. It would have been nice if there was more space between the children and the swamp person. I smiled at the green being, trying to come off as friendly. “I’m Nina, and you are…?”

“None of your fucking business, idiot!”

All right then.

I pressed my lips together when what I really wanted to do was sigh. Some people could be so disappointing and predictable.

The green thing bellowed, “They’re mine!”

Just like that, I couldn’t help myself. I smiled again. “I hate to tell you that you might be in for a surprise if you take a DNA test. None of them look like you.”

Behind me, Matti snickered, and that just made me smile bigger—he was the worst influence, and there was a reason we couldn’t stand by each other around holiday dinner at Sienna’s parents—even as the swamp-looking thing’s facial expression morphed enough to actually look pretty pissed. “I will gorge on your organs and sip the marrow from your bones, human trash!”

Ouch. That was almost scary and hurtful. Almost.

I wasn’t the one threatening to eat babies and calling people idiots out loud.

It wasn’t done either. “When I’m done, I will use the children’s bones to pick your meat from my teeth!”

Matti burst out laughing. I couldn’t take him anywhere.

But I had to focus. “What I was trying to tell you is that I liked your creativity with that first line, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the second one before. Are you going to tell me what your name is before you try and pick my flesh from your teeth or…?” I shrugged.

The green creature went still, its “What?” at a lower volume, like it was confused all of a sudden.

I bet it didn’t get laughed at that often. Or maybe it did and that’s why it was so mean. That was something to think about.

“Never mind,” I called out before lifting my hand and waving toward myself. “Come on, kids. I’m taking you home, and I cross my heart, I won’t hurt you or let anything hurt you. Promise.”

From one blink to another, the slightly bigger wolf pup shimmered for a second, and in the next, in its place was a child. A boy. A boy dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and I thought, not for the first time, how incredible it was that magic worked that way. It wasn’t like in the movies where beings turned up naked going from a fur body into a skin one, or where they ripped through every item of clothing they had on when they turned into their other nature. Magic wasn’t so wasteful. Even seeing all this with my own eyes was hard to comprehend.

Whatever was on their person was there, and then it wasn’t when they changed. Once, Matti had held a hammer just to see what would happen, but that hadn’t survived the transition, and it ended up falling to the ground. Glasses, cell phones, keys, all made it… as long as they were in pockets.

Watching beings go from one form to another never got old; it was even cuter when they were young.

“We don’t know you!” the little boy shouted, and the ferocious white wolf snapped its jaws at the green thing, then at me.

Someone had lost control of the situation, and I wasn’t sure it knew it yet.

I lifted my hand toward them in greeting, palm out. “That’s fair. I’m Nina. My friend back there has a cousin that’s a member of your pack⁠—”

“Henri!” Matti offered, sounding closer. Like Henry but fancy with an i.

“No one is going anywhere,” the green thing claimed, rearing up to its full height, anger again visible in its sturdy shoulders and boxy frame.

Some part of me realized I should’ve been frightened. This green swampy-looking monster might be able to rip me apart if it had the chance. It had nails so long, they’d classify as talons. It was creepy-looking too, no offense to it. It wasn’t like it chose to be born a being that wasn’t going to win any beauty contests with its mildewy skin and snarly-looking hair. Butttttt… it would have to touch me first, and it didn’t know it yet, but that wasn’t going to work out in its favor.

I kept inching closer, stopping when I was about twenty feet away from the kids, close enough to see that the creature resembled a decaying green woman with wild hair, and the kids were even smaller than they’d seemed from a distance. They were young. Way too young to be out here by themselves. No parent would have let a child at their ages out and about without supervision.

They were going to be in so much trouble when they got home.

Was someone already looking for them?

I could worry about that later. For now, I had a big mythical being with an anger problem and a taste for young magical meat to deal with. To each their own and all, but what a jerk. If it was going to eat someone, it might as well pick on somebody who could at least fight for their life.

I shrugged at it one more time. “They’re going to come with me, and you’re going away, hopefully somewhere far from here. And that’s if you’re lucky and their pack doesn’t hunt you down first, and if you don’t piss me off between now and then.” I crouched and held my arm out to the kids before meeting the green creature’s dark eyes. It had no irises or white in them, just a nearly black pupil-looking eyeball.

The kids, though, didn’t react to my gesture.

The thing laughed, and in a move so fast that my eyes missed it, it reached down and swiped the white pup by the back of its neck—it cried even as it snapped its teeth some more—and the swamp monster held it up. “You think I would have anything to fear from—” it started to threaten.

I hope this works.

I pulled my bracelet off and dropped it. I couldn’t send a message if it was touching me in any way. By some miracle, though the wind had been nearly dead up until that point, a breeze picked up through the trees, carrying my scent upwind now that it wasn’t hidden by my obsidian beads.

Sending me straight to the green thing’s nose. The real me. All of me.

And I said, in the calmest voice I could, “You’re about to piss me off. Put that puppy down before we start playing a game of tag that you’re not going to like.”

It was obvious the second my scent reached it.

It worked exactly the way I’d hoped it would. The way it had before when dealing with beings with noses who could sense magic, which was almost all of them. There were very few who had survived this long without evolution gifting them a biological warning system. It was mostly only people like me, I thought, who didn’t have those kind of life-saving gifts.

I’d come across people who liked the way I smelled from the get-go. Some beings, like werewolves, were almost always a sure thing, but I’d met a hell of a lot more who started off hesitant, and just as many who were repelled. I didn’t blame them, but I’d been banking on the latter just now, hoping it would be enough without having to touch anybody.

The swamp thing’s body stiffened. The look in its eyes changed to a very, very uncomfortable one dang near instantly. Its mouth parted, its teeth disappeared as it quit snarling, and it took a step back reflexively. I would have bet money that it didn’t even know it had done that— backed away, that was.

Some people smelled like sugar and spice and everything nice. Some of the time it was part of their magic, part of the way they lured things to them. Every once in a while, they just smelled good because they were good. That was how my friends with good noses had explained it to me. You could smell lies, anger, jealousy, and love, among a whole lot of other emotions that made up a person.

Me? I was good in my heart and in my actions. I liked to believe everyone who knew me thought the same.

But I was well aware that to a lot of beings, I smelled like sugar, spice, and sometimes everything not nice.

And in that moment, in this forest that felt like it was dusted in good drugs and some of the most impressive trees I’d ever been around, the green thing did what I had tried to avoid as much as possible since the truth about one of my parents made its appearance in me: the swamp thing sensed the magic that made me as different as its made it.

And I wasn’t sure what exactly I expected from the children who had never met me before, but what happened next wouldn’t have been it in a million years.

The white wolf turned its head and bit the swamp thing’s wrist so hard the creature cried out and dropped it. The instant the puppy fell, the centaur/goat child picked it up in his arms, and they, along with the boy, were out of there. They ran. Straight for me.

Not away.

To me like their lives depended on it.

The boy—who had been the bigger pup before—kept going, but the centaur/goat child, with the white puppy in its arms, skid to a stop behind me. Hiding. Shivering. Terrified.

There was no way the boys were even ten years old. That just made me mad all over again.

“I would leave now,” I warned the green being as I bent at the waist to pick up my bracelet and put it back on.

When I stood up, the swamp creature was rigid. Its dark eyes seemed wider than they’d been a minute ago. It was breathing faster too. I could’ve sworn I heard a faint squeaky sound come from it.

“Now,” Matti demanded from behind, sounding even closer, stern like I didn’t think I’d ever heard before from my easygoing friend.

The creature that had to belong to a folklore I wasn’t familiar with took a step back, then another, and with a long look in our direction, it took off as Matti came up beside me, the wolf boy in his arms.

My best friend grinned the same grin he’d had his entire life—mischievous, likable, and friendly. Just with a mustache he’d let me tug at during one of our stops after I’d accused him of gluing it on his face, it was so thick. “You made it fart.” He sounded so proud.

I shrugged and smiled a little, and he smiled even wider.

“You smell like Henri,” the child he was carrying blurted out, leaning into Matti’s neck, taking a big ol’ whiff.

“He’s my cousin,” Matti explained, tilting his head to let the boy get up in there and check him out. It was the way of their world.

There must have been enough of a familiar olfactory connection that he understood they were related. Honey-gold eyes slid over, and the boy lifted his finger to point at my wrist, done checking Matti out and verifying his story. “What’s that?”

I tapped my bracelet. “This?” He’d never seen one before?

“Yeah,” the child answered, his eyes widening, his nostrils flaring. He had dark hair and skin just about as peachy brown as mine. “You smelled like…”

I didn’t mean to tense, but I couldn’t help it. Ugly. Death. Bad. They were all words I’d heard before more often than I’d wished if I had the choice… but only around certain beings.

“…yummy,” the goat child sighed from my other side, sounding… did he sound dreamy?

He’d moved closer without me noticing.

“Yummy,” the boy in Matti’s arms agreed in a voice that was definitely sweeter than anything I could have expected.

I blinked at the same time Matti gave me an I-told-you-so face.

The little werewolf boy made sense. I knew wolves liked me. The centaur/goat boy… that was new. Huh. “Really?” I didn’t like how hesitant that came out of my mouth, but it’d be a lie if I said I hadn’t been expecting him to devastate me.

The goat child leaned closer, pressing his nose to my hip without a second thought. “Mm-hmm,” he whispered.

All right then.noveldrama

“I think you smell like moonshine,” the boy in Matti’s arms claimed.

Freaking Matti snorted, and I had to press my lips together for a second. I squinted one eye. “I think you mean moonlight?” I offered.

The boy shrugged.

I smiled at him, ignoring Matti’s even louder snort, while the white puppy, who had been silent up until that point, decided to growl.

I barely managed not to smile at it too. It looked like an animatronic stuffed animal. Like a Samoyed and a polar bear had a baby, all white and soft, apart from the growling and snapping teeth. Up close, the puppy wasn’t as small as I’d thought. “You were really brave, mini wolf. You should be proud of yourself,” I told it, hoping it would understand I was on its side.

My words didn’t do anything. The pup growled again, and the goat child sighed. “Stop, Agnes.”

Its name was Agnes? I wanted to hug it. Give it a little smooch. I might lose a knuckle, but it might be worth it.

Agnes didn’t stop, but that was okay. I still wanted to hug her. I bet it’d be like holding a cloud.

Matti shifted the child in his arms, who under normal circumstances would have been past the age of being carried around. “Ready to head back and take them home?”

The sooner we got there and got an answer to my situation, the better, right? “Let’s do it,” I agreed.