CW: mention of sexual assault

The sun was low in the sky when he left the cabin to head to the dropoff area. With a sick man on his couch, it was more important than ever to get fresh supplies every night. He’d written a list of special supplies he’d need to get the man back on his feet and tucked it into the lockbox - Frankie would see it when he made the deliveries.

Discomfited by the idea of leaving the man alone in his cabin, and by the thought of the wolf pack waking up to begin their hunt, Caleb’s steps were long and fast, striding through the underbrush that kept creeping over the path he wore in every night. His boots clapping on the hard ground, and the distant chatter of crows, were the only sounds he heard in the woods this evening.

He tried to put his axe out of his thoughts as he walked. He’d tried hard, as he’d packed the lockbox, to convince himself he’d been seeing things. He’d never had to do such a thing before. The world, once it’d put itself in order before his eyes, had always been this stark, offensive scape - prone to attack more than not, a dizzying rush of wants and works. He loved the woods so because it put him on even ground. Here, he was no more than himself, and made nothing more in the eyes of anyone, other than this small town, and his beloved.

Thinking about Frankie had been little better than thinking about the unnatural. Those off-color patches on his skin haunted him. He wanted to think about the man - the scent of him, his infuriating camper van, the laughter they’d shared. All of these things had been the pattern of his thoughts for eight years now, sinking into him like color to a fabric, but now this stain was sinking in too and he couldn’t resist it. He knew little about melanoma, and most of what he knew came from Frankie’s mumblings about it last night. Perhaps he would live, if he got treated fast - but he was lingering here, out of necessity for one, and, Caleb suspected, out of his sake for another.

Frankie could leave his van no easier than Caleb could leave his cabin. Frankie would have to, to save his life; Caleb knew he would leave too, to save Frankie. And he was certain the book-scribbling van-rat knew it, and wanted to spend the extra time convincing Caleb not to. He’d been there the last time Caleb had been in a city - his stroke last year had required hospital time, and Caleb always felt like a siege in civilized ground. Fool man would try to spare Caleb, as much as he’d deny such a notion -

Or maybe he’s spending as much time in Froδi as he can, a traitorous thought whispered in his head, because he thinks it will be the last time he’ll ever have in his hometown.

With all these thoughts swarming his mind, Caleb didn’t notice the crowd by the drop spot until he was out into the clearing by the road. He blinked, bringing his thoughts back to the present. Three people were standing there, next to the bulletin, in the midst of a conversation that had clearly paused itself upon Caleb’s approach.

Ståle was there, Caleb recognized, once he was fully back to himself out of the clouds - the man stood a head-and-shoulder’s width below Caleb’s six feet and three inches, his scraggly brown beard a pale shadow of Caleb’s own. Next to him was Darla, looking imperious as ever with ginger-pale hair flowing down past her waist and mere three inches below Caleb’s own height. The look in Darla’s eyes told him she felt disagreeable about something - the nervous twitch of Ståle’s nose, like a wary rabbit, belied some sort of nervousness or uncertainty.

But they were mere moons, revolving around the clear leader of their party - Stacy, indomitable, severe, little taller than Ståle but with miles more presence than him. Her prematurely white hair was pinned away from her face and cut to a sensible length above her shoulders, and her dark eyes glaring over a beaky nose brought to mind that of a hawks’, a cunning, uncompromising stare that never failed to command a room. She had never had children that Caleb knew of, but if she had, they would have been the lieutenants to her authority; as it was, her two employees at the pharmacy filled that role, as equally cowed by her as they were unswayable by the rest of the masses. It wasn’t merely out of respect for her father that Caleb spoke to her with great politeness.

“Good to see you before nightfall, Caleb,” Darla spoke first, her arms crossed as though daring an objection from even so simple a statement. Ståle seemed to gulp; Stacy narrowed her eyes.

Caleb nodded to each of the three in turn, feeling some sense in him tense up, something that only ever happened under social pressure. “Evening,” he grunted, and bent to drop off the lockbox. Frankie should be coming by any minute to pick it up; Caleb had remembered to drag out the stash of extra cash he’d mentioned. Maybe he could save him from whatever situation he was sure he’d walked in on. “Why’re you all out here?”

Ståle traded looks with Darla, but Stacy was not one to prevaricate. “We’re chasing a criminal, Caleb,” she stated, staring at Caleb in an almost accusing manner. “Ståle saw him running out this way earlier and we came to see if we could find him.”

“Ah.” Froδi was such a small town that crime was rare, practically a novelty. It could only have been someone coming in from the outside, hoping to find easy pickings out in the woods. “What’s happened?”

A darkness fell into each of the three faces, and Caleb knew before anyone spoke that it was bad. “Eva,” Ståle said heavily, “Magret and Gunnar’s girl. She’s dead.”

Eva. Frankie had mentioned her just the night before, swooning after the other town girl Anne with stars in her eyes, stars Frankie had recognized. Caleb felt a weight in his chest and knew he sagged. “I’m sorry,” was all he could say.

“She’s not just dead,” Stacy’s husky voice cut in. “She’s been murdered. An outsider broke into her home, brutalized her before doin’ the deed.”

Caleb stared at Stacy, tension seizing up his arms and the weight in his chest.

“He’ll be the one we’re chasin’,” Ståle added, indicating the road. “Rakel saw him leavin’ the house last night and told me ‘fore rushing over to check on the lass. She was just dead, blood still warm. We went after him, lost him for a while. I was coming up this road to let you ‘n Frankie know when I spotted him in the brush, went back to get some reinforcements. Not long away from this area now.”

“He’ll spot your cabin, without a doubt,” Darla put in. “Got worried for you. I can come back, help keep watch with you, keep you safe.”

The image of the bleeding man on his couch wavered in Caleb’s minds eye. His hands began shaking.

“This man,” he said, fighting to keep his voice under control. “Anyone hurt him?”

Eyebrows went up.

“Not that we did,” Stacy replied. “Though surely we would’ve had we caught ‘im.”

“Rakel didn’t see so,” Ståle added.

“Why do you ask?” Darla said.

“Saw blood on the ground,” Caleb made up on the spot. “Something stumblin’ out there. Might’ve hurt someone else.”

“Might’ve,” Stacy said darkly, “or could’ve been hurt himself. Heard a wolf pack out there last night. We lost ‘im for most the night and most the day. Plenty of time for a wolf to smell the blood on ‘im.”

“Aye,” Caleb agreed automatically. “I can keep my eye out.”

“I should come back to the cabin with you,” Darla insisted, taking a step forward. “More folk’ll come and help Stacy with the search, but if he finds you in the cabin by yourself -”

“I got my axe,” he growled, and hefted it for emphasis.

There was a slight bend in the handle. He wanted to throw it in the man’s head right then and there, for ruining Darla’s craftsmanship on top of everything else.

Darla, the closest person he had to a friend in town, was shaking her head, concern in her face. “You got an axe,” she agreed, “but he’s got a willingness to kill. Your axe could be too slow for him.”

“Not a chance,” Caleb snarled out, thinking about Eva dead on the ground. “I see him, he’s a dead man.”

“But if he sees you first,” Stacy insisted, then paused as Frankie’s camper van rolled up.

Upon seeing their group in front of his lockbox pickup, he stuck his head out the window, looking worried. “What’s happening, all of you? Caleb, it’s almost night.”

“Aye,” Caleb said, looking up at the darkening sky. The sunset colors had faded and the clouds were tinged with green. “I need to be headin’ home.”

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“I’m comin’ with,” Darla said again.

“Come back in the morning. I’ll be ready for ‘im tonight.” Caleb noticed in a dim, vague sort of way that he always started talking like the people he spent time around, and had already picked up Stacy’s habit of clipping out him like a cough in the throat. “Tomorrow, I’ll need someone watchin’ my back. Tonight, I’ll lay into him all myself.”

Darla began to protest again, but Caleb was over it. He made eye contact with Frankie for a long few heartbeats, a hello and a goodbye with a single connecting stare, then turned to leave, his axe hefted in his hand. He thought he heard Darla start after him, but Stacy called her back with “you’ll only get lost runnin’ after the damn fool, it’s already dark.”

Caleb stalked the rest of the way to his cabin, shaking with rage, insensate to the night forest around him - something he knew he ought to regret, with the wolves on the prowl, but the imagined picture of Eva on the ground, wide eyes pouring, spurred him onward, spurred him to plant his axe in the intruder’s throat.

And he’d bandaged him, and soothed him, when the damn man had killed a girl! Broken into his house to hide from the crime, on top of it all!

Seeing his front door still splintered and broken-in didn’t improve his mood. He strode forward and flung it open, his eyes falling to the couch before the fireplace.

The man wasn’t unconscious anymore. He was crouched before the burning fire, a look of combined fascination and terror on his face. This face whipped towards Caleb as he approached. “Whither went thou?” the man demanded, taking an ungainly step back. “Thou wast absent upon my waking, left me with this infernal blaze mere inches from my self -”

“You killed a girl,” Caleb growled, and pointed the axe at him.

The man stiffened in shock, and looked at Caleb with pain in his eyes. “Aye, the innocent girl is dead by mine actions,” he said, his shoulders drooping. “Were it not for my slow mind, my enemy would -”

“You killed Eva!” Caleb roared, and charged forward.

The man’s eyes widened and he darted to the side, but his hip gave way and he cried out in pain, falling to the ground. Caleb slammed against the wall, his axe held out in front of him, and pushed off it, his only thought to bury the axe in the man’s head.

The man rolled to the side, under the table, narrowly missing the axe blow to the ground. He waved his hand with a groan of pain, and the floor around the buried axe suddenly crinkled, pushing up around the weapon and pinning it in place. Caleb’s muscles strained, but the axe remained in the floor. He looked up with wild eyes and lunged forward, intending to use his bare hands.

With another grunt of exertion, the man reached up and tossed a dining chair at him. Caleb dodged it to the side, but abruptly his feet stopped moving and he slammed bodily into the floor, sending sparks through his vision. He clawed forward, but he was stuck fast; looking behind him, he saw the chair had fused with the ground over his ankles, binding them in place. He tried to kick out and free them, but the wood only creaked - summoning all his rage and his strength with an animalistic snarl, he kicked again, but to no avail.

“Please, stranger,” he heard the man speaking ahead of him, “allow me my defense. If thou find it wanting, I shan’t offer more resistance. I am very weak already.”

Caleb looked forward and growled low in his throat.

The man, who was backed against the wall of the cabin and holding a hand to his hip wound, gulped, but settled in and began speaking. “My name is Silas Green. I am a lawmaker in my… whence I came.”

“Can’t you talk normal?”

The man - Silas Green - blinked, and despite his bleeding wounds, lifted his chin with a haughty expression. “I speak perfectly normally. It is thou who speaks oddly to my ears.”

“You speak like those old Shakespeare books Frankie keeps tellin’ me to read,” Caleb stated. “I could barely read one line in five.”

“I cannot help thee,” Silas huffed. “I have my own trouble parsing thy rough speech.”

“Whatever. Continue sayin’ what you were sayin’.”

Silas rubbed his fingers together, shifting uncomfortably. Caleb could see the bandage bleeding through on his hip. “I came to thy town in pursuit of a criminal,” he said eventually. “One who had already committed a murder. I was the only one who could chase him. He eluded me for days, but I did not lose his trail, and we encountered one another in the house of an innocent. He had already attacked her, and I burst into the house in the midst of his wicked deed.”

Silas’ eyelids fluttered, and as he continued on, his voice choked, though he didn’t falter. “He held a knife to her throat and commanded that I should leave. He said he would kill the girl if I did not obey. I would not add another to the roster of the dead. I complied to his request and exited. I did not intend to abandon the girl, nor leave the criminal unattended, and I deliberated on what course of action I should next take. I deliberated too long, and I heard a short, sharp scream, cut off quickly.”

Caleb stared at Silas with a frown, the rage draining from his grip against the table legs. Tears were running down the man’s face but he kept his gaze fixed on the ground and kept speaking, his fingers rubbing together. “I rushed inside to see her lifeless body on the ground. My enemy was in flight, but I could yet catch him. I captured him against the door, as I have captured you upon the ground. I intended to bind him that I may return him to our land and stand him trial for his crimes. He wounded me however, here in the leg, and in my pain he was able to burst free from his bonds. He would have killed me, and I was forced to kill him, upon a sharpened wood skewer. He hanged there and died quickly, I saw it in his eyes.”

He took a long, shuddering breath. “I intended to return to my homeland, but I could barely walk, and I heard commotion in the town, who must have heard the attack. I was sighted as I left the house the second time. I ran into the woods, deep in the night, and heard the sound of howling wolves alongside the shouts of the town pursuers. They pursued me, hunting me as I had hunted my own quarry. The lead of the pack caught up to my slow steps and bit me.” He indicated his hip, only now realizing the extent of the injury. “Oh, God’s teeth -”

“An’ then you burst in my door, bled all over my couch, and waved my own axe in my face,” Caleb finished the account in a sour tone. “After I’d patched you up, no less.”

“Mine enemy is a canny one,” Silas insisted, pressing the bandage against his body and back again, as though that might heal his bleeding wound. “I cannot discount the possibility of co-conspirators.”

“For a detective of some kind, you sure can’t bandage worth a damn,” Caleb commented. “You mind lettin’ me up so I can fix it?”

Silas regarded him with suspicion on his face, but a brief shuffle to the side caused him to wince and cry out in pain. “I don’t seem to have much choice,” he muttered. “Either I die by my wounds now, or I perish through thy retribution.”

He tapped the soaked bandage a few more times, wincing each time, before giving in. Caleb felt the binding of the wood loosen from his legs, and he stood up, stretching his limbs from their stiff position on the floor, before walking around the couch to pick up his first-aid kit.

Silas watched him warily as he approached. “Can you stand?” Caleb asked gruffly.

“If I ask for an arm, will you offer one?”

“Yeah.” Caleb stuck out his elbow and Silas levered himself to his feet, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. The stumble back to the couch seemed to leave him in agony.

“You shouldn’t have been standin’ so quickly,” Caleb muttered, keeping his elbow out until the man was as settled as he was going to be. “You only made the damn thing worse.”

“I felt unsafe in a stranger’s house,” Silas whispered through clenched teeth. “I desired to find an exit before thy return.”

Caleb lifted up the soaked bandage and saw the gash still bleeding. He checked for infection, looking around the edges for bright red or blue veins, and found nothing - it must have reopened when he was ducking around, dodging axe swings. He grunted to himself and brought up the rag to clean it again. “I still have questions,” he warned the man.

“If I may ask one before thee,” Silas cut in. Despite his clear pain, he opened his eyes and looked right at Caleb. “Why didst thou believe me?”

“‘Cause you’re tellin’ the truth.” Caleb grunted.

“How knowest thou?”

Caleb turned and raised an eyebrow at him. “I just do,” he said.

“Guilty men may lie to escape their judgement.” A look of pain crossed his face, and Caleb didn’t think it had to do with the hip injury. “I am surely a guilty man.”

“That’s why I know you ain’t lying,” Caleb said, turning back to the wound. “Liars pretend they ain’t guilty, an’ pretend everything else along with.”

When Silas opened his mouth to say something else, Caleb dabbed the cloth on the injury. Whatever he was about to say got cut off with a groan of pain. “My questions now,” Caleb said sharply.

He quizzed the man as he cleaned the wound a second time and prepared another bandage. In the process he learned, between cringes of pain and furtive hesitations: that Silas came from the mountain nearby; he was the only lawman of his people, of whom were few already; and apparently, whatever he did with wood was “nothing special.”

He absolutely refused to elaborate further on it, fixing Caleb with a sharp look and saying only that it “‘twasn’t his secret to divulge.” Though that was one of the points Caleb most wanted answers on, realizing Silas wouldn’t talk, he let it lie as he extracted the complete tale, or as complete a tale as Silas would give, on the incident the night before.

“Somethin’ doesn’t add up,” he muttered as he applied the new bandage. “Hold still, damn you. Stacy said there weren’t any other bodies in the house aside from Eva’s. Can your enemy turn invisible?”

Silas drew a frown. “Not to my knowledge,” he replied, looking troubled. “He was a shapeshifter of certain renown. It was in his shifted state that he murdered one of my people.”

“What’d he shape into?”

“Beasts, of all sort. He was one of a kind. All the greater tragedy he came to misuse it.”

“Aye,” Caleb muttered, making sure the bandage was sealed properly. “Now, I ain’t made of gauze out here, so quit ruining these things and lie still for a while. Let the damn thing do it’s job.”

“Master Caleb?”

Caleb raised his head to see Silas gazing over his shoulder, his face gone white. Caleb turned to see where he was looking.

In his window, he saw the faint tinge of pale blue dawn, and the visage of his friend Darla, shocked and furious.