Red Flag

[dray]

Characters: Boyce
When: A couple of weeks after Day's End
Wordcount: 2022
Summary: Boyce has an encounter that makes him question the prospect of ever fishing again.
Notes: Crossposted to rainbowfic


Boyce hadn't considered how difficult the next few weeks would be, though they had been mostly trying in the way that there was much anticipation. Owen had left as early as the sun began to rise, and though the forest had been wonderfully quiet since, there had been a pall to the waiting that left Boyce unable to fully relax. He checked in on his chicks regularly and set Trellis to guard them when he needed to go further than his garden patch... and he did need to go out, to Oraston, where Owen's contact had been waiting.

The tavern was small and mostly populated by local fishers and river workers who were heading south-west with the season's log run, and they were noisy, unpleasant people. Boyce tended to avoid the busiest parts of Oraston as a rule, so when he'd met with an otherwise mild-mannered man named Gurile, a foreman who managed to logging traffic through town, he was already sweating. It wasn't Gurile's fault, but Boyce was not a significantly practiced liar and he knew he stuck out like a sore thumb. He felt like everyone must be watching them when they shared a beer and Gurile talked--cheerful, a little like Owen in that he had that naturally careful air about him that made him feel both pithy and impenetrable. Boyce learned a lot about very banal goings-on around the town, and then, when Boyce's anxiety had peaked, he was offered for a walk around town. Boyce nearly backed out of the offer. It was too obvious that they might be up to something. The only time he'd felt this anxious before had been the first time he'd come into a town looking for a hook-up.

But Gurile had no malicious intentions. He merely asked Boyce if he lived near the stream that that fed the river, and whether he would be close to it for the next few days, and Boyce had given him a fair enough answer that didn't necessarily give his surreal home away. Gurile asked him what he knew about Owen's work, and Boyce honestly replied that he didn't have much to work with. They were passing acquaintances, really. In his heart, they weren't (there was too much that Boyce felt in debt for, and too many confusing feelings tied up with Owen's surprising visits) but in truth he didn't dig deeper than acquaintance with anyone. And that included Gurile, who got the hint.

It wasn't until the chicks had grown their first feathers and a few of Boyce's early greens had begun to come in that he got a signal that something had changed. He'd been going down to the water's edge every day and checking a red flag he'd left dangling in the current, where it could be relatively easily seen, to no effect. This evening, however, the flag was gone.

Boyce hauled his line in and looked at the neatly severed rope with some trepidation; the flag hadn't merely got caught in something coming down the stream and slipped off--he'd made sure it wouldn't, when he knotted the contraption together. The rope showed the barest signs of fraying, obviously tampered with by something more intentional than nature.

He sat on the edge of the stream, above the pebbly edge where the moss grew well, and pondered what to do about it. Was it the mer-creatures that Owen had mentioned, or was it something else? It was hard to say, knowing the Evermarches teemed with mischief. He tromped back to his cabin, where it had settled in like a protective old hound around the chicken coop, and found one of the scales that Owen had left him. It was hard to imagine the immense size of the creature this thing had come off of, being bigger around than the splay of his wide hand, but Boyce had every assurance that it was more than a monstrous fish. At the very least, it sounded like it knew how to talk... unless Owen had learned some strange fish-language, which was something he hadn't thought of until this moment.

Boyce frowned, twirled the scale over a few times, and then returned to the stream. It was getting dark now, and he was leery of bringing a lantern when he wasn't sure if the mer-creatures were shy. On the other hand, if he was pulled into the water and drowned, that would be a rather grisly end, hard to avoid in the gloam if these things meant more ill than good. Boyce could feel his temples growing clammy, cold with the breeze. He knew he was probably budding again, but there wasn't much to be done for it.

Approaching the bank with more caution than maybe it deserved, he set the scale down on the pebbles and then backed off, up near the top of the bank. He sat, steepling his hands together as he watched, and waited.

Nothing.

Full dark finally encroached, and he sighed, turning to leave. Even though he turned one last time, it was too dark to see much of anything. He curled into his hammock that night and worried, unable at first to fall asleep.

His dreams felt stronger than usual; now that he and Trellis had bonded in their strange way, he sometimes felt the cabin's living-wood sensations: the slow beat of water drawing up from its roots to the greenery around the roof, the slow soak of sun that helped sustain it. Tonight he felt more than heard strange vibrations, like a song that sank into his roots, fine and cold and refreshing. It was entrancing, old as time and rain. He strained to hear more, leaning towards it. It was just out of earshot, though it raised all the hairs on his body. Boyce struggled to move, felt bound as though by hundreds of ropes that dug into him as he tried to swing his great bulk forward, closer, just to hear a little better. Almost words, not quite...

He woke with a startled yell as he thrashed and overturned the hammock, which dumped him, completely undignified, upon the floor. He pulled his tangled ankle out of the twining vines and took a few seconds to swipe a paw through his hair, settling his hammering heart. His single-room cabin was not fully silent.

Boyce caught his breath and strained to listen, then scrambled to his feet as the singing finally parsed. He flew to the door in a panic and, throwing it open, nearly upended himself directly into the stream.

"Trellis!" He shouted, more an oath than a directive. His cabin had inched its way out of the clearing and then bulled through the trees in the night somehow. Now it was curled up right on the water's edge, porch and stairs unfurled like a ramp towards the stream.

The singing had stopped, and Boyce gulped cold night air as he leaned in the doorway. "I need a light," he said aloud, even as the vine cradling a single lantern dropped down to meet him before he'd begun his sentence.

He gratefully took the thing from the black-scorched tendril and lit the wick, holding it out over the black current of the water. No moon tonight; he could only see the light's reflection rippling thousands of times on the babbling current. He swallowed back the last vestiges of terror, drew a breath, and waited a few more moments for the singing to resume... Nothing. "H-ho there," he shouted, feeling at once silly and a deep, gut-stirring anxiety. "Owen sent you. I'm here for you."

He definitely did not imagine the splash that had come from up-stream. Flashing his lantern that way, he barely caught the thick coil of pale scales slip back under the current, and his skin prickled. Judging by that glimpse, he guessed this thing was bigger than man-sized.

From behind him, a flash of dark surged forward, up the ramp Trellis had made, a monstrous maw of needle-sharp teeth and a dripping frill fully splayed. A wet hand clamped onto his arm and Boyce jerked back before it could overpower him and throw the lantern down. "I mean no harm," he barked, straining not to throw a punch while his gut told him this was definitely the end.

"Who-ere did youu get the-is?" The thing had clamped its hand around him, forcing him to stay on the slanted porch. In its other hand, it waved the scale, the gesture languorous for all that its grip was like a vice.

"Owen," Boyce replied, trying to look the creature in the eye. He'd been under the impression that this thing would be, like classic tales, half-woman on top. This creature had a faintly elongated face, with humanoid features only by dint of forward facing eyes and slightly protruding nostrils. Its frill settled back down into something like hair as it squinted at him, two sets of eyelids nictating every so often against the bare air. Its chest and arms, human-like, were scaled and tined in a way that definitely was not, and the rest of its body dropped away into the current, snake-like, without an end. Boyce did not feel at all gratified by that realization, but this thing had been regarding him with real clarity, and it clicked its many teeth together, forming a far less menacing visage. "I'll get you back to the lake," Boyce said, aiming to sound a little more calm.

That was shattered when a second body raised itself onto the edge of the ramp, arms folded as it rested its head on its hands. It regarded him cautiously, asking, "Are youu dryad?"

The first creature jerked his arm as Boyce stared, prompting an answer. "Uh, not exactly. I'm a man."

They flicked a sharp exchange, and the second mer-creature looked... chastened? Disappointed? It was difficult to tell; its features were more or less frozen, this one with a white star-like patch running from brow to nose against its darker scales. But it sagged a little. Boyce noticed then that it had curled the red flag around its neck, like a kerchief.

"What do you know about the dryads?" He asked, unable to restrain himself.

"Not youur business," the first intoned. It pressed the scale into his chest, forcing him to take it back, before it lowered itself back into the water and, with a splash, settled itself further down the ramp.

Boyce pawed backward for a hook, which Trellis provided, and set the lantern aside so that he could sit in the doorway. "It might be," he replied. He patted the door jam and said, "this tree came from them."

"Ee-it is a ve-ery strange tree-ee," the star-patched mermaid said. Its voice was strangely lofty, like it was trying very hard to modulate from a long, slow hum.

"When we met," Boyce replied, careful about this because he hadn't shared it with anyone before, "I had no home. They... they were gracious. They grew one for me."

The dark mermaid chuffed from somewhere lower on its body--Boyce realized it had gills lining its ribcage, and wondered how it breathed in the air at all. "You are dryad."

"I--"

"The-is tale e-is old, the-e Ooaaohn who-o loves the-e dryad, who-o be-ecomes the-e wee-eeping wee-llow when e-it goes." Said matter of factly, but Boyce stared at the creature for a few seconds, parsing.

He shook his head, more out of disbelief than distrust. "You know of them, then."

Star nodded, eager. "Not all storie-es so bad." And then, after the first had shoved it, adding more carefully, "We-e miss them. Ver-y good pe-eople, not like hu-umans."

Boyce scratched the back of his thumb, unsure what to say. The pair of them stared at him expectantly--they weren't so terrifying when they were perched on the edge of the porch, though he couldn't help but compare their alien faces to Daphne's beautifully warm, wonderful smile. "I miss them, too."

"Tell us how we-e get home," the first said, voice slow, careful, softer now.

That, Boyce realized, was going to be a bigger problem than he'd thought.


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