Terry Brooks - Angel Fire East

"That's not the point!" he snapped. "When you make a commitment—"

"—you stick to it," she finished, having heard this chestnut at least a thousand times. "But I can't ignore the rest of my life, either."

Pick muttered something unintelligible and squirmed restlessly. A hundred and sixty-five years old, he was a sylvan, a forest creature composed of sticks and moss, conceived by magic, and born in a pod. In every woods and forest in the world, sylvans worked to balance the magic that was centered there so that all living things could coexist in the way the Word had intended. It was not an easy job and not without its disappointments; many species had been lost through natural evolution or the depredations of humans. Even woods and forests were destroyed, taking with them all the creatures who lived there, including the sylvans who tended them. Erosion of the forest magic over the passing of the centuries had been slow, but steady, and Pick declared often and ominously that time was running out.

"The park looks pretty good," she offered, banishing such thoughts from her mind, trying to put a positive spin on things for the duration of her afternoon.

Pick was having none of it. "Appearances are deceiving. There's trouble brewing."

"Trouble of what sort?"

"Ha! You haven't even noticed, have you?"

"Why don't you just tell me?"

They crossed the entry road and walked up toward the turnaround at the west end that overlooked the Rock River from the edge of the bluffs. Beyond the chain-link fence marking the park's farthest point lay Riverside Cemetery. She had not been out to the graves of her mother or grandparents in more than a week, and she felt a pang of guilt at her oversight.

"The feeders have been out," Pick advised with a grunt, "skulking about the park in more numbers than I've seen in a long time."

"How many?"

"Lots. Too many to count. Something's got them stirred up, and I don't know what it is."

Shadowy creatures that lurked on the edges of people's lives, feeders lapped up the energy given off by expenditure of emotions. The darker and stronger the emotions, the greater the number of feeders who gathered to feast. Parasitic beings who responded to their instincts, they did not judge and they did not make choices. Most humans never saw them, except when death came violently and unexpectedly, and they were the last image to register before the lights went out for good. Only those like Nest, who were born with magic themselves, knew there were feeders out there.

Pick gave her a sharp look, his pinched wooden face all wizened and rough, his gnarled limbs drawn up about his crooked body so that he took on the look of a bird's nest. His strange, flat eyes locked on her. "You know something about this, don't you?"

She nodded. "Maybe."

She told him about Findo Gask and the possibility that John Ross was returning to Hopewell. "A demon's presence would account for all the feeders, I expect," she finished.

They walked up through the playground equipment and picnic tables that occupied the wooded area situated across the road from the Indian mounds and the bluffs. When they reached the turnaround, she slowed, suddenly aware that Pick hadn't spoken a word since she had told him about Findo Gask and John Ross. He hadn't even told her what work he wanted her to do that day in the park.

"What do you think?" she asked, trying to draw him out.

He sat motionless on her shoulder, silent and remote. She crossed the road to the edge of the bluffs and moved out to where she could see the frozen expanse of the Rock River. Even with the warmer temperatures of the past few days, the bayou that lay between the near shore and the raised levee on which the railroad tracks had been laid remained frozen. Beyond, where the wider channel opened south on its way to the Mississippi, the Rock was patchy with ice, the swifter movement of the water keeping the river from freezing over completely. That would change when January arrived.

"Another demon," Pick said softly. "You'd think one in a lifetime would be enough."

She nodded wordlessly, eyes scanning the tangle of tree trunks and limbs immediately below, searching for movement in the lengthening shadows. The feeders, if they were out yet, would be there, watching.

"Some sylvans go through their entire lives and never encounter a demon." Pick's voice was soft and contemplative. "Hundreds of years, and not a one."

"It's my fault," she said.

"Not hardly!"

"It is," she insisted. "It began with my father."

"Which was your grandmother's mistake!" he snapped.

She glanced down at him, all fiery-eyed and defensive of her, and she gave him a smile. "Where would I be without you, Pick?"

"Somewhere else, I expect."

She sighed. Over the past fifteen years she had attempted to move away from the park. To leave the park was unthinkable for Pick; the park was his home and his charge. For the sylvan, nothing else existed. It was different for her, of course, but Pick didn't see it that way. Pick saw things in black-and-white terms. Even an inherited obligation—in this case, an obligation passed down through six generations of Freemark women to help care for the park—wasn't to be ignored, no matter what. She belonged here, working with him, keeping the magic in balance and looking after the park. But this was all Pick knew. It was all he had done for more than one hundred fifty years. Nest didn't have one hundred fifty years, and she wasn't so sure that tending the magic and looking after the park was what she wanted to spend the rest of her life doing.

She looked off across the Rock River, at the hazy midafternoon twilight beginning to steal out of the east as the shortened winter day slipped westward. "What do you want to do today, Pick?" she asked quietly.

He shrugged. "Too late to do much, I expect." He did not say it in a gruff way; he simply sounded resigned. "Let's just have a look around, see if anything needs doing, and we can see to it tomorrow." He sniffed and straightened. "If you think you can spare the time, of course."

"Of course," she echoed.

They left the bluffs and walked down the road from the turnaround to where it split, one branch doubling back under a bridge to descend to the base of the bluffs and what she thought of as the feeder caves, the other continuing on along the high ground to the east end of the park, where the bulk of the woods and picnic areas were located. They followed the latter route, working their way along the fringes of the trees, taking note of how everything was doing, not finding much that didn't appear as it should. The park was in good shape, even if Pick wasn't willing to acknowledge as much. Winter had put her to sleep in good order, and the magic, dormant and restful in the long, slow passing of the season, was in perfect balance.

The world of Sinnissippi Park is at peace, Nest thought to herself, glancing off across the open flats of the ball diamonds and playgrounds and through the skeletal trees and rolling stretches of woodland. Why couldn't her world be the same?

But she knew the answer to that question. She had known it for a long time. The answer was Wraith.

Three years earlier, she had been acclaimed as the greatest American long-distance runner of all time. She had already competed in one Olympics and had won a pair of gold medals and set two world records. She had won thirty-two consecutive races since. She owned a combined eight world titles in the three and five thousand. She was competing in her second Olympics, and she had won the three by such a wide margin that a double in the five seemed almost a given.

She remembered that last race vividly. She had watched the video a thousand times. She could replay it hi her own mind from memory, every moment, frame by frame.