Terry Brooks - Running With The Demon

"I'm not supposed to go into the park," Nest advised him solemnly, and glanced furtively over her shoulder at the house again. "Gran says I can only go into the park with her."

"Hnimm. Well, yes, I suppose that makes sense." Pick rubbed at his beard and grimaced. "Parental rules. Don't want to transgress." He brightened. "But that's just for another year or so, not forever. Just until you're a little older. Your lessons could begin then. You'd be just about the right age, matter of fact. Meanwhile, I've got an idea. A little magic is all we need. Here, pick me up and put me in your hand. Gently, now. You're not one of those clumsy children who drop things, are you?"

Nest reached down with her hands cupped together, and Pick stepped into them. Seating himself comfortably, he ordered her to lift him up in front of her face.

"There, hold me just like that." His hands wove in feathery patterns before her eyes, and he began to mutter strange words. "Now close your eyes," he told her. "Good, good. Keep them closed. Think about the park. Think about how it looks from your yard. Try to picture it in your mind. Don't move …"

A warm, syrupy feeling slipped through Nest's body, beginning from somewhere behind her eyes and flowing downward through her arms and legs. Time slowed.

Then abruptly she was flying, soaring through the twilight high over Sinnissippi Park, the wind rushing past her ears and across her face, the lights of Hopewell distant yellow pinpricks far below. She was seated astride an owl, the bird's great brown–and–white feathered wings spread wide. Pick was seated in front of her, and she had her arms about his waist for support. Amazingly, they were the same size. Nest's heart lodged in her throat as the owl banked and soared with the wind currents. What if she were to fall? But she quickly came to realize that the motion would not dislodge her, that her perch astride the bird was secure, and her fear turned to exhilaration.

"This is Daniel," Pick called back to her over his shoulder. In spite of the rush of the wind, she could hear him clearly. "Daniel is a barn owl. He carries me from place to place in the park. It's much quicker than trying to get about on my own. Owls and sylvans have a good working relationship in most places. Truth is, I'd never get anything done without Daniel."

The owl responded to a nudge of Pick's knees and dropped

earthward. "What do you think of this, Nest Freemark?" Pick

asked her, indicating with a sweep of his hand the park below.

Nest grinned broadly and clutched the sylvan tightly about

the waist. "1 think it's wonderful!"

They flew on through the twilight, crossing the playgrounds and the ballparks, the pavilions and the roadways. They soared west over the rows of granite and marble tombstones that dotted the verdant carpet of Riverside Cemetery, east to the tree–shaded houses of Mineral Springs, south to the precipitous cliffs and narrow banks of the sprawling Rock River, and north to the shabby, paint–worn town houses that fronted the entry to the park. They flew the broad expanse of the Sin–nissippi to the wooded sections farther in, skimming the tops of the old growth, of the oaks, elms, hickories, and maples that towered out of the growing darkness as if seeking to sweep the starry skies with their leafy branches. They found the long slide of the toboggan run, its lower section removed and stored beneath, waiting for winter and snow and ice. They discovered a doe and her fawn at the edge of the reedy waters of the bayou, back where no one else could see. Deep within the darkest part of the forest they tracked the furtive movement of shadows that, cloaked in twilight's gray mystery, might have been something alive.

They swept past a massive old white oak, one much larger than its fellows, its trunk gnarled by age and weather, its limbs crooked and twisted in a way that suggested immense fury and desperation captured in midstride, as if a giant had been frozen in place and transformed one bare instant before it had fallen upon the world it now shadowed.

Then a flash of lamplight struck Nest full in the eyes as they crossed back toward Woodlawn, and she blinked in surprise, momentarily blinded.

"Nest!"

It was Gran calling. She blinked again.

"Nest! It's time to come inside!"

She was sitting once more on the crossboard of her sandbox, staring out into the darkening stretch of her yard toward the park. Her hands were cupped before her, but they were empty. Pick was gone.

She didn't tell Gran about him that night, wary by now of telling anyone anything about the park and its magic, even Gran. She waited instead to see if Pick would return. Two days later he did, appearing at midday while she poked along the hedgerow, sitting on a limb above her head, waving a skinny stick limb in greeting, telling her they had to hurry, there were things to do, places to go, and people to see. Then, when she did tell Gran about him, that very night, the old woman simply nodded, as if the sylvan's appearance was the most natural thing in the world, and told her to pay close attention to what Pick had to say.

Pick was her closest friend after that, closer to her than her school friends, even those she had known all her life. She couldn't explain why that was. After all, he was a forest creature, and for most people such creatures didn't exist. On the surface of things, they had nothing in common. Besides being a sylvan, he was a hundred and fifty years old and a big grouch. He was fastidious and temperamental. He had no interest in the playthings she tried to share with him or in the games she favored.

What drew them together, she decided when she was older, what bonded them in a way nothing else could, was the park. The park with its feeders and its magic, its secrets and its history, was their special place, their private world, and even though it was public and open and everyone could come visit, it belonged only to them because no one else could appreciate it the way they could. Pick was its caretaker, and she became his apprentice. He taught her the importance of looking for damage to the woods and injury to the creatures that inhabited them. He explained to her the nature of the world's magic, how it inhabited everything, why there was a balance to it, and what could be done on a small scale to help keep it in place. He instructed her on how to deal with the feeders when they threatened the safety of those who could not protect themselves. He enlisted her aid against them. He gave her an insight into the coexisting worlds of humans and forest creatures that changed her life.

He told her, eventually, that Gran and her mother and three generations of her mother's side of the family before Gran had helped him care for the park.

She was thinking of this as she crossed the backyard that Saturday morning. She paused to give a sleeping Mr. Scratch a rub behind his grizzled ears and glanced about in vain for Miss Minx. The day was hot and"slow, and the air was damp and close. Her friends wanted to go swimming, but she hadn't made up her mind whether to join them. She was still preoccupied with Two Bears and not yet ready to think of anything else. She squinted up at the sun, full and brilliant in a cloudless sky, brushed at a fly that flew into her face, and moved to the hedgerow and the park. The grass beneath her feet was brittle and dry and crunched softly. Questions pressed in about her. Would the spirits of the Sinnissippi appear tonight as Two, Bears believed? Would they reveal to her something of the future? Only to her? What would they say? How would she I respond? She brushed at her curly hair, ungluing a handful of strands from her forehead. Sweat was dampening her skin already, and a fresh mosquito bite had appeared on her forearm. She scratched at it ruefully. She had asked Pick repeatedly why it was that she was the only one who could see the feeders, or see him, or know about the magic in the park. Pick had told her the first time she asked that she wasn't the only one, her grandmother could see the forest creatures and the feeders and knew more about the magic than Nest did, and there were others like her in other places. After that, when she narrowed the scope of the question so that it excluded Gran and people in other places, Pick brushed the matter aside by saying that she was lucky, was all, and she ought to be grateful and let it go at that. But Nest couldn't let it go, not even now, after all these years | of living with it. It was what set her apart from everyone else. It was what defined her. She would not be satisfied until she understood the reasons behind it.