Tom Fiddle had just settled into his bed when his hypnagogic light show on the back of his tired eyelids came to an abrupt finish because of the sound of someone pounding on his door. What the hell? He thought for a moment and decided he was annoyed. Yes, that seemed about right.
It didn’t change the fact that he’d have to get up. This also annoyed him.
He glanced at the clock, which said 8:30 p.m. He’d barely fallen asleep. After returning from the lawyer, he’d worked in his barn on his latest project, a baptismal font for a Church in Nova Scotia.
Trefan had asked him if they ought to go searching for the surveyor the lawyer had mentioned, but Tom had only growled that he knew they were up at Overlook and not to worry. He switched on the wifi for the raincusi scholars be he’d limped over to the barn.
He’d worked all afternoon and the crafting and shaping had worked its effect on him, and had eased the stress of the early part of the day. When the grain of the wood he was shaping had started to blur under his fingertips and his withered leg to ache so badly he could not ignore it, he returned to the yurt, muttered a pain reduction spell before he made some food for the raincusi. He’d gone to bed as soon as he finished cleaning the dishes.
In the dark room with the longest wall matching the curved wall of the yurt, Tom reached for a triangular handle hanging from a chain above his head. He pulled himself upright with a sleepy groan, swinging his legs to the right. He straightened the fabric of the shorts he wore. A bony leg, brown from long exposure to the sun, stuck out of the left leg of the shorts he wore. While the left leg was bony, the right leg was emaciated, as if a child from a poster begging for help for a third world country facing famine had lent his tragically thin and misshapen to the 80-year-old man.
The pounding continued. Tom thrust his left arm towards a corner by the door. He gestured and his cane nearby the door shivered, turned its crooked head towards the bed, and then bent itself before springing into motion, like a grasshopper.
The cane sprang up, hit the light switch while following its trajectory and fell back to the wooden floor in the yellowish glow. The cane landed, tip-first, on the floor in front of Alex’s right side. Momentum carried the other end upward at just the right deceleration to land in Tom’s right hand. The small man, close to five foot tall at most, used the cane to balance himself while supporting most of his weight with his left leg. He smoothed the fabric of his shorts over the remains of his right leg.
The pounding continued, maybe even harder. “Hold on to your damn shorts, I’m coming!”
He headed towards his door, stuck his cane into the sleeve of a bathrobe hanging on a hook. The robe slid down the cane, over Tom’s left arm, and he was able to shoulder it on as he walked into the common room of the yurt in a practiced swinging gait.
He stopped by the entrance to the two guest rooms he maintained. He spoke through the thin walls to his guests. “Just stay in your rooms. I’ll handle this.”
“How did they get past the wards?” A muffled voice responded.
“I don’t know. Maybe I forgot to renew them.” He hadn’t forgotten. Tom kept a meticulous calendar, and he distinctly remembered recharging the camouflage spells just a few days ago.
The pounding continued as he made his way across the living room. He glowered at his cane as if it were a nuisance, but he used it almost as a crutch to keep all of his weight off his right side. The tip came down on a book one of his guests must have dropped. The polished wood of the cane separated into two pieces, like a piece of partially split kindling. One piece completed the bracing motion to the floor to support Tom’s weight. The other branch of the cleave struck the book on the spine, causing it to slide to the two child-sized backpacks tossed near the front door.
Tom glanced around the open room, checking for anything that might alarm a surprise a guest. Seeing none, he turned the knob of the door, braced himself with his now rejoined cane, and pulled open the door.
Rain poured down on a dark-haired woman in her late fifties. She was wearing a green jacket and water drenched her clothing, but Tom could see that she was trim.
That’s about all he noticed before she began speaking rapidly.
“Oh thank God! Thank you! We saw each other on the bridge this morning. I need your help. My dog is injured under the island bridge. Do you have a canoe? I…” She paused in her explanation, Tom seeing her gaze focus on his withered leg.
He could see the hope falter in her brown eyes, and then resolve rise up to push on.
She coughed, took a deep breath as if to collect herself, and then said “Do you have a phone?”
Alex paused to blink his eyes before responding. “No. I do not have a phone. What happened to your dog?”
He was confused, because the wards he maintained for the island should have kept the woman from even reaching his door, and should of at least warned him of a stranger and their dog on the island.
The storm he’d expected, but it was much stronger than his augury had predicted. He wondered at the forces that seemed to be moving around his existence.
Thunder rumbled, but the frame of the house remained steady.
The woman said, “Something attacked my dog and she’s on a rock in the lake beneath the bridge. She’s bleeding and I cannot reach her. Can I come in? Do you have a landline or…know someone with a boat?”
Tom thought to himself, worry about how she made it here undetected later. She said her dog was in danger from a predator. He knew where and what all the predators were on the island. None of them would have attacked a dog.
“Hold on for one moment.” Then he shut the door in her face.
He turned his back to the door from the inside, holding his cane to his chest and sighing. Tom then cast his mind over the island, and there she was, the injured dog, a glowing ember of pain and fear near the bridge. Something dark moved within the connection he held with the island. It was hard to pinpoint, but it moved along the northeastern shore, near the old summer camp.
The pounding at the door started again. Tom grimaced, and turned once again, bracing himself with the cane. The cane bent to provide better fulcrum for Tom.
He opened the door again, and stepped out on the porch with the woman.
“Let’s go.” He spoke in a firm voice. He moved past her to the steps, hobbling, almost hopping. When he reached the steps he took them two at a time. The rain continued to pour down.
Alex followed. “I don't think you can help. Can you at least drive me to my vehicle?”
Tom ignored her questions, but went off into the storm, leaving Alex open-mouthed.
She stumbled after him, “What are you doing? Why are you leaving? I need help.”
Tom continued to leave her questions unanswered, concentrating on swinging his cane forward and rocking along. He ignored the rain, and his eyes flickered left and right as he followed a trail through the forest. He could see the worn path, worn because of his own passage for the past 70 years.
Yet the magic of his passage caused the forest to open up before him and returned the forest back to it’s original wild state after the woman had passed.
“You are Tom Fiddle, aren't you?” Alex asked as she came up behind the older man moving along in short swinging vaults.
“I’m Alex Penny.” She offered.
Tom spoke, his voice was even but clipped as he hobbled along. “Why are you on my island and why didn’t I know?”
“Your island?”
“Yes. My island. Now tell me, why are you on my island?
Alex explained that she was an independent surveyor working for the State of Maine to map Sam Cooke island.
Tom strode on through the forest which descended quickly along the terrain. The path soon opened up to a small hidden cove. The opening to the lake was beyond a jut of land that obscured the view from passersby on the lake.
She followed him quick, surprised at how fast he moved. There was a dock extending a little way into the water. A Zodiac-style boat was floating beside it. The boat was a drab orange.
“Oh my God, you do have a boat,” Alex said the obvious.
Tom grabbed a pier and swung down to the boat, which had a wooden floor. The cane bent and cushioned Tom as he leaned on the other end like it were an arm helping him to keep his balance on the remaining leg.
“Come on, get in, or set back to the bridge on your own. This way will be the fastest.”
Tom untied the inflatable speedboat from the pier and looked at Alex with expectation.
Alex gathered her purpose and urgency about her. “Of course.”
She stepped down to the rocking surface. She sat on a wooden plank that spanned between the inflated sides.
Tom used an oar to push off from the pier. The boat floated backwards as Tom hopped over the seat from where Alex watched.
The cane moved in his left hand, placing itself to land like a wooden segment becoming jointed. It stuck to the wood surfaces of the deck and wooden seats, or hooked itself around one of the plastic handles that stuck to the sides like earrings.
This time, she saw the cane’s behavior. Alex began, “How is it..?” But the words just died as she watched the cane move about.
Tom again ignored her question. He sat on another planked seat at the back of the boat and lowered the propeller into the water by tilting the engine back. He pulled on the starter cord, his wrinkled arms showing their muscled edges even on the old man’s wiry form.
The motor sputtered to life, and Tom gave the throttle on the engine some gas. The boat suddenly lurched and began moving away from the pier.
Tom spun the nimble boat around, causing Alex to grab a handle on the side.
“Hold on,” warned Tom a second too late.
He made sure she was gripping strong and then he gunned the engine. The boat slipped through a narrow corridor of tress, the sides of the cove curling around the water like cradled arms.
He twisted the throttle wide open and the front of the boat rose up and then fell to the horizontal again, as the boat started skimming over the surface. They rounded the entrance to the cove and were suddenly zipping across the lake.
The wind kicked up and blew through Alex’s hair. The forest smell receded and the rain continued falling.
Lightning flashed and the crack of thunder was louder than the engine.
Tom turned the boat towards the sound of thunder and followed the shore. The outer shore approached as they curved around the island, but Tom kept it in the middle of the channel.
The trestle bridge came into view after a few moments, and Alex was again amazed at the size of the island.
The boat approached beneath the bridge. Tom heard Alex say, “Where are you, Connor? Come on, boy.”
He looked directly at the rock that supported the dog beneath the bridge. Then he reached down beneath the plank and pulled out a loaded quiver.
“What is that? Are those arrows?”
He killed the engine and raised his right hand. “Shhhh! Quiet. It will hear you.”
“What will…” She began, but Tom shook his hand, emphatic.
She was quiet.
The boat continued moving forward, but drifting. Tom heard the sound of raindrops falling, almost a mist.
Alex shined her flashlight under the bridge, and Tom really wished she wouldn’t, because it interfered with his eyesight, which he’d enhanced to give him night vision.
Varpatau watched from the underside of the bridge, its trap about to spring. They weren’t sure what was about to happen, but Varpatau had near eternal confidence it could respond to every eventuality.
The best outcome was for one druid to die, leaving Varpatau controlling the other and Earth’s gateway tree. That would be optimum, according to the thousands of successful times in the past that they’d accomplished the task.
Regardless, Varpatau was riding behind the eyes of a fox.
Though Varpatau never really considered itself separate from any of its steeds, any other observer would see the fox had a dark walnut attached to the back of its skull. Seven spidery appendages, gleaming dark like oiled marble, reached forward and gripped the vixen’s skull. The sharp-as-glass tips framed her face. The red fur of the fox could not hid where droplets of blood had crusted her furry cheeks where the appendages had cut her skin.
Varpatau caused the fox to peer from over the shoulders of the wounded dog. It watched the approaching boat in silence as it floated towards them.
The dog saw his mistress on the boat. Varpatau heard him try to growl, but it just came out as a whine.
One of the door druids, the slower one Varpatau had followed into this world, was moving forward in the boat that drifted towards the flat rock.
The cane assisted the druid to move forward to the prow of the boat, until he was beside the younger one Varpatau had spied earlier. The cane suddenly lengthened, twisting like a rolled up movie poster, the end widening and flattening until it was obviously an oar. The old one leaned forward over the prow, groaning as if the stretch caused him pain, and extended the oar forward. The younger one watched the form of the dog on the rock, and didn’t appear to notice the cane was gone and that he somehow held a full-sized wooden oar. The old one used the oar to poke the rock and stop the boat could bump it.
The oar became a staff and the old one stood again. Once he was standing, he seemed rooted to the wooden board that acted as the deck of the inflatable boat.
“I think there is something on that rock with your dog.” He gestured towards the nearby stone, and Varpatau pulled back into the shadow the dog cast from the flashlight the younger one kept waving around.
The rock was large and flat. Wedge-shaped with the wide end jutting higher like a broken table.
Varpatau turned and forced the fox to leap into the water with a loud splash.
The younger one said, “Over there.”
The old one looked where she was pointing.
Varpatau drove the fox to the shore and then caused it to scramble up the damp rocks to the center girder supporting the underside of the bridge. Now was not the time to trigger the trap. A single spidery appendage uncurled from the fox’s skull. It bent upwards like a hyperextended finger.
The finger stretched like taffy.
Varpatau hooked the edge of the girder, and the helmet released from the fox’s skull. It dropped away and the thin worms moved the glistening walnut at its center in concert.
The fox took another step forward and then froze. Then she suddenly screamed, almost sounding like the frightened caw of a blackbird, as she realized her fur was soaking wet, it was dark, the trail she’d been following earlier in the day had disappeared and now she was under the bridge. The fox twirled around, lunged in a few directions before she bounded from beneath the rocky underside of the mainland side of the shore and ran into the woods.
Varpatau had stayed beneath the bridge, watching its steed recover. It began moving along the beam, keeping the metal between it and the two druids below.
So far, only the older, seemingly crippled druid had performed any magic. Why was the other druid not using her abilities? Varpatau had not seen any wood about the younger druid. It realized the healthier one was untrained.
Varpatau felt a shivery pleasure as it decided the healthy one would be their first human steed. It moved along the girder until it was above the flat rock beside the boat.
On the boat, Tom levered himself up with the cane, which Alex eyed a little longer before looking around for the oar. It was gone.
He thrust the cane above him, and it seemed to hook on something on the flat surface of the rock above them and beside the boat. Then to her astonishment, he hauled himself upward, hand-over-hand, and literally pulling himself over the edge until he was beside the injured dog. Tom’s voice floated to Alex from above and an echo gave it a tone as if in a large room. “Your dog is in better shape than you thought.” He pointed to the underside of the bridge over them.
“Keep an eye above us.”
Tom reached forward with his hand and passed it over the deep gash Varpatau had left in the dog’s neck. Wherever his hand passed, the wound stitched itself together, leaving only the blood and crusted fur behind.
Alex looked upwards, and Varpatau slid back from view. Of the miraculous healing, the rock blocked her view.
Seeing nothing in the darkness above, she turned back to her dog. “What are you doing? Earlier he looked like he was going to bleed out any moment.”
“He seems pretty good. Maybe only superficial wounds.”
Connor lifted his head up, and she could see his face over the edge of the rock.
“I think we can take him to shore. Where’s your truck?”
Alex couldn’t believe what Tom was saying. She wobbled on the prow, but turned to point to the island end of the bridge, and that’s when Varpatau dropped from the beam over them towards Alex’s head.
Tom swung his cane around as if it were a samurai sword as light as a badminton racket and smacked the dark wrinkled mass that was Varpatau’s falling body. Varpatau pinged to the side like a discarded slinky and dropped into the water with a plunk.
She missed Tom’s martial artistry while balancing herself on the prow of the inflatable boat. Alex had sensed the sudden movement above her, but the downpour covered the sound of the predator falling into the water.
She wobbled, trying to see her dog. He stood and looked down to her from the ledge. The night was just one astonishment after another. Alex stared at Connor. He seemed fine. He looked horrible with the matted blood, but she couldn’t see any obvious wound.
He had climbed to his feet, seemingly refreshed, even energized, when she would have sworn he was breathing his final labored breaths.
She was wondering how she could get her dog into the boat, thinking of his creaky old hips, when he jumped with confidence to the bottom of the inflatable.
She screamed she was so startled.
Tom called out, “Woah! Careful there, Connor.”
She looked her friend over and then back at Tom. She didn’t recall telling Tom the dog’s name, but she must have.
“Who are you?”
Tom slid down from the rock to the boat and hobbled his way past her. They needed to get out of the area. He moved to the stern and started the engine. Once he was settled beside the running motor, he looked at Alex for a moment before answering.
“I’m Tom,” he finally said. “Let’s get you back to shore.”
He gunned the throttle and quickly reached the island side of the bridge.
Alex was looking at the cane, which was no longer a badminton racket nor an oar. It was just a hooked cane.
“How did you..?” She began again, but the reached the island side of the bridge.
Tom maneuvered the boat so it was parallel to the shore. The dog leaped to dry land and immediately moved along the trail to the road above.
“Your dog seems to be feeling much better.” He released the throttle and gestured to the shore with his right hand, while offering his left as if to assist her out of the boat.
Alex was speechless at the old man’s social gesture, but Tom noted she did need to take his hand to steady herself.
“That was so strange,” she was saying as she stepped to the shore. “Connor!” She called to a barking from the shoulder of the road above where she had parked.
Alex looked at the blood on her hands and turned to Tom. “How can he be OK if-“
The boat was gone.
If she looked closely at the water, she might have seen an indentation in the water that was the exact shape of the inflatable boat moving towards the center of the channel. But she didn’t. Instead, Alex stared all around her at the lake and the farther shore. It was like the boat had never been there.
She stared off into the rain for several seconds before Connor’s barking at being left getting soaked forced Alex to climb the incline to her truck.
She wondered if there was a vet in Chester Lake.
She trudged up to the road from the bridge and went searching the town for a veterinarian, or a cell tower. She found the latter and learned the former had left town years before. Connor apparently didn’t need to see one. So there was that. She eventually returned to the convenience store where she’d met Benny and Barney that morning. The store had overnight sites and RV hookups, and she rented one.
She found a hose for the RVs, at least she assumed it was for the RVs, and she was able to wash Connor beneath a bluish fluorescent light. Bathing him gave her a chance to look at his injuries. There were none. She looked carefully at his belly where she clearly remembered a long gash with guts spilling out barely an hour before. As the bloodstained water washed off him, she’d felt and examined, and as far as she could tell, her dog was fine. Eventually she’d toweled him off, shook her head, and went to bed.