“Ground rules.” Victoria walked beside him, both clad in reserve issue jumpsuits. “First, until you’re healed, no funny business. I don’t wanna hear about you getting tangled up in a thorncoil or chasing around triboars. You stick to the light stuff.”
“What about the glimmerfangs?”
“As long as someone is with you, that’s fine.” They emerged from the admin offices and out into the reserve proper, verdant wildlife as far as the eye could see. “Two, when I leave, you leave. No exceptions. I don’t trust you not to schmooze your way into someone letting you do something that’s too much for you too quickly.”
“That doesn’t sound like me at all.” He went for wide-eyed innocence.
Victoria gave him a long, unimpressed side-eye. “Three. If I tell you, ‘you’re done’, you’re done. You should know better than to argue with me by now.”
He gave a nod and a wave to another keeper who passed. “Got it, anything else?” The anticipation was killing him. He wanted nothing more than to get in with the animals and feel…something again.
“Yeah, you’ll be shadowing Will for the foreseeable future. I offered James his job back after…” Victoria looked around nervously. “Well, you know. He’s apparently got something else he’s working on, so unlikely he’s coming back.”
“Oh, come on, can’t I work with you? Will does the boring stuff.” He whined.
“No, I’ve had to pick up your slack since you’ve been gone. So that would be breaking rule number one. Which was?”
“No funny business until I’m healed.” He grumbled.
“Good.” She lifted her hand, waving over an older, balding man with a paunch. “Will!” she called out.
The balding man jogged over, a sunspindle monkey perched on his head, picking at dead skin. As he stopped, the corkscrew tailed monkey leapt off his head and landed on Marcus’ shoulder, climbing down to examine his injured hand and picking at the bandage.
“Hey boss. Hey Marcus, welcome back. What’s up?” Will said, already breathing heavy.
“Marcus is going to be shadowing you for a while. Don’t let him do anything stupid.” Victoria said, glancing at him from the corner of her eye again. “If he gets out of line, you come straight to me. I don’t care who the head keeper on duty is. If they have a problem with it, they can come to me too.”
The sunspindle had abandoned his hand after a few seconds and was now clinging to his thigh, sniffing at the wound beneath his suit. He felt the gentle hum of its song, and the echoes of dull pain in his leg faded.
“Oh, uhh..” Will rubbed the back of his neck. “Not to question you, boss, but the stuff I do is not really Marcus’ speed.”
“Which is exactly why he’s going to be working with you. He’s on light duty, for now.” She cleared her throat. “Alright, you two get going. I have some emberhawks to take care of.”
Marcus watched her jog off deeper into the reserve, scratching the monkey’s head. Well. At least he was back. “So, what are we doing today?” He looked over at Will.
Will gave him a confused look. “I uhh…” He shook his head and pointed to the monkey still inspecting his leg. “I was gonna finish with the monkeys, then go check in on the mirkin.”
Marcus pursed his lips, but nodded slowly. “Sounds…exhilarating.” He lied. Lifting the monkey off his leg and setting him on his shoulder. “You’re not gonna bore me to death, are you, buddy?” He said, scratching his chin.
The sunspindle, which he’d dubbed Finnegan, remained perched on his shoulder the rest of the day. Will had him logging inventory on feed, replacing bedding for the pack animals, and finally help check in on the mirkin who were recovering from mites. One let out a wheezy bleet as it nuzzled up against him, and Marcus found himself grinning, really grinning, at the sound.
It wasn’t the adrenaline-laced work that he knew, but that was the point, wasn’t it? Victoria had made sure of that. And she was right. For the first time in weeks, he felt like he fit in his own skin again.
It went on like this for several days. Each morning, Victoria would push him a little harder on the run. They would go to work where he would do menial labor while working with the animals. Then they would go home, and she would push him through another grueling workout. Throughout the structured monotony, he dodged text messages and phone calls from Calliope and his mother.
“So, you ready to run?” Marcus asked, washing out his coffee mug.
“Nope,” Victoria sat at the kitchen table wearing a fluffy black robe with a book in her hand. “Rest day.”
“Rest day? You take rest days?”
“Yep, and so do you.” She said, peeking over the edge of the book at him.
He grumbled and plopped into the chair again, looking back at the clock on the stove. “Alright, so what do we do until work?”
“We’re off today.” She said, setting the book down. She smiled at him like she already knew where the conversation was going, but was waiting for him to work through it himself.
“Okay. So what do we do?” Marcus said, mild panic setting in.
“Well, I am going to move from this chair.” She pointed to the living room. “To that couch, and read this book.” She patted the cover featuring a long-haired shirtless man with completely unrealistic abs. “Your dad invited me to a barbeque later, so I might do that. Haven’t decided yet, though.”
Marcus stared at her for a long, quiet moment. “Is this some kind of test? You’ve been putting me through the paces, and now you’re pretending to relax to see how I react?”
Victoria chuckled silently and crossed her arms. “Saturday has always been my rest day. I eat garbage food, read trashy novels, and sit around and try to be as lazy as humanly possible.”
“You’re serious.” He said, pushing himself to his feet and pacing. “I don’t think I can do that. I need to do something.”
She shook her head. “No, you need to relax. The work is important, but so is the recovery. Not just for your body, either. Sit down.”
Marcus chewed on his lip, but did as she asked. “So you’re just going to lounge around all day. What am I supposed to do?”
“Relax.” She said with a shrug.
He blinked. “That’s it? Just relax?”
She folded her hands on the table and leaned toward him. “Okay, what did you do on your days off…lets say a year ago?”
He took in a sharp breath and sighed. “I don’t know, the gym. Sometimes McGinty’s. A date sometimes.”
“Uhuh. Did you find those things relaxing?”
He paused and really thought about it for a second. Working out had always relaxed him mentally, but not physically. McGinty’s was always a shitshow, so while fun was rarely relaxing. Dates…definitely not restful. Sometimes the afterglow, sure. But the lead-up was exhausting.
“No, not really.”
“So you’re telling me you don’t know how to relax?” Victoria nodded slightly, as if she’d expected it.
“No, of course I…” He grimaced and let out a slow sigh. “Maybe?”
“Put it in your goals.” She said, giving him a nod as she picked up her book.
“Is relaxing a goal?”
“For you it is. Go write it down.” She shooed him off.
Marcus sat on the bed in her guest room, staring blankly down at the word he’d written.
Relax
This seemed like utter nonsense. He didn’t need to relax. He needed to get better. How was he supposed to do that just sitting on his ass? He sighed softly and got up again, heading out to the kitchen. She wasn’t there.
As advertised, she had relocated to the overstuffed couch. Feet dangling off the arm, she tilted her head back, looking up at him from the awkward angle.
“You figure it out?”
Marcus shook his head. “I don’t know. What do you do?”
Victoria’s gaze shifted from him to the book a couple of times. “This.”
“I don’t understand how this is supposed to help.” He grumbled, sitting down in the armchair beside her.
“I’m starting to get the feeling you’ve never relaxed before.” She gave him a sad smile that caught him off guard.
“I’ve relaxed…” he trailed off. Hadn’t he? Surely he had.
She reached over to the table and tossed him the remote for her TV. “Classic. Turn it on, find some mind numbing TV show, and veg out. That’s how my dad used to unwind. That doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”
He caught the remote and watched her immediately go back to her book. He flipped through the channels, on instinct leaving it on the morning news.
“Don’t think so,” Victoria cut in without looking up. “Talking heads are the opposite of relaxing.”
He sighed and went back to flipping through channels. The longest he stopped on any given channel was about five minutes. Nothing could keep his attention for long enough.
“I don’t think this is working.” He said quietly. “Sorry.”
She raised an eyebrow at him and spun so she was sitting, rather than laying, on the couch. “No apologies.” She shook her head, a warm smile crossing her lips. “Move onto the next.”
They moved the coffee table, and Victoria turned on some guided yoga video for him. After about five minutes, he broke, swearing at the instructor because “Human bodies don’t move like that!”
He moved on to something smaller. A five minute guided meditation. Twenty seconds in his mind wandered to the way he’d snapped at Ophelia. After struggling to push that way, his utter abandonment of his family invaded. He turned it off with a frustrated exhale.
He tried to go for a walk, ended up racing squirrels. Out of utter boredom, he grabbed one of her novels. Fangs from a Harvest Moon . The first twenty pages had him ready to tear his eyeballs out.
This was getting out of hand. How could he not just sit still and relax for five minutes? Grumbling, he flopped back in the armchair next to her, arms crossed like a sulking child.
“Nothing?”
“No…” he muttered.
“Closet by the door.” She said, jerking her head without glancing away from her book. “Box on the top shelf.”
Marcus pulled the old puzzle box from the top of the closet, looking confused. The front of the box showed a picture of an old farmhouse. White picket fence, barn in the background, the works. “You want me to put together a puzzle?”
“I want you to relax.” She replied.
He sighed and shook his head, taking the box over to the table. Marcus sat down on the floor and emptied the pieces out onto the hand-carved tabletop.
And after a while…something shifted. Eyes searching through pieces, envisioning them popping into place. He wasn’t sure this was relaxing, but it was the first time in a long time that he actually focused on a single, quiet task.
He’d hardly noticed when Victoria got up to answer the door.
“You want food?” She asked, holding up the box of pizza.
“Huh?” Marcus looked up, not fully registering what she’d said. “Oh, yeah…” He grabbed another piece of the puzzle and slid it into place before following her into the kitchen.
They sat at the table, eating quietly for a while until Victoria put her book down again. “Enjoying the puzzle?”
“I don’t know.” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I’m not sure how to describe it.”
“Is it relaxing?”
He shook his head and sighed. “I don’t know, maybe? It’s like…quiet. Like it turns down the background noise, you know?”
“Sounds like you’re moving in the right direction.” She said with a shrug. “You were in it. Sat there for three hours moving pieces around like my mama used to.”
“Your mom used to do them?”
Victoria took a bite of the pizza, then hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Yeah, closet in the hall is full of them she never finished.”
Marcus looked down at his plate for a beat, then back up at her. “What happened…to your folks?”
Victoria looked up at him, but didn’t say anything at first. She scanned his face as if she were judging if he’d earned the answer to that question.
“You…you don’t have to tell me if you..”
“Car accident. When I was seventeen..well, almost seventeen.”
Marcus frowned, “I’m sorry.” He didn’t turn his head to look, but his mind flashed the image of the birthday note on the corkboard.
“Yeah…me too.” She cleared her throat and finished off her slice. “Speaking of, you gonna come with? To your parents’ tonight?”
Marcus scratched the back of his head. He knew he should. He had apologies to deliver, yet he could feel his heart speed up at just how overwhelming the thought was.
“Can I make a suggestion?” Victoria asked, reading the trepidation on his face.
“Sure.”
“You don’t wanna dive into the deep end, right? All of them all at once?” She asked.
He gave her an affirming nod.
“Yeah, I don’t blame you. I’d take them on a couple at a time. Personally, I’d start with your dad. I guess I’m biased, though. I like the old guy. You and Calliope are close, right? Probably start with her.”
Marcus was quiet for a long time. Part of him just wanted to go sit back down at the coffee table and forget the whole conversation, but she was right. As usual. He needed to start mending fences. He sighed and looked up at her again. “You mind if I borrow your car tonight?”
She shrugged. “Go for it. I’m taking the bike anyway. Nick asked me to teach him how to ride.”
Marcus laughed, a skeptical grin crossing his face. “You run that by my mom first?”
“God, no. I’m not suicidal.” She returned his smile, gazing into his eyes for a long moment before getting up to clean the dishes.
“So Nicky told you to ask my dad?” Marcus shook his head, chest bobbing with a silent chuckle.
“Yep.”
Marcus spent the remainder of the day working on the puzzle. What he was going to say to his sister nagged at his mind, but he pushed it away as fast as it emerged. It was Calliope. He didn’t need a plan. She’d know if he was trying to script something. She always did.
When he finally stood, he’d completed the entire outline of the puzzle along with some isolated bits he thought went in the middle. Marcus wasn’t sure how long puzzles were supposed to take, and he resisted the urge to look it up. If he did, it would become a competition with the entire internet, and likely ruin the point.
He let himself admire the progress he'd made for a second, but there was one more thing he had to do before he left.
Marcus walked into the bathroom and stared at the grizzled beard in the mirror. Tiny gray hairs yelled at him from within the forest of orange. He plugged in the electric razor, shaving away the facial hair he hadn’t touched since his trek through the woods.
He pulled up outside his sister’s house. The place was still dark, no car in the drive. It was still early. Not a huge surprise they weren’t back yet. He got out and leaned against the hood of the car. It was about an hour before headlights spotlighted him.
Calliope didn’t finish pulling into the driveway. She didn’t even put the car in park. She jumped out and sprinted at him. For a split second, his fight-or-flight reflexes flared, but he pushed them down as she flung herself at him. The impact and her arms squeezing his torso forced the air from his lungs.
Marcus hugged her tight, struggling to laugh as he watched James clamber over the center console to stop the car before it barreled into the mailbox.
“I should kill you,” Calliope murmured into his chest as she squeezed him.
“I’d appreciate it if you held off on that.” He wheezed out, holding her tight to him as James got the car parked and walked over.
“Look at you, cleaned up and everything. Thought you’d gone feral.” James said, patting his shoulder.
“Briefly. Got tired of fighting off raccoons for territory.” He groaned and patted Calliope’s back gently. “Can’t breathe, Callie.”
She didn’t let go of him, but did loosen her grip. “You absolute idiot.” She said, looking up at him with puffy, wet eyes.
“I missed you too.” He said softly.
“I’m gonna go put some tea on.” James retreated, giving the two of them some space.
Calliope took a step back, her hands resting on his arms as she looked him over. “You look like hell. Less than I expected, though.”
Marcus smiled weakly and nodded. “Recovery has been slow, but I’m getting there.”
She tucked herself under his arm, “Come on, let’s go inside.” She said, walking him to the door.
The three of them sat at the kitchen table and caught up. Marcus wasn’t ready to be completely honest about what happened, but when the conversation came to the mysterious arrival of the contracts on their parent’s doorstep, things got awkwardly quiet. James getting up and refilling an already full mug of tea gave him away.
“You two know something.” Calliope narrowed her eyes as they shifted between the two of them. “Spill it.”
“For the record,” James piped up, returning to the table. “I technically don’t actually know what happened.”
“Coward,” Marcus mumbled, though he didn’t blame him. Calliope’s wrath was not something to trifle with.
“Marcus…” Her voice went sharp.
Marcus swallowed hard and stared down at the chipped wood of the table, fingers tracing the groove. “I didn’t know how to even start to apologize.” Marcus paused a beat, shrugging. “So I decided to do something to help.”
“Okay..” Calliope blinked several times then averted her gaze to process exactly how stupid he was. “So rather than using your words, like a normal human…you did what?”
Marcus looked up at James, who gave him the most useless shrug in the world, then to his sister’s glare that could have boiled water. “Are you going to make me actually say it?”
“Yes, I want you to hear how monumentally stupid it sounds when it comes out of your mouth.”
Marcus clenched his jaw and stayed silent for a long moment. She wasn’t going to let up. “I broke into an Arcanex research facility and stole the contracts.” He mumbled under his breath.
“I’ll kill you.” She breathed, standing up and looking very much like their mother as she paced in a tight circle. Her arms flailed with animation as she scolded him. “Do you have any idea how worried we’ve all been about you? Nicky has been in tears for weeks. Mom had to take him out of school! And you’re out here trying to get yourself killed?!” The rant went on for a long time. Each point she made pushed him a little deeper into his chair.
“And you!” She snapped her eyes to her husband. “You may not have known what he was going to do, but you have no problem enabling his stupidity, do you?” They both knew better than to respond. They silently took the verbal beating, waiting for the onslaught to end.
Eventually it did. She sat back down, out of breath and fuming.
“I’m sorry, Callie.” Marcus whispered. “I…kinda lost it.”
Her head snapped up, wild eyes still glaring at him, mouth open like she was about yell again. Then it slowly closed, and she took a few deep breaths before looking at him, the fury slowly fading into something softer as she reached out and took his hand. “I know.”
“I told Callie how the ritual hit me…” James’ voice came out pained. “The things I saw. Then Cassandra told us yours was probably worse. I don’t wanna speak for everyone, but I get it.”
“We all understand.” Calliope said, not having a problem speaking for everyone. “We just wanted you to come back to us in one piece.”
Marcus chuckled quietly at that, squeezing her hand. “I’m working on it.”
The drive back to Victoria’s was quiet, giving him time to reflect. Visiting his sister had gone better than he’d expected. Her anger hadn’t surprised him, but the ease with which she’d forgiven him had. Maybe the rest of his family would follow the same pattern. Nicky and the girls would probably just be happy he’s alright, maybe a little hurt. Mama will be as furious as Callie, maybe more… Dad… Victoria was probably right. Should have gone to him first. He’d probably already anticipated the apology and forgiven him before it even happened. Always a step ahead.
Then there was Ophelia…
He pulled the car into the driveway and cut the engine. His eyes went to the porch. The light was on. She never left the porch light on.
Victoria was curled up on the couch with a blanket over her shoulders, still thumbing through the same book. She looked up as he came in.
“How’d it go?”
Marcus pulled off his shoes and dropped the keys back in the basket before moving to sit across from her on the couch. “She only threatened to kill me twice.”
“Wow, the restraint on that woman is commendable.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” He muttered as he looked at the puzzle on the table. “Got the border done.”
“I saw.” She said, adjusting herself on the couch, playfully bumping his shoulder with her own. “I’m glad it helped.”
They sat there on the couch for a time. It was quiet. Comfortable.
“Thank you.” Marcus broke the silence. “For sending Kane after me. For the note.”
She looked over at him, one corner of her mouth turning up in a little smile. She leaned against him, and he slid an arm around her shoulders.
“Don’t mention it.” She murmured. “Ever again.”