Fable follows Eleanor to her apartment building, cawing his disapproval the whole way. Rather, he flew a block ahead of her, landed, called down his frustrations until she passed below, and then took off ahead again to continue his lecture, repeating the process several times.
“…WHY IS SHE BEING SO OBVIOUS NOW?” he squawks from his latest perch on the streetlight in front of her building.
Eleanor stares up at him, squinting in thought. “So you knew where I lived. Cool. I’d ask if you wanted another sandwich, but you left the first one back there. What is up?”
“What is UP is that you are having BAD IDEAS. And your connection to the veil is so fragile you think I’m a crow,” he humphed and turned his head away, which would seem like he was too mad to even look at her if it didn’t position his eye for better scrutiny of the ten-year-old miscreant. She shrugs and goes inside.
Mythos appears above the apartment’s portico, jaw bone dropped, and sickle in hand. “What are you raving about? Are you trying to show yourself to your charge?”
From the column below him, the chameleon appears, rotating both eyes independently to look at each of her colleagues in opposite directions. “An awful lot of questionable behavior from you two these days… what are you doing? Who is showing themselves to whom now?”
“Jinx, good afternoon. Please tell this fool to calm down and explain himself.”
The chameleon looks about getting her bearing, “I assume this is your mystery girl’s home?”
“Yes. I took your advice and went to Mythos, but he didn’t know either.”
“And what now? You’re just going to swoop down in front of her and ask? ‘Hello, child, what exactly are you?’”
Fable ruffles his feathers and groans. “No! And that doesn’t matter right now. She has plans to go to Badger’s Combe tonight.”
“WHAT?” Mythos and Jinx shout together.
“And she’s taking your girl with her.”
“NO, SHE IS NOT,” Mythos booms.
“How do you propose we stop them? She sees me as a crow.”
Jinx strokes her chin with her two fingers, skin kaleidoscoping in colors and wavelengths rarely seen. “I thought it was strange she could see you, but at least your form is native to the area. I didn’t realize she wouldn’t be able to hear you if you spoke to her. Do you think she could see us?” She waves her hand between herself and Mythos, who has taken a seat on the edge of the trim over the columns, one leg folded under him, sickle returned to the ether.
“I didn’t realize she could see me until she started offering me her lunch.”
“I still cannot believe you are being fed by a child,” Jinx sighs.
“You wanted me to blow my cover? A crow would never let a meal go to waste. I even practiced proper caws to keep up the charade. I feel ridiculous.”
Mythos pulls his dangling leg up, tucks it under himself, crosses the other, and rests his elbows on his knees. “I suspect she wouldn’t see me at all. What if she’s been spelled? Did someone think they were protecting her? Hiding her from the Obscure, but they hid the Obscure from her instead?”
“Maybe it was an accident. The Veil’s been treating her like one of the Obvious, but the spell’s starting to break?” Fable asks, turning the idea over in his mind.
The three lapse into silent rumination for a moment before Jinx pipes up, red, orange, and yellow. “The task at hand! Today’s immediate problem! They are planning to go to Badger’s Combe. On Halloween night.”
“Shit,” Mythos hisses.
“Do you think your new diviner can see us?” Fable asks, cringing.
Mythos winces and releases another “Shit.” Jinx appears beside him, hugging her tail around his waist. “I don’t want her to see me,” he says softly.
“You can stay in the ether, and we’ll do the talking,” Fable offers, and Jinx nods in agreement.
“Don’t let her know what you are. You’re just talking animals, OK? She’s too young to fend for herself at night,” Mythos starts as Jinx reaches up, pinching his teeth closed with her tong-like fingers.
“We will not ruin things for you. We want to remain a myth among the mythical, just as much as every guide. But we can’t sit back and watch them stumble into danger.”
René pours the girl a cup of tea, giving her some space to decide what she wants to do. Returning to the main dining area, he spots a polka-dotted chameleon sitting with Mogiannah and the crow perched on one of the eye stalks on a bust of a former mayor. “Ah, greetings!” he says, nodding to each.
“Mr. Akereggi, my associate, Jinx,” Fable says. “Jinx, Mr. Akereggi, proprietor of this café. He’s taken an interest in our charges.”
“A pleasure! And René is fine, really.”
Jinx nods, one eye politely maintaining contact, the other starboard aft, on the crow. “Nice to meet you, René.” She shifts, accidentally blending in with the marble top of the bookcase momentarily before settling for an assortment of autumnal colors.
“What can I do for you both?”
“We have a bit of a situation with the girls,” Fable says, looking toward the alcove where Michelle is lost in thought and then to the stairs. “We should speak in private.”
“Ah, yes, of course, this way,” he says, leading them away from the stairs and to a different nook around another corner in the maze of bookcases and cabinets displaying his treasures from centuries of traveling in the Obvious and the Obscure: plants, mineral specimens, statuary, mixed with the occasional souvenir ashtray and carved coconut monkey. He draws back a thick curtain of hanging plants to reveal a hidden sitting area of comfortable chairs, with an old wooden box telephone on the wall above an overstuffed velvet bench tucked in the corner. “We can speak freely here,” he points to the greenery. “Whisper vines.”
The two guides promptly sit, and Fable begins, “The girls are planning to go to Badger’s Combe tonight.”
“Tonight!” Jinx emphasizes as René looks aghast.
“I don’t know how this ridiculous notion came to them, but they cannot go traipsing about in the woods on Halloween night,” Fable continues.
“Ten years old!” she adds, a bright purple washing over her nose to tail.
“Badger’s Combe! Why in the world? Wait.” René stands, steps through the whisper vines, and then pokes his head back in. “Give me one moment. I think I can answer the why.”
The guides share a look and nod as he disappears. On the way to the entrance, he snaps his fingers a few times, and kettles sweep around the tables, refilling cups, and small truffles appear on tiny plates in front of every guest. He grasps inward, pulling on his protective glamour, and steps out of the door in his boots and a black suit sans horns. Crossing the street, he enters the hardware store and, a moment later, can be seen from the outside pulling a flyer from the window. “Thanks, love! I appreciate it!” he says behind him as he exits and returns to the café.
“I knew it,” he says with a swish of whisper vines, slapping the paper onto the table before them.
Fable squints at it, first turning left and then turning to focus his right eye on it. “I saw them looking at this yesterday. What does it mean?”
“It says, ‘NYCTOPHOBIA’ here,” René swipes a nail across the letters.”
“That is not a drawing of mangrove?” Jinx asks, both eyes focused on the lettering, one scanning left to right, the other in the reverse.
“Fear of the Night?” asks Fable.
“No, and yes,” René answers. “The rest is ‘Friday, October 31, 10 pm at Badger’s Combe.’ This is an advert for a music performance. A spelled advert for an Obscure band’s show.”
“I don’t like it. Eleanor cannot go. If Michelle goes, Mythos will explode, and I don’t know if I can still remember how to reassemble him.”
René’s eyebrows rise, and he starts to ask, but Jinx shakes her head and closes her two fingers like a pincer.
“You can talk some sense into Michelle, right?” Fable asks.
“Oh, well. I want to go. They can come with me.”
“Brilliant,” Jinx huffs. “Great idea. We send two newly Obscure (one questionably so) into the darkest, most fear-eater-infested hole in the forest with a devil encouraging them to do whatever they like. Just fuck us guides over here, spending all our time protecting them from fear and gloom. Ten years of work for what? To let them walk right into a nightmare? Let’s pack them a lunch for their field trip while we’re at it. Shall we ring them a private carriage for their trauma tour?”
René laughs and clasps his hands together. “I can protect two little girls. I just want to have a word with some teenagers.”