Henry follows Kika back through the shop floor and over the tiled threshold onto Baines Street. Without meaning to, he loses time focusing on the pendulum of the rose velvet bow holding her braid together as it sways with each step, nearly stumbling into her when she turns and holds up the notebook she’d tucked under her arm, displaying the words “Not much of a talker, are you?”
He laughs and then gasps, hands rushing to his mouth and forehead. “I… you… Oh god, I’m sorry.” Peeking up at her, he sees she has the notebook clutched to her stomach in a shoulder-shaking silent laugh. “Oh!” he said, turning pink.
Kika winks at him and tips her head to the door. The silhouette of Mr. Smith looms, back-lit in the glass panel of the front door. She gives a deep bow to them both.
“Thank you, Miss Kika! Please be safe on your way!” he calls after her before freezing at the sight of her dissipating into a plume of smoke, moving as if on a strong wind back towards Baines Street. “Holy shit. Holy shit!”
The door opens, and he turns to Mr. Smith, flailing his arms at the sidewalk where she’d stood. “Did you see? Did you know she could do that? Did you know anyone could do that?”
“Let’s have a talk when I get back,” Mr. Smith says, stepping onto the porch.
Henry holds out his hands, palms forward, herding him back the way he came. “No, no, I have to stop you with a letter. This letter,” he says, pulling the dark blue card from the inside pocket of his jacket as he walks up the wooden steps. “I promised I would deliver it.”
Reconsidering, he tucks it away again and steps around Mr. Smith’s imposing figure. “It’s too dark out here, easier to read inside, dontcha think?” He steps around him, opens the door, and hops out of his boots as quickly as possible to scramble out of reach.
“Plenty of light in here, please,” Mr. Smith says, hand extended. Henry’s already made it into the living room and, turning, waves it from the distance, “Yes, but there’s better light and a comfortable chair in here.” He’d never pushed the man before, but Madam Tuor seemed to know him, and so he could probably answer the questions forming a noisy mob scene in his head. He couldn’t possibly let him linger near the door so close to an easy escape route.
With a deep rumbling groan, Mr. Smith relents and lumbers toward the sofa, plucking the card Henry offered up before sitting down. He takes a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket and adjusts them on his nose. The lines on his forehead increase and deepen after popping open the seal and skimming the contents before frowning and pocketing his glasses once again.
Henry, seated across from him in his father’s worn leather armchair, had been staring intently at the lines in his palm and now squeezes his eyes shut. He startles when the man quietly asks, “Son, will you tell me what you and the lady spoke about tonight?”
The attorney’s face gives away nothing, and Henry desperately wishes he knew what the letter said. The ladies seemed to think Mr. Smith was someone he could’ve told right away, and everything would be fine. It will be all right. They both said it would be all right—I would be all right. The deep breath he takes doesn’t do much to amplify the whispered “nightmares” he barely hears himself.
“Can you tell me about them, too?” the man asks softly. Henry looks up in surprise first at having been heard and then seeing the pained expression on the man’s face. “When did they start?”
The twenty-year-old pulls his feet up onto the seat to hug his knees to himself and rest his chin on them, unable to look away from the strange, gentle expression on the man’s face.
Mr. Smith looks downward at this glimpse of his past—the same small and fragile form of Henry Merlo Sr just as he’d looked almost two decades before, propped against the base of an elm tree behind the library, trying desperately to hold back tears. This Henry Merlo doesn’t have a wife to mourn, and the man had been doing his best to ensure he wouldn’t feel lost and alone taking care of Avery. What is making it seem like his world is ending? The letter from the mediator was hardly helpful in this regard. Movement from the leather armchair returns his attention to the young man.
“A couple of weeks ago, I saw someone following a lady,” Henry started slowly. “The guy didn’t look right—sort of staggering? She didn’t seem to notice him, and then some other guys started walking with him, following her. It didn’t seem right; they all were, like, trailing her, and some looked shaky, and none of their movements seemed …right? Normal? So I thought maybe I could distract them a bit, maybe get a better look at them while I was at it?” His voice was pitching higher, defending his actions as if they’d been challenged, although the man across from him hadn’t said a word. “I pulled out this old watch I had in my bag that I was going to try and get a band for and kept forgetting about. I got closer and said, ‘Hey man, did you drop this?’ And they all turned and looked at me. I swear some of them didn’t have faces at first. And they changed. They got bigger all of a sudden. I know it sounds nuts.”
His retelling gaining speed as his heart rate increases, he continues, “I think… I think I wasn’t supposed to see them? I tried to get away, but they got me into an alley, and it was like I couldn’t fight back. I’ve never felt so small or scared in my life. I don’t even know why. I mean, I shouldn’t have tried to be a hero by myself. But I’m normally scrappier than I look, you know?” He looks up at the man, unaware of his fight to stay put on the couch. Mr. Smith grips his knee with what looks like a painful amount of pressure. Henry gulps.
“I… I couldn’t just watch them go after the lady. It seemed like the best option at the time. I knew you’d be angry with me.”
The big man lets out a groan. “At you? No, son, not at you. And as much as I would’ve preferred you had not tried to get yourself mugged by a group of miscreants, I believe you saved that woman from certain danger.”
“I hope so,” he says, rubbing his side reflexively. Mr. Smith’s eyes moved from Henry’s face to his hand on his ribs. He slides to the floor in front of the couch, moving the sturdy wooden coffee table between them aside to get closer like it is nothing. Henry’s eyes widen, and he freezes in place, looking down at the man on the floor before him, slouching to keep eye contact. “Wha—?”
“Henry,” he said, reaching over to tug on the hem of his jeans gently, “they injured you?” He tugs again, a silent request for him to unfurl.
The young man nodded, face red. “I couldn’t even defend myself.”
“And you’re still hurt?”
“A little bruised,” Henry’s misery apparent in his voice and the dropping of his chin into his chest while lowering his knees to unclench his body.
“And you didn’t go to the hospital? Or call me?” he asks, tentatively reaching and retracting his hand toward the side Henry’s been favoring.
Henry’s head snaps up. “And tell them I got kicked around like a hacky sack by monsters? I’d be put away. Unfit to care for Avery.”
The man leans back, “You think I would let anyone separate you? You think I wouldn’t believe you?”
“Why would I have thought you would believe me?” Henry tilts his head, baffled by the notion. “Up until earlier, I didn’t really believe me.”
Mr. Smith closes his eyes and thinks over the lady’s message.
Dear Mr. Smith,
Tonight is a good night for unburdening hearts. Please join me for tea at 2 pm, having distributed the weight of yours and the boy’s in a more sensible manner.
—T
Upstairs on the landing, the rabbit sits outside Avery’s door, having finished dancing the younger Merlo brother a dream of swimming with an enormous sea turtle. Eyes perfectly round, ears fully upright, and twitching with excitement, it is relieved that the kikimora’s plan seems to have been set in motion but shocked to see a wildling in its charge’s living room.