Where the Road Begins

July 2019

Ryan stared at the ceiling. Above his head and just to the left a spot of paint was starting to peel, casting strange shadows in the early morning light that was filtering into the room. The sheets felt cool on his chest

Next to him, the young woman’s breaths came slow and deep. She was facing away from him, half-curled up, one arm tucked under her head. Her hair was scattered wildly across the pillow, and Ryan fought the urge to stroke it.

He figured she was a few years older than him, maybe in college or just out of it. He wasn’t sure — they hadn’t spent much time talking the night before. After she had passed him sitting outside a small restaurant eating a slice of pizza, she had invited him home. Ryan had gladly accepted.

It hadn’t been his first time in bed with someone, but laying there thinking about it, he felt a certain thrill. It was all still new enough that was a taboo excitement that raced through his mind thinking about it.

She was shifting, starting to wake up.

“Good morning,” he said, doing his best to give a charming grin and not sound too eager. He might have been passable on the latter, but he wasn’t sure about the former; any sort of grin, charming or otherwise, still felt foreign to him. His face wasn’t used to it.

“It is,” she agreed with a yawn.

He propped himself up on one arm, trying to seem carefree and cool. He still wasn’t sure how to handle the morning after. Apparently, he missed the mark and she laughed at the sight of him.

He felt his face spark with the start of a blush. It wasn’t much, probably was hardly noticeable, but he felt it cross his face, alien and new after 18 years in his parents’ high-elf household. As soon as he could, without it seeming awkward, he lowered his arm.

She, meanwhile, had slipped out of bed to get dressed. He watched her, unsure what to with himself. Eventually, he figured he should get dressed too.

When she went off to use the bathroom, he made the bed. It was force of habit. When he finished, looking at the crisp edges and clean lines like his parents had drilled into him, he wondered suddenly if it was the wrong thing to do. He couldn’t convince himself to pull it apart again though.

He found her again in the kitchen at the opposite end of the short hallway. She was watching him with an amused look, and he realized there was a clear line of sight from where she stood into the bedroom. She raised a curious eyebrow but said nothing. Again, the flush crossed his face.

“What are you doing today?” he asked. The words sounded as awkward in the air as they had in his head, but he couldn’t think of anything else.

“Going to class,” she said as if it were obvious. So, she was a college student. “Are you not?” She paused for a second then added, “You’re not a student here, are you?” Ryan didn’t say anything. He wasn’t even sure exactly where ‘here’ was. He knew he was somewhere in the vicinity of Buffalo, but more specifically than that he was lost.

Her eyes narrowed slightly — not angrily, just analytically. His silence was enough of an answer.

“I’m worried I won’t like the answer, but I have to ask. You’re old enough to be having sex, right?”

“I’m eighteen,” Ryan said quickly, a little defensively. “I’ll be nineteen in a few months.”

“That’s generally, what comes after 18,” she agreed. “Won’t your parents be worried that you’re out all night. Where are they?” He didn’t say anything for a few moments, but the look in her eyes told him this wasn’t a question he could answer with silence.

“Manhattan,” he admitted. Her eyes widened a little, but she didn’t ask for any more information.

“I’d invite you to stick around, but my roommate will be up soon, and I’d love to not have to explain all this,” she gestured in Ryan’s direction, “to her. So, if it’s all the same to you.” She jerked her head toward the door.

Ryan nodded. He could take a hint, especially when it was as obvious as this one. He used the bathroom and grabbed his backpack, pausing to fill up the souvenir “I ♡ New York” water bottle he had bought at a gift shop just before he left the city.

They exchanged some sort of goodbye. Ryan thought it felt sharp and awkward, though she didn’t seem to care much. Then he wandered out of the apartment building and onto the streets.

He wasn’t sure where he was going, but it didn’t much matter because he wasn’t sure where he was either. He just started walking. He found a small run-down coffee shop and stopped for breakfast. He found no answers at the bottom of the paper cup of coffee, nor among the crumbs of the bagel, so when started walking again, he did it without direction.

The roads became side streets, which eventually became country roads that ran out between big green fields. In the back of his mind, as a long-term concept, he figured he wanted to head west, perhaps try to make it out to California. But it didn’t much matter at the moment. He wasn’t going to walk all the way to the west coast.

The sun grew high and hot. When he estimated it was about noon, he rummaged in his backpack and managed to scrounge up a package of peanuts he had bought at a rest stop a few days previous which he decided would pass for a lunch. He ate it under a tree.

By mid-afternoon, he had found his way to a highway and started walking along it. He absentmindedly watched the cars slipping along beside him, their windows and mirrors throwing glare into his eyes now and then.

Eventually, he got bored of walking. His legs were starting to get tired and his throat felt dry. He had finished off the water shortly after the salty peanuts. He held up a thumb and waited to see what luck he’d have.

A few cars seemed to slow, though he decided it was just his imagination when they continued without stopping. Eventually, a middle-aged man in a beat-up station wagon pulled up beside him and asked where he was headed.

Ryan admitted he didn’t really know, that he was just traveling, and that was enough for the man to agree to give him a ride.

The man gave Ryan a look up and down as if wondering whether a conversation was worth his while. Clearly, the answer was no, and they drove on in silence.

They parted ways at a rest stop as the moon was rising. They both went inside to grab a snack. While Ryan was in the bathroom, the man decided to slip away and drive off into the night.

A dwarf who looked like she was in her thirties noticed the lost looking elf and offered to give him a ride. He took the next part of the highway in the towering cab of a truck.

They started to go south, though Ryan didn’t realize it at the time. Sometime in the middle of the night, while Ryan was dozing, they passed into Pennsylvania.

They stopped at a diner when the sun hung on the horizon. She informed Ryan that she hated driving while the sun was rising and that she would rather stop and eat some eggs while it cleared the edge of the world.

“Technically it’s rising for about half the day,” Ryan pointed out. It was meant to be a joke, but he had just woken from a lapsing doze and felt groggy. The words came out flat; she didn’t seem amused. Ryan stocked up on his water and supplies while she refilled the dust tank. They were about to load back into the cab of the truck and start off down the highway again when a sudden urge gripped Ryan.

“I think I’m going to walk from here,” he announced. She raised an eyebrow at him.

“You know there’s not much around here.” She waved a hand at the green hills around them. He nodded and couldn’t help but grin — it was barely more than a slight turning up at the corners of his mouth, but compared to a few weeks previous, it was a lot. She was looking at him as if he were insane but shrugged and waved a hand in farewell as she climbed up into the truck. It came to life with a roar that quickly faded away into nothing as she drove away into a world no longer marred by a sunrise.

He slung the backpack over his shoulders and walked alongside the gently curving ramp back to the highway.

The green of the hills sent a thrilling shiver through him. So did the size of them. It was as if someone had taken the contents of Central Park, shaken them up, and poured it across everything the eye could see.

The morning air was still cool. Thin grey clouds, more like linen than cotton, hung in the sky to the west. The scent of the fresh air made him smile — until a truck rumbled by now and then and filled the air with the tangy, metallic burning smell of fairy dust.

The highway bent alongside a river and he paused to watch the gentle flow of it. It seemed so calm, so easygoing. He wished he could feel that serene; even then as he stood watching the beauty of the Pennsylvanian woods, he felt the high-strung tension of his parents’ high-elf lifestyle thrumming urgently inside him. They may have done their best to look cool and collected, but if Ryan had learned anything from them — besides the foolish rules about not showing emotion — it was that that kind of look took a lot of effort.

His eyes caught on a spot on the distant shore of the woods, in a little clearing that he could just spot the edge of, where suddenly the trees seemed more there than they had before, more real. As if that spot in his vision had gained extra clarity and focus.

He wasn’t sure what caused it, or what he was seeing, but the wonder of it made him peek out a hint of a smile again. He stood watching it a little longer. He thought he could almost make out some tall alien figure moving through the trees and wondered if there were any local legends he could suddenly buy into. Then the figure disappeared — if it had been there in the first place — and Ryan kept walking.

At the first exit he found, he turned off from the highway. He was looking for a small country road to walk down. In the back of his mind, he had conjured an image, and with nothing better to do and nowhere better to be, he was determined to bring it to life.

As the sun climbed higher in the sky the clouds that had been lingering on the horizon burned off and the cool was replaced with the growing heat of summer.

On a whim, Ryan found a shady cluster of trees and sat beneath it. He pulled out a snack he had bought that morning, as well as a beat-up paperback novel he had found, discarded or forgotten, at the bus stop in Albany on his way to Buffalo. It was a mystery, a pulpy one with a strong-jawed man whose face was covered in shadows cast by the brim of his fedora standing beside a sleek woman in a slinky dress. Someone had been murdered and the midday heat of a summer’s day was as good a time as any to slip away into the story and find out whodunnit.

He dozed off. He wasn’t even aware that he had until he was woken by the spatter of raindrops on his face. The book, which had fallen propped open against his chest, already had been accosted by a few droplets. It made the sleek-looking woman — who already had a look of anguish or horror on her face — seem to be sobbing. He did his best to wipe away the moisture with the hem of his t-shirt and slipped it into his backpack.

Moving a little deeper into the cluster of trees, he peered out as the storm picked up. Big drops were dancing across the worn asphalt of the road, making it shimmer in the watery light of the summer storm.

“I need an umbrella,” he muttered to himself.

He was just starting to think that he would have to keep walking one way or another — unless he wanted to be stuck out at night; whatever figure he thought he had seen by the river before, he didn’t want to meet it in the dark of the woods at night — when a beat-up pick-up truck rolled to a stop on the edge of the road. It sat still for a moment, then the sound of its horn pierced the landscape dominated by the drum of raindrops and the hushed whisper of wind. Moments later the horn came again; this time the driver rolled down the window and waved a beckoning hand in his direction.

As he approached, he was surprised to see that the young woman behind the wheel was about his age — he had, on pure fancy, assumed whoever was driving was at least a decade or two older. He was even more surprised to see a pair of pointed ears.

“Do you need a hand?” she called to him as he got closer. “Or a ride somewhere?” Some part of him wondered if it was safe, but then he reminded himself that he had been in the cars of two strangers and the house of another in the past day. Hers didn’t seem any worse or more menacing.

“A ride would be great,” he admitted. She grinned and leaned across the passenger seat to open the opposite door.

“Hop in then, before you’re completely drenched.”

When he was in the car, sitting on a threadbare towel she had laid out, she looked him up and down, smirking. His hair was plastered to his forehead and his clothes felt sticky with moisture.

“Enjoying the weather?”

“I was just thinking I needed to get an umbrella.”

“Was that before or after the rainstorm started?” she asked.

“After,” he admitted sheepishly.

“That’s always how it is, isn’t it,” she laughed with a sound like clear bells. “You never remember that you need something until you need it. Besides, you don’t want an umbrella. My moms always swear by rain jackets. They won’t break if they flip inside out.” He shrugged, but nodded and conceded. The image of the battered corpses of umbrellas lining the city streets back in Manhattan climbed through his mind.

“How did you find me?” he asked, as she put the car in gear and started to drive off. He peered back toward the cluster of trees he had taken shelter in. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to spot anyone tucked away in there.

“Have you seen your head?” she laughed. “Plus, I have a friend who reads tea leaves. He told me there might be someone who could use some help along the road today.” Ryan ran a hand through his hair self-consciously. It had always been a sticking point with his parents, the fact that he had red hair. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t have it if it weren’t for them; the color was, evidently, not befitting of a high elf.

“Are there many high elves around here?”

“High elves?” she asked in reply. “None that I know of.” She caught his eye. “Oh, not me, I’m a wood elf. Not that there’s much discussion about that in these parts. Most people just call us all elves one way or the other.” Then she spared a sidelong glance at him. “Where are you from that it does matter?” Her eyes narrowed slightly, but Ryan didn’t think it was angry or suspicious, just intently curious.

“Manhattan,” he admitted. His voice sounded a little sheepish to himself, but it likely wasn’t enough to be noticeable to the young woman.

“That sounds about right,” she shrugged slightly, her face relaxed again. “My friend Eric went there a few years ago. I’ve never been myself, maybe I’ll make it out that way someday.” Then, “Speaking of heading places, where are you going.”

“I’m just sort of going,” Ryan said. He liked the sound of that better than ‘I don’t know.’

“No shame in that,” she declared. “We love a good nomad, makes for some fun stories. I’m headed home for the day. If you have nowhere better to go, you’re welcome to sleep on our couch for the night.”

“Your parents won’t mind?”

“I’m not living with my parents,” she admitted, “but my friends won’t mind.” She thought about it for a moment. “For the record, my parents wouldn’t much mind either. They’re all for elves doing other elves a good turn — though they’re also the sort to be happy to give anybody a hand whenever they can spare it and sometimes when they can’t.”

They drove in silence for a stretch, the raindrops falling heavily on the windshield. The trees whipped by in a medley of dappled greens and browns. Ryan let his eyes wander across it, his eyes absentmindedly looking for patterns in the mix that were quickly whipped away as they sped along.

The trees on either side began to retreat a little, making way for swaths of field that were bordered in the distance by the proud swell of a forested hill.

“I never introduced myself,” she realized. “I’m Claire Dyer.”

“Ryan Freyson,” he replied.

“I’d shake your hand, Ryan,” she said, “but I tend to like to keep both hands on the wheel when I can help it.”

When Claire did turn off the road, it was onto a gravel driveway that wandered a short way to a small, cozy-looking farmhouse. Standing opposite the house was a big red barn that looked like it belonged in a calendar of New England sights.

She turned the truck carefully under an awning attached to the barn and shut off the engine. A young man came out from behind the barn at the noise. His long, coarse hair was pulled into a ponytail. A smudge of something crossed his forehead. He scratched his ear with a mud green hand.

“Hey Hawthorne, how’s it going in there?”

“Nothing’s exploded yet,” the ogre replied. “So, Stu was right,” the ogre said.

“You say that like he normally isn’t,” Claire pointed out.

“If we pointed out how often he was right, his head would be too large to fit through the barn doors,” he shrugged his broad shoulders. Then he raised a hand in greeting to Ryan. “Glad Claire could give you a hand,” then, “I should get back to it.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder where something was humming from inside the barn. “Are you sticking around for dinner?”

“He’s staying with us for the night,” Claire declared. Ryan wondered if the man would have an issue with it — he wondered it in the tone of the fearful voice that still lived in the back of his mind, the one that told him he was going to fail and have to retreat home to Manhattan with his tail between his legs — but the ogre didn’t seem to take issue. In fact, he grinned, and flashed a thumbs up.

“It’s always a fun time with guests,” he said, as much to them as to himself.

“Come on, let’s head in.” Claire led the way to the house.

The hallway was cluttered with muddy boots and random knick-knacks. A line of coats fought for space on not enough hooks. She dropped the keys to the truck in a rough wooden bowl on a shelf by the door and kicked off her shoes, edging them into an approximation of a line with her toe. Ryan followed her lead and basked in the feeling of walking around a house without shoes on — something his parents would never have allowed.

“Here, you can drop your bag in here,” she showed him to the living room. He carefully placed the bag down beside the couch. The number of times he had stepped away from his back since he had left were few. Everything he owned was in there. But, when she caught his eye, he knew that his stuff would be safe. “I think I hear Maggie in the kitchen, I’ll introduce you.”

The kitchen was filled with the kind of sunlight that his parents' apartment never got — perhaps this kind of sunlight just couldn’t be found in the city. It was deep and gold and coated everything like honey.

Maggie smiled at Ryan as Claire showed him in. The grin was tucked beneath a pile of nut-brown hair that was starting to go grey. He felt a needling surprise work its way through his chest. He couldn’t quite fathom how someone could show that much emotion and what seemed to be affection moments after first seeing someone. He was glad she did, though, the sight made him feel warm inside. He didn’t even think to try to smile back, but she didn’t mind, just went back to the bread she was kneading.

“Hello, friend of Claire’s,” she said, glancing up from the dough.

“Ryan,” he offered.

“Hello, Ryan, what brings you to our home?”

“Ryan,” Claire said sagely, “is a nomad.” She said the word with the same emphasis one might use when introducing a surgeon or scholar.

“Something like that,” Ryan replied.

“Well, it is something, isn’t it? The open road, the way the sky looks above you as your walking through the world. I was something of a nomad myself, back in my younger days. Where are you coming from?”

Ryan wasn’t sure if she was asking where he had just been, or where he was from originally. “I’m from New York City, but I just was in Buffalo.”

She nodded when he mentioned Buffalo. “I have a cousin who moved there years back. Said he likes the lake, though I don’t see what the big appeal is. It’s a wonderful lake, but not so spectacular I’d move to see it more often.”

He muttered some small agreement, glancing around the kitchen. Eventually, his eyes settled on the rhythmic motion of her hands in the bread dough. Claire caught him watching.

“Maggie makes the best bread. I don’t know when the last time we bought any from the store was, she’s just always making it for us.”

“A trick I learned on the road,” she admitted. “I can’t tell you how many friends I made by baking a loaf or two while I was staying with strangers. You stay in a stranger's house and it makes a bond, but you bake them some bread and it makes a friend.” She nodded wisely.

“I’ve never seen anyone make bread before,” he admitted. When he lived with his parents, things like bread were never made, only bought. Neither of his parents was interested in baking.

“Here,” Maggie said, stepping away from the dough and dusting the flour from her hands. She waved him over. Ryan glanced at Claire, who nodded as if to tell him ‘go on, she won’t bite.’ As she moved away from the dough, he realized she was shorter than he had been expecting. From the other side of the kitchen, he could only see her head over the counter. He had known when he walked in that she was a dwarf, but the change in height surprised him. He quickly discovered why, as he pushed aside a stool where she had been working.

“The dough’s almost done. If you could finish it off for me? Stu asked me to keep an eye on his casserole.”

“Do you know where is? He’ll want to know that his prophecy brought us a guest.”

“He’s out back, I think he’s gathering wood. I think he wants to do some capnomancy tonight. Besides, he said tonight will be a good night for a campfire.”

“I’m going to see if he can use a hand,” Claire grinned. “I hope you like s’mores, otherwise, I’m not sure we can let you stay with us.” She disappeared out the back door before he could admit that he hadn’t ever had one before.

Ryan prodded the bread tentatively. It felt soft and fleshy under his finger, but not altogether horrible. He tenderly started to work at it, doing his best to mimic the motions Maggie had been doing before.

“You’re going to have to give it a little more oomph if it’s going to bake before dinner,” Maggie offered. “It won’t get hurt, don’t worry.” She let him go at it for a bit in silence. “You seem like you’re running from something,” she said finally, leaning against the countertop beside the stove as she watched him.

“What makes you say that?” he said diplomatically.

“You have a look about you that is as if you’re watching the way you came. You don’t need to look over your shoulder behind you to be keeping an eye on what you’ve left behind, you know?” He didn’t really know, but he nodded anyway. She eyed him up and down. They were silent again for a few moments before she joined him. In a few quick motions, she tugged off a golf-ball sized wad of dough and stretched it until the afternoon sunlight streamed through it like a piece of stained glass.

“This looks about done,” she said, working the dough back into one mass. Then, with a gleam in her eyes, she added “do you want see how to braid it? There’s another trick for you; you braid a loaf of bread and everyone will look at you as if you’re some sort of master baker when really it’s as simple as braiding anything else.” She tapped the side of her nose knowingly, leaving a smudge of flour.

She broke the dough into three portions and twisted them together at one end, then she started at the top, and left Ryan to finish it, offering the excuse that she was going to check on the casserole.

“When Stu said he wanted to do capnomancy, I don’t think he meant with the dinner,” she quipped.

“What’s capnomancy?”

“It’s a kind of fortune-telling. You look for shapes in smoke.” Clearly, she decided the casserole was done. She grabbed two oven mitts and pulled out a bubbling, steaming dish.

“This out, that in,” she announced, pointing with her chin at the bread. “Put it on the baking sheet first.”

“So this is him,” a voice said from the back door. Claire was standing there with a young man about her age. He looked human, as best as Ryan could tell. His hair was just long enough to be standing up in all sorts of strange directions as if he had been rubbing it with a balloon. He was watching Ryan wide-eyed, but the elf got the feeling that it wasn’t any particular sense of awe, just how the man’s eyes were normally set.

“Ryan, this is Stu,” Claire said. “He’s the one who said I should look out for you.”

“The tea leaves said it,” Stu insisted, “I just passed along the message.” He thought for a moment. “It was a particularly good cup of tea.”

“How long have you been doing divination?” Ryan asked.

“Ages,” Stu replied. “My parents toyed with it while I was growing up. I picked up what I could until the internet became a better way to learn about it.”

“Did they offer it at your school?” Ryan’s fancy high-elf private school in the Upper West Side hadn’t run classes in anything like divination — and especially in spellweaving, which the teachers tended to approach with the same disdain as so many other things they considered part of non-elvish culture.

“No,” Stu said slowly. “I was homeschooled, my parents thought they could do better than the nearest school. And by then I knew more than my parents did. I suppose I could have tried to teach them, but I imagine that would have defeated the purpose of what we were trying to do there.”

“I suppose so,” Ryan agreed. He waited to see if Stu would say anything else, but the diviner was quiet, just watching the room and maybe — Ryan seemed to get the sense from the way his eyes were focused — watching something beyond it too.

“How’d the bread go?” Claire asked conversationally, joining them by the counter as Stu drifted toward the hallway.

“Ryan was a little gentle at first,” Maggie replied, “but once he got the hang of it he was a natural.” She nudged him with her elbow conspiratorially. He nodded once, solemnly. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice said that someone other than a high elf would have smiled at the comment.

There was a sound at the front door and the ogre, Hawthorne, came into the kitchen. His big toe poked through a hole in his left sock. He was pulling his hair out of the ponytail and shaking it loose. His face was decorated with more smudges. One shone with a spectrum of colors as if it were a smear of magic.

“Everything still in one piece?” Maggie asked. “Nothing blown to smithereens?”

“No smithereens or any other rubble,” he agreed. “What’s for dinner?”

“Hawthorne made a casserole, and Ryan made us a loaf of bread,” she announced.

“I just did the last of the kneading,” Ryan said quickly.

“And most of the braiding,” she pointed out, insisting, “it’s his loaf.”

“So, how do all of you know each other?” Ryan asked. He looked between them, trying to connect a middle-aged dwarf, an ogre in his late 20s, and Claire and Stu, who both seemed to be 21 at most.

“That,” Hawthorne said soberly, “is a long story.”

“I’ll tell you later,” Claire assured him. “Hawthorne doesn’t like to talk about it because he thinks it makes him seem less cool.”

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Hawthorne said with a friendly finger pointed meaningfully at Claire, “because you all like to slander me when you tell it.”

“Debatable,” Maggie interjected with a snort.

“We just make sure you’re not missing any of the important details,” Claire insisted. “Like how you ended up half-naked in that mud pile.”

“It’s more nuanced than it sounds,” Hawthorne insisted, turning to Ryan. “The story is more complicated.” Claire made a noise that seeped with a sense of teasing doubt.

“Is it though?”

“This loaf is coming out in a few minutes, and I need someone to go set the table,” Maggie announced. “And Ryan’s not allowed to do it because he made us bread.” Ryan wanted to protest, but she gave him another conspiratorial wink.

“I’ll go get Stu and Eira,” Hawthorne announced quickly.

“I guess that means I’ll set the table,” Claire sighed dramatically. Ryan followed her into the dining room. She went to a hutch and started gathering a stack of eclectic dishes. Arrayed on one of the shelves was a row of little carvings.

“These are really cool,” Ryan said pointing toward the figurines.

“Hmm?” she said, glancing up from the dishes. “Oh, thanks, I made them.”

“May I?” he asked, reaching out to pick one up. It was a figurine of a mountain lion reclining regally on its back paws. She nodded her permission.

“We elves — wood elves, I guess you’d say — have a tradition of carving. Each piece of wood has a spirit inside it. We do our best to give them shape and, through it, power. In return, they give us protection and luck and guidance.” She finished putting out the plates around the long wooden table and came to inspect the one he had picked up.

“That one gives stealth. We haven’t seen a mountain lion around here for years, but there used to be mountain lions all over the place in Pennsylvania. You can be walking down a trail and not know that there’s a lion near you until it’s pounced on you and started to tear you apart. That’s what they’d say, at least.”

Holding it, he could picture the woods — real, tangled wild woods — even though, before finding his way to Pennsylvania he hadn’t been to anywhere greener than Central Park since the time he had asked to go camping in fourth grade. His parents had taken him to a lodge; they proceeded to spend the weekend in some elvish meditation ritual that he had never hear of before and hadn’t heard of since. But, looking at the carving, Ryan could almost see the thick, weaving woods, could smell the decomposing leaves and wood, could hear the rustle of creatures moving through the underbrush.

Claire was putting out the last fork, smirking as she watched him stare at the figure.

“I bet your high elves don’t have anything like that,” she said teasingly.

“If I could, I’d be done with high elf culture forever,” he said stonily. Then held his tongue. She didn’t need to know about his family drama, that wouldn’t be proper.

“Casserole coming through,” Maggie announced, toting in the hot dish and placing it on a trivet in the center of the table. “Could someone go grab the bread?”

“I’ve got it, Mags,” Hawthorne said. The braided loaf was in one hand, Stu’s fingers were interlocked with the other. Ryan felt a twist in his gut. A voice in the back of his head said ‘if they’re like that do I really want to stay here tonight.’ But did his best to dismiss the thought. These were people who had been kind enough to take him in for the night when he needed it, and he didn’t have to love everything about them to be grateful. Besides, the voice that had spoken in his head sounded distinctly like his father’s. If he was trying to leave his parents and their lifestyle behind him, maybe it was time to reconsider outlooks like this one.

Trailing slowly, carefully, quietly enough that Ryan didn’t notice her at first was another figure. She was small enough to be a child, but not in the same way a dwarf was. She was dainty and frail-looking. Everything about her looked young — except for her eyes. They were wide and silvery, like the moon, and looked ancient, like a pair of antique plates. She watched Ryan, then sat at one end of the table. Ryan was surprised to see a curling feathery tail peeking out of the chair from behind her.

There was something ethereal and strange about her. Ryan had to glance at the others to make sure they saw her too.

“So, what’s in the casserole tonight, babe?” Hawthorne asked.

Stu rattled off a list of ingredients. Ryan kept a mental tally in his head and counted six different things his parents wouldn’t allow in their home if they had a say in the matter. He felt a certain small vindictive thrill when he took his first bite. He didn’t have much time to appreciate the sense of getting back at his parents, however. He was too busy savoring the flavors in the dish.

“This bread is delicious, Ryan,” Hawthorne said.

“And the braid is beautiful,” Stu added. “Maggie always says that she would use that as a way to weasel her way into friendships.”

“She mentioned something about that to me too,” Ryan agreed. Maggie grinned at him.

“When did you learn to bake bread?” Hawthorne asked.

“This was my first time; Maggie taught me this afternoon.”

“Good old Mags,” he said, shooting the dwarf a grin. “Wait until she bakes one of her pies. Her bread is good, but her pies are magical.”

“My favorites are the apple ones,” Claire admitted.

“Nothing holds a candle to her lemon meringue,” Hawthorne countered.

“Blueberry,” the girl at the end of the table offered simply, with a slow, knowing shake of her head. “It’s the only way to go.”

“What kind of pie do you like, Ryan?” Maggie said. “This lot will argue all day about it.”

“I’ve never had much pie,” Ryan said. It was mostly true, though, in reality, he had never had any pie. “My parents thought it was too human.” For the first time since they had met, Ryan saw Hawthorne bristle. The ogre glanced defensively at Stu sitting beside him, then back at Ryan.

“Is ‘too human’ an issue?” he asked.

“It was for them,” Ryan admitted. “But they had a lot of opinions that I’m starting to think weren’t very worthwhile.” This answer, apparently, was good enough for the ogre, who went back to grinning and eating his casserole. Ryan caught Stu glancing with tender admiration at Hawthorne.

After dinner, they piled their dishes in the sink. The strange-looking girl was the last to set hers down. When she did, the water turned itself on, the sponge nudged the soap into action, and it all began to clean itself.

Then they filed out onto the yard where Stu began to build a fire. Claire lingered in the kitchen, when she joined them, her arms were full of marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers.

There was a small ordered stack of sticks forming in the firepit under Stu’s hands. He worked quickly and precisely, building a little cabin out of kindling. Then, when he determined it was ready, he pulled out a little metal box from his pocket. Inside it, dappled in black and a faintly glowing red, was a perpetually burning ember from a phoenix’s nest. He tipped it carefully from the nestled layers of insulation into the middle of his stick structure and gently blew on it until it caught.

The curls of smoke started small, weaving and wandering from the gently glowing embers into a sky that was the same color, just now losing the light of day. They grew larger as he started to stack some larger wood onto the pile. Once it was burning brightly, Stu turned to look at the group.

The swimming firelight turned his narrow features into a gaunt, ghostly mask. His smile at the flames was too marred by shadows to look completely friendly. There was a power flickering and sparking in his eyes, in time to the motion of the fire.

“Does anyone have a question?” he asked. Ryan thought his voice sounded deeper, more resonant, as if it were echoing from all around them. No one said anything.

“Do you want to know where you’re heading?” Claire asked Ryan. He felt a sudden surge of excitement — and of fear — but he nodded. His fist clenched at his side, his nails digging into his palm.

He never specifically asked a question, but his exchange with Claire seemed to be enough. Stu’s lips began to move silently. He cocked his head to the left, then the right, looking deep into the curls of smoke and beyond them. He followed the grey shapes up from the fire, tracking them into the darkness of the falling night.

“You’re heading west,” Stu said, his lips finally letting out sound. Just those words were enough to cut through Ryan’s fears that the diviner was about to inform him he was headed back to the Upper West Side. “The journey isn’t a straight path, but you have a destination, there is a home for you, at the end of this road. There will be friends, and there will be enemies. There will be moments of beautiful life and moments of jarring death. The journey will take you far beyond this land before you are done. But in the end, you will settle like silt at the bottom of a river, as everyone does in the end.”

He looked to Ryan, stared deep into his eyes, it seemed as if the wind was rising and buffeting around them more than before. Stu took a hand, the fingers twisted into a claw, and slashed it through the plume of smoke. The wind seemed to die down — Ryan wasn’t sure it hadn’t just been his imagination and the blood pounding in his ears — and the smoke seemed to seep around the base of the fire for a few moments, hesitant to rise again. When it did, it was in a thin, straight line.

“It will end well for you. There are good omens in your future.” Ryan felt a surge of relief and nodded once in gratitude.

“Did you have something you wanted to ask the smoke?” Hawthorne asked.

“I already got what I needed,” he replied. “The apple trees will be ready for harvest by the middle of August. Does anyone else have any questions?”

When no one asked any questions, Claire said, “the only thing I need to know right is who wants s’mores?” There was a general chorus of agreement from around the fire, and she started passing out packages to open. Once all the bags and boxes were breached and the sugar could flow freely, they all got to work roasting marshmallows and assembling. Ryan kept a few steps behind, trying to track their process.

“You’ve never done this before, have you?” the girl with the silver eyes said. Ryan wanted to attribute her observation to the fact that something about her seemed distinctly magical, but he had a feeling it was just because he obviously didn’t know what he was doing. Some part of him clenched and braced for the impact of their laughter, but it didn’t come. They were all smiling at him, but not in a way that made him feel defensive. Stu wasn’t. Stu was too busy watching his carefully cooking marshmallow.

“I don’t think I had ever heard of s’mores before this afternoon,” he admitted.

“Here,” Hawthorne said, “I’ll show you. You’re going to want to roast your marshmallow first. Some of us get a little obsessive about getting it perfect golden-brown,” he coughed meaningfully and jerked his head at Stu who, without looking up, shrugged as if to say, ‘it is what it is.’ “I tend to think it’s more reasonable to just give it your best shot and work with what you get.”

“Some of us,” Maggie pointed out, “have the superior strategy of just letting it burn.” She held up a torched marshmallow on her stick. It was still smoldering slightly.

“Superior is debatable,” Hawthorne replied. “Anyway, the point is, there are lots of ways you can roast it. That’s personal preference. When you’re set you’ll want two graham crackers and a piece of chocolate to make your sandwich — chocolate goes below the marshmallow, otherwise, you’ll be doing a strange balancing act — and you’re good to go.” He showed his finished s’more as proof, and took a bite to sum up the whole set of instructions.

When they were finished with s’mores, Maggie told them a local legend about ghosts that haunted the woods. If you were nice to them, and you honored their graves, they would bring you lost things and help you out. If you treated them wrong, however, they would steal from you, item by item, until they took you last.

“Don’t worry though,” she said in reply to Ryan. “We treat them very kindly here.” As if on cue, a branch cracked in the distant trees, echoing across the field toward them, and something howled.

When the fire was burning low and they were all busy yawning, they went back inside. Hawthorne and Stu wished everybody goodnight and went upstairs hand in hand. Ryan felt his eyes catch on their interlocked fingers and the voice came back saying horrible things about them, but he quickly hushed it. Maggie went into the kitchen to make sure everything was tidied up and put away but then went upstairs too. The strange girl said nothing as she went away to bed but looked at Ryan as she left and gave a gentle smile.

“You’ll have to sleep on the couch,” Claire apologized. There are only three bedrooms upstairs, and they’re all spoken for so…”

“It isn’t a problem,” Ryan said quickly. “I slept in the passenger seat of a truck last night, so anything should be more comfortable.”

He went back to the living room. Claire joined him a few minutes later with a pile of pillows and a well-worn quilt.

“It’s a few years old,” she said. “Maggie makes one every year — it takes her a whole year too. Dwarves traditionally carve a stone tablet over the course of a year. It’s meant to be a cyclical, memory type of thing. Honors their gods in some way. Maggie thought it made too much of a mess, so she quilts hers instead. The new one goes on her bed at the end of the year and the old ones get passed down until they end up in the linen closet. This one is from,” she paused looking over the pattern, “seven years ago.”

“Have you all been living together that long?”

“No,” she laughed. “Maggie owns the place, so she’s obviously been here longest. I got here two years ago. Hawthorne got here at the same time. Stu was here already. Eira came just under a year ago.”

“What is Eira?” Ryan asked.

“What is she? Oh, she’s a fairy. She was wandering around in the woods, clearly lost. I don’t know where she was trying to go. We offered to take her home, but she said she can’t go home. Now she makes fairy dust for us. We’ve tried to tell her she doesn’t have to, and that we’ll get fairy dust from town, but that just made her upset. She said she made some sort of deal, that she has to make dust.”

“What about you? How did you get here?” Ryan asked.

“Oh yeah,” she grinned. “I promised you that story, didn’t I. Maggie is a friend of my moms’. I came up this way when I finished high school. They thought I should go to college. I wasn’t so sure, so I convinced them to let me do a gap year. Maggie said that if I wanted to stay somewhere other than Pittsburgh. I could come up here, so that’s what I did. Anyway, we started with a gap year, now we’re up to two.”

“Do you think you’re going to go?” Ryan asked. The image of the Broadwood envelope swam through his mind.

“Eventually,” she shrugged. “Maybe when I’ve done all I can up here.”

“So how’d Hawthorne end up half-naked and covered in mud?”

“Ok, I have one thing to say before I start this part of the story,” she fixed Ryan with a meaningful stare. “What I’m about to tell you, how I’m about to tell it to you, is the absolute truth, and if Hawthorne tells you otherwise, he’s lying.”

“Noted.” She grinned in approval.

“I was driving up from Pittsburgh, and it was an ugly day. Rain by the bucket — today was a drizzle in comparison. I got off the highway and found him in a small, beat-up car by the side of the road. It had quit on him.

“I pulled over to offer him a ride. He said he didn’t need me to take him anywhere but asked if I could lend him a hand. I figured he was going to ask me to help jumpstart his car. Turns out he had other ideas. See, he was coming up here to work in a local shop, but has a knack for experimenting with potions and stuff. He had some ingredients and had mixed together something that he was pretty sure would get the car going. He had me sit in the car and try to turn the key, meanwhile he poured his potion into something under the hood of the car.

“Well, let me tell you, it definitely did something. It was like the car came to life — to actual life — and tried to get a bite of him or something. It got ahold of his shirt and made a solid rip in it — managed to singe it too. By the time he was done struggling with it, he had lost his shirt and one shoe. When I got out of the car to try to help, it shut the door and locked it, so we were stuck out of it. It started driving right at him, so he dived to the side — which happened to be into a mud-filled ditch. He got stuck enough that I couldn’t get him out on my own and had to call Maggie for help.

“Stu came with her — his parents had died and she took him in. That’s how the two of them met. You can probably tell he and Hawthorne hit it off pretty quickly.”

“What happened to the car?” Ryan asked.

“It drove off into the woods. Hawthorne hasn’t seen it since. I bet the potion has worn off, but there are local stories that it’s still out there, wandering around the woods on its own.”

“And you all just stayed here? Together?”

“Hawthorne technically didn’t start living here right away. He had somewhere else he was living, but he was spending enough time here with Stu when he wasn’t at work that eventually Stu asked Maggie if he could just stay here.”

“It’s nothing like my family back in New York,” Ryan admitted. Then he added, “it’s really nice, this set up you all have.”

“You know,” Claire said slowly, “I’d have to ask the others, of course, but if they were alright with it, you could stay here.” She glanced at his face, then before he had a chance glanced away and went on, “only if you want to, of course, I know you have to head west, or whatever, but Stu never said when that’ll happen, and I think everyone likes you and I have a feeling they’d love to have you around for a while.”

He glanced around the room, taking in the old worn books on the shelf, the knick-knacks on the table, the upright piano tucked in the corner, the big green plant by the window. For the first time in years, he started to smile, a real, full, smile. It felt awkward — he thought it might have looked awkward too. But he did it anyway.

“I’d love to.” Then, “if everyone else is ok with it, of course.”

They were. Claire asked the next morning over breakfast. Hawthorne let a sound that neared a whoop. Maggie grinned at him. Stu smiled a knowing smile. Eira nodded with a soft, contented look.

Just like that, Ryan had a new family. It didn’t take him long to realize he liked this one much more.

They’d eat meals together, enjoy campfires together, have game nights in the cozy living room. Hawthorne would play music for them on the piano. Maggie would bake for them; Ryan had a chance to taste her apple pie and her lemon meringue, but had to agree with Eira that the blueberry ones were the best.

They made him a room out in the barn. He and Hawthorne — who had previously claimed most of the barn as his potion-making territory, but happily forfeited some space for Ryan — swept up and put together some make-shift walls in the loft. Claire, who knew her way around a set of woodworking tools, put together a simple bed frame. Maggie let him choose a handful of decorations from the hall and the library to give it some life. He borrowed some books from the local public library to go on the small table.

He told them all they were doing too much, that they didn’t need to make so much effort to put a room together for him — literally — but they wouldn’t hear it. Hawthorne just laughed and Maggie insisted that she had wanted a guest room for a while. Claire just smiled as she placed a little carving she had done on the shelf by his bed.

He sank into life there like one sinks into a comfortable bed after a long day’s work. It squeezed around him, holding him tight and making him smile. It made him feel warm inside.

Claire brought him into town one day, where she worked at the local antique shop. There were no job openings at the shop, but one of the servers in the local restaurant and café had just left for a bigger city. He had no experience, but the manager at the restaurant decided it was a small enough, slow enough job that he’d learn as he went.

Every morning he’d ride with Claire in the old truck into town and start his day at work. She’d come in for lunch and they’d eat together, when he could take a break. He’d finish work before she did, so he’d go to the antique shop and see what they were selling, or wander down the street and look around, or sit on the park bench in the little green space across from the restaurant, and just enjoy the feeling of the sun on his face until Claire was done with work.

Then they’d ride back together, and everyone would be living their lives at the little farmhouse in the Pennsylvanian woods.

At the end of the day, he’d climb up into the loft and let the soft glow of the two lamps wash over him. Sometimes he’d read one of the books he’d borrowed. Other times he’d throw open the hatch in the roof — Eira had woven a little magic around it to make sure it didn’t leak in a rainstorm — and climb out to lay on top of the barn and watch the stars swim by above him, drifting silently across the sky.

The summer grew hot and dense, the air hanging thick and humid above their little farmhouse. Ryan took to sleeping with all the windows and the hatch in the roof open, with only sheets on top of him. Even then he felt sticky with sweat. There was something in the feel of it, however, every rough edge and crinkle in the paper on which the experience was written in his mind made him smile. It felt so different, from the summer nights air-conditioned to the point of winter in his parents’ house. Those memories had crisp edges and straight lines that were thoroughly uncomfortable because every piece was so rigid, so defined. He reveled in the rawness of that summer.

On one particularly warm Saturday, Ryan, Claire, Hawthorne and Stu were lounging in the apple orchard. It wasn’t anything fancy, a small cluster of trees in approximations of straight rows, but on a sunny day, they gave their fair share of shade. The air felt so humid that Ryan half-expected to see droplets of moisture dripping from the trees, despite the soft blue skies and clouds blurred with the heat of the day.

Hawthorne — who had given up, a few weeks previously, on his long hair and had buzzed it so short it was almost sheared clean off — was leaning against one of the apple trees. Stu was draped across him, eyes mostly closed.

Claire was sitting cross-legged between two trees. Her attention was on the small wooden figuring she was working on. Now and then she’d pause her work and reach her hands above her head, wiggling her hands while she stretched. The tips of her fingers nearly brushed the lowest hanging apples, almost ready to be picked.

Ryan was half paying attention to the book he was reading. Sometimes his thoughts would drift and his eyes would land on Claire and her work and he’d watch her cut away shavings of wood, bringing the carving that much closer to a final shape.

“How’d you learn to do that?” he asked eventually. Even his words felt heavy and thick in the summer afternoon.

“My cousin taught me,” she replied. “And he learned from his mother, who learned from someone else. Families teach the skill to the next generation.”

“It’s really cool,” he muttered.

“I could teach you if you want,” she offered. “It’s not exactly traditional, but I can’t imagine anyone will mind too much. Besides,” she grinned at him teasingly, “it’s not your fault that your parents didn’t think to teach you how to use a knife on some wood.”

“I don’t think you would have caught them using a knife on anything other than food,” Ryan agreed. “I’d like to learn.”

“Great,” she said. “We can start once I’m done with this one. Now, let me see that tattoo again.” He pulled the neck of his shirt down to show the red and grey phoenix drawn on his skin above his heart. The tattoo had still been fairly raw and fresh when he had arrived. He had gotten it on a whim when he arrived in Buffalo. The road away from home was a rebirth for him; he wanted to remember that. And if his parents would have balked at the sight of a tattoo and said it wasn’t befitting of a high elf, all the better.

He lay in the grass and stretched back, his head propped on one arm. The clouds were drifting above him, and he watched them dance and weave in and out of the thatch of green branches above him. It was the kind of moment he felt he could live in forever.

August passed and the apples were harvested. They all picked the apples together, climbing into the trees and tossing to them each other. Eating almost as many as they put in their basket. Eira would pick three and toss them into the air as if to juggle them. Instead, they’d start looping and dancing circles around her head, picking up enough speed to whip her hair around a little.

Hawthorne took some of the fruit to make apple cider. Maggie used some to bake an apple pie that even Ryan had to admit was almost as good as her blueberry. For a week, Ryan would take the apples into the restaurant to share around and Claire would take them into the shop. Even then they had too many to eat, so they set up a stand off the main road and sold them to passersby.

Summer slipped into autumn and the hills were cast in amber. Hawthorne lent Ryan some of his sweaters — thick, wool things that hung large on Ryan. He had a collection that Stu insisted took up too much space. It was hard to make out his complaints, however, because more often than not his face was nestled in the thick wool.

The evenings got cooler. Then the chill started to spread into the day. Ryan spread a quilt over his bed — it was the same one that he had used that first night. Their game nights were accompanied by hot chocolate. They went to their campfires wrapped in crocheted blankets.

When the first snow came, Ryan and Stu watched excitedly from the window. Neither of them could explain quite why the snow was so exciting to see, why the sight of it thrilled them and made them feel as warm inside as it was cold outside. But they didn’t need to, they could see the same excitement in each other’s eyes, and that was enough.

Thanksgiving was an enormous affair. It had always been a strange holiday with his parents, who threw themselves into it as fully as their approach to life would allow. Back in the Upper West side, they had a Thanksgiving party where they hosted a collection of their friends and community members, but it was as stiff and rehearsed as the rest of their life. From the carefully laid out dishes to the almost scripted recitation of gratitudes, everything fell in straight lines and tidy piles.

There, in the woods, they first went to a Thanksgiving lunch at the restaurant. Half the town was there, eating seven turkeys and more sides than Ryan had ever seen. They ate until they were full and then ate some more. By the time they were finished, as a collective, they had finished off almost all of the massive feast.

Then they went home. They did this and that to stall for a few hours. Ryan went on a walk through the woods and Eira tagged along. Then they regrouped and sitting around the dining room table, they had another meal. Because they were all still getting over the engorging lunch, and to avoid completely destroying the local turkey population, they opted for a roast chicken instead. Claire had made cranberry sauce — an old family recipe, she insisted. Stu had baked stuffing. Maggie, entering the great pie fray at last made a pumpkin pie. She insisted that it was the only proper Thanksgiving pie — and that that the only proper time to eat it was around Thanksgiving. Hawthorne objected strongly to the very premise and had strayed into the realm of baking to rectify what he saw as a slight to the very spirit of the holiday. In response to Maggie’s pumpkin pie, he made a pecan one.

When they were finished — with far more food in their stomachs than they needed — they collapsed in the living room. Hawthorne played something slow and soft on the piano. It had enough pauses in it that Ryan kept glancing over at him to see if he had dozed off or not. Claire and Stu were playing a lazy game of checkers. Maggie was working on that year’s quilt. Eira had her nose in a book. Ryan just sat watching them all, wondering how he had gotten so lucky, and knowing without a shadow of a doubt what he was grateful for that year.

The snow piled on heavy and thick after that night. The storms followed the month in. Some days it was piled so high that Ryan crashed on the couch instead of making the trek out to the barn.

Maggie and Hawthorne got into a friendly duel of soups, each trying to out-stew each other. It made for some of the best food Ryan had ever tasted.

Christmas was a cozy affair in the farmhouse. Eira went out into the woods one day. It was snowing gently, and the air was frozen like an ice crystal. She was gone for an hour or two. Ryan was starting to wonder if they should go look for her, but the others weren’t concerned. Sure enough, she came back shortly with a handsome pine tree in her wake. It wasn’t dragging behind her, but rather walking on two lanky, bowed legs that Ryan could only catch glimpses of when they peeked out from under the lowest branches.

It marched its way into the house and settled in the middle of the living room. Ryan and Hawthorne had moved the coffee table out of the way in anticipation. They spent the evening decorating it with Maggie’s collection of ornaments. Ryan hung up a figure of a dozing cat that he had carved. It might have been his imagination, but he thought the branch trembled contentedly as he did. As a finishing touch, Eira fixed her glance on the tree, and a scattering of glowing wisps sparkled to life. At the top, a glowing orb of light, twinkling faintly, brought itself to life.

The month of December shone as brightly as the light at the top of their tree. They were always smiling and laughing together. There was a plate in the kitchen that never seemed to run out of cookies. The snow fell and Ryan couldn’t help but smile when, after a day or two, it wasn’t dark and sooty with grime, but was still clean and white.

Then came New Year’s Eve, and they sat together in the living room as the clock marched them closer to midnight. Maggie had bought a bottle of champagne that they all sipped at — Ryan was eager to try it, though found it somewhat underwhelming. They saved a bottle of Hawthorne’s apple cider for midnight, however. No one had tasted it yet, and he had managed to work some bubbles in.

When the big, somber grandfather clock struck twelve, they all cheered and whooped — except for Stu who was too busy kissing Hawthorne. They all drank their cider, and told stories about the past year, and joked. Ryan savored the glowing sensation of knowing that he was beginning a new year, one that would be untouched by his parents and their strict rules and harsh judgments.

January was freezing. So was February. When they weren’t out at work, they spend the two first months of the year bundled up in blankets or in the kitchen, which Eira had enchanted to feel balmy and warm.

In March, the weather started to warm. It happened slowly, but the snow came more lightly. The thermometer didn’t drop quite as low. Ryan dared to make the journey from the barn to the house in one of Hawthorne’s sweaters and a coat, rather than the enormous puffy coat that he had bought at a second-hand store in town.

The first day of April came and flowers started to stick their heads up from the half-frozen ground. Suddenly the yard was dotted with splashes and spots of stunning colors. They could hear the creek in the woods running more freely.

That night, when Ryan went to the barn to got bed, he found Stu waiting for him. The human was sitting on the rustic quilt, one leg tucked up toward his chest, the foot of the other tracing shapes and patterns on the floor.

“What’s up?” Ryan asked, sitting on a stool to unlace his boots. Stu was watching him carefully as if analyzing his features to try to figure out what Ryan was thinking, or perhaps what he knew. When he seemed to have come up with an answer he shook his head slowly.

“I just had to come tell you that…” he paused, glanced at his feet, then looked back at Ryan. “I had to tell you that it will be alright. It’ll be good, in the end.” The words brought back a flash of that first night at the farmhouse when Stu read his fortune in the woodsmoke of the campfire.

He got up and walked to Ryan, gave him a hug that felt slightly stiff, slightly awkward, and then showed himself out. The elf wasn’t quite sure what to make of the interaction. He shrugged and went to bed.

The next morning, as he was getting ready for work, he found his old backpack. He had hardly looked at it since he had arrived, but there it was, poking out of the corner where he had left it. When he and Claire drove into town, he spotted a hitchhiker walking along the side of the highway. Business at the restaurant was slow, but most of the people who came in that morning weren't locals. Instead, they were strangers passing through.

By the end of the day, Ryan knew what Stu had meant. He wasn’t sure if the universe had actually been sending signs, or if it was just a string of coincidences, but he could feel it in his gut and in his mind: it was time to move on.

He made the announcement over dinner. There was an explosion of protest and pleading for him to stay. Stu said nothing but watched him with a sad knowing smile. Ryan just shook his head.

“Stu said it the night I came here,” Ryan said. “I have a road ahead of me. It may be long, but there’ll be a home for me at the end.”

“Why can’t this be your home?” Hawthorne said.

“It has been,” Ryan agreed. “And maybe it will be again. I don’t know. But I have a road to travel first before I can settle. I know that, and I need to do it before I can really be happy and at peace.” He wasn’t even sure if that was true, but he knew them and he knew they were going to take this best if they believed there was no other choice.

After some discussion, they convinced him to stick around for a few more weeks — it didn’t take much work on their part — so he could gather supplies and give the restaurant a chance to prepare for his departure, without leaving them in a lurch.

He stayed until mid-April when the apple trees were starting to blossom and the woods sounded full of the wild sounds of animals moving between them.

On a sunny Saturday morning, with a light, floral-scented breeze meandering down their road, he stood in the driveway with a backpack slung over his shoulders.

It wasn’t the one he had arrived with. This one was Maggie’s, a relic of days past. But it had plenty of space for everything he had first left home with and everything he had collected since then. They all gathered to see him off. Maggie gave him a hug and a small bound package. She explained it was the quilt that he had been using. Eira had woven a spell on it to make it more compact and lighter. As soon as he was sure he had settled in a proper home he could open it and it would be as warm and as comfortable as always, but until then it would be no harder to carry than an extra t-shirt.

“Did you ever figure out what you’re running from?” she asked softly.

“I don’t think I’m running from anything,” he said simply. “Not anymore, at least. I think I’m running toward something”

“Yes,” she smiled gently, looking him over appraisingly. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

Eira kissed him on the cheek. It wasn’t a romantic kiss, but it did tingle as if with magic. He imagined a shimmering trace of rainbow set on his cheek for a moment. “For protection,” she said simply. “Be safe, Ryan.”

Hawthorne shook his hand firmly, then caved and gave Ryan a rib-crushing hug. When he extracted himself, he sheepishly handed the elf the last bottle of cider from the same batch they had enjoyed at New Years. “I know this place is really Mags', but I’m going to say it anyway. If you’re ever in the area — if you ever need a place to stay — you’re always welcome back here.”

Stu handed Ryan a package of food and placed a lingering hand on his shoulder. Ryan knew that he wouldn’t run out of food for a while now — in fact, he had a feeling that it wouldn’t be until just when he could comfortably restock.

Then Ryan did one last check of his bag to make sure he had everything. He tucked the food and the packaged quilt inside. He wrapped the bottle in a few layers of shirts and jackets to keep it safe. Finally, he stood up and said a final goodbye before loading into the passenger’s seat of the truck, next to Claire.

They drove in comfortable, sad silence to where their small road met the highway, then she pulled over to the side of the road. He got out and heaved his backpack out after him. She climbed out too and walked around to join him.

She pulled him into a tight hug, held him tight. When she pulled back, for a moment her face hovered near his and he wondered if she was about to kiss him.

She didn’t. Instead, she reached back into the cab of the truck and pulled out a package loosely wrapped in muslin. When she handed it to him, she fixed her stare on him intently. He could tell what she wanted, so he unwrapped it. Inside was the carving of the phoenix that she had been working on months before.

He turned it over slowly in his hands, admiring all the detail and beauty of it. His fingers brushed against something on the bottom and he found her initials carved there. She didn’t normally mark her name — the carvings weren’t hers to own, they were spirits in their own right. This one, however, seemed to merit an exception, as if she was asking him not to forget her. He wanted to assure her that he never could.

He slipped the figure into the pocket of his jacket. Then they hugged again, and he tried to put all the gratitude for everything she had done for him — when she had first rescued him from the rainstorm, when she had given him a place to stay, when she had helped him find a job, every single moment she had helped him — into the hug. He wasn’t sure how to thank her for it all.

“Stay in touch,” she said finally, extracting herself. “You know the address, and you have our phone number. Maggie will want to hear all about your wanderings, and we all want to know that you’re alright. And Hawthorne was right. If you’re ever in the area, you’re always welcome to come visit. We’d love to have you, and you know that we have the space for you.”

“I know you guys,” Ryan said softly. “You all will fill that room in the barn with some other lonely wanderer who needs a family before long.”

“I don’t think we’ll be able to fill it,” she shook her head slowly. “Not anytime soon. Not while it’s your room.” She reached up and rubbed his shoulder comforting. “Good luck, Ryan. May the spirits follow you.” He smiled at her — he felt as if he had been practicing while he lived at that farmhouse in Pennsylvania. Then he shouldered the backpack, buckled its straps, and set off toward the highway and onward down his road.