Northwoods Magic (Northwoods Fairy Tales Book 1) Page 3

  Instead, Quinn lived and worked alone. She had a second-floor apartment in an ok neighborhood in the city, where the carryout was two blocks down and Quinn could “one click” her grocery order and just pick it up at the store. Anything else that was needed could just be ordered online. She never went to the doctor for anything anymore either, not since she had weaned herself off the heavy medication she had been taking. The drugs made her feel empty and dead inside, a shell of a person. The medicine may have kept the vivid dreams at bay, but it also sedated her. She just sat in her apartment and worked, and when she needed some social interaction, she logged onto her social media accounts and chatted with the ladies in her various groups and forums. That was the safest way to be for Quinn. No one had to know she had problems. No one had to know she was different.

  No one had to know she was other.

  Talia was different though. Almost right away, they had formed a connection when they met in her online writer's group. Talia was different too, not in the way that Quinn was, but different enough that she also had reason to stay away from too many people.

  Talia felt things. She was what someone who believed in the woo-woo stuff would call an “empath.” It was hard to hide things from Talia, especially if she was close enough to touch someone. A couple of times calling out a liar, cheating boyfriends, and a boss with a seriously disturbing inner monolog, and Talia realized that maybe her gift didn’t allow her much in the way of personal connections. Feeling others’ emotions was a bit like mind reading, and no one wants someone else to be able to read their thoughts. Talia kept her personal connections to a minimum, and Quinn thought that was sad because Talia was such a beautiful soul. Talia didn’t have to hide as much as Quinn did, but then again, she didn’t have her weirdness going on blast at the slightest provocation.

  Talia had been so open to telling Quinn about her issues that she felt comfortable confiding in Talia, too. She didn’t know if her friend actually believed that she had power over plants, but Talia acted like she did and wasn’t standoffish about it. To Quinn, that was more than anyone else had ever given her. That made Talia her very bestest friend. Her only friend. Her bestest only friend.

  It was Talia’s idea for Quinn to come back to the Happ House and see if Quinn could find answers to how everything ended up such a mess.

  Talia’s Why don’t you just go back to the place where it happened and ask? had thrown Quinn for a mental loop, immediately embarrassed and ashamed that the thought had never occurred to her before. Quinn never would have had the idea on her own. She hated that part of herself that needed someone else to tell her what to do, having no confidence in her ability to make her own decisions. Quinn had even thought about asking Talia to go with her to Happ House but then got shy since they hadn’t ever actually met face to face. Talia probably wouldn’t have minded; she was good about things like that. Talia was good, but Quinn was too meek. She wouldn’t ask something like that of her only friend, and now here she was pulling into the drive of a building that didn’t look as familiar as it felt. Her heart was beating a rhythm like a river dance, and her palms were clammy with the sweat of the hyper-anxious.

  She pulled her compact car into the side lot parking and walked past the large wooden “Happ House” sign marking the main lodge. The building was two stories high and spread out like a big wooden mansion, made with thick cut logs and high beams. Everything was a different shade of brown, but instead of looking boring and monotone, it seemed vast and exciting. It looked like the type of place you could explore. Quinn strode through the smoothly paved lot, almost high with excitement.

  The air smelled cleaner here than in the city. It had a fresh scent, like wind through the grass with little hints of the wildflowers that populated the ground around the lodge. The landscaping wasn’t manicured - no, it was quite the opposite. The main building looked like it had been carved directly from the forest, and aside from the dirt road she had driven down to get there, the parking lot, and the lodge itself, all that could be seen in any direction were trees. Huge towering oak trees, white birch with bark peeling, and evergreen as far as the eye could see.

  Everything was ripe and bursting with life.

  Forgetting about her nervousness for a moment, Quinn lost herself in the vastness of nature, something she never allowed herself to do. It was too dangerous to be around this much plant life, not for her but for others. There was no telling what she might accidentally do, but it just smelled so good, so fresh, and so green. Quinn couldn’t stop herself from absorbing the feel of the breeze in her hair, the sound of evening insects playing music in her ears. A loud cawing came from her right, and she snapped her head to the side in surprise. A raven? Quinn dreamed about ravens. She dreamed about one raven in particular and had for the last ten years. Her sketchpad was full of drawings she had done and poetry she scrawled in the middle of the night. Not prose that made it to her books, but poetry about this bird specifically. The bird that she didn’t know why she dreamed about but did. The bird with the copper rings in his eyes. This raven was significant, but she didn’t know why. As hard as she tried Quinn couldn’t remember; would being here in this place help her?

  Her whole body buzzing with excitement, Quinn raced over to see the bird sitting on the branch eyeing her suspiciously. It was just a regular old black bird, nothing special as far as birds go. Quinn didn’t know what she expected, maybe that the bird would look at her from his perch on the branch and say “hello” or something. She felt a little disappointed anyway that he didn’t.

  Quinn knew that she was stalling, that she was scared to walk in the door of the lodge. She knew that it would be just like any other hotel or vacation lodge. She would check in, get her keys, and be directed to the cabin where she was staying for two weeks. She would get her things and sit in that cabin and be exactly the same Quinn she had been when she was sitting in her lonely apartment. Except here there were trees and flowers and a thousand other things that could unwittingly out her secret, all without giving her any answers. Who knew if the same people even worked here anymore? Who knew if it was even owned by the same people at all?

  As her anxiety rose to level ten on the SHIT THAT MAKES ME FREAK OUT scale, Quinn’s “flight” part of her “fight or flight” instincts took hold of her. She turned to run back to the car, maybe not to leave just yet, but at least to shut the doors and the windows on all of the green around her. Yes, the air felt exquisite to breathe and the sound of the birds in the trees soothed her, but the whole situation was really frightening. Quinn was scared; she needed to shut it all out. She turned to run but found that she couldn’t move. A gnarled tree root sticking out of the ground had curled itself around her ankle, as if to stop her from leaving. It wasn’t gripping tightly, more like curling lovingly around her lower leg like a child, asking her not to leave.

  She was definitely trying to leave.

  With a muffled shriek, Quinn kicked her shoe free just in time to hear the front door of the lodge swing open, and two worried looking faces peeked out. Quinn froze mid-step, and the tree root immediately took back the hold of her leg, winding around first the right and then the left. She was effectively trapped and facing two people to whom she could not explain the phenomena they were witnessing.

  The first person to come out the door and down the wide flat steps of the entryway was a young woman, maybe a little younger than Quinn. She was curvy in the way Quinn always wanted to be, with dyed black hair that had a red stripe running through the front section. She had it tied back in a bandana pinup style, and her green eyes were filled with concern. Concern for Quinn? Concern for the magical tree roots coming out of the ground and petting her? Concern for what the nonexistent neighbors might think and how fast she might get back to the lodge to call an exorcist? Quinn didn’t know and couldn’t dwell on it because the second person that came down the steps caught her attention.

  Memories snapped into place in Quinn’s mind like lego blocks fitting together. The
short older lady with the starched white apron and soft gray hair pulled pack into a bun was Miss Benny. Quinn’s internal monolog was wild and disjointed; she remembered Miss Benny, didn’t she? Maybe not before, but now she did. Miss Benny owned the Happ House. Miss Benny was a lovely granny lady who always reminded Quinn to be careful on the trail, watch out for bears, and always be back to the cabins before dark. Miss Benny packed the best egg salad sandwiches and told her she was a lovely young woman and looked at her sketches and ahhed over them appropriately when Quinn would come back from her walks. This was Miss Benny, maybe a little older than the memories her sixteen-year-old self provided, but the woman was the same. Quinn remembered.

  She remembered.

  Quinn’s head felt like it was going to fracture from the pressure of a hundred swirling memories, all trying to be acknowledged at once. Too many emotions overtook Quinn and colors exploded in front of her eyes. Maybe this is what an aneurysm is like, Quinn thought to herself. Maybe I’m going to die here. Before she actually did die and pass away into the unknown, Quinn sucked in large puffs of air, filling her lungs and gathering confidence. Miss Benny and the younger woman looked to Quinn, then down to the tree roots currently winding their way up her legs. They were halfway to her waist now.

  Quinn wondered whether they would still hold her up after she left her body and went to heaven. She wondered if they would keep her standing there like a long haired lady scarecrow, or would they collapse when the life left her and let her body slump to the ground. Hysteria bubbled up from her guts and she started to laugh, not a belly laugh like when someone told a joke, but the crazed cackle of a person whose mind was slipping away.

  Miss Benny started toward her, concern in her eyes, and Quinn rushed to get out the words that she wanted to say.

  “You are Miss Benny, you made me sandwiches. I was here. Long ago. I got hurt. I’m Quinn, do you know me?” Her arms flung out in front of her, she pleaded, her words coming out fast and jumbled. Please know me, her wide gray eyes seemed to scream, finally overflowing with the tears she had held in for the last ten years. “I don’t remember what happened here,” she whispered as the stress of her journey finally took over, and she slipped into the quiet dark of unconsciousness. “Do you know me?”

  Corbin Olsen scrubbed his hands over his face and raked them through his inky black hair in frustration. He sat hunched over in one of the overstuffed brown leather chairs in the lodge, long legs splayed out and elbows resting on his knees. What a shitshow, he thought to himself. For the ten years since he had seen her last, no, since she had left him, he had wondered about her life. What had she been doing? What had her life been like ever since he had carried her, bloody and broken, through the woods and into the lodge surrounded by strange people who asked him a lot of questions he couldn’t answer? Was she happy?

  He wasn’t happy. After all they had been through, he couldn’t believe that Quinn had just left without another thought. She left and NEVER came back. Except now she was back, and she was a complete one-eighty from what his mind had imagined. In the ten years he had spent living in a body that he didn’t understand, Corbin had assumed that she had gone home and thrived. Maybe she had a high-powered job and spent her days breaking balls in the boardroom, having one night stands with lesser men and tossing them out in the morning. Maybe she was a housewife, staying at home and raising her kids while her husband went to work every day and she kept the house and cooked the meals. Maybe she was neither of those things, but instead somewhere in the middle, living her happy life without a care. Without him.

  Regardless of what he had imagined her doing with her life, none of it equated to the pallid nervous wreck who had rambled those pitiful words in the courtyard and then promptly passed out. Where was the cold hearted bitch his heart had imagined for the last decade?

  Corbin rubbed his knuckles over his eyes again; God, tonight had been rough. He was shocked as shit to see her standing outside. He had been hiding like a wuss behind the lodge door while Miss Benny and Rose went out to greet her. They had been watching her through the window for about ten minutes before they even went out, looking at Quinn as she darted around the yard, clearly agitated at something. Miss Benny hadn’t even told him Quinn was coming, and she damn sure would have known because she ran the books and had the info on all incoming reservations. Rose got a pass because she might not have gotten the significance of the name, but only just maybe. Rose was old enough to remember what had happened back then, so maybe she too had known. Rose might have spaced out looking at the books and not placed the name Quinn Reynolds. Miss Benny, though, was another story.

  He loved that old woman as much as a raven turned human and then adopted by a human woman could. He was fiercely loyal to her for not only believing his story and helping Quinn, but for taking him in and giving him her last name. He would fight to the ends of the earth for that woman, he would lay down his very soul for her. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t hold a grudge. What could she gain by not telling him Quinn was coming? It wasn’t like he had forgotten about her. How could he ever? He had given his raven’s body for her so he could help in her time of need. He had changed so she could live; of course he wanted her to survive. He just never thought that she would leave, but he had never seen her again after she had been whisked off to the hospital. He had bonded with her in the forest; the magic that had changed him had been Quinn’s magic, but the desperate plea for help had come from him. When she had gotten injured… The whole thing was a Goddamn mess, and even now after seeing her again, he was questioning himself. Maybe the bond was different for him because he was an animal. Correction, was an animal, as in past tense. He was one hundred percent human now, whatever magic had existed on the forest floor had long left his body after being changed. Maybe he didn't even remember what happened correctly. Whatever the story really was, the fact that he had ten years of anger and abandonment issues was hard to refute, and he wasn’t ready to lay infinite forgiveness upon her, no matter how pitiful she had looked when the tears started running down her face.

  No, it didn’t matter that he had fairly skipped every step as he vaulted out the door and past Miss Benny and Rose to get to Quinn before her head hit the ground. Corbin could say what he wanted to himself about how much he didn’t care, but the truth of the matter was that when Quinn was in danger and obvious distress, he couldn’t get to her fast enough. He could have walked, though; the vines that had been holding Quinn up during her desperate pleading had actually lowered her slowly, almost lovingly, to the ground. They hardly disturbed a pebble, and when Corbin reached her, they unwound from her body slowly, almost as if deferring her to his care. Now that he was there, whatever job the roots had been doing to protect her, no to keep her there, no longer needed doing.

  It didn’t really make sense, but Corbin had seen a lot of weird shit going on in this forest, so he wasn’t going to make calls about what was normal and what wasn’t. And as a raven turned human, it wasn't really his call to make. Maybe he would ask the old man what he thought. It had been a while since he had been over to pester his cantankerous ass, and after the last favor Corbin had done, the old man owed him a solid.

  Corbin looked down at his arms and sighed. That made twice now that he had carried the same unconscious girl through the woods; granted, this time she wasn’t bleeding, and he had only carried her to her cabin. This time Corbin had an entourage when he did it. Miss Benny followed behind him, barking directions like he couldn’t find his way to cabin twelve and hadn’t been living at the lodge for the last decade. Rose came with her luggage, so that when Quinn woke up, she wouldn’t wonder where her things were, and maybe having something familiar close by would keep her calm.

  He had laid her in the queen sized bed in the small bedroom of her two-room cabin and pulled the crocheted coverlet up to her chin. She barely weighed more now than she did as a girl of sixteen, and her skin looked as pale as milk next to the deep brown spill of her hair as it spread across th
e white pillowcase. She had more baggage under her eyes than she had brought luggage, and Corbin found his chest tightening at the thought of her maybe not being as happy in life as he thought she had been. Like maybe he shouldn’t judge her so harshly, perhaps she had her own problems that kept her away so long.

  Screw that.

  Corbin had ten years of abandonment saved up. He had picked her, and she had left him scared and alone. He wasn’t going to fall for her pathetic poor me bullshit. He had done his duty as a staff member of the lodge by picking her carcass off the ground in the front yard and depositing her in her room. He was not obligated to see her, be around her, or know anything more about her or the reasons she was here, besides that of a hospitality employee.

  Nah. Corbin was going home and going to bed; he had worked hard today and wanted some sleep. Well, he would eventually go home and sleep, but first, he needed to go see the old man. There were just a couple of questions that needed to be answered first. After he was satisfied with those answers, then he would go home and forget all about the pale princess in cabin twelve.

  The hike over to find the old man didn’t take nearly as long as Corbin expected. Since he was the guardian of the forest, the green man, his glamour was such that if he didn’t want to be found, you wouldn’t find him. More than once in the years that he had known the old fart, Corbin had spent HOURS walking in the places where the man’s home should have been, only to be bewitched and misdirected so that he walked all over Hell's half acre before finally giving up. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had taken his old beat up Blazer down the trails either. A motor vehicle wouldn’t get him any closer to the place. If the old man didn’t want to talk, he wasn’t going to talk. To anydamnbody.

  Corbin got to the old man’s cabin within ten minutes of walking, pretty much a new record and something that made him instantly suspicious. The fact that Corbin was able to find the old man’s home so fast meant one of two things: