fiction for young adults

by Miranda Miller

Country Folk

Calpurnia Edwards saw him first. It was the middle of May, and a nasty summer storm had lashed at her windows for hours. She’d slept through it with relative peace, right up until she heard a sharp crack from outside. She sat up, listening to the fading wind, and got up to light a candle.

The candle guttered when she stepped out onto her porch. Little pearls of light reflected from the sodden grass, but the old tree in her yard was whole. She held the candle high and looked into the night. Reflective eyes looked back, too tall to be a wild dog, too low to be a night owl.

“Evening?” Calpurnia called, glancing back to make sure her shotgun was still propped beside the door.

The eyes did not blink. “It certainly is one,” said a voice, cautious.

“What’re you doing out there?” Calpurnia squinted into the darkness.

There was a long silence. “Walking.”

“It’s hardly the time or the weather for it,” said Calpurnia. “Are you lost?”

“Yes.” The eyes stepped close enough for the flickering candle to catch a face. The animal eyes belonged to a man who was painfully beautiful. He seemed both old and young, and his clothing was a striking, vibrant green that nearly shone.

“Where are you headed?” she asked.

“Tomorrow, home,” he said, with the solemnity of a death knell. “Tonight, I seek shelter for the night and directions for the morning. I will pay whatever price you ask for these things.”

Calpurnia pursed her lips and assessed him. More of a boy than a man, she decided. His limbs were still too long for the rest of him, and he reminded her of her sister’s sons. “Well,” she said, “My mama raised me to be a good neighbor. Come on in.”

His face went pale, but he stepped forward until she could see the golden flowers embroidered into the sleeves of his shirt—lilies and orchids and foxgloves. He carried no bag, and his shoes were thin cloth and canvas. Her heart softened at the sight. Wherever home was, he was a long way from it.

“There’ll be breakfast in the morning,” she said, pushing the door open. “Grits and eggs okay?”

The stranger hesitated on the doorstep. “What is the price?” he asked.

Calpurnia laughed and shook her head, but he grew distressed.

“You must tell me the price,” he said, “You’re a good neighbor, aren’t you? That’s in the rules.”

Calpurnia told herself to ask her sister exactly what they were teaching city kids about manners these days, and said, “Only price is your company, young man. Ever since my sister and her boys moved to the city, it’s been awful quiet around here. You tell me about your travels and we’re even.”

The stranger still didn’t enter. “That is all that you require? Not my firstborn child, or a cloak made of stars, or the first thing that greets me upon arriving home?”

Calpurnia blinked. “Of course not. What kind of a neighbor would I be if I asked any of that?”

The stranger drew himself up, haughty. “You will give me your word that conversation is all you ask?”

“You have it,” said Calpurnia. “Guest room’s this way. Things’ll be clearer in the morning.” She hoped that was true. He talked like he’d escaped from one of the Victorian novels her sister used to read. All fancy and formal.

In the morning, things were not clearer. Calpurnia had locked the silver drawer before she’d gone to bed due to the nagging feeling that she should take some precaution, but he was a perfectly polite houseguest. He greeted her looking unruffled and somewhere between fifteen and forty-five, depending on what angle she looked at him.

Calpurnia couldn’t think of a tactful way to ask about that, so instead she started scrambling eggs and asked, “Where is home, exactly?”

“Past the bend in the oldest river in the realm of green and gold.”

Calpurnia looked over her shoulder, but the stranger who was sitting straight-backed at her kitchen table appeared perfectly serious.

“You’re a bit of an odd duck, aren’t you?” she said.

The stranger frowned. “No. Not at all. If name-calling is the price of your hospitality, I will leave you in peace.” He stood up and went for the door, but Calpurnia dropped the spoon and held out a hand.

“Wait,” she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. Come have breakfast, at least. I’d feel awful to send you out there without getting a meal in you.”

He looked at her with frozen stone eyes, searching for something. Calpurnia smiled and wished that her sister were there. She’d always known how to talk to the young folks running around town.

He sat down. “Are you really a good neighbor?”

Calpurnia started putting eggs and grits onto plates. “I’d like to think so,” she said, coming over to the table. “I help out my neighbors when they need a hand, they help me out when I do. My knees aren’t what they once were, you know, but I can still can peaches with the best of them. We trade around and it all works out in the end. We’re all good neighbors.”

“You call each other this,” he said, half to himself, “And your belief makes it true.”

“I suppose so. That’s important to you, isn’t it? The things people call each other?”

“Titles have power,” said the stranger. “Titles make you what you are.”

“Huh,” said Calpurnia, and thought of all the titles she’d been called in her life. Sister, gardener, seamstress, and far, far more than that over the years. “I suppose you’re right. Did they teach you that in wherever you’re from?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s tradition for us to travel when we come of age, to know the world before we tie ourselves to the land to live.”

Calpurnia smiled. “I know about that. I like visiting my sister in the city, seeing all the fancy buildings and the classy people, but my roots are here. I don’t think I could be happy anywhere else.”

The stranger—who had to be eighteen, Calpurnia thought, though he didn’t quite look it—was quiet for the rest of the meal while she sketched out a map that led to the next town, marking big landmarks like the main river and the edge of the plains to guide him.

It was only after she’d stood on her porch, waving as he strode off with the paper held tight between his fingers that she realized she hadn’t even gotten his name.

And that, as most people thought, was that. Calpurnia told the miller’s wife all about the strange young man, and the gossip circuit had a nice run of it for a day or two, but nobody figured they’d ever see him again. The gossips may have run it for longer if Calpurnia had connected her suddenly thriving herb garden to the young man’s visit, but they didn’t. People so rarely pick out magic, even when it’s right in front of them.

But later, a year and a day exactly if anyone was counting, the strangest stranger to set foot in their little town came back.

Heck Johnson saw him next. The stranger blew into town with twice the speed of a tumbleweed and none of the rustling. He was twenty, maybe, or early thirties? At first, Heck had thought that he was one of his son’s friends, but then Heck stopped sweeping the porch of his general store and looked at the man, properly, and placed his final age at twenty-five. Ish.

He had an odd face, was the thing. It was without line or wrinkle or blemish, but his eyes were the grey of ice and stone and eons old. Then there was his getup. At first glance he seemed to have a farmer’s sturdy work shirt, and a cowboy’s brown pants with fringe, but when Heck looked closer there was fancy flower embroidery all along the shoulders in green and gold, the fringe of his pants tangled like roots, and he left a faint trail of dirt as he walked. His thin shoes seemed wholly unsuited to the hard-packed dust and soil.

The stranger was standing in the middle of Main Street, taking in the town with his too-old eyes. The moment their gazes met, Heck was struck with a sudden rush of vertigo, like he’d looked off a canyon or missed the final step on a stair. Heck blinked, and everything was normal. The stranger was watching him.

As the owner of the town’s general store, Heck prided himself on being a welcoming committee for the community. The stranger was, well, strange, but that was no call to be rude.

“Howdy, neighbor,” he called, “Haven’t seen you around before.”

The man’s eyes widened. “You know I’m a neighbor?”

Heck hesitated. What did he say to that? It was just a greeting. “Lucky guess,” Heck said, “You just move here today?”

“Yes. I live here now. I am one of you. I am going to be one of your good neighbors.”

Heck smiled. “Alright then. Welcome. Are you looking for work?”

The man blinked. Heck couldn’t remember if he’d blinked at all before that moment. “Is that what your people normally do?”

“If they’re short on cash,” said Heck. “I got a shelf that’s going rotten, and I need to shift it out and replace it before it spreads. If you got an hour or two to lend a hand, there’s a few dollars in it for you.”

Heck didn’t technically need the help. But it would go faster with two, and it would give him a chance to get to know the new neighbor’s situation. He seemed entirely lost.

“Very well,” said the young man, stepping close. “What is the bargain?”

“Let’s say, two dollars for two hours of work,” said Heck. “But I’ll still pay you the same if we finish sooner. Sound fair?”

The stranger considered this. “Yes.”

“Say,” said Heck, turning to walk back into the store. “What’s your name? I’m Hector Johnson, but everyone just calls me Heck.”

After a lengthy pause, the man said, “People call me Runner.”

Heck wondered what kind of trouble this kid had found that he felt the need to use a false name, but kept his thoughts to himself. They fixed the shelf in less than an hour, and Heck was pleased. He gave Runner the money, and said, “You want lunch, too?”

“What is the cost?” Runner looked at the dollars like he’d never seen money before in his life.

“No cost,” said Heck. “Just being neighborly. Gotta welcome you to town properly instead of just putting you straight to work.”

“A gift?”

Heck shrugged. “If you think of it that way. Just my way of welcoming you to town. You like hashbrown scramble?”

Runner accepted the meal, though he watched Heck as they ate, as if he couldn’t figure out why. That afternoon, Heck went to fill the fixed shelf up with cans of preserves and found a little branch growing from the edge of the shelf, green buds dotted along its length. That was head-scratching strange, but it wasn’t in the way of anything, so he stacked the cans around it and left it alone.

After that, Runner was everywhere. He showed up in the cattle pens to watch the ranchers work and offered yards of delicately crafted silk the color of river water in exchange for answers to his questions. They waved off his attempt at a trade and answered his questions anyway. He showed up to the knitting circle and offered them rings of gold in exchange for a shirt like the one the ranchers wore. They waved off his jewelry and gave him their husbands’ spares and taught him how to mend his own shirts.

Cody Gartner didn’t like him, but Cody Gartner didn’t like anybody. “That man’s strange,” he’d say to anybody who would listen. “He’s more than strange, he’s downright uncanny.” Most people would shrug and agree, but nobody wanted to do anything about it, which infuriated Cody. But Cody believed that if a job needed doing right, you should do it yourself, and the third week that Runner was in town Cody got his chance.

Cody was coming out of the post office when he saw Runner walking down the street in his dainty shoes. He was going to step on a rattlesnake someday, Cody thought, and it would serve him right for not wearing a proper set of boots.

“Hey you!” he called, “You’re Runner, aren’t you?”

Runner blinked with cavernous eyes. “That is what I am called.”

“Called that for a reason?” Cody said. “Are you running from something?” The back of his neck felt cold, even though the sun was beating down. The man was just unsettlingly strange, and he took that crawling feeling in his gut and turned it into anger. “Well? Answer me!”

“Yes,” said Runner. The wells in his eyes filled up with ice, and he said, “I am running from a way of being that does not bring me joy, and I am doing it by staying still. By being here.”

Cody sputtered. “What does that even mean? Just tell me straight—are you bringing trouble here?”

“That is not my intention. But it is a possibility.”

Cody took a deep breath and leaned in towards Runner. “Listen here,” he said. “Decent people live here. Nice people. If there’s even a chance you’re going to cause trouble for them, I suggest you hustle on out of town. You understand me?”

“I do,” said Runner. There was a dull roar in Cody’s ears that made the world feel muffled and dark. “But you seem to have difficulty understanding me. Is that true for all of you, I wonder? Perhaps that is another thing I must learn in order to be your good neighbor.” Runner’s voice warmed somehow, became less like a frozen pool and more like baking sandstone. It wasn’t any less frightening. “Let me try this: I am not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere. If trouble comes, I’ll handle it, because my roots are here now. You understand me?”

Cody swallowed hard. Nodded. Runner smiled and leaned back, and Cody realized he was sweating.

“Good,” said Runner, with painfully deliberate diction, “You take care now.”

Cody didn’t bother Runner again. Sure, he’d complain about him to anyone who would listen, but he was careful not to do it to his face, and Runner seemed content to leave well enough alone. It bothered Cody, but he wasn’t about to leave his home, either. If trouble came he’d have to be content with saying that he’d known it all along. But the one burning question he carried with him, day in and day out, was what kind of trouble it would be, and where would it come from?

No one quite knew where Runner had come from, or why he’d come. Cody Gartner thought he’d killed a man and was on the run from the law. Calpurnia Edwards thought he was trying to escape a strict family life. Heck Johnson just thought he was a young man who’d set out to find his fortune and come up short. No one could agree on the particulars, but he seemed to mean well, and the more he learned about ranching and the small town’s community, the more normal he was.

His pants stopped dripping topsoil, and his eyes grew less like the bottom of a well and more like the thunderclouds that rolled across the plain. He bought himself a Stetson with his own money, and he learned how to tip it real friendly-like, and hang it on a hook when he entered a home. Flowering embroidery still appeared on all of his shirts, but now the designs were tumbleweeds and wildflowers and cacti.

People did start to notice, ever so slowly, that the luck of their little town had gone from ordinary to great. Lost cows found their way home. Kids who drank from the river stopped getting sick. Storms picked a shingle or two off a roof instead of ripping the whole roof straight off. Everyone enjoyed the lucky months, but as time passed an undercurrent of uneasiness began to prick at the edges of their thoughts. So much good luck wasn’t natural, was it? Surely, eventually, there had to be a cost.

No one quite knew where he’d come from, but Mrs. Annabelle O’Malley had a theory. She was the oldest person in town by over a decade, and she lived with her granddaughter’s family in a house nestled next to the watermill. Her own grandmother had told her stories about fair folk who danced through tales and tripped mortals up in bargaining and tricks. To hear her ancestors tell it, whether you called them fair folk, lordly ones, gentry, good neighbors, or anything else, they were things to be feared. As a girl she’d dreaded their tales, since they ended with horrible curses or losing a loved one or prizes that were more punishment than reward.

Now, though, she was too old to be wary of anything, so when she stepped outside the house six months after Runner had arrived in town, she laughed to find Runner planting tulips along the little track that ran up to her front door. “Good morning to you, Runner! What’s all this?”

He smiled up at her and looked more human than Mrs. O’Malley had ever seen him. “Your granddaughter mentioned how much you missed your tulips flattened by that last storm,” he said. “I found wild ones growing in the hills when Jack and I were hunting for the lost steer, and it seemed a shame for them to be out there with no one to appreciate them as well as you.”

“That is awful kind of you,” said Mrs. O’Malley. “Thank you. Would you like to come in for lemonade?”

“No, thank you,” said Runner, getting up and dusting the dirt off his knees, where it stayed off. “Rancher Jordan wants all the hired hands out bright and early to move the cattle. I’d best be off.”

Mrs. O’Malley watched the tulips shimmer in the breeze. “Well, I certainly owe you a favor for such a gift,” she said. “This is wonderful, Runner.”

The skin around Runner’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. It didn’t used to do that. “You owe me no favors,” he said. “That’s what a gift is.”

Mrs. O’Malley smiled. “You really are a good neighbor, you know that?”

At that, Runner grinned ear to ear, “That’s what I try to be, ma’am. I certainly hope I am.”

And all was well until the day Runner’s parents came. Heck Johnson was sweeping his porch when they appeared. They didn’t walk into town, they didn’t ride, but Heck turned around and there were people, tall and slender and wearing clothes of rich green brocade and golden embroidery, with flowers and leaves woven into their hair. The world was far darker than it had been a moment ago, as if the whole town had been cast into shade.

“Howdy, folks,” said Heck, who was unsettled but didn’t like to hold that against people. “Welcome to town.”

“Traditionally,” said the tall woman, wearing a set of deer antlers twisted into a crown, “one applies the word ‘fair’ to that appellation.”

“Oh,” said Heck, wondering where the sun had gone, “My apologies. What’s your—”

“Heck!” shouted Runner, slamming open the door behind him and tumbling out onto the porch. Heck hadn’t realized he was back there. “I was—I sensed something, and—you haven’t seen any strangers, have you?” Runner spotted the figures. “Oh,” he said, and went perfectly still. “Jumpin’ Jehosephat.”

“River-runner,” said the woman with a frown. “What on earth just came out of your mouth?”

Runner ignored her, and turned to Heck. “Things might get rowdy,” he said, “I suggest you scoot.”

“Right,” said Heck, and went for his shotgun, locked in the safe at the back of the store. The lock took some fiddling, but it was under a minute before he’d crept back to the screen door to listen out for signs of trouble.

The woman was talking. “But this is unacceptable. Come home at once.” The air smelled of sickly-sweet flowers.

“I won’t,” said Runner. The crisp way of speaking he’d used to have was back, sharp and not at all friendly-like. “I’ve tied my magic to this land, and the people have accepted me here. I can pull rivers and cacti to my will, and I can call up wild horses swifter than the wind. I’ve planted myself here, and my power will only grow through the centuries.”

The man’s voice was rough like rolling stones. “They accept you because you play human, River-runner. Look at you. With no one to recognize your true nature and name you as you are, you’ll wither and die.”

Heck liked to think he was a clever man, but all this was sending his thoughts spinning. Magic? Magic wasn’t real, and Runner wasn’t magic. Anybody who’d been known to swing a hammer and smack his thumb was plain ordinary human, in Heck’s book. Still, that didn’t explain the serious voices out front. Heck glanced back into his store and saw the edge of a branch, leafy green and growing, sprouting from the edge of a shelf. Alright then. Maybe there was something to this magic business.

Heck frowned. Maybe he didn’t know Runner half as well as he thought he did, and if that was the case, maybe there was no cause to go sticking his neck out for him. He still listened, though.

“Have you even tricked them?” demanded the woman. “Have you won a lifetime of dreams, or a firstborn son?” Heck could see the back of Runner’s head as he looked down, as if ashamed. “Of course you haven’t. That would ruin your pretend. Have you forgotten everything we’ve taught you? If they don’t fear you, they won’t call you by your title.”

“No!” said Runner. He walked down the porch steps, the wood creaking under his boots. Heck could smell the electricity of a sudden prairie storm as the wind kicked up. “That’s not true. I place no harm on these people, and I give my magic as a gift, and they call me by my title anyway.”

“Humans are fickle and forgetful,” said the woman. “All it takes is a season to go by without someone naming you truly, and your power will leave you. People will always speak of things they fear, and they will forget the things they don’t. Clearly you are still too young to understand that. It is fortunate you have not yet been here a year. There’s still time to save you. I will raze this place to the ground and release your magic from the land, and you will come home.”

Heck peered through the screen door to see thorny brambles erupt from the dusty soil at the woman’s feet, reaching and grasping like hungry claws. They reached for Runner, and suddenly Heck didn’t give a darn whether Runner was human or magic or a monkey’s uncle. He’d spent nearly a year with Runner underfoot, hauling seed out for various ranchers, fixing shingles, buying boots, and he was a part of the town now. Heck slammed open the screen door and wildly fired at the encroaching vines.

Heck wasn’t a good shot. He missed most of them, sending plumes of dust up from the dirt, but a few of the brambles shuddered. The tall woman’s eyes, hard as stone, fixed on him. Heck felt frozen.

“No!” yelled Runner. There was the howl of night coyotes behind his voice. “You will not touch him. You will not touch any of them. They name me truly, and I will not die. There are other ways for our kind to exist, mother. Ways without fear. You cannot stop me from following this path.”

Runner’s mother raised an eyebrow. “Prove it,” she said, and more brambles burst out of the earth, clawing up the track down the center of town. The man gave a whistle, and baying hounds howled in response, appearing from thin air monstrously large to snap and leap about his waist.

Runner raised his arms and the sun was shining brightly again, and the sky was a clear painful blue that set the hounds to whimpering, pawing at their eyes as if to hide from the glare. Runner’s parents squinted in the harsh light. Heck tugged the brim of his hat lower on his head and grinned.

But the vines didn’t seem affected by the light. They reached the edge of the porch and ripped apart the wooden steps like paper, crunching wood into splinters and shaking the building so hard that Heck stumbled back.

Runner reached down. Water started to seep out of the earth beneath them, but the day was dry and the land was dusty, and it faded as soon as it appeared. Heck bashed a bramble with the end of his shotgun, but it reached for him and twisted tight around his forearm, and he bit back a gasp at the thorns dug into his skin.

A massive rumbling shook the earth, and Heck saw the man pull a massive stone from the ground, hard and cold and clay-grey. Heck met his gaze for long enough to see a long fall and a cold death in his eyes.

He was afraid, and he was going to die. They all were. The two of them were wild and frightful, and he knew in his gut that they wouldn’t stop until the town was a cold patch of mud under the summer sky.

Runner was grasping at open air, as if he was trying to catch something that was slipping through his fingers. He was muttering to himself, curses and words in a language that Heck had never heard before. He was scared, and Heck thought in that moment that he’d never looked younger.

“Hey,” he said, gentle, “It’s all right, Runner. You’re not alone.”

Runner turned his head, and smiled at him, and his eyes were full of thunderstorms. They were the familiar summer thunderstorms that Heck had grown up with, and he wondered how Runner had managed to capture the sky in his eyes after less than a year in their town. He didn’t wonder why they made him feel safe. It was Runner, after all. He knew him. “That’s right,” said Runner, wonderingly. “I’m not alone. Heck, what do you call me?”

“A friend,” said Heck. Runner nodded. “An admirable young man. A neighbor.” Lightning flashed in Runner’s eyes. “A good neighbor.” Those words echoed in the world in a way that was both familiar and strange. Heck wondered if they’d always done that, each time he said the words.

Runner grew more vibrant, somehow, and the wind howled up fierce and strong but tugged at Heck only gently, even as his storefront creaked around him.

“You name me true,” he said, “I am a good neighbor.”

That was all the warning Heck got before Runner blinked, and the boiling summer storm behind his eyes erupted all around them, sending hunting hounds yelping and tumbling, and ripping brambles out of the earth in gusty fistfuls. The thorns digging into his arm ripped free in red lines of pain. Heck sucked in a breath to yell moments before the rain pounded down, soaking him through and leaving his arm tingling and cool.

Dry earth. Sudden rain. Whipping winds.

Heck knew a recipe for a flash flood when he saw one. He grabbed the back of Runner’s shirt and hauled him up onto the remainder of the porch as a burst of mud and water and tumbleweeds came crashing down the center of Main Street and hit Runner’s parents at full speed.

Heck saw a split second of fury cross the woman’s face as mud splashed across her cheek, and then the mudflow was raging past them and he couldn’t see anything but flashes of dark shapes lit up in the bursts of lightning overhead.

Then it was over.

Heck blinked, and the storm died down. He blinked again, and the water raging through the center of Main Street had slowed to a trickle. He blinked a third time and the sun was shining in a painfully blue sky, his porch was busted up, and there were little muddy puddles all over town, but everything was otherwise back to normal.

He let go of Runner’s shirt.

“Are you all right?” demanded Runner, twisting around to examine Heck’s arm. “I wanted the rain to help, but I’ve never done healing before, and—”

Heck brushed him off. “My arm’s fine. What about your folks? Are they gone?”

Runner glanced down the street, looking at something too far away for Heck to see. “They’re gone,” he said. “They’re not hurt—I’m not strong enough for that yet, but I will be. And I think I proved my point.” He looked back at Heck and shuffled his feet, and Heck realized he was nervous, just as uncertain as when he’d been a stranger with strange eyes standing in the middle of Main Street.

Heck laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “I think you certainly did.” Runner grinned back. “I guess that means you’re stuck with us, huh?”

“You’ve got it backwards,” said Runner, “All of y’all are stuck with me.”

“You’re lucky we like you. And I’m lucky I’ve got such a good neighbor around to help me start fixin’ up my porch.”

Runner smiled. “I’d be glad to.”

His eyes were the color of the sky behind him. Heck had a feeling they always would be, from that moment on.

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Miranda Miller is a writer who enjoys lurking in libraries and collecting weird words. Her creative work has been published in the Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, Mysterion, and The Foundationalist, and been performed at the University of Iowa’s Ten Minute Play Festival.