08. || twin fawn.

Finley had taken one step too many off the mossy slate patio, no longer protected within the boundary of the hemlocks. The beast now stood between her and the cabin.

Backlit by the fire, it's spine bent like the very mountain ridge they stood upon. Bloody velvet draped in tatters from its antlers where each of its twenty-one points shined with a wet crimson that had never dried, never washed clean, and never would. Where its fur had once been as white as the first breath of winter, mud and not-mud saturated what was left of its hide. Beneath it, exposed rib bones reflected in the moonlight, all picked clean with just a few stray strings of sinew swaying each time its empty chest swelled to take a breath that it didn't seem to breathe.

The beast lurched forward with a staggered step, balancing upright on the skinny bones of its hind legs; its front two had been chewn clean off by the coyotes as River had explained earlier. From the shoulders up, its head remained mostly intact if you could ignore the clusters of red, tumorous growths that marred its face. With every step closer it took, white worms and thousand leggers spilled from its snout.

Rooted to the ground by no will of her own, Finley could only stare up into the black coal eyes of what had once been a deer.

And this one, she remembered well.

This one had been meant to be hers, to be hunted and shot, gutted and processed, then mounted to a wall, the bedroom wall in particular to cover where her own head had put a hole in the sheetrock. But when the time had come to take sight and pull the trigger, no shot rang out.

See, if you were to look back far enough, you'd find that every ancient culture once held a high holiness for creatures that defied their natural pigmentation. In the old country, long before the Christians drove out the snakes, the white stag was a sacred beast born from the fires of the Otherworld, sent to transcend the realms and wander the forests. And those highland forests of the old country were all once carved from this same limestone and pleached with these same trees. An ocean may have split the mountains in two, dividing the continents, but there was no denying their roots and the ancient spirits embedded within them.

Killing such a sacred creature would not only be heinous, but unforgivable under the eyes of the old gods so Finley had lowered the rifle all those months ago, knowing full well she in turn had made herself the target that night. Then again, maybe she had been all along. Wasn't that why she cut open the fence in the first place? To escape her own killing? Both she and the white stag had been so close.

But now, as the beast leered over her in a way no deer should ever stand, it wasn't fear that snaked up her spine. No, instead of calling out for help, she swallowed back River's name that'd crept to the tip of her tongue and found remnants of guilt in its place.

"I'm sorry," her jaw trembled, "I'm sorry you didn't make it out."

<I'm sorry you didn't either, Finley.>

The voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere except from the beast, clinging to her name as if it had said it a hundred times before. And maybe it had. Maybe she hadn't been hallucinating when she'd heard it calling for her last fall as she dragged her limp body through the wet leaves and the brambles towards the hole in the fence where the stag stood ensnared and half eaten.

But the advocate had told her that couldn't be true. The voice wasn't real. Just her head processing the trauma in full-on survival mode. Just like that time she fell from the black hemlock and woke up in the reservoir with the Green Man. And here she was again. Ignore it, ignore it, she told herself as she shut her eyes tight. This isn't real. The Green Man wasn't real. The Demon—it's eyes scorched through her mind, forcing hers to open. The beast that was once a deer remained before her.

"I didn't escape last year, but I survived," she stammered. "You..."

<You're here. As am I.> The creature dipped and tipped its head with a jerking bob to assess the scene beyond Finley. Even dead or undead, its prey instincts had remained. As it turned in profile, the red growths along its face glistened. <We both eventually found our way back.>

"A journey I can't seem to recall..." Finley's eyes roamed along the shadowed edge of the woods as she watched behind the beast in an eerie symbiosis. "Did you bring me here?"

<You asked for us, didn't you?> The stag snorted, spewing nightcrawlers back to the earth. <Well, maybe not for me, but technically, you brought yourself back, anyhow.>

"Was I alone? Did my—" And the word Finley would normally use aloud as an endearing pretense nearly slipped off her tongue, but this beast had witnessed the bullet entering her body. It had seen the finger that pulled the trigger; the glint in the evil eye behind the sight. There was no need to hide behind words. "Did the Demon survive?"

<That which you call demon—>

"Was it not demon?"

The bloody velvet swayed from the crown of antlers as the white stag tipped its head, focusing once more on Finley. <An answer will be given when the final tithe is paid.>

Finley pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. "The final tithe?"

<You know our old stories of the ancients, the spirits—the demons,> the beast began, almost with a purr. <But false gods have soured this earth and cursed this mountain. The souls of the dead cannot pass; they lay entangled within the roots between this world and the next, feeding a malignant darkness that has seeped into these woods. Three talismans, buried by the same hands that first tore open her earth, mark the mountain's borders.>

"The borders which have you trapped," Finley reiterated. "You need me to find these talismans?" The creature twisted its neck to scan their surroundings. What Finley had thought were red tumorous growths along its face were in fact clumps of raw red garnet, matching the stones in her ring. Coincidence, it was not and she wanted no part of any of it. As the stag took a step away from the cabin, Finley mirrored its stride. "That uh, seems like an awful lot of trouble for me to go through just to get an answer."

<It's not just an answer though, is it?> The sheen of its coal eyes gleamed beneath the full moon. <You could always hike back to Devil's Elbow and find out yourself. Either way, your debt must be paid.>

The beast was right. It wasn't just an answer, it was her own pending freedom. Not knowing if the Demon survived made her just as trapped as the dead here. Finley slowly raised the pink cordial glass to her lips as she watched the beast teeter on its legs. Still warm, the mulled moonshine rekindled an old warning from childhood. "And your name?"

The stag's ears flicked at her question. <My name?>

"You know mine, I'd like to know yours. If you have one, that is."

A low rumble thrummed through Finley's head like some kind of growl, something caught inside the throat of a predator rather than prey. Certainly no sound a deer, neither dead nor undead, should make.

<Yes, of course I have a name. Which I will tell you because you asked. Rules are rules, aren't they?>

Above Finley, something rustled along the branches of the hemlock, but she kept her focus on the beast. If her grandad's old stories had any lick of truth to them, knowing the name of a woodland spirit could come in handy.

<My name—my god-given name, that is the one that was bestowed upon me is, well, it's uh, Buck...> The stag kinda coughed a little to clear its throat and deepen its voice, but visibly, the beast barely moved. <...Mouse. Buckmouse.>

"Buckmouse..." Finley squinted through the darkness at the creature, raising the glass to finish off the moonshine. The spirit folk weren't supposed to be able to lie; they could deceive, but never flat-out lie. A demon, however, Finley had learned, was a beast of a different color. "Should I fear you?"

<Of all the monsters in these woods, it is humans that should scare you the most.> With a lumbering stagger, the beast stepped aside and turned towards the road.

"Thank you, Buckmouse," Finley called out before it crossed the line of shadows.

Hearing its name, the stag's ears twitched again as it paused along the ditch. <Why do you thank me?>

"You called to me after I was shot last year, if you remember. It was your maggots that kept me alive. They ate away the infected tissue from my wound." Just mentioning the worms made her skin crawl, but she needed to acknowledge reality. "I'd be dead if it weren't for you."

<And yet, here you are, anyway.> From the distance, the beast's eyes no longer shined. Instead, they just seemed empty and hollow. It turned once more towards the darkness and took a step onto the road. The click of its hooves against the gravel echoed Finley's footsteps as she made her way back onto the slate patio, keeping her back to the cabin.

Yes, she was here, but hopefully not for long.

Gathering up the glasses and the mason jars, she set them just inside the kitchen on the counter, then hurried back to the firepit to search for a log that would be small enough to fit inside the wood burner. As she turned one of the pine rounds over, little white worms spewed from a crack in the bark. Finley flung the log down, frantically wiping her hands clean against the gold waders, shrugging tighter into River's flannel.

<You can still feel them, huh? The worms?>

The beast's steps had long since faded into the mountain sounds of the night, but its voice seemed closer than it had moments ago, almost like it was right over her shoulder. Spinning around, Finley scanned the branches above, but only a green winged moth fluttered by. Her eyes fell back down to the log on the patio which had now split in two, but no white worms wriggled free from its innards. Taking a deep breath, she squatted down to pick up the pieces, but the glare of her garnet ring against the flames stole her attention.

The stones were said to have come from this very mountain, unearthed during the mining operation and given to her great, great granny by some beau she was set to run off with. Instead, her father sold her hand to the foreman of the mine and her family got this nice hunk of mountainside and great, great granny got knocked up at fifteen, then widowed just a few days later when the mine exploded. Cursed, Gram would say about the ring, but still she never parted with the damn thing just like she never parted with the land, even when the gas companies came knocking about mineral rights.

"What's earthed, should stay earthed," Finley murmured as she adjusted the ring on her finger. "And what came from within, should return."

Grabbing the pail next to the stone firepit, she doused the fire and watched as the fingers of smoke led her eyes towards the dark, empty, road that wound up to River's cabin.