Foxfire by Rowan Hill

Author:Rowan Hill [Hill, Rowan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798988635406
Publisher: Bayou Wolf Press
Published: 2023-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

Aino

Kurt and Carly, an odd couple, kissed passionately at the door and Aino thought abruptly of Wilholm and his full red lips. How she would likely never taste them the way young lovers were meant to taste each other. With heat and smoke and fire smoldering your insides. And suddenly all her wise, careful choices abruptly turned into regrets. Something she never had, lost in an instant. She gave them their private moment and watched her father instead.

Mattias was leaning over his knees, sloppily mumbling in Lappish. A state she had never seen before. Confrontation, fighting, dealing with murder and death, didn’t really seem in Mattias’s wheelhouse. He hadn’t fought the divorce. Nor the custody battle. Nor any disagreements with her grandfather. She could perfectly recall a fight between them and Mattias physically shrinking from her grizzled grandfather, his anger at some old feud unabated. The curmudgeon had died and their relationship remained eternally estranged.

Passive, jovial, round were the words usually used for Mattias. This half-crazed, incoherent, and despondent trainwreck was new. Then again, so were two dead guests and a ‘large, fast figure wearing a bone hat’ in the woods. Aino’s fears of bodily harm bizarrely quelled when her father curled up and became frustratingly useless.

“Boneandcrownboneandcrownboneandcrown,” he murmured, the words slightly familiar. Where had he gotten the word ‘crown’ from? Like always, her gaze was drawn to her grandfather’s painting.

She kneeled next to her father, “Mattias, let's get you into the bedroom.”

His face was puffy from tears. “I never believed him.”

She tugged on his forearms but he was planted as a dead weight in the chair. “I never believed him, Aino. I thought he was crazy. We all thought he was crazy.”

He wasn’t budging. She reached for his cup of tea, holding it to his lips. “Who was crazy?”

“Your grandfather.”

He sipped the tea, liquid dribbling down his chin and through gray stubble.

“What are you talking about now? He was crazy. I mean towards the end, at least. Maybe even before I left. Remember how he used to make all those little figurines and plant them? The gnomes? Crazy.” She tried to make him laugh, coax a smile. Something to bring him out of this and be helpful for once.

The front door shut and Mattias’s stare lethargically roamed the remaining guests. Rocky stood at the hearth with a tense frame, hypnotized by the flames as if they held an answer. Carly leaned back against the front door and clenched the short and old rifle. And Mimiko, now silent, leaned her head down on the same table.

“But what if he wasn’t?” Mattias’s eyes widened frightfully, too large for his face. He whispered in Lappish and something about his voice and stare, similar to her grandfather’s, roused an old, indistinct memory.

Aino frowned, Mattias neared a strange hysteria and if she was being honest, she was too, only doing a much better job of not letting it show. She had always taken care of him when he visited Helsinki. A daughter older than the flighty father.

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