Page 23 of Starlight

“Yes.”

“What about your uncle? I thought he was the local legend?”

Akai gave a small laugh. “He is. But he moved down to Mexico when I was about five. He met another harpy from there and decided that he could do with a warmer climate. My parents remained broadly in the area until ten years ago, then they also moved south. I think they expected me to move south after my sister’s murder, but this has been my family’s area for generations, and if I leave, then someone else will take it over. Besides, I know where all the best mines are and what they produce. I also have friends.”

“Other harpies?” He used Akai’s name for his people.

“Some of them are…but there are a bunch of other monsters too. You’ve already guessed that.”

“I had. I was just fishing. So all those urban myths are true. Bigfoot is out there.”

Akai nodded. “More than one. And other kinds.”

“So when you’ve healed up a bit, you’ll go and stay with one of them?”

“Are you worried I will leave your cabin?”

“I’ve never had anyone here before. I’m kind of enjoying it. Especially because you also like staring at the sky and the valley. And I guess we have a shared traumatic event.”

“Two…don’t forget you shot me.”

“Oh my god. That is at least partly your fault because wolves aren’t meant to fly.”

Akai laughed. “Agreed, it is partly my fault. Perhaps I should have approached you like this…you wouldn’t have shot me, would you?”

Cole wanted to agree that he definitely wouldn’t have shot Akai if he had walked out of the shadows looking like an oversized moth. But he couldn’t. Because he didn’t know what he would’ve done. “I hope I wouldn’t have. But I don’t know. Maybe I would’ve panicked and run for the house. Then you could’ve eaten all my dinner.”

“And I would have watched the meteor shower on my own, which would have been sad.”

Cole nodded, the bag becoming heavy in his arms. “So fate brought us back together because we have issues and spend too much time alone.”

“I don’t have issues,” Akai said confidently.

“You have been spying on me for years.”

“I have been watching over you. You might have hurt yourself up here all by yourself. What if you had fallen while building the cabin?”

That had been his mother’s fear as well, and while he had understood it, he needed to get away from his family. He needed to do something on his own to prove that he still had his own life. “I guess I would have called for help and done the best I could.”

“And if you couldn’t call?”

“Aren’t you a little ray of sunshine?”

“No, I prefer being a moonbeam.”

Cole shook his head and smothered a laugh. It shouldn’t be so easy to talk to a monster. They reached the clearing, and he put the bag down. “How do you fly carrying this?”

“That is my maximum weight, more than that and I cannot go very far, a hundred yards maybe.” Akai crouched next to the bag. “Would you like to see what I make?”

Cole’s stomach turned as he remembered his cousin showing him some jewelry that he’d stolen. He nodded, unable to speak.

Akai opened the bag and rummaged around, pulling out several cloth-wrapped bundles before deciding which one to unwrap. Neatly laid out inside the cloth were a dozen charms made of precious stone, gold, and silver.

“They are for wearing on a chain or a piece of leather.” He picked up one that gleamed red like his eyes. “Humans like jewelry as much as monsters.”

“We do.”

“Choose one as a thank you for helping when another man would have killed me, regardless of how I looked.”