King of the Woods, or Trivial Pursuit

Part 48 - Antler

Huntsman checked his wristwatch. Moonlight glinted off its lying face. The time was not 11:32 in the morning, and he doubted that it ever had been, in this beshadowed place. "Lodge?" he said. "This is Huntsman. Radio check, over."

Enchanted forests, cricket songs, and radio static were a few of Huntsman's least favorite things, especially in combination. He'd lost a friend - well, colleague - to a cricket. Eight-footer. It took her head so fast that she had kept standing for a moment, fingers twitching at her neckline like she was trying to sign out, "guillotine." Shikari was an Indian national, but she stopped being a cricket fan after that.

"Lodge, I do not read you. Be advised, I've been pulled across." He kept his voice steady, but his breaths shallowed and quickened. It's only the rib injury, he thought. It couldn't be fear. If it were, it would eat him alive faster than a cricket.

The official word was that Lodge's eggheads hadn't cracked radio communication with what they called "herniated reality-space" and what the rest of Lodge was strictly forbidden from calling "fucking Fairyland." But Huntsman was not some neophyte with Andromalius-7 clearance, his eyes still raw from having the wool sheared off; when he had taken up the hunt, there were only two clearance levels, in or out, and the latter came with a courtesy bullet to the head. The truth was that Lodge had a working prototype that it would never use. People who crossed over to Fairyland might have sparkling sapphires where their eyeballs used to be; or ashy-white beards down to their ankles, woven from cotton candy and regret; or stained-glass butterflies in their ejaculate-even Huntsman had winced when he heard about that one-but they never had anything useful to say, and hearing their last moments would devastate morale. So, Lodge bought its radios out of an army-surplus catalog.

People who crossed over almost never made it home, and never with their mind intact. Huntsman was a seven-time exception to the first rule; this was his eighth visit. As for the second rule, there was a running joke in the mess hall about the old man-that was him, since Huntsmen calling each other Huntsman grew farcical quickly, even though they were officially fungible. He couldn't remember exactly how the joke went, because he'd walked in mid-telling. The gist was, the old man always made it back from Fairyland because his mind wasn't intact to begin with. Huntsman had nodded to the joker and said, "Funny." When he returned from the cafeteria line with his oatmeal and raisins-his primary care had told him to eat more fiber-custodial had already mopped up the joker's piss. Even the janitors knew about his sense of smell.

Huntsman frowned. The air was stale, and the forest's colors were muted, when he expected everything to feel more vibrant. Though there was no wind, a gloomy cloud glided across the full moon. And he was certain Ray Lumley had not been wearing French cosmetics.

A crow perched on a branch overhead. He eyed it warily. Its beak wasn't big enough to fit around his neck, but he had not survived Fairyland by underestimating its denizens.

His radio crackled to life. "Huntsman?" Lodge said.

"Lodge?" Huntsman asked. There were stories of ordinary radio transmissions from herniated reality-spaces, but there was always a twist: a Huntsman from the Bronx transmitting coordinates in Sumerian, a Chinook pilot screaming that his luck dragon was going down in the Bermuda Triangle, Shikari calling in her own beheading a week before her encounter with the cricket and confirming her report a week after. But this just sounded like the nameless woman who knit scarves for her nameless grandchildren, baked raisin bars that were a little too dry, and answered the radio for Lodge.

"Yes, dear?" Lodge said. "This is Lodge. Are you injured?"

Huntsman frowned. "Why do you ask?"