Unfamiliar Territory
Chapter 18: Unfamiliar Responsibility

Kat returned the next morning. She reported to Dr. Quincy that there were no signs of Hornroot but that she would spend the remainder of my recovery time searching for him. Dr. Quincy tried to talk her out of it, but it was like trying to reason with a brick wall. It made me wonder who was more the familiar and who was more the Master in their relationship.

I could hear them arguing from the other room as I picked at bacon strips. I was watching the children play outside from the kitchen when Kat stomped through the room. I lowered my head, but continued to watch her as she pulled open the sliding glass door, went outside, then slammed it shut again.

She looked like she was planning on going straight past the kids and back into the woods, but they intercepted her, grabbing on to her arms and legs, jumping and smiling and seeming to say a million things at once. In the mood she was in, I was half expecting her to just shake them off. Instead, she knelt down and hugged one of them. From my vantage point I could see the child’s face, one of the girls, and she seemed pretty surprised.

One by one, Kat hugged each of them. The kids had lost their smiles by the end and none of them said a word. When she stood up again, she captured me in those green eyes of hers. I couldn’t break away and, like always, I struggled to figure out what she was feeling—what she was trying to tell me.

Before I could really consider it, she turned away and ran down the mountain, disappearing almost instantly for me, but I watched the kids watch her go. They stood still at first, but one by one they grabbed each other’s hands as they stared down the mountain together.

“Alex, could I ask a favor?”

I jumped in my seat. I swallowed the food that sat in my mouth as I turned to Dr. Quincy. His large frame took up most of the doorway that sat between the kitchen and the room where he and Kat had been arguing. His face and the top of his head were still red from their interaction.

“I have to go down into town this morning,” he went on, walking into the kitchen, his dark eyes glancing out the glass door. “Would you mind watching the children while I’m gone?”

I swallowed again--though there was no food, just a lump in my throat. I was no good with kids. Especially kids with a predisposition towards hating me. But it wasn’t like I could just tell him no. He was sheltering me, feeding me, and even if he was a ‘Master’, he was leagues better than Mallard.

Still, it was only fair to let him know.

“Sure, I can try.” I pushed bits of egg around with my fork, unable to look him in the eye. “But you should know, I’d have absolutely no idea what to do. I’ve never taken care of kids before.”

I peeked through my bangs as he nodded, his face riddled with lines. Kat must have really put him through an ordeal. He looked nothing like the person who woke me up with breakfast in bed.

“And now I’m asking you to look after six.” He scratched his beard absently, still staring outside. “I know this is a big favor of me to ask, but Kat isn’t giving me much choice. I have to go into town, I have to do my job, or word will spread about the hermit who lives secluded in the mountains like he’s hiding. And she will catch wind again, she will replace us, and she’ll...”

I put my fork down when Dr. Quincy fell silent. He appeared rooted in the spot, unable to move, to speak. His eyes remained closed, like he was trying to forget it all. To escape, drift away and never return. I stared down at my pale, bony hands. The long nails that would grow back overnight if I cut them, the soft, supple skin that wasn’t my skin.

“It’s alright, Quinn. I will look after them.”

He opened his eyes, the lines in his face receded. He blinked a few times as I tried to hold his stare.

When he smiled, I focused again on the scraps of breakfast. “Thank you, Alex. Really. I would be lost without you.”

“It’s...Don’t worry about it. I just hope I do more good than harm.”

“You’ll do fine.” He was already walking back out, grabbing a dark grey jacket that hung from a peg in the wall. “They seem like a handful at first, but once they warm up to you you’ll wonder if they take better care of you then you do for them.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, and he was already leaving the room, putting on the jacket as he walked.

“Tell the little ones I said goodbye. I’m running late as it is, they will understand. Have a good day, Alex.”

“You too,” I called after him. He never turned around and he was soon gone from my line of sight. Not long after that, I heard the front doors open and close.

Outside his kids had gone back to playing. I reached down for the cane. Better sooner rather than later they replace out what’s happening.

I was halfway out of my seat when I looked back to the glass door and saw that Gust had stopped chasing his siblings around. He was standing still, facing me, and was staring at me with his new stick pointed right at me. When our eyes met, he brought the point of the stick across his throat before spitting at the ground. I sat back down as he returned to playing.

Maybe it was best to wait to give them the bad news.