There were certain things Rowan knew to be right. No one could change his mind on them, and his parents didn’t need to tell him for him to know. One of those things happened to be that his Mom and Dad loved him very much. Another was that he wasn’t supposed to talk about the person he knew watched him while he slept. Or the ferret-like creature that sometimes burrowed into a hole in his mattress. As far as their family was concerned, that pair of creatures were figments of his imagination. They had to be creatures . . . right?

There were other things Rowan knew to be right that his family had told him explicitly to say to strangers. Among those things were that his mother was absent. He knew she wasn’t. She was always asleep in bed the mornings he got up to go to school, and she was always waiting for him to get home. He’d hold his father’s too large hand until he saw his mother waiting in the doorway. Then he’d run to her, sometimes with tears in his eyes and sometimes with a smile on his face. It had taken him a while to get used to the lie that his mother wasn’t an active part of their home. Now it rolled off his tongue easily.

There were any number of things he was and wasn’t supposed to discuss. Don’t talk about the magic in his father’s or mother’s families. Don’t mention ever having known his mother. Don’t imply he may grow into something other than human. Don’t listen to the other kids at school, they don’t know what they’re saying half the time anyway. Do his work. Read his books, he had an incredible aptitude for the written word the moment he was handed a pencil, paper, and novel to report on. If he got angry, speak quietly and don’t growl. Stay with the teacher and never sit alone.

Never be left alone.

There were many rules that went named and unnamed, commands that he followed to the best of his abilities. He got distracted. He forgot what he was supposed to do so often he assumed he wasn’t supposed to do anything. The one absolute he clung to was that last rule, though.

Never be left alone.

He didn’t like being alone to begin with. Being alone used to be fun, private, enjoyable. He used to happily climb trees, hide in bushes, run through the woods all on his own. On his own no one cared if his shirt got snagged and somehow slipped off of his thin, small frame. No one griped about how dirty his bare feet got. Alone used to mean solitude and sanctuary, rolls through grass and stomping through mud. Now eight years old and in school, he had adopted his parents’ worries about being alone. Being left alone meant being spoken to by someone he didn’t recognize. Being left alone meant someone could find out that most of his school life was built on lies. Rowan had never liked lies. Lies were hard. Lies were mean. It was easier just to call them stories and believe those stories to be true. He could uphold the story that he was a boy so long as he didn’t go to the bathroom and draw attention to himself. He could uphold the story that his mother wasn’t at home so long as he didn’t get lost in conversation with other students. Not that students ever cared enough to ask for more than what she was, if he would be the same.

People didn’t always frighten Rowan. He didn’t worry until he realized they didn’t think like he did. It seemed sometimes they could be mean for no good reason. They had reasons. They usually told him those reasons if he asked. But as far as he could tell, those reasons weren’t always good. When kids at school started being ruder and ruder to him, he stopped asking why. The answers were always the same.

Rowan asked his mother if he was the only one in the world who felt this way. “No baby,” she had said. He had believed her.

Rowan asked his father if people would always be so mean for no good reason. “Yes,” he had said. “Don’t let them get to you.”

“But they do,” Rowan had told him.

“Then don’t let them see they do.”

Rowan wasn’t sure how this was to be accomplished, but he thought it good to remember the advice anyway. There were so many ‘don’t’s. It was no wonder he thought it safer not to act at all.

Stay close to the people he knew.

Never be left alone.

But one time . . . he was.

He knew it wasn’t on purpose. He knew his dad would never intentionally miss meeting him after school. His father had told him specifically to wait for him with a teacher if he was late. Rowan always had. He’d always clung to his teacher or some other school adult in wait.

But one afternoon, he had been left on his own.

No teacher.

No principal.

No other students.

No one.

Left alone.

The word ‘alone’ circled his brain over and over, legs squeezed tight together as he sat on a bench and waited. He hugged his books and papers to his chest, staring blankly straight ahead as he waited. Alone.

His dad would be here soon. He tried to repeat that over the word circling his mind repeatedly. His dad would be here soon. He wouldn’t have to be alone for long. Not long at all.

He was shivering by the time someone took the usual place of the teacher at his side. There was a noticeable distance between himself and the person who had taken the seat, but he still felt the intrinsic need to scoot further away. So he did. He didn’t have a way to tell how long it had been since the teachers and students had left him alone outside the school, but he did know that whoever was sitting beside him was a stranger. A stranger who neither worked at the school nor knew his family.

That he knew of.

It seemed strange that thought would occur to him. Strange yet . . . right. And unfortunately Rowan had been told to always believe what he felt to be right.

The panic he had felt at being alone only intensified with the emergence of the stranger. He didn’t want to look up at the person beside him. That would mean acknowledging he was no longer alone. Suddenly alone seemed much more . . . appealing than being accompanied by a stranger.

He thought perhaps he could ignore the other and they would go away. He could pretend that they weren’t there. He could go back to imagining himself he was alone.

But then . . . .

“Are you waiting for someone?” His voice was smooth. It was quiet. If honey had a sound, Rowan thought it might sound like the man’s voice. Smooth, quiet, thick . . . .

Dark.

There was something dark.

Rowan’s chest tightened. His heart thumped painfully. He wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers. He wasn’t supposed to be approached by them. He wasn’t supposed to be left alone, but here he was. It would be rude not to answer. It would be rude . . . .

“Dad will be here soon,” he murmured. He felt his lips move, but he didn’t hear his own voice. He didn’t feel the words move from his throat to his tongue. He knew he had said them though.

Because the man answered, “Oh? You live with your father?” Rowan swallowed hard, but couldn’t muster the voice to say anything else. He was shivering harder. He felt cold. He was . . . afraid. “You are shaking. Do you need a jacket?” There was concern in the honey-laced voice. Rowan shook his head. “Are you sure?”

Don’t talk to strangers. But . . . he couldn’t be rude. And he was more scared to be quiet than keep talking. Listen to what he thinks is right. He could always scream . . . .

“I am . . . sir.”

“Your father shouldn’t leave you alone like this.” The man shifted, but didn’t move closer. Rowan’s eyes shifted to see how the man rested his forearms on his thighs, hands steepled gently. The man seemed relaxed enough, feet flat on the ground and the rest of his body lax as he leaned on his legs. Still, something felt wrong.

“He didn’t.”

The silence that followed Rowan’s rebuttal made him even more anxious. Then the man spoke again, “Where is your mother? She could have come to get you, correct?”

Rowan shook his head out of habit. “I don’t know her.”

“Is that right?” The lilt in his voice urged Rowan’s eyes upwards. Casual dress. Even tone. Rowan was startled by the face of the man. It didn’t seem like it should match that voice. There was something about the shape of the man’s face that reminded him of a toad. A smiling toad. Only he wasn’t smiling. His mouth was a small, thin line sitting beneath a carefully trimmed mustache. His nose didn’t hook so much as gently point downward, and his glasses were large and almost square. They made his eyes look darker, and Rowan could see an eyebrow raised above the rim of the glasses. He . . . he didn’t believe Rowan. “My boy,” the man murmured, his tone getting softer and striking a nerve within Rowan, “I have to say . . . I know your eyes.” Rowan felt himself freezing over, felt ice in his veins from that moment forward. He went completely still, and this seemed to be exactly the reaction the man was waiting for. A hand much larger than his seized his palm and squeezed and dark eyes narrowed and honed on him as the man leaned close and whispered hastily, “I know your mother, my boy. She was very dear to me.” The whine that left his throat wasn’t human, and it seemed not to offend the man currently squeezing his hand. If anything, it further confirmed his identity. “But she is dangerous.” The urgency in his tone alarmed Rowan, felt real to Rowan. “She is dangerous and I cannot help but be concerned for you.” Rowan felt numb with fear, unable to refute what the man was telling him. He couldn’t open his mouth to tell him that his mother was the kindest, strongest person he knew. He couldn’t tell him that she would never hurt him, he was her child, her only child. “Skinwalkers turn on their own kin, my boy.” It was like the man knew what he was thinking. “Meeting you now for the first time . . . I could never forgive myself if something were to happen to you because of her.”

“ROWAN!”

Frozen. The boy was frozen when he heard his father screaming for him.

The man let him go, and murmured, “Don’t let her hurt you, Rowan.”

The man was gone. He disappeared and his father appeared. His father had seen him, but didn’t follow. Didn’t track him. Instead he pulled Rowan home, and once at home they were packing. Packing and getting ready to leave town again.

His mother was too hysterical to hear what Rowan had to say. She yelled at his father, spewed rage as he didn’t even defend himself for being late. No matter what, it seemed futile. The man would have found Rowan either way.

As Rowan slept in the backseat of the car with the figments of his imagination acting as his pillow and stuffy, he thought of the man’s words. He knew many things to be right, things his family had told him from the very beginning. He couldn’t imagine their rules as being anything other than their attempts to keep him safe. But the thought of his mother being dangerous lingered. It lingered much longer than he ever wanted it to.

He wished the thought would go away so he could sleep and forget the face of the man who had said those words to him.