Page 150 of Strange Animals

Green paused, smiled, and touched the brim of his hat.

He looked scuffed and sun-ripened, but not much older. His beard was wild. His eyes were deep shadow and moss.

Valentina shook her head.

“I cannot believe you did it,” she said. “Did you find another doorway?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Green said.

His voice was different, a mix of accents she couldn’t place. He walked forward, setting Dancer’s bent and weathered cup on the rag moth’s table.

“How did you manage it? Where have you been for the last year?”

Green stroked his beard.

“A year, eh?”

Valentina narrowed her eyes.

He ran his hand across the tabletop. She watched the motion. A woven bracelet of blooming, multicolored flowers shining like stained glass hung at his wrist, tinkling against the wood. The design was familiar, a protection against southern bramble leeches.

“Mr. Green. How?”

His expression grew distant.

“Well, a century and a fair amount of help from new and old friends didn’t hurt,” he said. “But, as usual, nature did most of the work.”

He took off his hat and moved as if to hang it on an invisible hook.The hat hovered, then swung across the room with a hornet’s buzz before perching on the top corner of a metal shelving unit.

She watched him, struggling with a rare loss for words.

Green cocked his head. Something seemed to draw his attention through the wall, up toward the boughs of the library oak. He smiled and nodded a greeting.

Returning his focus to the cabin, he looked around him like a man stepping into a storybook. Dancer continued staring, open-mouthed as he settled into his camp chair and reached for a toasting fork.

Finally, Valentina found her voice.

“A century?” she asked.

Green grinned at his old teacher.

“Bit of a detour. I took the long way back.”