Page 61 of Her Wicker Guardian

Blair has been quiet longer than usual. When she finally speaks, she looks at Locke rather than the rest of us. “Once people know you exist, we lose control of what everybody else does with that information. Not control of you. Control of the rest of it.”

She keeps it simple. People will take pictures. Pictures can spread. Some strangers may be frightened, others fascinated. Someone may call the sheriff. Someone may want an interview. None of us can guarantee people will ask permission before taking pictures, posting them, or deciding what your story is.

That last part changes him. His attention drops to his hands, to the willow fingers darkened from washing after working on the bear.

“They will talk about me.”

Laura answers quietly. “Yes.”

“When I am not there.”

“Yes.”

No one rushes to soften it. Three days ago he didn’t have a word for town. Now he’s sitting in my yard learning that strangers can carry a version of him somewhere he can’t control.

“Then I want to speak too.”

Pride catches me before I can stop it. “Then you get to speak for yourself,” I say.

Janet hesitates over her notebook. “People are going to ask what you are.”

Locke turns one hand over and studies the weave along his forearm. “Wicker.”

Tom makes a small sound that might be a laugh, and Locke looks at him. “Wrong?”

“No. Just concise.”

Locke looks around the table. “I am Locke. I am wicker. I am alive.”

That silences everyone for a moment. We know almost nothing about what happened Friday night. My ring went into the fire, the bear became Locke, and the willow pulled tight at the center of his chest. Anything beyond that would be us inventing answers because uncertainty makes people itchy.

“That may be enough,” Laura says.

“It is for me,” Locke says. His voice is calm, but there is no uncertainty in it.

From there, the conversation gets practical fast. Shannon wants the first few people Locke meets to be locals we trust, while Blair argues for keeping that circle as small as possible. Janet starts filling her notebook with questions about photographs, identification, transportation, and what happens if curious people start showing up at the house.

Janet looks up from her notebook. “Curious locals aren’t the only people I’m worried about.”

Blair turns toward her. “What are you thinking?”

“Government. Researchers. Somebody deciding Locke is the first of his kind and therefore everybody gets to study him.”

The yard goes quiet.

Shannon looks at Locke, then at Blair. “Can they do that?”

Blair’s expression hardens. “If someone with enough power decides they want him, the law may not stop them before they act.”

“That’s not comforting,” Laura says.

Blair exhales and sets down her sandwich. “No. And I’m not going to pretend the law has a tidy answer for a situation nobody has ever had to write a law about.”

Locke has been listening closely. “Can they take me?”

My stomach drops. The image comes fast: uniforms, locked doors, people talking about him like he isn’t in the room.

Blair answers him directly. “I don’t know what someone with enough power might try,” she says. “And if this gets bigger than Hollis Springs, you’re going to need a lawyer who knows that territory better than I do.”