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If there was one thing Luz wanted, it was a distraction. And if anything was a better distraction than helping her friends, and getting involved with people’s love lives, then it would have to be helping her friends with their love lives.
Luz cornered Hunter as soon as she got a chance in the upstairs room he was sharing with Gus. Amity came along in hopes of being a grounding influence, but she didn’t have high hopes. She’d been there when Luz put two and two together about why Hunter seemed to pay special attention to Willow, and she wasn’t sure if anything could stop her girlfriend now.
Hunter was dutifully making his bed, like he did every morning, when Luz poked her head into the room. “Hey, can we talk to you?”
Hunter glanced warily at her, and then at Amity, who entered just after her. Amity’s presence seemed to reassure him, a little. “What do you want to ask about?”
In a supremely sinister gesture, Luz shut the door and leaned against it with her arms crossed. She had on that narrow-eyed smile that meant she was ready for some mischief. “Do you have a crush on Willow?”
He blinked. “What? No! I don’t want her to get hurt at all!” When Luz snorted, he added uncertainly, “That… that is what you mean by having a crush, isn’t it?”
“No! Pff. I’m asking if you like her!”
He glanced in question at Amity, as if she might offer some clarification. “Of course I like the Captain. She’s my friend. I—I think.”
Luz pressed, “But Gus is your friend, too, and I’ve never seen you blush at him.”
“Gus doesn’t…” Hunter hesitated. “I don’t know what you want from me, right now.” But he didn’t try to escape out the window, which Luz seemed to take as a good sign.
“Okay, tell me this. Whenever Willow does something cool, does it make your heart beat faster?”
He thought about this. “…I… guess? Is that worth mentioning?”
“Mhm. And does your name sound special to you whenever she says it?”
His ears were turning red. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. Luz shook her head knowingly. “Oh, Hunter, you’ve got it bad, huh?”
“I’ve got what bad? Is this some human disease I don’t know about?”
Amity, watching from near the wall, snorted. “No, witches definitely get this one too.” At Hunter’s look of alarm, she clarified, “You just like her, is all.” She gave Luz a sheepish look. “I know the feeling. But you are kind of obvious. You blush a lot every time she sits next to you.”
“I do not!” he protested.
Then, from outside the open window and down below, Willow called, “Hunter!”
His face immediately turned pink. He spun around and, in trying to stick his head out the window, whacked his head on the windowframe. He yelped, rubbed his forehead, and then poked his head out more carefully this time. “Y-yeah?”
She was standing with Gus in the front yard. “Do you want to come with me and Gus to the park later today? We were going to climb one of the human trees. Luz said these ones don’t bite you!”
“Yeah! Sure!” His voice cracked, and he gave her a thumbs-up. She cheerfully returned it.
When Hunter pulled his head back in and turned back to Luz and Amity, they were both watching him with eyebrows raised. He opened his mouth to defend himself… and then gave up. He covered his face with a groan.
“Look.” He let his hands drop. “I just… she’s the one person who wasn’t… suspicious, or afraid of me, when we met. And then I betrayed her trust, but she—she gave me another chance. I mean, all of you did,” he added, glancing up at Luz. “More chances than I felt like I deserved. But the Captain just… she saw me. Right from the beginning.”
Luz and Amity glanced at each other, their humor dimming. Luz hesitated, then asked him, “I’ve been wondering. Why do you call her that?”
“What?”
“You keep calling Willow “the Captain.” How come? You’re not on a flyer derby field. You can just use her name.”
He looked down. “I don’t know. Keeps things… simple, I guess.”
“How?”
Hunter shrugged. After a long moment, he spoke again, but his voice was quiet. “I… I like how she looks at me, okay? And I don’t want to risk ruining things.”
Luz nodded sagely. “Hunter,” she decided, “You are going to tell Willow how you feel.”
“But I don’t know how I feel!” Hunter clutched his hair with one hand, clearly agitated.
Amity broke in, “Luz…”
But Luz was in full-speed-ahead mode. “I’ll help you! Me and Amity will both help you!”
“Luz!” Amity grabbed her hand. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure thing, sweet potato!” She winked at Hunter and followed her girlfriend out of the room. Amity led her back to the girls’ room, checked they hadn’t been followed, and then shut the door.
“I’m not sure about this,” she said. “I mean, remember when Hooty tried to help you ask me out?”
“Oh.” Luz grimaced. “Well, that worked out in the end anyway, didn’t it?”
“But do you want to put Hunter through that? And what about Willow? Do you know how she feels about him?” She personally didn’t see much romantic appeal in Hunter, but then, she didn’t see the appeal of most boys in general. Maybe Willow liked the sad, broody blond type. But what if she didn’t? What if they were setting him up to crash and burn?
Luz waved her off. “It’ll be fine! They’ll be cute! You’ll see!”
The plan came in the form of a trip to the library, actually. It was really a way to get Gus out of the house—after all, a real human library? How could he pass that up?—but Luz decided it would be the perfect time to give Hunter a few minutes to talk to Willow alone. There were three floors in the central library, and Luz had never explored much past the YA Fiction section. She only remembered it when Vee asked her whether she wanted to check out any books. Vee seemed as relieved as Camilla that the other kids were starting to breathe again, after their violent transplant from the Demon Realm.
The central library actually looked a lot like the one in Bonesboro. Tall, imposing, lots of columns. In a way, it was sort of comforting. In a way, the reminder hurt.
Vee showed them her favorite section—she’d started looking at veterinary books, because of the time she’d spent living with Camilla. Gus stayed in nonfiction, excitedly grabbing books like he was trying ever dish at a buffet, and Luz showed Amity where the Azura books were. And all the books similar to the Azura books. Amity looked like she was in heaven.
Once everyone else was settled, Luz brought Hunter to a corner of the library where there weren’t a lot of people. It was down a hallway, so nobody was likely to come by and interrupt.
“All right,” she told him conspiratorially. “Willow is in nonfiction with Gus and Vee, but I’ll bring her over here so you can talk to her. Are you ready?”
“No,” he told her anxiously.
“Aah, neither was I. Just wait here, okay? I’ll be right back!”
“Luz!” he protested, but she was already running off down the hall.
Thankfully, Willow hadn’t moved from the shelf where she’d discovered the books on botany. She looked up when she heard Luz approach. “Luz! Did you and Amity find the Azura books?”
“Yup! We sure did! Hey, have you got a minute? Hunter was looking for you.”
“Oh.” Willow blinked. “Sure! Where did you see him?”
“I’ll show you!” Luz led Willow out of the nonfiction section, back towards where she’d left Hunter. It didn’t occur to her until they were halfway there that he might have escaped while she was gone. Darn, she should have left Amity to watch him.
But when she poked her head around the corner, to her relief, he was still waiting there, rubbing his arm. He jumped when she appeared, but before he had time to say anything, Luz turned back to Willow. “Here he is!” She herded Willow around the corner and gave Hunter a thumbs-up. The look he gave her in return seemed close to terror, but she assured herself he was just nervous.
When Luz disappeared around the corner, Willow turned to Hunter with a puzzled smile. “Luz said you were looking for me?”
Hunter was panicking. He tried to subtly do the breathing thing Gus had shown him, but his tooth gap whistled on the first breath. Then he inhaled and held it, but a problem with this strategy emerged right away when started to get lightheaded.
“Hunter? Are you okay?” Willow stepped towards him.
“Me? I’m fine!” He forced a laugh, aware that his voice was too bright and loud for the space. “I am A-ok!” Why had he let Luz talk him into this? Oh, right, because whenever there was anything to do with Willow, his brain turned to mush. He should’ve made a break for it before they came back, instead of following orders like a good little soldier.
“Okay,” said Willow, uncertain but still friendly. “What did you want with me?”
“I, uh…” He glanced around, hoping for a distraction, an escape route, a—a source or courage, maybe? Why was this so difficult? Why was this scarier than running for his life from Kikimora? He’d rather be dodging cannon shots from an Abomaton than be alone with Willow right now. But if they left here without him saying anything, Luz would keep pushing him. He’d turn himself into a coward. He hated uncertainty, and if he told her, if he got a response, at least he’d know.
But this was one situation where he didn’t think knowing would make him feel better. He imagined telling her, imagined the smile dropping from her face. And then everything would be awkward, and she’d never look at him the same way ever again.
“Hunter?” she said again, growing concerned.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it. “I… I gotta go!” He dodged around her and swung around the corner, nearly bowling over Luz, who had been listening from out of sight. “Sorry!” he called over his shoulder in panic, but he didn’t stop.
“Hunter, wait!” Luz called after him.
He charged through the back door and out into the sunlight. Flapjack—who had been hiding away with the other Palismen—greeted him, chirping inquiringly. “I can’t do it,” he told his Palisman. “Flapjack, staff!” He needed to get as far away from here as possible, and he didn't care if the humans saw. But Flapjack only twittered at him.
“Some help you are.” He started scanning for an escape route. They’d be right behind him; he had to get out of sight fast. He ran to one of the trees, crouched, and used his magic to blink straight up and grab the lowest branch. From there, it was simple enough to keep climbing. He went as high as he could without risking a fall that would break his neck, and then he settled on a branch, hugging the tree trunk.
Flapjack landed beside him and tilted his head.
Hunter scowled. “Don’t give me that look. It’s not that simple.”
In the distance, he heard Luz emerge from the building, calling his name. Then Amity and Vee, then… Gus, and Willow. Was everybody involved in this now? Hunter groaned and pressed his forehead against the tree. “Don’t you dare tell them where I am,” he muttered to Flapjack. When he looked up, though, his Palisman was gone. “Oh, no.”
He tried to make himself as small and hard to spot as possible as his friends’ voices moved away from each other. They seemed to be splitting up to search. He heard someone take to the air, though he didn’t look to see who. It was only a couple of minutes later when Willow said, “Hunter?” from right next to him.
Hunter yelped and nearly fell out of the tree. As it was, Flapjack grabbed the front of his shirt with his little claws and helped him regain his balance. Hunter twisted as best he could, to see Willow floating on her staff just outside the branches of the tree. “H…Heyyy, Captain,” he managed, trying for a smile. Of course Flapjack would’ve gone to get her.
Willow drifted closer and gripped a branch, settling easily on a limb adjacent to him. “Mind if I sit here?” she asked kindly.
“Go ahead,” he mumbled.
Clover morphed out of staff form, and she and Flapjack buzzed and fluttered off somewhere to do whatever Palismans did when they weren’t being traitors and abettors. Hunter gripped the tree like it would hide him.
“I’m sorry about Luz,” Willow told him. “She gets… stubborn, sometimes.” She smiled thinly. “I don’t know what she was pushing you about, but you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” She waited, giving him a chance to respond, but he didn’t. “Was it important?”
Hunter tried to judge the distance to the ground. Climbing down would take too long, and he didn’t want to leave her stranded up here. “No,” he said. “Not that important.”
She leaned her shoulder against the trunk. “Is it important to you?”
“…Yeah. But… now’s not a good time for it. We have bigger things to worry about.” He couldn’t look at her.
“Okay. We don’t have to talk about it.” Willow kicked her feet. Then, abruptly, she said, “At least they still have trees in the human realm.”
Hunter eyed her. “You didn’t know they have trees in the human realm?”
She gave him a wry look. “Luz didn’t talk about the plants here very much. I have to say, it was a relief to find out they have gardens, here. At least some things are the same.”
Slowly, Hunter unwrapped himself from the tree and leaned back to look up. This high up, the sky was easily visible through the branches. “Emperor Belos used to tell me about the human realm,” he recalled. “He told me that the trees were green, and the sky was blue. And the rain doesn’t burn you.” Now that he thought about it, that might have been the one good thing Belos had ever given him, even if it had been as calculated as everything else. Real wonder mixed in with the lies. At least Hunter had been able to imagine a blue sky. He wasn’t sure why the truth in it hurt worse. What else had been true?
But Willow was outside all of the complicated feelings there. She chuckled about the rain, and just that simple thing eased Hunter’s mind. “Yeah. Boiling rain was a lesson that Luz had to relearn a couple of times. Apparently, playing in the rain is a thing that kids do here, without having to dare each other.”
“You guys dared each other to play in the rain?” he asked her in shock.
“Not me. Other kids did, though. I…” She sobered. “I never really had friends to dare me to do it. And by the time I met Gus, neither of us were dumb enough to risk getting burned like that.”
And so they circled back around to where they’d started this. The risk of getting burned, huh. Going on present evidence, Hunter didn’t think he’d have ever taken a dare like that. “Well,” he said awkwardly, “I can imagine Luz taking that dare, if you want to try it when we get back to the Boiling Isles. You have plenty of friends, now.”
Willow looked at him, and this time, her smile was a little odd. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
They sat in silence grown comfortable, for a moment. Willow kicked her feet again. “Hey, Hunter. While I’ve got you here… I’ve been meaning to ask you about something.”
His heartbeat kicked up immediately. “H-ha. Sure, Captain. What is it?”
Her smile quirked. “It’s about that, actually. I’m not the Captain of anything, here. You don’t have to keep calling me that.”
Oh, Titan, what would Luz say in a situation like this? “Oh! Well, you’re always captain in my heart!” He gave a panicked laugh, instantly regretting the words. Too late to take them back now, though. He wanted to flee again, but there was still the problem of getting down out of the tree.
Weirdly, Willow’s cheeks seemed to go a little pink. “Haha. Right.” She looked down. “But, um… I don’t know. It’s… it feels a little weird. I’d like it if you’d just call me Willow, from now on.” This was when she lifted her head and offered one more tentative smile, and Hunter was undone.
You’ve got it bad, Luz had told him. He hated it when she was right. “Oh,” he said. “Uh. Okay.” He had to work up the courage to go on, “Yeah. I can do that… Willow.” He could feel his face turning red. She was still smiling at him, though. The branches hadn’t broken form underneath them, and the sky was still blue, and Willow was still smiling at him. So, maybe it would be okay.
“All right.” She looked down. “Now, uh… we should probably get down, but climbing’s not really my strong suit.”
“Oh.” Hunter looked around for Flapjack and Clover, but neither of them were anywhere to be seen. “Well, I can help you. I climbed up here. I can… probably climb down.” Probably.
He went first, sliding off of his branch and starting to carefully make his way towards the ground. But just because the day wasn’t bad enough already, as he put weight on one of the branches just a few feet down, he felt it crack in warning. It wasn’t warning enough.
It snapped, and he dropped.
“Hunter!” Willow cried.
His jaw clenched by instinct and he squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the pain on impact—except he landed in something softer that only knocked his breath away. He opened his eyes, blinking at Willow still perched on the branches above. She had a hand stretched out towards him. He pushed himself upright and found himself half-buried in a pile of leaves and flowers with lots of petals. Oh. Right. Plants.
“Scootch over!” Willow called down.
“Right!” He moved to one side, intending to get to his feet. But as soon as he was out of the way, Willow jumped and landed next to him, sending up a puff of petals.
“Whew!” The plants disappeared from underneath them, dumping them both on the ground. “Glad I had practice with that.” Willow got to her feet and held out her hand to help him up. “Are you okay?”
“Uh…” He took her hand and let her pull him to his feet. Titan, she was strong. “Yeah. Thank you.” He managed a smile. “For… everything. For being my friend, about this.”
“Of course!”
And at that moment, Luz rounded the corner from the side of the library. “Hunter! Willow!” Ghost hopped down from her shoulder and ran off, probably going to get the others. As she reached them, though, her attention fastened on Hunter and Willow’s hands, still clasped together. Hunter stifled a squeak and quickly let go.
“Hi, Luz,” said Willow, her tone friendly but stern.
“Hey… Willow. Hey, Hunter.” Luz seemed to be picking up that her plan hadn’t worked. “Uh… where’d you find him?”
“In the tree.” Willow crossed her arms.
“Oh.” Luz grinned sheepishly. “…Sorry, Hunter. I… didn’t mean to freak you out like that.”
He rubbed his arm. “Yeah. I mean, I appreciate you wanting to help, Luz. But when I want help, I’ll ask for it, okay?”
She gave a disappointed sigh. “You’re right. I’m sorry, guys.”
“It’s all right.” He risked a small smile. She offered a tentative one in return.
Gus, Amity, and Vee arrived a few minutes later. “Guys!” Gus shouted, holding up a book as he ran towards them like he’d found the answers to life’s greatest mysteries inside. “Giraffes are real!”
Luz had to laugh. “I have got to get you guys to a zoo.”
Amity took her hand. “We’ll put it on the list.”