The second man probes the air with white-gloved hands, doctor hands. He withdraws a raspberry-colored drawing room chair, plush and high-backed with an embroidered pillow. When he sits, he flips out his coattails, just so, and adjusts his little doctor glasses over his little doctor nose. His hair is parted, looks still wet from the comb, and he crosses one neat leg over the other.
The third man has the looks of a trapper as pieced together for a stage play; he’s too clean and whole to be the real deal. The chair he pulls out of nowhere is made of antlers all stuck together, with a glossy bearskin tossed overtop. He’s the only one with a beard, and it’s a thick, wavy thing that weaves into his long hair, black as his eyes. His clothes are layers of worn doeskin and homespun, and his grin flashes like a wolf’s bite in moonlight.
The fourth and final man is the squirrelly one who should be collecting firewood. He’s still got the raw cheeks and bones of boyhood about him, like his elbows and knees haven’t quite figured out where to settle down. His hair is just this side of red, and the chair he pulls out of thin air is a kitchen chair carved of shining wood. He slaps it down to complete the circle and slumps to his elbows to stare at the empty space where there should be a fire, were they men who made any sense.
But they’re not men. As they take off their hats, they reveal long, pointed ears that poke straight up through their glossy hair.
“Go on, then, Tom,” the third man mutters.
The young one leans forward, digging his hands into the dirt and pulling up flames with his bare fingers. There’s a great flash in the falling night, and he sits back, dusting his hands off, a bonfire crackles merrily as if he’d been carefully building it for an hour. There’s even a shiny coffeepot perking at the edge of the flames. Nettie has seen ghost fire before, but this ain’t it. She can feel the heat against her chest from where she hides in the bushes.
She looks down and sneers. Her chest is still there, poking out just enough to tell the world she’s not the man she wishes she was. When she travels as a human and as a man, she carries a muslin cloth to bind up her bitty bosoms and hide her secret. She looks enough like a lanky boy to play the part. But here, out in the middle of nowhere, freshly out of her feathers, she’s naked and shy. As soon as the men start arguing over what to do with their prey, she sneaks around toward their horses to borrow some clothes from their packs. Seeing as how they can pull any damn thing out of thin air, they shouldn’t mind the loss of a shirt for as long as it takes her to figure out who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy and kill what needs killing.
Nettie Lonesome, you see, is also a Durango Ranger, charged with keeping the good people of Durango Territory safe from the monsters that lurk in plain sight. So not only does the Shadow need to know why the possum’s headed for a noose, but the Durango Ranger is charged with protecting the innocent. It’s a heavy burden, sure enough, and she’d rather be anywhere else but here. She hasn’t seen her Ranger captain or crew in weeks, maybe months, but she can still feel the weight of her badge, pushing her to doing what’s right.
The men are muddying up the night with their arguing as the possum clings to the highest branch of the tree, and Nettie feels a rush of comfort when she smells their horses. She misses her friends, but she misses horses, too. As she quietly approaches, giving them time to smell her in return, she feels her stomach somersaulting and knows that, like their riders, these horses are not what they seem. Two of ’em are unicorns, brushed whiter than most and with their horns, tails, and balls intact. One horse, a dapple gray with a mean eye, has wings folded down by her sides like a goose, dirty and rustling. The last mount looks like a horse, an eagle, and a lion spent a confusing night at a whorehouse, but it’s watching her like it can see through to her hateful heart. All the beasts are kitted up in fancy gear, dripping with ribbons and gold chains. Nettie didn’t much fancy any of their riders before now, but her feelings firmly point to nope. She has no love for a feller who can’t let his horse rest without a saddle, now and again.
Of the four critters, she’s most familiar with unicorns, having broken a few to ride in her days as a simple cowpoke. Feeling exposed as hell and raw as a chunk of meat, she sidles up to the kindest-looking stallion, cool and showing no fear.
“Hey, feller,” she murmurs, voice rusty from disuse. “How ’bout I loosen that cinch for you? Might be nice to take a full breath, don’t you think?”
His great head swings around, almost snakelike, to regard her, a king surveying a potato. Now, Nettie has a way with horses and horselike creatures, and the moment she’s tugged on his cinch, the beast gives a heaving harrumph and nuzzles her briefly. When she slides a hand into his saddlebags, he sighs in a magnanimous-type way and pretends to ignore the trespass. Her clever fingers find the likeliest fold of fabric and pull it out, where it impossibly unfolds again and again until it’s a sweeping, full-body cloak that drags the ground. She digs around the saddlebag until she finds a golden rope much like the one destined for the possum’s scrawny little neck and uses it to tie the billowy fabric around her waist. It’s somehow both heavy and soft, like wearing a winter blanket made of spiderwebs, and it moves with Nettie’s every step.
“Time to meet a posse in my pajamas,” Nettie tells the unicorn, who nods as if he understands how goddamn preposterous this is.
As she approaches the fire, she tries to figure out what’s going on.
“I don’t care if he’s fair of face. He fired a gun at me.” The first man, the leader.
“Ah, but it was dry. He didn’t actually shoot you. And you’re not allergic to iron anymore. And finally, if we’re discussing facts, you had previously asked to inspect the weapon in question. . . .” The second man, the doctor.
“And had removed all but the second bullet . . .” The third man, the trapper, while grinning.
“And then, when the gun didn’t fire, you took it back and shot him in the gut.” The fourth man, the one with the baby face, wincing as he says it. “Not that that’ll kill a shifter.”
“And shooting can’t hurt you either, after all,” adds the doc, adjusting his spectacles. “It would only tickle a little.”
The first man stands, and Nettie understands that he’s not the clever, kind, brave sort of leader. He’s the sort who leads by force and fear. The sort who drinks power, all sloppy, from someone else’s glass like it’s cheap whiskey.
“Just because bullets can’t kill me and iron ain’t a problem doesn’t mean I enjoy the sensation of being shot. I still say we string him up and cut out his heart. I’d like to put it in a bell jar.”
The doc rubs his stubbled cheeks. “How many hearts do you really need in bell jars? Isn’t your shelf nearly full? Let’s just take him back to Lincoln and let the humans sort out their petty little disputes. This is why they make their laws. And why we should keep to ours.”
“I don’t want to go back to Lincoln,” says the tenderfoot boy. “Let’s go back home. I get tired of playacting so much. My ears feel permanently crushed.”
“How poetic,” the trapper says, sneering.