Page 17 of A Light in the Dark
SEVENTEEN
Only a fool would refuse such an offer.
As promised, after lunch, Joel took me to the garden store, where I went on a rampage for Earth roses, vegetables, and delicious blooming treats for visiting luna moths. I bought three of every variety of rose, which would fill at least half my garden. The other plants would fill the rest, and I expected to have shaded paths underneath my maze of arching trellises once finished. To make certain all my plants would get enough light, I bought outdoor plant lights I could install from poles on the trellises. Joel promised he could handle protecting the electrical work from the floods and heavy rains in exchange for some quality time with the blooms.
Only a fool would refuse such an offer.
While Joel did purchase a few roses for himself, I ended up filling most of the trailer with my acquisitions. The trellises pushed the limits of his SUV and guaranteed we’d have to go through my hometown to get back to Stonecreek .
The forecast called for rain in the early morning, which would make the dirt road impassible for the trailer. As such, we’d return to pick up everything on our way out.
The owner, one of Joel’s uncles on his mother’s side, didn’t mind a little bit of inconvenience for my sake.
Dinner proved to be a quiet enough affair, taking place at dusk as the luna moths began to stir, taking flight from the house to fill the sky with fluttering wings. Joel took pictures, and while I did use my camera a time or two with some help from him, I was content to watch them while crocheting. As warned, the moths indulged with each other, and one by one, the females went to lay their eggs before finding some quiet place to land, where they died without fanfare. Their passing hurt a little, but I couldn’t help but find beauty in it as well.
One such female landed on my shoulder and settled in, and only when she fell totally still an hour or so later did Joel’s father remove her. “I’ll put this one in a case for you to take home. This one is your true first.”
I understood, then, what they’d meant when discussing Joel’s first. While there was nothing magical about the luna moths, something about them left an impression. I watched his father go, pondering the cycle of life and death. “Thank you. She was so peaceful.”
“That is the beauty of the luna moth. That is the pain of them, too. I’ll bring out some mundane silk for you to play with. I’m sure we have a hank or three around.”
“Or a million,” Joel muttered. “Mom spins, she dyes, and she hoards. And unlike Yolana, she does not sell most of her hoard. It is either gifted or she uses it. I keep telling them they need to start selling some of the silk they gather.”
“These are our moths, and it’s our silk,” his father replied, lifting his chin and heading into the house with the luna moth. “Pest.”
“Skinflint!”
“Ruiner of hoards.”
“Just because I insisted that you do not waste any silk does not make me a ruiner of hoards. If you can’t use it before actual pests get into it, you need to unload it or better protect it. Just let me shore the damned house already, you cretin of a father!”
“Maybe if you’d let us pay for it, we might.”
“Pay me in suits.”
“No.”
“Raw silk.”
“Also no. Cash or bust, punk.”
Joel yelled his frustration for the world to hear. “Damn it, Dad. There’s a ten percent surcharge for distance.”
“We can afford it. Cash or bust, punk.” Without waiting for a reply, his father swept into the house.
“Just let him pay for the shoring, and then talk to Yolana and custom order seventy-five percent of their stuff, in the colors and types you want. Make her charge you extra, payable to them. Sure, the government gets a bunch in sales tax, but your cousin gets paid and your father gets what he wants. You eventually return a good chunk of the money, your company gets a good job, and you get to feed some of your employees. You clearly have to pick the cream of the crop to do the shoring work here, so they’ll have to compete with performance reports to get onto the team.”
“I see you are business savvy.”
“I am not. I just have common sense and use it. You do not need to gift your parents with the shoring work, especially if they can afford it. And knowing how much you spent on their silk, I’m pretty sure they can afford whatever work they need.”
Joel pouted at me, put his camera back into his bag, and got up to stretch. “But I want their silk.”
“Why not counter with either full priced shoring or a discounted shoring, but the difference is paid in silk fabric in sufficient quantity to make three suits for every employee working the job, yourself included.”
He eyed me. “That’s not a bad idea. And if he doesn’t bite on the suits, I’ll just buy the materials for the suits.”
“You need to share some of the suits with your employees.”
Judging from the force of his heaved sigh, he found my rules to be particularly heinous. “Must I?”
“I am sure your most skilled employees deserve to own nice suits, a reward for having been in the top five performing employees. There would be six of you working on this house, right? And if the employee happens to be female, then she gets an outfit of her choice in silk.”
Joel eyed the house. “I think we could do the work with six, yeah. I might have to call in one or two extras, depending on the basement and the condition of the roof. It’ll be a big job.”
“Why don’t I negotiate for the contract while you sulk?”
“I wanted to do it for them for free.”
“We can’t always get what we want.”
“You’re merciless!”
I nodded. Before I had a chance to inform him about how merciless I could be, his parents returned.
His mother carried a basket containing red, orange, and yellow skeins of silk yarn. She placed it on the picnic table near my bag. “This is compensation for bringing our son home for a visit.”
I could accept bribery, and if I got silk for dragging Joel to the town, I would be concocting reasons to visit early and often. I set aside the start of my blanket and grabbed the closest skein, fondling it. The texture was silk, but it was a strange silk, smooth and more delicate than any silk I’d handled before. “This isn’t shifter yarn, and it definitely isn’t standard silk.”
“It’s mundane luna moth yarn. Their silk is fragile, so it’s quite the challenge to spin, but once it’s spun, it has a unique texture. Shifter yarn is less fragile, but the texture isn’t quite the same.”
It really wasn’t. I rubbed the skein against my face and determined I would be forever making blankets from luna moth silk. “Not as soft as Shifter Five, but it’s a strong contender.”
Joel stared at me with a rather unamused expression.
Smiling, I turned my attention to Joel’s father. “You may pay cash or accept a discount if you pay the equivalent of the discount in silk. He is no longer allowed to negotiate the contract because he is a biased son. As the common sense currently present, you must decide if you’re paying full price or at a discount with the expectation of providing silk. He will be using the silk to make suits for himself and clothing for the workers who will be doing the sigil work.”
“We’ll take the discount plus silk,” his father replied without even a hint of hesitation. “Thank you for resolving that matter promptly.”
“You’re welcome.” I gave Joel my undivided attention. “ You can go into your SUV, lock yourself in, and scream your frustration. Please don’t disturb the moths again. They’re busy having a good time right now.”
“I’ll refrain from screaming for now, but the first time I get you playing a computer game against me, I am going to destroy you at it.”
I laughed at his version of revenge. “Okay. I can live with the burden of being a good sport while you destroy me if it makes you feel better. Is everyone happy with the arrangement?”
“We should bring out some more yarn, maybe in pinks and purples. She’s earned it with that,” Joel’s mother said, and without waiting for his father to reply, she headed for the house.
“Are you going to have room in the SUV for everything?”
“It’ll be questionable, but we’ll manage. If not, I’ll just make another trip in a week or two. I’m going to have to build the actual contract and do the evaluation for this place. Such a pain in my ass, Dad.”
“You’ll get over it eventually. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just accept the damned cash.”
“He’s stubborn, grateful for being alive, and loves you,” I replied. “As such, he doesn’t want to accept cash because he wants to be the one showering you with cash. He’ll get over it. Just remind him you have a grill and will fire it up on demand.”
“Joel, I have a grill, and I’m willing to use it.”
“I’ll be expecting some damned good steak and other food. And some yarn I can play with.”
“You have a stash in your bedroom. Play with that.”
“But I want new yarn. ”
Joel’s mother laughed, stopping in the doorway and turning to face us. “I’ll get him enough to make himself a scarf. Maybe that’ll keep him quiet for ten minutes.”
“It’s a long shot, but I’m willing to try it,” Joel’s father said, and I grinned at the despair in his tone. “I don’t know why everyone in town wants a son. Sons are spoiled, annoying, and cause trouble.”
“The girls are just as bad, but they get away with it because they’re cuter,” Joel’s mother countered. “Just be grateful we identified ours was going to be trouble from birth. We might have been stuck with more than just one.”
Love showed itself in many ways, and Joel dragged his heels about leaving town. I reminded him we could dodge stopping in my hometown if we filled up in his town and targeted a different gas station closer to Stonecreek. As I dodged visiting, I couldn’t blame him for his ready acceptance of the idea. The roses in the trailer convinced him we needed to leave his family behind and return to the city.
After we safely passed where I’d been born, Joel heaved a rather pained sigh. “I’m sorry. I get stubborn once I go home. And I start acting my shoe size rather than my actual age.”
As Sampson Sigils had been in business for over fifty years before I’d moved into town, I assumed the company’s owner was at least in his sixties, which indicated his parents were older still. At Joel’s production of a hundred pounds of silk a year, I could understand how Yolana had so many goods available, which she’d spun and dyed herself.
The Fountain of Youth truly was being a luna moth. The reality I would be a memory before he reached his middle age cast gloom over the already dreary day, although we got lucky and the clouds opted to maintain a drizzle rather than actual rain.
“You have to have a hard job, especially around the flooding season. What if the shoring on one of your properties failed during the floods?” I regarded him with wide eyes. “None failed, did they?”
“No, we didn’t have any failed shorings this year. The few times we’ve had shorings fail, it’s been for things outside of our control or the homeowner invalidated the shorings through making modifications without having us come and fix the foundations. And we have runes in place for that; if a shoring fails, we can tell. The sigils on the foundations are linked to a board we monitor in our headquarters. When we see the sigil fade or show signs of damage, we contact the homeowner and implement some clauses in our contract. We offer immediate repair of the sigil as long as they tell us exactly what they did to invalidate the sigil and pay the at-cost wages and supplies for the repair. That’s roughly five thousand per foundation wall.”
“Compared to the full cost of shoring, that’s really not bad.”
“It’s really not, and we only charge when they invalidate the sigil. It’s a lot of work to restore the shoring. A few years back, someone refused to pay out, so we cancelled the contract and refused to refund as they had done substantial alterations to their foundation. We photograph the foundations before we do the work, and if we do interior work, we photograph the inside. ”
I remembered them taking pictures of the exterior of my home during the work. “How bad is the repair season for you?”
“It’s busy. I’d say a quarter of our properties need to have some form of maintenance work done on them. Yours would have been on the maintenance list this year for precautionary examination outside of our usual checks, but we adjusted the schedule after you decided to take advantage of my suggestion to have additional work done. The front foundation wall took a beating. I suspect it’s where your front step connects to the foundation, since that’s touchier work. Most don’t have that leading step. I’ll be seeing if we can offer that leading step to more of our customers after seeing how critical it had been rescuing Gabriella. Do you mind if I make off with your rescue rig design? I’ll pay for the design if we can install it on our covered properties. You’ve proven that setup saves lives.”
“You can give me some extra vomit and shifter byproduct as compensation, but I don’t need to be paid for the design. I’d give it to the entire city for free if I could.”
“Until we find out why there are so many refugees dying like they are, I’m afraid if you did start sharing your rescue rig, you might draw the wrong attention. I don’t want you to end up being a victim, too.”
“Wait. Someone might target me just for helping to teach others how to rescue people out of the floods?”
“Yes, it’s possible.”
“But why?”
“Profit, why else? You don’t know how much those refugee contracts are worth, do you?”
“I knew Stonecreek is getting paid for housing refugees, but I don’t know all the details. I did know that Gabriella hadn’t been warned about how to avoid the floods.”
“I’m worried about the situation.”
I was, too. Rather than inform Joel I was already involved, I said, “Why do those in Stonecreek want to get rid of the refugees? I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand because you’re a selfless person who cares about others. You wouldn’t actually use someone to make a quick buck.”
“I’m extorting you for your silk, Mr. Luna Moth.”
He grinned. “But you’re doing so in a playful fashion, and you’re providing me with roses. It only seems fair to pay my rose dealer for access to her new blooms. And you provide snacks.”
“You can even give me input on what your preferred snacks are, so you can pass out on my counter following your rose and snack treats. I won’t make promises I’ll release you to your home some nights. I might just take you into my bedroom and use you as my nightlight.”
“Being extorted for silk? That makes sense. Being kidnapped to be used as a nightlight? That’s a new one. Can I at least be released in time to go to work? I tend to go in early to dodge the assholes down the hill.”
I couldn’t blame him for that; if such a thing became an option for me, I’d do the same. “That depends on how early you leave.”
“Sunrise,” he admitted. “But I suppose on nights I am not set free to return to my own home, I will just stagger into work late and make excuses.”
I giggled. “I’ll limit kidnappings of luna moths for nightlight purposes to Friday and Saturday nights. All luna moths should be warned that I will catch and keep any shifters that visit my domicile on those evenings. Sniff my roses at your own risk.”
“That would be a good way to get a mixed batch of silk, because there would definitely be copious amounts of shifter vomit in your home after that.”
I snickered at the thought of having to clean up after a bunch of shifters, but the reward came in the form of silk I could spin at my leisure. “I’ll even put out a buffet for my kidnapped guests and release them the next morning.”
“And that’s a good way to make certain your place is a party every Friday and Saturday night. You might even get them to show up in human form to make the neighbors ask questions.”
“Or accuse me of being a slut,” I muttered. “Did you know the banshee at the bottom of the hill accused the librarians of being whores because they had a party once?”
Joel glanced at me before returning his attention to the road. “No, I didn’t.”
“Just wait until you park with your blinkers going outside of my home with the trailer and help me unload everything. By the end of the day, you mark my words, I will be a championship whore in their eyes.”
“People are terrible, and I question why I offered shoring to any of them at a decent rate.”
“Considering none of them accepted, they probably think you’re a low-level salesperson who is just trying for a quick buck.” I shook my head, dug around in the bag at my feet, and retrieved my crochet project. “Your parents really don’t sell their silk?”
“The only silk they sell is what they produce and sell to Yolana. They give their mundane silk to charities, people in need, or to friends to fund their crafting adventures. Your refugee crafter friend will end up receiving an unholy amount of fiber from them. There’s a cotton farm not far away from us, and they’ll get cotton for her, too. And we do not discuss the rabbit farm. Rabbit fur is soft but itchy.”
“You’re allergic to rabbit fur?”
“We don’t get rashes or anything like that, but it makes us itchy. We love rabbit fur.” Joel sighed. “If you want to torture us, you’ll make us rabbit fur scarves. We’ll snuggle into them and become itchy. About half the town has a problem with rabbit fur making us itchy.”
I could handle getting yarn made from rabbit fur, and I’d delight in the soft, fuzzy texture. “And if I really want to torture my target, I would make a blanket?”
“That level of evil would not go unpunished,” he warned me.
“And what are you going to do about it, Joel? Come over and get skunked on my roses?”
“Probably. I’ll have to put a great deal of thought into how to get payback for that level of evil. I’ll have to make it good, because that sort of power play is to be respected and admired.”
“Rabbit fur is to you like Shifter Five’s silk is to me, isn’t it?”
“I hate how true that is. I’m just grateful rabbit fur isn’t sold as actual fabric, else I’d try to make a suit of it, and I’d end up itching for all eternity.”
I had bad news for him, and it involved a fabric store in Stonecreek that had a variety of thin rabbit wool fabrics available for sale. When he invited me over to play games, I would begin my plan to provide him with a suit made of his bane, but as I wasn’t completely evil, I would line it with Shifter Five’s silk, allowing him to wear it without actually itching.
It would make a good excuse to take Madeline out into the city to see what there was to see—and who had an unhealthy interest in the refugee.