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five.
Some people wanted to hang Isaak.
Roswell didn’t, not really. They understood why, of course, and they were plenty angry, too, but Isaak was the closest thing they'd got to a dad. Isaak was the one that found them, no matter what they thought about the man, and it was awful mixed these days. Had been for a while.
(They’re not sure at all how to feel about knowing that Isaak killed the man who summoned them. They never met Jack, though they sure as shooting knew his face, what from seeing that statue every day.)
But Roswell was the sheriff, and also sort of interim mayor until they could hold elections, and it was the sheriff that does the hanging in Refuge. ‘Course, it was hardly the case that Roswell could stop anyone who got it into their heads to take things into their own hands, being as they were in the remnants of their body. Nobody seemed to be much inclined to disobey them, though, whether out of respect or lingering memory of that time they put a Freedom Brigade member all the way through a wall after they wouldn’t stop haranguing Brogden about the vault.
They had a – community get together, was how Ren was phrasing it – where they talked about what to do. Most everyone showed up. All of the townsfolk’d heard the bubble was gonna come down, though how long it’d be they weren’t all sure. Some of the members of the Freedom Brigade shuffled over to Roswell and muttered thanks to them for their part in bringing it down. There were plans for a celebration later on, with plenty of insects for Roswell as a gift for helping save the town, too. They were pretty sure Ash was making a new sheriff’s badge for them, too.
“Just keep him in the cells,” Roswell said eventually. “He can’t get them open, not without his wand.”
Nobody argued, but Cassidy had to help them open the cell doors. Isaak never met their eyes.
two.
“Red clay ain’t good for growin’ in,” Isaak had told them.
Roswell was trying to get flowers, carefully uprooted from Paloma’s garden and held temporarily in a glass of precious water, to take root on their body. They had only been a few days old at that point, and Isaak reached out and caught their hand.
Roswell turned towards him, flycatcher body drooping. “But why?” they asked.
“It don’t have the right texture,” Isaak said. He ran a finger down Roswell’s arm and it came back red. “Too soft when it’s wet, too hard when it’s dry.”
He leaned over slightly – Isaak was a tall man, but even sitting down Roswell’s head came up to his chest. “I know you want to do right by these flowers,” he said, and paused, a heavy weight in his eyes. “You need to put them back where you got them. Paloma’ll be glad for the help if you come over and care for them.”
“Oh,” Roswell said, and curled their homunculus fingers around the jar the flowers were held in. Their flycatcher self darted down off of their shoulder, and landed on the lip of the jar. They sat there for a moment, and looked at the reds and blues of the flowers they had found.
“Look, Roswell,” Isaak said, and clapped them on their shoulder. He reached out and traced a pattern in the clay of their chest. “Clay may not be good for plantin’, but it’s plenty good for writin’ and paintin’. I bet you could put whatever you want on your body, and smooth it out when you don’t want it anymore.”
Roswell ran their fingers over the flower he had drawn on their chest. It was crooked, true, and it was simple, but it was perfect. “I don’t think I’ll ever smooth this out,” they said, and their flycatcher self flew back up to their shoulder.
Isaak laughed. “C’mere, big buddy. I can teach you a whole lot more than how to draw flowers.” He leaned back on his heels and took a drag on his cigarette, but his eyes were creased in a smile.
six.
Roswell had been taking care of the nominations for Town Elder. There weren’t really a lot of candidates – there was talk of Redmond running, but the general consensus seemed to be that he didn’t live close enough to town to run it, unless he wanted to move into the manor, and all accounts pointed to him liking his farm just fine, thank you very much.
In the end, it passed quietly. Cassidy was elected, on account of everyone being generally impressed with her mining records, and also because she was about as different a person from Isaak as the people of Refuge could imagine. You couldn’t catch her hidin’ things, they said. She’d blurt it out at the Davy Lamp next payday. It was true, Roswell had to admit. And right now, it was what Refuge needed. A little honesty could go a long way.
Isaak was still in the cells the day after elections, when Roswell flew in. They got the hole in the cells patched up pretty quick, and’d been keeping the door locked ever since. They could fly in and out through the window, and Ren had a key for when she dropped by to bring Isaak his meals. It worked pretty well, as systems go.
“Any decision been made about me?” Isaak asked one day, voice raspy. He’d been pretty quiet ever since he came, except to occasionally ask for a cigarette. Roswell’d asked Ren to drop them in alongside his meals. There wasn’t sense in – well, Isaak killed a man, but there wasn’t sense in making this worse for him than Roswell needed to. He could have his cigarettes.
Roswell turned to land on the bars of Isaak’s cell. It was new yet familiar to have to maneuver to look people in the eyes. This was just a new way of doing it. “No,” they said. “Nothing.”
Isaak snorted. “Any plans to make a decision?”
“No,” Roswell said again. “Do you want them to?”
“It’d be nice to get it over with,” Isaak said, hunching over. He fumbled with the bit of tinder Roswell gave him, and tried to relight the stump of his cigarette.
“Isaak,” Roswell said, “I don’t want you to die.”
“Really?” Isaak said, “Because from this side of the bars, it don’t look like I got many fans out there.”
Roswell shook their head. “No, you don’t.” Isaak snorted again, and began to speak, but Roswell interrupted him. “No, you don’t, Isaak, I’m not going to lie to you – but I’m not doing this because I’m your fan. You taught me to read.”
“I killed a man,” Isaak retorted.
“And neither of us can change that! But neither of us can change that you taught me everything I know, except for what the spell gave me.”
“Junebug,” said Isaak. “Take me out tomorrow and try me, Roswell. It’s for all our good.”
Roswell jerked back, like they did when the fireball hit. How dare he.
“That’s not going to work, Isaak!” Roswell cried. “You didn’t used to do that!”
Isaak jumped to his feet. “That was one of the first things I said to you!” he roared. “Don’t tell me I’m a good person! The Chalice didn’t make me like this, it just helped!”
Roswell froze. They sank down, and let their ruffled feathers settle. “You’re not, not really,” they said, voice barely above a whisper. “You killed a man. You gave me a control word. Those were awful things - that won’t ever stop being true. But it also doesn’t make everything else a lie. You really were a good sheriff, before everything else happened.”
“’S pathetic is what it is,” Isaak said. “Every trouble I saved Refuge from, I got Refuge into. I tried my best to avoid your word for almost a year – but right before the loops, and all, you just got to asking too many questions. I’m sorry. It’s pathetic, but I’m a weaker man than I wanted Refuge to know. If I had just told someone – if I had told Jack –“ he cut himself off.
“That doesn’t change anything either,” Roswell said, still quiet. “I know you’re sorry. I know you think what you did was terrible, and you know what I think about that. It just doesn’t change that I’m not going to kill you, or let you die. That might be what you want, but I'm not going to give it to you. Despite everything, Isaak.”
three.
“The armor’s almost ready,” Isaak said with a grunt, heaving the bag of feed into the rafters above the sheriff’s stables.
“Really?” Roswell said. They perked up, and abandoned their efforts to reconstruct Isaak’s bench. “But that’s so quick!”
“Well,” Isaak said. “Not a whole lot of work left in Refuge, and the smith up by Redmond’s has made plenty of guard’s armor before. Not even a matter of scaling it up, since we’ve got goliaths running around.”
He leaned over to look at Roswell. “How’s your art coming along?”
Roswell ran their homunculus hand over the traces of patterns their flycatcher half had traced in their clay. A sun, patterned in bird feet. A patch of flowers drawn with a beak. The alphabet drawn out with Isaak’s pencil, held carefully in large fingers. “Pretty good,” they said.
Isaak laughed. “A little better than ‘pretty good,’ I’d reckon.”
Roswell shrugged, and smoothed out a section of particularly crooked letters. “It’s good practice, Isaak. This way I don’t break any more of your slates.”
“Those old things!” Isaak said. “You know we got slate down in the mine, right? It’s no bother to get more. ‘Sides, I reckon we only got a handful of children.”
“And they only get one each,” Roswell pointed out.
“But they’re not going to be deputies,” Isaak said. He reached up to pat Roswell on the shoulder. “You’re gonna be good at it, big fellow.”
“I sure hope so!” Roswell said. “I’m big, but I’ve never fought anyone before.”
“I’ll get the guards to teach you,” Isaak said. He smiled, and fumbled through the pockets of his vest for a cigarette. As he lit it, he said, “I’d teach you myself, but I’ve just got my baton.” He patted the holster on his hip.
“It wouldn’t even matter if I broke the baton,” Roswell said, “As long as I broke it over the bandits’ heads.”
“Ha!” Isaak said. “I don’t think we’ll be seeing much more of those around here. I just need another body ‘round here, to keep me honest. But,” he said, pointing at Roswell with his cigarette, “there was this time, back afore you got here, when there was a gang of twelve bandits roamin’ around here. Me and Cassidy and Xavier headed out to ward ‘em off before they came down on Redmond . . .”
seven.
Later that year, Isaak got sick.
“It’s my sins catching up to me,” he said one day, when Roswell and Ren were bringing him food.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ren said, and slid her tray of oatmeal under the bars.
Isaak eyed it for a moment. “Thanks,” he said at last.
After Ren left, Roswell landed on the bars, in their usual space. “You’re almost sixty,” they said. “If anything, it’s the mines catching up to you.”
“That’s probably true,” Isaak admitted. “My daddy only lived to be sixty-seven, and he spent every day in the mines since he was sixteen. That’s how it goes, for men like us.”
“It didn’t have to,” Roswell said.
Isaak whipped his head up. “Don’t talk about changing the past to me,” he spat. Roswell fluttered up in surprise, and then landed, bracing themself against the bars.
“Don’t talk that way to me,” Roswell said, and it was easier than it had been before. “You don’t have to pretend the past didn’t exist!”
Isaak fell silent, and sank back down onto the bed in his cell. Roswell flew off, and landed on the desk. They’d started fixing it up, so it was easier for them to use now. It wasn’t particularly hard, since they used their bird body to do the paperwork a lot of the time when their homunculus body was still around.
“I still feel the cup,” Isaak said, breaking the silence.
Roswell hesitated. “I know you do,” they said, and flew back to their spot on the bars of Isaak’s cell.
four.
“Where are you going?” Roswell asked Isaak.
Isaak looked up at them, and put down the pickaxe in his hand. “Out towards Redmond’s,” he said, looking back towards his desk.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Roswell asked. They moved closer to Isaak, ignoring the way the floorboards creaked under their weight. “Going alone, I mean?”
“Good as any other idea I had,” Isaak said. “Go guard the town, Roswell,”
“I don’t know,” Roswell said, “You’ve never gone off like this before.”
Isaak sighed, and Roswell could see exhaustion in his face. They wondered if Isaak hadn’t slept well the night before. They’d have to ask Ren if he’d come out to the Davy Lamp last night. It wouldn’t be common for him, but then again, neither was this.
Isaak muttered something under his breath, and Roswell stepped back.
“I’ll let you go now,” they said, and watched as Isaak gathered up his things – why did he need a pickaxe? – and headed out. Something – something was odd –
eight.
Roswell landed on the wall of the sheriff’s office and pulled open the window latch. They ducked through into the room, and immediately noticed something was off. Something in the air or the atmosphere.
They flew further in, and saw Isaak.
“Oh,” they said.
one.
Roswell remembered a time before Isaak, but just barely.
There was nothing, and then – the sun. The sky was overcast, but the clouds were starting to fade, and the sun peeked through a break in the grey clouds that were stretched out across the sky to the horizon. There was something beyond it, or maybe before it, too, shimmering in the sky and giving off a faint second light.
They tried to stand up. They could feel knowledge unfurling in their mind, and it felt like second nature to push magic through their body to stretch and contract their clay to form limbs. It felt equally natural to hop up and flutter, so their feet weren’t caught in the rest of their body.
The sun was directly above them now, the clouds almost completely gone. Roswell – but they weren’t Roswell yet, not quite – stood up.
“Hey!” they heard, and they could feel the same power that was showing them how to move reach out outside of them, and show them the meaning of the words.
They turned as one, both clay and bird. A person was walking towards them, across the fields of hard red clay.
“Who are you?” they asked. The figure halted, like it was surprised.
“I’m Sheriff Isaak,” the figure said. They were close enough now for Roswell to see the figure was a human. “Who are you?”
“Oh, I don’t have a name,” they said.
“Huh,” Isaak said. He pulled out a baton, and tapped them on the shoulder. “Junebug.” They felt an odd tingle in their limbs that passed as soon as they recognized it.
“Is that my name?” they asked.
“What?” Isaak said. “No, no. Big fellow like you, you need a bigger name.”
“Are junebugs small?” they asked. They knew – or the magic knew – that bugs were small, but they weren’t sure about junebugs. Isaak flinched, and their bird half flew up to their shoulder and hopped on Isaak’s arm to comfort him. He started, then relaxed and reached out to scratch their head.
“Yup,” Isaak said. “Smaller’n my little finger. And definitely smaller’n yours.” His voice was muffled, and he pulled something out from where it was clutched between his teeth. He said, clearer this time, “Y’like the sound of Roswell? It was my daddy’s name, and he was a big man.”
“I do,” Roswell said. Reflecting back on it, Roswell probably would’ve liked just about anything, even Junebug.
“Good!” Isaak said, and clapped them on the shoulder. His hand came back red, and he rubbed the clay off on his pants. “Now come on - there’s been some big changes ‘round here lately. I reckon we need someone like you to help keep Refuge safe.”
nine.
They buried Isaak out in the woods, closer to Paloma’s cottage than to the town. Roswell had a suspicion that if Isaak had had a choice, he would’ve wanted to be buried in the mine. That was where he spent most of his life, at least before he became Sheriff.
It was also where Jack’s body lay.
Roswell had seen the shaft plenty of times. June had taken to going down there with flowers, and Roswell usually came with her. Sometimes they would sit there and think of the face on the statue, falling down. But now, all they could think about was Isaak’s body getting smaller and smaller, down into the depths.
They shook their head. June wasn’t here, understandably, but Cassidy and Ren were, both mostly for Roswell. Ren had helped Roswell out with Isaak, and Cassidy wanted to show respect for the last Mayor, no matter what he’d done.
Plus, someone needed to wield the shovel.
Roswell had flown up to Luka’s cave, and asked him to say a couple of prayers. (They’d also borrowed a Caleb Cleveland book. The earlier ones were about as heavy an item as they could carry.) Luka did come, and said a few words about fate that Roswell wasn’t sure Isaak would’ve liked. He always seemed to go back and forth, on whether he wished things were different or was adamant that they stay the same, a push back against the lingering effects of the chalice.
Cassidy had hauled up a rock from the mines, anyway, and that was as fitting a goodbye to Isaak as Roswell could imagine. That, after all, was where everything had started and ended for him.
Afterwards, they perched on the makeshift tombstone. Ren and Cassidy both left them alone – they were pretty sure they were headed off to the Davy Lamp together. They looked at the flowers growing closer to the trees. Just scruffy dandelions. It’d do. Outside of Paloma’s garden, there weren’t a whole a lot in the way of pretty blossoms out here, ‘less it’d just rained.
There hadn’t been a lot of Isaak-less time in their life so far. It was strange, now, facing down this new world. But it would be stranger in the future, Roswell thought, and eyed the shimmer of the bubble still in the sky.
They didn’t, after all, have to forgive or forget. They could remember his stories of being sheriff before Jack and June and the Visitor, of fighting off bandits from up and down the Sword Coast, and hold them the same as the memories of looking at him through cell bars. Isaak could just . . . be.
Roswell looked down at the blank stone. They'd remember it, at least.
“Goodbye, Isaak,” they said. “For a while, at least, you did keep Refuge safe.”