Angel Fire East by Terry Brooks

image to register before the lights went out for good. Only those like Nest, who were born with magic themselves, knew there were feeders out there.
    Pick gave her a sharp look, his pinched wooden face all wizened and rough, his gnarled limbs drawn up about his crooked body so that he took on the look of a bird’s nest. His strange, flat eyes locked on her. “You know something about this, don’t you?”
    She nodded. “Maybe.”
    She told him about Findo Gask and the possibility that John Ross was returning to Hopewell. “A demon’s presence would account for all the feeders, I expect,” she finished.
    They walked up through the playground equipment and picnic tables that occupied the wooded area situated across the road from the Indian mounds and the bluffs. When they reached the turnaround, she slowed, suddenly aware that Pick hadn’t spoken a word since she had told him about Findo Gask and John Ross. He hadn’t even told her what work he wanted her to do that day in the park.
    “What do you think?” she asked, trying to draw him out.
    He sat motionless on her shoulder, silent and remote. She crossed the road to the edge of the bluffs and moved out to where she could see the frozen expanse of the Rock River. Even with the warmer temperatures of the past few days, the bayou that lay between the near shore and the raised levy on which the railroad tracks had been laid remained frozen. Beyond, where the wider channel opened south on its way to the Mississippi, the Rock was patchy with ice, the swifter movement of the water keeping the river from freezing over completely. That would change when January arrived.
    “Another demon,” Pick said softly. “You’d think one in a lifetime would be enough.”
    She nodded wordlessly, eyes scanning the tangle of tree trunks and limbs immediately below, searching for movement in the lengthening shadows. The feeders, if they were out yet, would be there, watching.
    “Some sylvans go through their entire lives and never encounter a demon.” Pick’s voice was soft and contemplative. “Hundreds of years, and not a one.”
    “It’s my fault,” she said.
    “Not hardly!”
    “It is,” she insisted. “It began with my father.”
    “Which was your grandmother’s mistake!” he snapped.
    She glanced down at him, all fiery-eyed and defensive of her, and she gave him a smile. “Where would I be without you, Pick?”
    “Somewhere else, I expect.”
    She sighed. Over the past fifteen years she had attempted to move away from the park. To leave the park was unthinkable for Pick; the park was his home and his charge. For the sylvan, nothing else existed. It was different for her, of course, but Pick didn’t see it that way. Pick saw things in black-and-white terms. Even an inherited obligation—in this case, an obligation passed down through six generations of Freemark women to help care for the park—wasn’t to be ignored, no matter what. She belonged here, working with him, keeping the magic in balance and looking after the park. But this was all Pick knew. It was all he had done for more than one hundred fifty years. Nest didn’t have one hundred fifty years, and she wasn’t so sure that tending the magic and looking after the park was what she wanted to spend the rest of her life doing.
    She looked off across the Rock River, at the hazy midafternoon twilight beginning to steal out of the east as the shortened winter day slipped westward. “What do you want to do today, Pick?” she asked quietly.
    He shrugged. “Too late to do much, I expect.” He did not say it in a gruff way; he simply sounded resigned. “Let’s just have a look around, see if anything needs doing, and we can see to it tomorrow.” He sniffed and straightened. “If you think you can spare the time, of course.”
    “Of course,” she echoed.
    They left the bluffs and walked down the road from the turnaround to where it split, one branch doubling back under a bridge to descend to the base of