The Potluck

The invitations came in everyone’s mailbox. They were color copies of a handmade card, vines crawling up the sides, letters outlined in colored pencil. No one quite knew what to do with them - they sat on mantelpieces, and kitchen tables, they stayed in cars, and got tacked on propane refrigerators. They were too nice to throw away, but they were also an invitation to a neighborhood potluck. These things did not happen.

At the centaur’s house, Raven flew up to the window ledge, perched, undid the latch with his beak, and waddled inside uninvited.
“Are you guys going to the potlatch?” he croaked.

The centaur family frowned at him as one. “You know we can’t.” murmured the grandfather, a shaggy white flanked stallion with an almost roman nose.
“And why’s that. You got an invitation didn’t you?” Insisted Raven.
“Our glamour shows us as people mounted on horses - it would never do to spend a long time with humans. They’d get suspicious.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Raven interrupted, “Let me weave my magic over you, and no one will ever know.” He shook his feathers and sat down in the form of a dashing young man in an immaculate tuxedo, and turned a sincere grin at the assembled centaurs. There was never anything abrupt about his transformations, it was more as if he flowed seamlessly between them, as if he was as much one as the other. The centaurs exchanged a look among the four of them.
“And what do you want from this, Raven,” asked the mother, a small delicate looking filly, with almost paper thin skin on her more human parts.
“Nothing!” Raven lied sincerely. “Your happiness makes me happy, and when I am happy, we all benefit.” He paused, “Besides - it has been too long since I have been to a potlatch. If this one is successful, perhaps I will host the next!”
“We will consider it,” admitted the father, a wiry brown frame with short curly hair atop his human half.
“Good! It is settled then!” Raven stood up. “You know where I live! Come to me when you are ready!” With that he flew out of the window leaving it ajar, and flapped up the the cedar tree overlooking the house where he’d built his nest.
The daughter, clopped over and shut it, and latched it again, “Do you think we could go?” She asked. “I feel like I’m never off the farm.”
“I could make a whole chicken . . .” the mother suggested.

“It’s too dangerous,” said the grandfather, and the father nodded, but the two women exchanged glances that meant it was possible. The men could be worn down.

One driveway over, The troll’s cave was in an uproar.
“I want to go to the party!” screamed a little troll girl, snot spattering everything as she shook her head in rage. “I want to! Me!”
“Shut up!” roared her brother. “I should be the one to get the magic ring. I’m older.”
“If it’s age that matters, it should be me,” cackled the crone in the corner, but none of the ten other trolls in the cave paid any attention to her.
“Maybe nobody should go,” roared Craggtooth, the alpha female, “It’s too dangerous.” Nobody paid any more attention to her than they had the crone.
“Listen!” Yelled Scraggle, the alpha male, “We have only one ring that can make one of us look human. We needs to decide who gets to use it calmly and rationally.”
“Me!” Me!” “Me!” yelled the other trolls, and he ignored them. “Why don’t we rolls this dice for the grownups. I’m six, Blungfang is five, Craggtooth is four, Maggle is three, Squig is two and if it comes up a 1 we rolls again, okay?”
Without waiting for consent, he rolled. “It’s a six!”
“Those are your loaded dice!” shrieked Squig.
“Are not!”
“Roll them again!”

“You just don’t want me to go!”

Across the road from them, in his hidden away house, a lone sasquatch stood at the end of his driveway, reading. Silently he carried the invitation inside, pulled out his laptop, and logged into the Landes st community Nextdoor Neighbor site, whose URL was provided at the bottom of the card. He made a profile, and logged in. When it asked if he knew any neighbors who could verify him, he clicked no. There were only four members so far, but he googled each one meticulously, Mariah, who seemed to have made the site had a facebook, and he sent her a friend request. He wasn’t actually planning to go of course. He would watch from the outside, and wanted to understand what he saw.

On the corner of Landes and El Sol, a fisherman studied the invitations,
“How exciting!” He exclaimed. “I’ve been wanting to meet the neighbors since we moved here.”
“I can make chicken,” murmured his Selkie wife. “There probably won’t be much meat there.”
“Excellent idea.” The fisherman leaned in, holding her shoulders to give her a kiss. “We’ll blow them right out of the water!”

At the end of Treetallow lane,  Hoxhogwaxtewae got out of his car, and looked through his mail. His eyes alighted on the card and he clicked his long beak with a sound like distant thunder. With his usual grace he stalked into his house, where he set down his mail, and computer case. He went to the pantry,  took out a few stale human skulls to tide him over until dinner, and crunched them down, then pulled a human corpse out of the oversized freezer and laid it out on the table to thaw. Then he sat down and studied the card again, considered it, and then crumpled it forcefully, turning to the other mail in his pile.

On the other far end, brushing against DeLuna, a wolf bounded across the field, and came to an abrupt halt in front of her father who stood leaning against a tree, smoking a pipe.
She has made her move.
The father turned, spoke out loud. “What has she done?”
It’s a potluck. She invited us to it. It claims to invite everyone on Landes and its branches.
“We will have to send someone to spy and scout. Who would you suggest Rachel?”
Choose me. I am disposable if she takes hostages. I notice. I report.

“Let’s send two of our pack. You pick your companion. Make sure you bring something suitable. Show them that our kind eat meat.” He finished this with a feral smile.
Thank you, I will bring a whole chicken. With that Rachel bounded off through the field of bleating sheep, who only scattered a little for her passing.

“Are we going to go?” Bri asked Sylvan, holding the invitation.
“You have nothing to hide,” he said. “You go. I’m still spooked.”
“Hilda wasn’t actually human - we know that.”
“Yes, but she also isn’t what you said she was. That was a terrible risk - and besides there’s you discovering me on accident - I just don’t think my luck is up right now.”
“Come on,” she pleaded. “It’ll be boring without you, and besides, I’d have to walk.”
“Boo hoo, it’s not that far, it’s only on the corner of Glasshill.”
“Glass hill?”

“Haven’t you noticed? Old Landes isn’t the only road that stretches off. There’s Glasshill and Treetallow. Glasshill is even paved.”
“I never noticed,” she admitted. “Come on! Aren’t satyrs supposed to be party animals?”
“All those books you got at the library are giving you strange notions. Do you trust a book on satyrs, or the real live one in front of you?”
She grimaced. Took a breath, put on her best smile. “Please? Pretty please?” - there might have been a little more flutter to her eyelashes than necessary, and a tilt of her hips. Sylvan got that look in his eyes, and then shook his head as if clearing it. “Fine.” He finally said.

They decided to do something special for the potluck, and prepared a whole chicken, Sylvan showing her how to wrap it in tinfoil and bake it on the outside grill. On the trip in to get it, she stopped at a thrift store and spent a good bit more time than Sylvan had intended getting clothes that she purchased with her newly minted credit card.
“I can’t look like a homeless person,” she insisted.

Ferrius declined, as they both knew he would. He scowled at Sylvan for going too, but the younger Satyr held his ground. They arrived a little late, at a house with all possible spaces jammed with cars. Sylvan finally let Bri out, and said he’d find a spot and meet her inside. She went and knocked on the door.

“Hello! Welcome!” The woman who opened the door was tall and thin, with shoulder length platinum blond hair, and a flower crown that still looked fresh. Bri felt like she could get lost in this woman’s icy blue eyes.
“Hi, I’m Brianna,” Bri said. “I live on old Landes lane.”
“Oh! Old Landes lane - we’ve had a few others from that way already. I’ll have to introduce you! I’m Mariah.”

Bri let herself be ushered in, Mariah was a whirlwind, greeting everyone by name - more names than Bri could keep track of - and finally sweeping her in front of an older woman, sitting on a couch alone.
“Philis, this is Brianna. You both live on old Landes lane!” Then she was off, and Bri watched her out of the corner of her eye as she let Sylvan in, and showed him where to put the food.

“A pleasure to meet you.” Warbled the old woman, who clasped her hands to her heart and inclined her head. “Where on the lane are you?”
“I’m at 609? Where are you?”
“Oh I’m almost at the end, 715.”
“I haven’t had that much time to be acquainted with the lane,” Bri admitted, I’ve only been here a little more than a month now.”

“Oh, welcome then.” The old woman reached into her bag, and pressed a jar of blackberry jam into Bri’s hands. “I make artisan blackberry jam as my living,” she explained. “I hope this helps you settle in.”

Then Marian was ushering Theresa their direction, and introducing them. “I’m at 230,” Theresa explained. Philis warbled her greetings, and the three of them talked about the lane for a bit until Philis got up to talk to someone.
Theresa sat down and leaned close. “I can’t stay long,” she told Bri in an almost whisper. “There’s someone killing angels in an alternate reality, and I need to focus on that for the rest of the night, but I thought I’d at least make an appearance.”
“I - you mean - someone is killing angels in an alternate . . . ?” Bri said confused.
“Yes - I try not to let my alternate submutations overshadow each other - but when my life is in danger and I know it ahead of time, I feed as much power into that universe as I can. If an angel dies in one reality, she dies in them all” Then her voice went back to normal as if nothing she had said was strange at all “- oh hi Sylvan.”
Sylvan was coming towards them, stepping nimbly around a little girl with snot running down her nose, a drumstick clutched in her little fist.

“There are fifteen chicken dishes,” he reported glumly. “I counted. Hello Theresa.”
“I didn’t end up bringing anything,” Theresa confided. “I left in such a rush.”
“Well, help yourself. There’s more than enough.”
“I might grab a little something on the way out,” she said, and rose. “We’ll talk more later Brianna.”

Then she was gone. Sylvan turned to sit down with her, but got commandeered by an older man, who introduced himself in soft wispy voice, and started talking earnestly. Bri couldn’t make out their conversation in the murmur of voices, so she watched faces instead. Here the exclamation as two people discovered they’d been next door neighbors for twenty years, there a beautiful young woman with bright pink hair telling a circle of onlookers about an alaskan fishing voyage she’d worked on. Bri got the sense that none of these people had met each other before. She wouldn’t have expected these numbers from such a solitary folk.

“Well aren’t you a pretty little bird.”
Bri turned from her reverie to see a young man perched on the edge of the couch next to her. She hadn’t seen him come over. He had the shiniest black hair she had ever seen, and pale grey eyes that still somehow managed to shine with suppressed laughter. He was wearing what had to be a suit, complete with a white bowtie and glossy designer shoes. She wasn’t familiar with suits but it looked expensive. He looked expensive. -and hot, attractive in the way of men out of magazines come to life.

“Hi,” she said, stuck out her hand, “I’m Brianna.”  
He took it, kissed it, and in one smooth motion settled down beside her. “I’m Raven, the pleasure is all mine.”
“Oh, I - you live here?” Bri stammered
“Here?” He paused, “I’m not the owner of this house, no, that honor would belong to our lovely Mariah.” He gestured vaguely.
“I, oh, no, on the road, Landes.” Bri, felt a lump growing on the inside of her throat.
“Oh! Here! - yes, of course. I live on Old Landes lane - as I believe must you, since Mariah pointed me your direction?”
“I, yes, that’s right. - why . . .?” She shut her mouth abruptly, realizing it was a stupid question. Why is someone rich living here?

He smiled, his teeth almost glittered. Bri shivered involuntarily and forgot to breathe. Forgot everything for a moment until his voice brought her back. First the tone, amused, soft, then the words.
“. . . were beginning to ask me something?”
“I, yes,” she shook her head as if clearing it. “Why are you here?”
“It seemed as good a place as any to be. Come meet the neighbors. Enjoy good food. Become part of the community. Why are you here?”
“I - I was invited.” She said lamely

He laughed, loud and uproariously as if she had said the cleverest thing in the world, slapping his thighs with his palm. “So you were Brianna, so you were!”
She scrabbled for something to say. Why is he talking to me? Words began spilling out of her lips.
“It was a pretty card with vines around the border, but you know that already - and it was in my mailbox so I thought I had better come, bettern’t, I mean, shouldn’t - I?”

“It is my delight that you did,” he said, suddenly serious - grey eyes meeting hers. “You are an incredible creature.”
“I, thank you, you are too, I mean, really nice and . . .” the mouth clapped shut again. She felt as if her words were the wrong length, either too short or too long, all inadequate, and Why was he talking to her? Raven was watching her expectantly.
“Nice.” She finished.
He sat still a moment, then sat up, shaking himself in an almost birdlike way, “It seems that one of my companions is summoning me. If you will excuse me?” He got up and made his way towards a cluster of people waving at him frantically holding plates piled with chicken. As Raven passed out of hearing, she let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.
Nice?! He probably thought she hated him now. She could see it his posture, as he hopped one foot to the other, nodding his head solemnly. Part of her wanted to run after, appologize, tell him that her stomach had curled into a little ball, and she didn’t believe in love at first sight but she did believe in instant crushes and this was that, and that usually she was cooler than this, much, much cooler than this, and if he’d only give her a chance . . .

Bri sat on the couch, still as stone, fingers clenching and unclenching into the folds of a  crocheted sunflower on the blanket beneath her, feeling as if everything was spinning out of control.

Raven in the meantime felt like everything was spinning into it. He  was hopping back and forth in excitement.
“Your magic has hidden us perfectly,” explained the centaur father, “But you did that by pulling our spirits out of our bodies. We are ghosts and we cannot eat anything. We have all filled our plates high with chicken, before realizing. We cannot walk around all night like this. Can you let us eat? ”
“Never fear,” cackled Raven. “I’ll help.” He pulled the group out a side door onto the porch where one unusually short man was firing up a large grill, and up against the bushes. There he grabbed the father’s plate, and enlarging his mouth to its size, where he sucked up its contents in one giant gulp. The father barely had time to protest before Raven had grabbed the next plate, and the next, sucking the food into his stomach with a giant slurping sound. In a moment he was licking his giant mouth with an equally giant tongue, as it slowly diminished in size and his face began to return. The centaurs looked sadly at their plates. Raven giggled. “That was delicious,” he burped. Then he looked around and giggled again. “You should all see the looks on your faces.”

The short man kindled the fire, and they all gathered around it. Some more people trickled out from the party. A slightly puffy man introduced himself as “Frank” to the glum centaur family, who made polite conversation.

An older woman, plain and grey, joined them, offering marshmallows that the centaurs dutifully put on sticks and then spitefully burned to a char before passing to Raven, who ate them anyway, smacking his lips with each bite.

Soon the fire was surrounded by guests. An older woman with an impossibly small head, and her hunchback son. A tall man with a well trimmed white beard, and a bright laugh. A woman with strangely grey skin and bandaids covering her arms and face. A thin woman with sunglasses in the dark, A young man who’s arms were covered in strange tattoos. A skinny short teenage girl with large headphones covering her ears. They talked in several small clusters. Circling the subjects familiar to them all. The strange lack of wind in the valley. The long commute. Living off the grid - solar panel arrays, and water catchment, and composting toilets - these people were by and large the salt of the earth. They got excited by such things.

And if any of them seemed strange, they all ignored it - not wanting to pull attention to their own oddities. Perhaps someone noticed Headphone girl eating mosquitos, or the woman with the bandaids shrinking back from the fire every time it lept, but no one mentioned it.

“There’s an ant crawling on your face,” the headphone girl noted, reaching towards Frank as if to brush it off.

“No! Don’t!” Frank said leaping backwards “That’s Frank. He’s a friend of mine - I mean, I have this ant farm at home, he must have escaped. I name them all Frank, because it’s a good name, it’s my name.” He laughed, high and shrill. “Y’know?”
They were all staring at him. He hunched his shoulders and cradled the ant that had by now crawled onto a fingertip, “Bad Frank,” he muttered under his breath, chuckling nervously.

Later, the man with the tattoos dropped his marshmallow in the fire, and scooped it out with his hands.
“I used to be a fire walker when I was younger,” he explained after bandaid woman had stopped shrieking. “The surface of coals isn’t actually that hot, as long as you move with them in the right way.”

Occasionally the group would ebb into everyone talking together. When the short man exclaimed on learning the woman with sunglasses was a machinest as well. “You’ll forgive me, but there aren’t a lot of ladies making parts!”
“No - I understand. I worked for five years in a shop. We had a super high turnover rate, but I was the only woman that whole time.”
“I have a forge if you want to come check it out.”
“I would love to!”
They chattered more about parts and metal, but the group’s attention wavered as their voices grew quieter.

“I saw a Sasquatch once.” Said the tall man, and the group grew quiet again. “It was unmistakeable. I thought it was a bear at first of course, but then I got a good look at its face - and it looked more ape than bear.”
“Did you get a picture?” Said the short man. “Lots of people claim to see those kinds of things but nobody ever records it.”
“No. It’s not like I was expecting to see it. But I know what I saw.”
“I think it’s pretty cool that there are legends of Sasquatches both here and in Tibet. Really makes you wonder,” said the grey woman.
“I don’t believe it,” said the bandaid woman, “The bible never mentioned Sasquatches. I don’t think any good Christian should think about them either.”
“Amen,” echoed the centaur family with scattered assent from around the fire.

Sunglasses woman snorted.  “The bible doesn’t mention lots of things that we now know to be scientifically true. Sasquatches are probably just wild apes or something.”
“Amen,” echoed the centaur family with scattered assent from roughly the same people as before.

The tall man and headphones girl exchanged puzzled looks, but let it go. They were fortunately interrupted by a slightly intoxicated Bri coming out to join them. “Are we roasting marshmallows?”
“Yeeheah.” The hunchback son exclaimed in his donkey voice and passed her the bag from the other side of the fire. Bri reached for it, overbalanced, and began to topple into the metal grill suspended over the flames. She instinctively reached for the frame, the barest touch of which had her reeling in pain. Then it was coming apart, impact scattering a rain of coals on the other guests, and she was pinwheeling towards the fire. Raven appeared, suddenly close and firm, a hand around her pulling her back, and other warding off the toppling grill line that threatened to crash ontop of her.

Everyone was staring at her. She stuttered an apology. The tattooed man, subtly slipped the coals he’d caught barehanded back into the fire, the bandaid woman got back onto her chair from where she’d fallen over backwards. The short man went to grab a shovel to push the coals back into the fire pit. Frank stared dolefully at the meat that had fallen into the flames and the marshmallow bag, smoldering under the collapsed grill, and another ant crawled out of his mouth, but nobody noticed.
“Are you alright?” Raven asked her, his arms still holding her, which was good, because she thought her legs might give out otherwise. The image of the grill pinning her to the fire flickered behind her eyes like one of Theresa’s alternate realities.
“Thank you,” was all she could get out.
“I’d really rather you didn’t burn” said Raven, a bit of his normal humor back.
She almost cracked a smile, but it was a weak smile.
“Your arm,” she stated. He looked down at it. His left hand was beginning to swell red and burnt, his arm was crisscrossed in the several places the heated chain had lashed against it, imprinting burns into his skin.
“Hurts,” he said quite calmly. “Quite a bit actually, but it will wait. Why don’t you sit down?”
She sat. Unhurt except for her hand but head still not quite clear.
“I’ll go get both of us some ice,” Raven said quietly into her ear and then he was gone again. She tuned into the bandaid woman shrilly talking about poor grill design, and the tattooed man grunting with a rake trying to pull it out and admitting that maybe she was right.

Then a man was coming out of the house, apologizing for the accident, moving to go get a hose. Bri hadn’t seen him yet tonight but in her daze she almost imagined he was wearing crown. Certainly the way he moved and talked gave off an unmistakeable air of authority. Soon he had the bandaid woman safely inside, the fire was out and the grill was hissing with steam as he continued to douse it with cold water. Then he ushered everyone inside, except Frank who insisted on staying and making sure the fire was actually out. The man, who eventually introduced himself as Regan, efficiently got everyone ice who needed it and drinks to calm them and then they all found themselves settled in a lounge, while he strode off to address a shrieking woman who swore she had seen a bear in the bushes.

Bri sat in shock for a bit, looking around dazedly. A man walked by with a wine glass who seemed to have a massive ghostly dragon’s body coiling behind him. She blinked a few times as he paused and started talking to a gristly looking sailor.
“Yes, I’m a good Catholic I am,” He was saying. “A lot of people seem to want to know that at this party.”
“It’s important,” said the dragon bodied man. “Our faith in God is what makes us human.”

“I go to church every Sunday!” The sailor repeated forcefully. “ And so do my wife and kids.”
“As it should be,” said the dragon “-and you’re a fisherman by trade?”
“That’s right!  I own my own boat. I’ve got three crewmen who help me traul the bay,” said the fisherman.
“How’s the market for fish?” Said the dragon curiously, sipping his wine. Bri’s head was clearing and when she blinked again the dragon phantom was gone.
“Oh they’re robbing us they are. There’s a little meat market in town, but they’ll buy hardly a fraction of what we catch. Everything else goes to the cannery at half price.”
“You know, I’m always looking for large quantities of meat. If I ordered 50 pounds of fish a week could you supply that?”
The fisherman scratched his head, “That would just about be our entire catch, but I could. What would you do with it all?”

“I have a number of large carnivores on my property. Always looking for good ways to feed them,” said the dragon. “How much would you charge?”

They started haggling prices, and Bri got up, burn and trauma forgotten, to go find Sylvan.

Sylvan had just finished dishing himself up some food when a middle aged woman cornered him. “Hi, my name is Lisa,” she said with a big smile.
“Sylvan,” he carefully shook her hand.
“How old are you?” She asked
“Eighteen,” he lied.
“Wow, you’re exactly the same age as my daughter,” she cooed. “And what do you do?”
“Well, I mostly stay home and help my dad with stuff and take care of my goats. These days I’ve been picking berries and harvesting Stinging nettle a lot. Looking for work.”
“You’re a wildcrafter?”
“I guess.” Sylvan darted a gaze at her husband standing across the counter talking  with another woman about her age surrounded by six young girls, hoping that he would come over.
“That’s so amazing! My daughter is really into wildcrafting too!”
“Oh, yeah, it’s a good skill.”
“Did you go to school here?”
“Oh, no, I was homeschooled.”
“Same with my daughter, we just really didn’t want to subject her to the whole public school system.”
“Yeah, I hear it’s pretty awful.”
“Did you have any particular areas of study you liked?”
“I’ve always enjoyed music,” said Sylvan carefully, unsure how to bluff his way through never having had any education at all besides learning how to read.
“My daughter loves music. She was always really interested in early childhood education. Wants to have a big family someday. I’m going to be such a happy grandmother.”
Sylvan nodded, squirmed, “Good hearing about you and - your daughter. I think that’s my friend coming towards me. She might want to leave.”
“Oh, before you do - did you say you were looking for work?”
Sylvan blinked, “Yeah, definitely.”
“Do you like yard work?”
“I, yeah.”
“Why don’t I give me your number." He dutifully wrote it down for her. "We often have things we need done on our property that we would love to have such a -strapping- young man as yourself to do,” she continued and reached out a hand to give his knee a squeeze making him jump up and out of the way like a surprised dear.
“Bri! Hi! Over here! Did you want to go?”
She walked over, “Soon. Come with me.”
Sylvan took her hand relieved and allowed himself to be led out of the room, “Goodbye Lisa! It was nice talking to you!”
“I’ll call you!” She shouted after. “I can’t wait for you to meet my daughter!”

Once out of earshot, Bri turned and explained about the dragon man in a hushed voice. “He needed a lot of fish. It wasn’t just a vision.”
Sylvan was looking in concern at her hand. “Let’s get you home. That burn looks serious.”
“I have to say goodbye to Raven first.”
“Who?”
“Raven. He lives on the lane,” Bri said impatiently.
“In all my life living here I’ve never heard of a Raven here.”
“Can’t help that.You were standing there when he came by.”

Bri left him to go get their mostly untouched chicken and went in search of Raven. The house was large and she poked her head into one room to find Hilda sitting talking with a small vaguely green man. Another found the most beautiful woman she had ever seen playing with several children. She finally found him in the kitchen. Surrounded by seven young men with hair the same color as him, dressed in the same shade of black but younger somehow - skinnier in some imperceptible way. The tension between them was palpable.

“Brianna,” Raven turned, smiling. “These are the Crow brothers. They live on Treetallow. Delightful folks. Funny, so funny.” He locked eyes with the eldest as he said this in a way that made Bri feel like he meant the opposite.
“Good to meet you,” muttered the one closest to her extending a crabby hand. Bri moved passed him.
“Raven, I’ve written down my number.” She handed him a piece of carefully folded paper. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
The brother closest to Raven elbowed him in the ribs. “I think she likes you man. Smooth going.” He said it loud and all the brothers laughed, dry and raucous. Raven said something but Bri couldn’t hear. She turned and left, grabbing Sylvan on the way, and it wasn’t until she was out the door that the harsh croaking laughter stopped ringing in her ears.