The Seekers of Deer Creek

1998

They are moving again. Deep into the seam of the Wisconsin woods, done the gaps successful the spruces and pines. Along the aureate jog of the creek. They alert past the yowling of dogs, the hiss of abdominous catching occurrence nether the grates of a grill, leaving down clattering pill bottles, upturned furniture, napkins crumpled similar fallen doves among pillars of glass, a yeasty belch of fury successful the air. The yellowish farmhouse becomes a thumb smudge successful the background. And still, they spell deeper.

Vivi, the elder astatine ten, holds her sister’s sweat-wicked manus truthful tightly that Calla, 8 and indignant, cries retired successful protest. Vivi catches show of Calla’s pastel-crayon-grimed fingertips, the marmalade streaked nether the downward curve of her mouth. Her thorax is choky with adrenaline, but she forces a merchandise of muscle.

“Here, Button,” she says, handing Calla a stick. “Draw maine a dragon.” When things go what they do, the sisters instrumentality to the woods.

In the dirt, they render worlds much beauteous and sensible than their own. Dragons expelled from castles; mermaids redeeming sailors from shipwrecks. Their mother, May, was the 1 who’d fixed them each those myths of justice. She hadn’t wanted to unrecorded successful their reality, truthful she taught them to physique stepping-stones made of stories. She revealed to them the creation of waking dreams. Then she near to ascent alone.

Calla stares astatine the stick, past throws it distant from her. “No. I won’t.” Vivi sees a shiny, caller hardness successful her sister’s eyes. The gauze of childhood, lifted from a wound. She remembers how, conscionable moments before, successful the room their parent erstwhile loved, their begetter had slapped Calla crossed the face. Don’t sass me, girl. It was an unconvincing slap, hesitant successful its conviction, but it was besides the archetypal clip Tuấn had turned against his youngest and astir beloved.

Calla had stood successful the mottled light, her manus cushioning her cheek, breathing fast. Vivi saw the churn of wills; their father, connected his 4th brew of the evening, regretful yet clinging to his past thread of authority, and Calla, prideful and betrayed, acceptable to antagonize. Vivi had known capable to propulsion Calla distant earlier portent could go disaster.

The woods of Deer Creek would ever lure Calla in, her acheronian siren. Wind hissing done her parted lips, the clench of her teeth arsenic she runs. She loves running. And possibly she’d fto herself beryllium pulled distant because, successful immoderate country of her young heart, she understands the mechanics of power. Even successful the fairy tales, heroes indispensable beryllium cunning. They indispensable hold for the monsters to sleep.

Now it’s dusk. Tuấn’s handprint connected Calla’s tegument is arsenic pinkish arsenic the disappearing horizon. Vivi thinks she would similar to premix that colour for herself. She’d commencement with a basal of titanium white, warmed with Holland yellow. Then, a flick of carmine, deepened with an undertone of her favourite shade, phthalo blue. Yes, astir right. The tender pinkish of consequence.

Calla catches her gaze. “What are you looking at?” “I person an idea. Let’s play hide-and-seek. Trốn tìm.” “His game.” Calla quavers with disgust.

Months agone during a wintertime powerfulness outage, with thing much to bash than poke the fire, Tuấn told them astir however helium utilized to play with his younger member Kiê`u successful Long Xuyên. He seldom spoke of Kiê`u, but that night, the memories rivered from him. Tuấn talked astir however helium and his member folded themselves into intolerable wads of tegument and bony to flight the other’s notice. The hiding had served them good during the war, different 1 of his forbidden topics. Tuấn buried the memories of singing bullets and exile boats toppling with bodies, on with those of their mother, who’d near without a hint erstwhile Vivi was 7 and Calla was five. Vanishings and violence, curses that kept connected giving.

Before the sisters could inquire wherever Kiê`u had gone, the lights flickered backmost connected successful the farmhouse. Tuấn would not talk astir his member again, but Vivi imagines her uncle sometimes, a diligent antheral with her father’s blue-black eyes, inactive huddled down the trees, waiting to beryllium found. But he’s dormant now. Most of their household are.

“Trốn tìm volition beryllium ours,” says Vivi. “Better than regular hide-and-seek.

A bigger adventure.”

Doubt hopscotches crossed Calla’s face, past sinks nether the skin. In its spot emerges a anticipation truthful tender and fragile that Vivi could astir scope retired to changeable it.

“How bash we play?”

They acceptable the rules together. The seeker counts to 50 portion the hider scurries to their chosen spot. They tin fell anyplace successful the woods, but erstwhile they find a spot, they are not allowed to move. No substance however agelong it takes, the hider can’t uncover herself, nether that astir grievous punishment of sibling humiliation.

Vivi scoots down a chromatic shaped similar a curled-up jungle cat, not acold from wherever Calla squeezes her eyes shut, counting. Calla skips a fewer numbers, but Vivi doesn’t close her. She presses her nails into the ungraded and waits.

Then Calla begins hunting, footsteps approaching and receding, tracing orbits astir the trees. By the ticking of her wristwatch, Vivi tracks 5 minutes, past ten. There’s a shuffling of leaves, Calla’s hum of annoyance.

At last, Calla’s caput pops from down the stone. Eleven minutes precisely. “Found you. My turn.”

As Vivi counts, eyes shut, she practices honing her different senses. Once, she’d work astir sightless animals that relied connected vibrations to navigate the satellite astir them. An alternate consciousness expanding to capable successful the spread of the missing one. She remembers her creation teacher talking astir Claude Monet’s diminished sight, however cognition tin muddy and sharpen each astatine once. Art, the teacher had said, tin travel from loss.

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight. Her fist curls and uncurls with the count, a throbbing organ.

On a parallel obstruction of thought, Vivi is imagining her father’s close hand, crushed successful an mishap astatine the lumber mill conscionable a twelvemonth earlier their parent left. Vivi was six erstwhile the mishap happened. She’d lone conscionable begun to slumber done the night, but her father’s manus brought the nightmares back. She spies the manus erstwhile he’s sleeping, resting connected his thorax successful a heap of tegument and bone.

Now helium does everything with his near hand. Reaching for his belt, slamming doors, holding the telephone receiver arsenic helium calls astir the nutrient stamps that ne'er get connected time. Driving similar a maniac nether the yawning state roads. Smacking Vivi for immoderate infraction she would ne'er retrieve afterward.

“Fifty,” she finishes.

Calla is not down the crouching-cat rock. She is not among the shade trunks of quaking aspen oregon the snowberry shrubs with their larval clusters of fruit. Vivi wanders connected and connected successful the woods, her sneakers slipping successful muck, a bedewed sickness moving up her neck. Fifteen minutes, and inactive nary Calla. A warbler trills from a branch, a squirrel scrabbles implicit mulch. Dread scoops a hollow wrong Vivi’s stomach.

She hears her mother’s past words, the ones spoken earlier she near them successful the night. Keep adjacent to your sister. She’s each you have. A tuck of the hair, a brushed adjacent of the door. Vivi had nodded drowsily, not knowing what she was promising oregon however that committedness would basal wrong her for the remainder of her life. Because that’s the mode of oaths. They are binding.

Ink present bleeds from the clouds, shadowing the past of the day. Vivi fiddles with the metallic antler ringing successful her pocket, 1 of the mementos near down by May. She hasn’t told Calla astir the ring, but Calla volition find out. The secrets ne'er negociate to turn betwixt them.

“Calla?” she calls. “You tin travel retired now. This is simply a anserine game.” She imagines Calla falling into the creek, bitten-down fingertips slipping beneath the surface. Wiggling a farewell. Vivi races toward that bladed vein of the woods. Her feet disturbance the leaves and shuffling nighttime creatures. But the creek’s aboveground is glass, reflecting a swarm of midges, the achromatic cathedral of trees.

Vivi wants her mother, adjacent arsenic she feels her choler leaping retired successful unexpected places, past disappearing conscionable arsenic quickly. What would May bash successful this situation? Vivi doesn’t cognize anymore. With each passing year, the representation of her parent frays into different woodland story, draped from the boughs similar moss. How to hatred thing that nary longer exists?

Vivi makes her decision. She volition spell backmost to the farmhouse and find Tuấn. She’ll propulsion him into their hidden world, let him to portion it unfastened with his impotent rage, his unceasing blame. She has nary choice. She is the protector and she has failed.

But past she hears a muffled giggle. She looks up and determination Calla sits connected a debased branch, feet dangling successful hand-me-down sneakers. She’d drawn a bid of hearts connected the outer sole and colored them successful with a reddish Sharpie. Each arsenic precise arsenic a stamp.

Vivi blinks into this mentation of reality, 1 wherever Calla is not successful information astatine all, wherever they tin beryllium kids playing successful a harmless pouch of nature. How adjacent the 2 realities were, however overmuch slippage betwixt their borders.

“Why didn’t you travel retired erstwhile I called?”

“That’s not however you play Seekers.” Calla hops down nimbly, spits a hunk of achromatic hairsbreadth retired of her mouth.

“When did you larn to climb?”

Calla gives her a secretive smile. “Let’s play again.”

Later, it would travel to Vivi, the mode a abrupt thunderstorm descends connected a body, each white-hot flashes and skin-sluicing chill, that she had been the 1 to thatch Calla to run. Before their minds and imaginations were afloat formed, they’d learned unneurotic each the ways to fell from the world, and each other.

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From The Seeker of Deer Creek by Thao Thai. Copyright © 2026 by Thao Thai. Reprinted by support of Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.