Clove & Moose 18: The Guard Gig

Clove and Moose is a serial fiction story. If you want to get caught up on what came before, click one of the buttons below.

Previously, on Clove & Moose: After the mysterious Cataclysm dried up the earth and its magic, Clove and her cat Moose travelled to find and repair pools of corrupted magic left behind. Along the way, she's picked up three travelling companions: Marissa, Jasper, and his trusty horse Miss Delilah. They've recently arrived at Bone Gorge, where skeletons of ancient giants were discovered after the Cataclysm, and Jasper's old friend Nickel has started a cult.

“Here’s your day’s pay.” 

Clove took the proffered sack. “Thanks, Jen. See you tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

Clove didn’t need to look inside to know what was there: Potatoes, carrots, a rasher of bacon, and three apples. Good payment for an easy day’s work on guard duty, and enough to keep her and her friends fed for a day. 

She’d been working for Jen and Jon, a pair of twins in their fifties, for a few weeks now. They kept a small campsite in a quiet area of the woods near the river where they and several employees kept tents. They left every day to go to work and had hired Clove to keep watch over their things while they were away. They were very secretive about their work, but promised it was nothing illegal. The work was easy and the pay was good, so Clove had decided to accept their answers at face value.

By the time she’d walked up to her end of camp, she was tired and sweaty, so she stopped at one of the camp’s outdoor shower stalls to rinse off before heading home. Of all the luxuries the Cataclysm had robbed them of, hot running water had to be one of the ones she missed the most.

Right now, the luxury she missed most was Moose. She could normally keep him with her while she was at work, but she’d offered to help with some other tasks around the campsite today, so she’d left him behind.

When she got back to their tent, he trotted towards her, chirping loudly until she set down the sack of food and scooped him up. “There’s my Moosey Goosey! Were you good for Jasper today?”

“A terror, as always,” Jasper drawled. 

“Not my Moose!” 

Jasper came out to pick up the food as Clove carried Moose back inside. “Feels heavier than usual today.”

“I helped them move some crates while I was there, they might have thrown in something extra.”

“We could trade for a day,” Jasper offered. “Let me do the hard work.”

“No, you already have the perfect cover.” 

Jasper had been spending as much time as he could with his old friend Nickel, running errands for him and trying to find out more about the cult he had started. All they’d learned so far was that it had something to do with the giant bones–obviously–and that they were the ones controlling the access to the skeletons. 

“Just don’t work yourself too hard,” Jasper said. “We’ve got enough now that you could take a day off.”

“Thanks, but you don’t have to worry. The job’s a pretty sweet setup.” Clove set Moose down on the bed and prodded at their cooking fire. “What about you, anything new today?”

“No,” Jasper shook his head. “Nickel wasn’t around. I chatted with a couple of his hangers-on but didn’t pick up any new clues.”

“Too bad. Any sign of Marissa?”

“Not back yet.”

Marissa had been staying out longer and longer searching for her family. She was trying to conduct a methodical sweep of the gorge, but with so many people coming and going and moving around each day, it was slow work. Clove was growing increasingly worried about her.

The tent felt quiet with just Clove and Jasper there. They’d upgraded to a semi-permanent canvas structure with a pair of bunk beds on either side and a cooking area in the middle. Marissa still wasn’t back by the time Clove curled up with Moose on one of the top bunks and went to sleep. 

When she woke up, Marissa was sprawled on the bunk below her with one hand dragging on the ground. Clove crept down the ladder so as not to wake her and grabbed a quick meal of leftover potatoes and bacon before setting out. She gathered her water bottle, a portion of food for lunch, and got Moose into his harness. She knew it should be a quiet day at camp, so she packed the mysterious book she’d found in the library. She’d been studying it again whenever she had time, looking for any clues about what might be happening in Bone Gorge.

With a wave to Jasper, she set out for the day. She carried Moose until they got past the worst of the crowds and then set him down to trot along beside her. The path along the river went through a grove of trees and Clove could almost imagine she was simply out for a leisurely walk in the sun.

Once she arrived at camp, Clove waved goodbye to Jen, Jon, and their work crew as they set out on their wagon to do whatever it was that they did with their time. When they were gone, Clove did a sweep of the camp to look for anything out of place. Then she found a quiet spot just off the path where she could sit in the shade and read.

By lunch time, she’d flipped through and taken notes on three different versions of the book: a romance novel, a book of sonnets, and a non-fiction book about algae. In between, she did rounds of the camp to make sure no one was sneaking through the woods to get at it from the back. But she didn’t hear or see anyone all morning. Just Moose, lying on the forest floor beside her, napping to his heart’s content.

It was a good way to spend a day. Clove’s only regret was that she couldn’t curl up with Moose and sleep too; she had to stay awake in case anyone showed up. The camp did get the occasional visitor, usually someone who was lost, so she had to stay alert just in case. 

After a cold bacon sandwich for lunch, she opened the book for the fourth time and found it opened to an illustration of corrupt magic.

“Ah!” She sat up. “Look look look Moose look!”

Moose did not look.

Clove couldn’t believe that the book had finally opened up on a relevant page, like the one she’d seen when she first found the book way back in the library.

She flipped her notebook to a fresh page and started frantically taking notes. Most of the beginning of the book was basic magical theory that Clove already knew, but she still wanted to copy it down in case it tied into something important later on.

On the topic of corrupt magic, the book said that the pools were created only when naturally occurring magic grew too strong and was then corrupted by a human spell. Clove had never heard of such a thing, but she supposed if they were small and localized then maybe they weren’t something that was commonly known before the Cataclysm.

More startlingly, did that mean the Cataclysm was caused by a human spell? Did someone corrupt all the magic all at once?

She was deep into these mysteries when she realized there were footsteps shuffling around amongst the tents she was supposed to be guarding.

“Shoot,” she muttered. She placed a large stick across her book to make sure the pages stayed open and she didn’t lose this version of the book.

Clove walked through the camp, peeking out from behind tents. She held a rock in one hand, though she didn’t know if it would do her much good. The downside of guard duty was that she wasn’t well equipped for dealing with any actual intruders. 

“Hey!” she yelled when she caught sight of a man amongst the tents. “This is private property!”

The man turned to face her. Clove was surprised to find she recognized him. It was the man who had approached the bones and sparked orange magic, who she’d later seen at Nickel’s headquarters. “Just passing through,” he said. 

“Well, pass faster,” Clove said, shaking her rock at him. She hadn’t heard him open any tents, so she was reasonably certain he hadn’t taken anything yet. “The road’s back that way.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and shuffled off in that direction. 

Clove followed him, warily, making sure he didn’t set a foot out of line. Back by the entry to the camp, Moose stood staring down the road away from camp.

“What is it, boy?”

Moose took off, running fast, until he reached the end of his rope and came to an abrupt stop. Clove peered in that direction, trying to see what he was running towards. In the shadows farther down the road, just at the edge of her sight, was what appeared to be a horse-drawn wagon.

“Ah,” the man said. “That would be my ride. Got turned around about where we were meeting. Sorry for the mix-up.”

Clove watched until the man walked down and boarded the wagon. Someone called out to him as he approached, followed by a brief exchange between multiple voices. Was one of those voices familiar? Was Moose excited because he knew that wagon, that horse, that driver?

She watched until the wagon disappeared, then picked Moose up and returned to their spot. 

Her book was gone.

“No,” she said as she turned in a circle, looking for it, “it was here, it was right here!”

She searched everywhere, but the book was gone. The stick she'd used to hold the pages open lay discarded next to where she'd been sitting, but there was no sign of the book itself. The man at the camp couldn’t have taken it; she’d been watching him the whole time. Had someone else snuck in while she was distracted by him? It didn’t seem possible, yet she didn’t know how else to explain the missing book.

When Jen and Jon finally returned from their day’s work, Clove grabbed her payment, picked up Moose, and stormed all the way upriver back to her tent.

“Jasper!” She yelled as soon as she arrived. “Were you down in the woods on the other end of camp today?”

“Yep.” He turned from where he was cooking over their fire. “Nickel asked me to drive him down there to pick up one of his friends. He went into a camp while we were waiting and came back with a bundle.”

“Yeah, well, your so-called friend stole my book. And I think I know what his cult is doing with the bones.”

“What’s that?”

“They’re corrupting magic on purpose.”

Thank you for reading! If you’re not already subscribed, click below to get the next chapter delivered directly to your inbox. See you next month!

Katie Conrad is a speculative fiction writer living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. You can find her on bluesky and instagram.