“We do as much of our own agriculture as possible. It can be hard to buy enough produce, and we appreciate the self-sufficiency, even if it isn’t absolute. The issue is livestock.” Dee shook her head. She should have looked incongruous; a woman in business casual clothes with snakes growing from her head, walking into what was basically an amateur farm. She looked like the most natural thing in the world. “There are very few creatures that can share space with a petrifactor without being in danger. None of them are what I’d call ‘friendly.’”

“My basilisks are okay,” I said, feeling oddly defensive toward the little feathered bowling balls.

“Basilisk eggs are toxic, or they’d be a viable candidate. As it stands, we could eat them, but we’d have to devote a lot more time and money to raising them than we spend just buying bulk raw chicken at Costco.”

“That’s a problem.”

“It is.”

We stopped talking for a while after that, and just walked. The patches of farmed ground gave way to fields with people in them, weeding and hoeing as they worked the land. They straightened as we passed, watching us go. Most were bareheaded, but a few were wearing straw hats with the tops cut out, providing them with a small measure of shade while also allowing their “hair” to move freely. I saw one man thrust his head suddenly into the corn, and come out with the back half of a mouse squirming in the jaws of one of his larger snakes.

Shelby followed my gaze. “Bet that’s a mouse that’s not going to be singing any hosannas any time soon.”

“This is why the Aeslin mice stay home,” I said.

“Quiet,” said Frank, looking back over his shoulder. “This is where we are quiet, and stealthy, and hope that we are not attacked. Yes?”

We were approaching the woods. I frowned. “Your own people would attack us?”

“I’d like to think not, but Frank’s right,” said Dee. “Strange things have been happening in this stretch of wood. The fringe farmers swear it isn’t them, and yet . . .”

“Strange things like what?”

“Men being bitten in two,” said Frank. “Is that strange enough for you?”

“Maybe.” I looked to Dee. “You couldn’t bite a man in two—”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“—but that lindworm we saw earlier could, and we’re only about five miles from where we tagged it. That’s well within a lindworm’s normal territory. Do you have any wild onions growing around here?”

Dee blinked. “Yes. We passed a patch a little ways back.”

“Can we get some? I think six bulbs or so would be sufficient.”

“And that will keep the lindworm from attacking us?”

“If it’s the lindworm, yes. If it’s something else, we can at least make it cry as it eats us.” I shrugged. “If we have to go through this patch of trees regardless, we may as well try for the solution that doesn’t end with us being digested slowly in the stomach of a giant lizard.”

“I appreciate non-digestive solutions,” said Frank. “Deanna, you wait here. I’m faster.” With that, he turned and trotted back toward the promised onions.

I shook my head. “If it’s not one thing, it’s something else.”

Minutes ticked by while Frank gathered onions in the distance. The sun was high enough to make me wish that I’d thought to bring sunscreen. Portland isn’t really sunburn country. I slapped at a fly that had landed on my arm, and said, “Hey, Dee? While we’re waiting, you want to fill us in on what we’re walking into?”

“Sure,” said Dee. “It’s not like I’m going to convince you to turn around now.”

“Pretty sure that ship has sailed,” said Shelby, who was eyeing the nearby foliage with trepidation, as if she expected it to attack at any moment. Then again, she came from Australia: she probably did expect some sort of vegetable ambush.

(Australia. The only continent designed with a difficulty rating of “ha ha fuck you no.”)

Dee took a deep breath, appearing to gather her thoughts, and said, “Most Pliny’s gorgons live in communities like this one, close enough to mid-sized human cities to be able to blend in, but far enough away to have some autonomy. We tend to move on when the cities get too large, since the alternative is discovery, and that never ends well for anyone.”

“I can see that, what with the,” Shelby made a snaky gesture in the air above her head, “and all.”

“Yes, that,” said Dee, clearly not sure whether or not she should be offended. “This particular community was founded by Hannah and some of her cousins from her mother’s side, about fifty years ago. I won’t tell you where they came from originally, although you can probably figure it out if you read those notes of your great-grandfather’s.”

“Er. Yes.” Somehow, I didn’t think that telling her the notes had been destroyed was going to help. “Was it a matter of relocating an older community, or . . . ?”

“Hannah had issues fitting in with her original community,” said Dee delicately.

“Because she’s gigantic?” asked Shelby.

“Something like that. Pliny’s gorgons and greater gorgons don’t historically have the best relationship, and when it became clear that she needed to move if she wanted to keep the peace in her family, she took some of the younger, more flexible cousins along with her. This,” Dee waved a hand, “was intended to be the first of a new breed of community. A permanent one.”

“Hence all the illusions and distractions on the way in,” I said.

Dee nodded. “We pay every year to have them renewed. The idea is that the cities can grow up around us until we’re just one of those strange little patches of forest that seem to exist in every major metropolitan area. Then we’ll always have a refuge. Not all our children can stay, of course—the limited footprint of the settlement means that we have population caps—but we know they’re safe as long as they’re with us.”

“So what about the fringe?” I asked. “How did that start?”

“The farming aspect was always a part of the community ideal,” said Dee. “Originally, there were some who wanted to see this turned into a multi-cryptid settlement. Plant vegetable lambs and bring in some manticore for protection, start growing bird-fruit and get a few tailypo to come and hang around doing whatever it is that tailypo do . . . but it didn’t work out. No one really liked needing to wear eye protection every time they left their trailers, and non-gorgons could never quite relax around us, knowing that all it would take was one slip for them to be at risk. We settled into being a normal gorgon community.”