Rick had been checking our perimeter, his eyes traveling but his head unmoving. Satisfied we were unobserved, he withdrew his hand from his jacket with an odd, dull, crinkling sound. He was holding a gallon-sized plastic zipped bag, the air smoothed out, a wad of cloth inside. A pillowcase. Rick had stolen Sonya Tolliver’s pillowcase. “Get a good whiff,” he instructed Occam.
The werecat took the bag, hitched his hip against the truck as if to get comfy, opened the bag, and ducked his head to it. “Hooo,” he said, making a face. “Musky. That’s pungent.” He passed it to me.
I stuck my nose in, expecting to get an awful scent as part of the boys’ “Here, this stinks—you smell!” game. I caught a hint of body odor and something a little like pond water. I thought back to the house and the grounds. There had been fishing equipment and the kayak behind the shed. “I smell river water. The river is close enough that the scent shouldn’t count. There’s nothing here that reminds me of the assassin.”
“Your nose ain’t any better than a human’s, Nell, sugar.”
I shrugged and passed the zip bag back.
Rick said to Occam, “If you get a chance to read the senator’s house, I want you to sniff around. In case there are paras passing as human living there too.”
“Yeah, that’s gonna go over real good with the Secret Service. ‘Hey, you, Texas boy werecat,’” Occam said in a passable nasal Jersey accent. “‘What da hell you doin’ sniffin’ da senator’s laundry?’”
Rick didn’t laugh. “Don’t get caught. Nell’s right. If Sonya really is a paranormal, and still in the closet, then we might have an intra- or interspecies war brewing. The senator is working for pro-paranormal legislation. We need to keep him safe. And if someone in his family is paranormal and he knew it and didn’t reveal it to the Senate Ethics Committee—”
“He could lose his position, which would hurt paranormals everywhere. It’s to our benefit to keep him alive and healthy. Got it, boss.” Occam winked at me and walked away.
I looked back and forth between the two werecats, absorbing the possible ramifications of the senator’s family having a paranormal. In the middle of an internal or external war. Or launching a war. Or . . . Or I was too tired to think. I turned on the truck and the heater, and went home. Somehow I made it home alive, which meant Mama musta been praying for me because I’m sure I slept the whole way.
• • •
It was three p.m. when I woke to the sound of banging. I half fell out of bed, grabbed my shotgun, and stumbled to the front of the house, where I spotted Mud through the window, on the front porch, no coat, arms crossed over her chest, and three cats weaving around her legs. I put the gun away, located my service weapon hanging in its holster and shoulder rig on a kitchen chair, to make sure they were secure, and opened the door. The cats ran in, silent, twitchy, irritated. I’d left them out all day. “Mud?”
“You’uns need a dog.”
“A dog,” I said, feeling as if I’d missed something.
“To bark. To tell you’un when company’s here.” She looked at me as if I was stupid.
“I had dogs . . .” I stopped. The churchmen had killed my dogs, leaving the dead bodies on my front porch, about where Mud was standing. If I looked closely at the grain, I could still see the blood. Was Mud too young to know that? I decided not. “The churchmen killed them as a warning that I had to come back to the church and marry in.” When she only frowned at me and hunched her shoulders harder, I asked, “Why are you here without a coat? And how did you get here?” I leaned out to verify that there was no car in the drive, no dust hanging in the air. “What happened?”
“I walked over the hill. It’s gotta be some ten miles,” she hyperbolized. “And your’n tree happened,” she said.
She had to be talking about the vampire tree. The one that used to be an oak. When I got shot the tree had access to my blood and recognized my imminent death. The oak had healed me. Had changed me somehow. And my blood had changed it, making it . . . something more. Something scary.
“It killed another dog,” Mud said, leaning in toward me, pugnacious, truculent. Truculent was one of Daddy’s words. “It was a puppy,” Mud shouted. Tears gathered in her eyes, welled up, and spilled over, down her cheeks. “One a the Jenkinses’ puppies. Mama said I could have it. And your’n tree killed it!” She screeched the last two words. Tears splashed on her dress.
And . . . I realized her hair was up. Bunned up. High on her head. Like a woman grown.
“Ohhh,” I whispered. “Oh no.” I held the door wide and Mud rushed inside. I stared out into the glare of day. My mind blank. Empty.
Mud had started her menstrual cycle today. That was the only reason she would have her hair up. According to the way the church used to be run, that meant Mud was now old enough to enter the marriage market. Mud was only twelve. Had the church changed enough that she would be safe? Were the church elders still marrying off young girls in what was legally and morally statutory rape? Would Daddy say no? Defend her? Daddy was sick. What if he died? Who would protect the young Nicholson girls?
Moving woodenly, I closed the door. Followed Mud into the house, my feet icy on the wood floor. I put wood in the firebox, on top of a few glowing coals. Put on water to heat for tea. Wrapped an afghan and a warm blanket around Mud on the couch and tucked it in tight on her legs. Gave her one of John’s old handkerchiefs. It was soft and neatly folded, frayed around the edges. She blew her nose, honking like a goose. I almost reached out and touched her bun, the way I might touch a thorn that could prick me. Jerked my hand back and raced to my room, threw on clothes. Trying to think. Trying to figure out what to say. What to do. The tree. The puppy. Mud with her hair bunned up.
I pulled on wool socks. For the first time in forever, I put my hand on the wood of the floor and said a prayer, to God, this time. Not to Soulwood. Asking for wisdom. Trees, no matter how ancient, weren’t good with words. Maybe the Divine would be better.
SEVEN
I sat on the couch next to Mud. Pulled the blanket over my feet. Caught a glimpse of my fingernails. I had leaves growing out of the tips. I curled my fingers under. I had read the earth a lot lately. It had been two days since I’d clipped my leaves. I reached back to my hairline at my nape and encountered the peculiar sensation and shape of leaves sprouting there too. They were small yet. I could hide them. For a short while.
“Mud. Did you see the tree kill the puppy?”
She sniffled and wiped her nose again, holding herself stiffly away from me. “Yes. Dagnabbit,” she said, cursing in church-speak. “It reached out and stabbed him with a thorny vine. And squished him until he stopped screaming. Stopped breathing. And then it raised him up and dropped him in the crook of a branch. Leaves”—she sucked in a breath that was more sob—“leaves covered his li’l body.” She leaned to me at last and put her head on my shoulder. “His name was Rex. He was a bluetick hound. A runt. Too little to hunt.” She blew her nose again. “Rex was gonna be my dog—my dog—’acause I became a woman today.
“And I got an offer of marriage.”
I didn’t stiffen. Didn’t alter anything about my posture. But my voice was grating and hoarse when I asked, “Who offered for you?” A twelve-year-old child. I’d find him and I’d feed him to the land, even if it meant claiming the church compound and everyone and everything in it.
Mud didn’t answer.
Marrying a twelve-year-old child was statutory rape. The state was supposed to have stopped the practice when they raided the church. There was supposed to be ongoing oversight. Girls were supposed to be safe now. “Mud?”
“Daddy wouldn’t say. He jist told him I was too young. That they had to wait till I was fourteen to come courtin’. And sixteen to marry.” She looked up at me, her hazel gray eyes worried, her tone stark. “Sixteen is the age for marriage in Tennessee, with parental consent, and even though we’uns is still
gonna have sister-wives, the church is gonna abide by the age law from now on.”
“Fourteen is way, way too young for courting,” I said, “and sixteen for marriage is abominable. You shouldn’t have to deal with men until you’re eighteen. Or older.”
“I know. I been thinking. ’Bout what you’un said. That if I stayed in the church, I’d never put my hands into any soil but my husband’s. That I’d have baby after baby, and have to share a home with bunches of people. That I wouldn’t be able to claim trees or land. Or feed it with my soul, sharing back and forth. I’m not completely sure what you’un meant by all that. But . . . but it sounds wonderful. And I want to be able to have it.”
I tightened my arm around her and eased her close to me. “Have you . . . sat with a tree and talked to it? Taking its peace and sharing its power? Deep underground?”
Mud took a slow breath and whispered, “Yes. Is that a sin?”
“No. It isn’t a sin. Have you claimed land on the compound? You do that by—” I stopped abruptly, trying to remember how I had claimed the small plot of land behind the house where the married trees were, the roots of the huge poplar and massive sycamore intertwined. I used to cling to them when I was tired or distraught, sharing and communing with them, back and forth. I had a feeling that they were mine long before I claimed the whole land that was Soulwood. Had I bled on them?
The memory ripped up from the deeps of my mind. Dark and full of grief. Fast, like flipping through a picture book and seeing a story play out on the turning pages. It stole my breath.
One awful night, as Leah lay dying, her breath stopping and starting, her pulse fragile and faltering, I had cut myself on a knife in the kitchen. I had wrapped the finger in a cloth and run outside, crying silently, though not because of the slice on my hand. Crying because my world was changing again and I was afraid. Crying because Leah was dying and I couldn’t help her. Crying because I was a young girl facing death all alone. I curled on the roots and dug my fingernails into the ground, sobbing myself into exhaustion. I fell asleep at the married roots. As I slept, the cloth on my wound came loose and I bled onto the roots. The small smear of my blood had made the trees mine. That first claiming of two trees and a small patch of land, that had been an accident.
I had shed blood in other places. At the vampire tree. At the gate where I had wanted the tree to move to. My blood had claimed small patches of land in many places and I had deserted most of them.
Those small claimings had been completely different from the way I had claimed Soulwood. Feeding my attacker to the woods had made all of Soulwood mine. That was the blood of a sacrifice mixed with my will.
I had killed for my land. I was a soul stealer. That death, that feeding, had been my choice. And now, like an addict, I often thirsted for more blood to feed to the land.
I was a monster. I knew that. But if Mud was never put in danger, if she was never fighting for her life, could she have land, yet not feed it the life of another? Could she be a keeper of the land without being a killer? How would I keep her from creating a vampire tree? From becoming what I was, from doing what I did? Blood. Sacrifice. Polygamy. Interwoven bloodlines for two centuries had made me what I was, had given me my gifts.
My blood on the compound had made the vampire tree mutate, had made it mine. I had claimed it and changed it and then deserted it. And if Mud had claimed Rex the way I had claimed Paka and other sentient beings, then had the tree taken a sacrifice from my bloodline? Did any of this even make sense?
The simple truth was that I didn’t know what I was. Didn’t know what I could do. Didn’t know what any of the repercussions of any of my actions might be. I had blundered. I had done evil. And I needed to protect Mud from making any of my mistakes.
Blood. Sacrifice. Polygamy. Interwoven bloodlines for two centuries. My brain tried to wrap around concepts that were older than time. My mind whirled and stumbled and I felt myself flush. My finger-leaves curled in anguish. The church taught that females were pure until menarche—the very first sign of menstruation. That once that occurred, they became women, became impure, and had to be taken in hand by a man. They pointed to the New Testament, First Timothy, to claim that childbirth kept women pure, that they were saved by childbirth. They taught that the moon cycles were evil and proof that God cursed Eve for an unforgivable sin and, through her, down to all women forever. Women were taught to feel shame just for being women.
Animals knew when humans got the woman’s monthly curse.
Did trees? Did my trees? Did the vampire tree waken when Mud came near?
“Mud.”
My sister looked at me quickly, and I realized my tone had altered. Her name was wrapped in my worry.
I shook my head. “No problem. Just, well, did you bleed at any time when you were near the tree?”
Mud’s eyes went wide and fearful. “Did I kill Rex?”
“No, sweetheart. But, well, the vampire tree got the way it is because I bled on its roots. And if you bled near it and it sensed your blood, and we’re sisters, well, it might have tried to protect you from the puppy.”
Mud scowled, and I had a feeling that it looked a lot like my own scowl. “I cut myself,” she said, holding up her left hand. “I slid a potato peeler on my thumb. It was leaking through the bandage.”
I took her hand and turned it to the light. The wound was still leaking; the commercial-style, pale beige bandage was red all along the central pad portion.
“I did it yesterday. It was still drippy when I left the house to go to devotionals.”
“And did you pass by the tree?”
Mud held the thumb up and studied it. “Yep.” She pushed me away and scooted into the couch corner. “That was afore I became a woman grown.” We fell silent, thinking about blood and being grown women and the strange tree.
“Your’n water’s boiling,” Mud said. “I want real tea, not some yucky herbal stuff. Mama Carmel done been making me drink some awful stuff on account a me being grown up.”
I remembered Mama Carmel’s feminine-soother concoctions from my own days in the Nicholson household. They had been pretty awful. “How about something with lemon and ginger?”
“And then you’un tell me about what we are. More’n you done told me last time we talked. ’Acause I’m thinking we’uns, you’un and me, we ain’t human.”
With those words ringing in my ears, I made tea with lemon and ginger and a handful of raspberry leaf, brought the pot in a tea cozy, on a tray with mugs, honey, cream, and spoons, to the low coffee table in front of the couch. I poured two mugs of the lemon honey tea and mixed my own, leaving Mud’s untouched. In the church compound, a woman grown made her own tea. She was a child no longer.
Mud stared at me, the pot, the mug, and I watched realization dawn in her eyes. Slowly, she leaned forward and added a small splash of cream and a drizzle of honey to her cup. Stirred the mixture and leaned back, holding the mug. “So this is what it’s like? Being a woman grown? I make my own tea? Kill my own puppies? And have this awful thing happen to me every month?”
Something in the statement made me want to smile, but my mouth felt frozen. “It’s not so awful. Churchwomen aren’t allowed to have relations with the men during this time. They aren’t allowed to work in the greenhouse or garden or with the animals. I think this is the time each month that churchwomen get to sit quiet, to read books. To meditate and have time to be introspective.”
“Edith called it a curse.”
“Mmm. Not all our sisters or friends are very smart. Sometimes even the best women can be kinda stupid.”
“So what are we?” That was Mud. Cutting to the chase. Demanding answers.
“I don’t know. Not exactly. I do know that we can claim land with our blood. Maybe even accidentally. And that when we do, we become responsible for it. We become its caretakers.”
“And you bled on
the vampire tree. You’un’s claimed it.”
“And deserted it,” I acknowledged. I knew on some deep-down level that my desertion had caused the tree to mutate. That fact left me mentally wringing my hands with guilt. My neglect had killed a puppy today. Taken back to its most basic beginnings, I had killed Rex. “To say that I didn’t know what claiming it might mean, and didn’t know that deserting it would make it bloodthirsty, is no excuse. We can make land healthy and fecund. We can make it grow crops or, seems like, we can make it spit out weeds and thorns. We do that by communing with it. And by bleeding on it. Little drops. That’s how we claim it.”
“Gross. The bleeding part. I get the talking-to-trees part. I been talking to plants since I was in diapers. So what are we?”
“I don’t know. A friend told me I was yinehi, which is sorta like a fae.” At her blank look, I said, “Like a fairy.”
She looked down at herself. “Too big. Ain’t got no wings. Can’t fly.”
I laughed, the sound unexpected and stuttering. “Good point. I did some more research, but I still didn’t find us. I guess I need to expand my search parameters. Find out what we are.”
“Search parameters. Townie talk. And when you learn what’s what, you’ll tell me, right?”
I nodded my head and cradled the lemon ginger tea, letting it soothe me. “Soon as I know I’ll tell you.”
“So how’m I gonna get land? And how’m I gonna not get courted in two years and married in four? And how’m I gonna be safe? I want land. It don’t have to be as good as Soulwood. I can make it grow if’n I work at it, right? I want a place a my own. No husband and no children.”
“You’re too young to know if you really want children or not.”
“Churchmen don’t care what I want. They decide and the womenfolk follow. All exceptin’ you’un. I want a real life. With the land.”
“Mmm. I’m still trying to make up my mind about young’uns and I’m nearly twenty-four years old.”