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.”
“Okay. I’ll decide if I want a man and babies after I’m twenty-four.”
I smiled. We both sipped.
“Why’nt you’un got no Christmas tree?”
I topped up our cups. “Well, sister mine, I’ve had no time to think about Christmas. Soon, though.”
“You’un tell me when and I’ll help you.”
“Deal.”
The three mouser cats raced down the stairs and leaped on the couch to curl on top of us and around us. The house warmed. And it occurred to me that . . . that maybe Mud could live here. With me. And that maybe I could give her a small part of my land. Like a land dowry. Or something. If Daddy would ever let her move in with me.
“You know you’un got green leaves growing out your’n fingers?”
I held out my hand, fingers splayed. “Yep.”
“Am I gonna grow green leaves?”
“I have no idea, sister mine.”
“I reckon we’ll figger it out as we go, then.”
“I reckon,” I agreed, ideas and possibilities racing around in my brain like bumper cars, all filled with excitement and delight slamming into concern and fear. All the things that could go wrong. All the things that I might have to reveal to my family. The tree I had to corral and harness and direct. Brother Ephraim to kill. Again. And all that very soon.
• • •
My time with Mud was short, but I let her help me clip the foliage off my neck and away from my fingernails. She seemed to find it amusing, and giggled every time a leaf went flying. The laughter did us both good, but I was going to be late to work, and so I cut it short, gathering up my gear and herding the cats onto the back porch. Then I drove my sister back to the church compound, let her out, and watched her go inside the Nicholson house.
Not wanting to do it, but knowing I had to, I drove to the tree, parked, and got out, wrapping my coat tightly about me, shoving my hands deep into my pockets. The sun was setting, casting a red glow on the once-upon-a-time oak and dark shadows leaning long behind it.
The tree was no longer young and vibrant and full of life. It had dark, thick bark and abundant, swollen leaves, too thick and pliable to be a live oak or a deciduous tree. The leaves were more like the foliage of a succulent, with scarlet-lined veins that, when broken, dripped a red substance viscous as blood, gooey and oily.
The tree had grown wildly since I had used it to heal me. It now had the girth of an old-growth tree, bigger than five men holding hands could reach around, with branches that coiled and curled. Vines sprouted from the jointure of limbs and trunk, each covered with needle-like thorns. At the base lay the remains of a cement block wall, tumbled and fallen in shattered heaps, the wall the churchmen had constructed with the hope of keeping the tree confined. They had also tried chain saws, fire, herbicides, dynamite, and a bulldozer, which the tree had eaten. It was entombed inside the mass of leaves and vines and branches somewhere, the huge behemoth buried. This one tree looked like the forest of a child’s fairy tale, one capable of burying a kingdom.
Around its base, at the wide dripline, roots had sprouted up new growth. It looked as if the tree was trying to grow an enchanted—or cursed—forest.
“You figured out a way to kill that thing?”
I didn’t turn around at the sound of my brother’s voice. “Hey, Sam. My last suggestion didn’t work, I guess.”
“Couldn’t get close enough to cut it or blow it up. Thought about throwing a stick of TNT on it and hoping for the best, but I was afraid it might throw it back at us.”
I breathed out a laugh, a sound a wereleopard might make. Chuffing. Tilted my head to Sam. He was standing to my left, at the back of the truck. Like me, he was dressed in winter layers, his hands in his pockets. A hand-crocheted toboggan in Mama’s favorite blues was on his head. With each breath, he blew a cloud of vapor.
“What is it, Nell?”
I shook my head, watching him in my peripheral vision. “I need to do some thinking, brother mine. On the vampire tree. On a lot of things. When I got something to say or do, I’ll let you know.”
Sam pressed his fists deeply into his pockets, his heavy jacket pulling down. “When that time comes, am I gonna have to hold off the pitchforks and kerosene to keep some a the church folk from burning you at the stake?”
“Would you protect me, Sam?”
“Yes.”
I nodded at the simple statement. “Why did you set Benjamin on me? Why did you surprise me like that?”
My brother shrugged. “You been gone a long time, but I still miss you, Nellie. I miss your spirit and your smart mouth. I miss the way you don’t let nothing and no one stop you from doing the right thing. Even if you’un suffer for it. Daddy, he’s been fighting the mamas for months about going to the surgeon. You’un stomped him and now he’s got an appointment.” The church-speak faded as he spoke. “The family needs you. The church needs you. We need you to lead us into the twenty-first century. Into the future. It’s that or die.” When I said nothing he added, “Church membership numbers were highest in 1954, at well over twelve hundred. Now church rolls stand at six hundred fourteen, with women leaving the church all the time. The church is dying.”
I thought about that. Thought about the cycle of life and death. Understood that all trees die eventually. All forests. So do all civilizations, all organizations, and all churches. Maybe it was time for God’s Cloud to die, be chopped up and fed into the fire of some new church. “I’ll let you know about the tree when I figure things out.” Leaving my brother staring at the mutated oak, I walked back to my truck and drove away. Thinking that my brother was a hunter. And the hunter in him had baited a trap well with Ben Aden and with the plea to bring the church into the twenty-first century. He meant everything he’d said, in the best way possible, but he was still reasoning like a churchman.
On the way out, I slowed and studied the place where I had told the vampire tree to move; the place where I had dropped my blood to encourage it to move. All along the fence were small growths, with dark bark and heavy, reddish-tipped engorged leaves. Some of the growths had put out vines that had begun to curl into the hurricane fencing. I had a feeling that they would grow fast, winter or no.
I had made a bad mistake asking them to grow here. Probably had made several more mistakes. I had to decide how to fix them all. Probably like yesterday.
• • •
I pulled up at PsyLED headquarters on Allamena Avenue, a newish road on newly developed land off Highway 62. It was three stories of government-building ugly, with the two top levels set aside for PsyLED, and for an eventual PsyCSI, whenever the government got around to fully funding the agency. The bottom floor was Yoshi’s Deli and Coffee’s On, and I stopped for a coffee. As I entered, the girl behind the counter smiled at me and said, “The usual?”
“Oh. Yes, please.” I watched her making me a caramel cappuccino and understood that I had, at some point in the last few weeks and months, gone through a rite of passage without even realizing it. The usual. I had a usual coffee at a coffeehouse. Unlike God’s Cloud of Glory, I had entered the twenty-first century. I was a modern-day woman. Maybe even a city girl. Knowing that didn’t help much, but it did show that things could change.
My heart heavy and my mind full of thoughts that writhed like snakes, I carried my gear and coffee inside and up the stairs. I had a feeling that the EOD debriefing was going to be long and tedious.
• • •
JoJo said, “Financial update. Like everyone else with assets, the Tolliver family has money invested in the Tennessee Valley Authority. They also are heavily invested in four local small industries that make parts for weapons manufacturing companies, a video/PR/talent agency that handles the careers of several Tennessee sports icons and three big country singers, and a medical corporation called DNAKeys.” She glanced up from her tablet. “Which is where it gets a little interesting.” She looked back at her screen, her earrings swinging. “Social media conspiracy nuts suggest that DNAKeys is holding a vampire and wolves or werewolves prisoner on the premises and is doing animal experimentation that sounds like something out of a horror movie. Multiple social media sites have shared the accusations, specifying internal sources for the charges. I’m working to track down the sources so we can interview them.