When I finally stopped shaking and my fingers were no longer an odd, ashy blue, I pulled a chair and a small table close to the stove, carried over an afghan crocheted by my sister Priss, and wrapped up. I held my toes close to the stove’s warmth as I logged onto the PsyLED intranet for updates, checked e-mails, and wrote my reports. All except the things that were happening along my borders. That was private. Until it wasn’t anymore. I knew I’d have to tell them eventually, but not until I understood it all. And the case was solved. We had dead adults and dead children and that took precedence.
I sent reports to Rick and e-mails to the unit about what I had discovered reading the land, telling them what I sensed about the triangles made up by the affected sites, and the circle, and the sun glow at the circle’s and the triangle’s centers—which were the same place, GPS-speaking, but could have been any one of four R&D places on my map. I told them what I understood, and what I was totally confused about. I told them that I’d be in tomorrow, but that I needed to go by and see my mama first.
What I really wanted to do was go see the tree on the church compound, the one that had grown roots inside of me, claiming me, healing me, changing me, even as I claimed and changed it. Something was wrong with the tree and with the blot that was Brother Ephraim. It wasn’t connected with the problems in the land at the triangle and circle. It was its own problem. And I had a dreadful fear that my blood and I had caused it.
* * *
I didn’t sleep well. The cats were difficult, up half the night, mrowing and yodeling and walking across the bed, especially Jezzie, who kept sticking her nose into my ear and breathing. It wasn’t like her. She had never done such a thing before. I got up a little after three a.m. and put them out, but it had snowed unexpectedly during the night and they started caterwauling, so I got back up and let them in. After that, there was no going back to sleep for me. Of course, the cats then curled up on the bed and fell deeply to sleep for the rest of the night. They must have wanted the whole bed for themselves.
The house had chilled down, so I put fresh logs in the Waterford (checking first to make sure the strange branches were still ash—they were), and made coffee. On the couch, in my jammies, robe, wool socks, slippers, and an afghan, I checked e-mails. I discovered that at about two a.m., all the surviving deer from the accident had died. They had been walking in a circle, clockwise, not eating, not drinking, just walking, constantly, at the University of Tennessee’s forestry, wildlife, and fisheries department, where the living ones had been taken. Within minutes of each other, near dusk, they had buckled, fallen, and died. Their bodies were still redlining, according to a PsyCSI tech who had been dispatched to the site. The deer were going to receive necropsies and then be cremated ASAP, in case they had something contagious.
Rick had pulled a late-nighter and had replied to my reports with comments and a few questions for clarity, which I answered, and amended my reports to reflect the corrections. Report-speak was a language all its own and had to be searchable, in multiple law enforcement databases, often with their own languages and terms.
Occam had sent a text to ask if I was okay, since I had left the neighborhood scene so quickly, and also because he had seen that I was going to be late tomorrow—well, today, now. I sent back a quick comment that I was fine, and would see the unit soon.
I was dressed for work by five a.m. in a long dull green skirt, leggings, layers, and my dress boots instead of my field boots. Shortly after, I called Mama’s number. The Nicholsons were farm people and got up when the roosters started crowing, sometimes by four a.m., so they could make it to morning devotionals, which took place at dawn. Sometimes the family ate breakfast before church, sometimes after. Life on the compound of God’s Cloud of Glory Church was both strict and fluid: strict in the sense that everything revolved around church, and church had rigid schedules, and fluid in that families could do what they wanted with their daily schedules, otherwise, so long as they worked at something that supported the church—woodworking, working the fields, sewing, animal husbandry, or whatever needed doing on the land that supported them.
I listened as the call rang. It was still strange to know Mama had a cell phone. It was an old-fashioned one with a flip case, but she knew how to use it.
“Nell?” Mama said, picking up, the sound of Nicholsons loud in the background: a baby wailing, children singing a familiar song about Noah and his animals two by two, skillets and pots banging in the kitchen. Breakfast in such a large clan wasn’t usually a single sit-down affair, but was generally done in stages, groups coming and going for a couple of hours. Loud and gregarious and full of energy. The exact opposite of my daily routine, solo and silent.
“Hey, Mama.”
“You’un feeling better, honey? You feel good enough to come to breakfast? I’ll make you some French toast, just the way you like it.”
Right. I had the flu. I was certainly on the road to hell, lying to my mama. “I feel great. I’ll be there fast as I can get there.”
“Drive safe. I’ll alert the guards at the gate to expect you.”
“Yes, ma’am. Bye.” Alert the guards at the gate? I had thought that kind of stuff was done.
I gathered my things, put the cats on the back porch with food, water, and a cat litter box that I kept for very cold weather, tied the old cat blanket from last winter to the hammock, and closed up the house. The cats would spend a few hours getting settled into the hammock, which would be a game, flipping, rotating, and rocking, and then once they settled into it they could sleep away the day.
Out front, the sky was black with a heavy, wet snow falling, and I mushed my way to the truck. The snow slop wasn’t truly frozen, and I was able to drive most of the way down the mountain, the tires picking up clods of mud and snow slush. I needed to get a four-wheel-drive vehicle, and that was on my to-buy list as soon as I could afford it, but it would be a while. The upgraded solar panels and batteries had taken a considerable chunk of change from the sale of John’s gun, and I wasn’t ready to become a truly modern woman and go into debt. Yet.
The guards at the church’s twelve-foot-tall gate were carrying shotguns and rifles, but they let me in after I presented my driver’s license. Inside, there were dogs and armed men patrolling the grounds, and that sort of thing was supposed to have been finished under the new leadership in the church, but it seemed old habits were too established to let that occur. Or maybe something else had reinforced the old patterns.
Here, there was only a light dusting of snow, and though it was still falling, it was melting even faster. The day was yet too gloomy to see the tree I was interested in, so I drove on to the Nicholson house and parked beside Daddy’s red truck. The house was a three-story saltbox-style block of a house, with more rooms up under the eaves, big enough for all three wives and all the children. I cut the engine and pulled a plastic baggie from the glove box. Before I could get out of the Chevy truck, the front door opened and Mud came tearing out at a dead run. She leaped off the porch, yanked open the heavy truck door, and threw herself at me in a hug tight enough to cut off the blood to my lower limbs. I hugged her back just as tight.
“I missed you,” she said into my middle. She had grown since I’d been gone. Maybe a whole inch.
“I missed you too,” I said softly.
Mud pulled away, backing to the house, jerking on my arm. “Did you’un bring me a present? Mama said I wasn’t to ask but—did you?”
“Of course.” I held out the baggie and shook it. Mud snatched it from me and said, “Dust?” Then, squealing, “No. Seeds!” She turned and raced inside, leaving me climbing the steps to the porch. Mud was whatever I was, species-wise. Nothing was more precious to either of us than living, growing things: seeds, roots, cuttings, flowers, even pollen.
“You spoil that girl.”
I flinched and my hands fisted. The result of training and bruises from Spook School self-defense classes. In the same instant, I saw the man sitting in the shadows, on a rocker. Still. Silent.
“Sam?”
There was a shotgun across my brother’s knees. He stood and met me halfway, in a hug that surprised me. Sam and I had spent all the years of our childhoods fighting and arguing; hugging had never been part of our relationship. Tentatively, I hugged back.
“You’un gonna steal the bubblegum in my pocket?”
I chuckled into the rough wool of his pea coat. Rather than answer, I reached into his coat pocket and took a piece. “For later,” I said. “Thank you.” I stuck it in my own.
“We’uns got us a problem, Nellie,” he said. “When you’uns done with breakfast, we need to talk about Daddy.”
“Okay.” Daddy had been shot not long ago. I had seen him on my last visit and he had looked a mite puny but nothing to cause the concerned tone in my brother’s voice. Was Daddy sick? Not healing right? Did he have cancer? Heart disease? None of that ran in our family, but I had a bad feeling about it. I couldn’t make myself ask, and I hoped it was just a bad guess. Sam opened the front door, like a gentleman, and followed me in. Small talk with Sam had never been easy, but I gave it a go as he closed the door and unwound his scarf, asking, “So, how’s married life?”
My brother smiled, showing teeth, his eyes crinkling up. “Better than fine. Finer than frog fur spilt three ways.”
“I’m glad. Marriage should be a happy thing,” I said, shucking out of my coat.
“I’m sorry yours was bad, Nell.”
That stopped me and I shrugged, uncomfortable with the topic of my marriage. I said, “Better the Ingrams than to live with the colonel. Way better, brother of mine.”
“That is the God’s own truth, sister,” he agreed.
“What kinda seeds are these?” Mud shouted over the din, a clamor that suddenly crashed down on me. Sam patted my shoulder. “Home sweet home. Come get me when you’uns done with women’s talk.”
“Okay.” I moved through the controlled chaos to the kitchen and hugged Mama. “Love you, Mama.”
“Love you too, baby girl. Sit a spell.” I did and she dished up breakfast and slid a quart jar of honey to me. “Eat you’uns’ French toast,” she demanded to all the bodies at the table. “Sam! Daddy’s busy. You come on and eat. Give that wife of yours a morning in bed.”
“What. Are. The. Seeds!” Mud shouted, jerking my jacket.
“Mindy, you mind your manners!” Mama demanded.
In the living room, three tiny little’uns started resinging the song about Noah and the flood.
“Brighamia,” I shouted to my sister, as half a dozen older little’uns raced through the living room, screaming. I shook my head at the culture shock of being home again. No. Not that. Just being here. Loudly I said, “It’s a succulent bellflower from Hawaii. The common names are alula, olulu, or pu aupaka. Read up on it. Only plant a few at a time,” I cautioned her, and caught her eyes with my own. I added, “You’re going to have to make it grow.”