Walk Among Us, page 24
But Robin, perfect Robin, just shrugs and says, “No. Because Plath’s words are immortal, aren’t they? This girl can’t cheat death forever. But we’ll remember her when she’s gone.”
Tiller of the Ground
“Caine was a farmer. Did you know that?”
Kasim doesn’t answer, just looks down at me. I’m on the ground, ass-deep in mud. I don’t remember how I got here, or why Kasim is here, but I’m not bothered. I keep talking.
“A farmer, a ‘tiller of the ground,’ while his brother was a ‘keeper of sheep.’ Does that make sense to you?” I ask him. “That Abel was the one who would have known blood and sickness and death, and yet it was Caine who turned to murder?”
He doesn’t answer. He does edge closer. I peer up at him, at his crescent moon tattoo and his almost-human pulse. I can’t stop talking. “It was Caine who gave humanity its bloodlust, and who ultimately made us into monsters who must be either predator or shepherd to survive. But you know what’s funny?” I add, leaning in conspiratorially. “When they say vegan, they mean ‘doesn’t eat animals,’ but when we say ‘vegan’ we mean ‘feeds off animals, not humans.’” I giggle.
Kasim laughs. He gets it. He gets me.
But as quickly as the joke came to me, it’s gone. “Why was Caine the farmer?” I murmur.
“Can you stand up?”
“Of course I can,” I say, and don’t. “I have nothing against farming. Obviously. I spent all last night out checking our wintering beds and our cover crops and the garlic shoots. I like farming! I enjoy every aspect of food production, of turning life into sustenance.”
“Please stand up, Leigh.” He sounds—what, scared? A little desperate? I smile broadly, trying to put him at ease. No need to be afraid, Kasim!
“I think it’s what makes us human,” I continue, sliding my hands into the mud. It feels amazing. Slick and cool and knotted with grass roots. “Farming, I mean. It’s hard work, but the benefits far outweigh the struggle. That’s pretty obvious. No agriculture means no villages, no towns, no cities, no nations. Abel couldn’t have done that. Wandering shepherds can’t keep up with demand. So these days, humans grow their meat much like they grow their corn, for better or worse.”
He crouches down, finally, leaning in to hear more. I think he’s interested, until I see a little furrow in his brow. Concern. Still concerned. I think back. Why would he be concerned?
“Makes us human?”
“Us,” I repeat, feeling the shape of the pronoun between my lips. “Makes us human. Am I human?” I rub at the soil with my palms, frowning. I sound out my thoughts, slowly, the way they’re coming to me. Molasses-thick, not blood-hot. “I was once. I think I still am, but not—not in the same way. Obviously. I drink blood. I don’t age. I’ve got—I’ve got powers.”
“Leigh, let’s get up,” he says, reaching out and gripping my upper arm. “This isn’t the right place to—to talk like this. Let me help you to your cottage.”
“I know I’m not the same as they are,” I say, barely noticing how he pulls at me, except to sit down harder. I’m busy. Can’t he see that?
“You’re really, really not.” What has him so desperate? I look around. We’re alone. No humans here to observe us, to mark the difference like I am.
“But I’m not like you, either,” I say, finally looking directly at Kasim again. “When I look at other Kindred, like you, like Ladzka, even Lucille, there’s a difference there, too. I make the food. I cultivate it. That process, it changes me, makes me . . . better? Stronger?” No, that’s not right. “Human means the opposite. Doesn’t it?”
“Up, Leigh. Come on. Don’t make me get Lucille.” He tugs again. I stand, finally, though the earth does its best to hold me back. It recognizes me. I look at where the mud has sunk into the creases of my hands, plodding along behind Kasim as he leads me toward my cottage.
“Caine was a farmer,” I murmur to myself. “I am a farmer of man. But I should be called a shepherd, with my herd, my husbandry, the blood and sickness and death that are all my responsibility. It’s all getting jumbled. Caine should have been the shepherd. Or a hunter, a solitary hunter, and yet he worked the soil and found murder there. Perhaps it was because he didn’t know what it was to cull a sick animal. Because he didn’t know to respect life in order to gain more from death. Maybe that was why it was murder.”
Kasim isn’t talking. I look at him; now I’m the desperate one.
“Am I upsetting the order of things?” I ask him.
He goes still. “This is the better way,” he says, but he doesn’t sound like he believes it. Doesn’t sound like he’s certain.
I’m the certain one. But I don’t feel certain, either. I feel dizzy. I waver on my feet. It spurs him to action, and we start walking again, the squelching of my boots drowning out my voice.
“Is this wrong, no longer looking death in the face and naming it murder, and instead calling it farming, ranching, slaughter . . . the abattoir instead of the killing fields?”
We reach the front door. The knob won’t turn for Kasim. He lets go of me, glances at the sky. It’s getting brighter, bit by bit.
“I need to go,” he says. “Can you—can you get yourself inside?”
I fumble with the lock. It turns. The door eases inward. I hear footsteps fading behind me, so I don’t think he hears my conclusion.
“There are rumors,” I whisper to the empty hallways of my house, “that it was Caine who spread agriculture across the early human world. He planted his crop then, a growing swell of humanity to feed upon, and we have harvested it for millennia since. Perhaps I am only implementing it in a more focused manner.”
Yes.
Yes, that seems right.
Deal-breaker
I come to the next evening on the floor of my bathroom. I’m lucky; there are no windows in this room, and nobody has found me insensate and put a stake through my heart. Noddist bullshit no longer runs through my head.
All that’s left is memories of being foolish, of having a death wish, of lying in the mud in the fields and proclaiming for all the world to hear what I am. How did I fuck up this badly?
I’m supposed to be in a hidden vault beneath the house. I have only half memories of leaving it maybe an hour before dawn, after I took my morning dose way earlier than normal. I was spun up after spending the evening with the sheep and with Robin, desperate for something to take the edge off. I’d needed it. I’d needed it.
So instead of grabbing a bag from my main stock, I’d reached for one of the pouches Jo dropped off early last week. I’d wanted something strong. I’d been hesitant to try it until then (Who wants to try a blood sorcerer’s experiment? And besides, it’s only been a few weeks since she took Bill, so there’s no way it was more than a first draft), but that much intimate time with Robin was—was too much. I wanted something stronger than normal. I figured I deserved it, deserved peace.
Except whatever blood that thaumaturge gave me must have been tainted somehow. Because of course it was. That’s what I get for trusting another blood-drinker to provide my food for me. She’s got no sense of integrity. Fucking stupid, is what I am.
It could have been worse, I tell myself as I down a bag of blood—my own product this time, chunks and all—and wash all the caked mud off myself. As far as I can tell, in the disjointed fragments of memory banging around my head, it was only like drinking a batch of blood high in THC, maybe ’shrooms. It could have been far worse.
Once I’m changed, I text an apology to Robin and ask her to handle the office while I deal with an emergency. Kasim’s the real person I need to apologize to, but I’m not ready for that. No, first I get in my car and drive to Washington Park.
To Jo Ladzka’s house.
It’s a gamble; for all I know, she could be out, but I don’t want to warn her by calling ahead. I whip around dark, winding roads, up the pitch-black stretches of Cornell, and into the great woods that tower above Portland. Her house perches on one of the steep ridges inside the park, buried in a tangle of unmarked roads, but I know the way.
If she doesn’t want to see me, I won’t be able to get to her. The house is warded to hell and back. I know about where the first ward will be, and I park my car just outside of it. I test it.
It gives.
She’s in, then, and while now she knows I’m here, she’s letting me come.
My anger is desperate to have the upper hand, to come roaring in like a vengeful angel, but that is not the tack to take with her. No, better an unannounced visit paired with surprising calm. I master myself as I near the lights of her home, which has none of the old charm of mine nor the modern polish of the other houses in these woods. Instead, it’s a haphazard stack of three different building styles, added onto decade after decade. It sprawls. It towers. It makes no sense at all.
I’m met at the front door by two of her Blood-bound servants, older women with fine-boned hands that are decorated with small scars. They don’t talk, not out of deference but of smugness; they serve a greater master than I. They beckon for me to follow. I hesitate, but enter, half expecting horrors to line the walls. But it’s a very normal house. Boring, even.
Wherever she does her work, it must be tucked away.
I expect I’ll have to wait, but Ladzka is waiting for me in her kitchen.
“Leigh,” she says, smiling pleasantly. “What a surprise—are you bringing Christmas gifts?”
“Not this time.”
“A shame. But I have something for you,” she says, and goes to her fridge, kept as polished as any lab equipment. At the thought of her lab, I shudder; I don’t want to see what perversions she keeps down there.
For all I know, Bill might still be alive.
I’m caught on that thought—of Bill restrained, hobbled, his veins tapped to deliver the material for blood sorcery on demand—when she holds out another blood bag.
I stare at it.
“Another iteration,” she says. “A refinement. I think you’ll really like this one.”
“No,” I say.
She frowns. “No? Are you over bagged blood, then?” She steps closer.
I bare my teeth reflexively.
“You look a little peaked, Leigh,” she says. “Sit down. Please, have a drink. It will take the edge off.”
“And leave me gibbering out nonsense under the stars again?” I snap.
Fuck. There goes my hand.
Her face takes on an abstracted look of compassion. It’s all wrong. In another context, I’d admire it—it’s a work of art, that mask—but now I’d rather clutch my head or lunge or leave.
Instead, I take the bag of blood from her, then set it gently back in her fridge. I shut the door.
“The deal is off,” I tell her. “No more lives, no more experiments. Find another source.”
“Tell me what happened,” she says. She watches for my response.
But there’s no reason for me to answer her, not even to maintain the relationship. We are transactional. She purchases live feed shares, she gets her blood, we move on. I refuse to be indebted to her, and that’s what will happen if I answer her questions, if I keep accepting her gifts, even if they’re allegedly as payment for Bill. Bill’s only one life. Eventually the value of her experimentation will exceed what I gave to her, and then the scales tilt back in her favor.
And even before that, she will find weaknesses in me. I won’t let her do that.
“The deal is off,” I repeat. “You can come for your normal feeding on the fourth.”
“Leigh—I didn’t want to bring this up, but I know you understand that it’s hardly good customer service to blame me for your own failings.” She leans in. “That specimen you gave me, Bill—he’s not what I was after. I said lurking danger, not childish entitlement. I assume that’s why the batch I gave you had such unintended side effects,” she says, making this my fault. “I need good material, Leigh, not your castoffs. Not your trash.”
I thought I’d hid it better than that. But I refuse to feel ashamed for her.
“Surely you know somebody in your system like that,” she says. “Impassioned. Ready to be tipped over the edge. Somebody glorious, Leigh. That’s all I want.”
I think of Robin, and in another instant am relieved that there is no way Jolene would ever think to pay attention to her. What is an artist to a blood sorcerer?
Besides, there is no violence in any bone of Robin’s body.
“The deal is off, Ladzka.”
The corner of her mouth twitches, ripples, but she does not snarl. She only sighs, disappointed, perhaps thinking of severing our relationship entirely. I wouldn’t stop her.
But I’m useful enough for her to try to keep. “Are you sure? Just another little donation, and I’ll have your problem solved for you.”
She might even be telling the truth. But I don’t like whatever game she’s playing. I don’t trust that she didn’t know something was wrong with what she gave me until I told her. She was too prepared to ask for more. I consider whatever trust existed between us broken, and I’m already two people down, because Jason has refused to return to the commune.
So I say, “No,” and leave.
Animal Husbandry
We need to expand soon.
Bill and Jason’s slots need to be filled. We have room for more, too; Robin’s the only new member to join in three months (not counting Kasim, for obvious reasons). It’s time to grow the herd a little more, if only to absorb the inevitable losses that come every quarter with our existing contracts.
But I’m nervous. I’m worried I’ll miss something, like I missed it with Bill. It’s winter, too, and the general rule is to never add to your flock in the leanest time of the year. Hell, I preemptively culled the quail population before it started getting dark, since they only lay well for a year or two at most. Fewer mouths to feed. The logic doesn’t apply one-to-one for humans (obviously we have enough food and housing), but I’m feeling off-balance. I want to be cautious, and I can’t afford to be.
When I’m feeling like this, the only person I can go to is Lucille.
I find her in the community’s remote studio, out in the fields, which is empty except for her this time of night. She’s working on a painting when I come in: sun-drenched hills, off a batch of photos I assume Key took for her. I’ve brought wool that needs carding into batts, and we work in silence for a while. I hate the company of most other Kindred—we are always struggling for dominance in some way—but Lucille and I have an equilibrium, a working relationship that is comforting to both of us.
A lot of our kind give up working with their hands. Even those who were sculptors in life slowly turn to patronage and indulgence, leaving behind creation. I’m not sure why it happens; it could be a status thing, left over from centuries when working with one’s hands was base labor, or it could be that without the perspective of the sun and looming death, work loses its savor. With an eternity to create, progress becomes meaningless. We are the work that endures, more than any canvas, any sculpture.
But I still enjoy it. On nights when I feel there is nothing human left in me, I still want to create. I want to help bring a lamb into the world, bloody and weak, and I want to spin wool and spread plaster and focus on the magic of the body and mind and soul combining into one singular task.
I’ve been there for maybe an hour, mind dancing along thoughts of immortality and legacy contrasted with the present, the active, the timeless, when I finally feel like talking.
“Do you think we should expand?”
The soft scrape of her brush against canvas answers me for a long time. My skin grows soft with lanolin and speckled with grass seeds. At last she says, “Of course.”
I consider. “I could hold off for a few months.”
“New blood is always appreciated,” she says. “And we have another mouth to feed with Kasim. It will decrease our stores. If we cannot show growth, you cannot continue the experiment.”
She’s right, of course. Our operation is not widely accepted or appreciated. Many find it laughable and a recipe for disaster. I’ve worked to prove them wrong for over five years now, and so far, our luck has held. We haven’t had any breaches of the Masquerade, and while we can’t disappear members as easily as people off the street, we produce a good product, and that counts for something.
But any faltering, any weakness, and we will be torn apart. The experiment will end. My experiment.
I can’t allow that. I can’t allow any failure. I’ve been lucky, these last six months or so. Things have been going along smoothly, happily. But that can change so easily. This Bill thing, that was a setback—and a warning. Jolene Ladzka’s strange offer likewise.
Lucille doesn’t know about the latter, though. I wanted to see how it would pan out first. If it had worked, it would have been an absolute triumph, but Lucille would have told me not to pursue it at all. She would have been right about that, too.
I can’t bear to tell her how badly I fucked up.
“And how is our illusion of moral integrity?” she asks, turning to blending colors, summoning sunrise on her palette in a continuous shift of purple to orange. I try not to watch, lest I get entranced by the process.
“Holding,” I say.
“Good.” Another long stretch of the sound of the brush and the comb on canvas and fleece.
I’m deep in flow when Lucille says:
“It would secure us more if we expanded our portfolio.”
At first, I don’t understand her meaning. The words sound too new on her lips. Portfolio—the language of an investment banker, not a great artist born before the First World War. But then, once I’ve gathered up the threads of the conversation, I take her meaning.
She’s far cleverer than I tend to give her credit for these days.
“We do have room, I think, for more varied types.” We have a glut of the frightened and downtrodden, the humans we provide shelter to who had none before, and over time those convert to a peaceful, engaged sort. Some of our clients like that type, while for others it must be getting boring. I go through my mental roster, sorting each community member into categories. The passionate, the depressed, the sedate . . . we lack the angry. Bill had fit that profile, thanks to a lapse in my judgment, but I don’t want more like him. There are other paths to the same result, though.
