Walk Among Us, page 25
“More young idealists,” I say. “Like Kasim. Choleric, with a balance of sanguine to keep them from fighting.” I don’t like those terms—they’re too simplistic—but Lucille thinks in them almost exclusively. It’s her age showing.
“We are thin there,” she agrees.
She doesn’t say anything else after that. I stay another half hour, until the batt is organized and ready for the dye vats, then pack up and return to the office.
I cover my desk in pending applications. They’ve been accumulating for weeks. I want Kasim to do an in-depth pass, looking for kids fresh out of PSU social justice–focused courses. No, better yet—Robin. She’ll like that plan. I can spin it as putting into practice what we discussed last month, and it should give me the right blend of passionate idealism with a guard against antisocial behavior. They’ll come with risk, a higher propensity to look for injustice, but we can sweep them up in the energy of this place, cloud their better judgment.
Robin’s off tonight, though, so I call Kasim instead. There’s a good chance he knows somebody.
January
Culling
Sickness in the quail. I had to cull four hens today, young ones. I didn’t bother bringing them into the slaughtering room, I just cracked their heads on the side of their hutch and snipped their necks with shears right there in the yard. Quail are stupid things, and even if they could smell the blood, I don’t think they’d care.
Key is going to be upset in the morning. They’re a gentle soul and would have tried to nurse the quail back to health, but we’ve seen this before and I know how it goes. Slowly the birds will stop walking, then stop eating. Eventually we’d have to force water down their throats with syringes, but even that wouldn’t work long term.
Better to have it done with.
It leaves me angry, though. Not that the quail are dead, but that they were diseased, and so I can’t work that alchemical magic to turn them into stock, or even food for the barn cats. I thought about draining them myself, but they’re small, and I don’t know what their illness would do to me.
I bury them deep enough that prowling foxes or enterprising raccoons won’t dig them up, far enough from the hutch not to attract more pests. Then I check all the other birds, each one docile in my hands. They’re all fine, fat and happy off their feed and kitchen scraps, and they coo their little frog-like songs once I have them back in their run.
They, like the sheep, like the humans, trust me implicitly.
I leave them behind and stalk out into the greater wilds of the commune, past where the dry-built walls end and where our rewilding efforts are underway. Young trees, native species of bracken and vine, careful creation of ponds and widening of creeks—it’s enough to take the edge off. This is the way the world goes. Where there is not predator or parasite, there is disease, there is accident, there is loss. Death is constant; even I, in all likelihood, will die one day.
Maybe that thought should upset me again, but instead it brings with it a gentle calm.
And then I see the footprint.
It’s human, not animal, and any member of the commune could have left it. Except the footprint is not of a sensible boot, but of a sneaker. Not something any community member would wear this far out, not this time of year. And when I look for others, eyes narrowing in the dark, I find two more, coming from the direction of the closest road.
Somebody was here. Somebody who should not have been.
There are no tracks leading away.
I follow them as far as I can, but catch no scent and hear no movement beyond the usual nocturnal creatures. I am alone, with no clues left to me. I spin half a dozen explanations, two of them particularly unnerving—poachers on my land, or worse, suspicious humans with infrastructure behind them—but I tell myself that, with so few footsteps, it’s impossible to reconstruct a path. And it’s not far from here to the road; anybody working in this section of the land would have been smart to drive as far as they could and walk in, then back out. There’s no reason to enter this far from all the houses, just to hunt my people.
Only a fool, angry over dead quail, would walk across miles of muddy, murky field and wood.
I make myself go back to the office.
The Tower
Robin invites me to watch one of her performances, so I rearrange my schedule to get a few hours off. It’s tricky, since normally she’d be the one covering for me, but Kasim is happy enough to fill in. We don’t have anybody scheduled to visit tonight, and he’s not cleared to handle the files yet, so I leave him sitting vigil in case we have another eruption from the human members. (These things come in waves it seems, so since Bill, I’ve been waiting for another. Not a fight probably, but an overdose, a bad breakup, a suicide attempt—there’s a lot that can go wrong.)
I offer to drive her there, but she declines, saying she needs the prep time alone. And that’s fair. We’re likely closer in my mind than we are in hers, so I give her the space. I drive myself down just before doors open. The performance is part of a larger spectacle that’s put up in the theater on Alberta, a variety show featuring dance, lectures, a static gallery in the foyer, a whole arrangement of delights and challenges and beauty. I love it, every bit of it, and it gives me a rush I’ve been missing lately, being so caught up in the work on the farm.
I love the farm, of course, and it is artwork of a kind, a living piece of craft, but there’s something about spectacle. I wouldn’t be of my own Blood if I didn’t crave it.
All of it, though, is pale beside Robin.
She’s dressed simply. Loose, baggy sweater that hangs limp around her shoulders, baring her throat, paired with black skinny jeans tight on her wide thighs and delicately patterned Wellingtons still mucked with mud and sheep shit. She sits on the edge of the stage to begin, and even with her mic, she’s quiet at first.
Her art is in her speech. In the cadence of her voice, the timbre, the intonation, the emotion and restraint of it. She transports us, the entire room, to a windswept cliffside, to the tower built on top of it. A tower she has guarded, carefully, all her life. She weaves together tarot, astrology, history, architecture, pulling us into the molecular structure of mortar, then back out again to the great expanse of roaring wind, of the storm, of, finally, her body and her tools of iron, helping speed along what nature has already begun.
break down, break down every single brick of it, crush each one beneath my heel, mix every particle of dust with wine and force it through my body, until it is a part of me,
force the change and the silence after
I want to own it. To record it, to write it down, to have it forever.
But that would kill its magic. It is her very life that invigorates it so.
I’ve watched her perform five times already. This is the sixth—the first she knows I’m in the audience—and the selfish, proud part of my soul (or whatever it is I have) thinks that her knowing I’m here is what makes it so much better. Is what inspires her. More likely, it’s been the time she’s had to herself at the ecovillage. No day job, food provided, everything I do intentionally to cultivate art like this. But normally, that covetous part of me whispers, it takes longer to settle in.
And to that I counter, She’s so polished up there it must have been in the works before she ever came to me.
However it happened, though, this performance eclipses all her others. I’m entranced. Literally. Can’t move, forgetting who I am, what I am. Not even thinking to panic that my guard has dropped so low. I’m silent when everybody else claps, but when she leaves the stage, I scream with joy and the noise is swept up in the continuing applause.
After, we wind up at the same bar on Division where we talked in November. She’s high on endorphins and weed, and I’m flattered she suggested we go off alone instead of joining the main after-party that’s headed to a service industry–favorite strip club on Morrison. I would go anywhere with her, but tucking ourselves into that walled patio, under the heater, her with another paloma and me with water again, it feels right. Like we’re following a narrative.
I’m more than a little in love with her.
I tell her she was amazing, and she laughs and says she knows. We talk for almost an hour about her process, and I watch her glow at having an understanding audience. I think, sometimes, she forgets that I’m an artist, too. That I’m not just a farmer. But I can keep up with her talk of theory and structure and the rush of finding just the right edit to make. And I give her room to lead, to fill the space between us, to keep performing. She loves it.
And then I’m thinking of what it would be like, to drink from her while she’s so hyped-up about her own work, full of pride and eagerness and relief. Incredible is a bare start, awe-inspiring likewise. I jump back from the thought as if it’s sunlight, but it won’t leave me.
If I let myself drink from her, I would embarrass myself with the high coming off of it. That magic in my gut would transfer her incandescence to me and the whole bar would feel it, would come to worship at my feet the way I want them to worship at hers.
Given all that, what comes next is probably inevitable.
We’re back on community land, after a twenty-minute drive where all I can smell is her, all I can hear is her intoxicating, delighted chattering, chattering I respond to, encourage, revel in. I let her out near Hawthorn House, but she wants to walk, and so we go out to the gardens. The paths here are paved with carefully chosen colored cobbles, so even though it’s dark and wet, it’s safe enough. We can’t see the colors of the plants, with all their flowers gone for the winter, so I tell her about each. About the purple-flowering monarda, about the borage that all the bees love with its periwinkle flowers that stay all the way through October, about what thyme and basil look like when they’re allowed to bloom. It’s her turn to hang on my every word.
She reaches out and takes my hand, and I don’t pull away.
I tell her about lemon balm tea and sorrel salads and everything she can look forward to come spring and summer. I show her the garlic beds and explain about the necessity of cold shock to their growth, and the handmade trellises we’ll grow beans on in the spring. I sketch out a whole idyllic life for us. She is entranced, and I am entrancing. She follows me, happily, to the greenhouse where we’ll grow our seed starts and where our tenderer plants spend the winter.
And then I push her up against the see-through wall and kiss her.
I don’t mean to, but my self-control is frayed, so frayed that I can’t even back off far. Just far enough that our lips don’t touch anymore, but I make myself breathe, make my heart race, just for her. Her arms go around me reflexively, and she looks into my eyes, searching for—something.
“Keep going,” she whispers.
In an instant I’m kissing her again, then nuzzling at her throat. She arches. Every predatory instinct in me screams to life, blood lust and artistic intoxication and some old shreds of human emotion tangling together. It would be so easy to bite her, and I can just make her forget afterward.
But I have rules. I have standards. I have just enough presence of mind to know that if I let things go any further, it will put the whole herd in jeopardy.
So, finally, I push her away.
She makes a small noise, confused and hurt, and searches my eyes for some explanation, and I seize the moment. I feel my monstrousness unfurl, like a seraphim’s many wings, and she is pinned as surely as she was by my body.
“This never happened,” I tell her, and it’s as if I can hear the mechanisms of her mind at work, poised to erase. “You took my hand, after I told you about the thyme and basil. We did not talk of lemon balm tea and sorrel salads, we did not go to the garlic beds, we never stepped foot into the greenhouse. I did not kiss you. You did not ask me to continue.”
She nods, the tiniest of things, lost in her overwhelmed mind.
I keep her like that, docile and blank, as I walk her back out into the night. Our bodies cool. We go back to the bit of path where she took my hand, and I let go of her physically, though I do not look away. I’m not a natural at memory replacement, not like Ladzka must be, but I am skilled enough from constant practice on the farm. And I know the best way to decrease distress is to make the transition back to wakefulness, back to memory, as seamless as possible.
When I am certain I can control myself, I look away. She blinks. She yawns.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I must have drifted off.”
“It’s getting late,” I confirm. I begin walking in the direction of Hawthorn House, and she follows me, kittenish.
Maybe I shouldn’t have made her forget, but I only had the one chance, and it’s better if she doesn’t know. It would be better still if I sent her away, but I want to give it a little more time. I want to test myself. I thought I wasn’t at risk, and I was wrong; so now I need to train up my resistance. Robin Joy is perfect, but she is not unique; there will be another like her one day.
We part at her doorstep, and I fade into the night.
PR
Today, while I was sleeping, we had a visit from the mayor’s people.
They want us to take on a much higher number of the houseless population of Portland. The mayor is under pressure to clean up the streets and is refusing to enact any policies that may actually help the problem, but he knows we take a large portion of our membership from that group.
But we don’t take high numbers, and we certainly don’t take whoever gets sent our way. Especially not for human political purposes. Especially not without oversight on who joins; we will be obliterated if I fail to maintain the integrity of the herd, the safety of our stock.
The request came with veiled threats, though, so I have to take it seriously. Worries about “cultlike” appearances. Concerns about how we’re using government grants. I can’t just say no, not when the cleanliness of my operation is at stake.
So I must ask Sebastian Vương for intercession.
Vương is not the Prince of Portland. He’s not the seneschal, either. To be honest, I couldn’t tell you his exact place in the power structure, which is as much because I stay out of court politics to the best of my ability as it is because he is, undoubtedly, dangerous.
He’s not much older than I am, but holds far more sway. He is always calm and focused. I have never seen him flinch or lose his self-control—and I have watched him feed.
He only takes live prey, and Robin matches his profile perfectly. I should have assigned her to him the moment I gave her the key to Hawthorn House, but of course I didn’t.
As soon as I’ve had a moment to think things through, I call ahead to one of his people, who says he’s open to seeing me tonight.
I meet him at his house in the Southwest Hills, high on one of the steep cliffsides that wind up and up the great ridge that forms Portland’s western boundary, but outside of the arboretum proper. It’s a beautiful house, classic modernism, with impeccable landscaping that somehow manages to look beautiful even in the gray Portland winter.
My first hint that he expected me to show up tonight should have been how easy it was to get an audience with him. But it’s the second hint that hits home: his guest.
Jolene Ladzka perches on a stool in his spacious kitchen, sipping from a large smoothie that smells of heart’s blood.
“Leigh Konopasek,” Sebastian Vương greets me, not looking up from the sheaf of papers he’s making his way through. “Sit.”
He’s fed recently, though he isn’t bothering with any pretense at a lively blush. It’s the power rolling off him that I respond to, that sends my skin crawling. I drop my own charade, the better to be at the ready. This is wrong. This is very wrong.
“I had a visit from the mayor’s aide today,” I say.
“Yes,” he agrees. “You did.”
“I was going to ask you to turn his attention from us. Am I correct in assuming that would be pointless?”
“You are.”
To the point. He’s always to the point. And Jo, she always holds herself so exactly, and I end up feeling like an unwashed hick, even though I’m wearing a perfectly tailored suit with rose-leaf buttons, custom-made for me by an atelier down on Division. My armor.
I try to reassert myself by remaining silent. Waiting.
Eventually, he deigns to set aside his work and look me in the eye. He folds his hands across one knee. “You need to increase production to remain viable. Reducing the vagrant population keeps the rest of the humans happy. Explain to me your disagreement with my solution.”
I can’t help it. I launch into an impassioned lecture on the safety needs of my flock, the carrying capacity of the land, the available housing, the need to carefully vet each new addition so that the overall quality of the herd will increase. It’s carefully rehearsed, at the ready for just such an occasion, honed by bringing in Kasim last month.
But it doesn’t sway him at all, and Jo watches with a quirked brow, slurping on her pureed offal.
So I turn to what he will care about. “You can’t really think this will go unnoticed, can you?” I say. “There’s limited demand for bagged blood as it is, so most of them would be marked for active feeding. And that means too many of us on my land, too many opportunities for mistakes and slaughter, and people will notice that. Better to kill them on the streets. One less linking feature between them all. And you’re doing it already anyway, aren’t you?”
He shrugs and says, “But you make a better product.”
