Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(43)

“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.