Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(44)

Animals knew when humans got the woman’s monthly curse.

Did trees? Did my trees? Did the vampire tree waken when Mud came near?

“Mud.”

My sister looked at me quickly, and I realized my tone had altered. Her name was wrapped in my worry.

I shook my head. “No problem. Just, well, did you bleed at any time when you were near the tree?”

Mud’s eyes went wide and fearful. “Did I kill Rex?”

“No, sweetheart. But, well, the vampire tree got the way it is because I bled on its roots. And if you bled near it and it sensed your blood, and we’re sisters, well, it might have tried to protect you from the puppy.”

Mud scowled, and I had a feeling that it looked a lot like my own scowl. “I cut myself,” she said, holding up her left hand. “I slid a potato peeler on my thumb. It was leaking through the bandage.”

I took her hand and turned it to the light. The wound was still leaking; the commercial-style, pale beige bandage was red all along the central pad portion.

“I did it yesterday. It was still drippy when I left the house to go to devotionals.”

“And did you pass by the tree?”

Mud held the thumb up and studied it. “Yep.” She pushed me away and scooted into the couch corner. “That was afore I became a woman grown.” We fell silent, thinking about blood and being grown women and the strange tree.

“Your’n water’s boiling,” Mud said. “I want real tea, not some yucky herbal stuff. Mama Carmel done been making me drink some awful stuff on account a me being grown up.”

I remembered Mama Carmel’s feminine-soother concoctions from my own days in the Nicholson household. They had been pretty awful. “How about something with lemon and ginger?”

“And then you’un tell me about what we are. More’n you done told me last time we talked. ’Acause I’m thinking we’uns, you’un and me, we ain’t human.”

With those words ringing in my ears, I made tea with lemon and ginger and a handful of raspberry leaf, brought the pot in a tea cozy, on a tray with mugs, honey, cream, and spoons, to the low coffee table in front of the couch. I poured two mugs of the lemon honey tea and mixed my own, leaving Mud’s untouched. In the church compound, a woman grown made her own tea. She was a child no longer.

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.”