The Harvest (3 page)

“We should eat,” she says.

And so they eat.

Cael goes for the meat.

The rabbit is so tender it falls apart in his mouth. Almost like it becomes one with the broth in which it sits. And the sweetbreads are, as the name advertises, genuinely sweet. An outer crunch gives way to a soft but firm interior, and it’s salty, too, and just
off-tasting
enough that it’s appealing in some way he can’t quite understand. The wildness of it calls to something deep within him.

This is the kind of food he figures sits on the table at the Lord and Lady’s manse, ever-replenishing itself.

He has to steady himself. He’s almost drunk on the food.

And just as he hits that point, the bald woman—Siobhan—goes to a small wooden sidebar and pulls out a bottle of red wine. She uncorks it with her teeth, follows this with a wink, and begins to pour glasses for everyone. And soon everyone is drinking and eating, and mostly it’s Esther, Edvard, and Siobhan talking about simple things: how the new “settlers” are acclimating to life here at the farm, how they’ve cleared a few more plots and are going to build something called a “longhouse,” how they have a lead on a few more calves . . .

“You have cows?” Cael asks suddenly.

Esther nods. “And a goat.”

“And a dozen chickens,” Siobhan adds.

“Amazing what good food does for the animals,” Esther says.

Edvard jumps in: “The rabbit was one I found in our garden. I let him eat for a time. Saw that he had a little . . . wife and a nest of baby rabbits, too.”

“Kits,” Siobhan interrupts. “A
litter
of rabbit
kits
.”

Edvard shrugs it off. “I care not what they’re called, I only care that this little Ryukyu left behind a rabbit legacy. Then I felt comfortable putting an arrow through his eye.” He mimes pulling back a bowstring.

“Minimal technology,” Esther says. “A life predicated on the natural rhythms of living with and for the Heartland. For the whole world.”

Cael barely knows what she’s saying. The red wine is doing its part, pulling apart his mind like hot, warm monkey-bread. “You said you had a goat. I had a goat. We. My family.” His words feel like they’re melting in his mouth. Then he says, without thinking: “I want to go home.”

He feels dumb for uttering it. It’s a childish thing to say. And the way he said it, too: a plea from a mopey little boy. Shit.

But no one laughs this time.

Everyone gets quiet.

“You don’t have a home anymore,” Esther says.

“Boxelder is gone,” Wanda adds. Again, a Wanda different from the one he knows manifests: In an earlier life, Wanda wouldn’t even be able to
say
those three words without her voice cracking and tears spilling. But she says them now, chin up, out. Grief is in there, but it’s contained. Kept in its cup instead of poured over everything and everyone.

“I don’t understand,” Cael says.

“The Empyrean took it over,” Esther explains. “After the Saranyu fell, the clampdown started with Boxelder. They had advanced notice, so some of the townsfolk escaped. Others stayed and . . .”

“They’re not human anymore,” Wanda says. There, that time, a hitch in her voice, a grief-struck hiccup. Cael’s glad to hear it. Not because he likes her sorrow, but because in it, he still recognizes Wanda. “They’ve been changed.”

“Changed? I don’t understand.”

“They’re mechanicals now,” Esther says. “Encased in machine. Humanoid motorvators driven by their former minds but controlled by the Empyrean. A more
effective
worker. They tend the corn without any of that . . .”

“Disagreeable humanity?” Siobhan says.

“Mm.” Esther nods. “Metal men do not rebel.”

“Godsdamn,” Cael says. The wine and the news form a one-two punch. “You’re joking, right? Playing a prank on me, the drunk fool?” But the stares around the table tell him differently. He looks to Wanda. “Your family?”

She only says, “I don’t know.”

“When did this happen? How . . . long ago? How long was I—”

“Just over a year,” Esther says.

“A year.” His stomach does an internal belly flop. Everything tingles. Sweat beads on his brow like condensation on a glass. He tries to say something else, but his mouth is all cotton, and next thing he knows, he’s falling off his chair, hands catching him, knees cracking against the floor. The vine around his arm uncoils, lies slack—

He pukes.

BLOOD MAKES THE GRASS GROW

HIS MOUTH TASTES
of dead rabbit. And stomach acid. His cheeks puff out as he exhales a regretful, embarrassed breath.

The room Esther gave to Cael is upstairs, in the back corner. A small room with wallpaper that once held bold stripes but whose dark lines are now faded and washed out—and peeling anyway. Great strips of it, like sunburned skin curling away from the flesh underneath.

It’s Wanda who stops by first. Asks him how he’s doing. Sits next to him and pulls his hand to her lap and strokes it. Then dances her fingers on the back of his neck, sending chills in both directions—down to his tailbone and up to the back of his head. His body tingles, skin gone to plucked chicken skin.

Cael sits on the bed.

“You okay?” she asks.

“I seem okay?”

“Point taken.”

“
You
seem awful okay with everything.”

“I’m a long ways from okay¸” she says. “A whole Heartland away from it. Everything’s different now. Everything’s gone all strange and slippery.” She shrugs. “But I’m getting there. This is my place now. And I think it’s yours, too.”

“I dunno, Wanda. I think . . . I think I need to go. Find my friends. Find Pop. I mean, dang, don’t you wanna find your family? Maybe they’re okay. Hell, maybe that dog of yours is still out there, nosing crotches like a champ.”

She laughs, and he does, too—the pressure, vented, if only a little. But then she says: “To what end? What happens if I find them? We run away together. Probably die together—and a whole lot sooner than any of us would’ve hoped for. Not much use in that. We can be useful here. We can change things with the gifts we’ve been given.” She places his hand on her knee. “Besides, Cael, we’re family now.”

“We’re Obligated, but not yet married.”

She leans her head on his shoulder. “No, but we will be soon.”

Before he can say anything, she’s standing back up. “Mother Esther wants to say some things to you. Talk about . . . what comes next and all.”

Mother Esther?

“Oh. Uh. All right.”

Wanda stoops and kisses his cheek. Her lips are warm. Her breath smells of grated apples. Then the girl, his Obligated, retreats from the room, and he wonders what happened to her in the time he was asleep. The Blight, obviously, but it’s more than that. She’s different. Still Wanda, at the heart of it all, but she’s tougher, too. More self-assured.

He doesn’t know what to make of that. He likes it, though.

Not much time to consider it further, because Esther must’ve been waiting right outside the door. The woman does not walk in so much as she seems to drift into the room, the way pollen drifts across plasto-sheen after a piss-blizzard—it’s effortless and ethereal. Divine, almost, as if she’s not even human.

And maybe she’s not. He picked up a young man purporting to be her son from the Saranyu, a man who—while only a few years older than Cael—still looks too old to be this woman’s child. The Blight isn’t just in her or a part of her. She
is
the Blight. Hell, for all Cael knows, it started with her. Maybe she was the first.

The witch sits and reaches back and grabs some of her hair—platinum with streaks of gold and filaments of true green—and begins to idly braid it.

“Time is not kind,” she finally says after a long silence.

“I don’t follow.”

“Everything keeps moving forward, with or without our permission. We can’t stop it. Can’t slow it down or turn it around. Life continues. Time progresses. Everything alive moves steadily toward death, and everything dead plays host to new life. Time continues, and it’s up to us to choose what we do with it. I wish that we had more time together. All of us, here. But that is no longer possible.”

“You’re still speaking like a . . . like the damn Maize Witch and not like a person who wants to be understood. You wanna say it, get to it.”

A perfume rises off her. It’s her breath. Before this moment he’s never seen or smelled the blooms of a Sweet Alice flower, but he pictures a cluster of little white petals and
somehow
he knows that this is the scent that’s crawling up his nose and winding tight around all the switches and levers inside his brain—he can feel it tugging, pulling. But he’s aware of it, too, in a way that he wasn’t before, and he steadies himself against it, pushing Esther’s control away.

His lips curl in a snarl: “Don’t. I’m not a poppet doll, so don’t try to make me dance. You want something, say what it is or get out.”

She recoils. The whites of her eyes shoot through with little tendrils—same size and shape as bloodshot veins, but these are like runner-vines searching dirt for sustenance. Then she blinks and they’re gone. She smiles.

“You’ve changed,” she says.

“I’m the same.”

She offers no rebuttal, but her smirk tells the story:
Oh no, you’re not
. Instead, she says: “You don’t want to stay here, do you?”

“No. I sure don’t.”

“You could do a lot of good here. This could be your home.”

“This won’t ever be my home, lady. And you won’t ever be my mother, no matter what Wanda thinks to call you. I got family and friends. They’re my home.”

She smiles stiffly. “Then I want your help.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“You’re special. Different.”

“C’mon. You’re surrounded by . . . special people.”
Blightborn
. “You alone have more power in your pinkie finger than I will ever have.”

She smiles. “You ever play Checks?”

Checks. Simple enough game board: red and black squares, alternating. Red pieces on the black squares, black pieces on the red. Each a round piece with a different sigil carved into the top of it: crowns, pistols, horses, butterflies. That makes each piece different, each capable of its own move and only that. Goal is to move your pieces, jump them over the enemy’s to knock them off the board.

“Pop was a . . . a godsdamn mastermind at that game. He taught me early, and I always thought I had him, you know? But somehow by the end he always managed to jump my damn Queen and knock my ass outta the game.”

Pop used to say:
In this game, the Queen is everything.

A deep ache lances through him. He misses Pop and Mom. Misses them so bad it’s like a living absence, a hungry wound.

He wonders if they’re even still alive.

“The Queen,” she says. “I bet you were aggressive with her.”

“Hell yeah I was. Most powerful piece on the board. Can go any direction, jump any poor dummy she comes across. She’s a big gun, that one.”

“And yet, you always lost her.”

“I did.”

“What’d your father do with his Queen?”

“Always held her back.”

“And he always won.”

He shoves his tongue into his cheek. “Yeah. That’s right. It’s just—I can’t wrap my head around it. Why have a weapon like that if you’re not gonna use her?”

“She’s the most potent, but also the most vulnerable.”

“Why?” But then he thinks about it. “Because she’s just one piece.”

Esther smiles. “Exactly that. She is
just
one piece. That’s why you have all the other pieces. To support her. To protect her until that moment when her powers must be used.”

He gets it now. “You’re saying you’re the Queen.”

“It feels a bit ego-fed, but the idea is the same, yes.”

“So that makes me . . . what? One of your peon pieces?”

“You are no peon, Cael McAvoy. You’re more important than that. Though it remains to be seen how important. Are you a Black Rider? Or maybe a Hierophant? Or a Gunfighter? Depends on how tricky you are.”

“I’m not tricky at all. If I’m not a peon, then I’m damn sure the Hermit.” The Hermit—a piece he never quite understood. It just sits there. Can’t move unless to jump an enemy piece that gets near it. But that’s who he wants to be now. He wants to just stay away from all this nonsense.

“You’re too powerful to be a Hermit.” She says it again: “I need your help, Cael. Things are moving fast. The Heartland is on the brink.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means the Empyrean are going to take all our pieces and knock over the game board. They’re taking over whole towns, turning the folks there into metal monsters. It’s war, and the Heartlanders are losing.”

“And what can I do about that?”

“You can fetch something for me.”

“
Fetch.
Like a dumb dog. See? Peon.”

“No. Fetch, like a skilled, trained hound.”

“You’re not making me feel any better comparing me to an animal.”

“You’re assuming I put
men
above
dogs
in my assessment of animals.”

“Okay. Fine. So, whaddya want me to fetch?”