The Gift of Sky and Soil (Father Sky Book 1)

by Gillian Zane

  “Not at all, it’s nicer than my apartment. Never spent much time there, so I never put much effort into making it comfortable.” I shrugged and poured myself more cereal.

  “I feel much more comfortable with you staying there as well. I can’t wrap my head around what is going on, and I feel much better that you are here, at least there are two of us.”

  “I don’t think he literally meant for me to never leave, Miley. I don’t mind coming back and forth from Baton Rouge, if it’s needed. My lab is in Baton Rouge.”

  “You’ll stay here, it’s for the best.”

  “Sure.” It was for the best. I should definitely stay here. She looked at me quizzically as if what I had said made her pause.

  “What just happened?”

  “I don’t know?” I didn’t know what she was referring to. Maybe she heard a sound. Was the god back?

  “My voice came out all full of resonance or something. Did you hear how different it was?”

  “Sounded the same.” I munched away at the cereal. It was really rather tasty; I hadn’t eaten this kind of cereal since I was a kid.

  “Stop eating.” I brought the spoon down from my lips and let it drop into the bowl. I had the eeriest feeling that what I was doing was wrong. I shouldn’t be eating.

  Miley gaped at me again.

  “Why did you stop eating?”

  “You told me to.”

  “Do you always do as you’re told?” I frowned at her. Why was she talking to me like I was a child?

  “Of course not. I do like to follow the rules, though,” I confessed.

  “Raise your right hand.” Her voice was all weird. I heard it and then stared at my hand, which was high in the air. I smelled wind and rain.

  “What are you doing to me?”

  “When I say things a certain way, you do them,” her voice wavered a bit. “Like the police officer.”

  “Do it again.” This time, I concentrated on her words.

  “Stand.”

  The smell of clouds, sky, and thunderstorms washed over me, and I tried to stop it, but I stood. I let the thunderstorm in and wind around me and was finally able to sit.

  “How did you do that?” she asked.

  “I brought the smell of the thunderstorm inside of me. I think it gave me the strength to resist you. Try again.” I held strong to that smell.

  “Stand.” I didn’t stand, but I really wanted to.

  “Well, is this my superpower? It didn’t last that long,” she pouted, and the way her teeth curved over her lips made things tug down below my belt that I didn’t want to think about. No time for drama and sex when we had a goddess to stop.

  16

  Zeke was driving because I didn’t feel like concentrating on the road. He had protested at first. He looked kind of green when he realized what kind of SUV it was, but then slid behind the wheel excitedly.

  “This SUV cost double what I make in a year,” he said as he maneuvered it onto the highway.

  “I bought it used. I’m not stupid, probably just your yearly salary. Isn’t that what most people do?” I asked.

  “Still.”

  “Are you one of those men that gets insecure when a woman makes more money than you?”

  “I have no issue with having a sugar momma, botanists make next to nothing.” He threw a smile my way and if I didn’t have logic on my side, I would think he was flirting. Well, I had kind of started the flirting.

  We had been on the road for about an hour when he pulled into the parking lot of a run-of-the-mill single living apartment complex. It boasted a big banner that said, “You could live here, 1 bedrooms starting at $1000” on the fence.

  “Home sweet home.” He put the car into park.

  “I can’t imagine being cooped up in a one bedroom when we were on complete lockdown.” I got out of the SUV and followed him up two flights of stairs.

  “I was always an essential worker. My lab likes to at least try to work on the cures, never got close, but we tried.”

  “You might be able to make some progress on this one,” I offered.

  “Possibly, but I don’t think what needs to be done will be accomplished in a lab, though.” On the third floor, he stopped at the first door and unlocked it to reveal a spartan apartment. Everything was neat and tidy, but there wasn’t much of it. A newish looking sofa sat in front of a medium sized television. A kitchen that looked untouched, a bedroom with only a bed with a random patterned comforter hastily thrown over it. He slid open the mirrored doors of the closet and revealed neatly hung clothing and a small dresser.

  “What are you thinking?” I sat on the bed, moving over when he placed a large suitcase on the mattress next to me. “Pile it up, I’ll put it away,” I added.

  “I’m thinking we’ll have to eradicate whatever is pumping out that pollen. It’s gotta be from the plant or plants I was tracking in the swamp. I think we found it, and that was when she found us.”

  “I kind of remember something, big purple flowers, it was beautiful.” I started to fold the clothes he handed me, and after a few moments, we were done.

  “I don’t know what that says about me that I can fit everything I own in one suitcase.” He looked down at it disappointedly.

  “Not everything.” I gestured to the nightstand and bathroom.

  “Yeah, I do have toiletries.” He went into the bathroom and brought out a small bag, presumably stuffed with said toiletries.

  “You have any photos, or anything like that you want to bring?” I asked, regretting my question the moment I saw his face fall.

  “Not really. Family is from New Iberia, and we lost most of everything during Gaston.” He was talking about the massive Cat 5 hurricane that hit two years back. “I was getting my PhD at the time, so I kept most of my stuff at the family home. Now, this is about it.”

  “Nothing made it?” I asked, not knowing why I kept up, he was obviously distressed by the topic.

  “Knocked the house clear off its pilings, nothing survived, not even my parents.” He got quiet, and I reached out a hand and took his.

  “Fucking sucks.” I knew exactly how he felt.

  “Yeah, it does.” He looked around the room, as if just realizing where he was.

  “Anything else?”

  He walked to the nightstand and opened the drawer, fishing out a small tin box. I assumed it had a few personal things inside.

  “You really have that place stocked. I don’t need any kind of kitchen things, not that I cooked much.” He zipped the suitcase up when I was done rolling up the last shirt.

  “Thanks for this,” he said and motioned to the suitcase. “And I mean everything.”

  “Neither one of us had much of a choice in this situation. I’m just lucky enough to have everything set up so I can handle things. Take advantage of it.”

  “We’re accepting this rather easily, wouldn’t you think?” He placed the luggage on the ground and began wheeling it to the front of the apartment.

  “We are. You think he did something, the Rag guy — god, whatever he is?”

  “I do, which brings up all kinds of free will arguments in my head. Shouldn’t we have free will? Didn't he say he couldn't force us?”

  “He did ask us which side to choose, maybe that allowed him to roofy us or something, to make us more accepting. I mean, I was raised Catholic, this should go against all of my beliefs.” I picked up the only decorative item in Zeke’s apartment, a little cactus statue.

  “Oh, bring that.” he smiled at the little statue. “My boss gave that to me. I get the religious thing. My mom’s Muslim and my father was agnostic but kind of practiced a form of Pantheism.”

  “Pantheism?” I hadn’t heard of that one before.

  “Ironically, it is sort of like Gaia worship. Earth Mother.”

  “What a position we’ve been placed in, Earth or Humans. I feel like I’m making the wrong decision. She’s right, we haven’t been that good to our planet.”

 
; “But how can that justify the death of billions?”

  “It can’t, and it shouldn’t be one or the other, but when have conflicts been fair?”

  Zeke had a lot more items at his lab, and we had to pull my SUV right up to the back door.

  “I think we might have to utilize your new gift for this one,” Zeke said as he fished out an ID in his bag.

  “What should I expect?”

  “There will be a security guard at the front. No one is allowed in without a badge, and there will be at least one or two lab assistants and the director there. They won’t take kindly to me removing some of the equipment. But they are staying isolated so they don’t expose themselves or others. I had planned on requisitioning it, for a field lab, but that might take a lot longer.”

  “A field lab, that would work? If you told them that, right?” I pulled my mask up over my mouth and nose.

  “Yes, if I show them the graphs, the amount of pollen in the area, they would let me.”

  “Good to know.” I followed him to the front of the building.

  “Good morning, Dr. Salvesen.” A security guard stood at the front door, encased in a plexiglass security box.

  “Charles,” Zeke greeted him, holding up his badge. The guard looked at me suspiciously.

  “Does she have a badge, doctor, you know I can’t let her in without a visitor badge at least?”

  “I do have a badge, you checked it, let me in.” I said in the tone of voice that I knew would get the job done. The guard’s eyes went dull for a second.

  “You do have a badge. I checked it. Please, enter.”

  “Thank you, Charles,” I said.

  “That’s amazing,” Zeke said as soon as we got out of earshot of the guard.

  “It feels weird.”

  “I hope whatever change I get is that cool.” I scoffed and smiled at him when he held the door open for me.

  “Grab that cart over there.” We were in a large lab. “I don’t need much.”

  “Zeke, I didn’t expect you today.” An older woman came into the room wearing a full-on protective suit.

  “My tests were off the charts, Ingrid. Off the charts. I need equipment. I’m going to set up a field lab near the bloom. I have to look into this more. We have to find the plant producing this.”

  “You’ll have to fill out the requisition paperwork, Zeke. Get approval from the dean.”

  “The paperwork has been filled out. Zeke got approval from the dean. He’s cleared to take whatever he needs. It was on your desk, you filed it away, remember?”

  “Oh yes, silly me. You did. The paperwork is all done, take whatever you need. Will I be seeing your results soon?”

  “I’ll email you the data when I get back to the field lab.” Zeke began moving equipment onto the cart.

  “And who is this, Zeke? I don’t see her badge. You know we shouldn’t bring people in here; they risk contamination.” The woman frowned at me.

  “I’m Zeke’s new lab assistant, you’ve met me before. I’m a charming and brilliant assistant. I will be helping him at the field lab.”

  “Ah yes, new lab assistant. How are you liking working here? What was your name again?”

  “Amaline Lopez, the new lab assistant.”

  “Amaline Lopez, the new lab assistant,” she repeated.

  “You’re amazing, scary, but amazing,” Zeke said as we wheeled the cart out the back door and began loading it into the back of the SUV.

  “Thanks, I think.”

  17

  For the last four years, I hadn’t ventured far from my home. I went between my apartment and the college and then when I got my new job, I went to the lab located on the college campus. Most of the time, I ate on campus, and the few little groceries I picked up were at the corner grocery near my home. I lived a very limited life. Not that was abnormal. Most of us had lived this type of lifestyle since early 2020. There was nothing special about e. As Miley and I made our way out of the campus area and into downtown Baton Rouge, I realized how limited I had been.

  In the area the riots had occurred, houses and business were still burned to the ground, their charred remains like bones of some long dead dinosaur. Half of downtown had burned, including most of the businesses, and the outlying houses as well. They had used it as an all-out excuse for a war, one ideology against another, with the real reason for all of the outrage dismissed because in the grand scheme of things those voices were too small to be heard. The fighting had only stopped as the ranks of rioters were decimated by the second wave of illnesses, a swine flu resistant to heat and airborne. It had targeted teens and twenty somethings, like the one before it had targeted the elderly. All those people under thirty crowded together as they protested our government were ripe for spreading a new illness.

  Could the Mother have been behind the riots? Fueling them to make the illness spread more? I didn’t see how she could have caused it; they were all so random but so incendiary. The Bay Bridge massacre and the government's limitations of gun sales fueled the first massive casualty riot, the mass shooting in Atlanta by a neo-Nazi got the next one going, the mass shooting in the French Quarter by an unknown assailant who was never caught which led to the police racial profiling spawned even more, then the Planned Parenthood bombing, the stand-off at Blackfoot Ridge, each one of those events had triggered more and more unrest, which led to the destruction of entire cities. Chicago had burned to the ground, along with Atlantic City, Portland and Seattle, Seattle only partially saved because of the downpours.

  Baton Rouge was only a small blip on the radar, but the city was decimated in parts. Residents had fled to the suburbs, leaving houses abandoned and foreclosed on. In each neighborhood you passed, the grasses reached the bottoms of windows, the streets over run with potholes and weeds. The only ones who couldn’t make it out of the city were either stubborn or too poor.

  The apartment complexes, like where I had lived, had stayed occupied because of its nearness to the colleges, full of professors and master and PhD level students. Cheap, clean, and close to the campus.

  I felt a pang of guilt that I had let the university life consume me and direct a blind eye toward what was going on in the world, but it had gotten too much. It was one thing after another for almost five years. Each sequentially worse as they progressed. As if something, or someone, was hell bent on destroying this planet, or at least destroying the humans which resided on it.

  As we left the suburbs, high-tailing it past the abandoned malls on a highway with no traffic, I breathed in a sigh of relief. The congested feel of the city was overwhelming.

  Once we were on a good stretch of highway, I pulled out my laptop and started trying to crunch the data, processing the blooms and the cases that resulted from those blooms, to try to track down something that would lead us to pinpoint where the Mother was manifesting these plants that were killing everyone.

  “Stop!” We were in the middle of nowhere, about ten miles away from Miley’s house.

  “What?” She startled, but did not pull over.

  “Pull over there.” I pointed to an area that had a wider shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” he asked but did as told.

  “Don’t you feel it?”

  “No, I don’t feel anything,” she said honestly.

  “C’mon.” I closed my laptop and put it on the back seat, opened the door, and the feeling of being right on track washed over me. Miley got out of the car and followed me, the ground was saturated from the recent rains, but it wasn’t a swampy area. This far away from the coast, the wood was more piney and the mud redder, than the cypress, black mud areas of coast. Flies buzzed around us as I led her into the wooded area near the road.

  “What are you talking about, feel it?” Miley asked, and there was a bit of fear in her voice.

  “Something is here, I can feel it. Like a spark calling to me.”

  “Like the clearing, is it like that?”

  “No, it’s not like that.”
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  It was the oddest feeling; something was in need. There was an invader, and there were things in need of help. I found it within only a few feet of the woods. The vines reached to the sky, choking and clawing at the beautiful pines. They didn’t belong here. They had been brought here on boats from areas that had things to combat them and eat them, but here nothing ate them, so they grew and grew and grew. And the plants underneath them couldn’t feel the sun anymore. The sun the pines usually let through.

  I had never seen an infestation like this before. So much kudzu, there looked to be a fence but it was now completely overrun, the roots of the kudzu shallow and reaching everywhere. It pushed deeper into the woods each day, growing faster than anything could handle it. It didn’t belong here, but it flourished.

  “It was the pine trees,” I whispered. “They’re dying. The kudzu attracted wasps, which are eating the pine, but not the kudzu.”

  “You heard the call of the pine trees?”

  “I think so.” I stuck my hand deep into the kudzu to find the bark of the pine. It wasn’t too late. It still lived underneath. The pine belonged here, the kudzu did not. And suddenly, I realized what the Mother meant. I knew exactly how she felt as I willed the kudzu to not exist anymore, and the vines fell away and the pines rejoiced as the sun cascaded over them for the first time in a long time.

  “Holy shit,” Miley breathed as the kudzu vines fell from the highest branches. As they hit the ground, they shriveled into dust.

  “They were dying.” I winced at my words.

  “For them to live, the vines had to die?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you found your superpower, Zeke.”

  “What?”

  “Plant whisperer,” she laughed, a spontaneous guffaw, and I couldn’t help but join her. The weight of what I had done eased from my chest. The weight of the meaning behind what I did still lingered, but now lightened at the humor in her eyes and the way she looked at me with joy.

  I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of her.

  “What was that for?”