The Killing Jar

by Jennifer Bosworth

  “Kenna, will you join our circle at the fire tonight?” Illia asked, spreading herbed butter on a thick slice of seed bread.

  “Your circle?”

  “Most nights we play music around the fire,” Stig explained. “Did your mother teach you to—” His words cut off, and he glanced at Rebekah with an expression that reminded me of a dog afraid it had incurred the wrath of a strict master.

  I looked from Stig to Rebekah. “I don’t know,” I said, ignoring the aborted question so as not to get Stig into trouble. “I don’t have my guitar.”

  Stig waved his hand at that. “If there is one thing we have plenty of at Eclipse, it’s guitars,” Stig said. “I should know. I made most of them.”

  He pushed his chest out proudly when he saw my eyes pop with wonder. It was like he’d just told me he was responsible for erecting Stonehenge.

  “You make guitars? Will you show me how?”

  Stig grinned. “Of course.”

  “Do you write music, Kenna?” Rebekah asked.

  I looked over to find my grandmother staring at me intently.

  I nodded. “I don’t know if I’m any good,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true. I knew I was good. I just didn’t know what these people considered good.

  “Your mother used to write songs,” Rebekah said, sounding far away, lost in memory. She sipped at her tea. “We don’t sing them anymore, but they were lovely. Sad, but lovely.”

  This news was nearly as much of a shock to me as it had been to discover I had a grandmother I never knew about. My mom had never told me she wrote music. She had never even alluded to the fact. There was so much she could have taught me, about music, about myself, but instead she had hoarded secrets, and asked me to do the same. But I remembered when I was very young, there was a song she used to sing to Erin and me to get us to go to sleep, a sort of lullaby.

  Sweet girl, don’t cry.

  Sweet girl, I hear you sigh.

  I’ll never let you go,

  But you still must dream alone.

  Sweet girl, don’t cry.

  Sweet girl, I hear you sigh.

  I’ll be here when you wake,

  So you won’t be afraid

  to dream alone.

  To dream alone.

  I’d thought it was a tune all parents knew and sang to their children, but now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe that lullaby had been one of hers. It was certainly sad and lovely, as Rebekah said my mom’s songs were. I wished she had told me who she was, or who she had been. I’d always known my mom was aloof, but I was coming to understand that it was more than that. She was a complete stranger.

  I feel like I don’t even know you. That was what I had said to her in the car, but I had immediately regretted my words. Now I was glad I had said them, gratified that she knew how I felt before she abandoned me. I’ll never let you go, my ass.

  “Maybe you could teach us some of your songs,” Rebekah suggested.

  I bit my lower lip, not sure I was ready to share my music again so soon. My performance at Folk Yeah! Fest seemed like it had happened to someone else.

  “Then it’s settled.” Illia clapped her hands excitedly. “You’ll come to the fire tonight and we’ll learn some of your songs.”

  When breakfast was finished, most of the Kalyptra departed to work in the fields and orchards and gardens, while a few stayed to clean up after the meal. I started to help clear the dishes, though I was desperate to get outside again and sample more anima. But Rebekah had other ideas.

  “Kenna, come to my study,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “I need to speak with you.”

  * * *

  “Did I do something wrong?” I asked when we were alone in Rebekah’s room. Maybe it was my perpetually guilty conscience doing my thinking for me, but it seemed like I had displeased Rebekah.

  Instead of answering my question, she said, “Have a seat,” indicating an arrangement of large pillows arcing in front of the fireplace.

  I lowered myself awkwardly onto one of the pillows and folded my legs, biting my lip to keep myself from rushing to apologize when I still didn’t know how I had offended, or even if I had.

  Rebekah took the pillow across from mine, lounging comfortably. After a pregnant silence that would have driven Blake crazy, Rebekah finally spoke.

  “How do you feel today?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  She smiled the kind of knowing smile that told me she could see right through me to the back of my brain, into the dark cellar where I stored my most appalling secrets. “Be honest.”

  I took a breath and sighed. Lying to Rebekah wasn’t going to get me anywhere. She was too perceptive.

  “When I woke up this morning the withdrawal symptoms or whatever you call them were back,” I told Rebekah.

  “Catharsis,” she corrected, and nodded for me to continue.

  “They weren’t as bad as they were yesterday, but I knew they would get worse,” I said. “Cyrus had me take anima out in the field, and after that I felt great again, but—”

  “But once it wore off, the hunger returned.”

  I nodded, averting my eyes in shame. “I don’t know how to control it.”

  “You can’t.”

  I blinked at her, wondering if I’d heard her wrong. “But isn’t that why I’m here? To learn how to control it?”

  “That’s what your mother would like,” Rebekah said. “But the real reason you’re here is because you can’t cull another Kalyptra. You’re here because your mom doesn’t want you to hurt her or your sister or anyone else. She understands how thorny your situation has become. It is one thing to experience catharsis after culling too much anima in too many forms, as you did. It is another to undergo catharsis after culling the most potent form of anima, which you also did.”

  I raised my eyebrows in question.

  “Human anima,” she clarified.

  I swallowed hard. So my mom had told her what happened in the basement. Had she also told her about Jason Dunn?

  Rebekah leveled her green eyes on me, her gaze intent and penetrating. I felt like she was peeling back layers of me using only her stare.

  “Have you taken human anima?” I asked, looking down, unable to maintain eye contact any longer.

  “Yes,” Rebekah said without hesitation, and I was surprised to hear no trace of guilt in her voice, and equally surprised that I was relieved at her lack of obvious culpability. She didn’t explain the circumstances that led to her taking human anima, and although I was desperate to know what had happened I didn’t ask. I had never spoken of what I did to Jason Dunn, and I guessed Rebekah would prefer not to talk about her experience either.

  “Unfortunately, the very nature of anima is addictive,” Rebekah said, “and the more potent the sources of it that you take, the more your cravings will escalate. The amount of anima in a nonsentient living thing like a plant is minimal and wears off quickly. The amount in an insect or spider is slightly more potent, and in a creature like a reptile or bird or mammal, more efficacious still, because those sorts of anima bring with them a trace of the vessel.”

  I shook my head, not sure I understood. “The vessel?”

  “The container. In some cases, a body. But there are other things that can hold anima, if one knows how to capture it.”

  I glanced toward the cupboard from which Cyrus had taken the sheep’s head jar. Rebekah saw where my eyes went and nodded.

  “We call them culling jars,” she said. “We use them to store anima.”

  I pictured the rows and rows of jars I’d glimpsed inside that cupboard, and I couldn’t suppress a shudder of desire. I unconsciously licked my lips like a dog salivating at the sight of meat.

  “What kind of anima?” I asked, hoping Rebekah couldn’t detect the grasping neediness in my voice.

  Rebekah cocked her head to study me a moment before answering. “Mostly animal,” she said.

  I swallowed hard, thinking of Jason Dunn killing Erin�
�s cat, Clint Eastwood, and its entire litter. Then I thought of the animals that had perished in the circle of death surrounding my house, the chaotic furor of sensations and impulses that had poured into me and flowed through me into the bodies of my mom and Erin. That had saved their lives. Lastly, I thought of Bully, the rambunctious little goat I’d named earlier that morning.

  “You kill the animals to take their anima?” I asked, horrified, and beneath that horror, desirous in a way I could not ignore or suppress.

  “Cull,” Rebekah corrected. “We don’t kill. We cull. We harvest. There is a difference.”

  “But if the animal dies—”

  “Kenna.” She spoke my name sharply, a reprimand, and I shut my mouth. The way my grandmother shifted from serene to commanding was going to take some getting used to.

  “Do you eat meat?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  “So do we,” Rebekah said. “The animals at Eclipse live good, happy lives, and when we need their meat we slaughter them humanely, and we preserve their anima in one of the culling jars so we can ration it over time and share it among the entire commune. The meat feeds our bodies, and the anima … well, it feeds everything else. Do you know what the word Kalyptra means?”

  I shook my head.

  “A Kalyptra is a veil. We call ourselves this because we know of the existence of a veil that obscures the divine world all around us, and we know how to lift that veil and see beyond it. Anima is how, Kenna. Anima heals our bodies and keeps us young, but more importantly it connects us to nature and expands our minds and our experience of the world in a way no one who is not Kalyptra can ever understand.”

  “Like a drug,” I said.

  “It is simply energy, but, yes, the experience can provide a dreamlike experience and enhance your senses, similar to certain drugs. And, as I said, the ability to cull anima comes with the potential to become addicted if you take too much, or if you take anima that is too powerful for your mind and body to manage.”

  “What kind of anima did I take yesterday?” I asked, thinking of the tranquility that had washed over me, so heavy that it had carried me straight into sleep. “It was lamb, wasn’t it?” I guessed before she could answer, remembering the shape of the jar.

  Rebekah nodded. “We craft the jars accordingly.”

  “But how?” I asked. “How do you get anima into the jars, and why are they able to contain it? It seems like the anima would just … leak out.”

  She waved one long-fingered hand in a dismissive gesture. “It’s not something I can explain. You have to experience the process for yourself in order to learn. I was taught by a bruja in Mexico how to make the jars.” She smiled. “Perhaps someday I will teach you, too.”

  She sat up and crossed her arms on top of her knees. “As to how we transfer anima from one vessel to another, I believe you already know something about that.”

  I looked down at my hands, picturing those strange, white threads that emerged from them when I took anima. “I guess so.”

  “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Kenna. What we are is something to be celebrated, not repressed or despised. Never be ashamed of who you are, sweet girl. You are Kalyptra. It doesn’t matter that you were raised apart from us. We are what we are, regardless.”

  “Does that mean you still consider my mom Kalyptra?” I asked her.

  Rebekah’s eyes shifted past me, as though my mom had just entered the room and interrupted us. “No,” she said finally. “She gave up her gift. She’s lost to us.”

  My heart tripped over a few beats. “You can give up being Kalyptra? How?”

  My grandmother turned her gaze back to mine, her eyes slightly narrowed, her mouth a flat, humorless line. For an instant she appeared decades older. Or perhaps it was just that her sudden bitterness wiped away her beauty.

  “Why would you ask such a thing? Did I not just tell you that being Kalyptra is a glorious privilege?”

  “I’m sorry.” I immediately regretted my question. “I was just curious. I mean, I’m way more curious about how we became, you know, the way we are to begin with.”

  Rebekah schooled the venomous expression from her face, and once again she was the stunning woman I’d first laid eyes on yesterday.

  “Of course you are, dear. Of course you are. There’s so much you don’t know about us. But we can’t cover it all in one day. I wouldn’t want to overwhelm you after the hell you’ve been through. What happened to your mother and sister … how horrible that must have been.”

  Tears seared the backs of my eyes, and I felt a hot pressure in my head like I was going to sneeze. My throat clamped down around my rising anguish, but it was no use.

  I had lost my entire family. I had lost them because of something horrible I did.

  I had brought them back, but that didn’t change the reality of how they had died.

  I broke then. Broke wide open, and all the tears I’d held back, all the sobs I had bottled, came bursting out.

  “My poor, sweet girl,” Rebekah said, and she came to me and wrapped me in her arms and held me for as long as I needed her to. At some point her hair loosened and fell from its bun on top of her head, and I felt a nostalgic rush of warmth for this woman I barely knew as her long, blond hair draped over my arms like a blanket of silk threads. It made me feel like a child again, the child I had been when my mom’s hair was long like Rebekah’s and I had hidden myself in it like I was hiding behind drapes while she sang me to sleep.

  Sweet girl, don’t cry.

  I was a child again, and I wanted to be taken care of.

  I wanted Rebekah to take care of me.

  LISTEN CAREFULLY

  I had anticipated I would get to spend the day with my grandmother, that maybe she would take me on a walking tour of Eclipse, during which we could cull another wildflower or two, or, even better, that we might sample from some of the jars in her cupboard. But when I had finished crying and pulled myself together, she rose from the pillows and held out her hand to help me up.

  “Now, sweet girl, I have work to do, and I imagine you’d like to get yourself cleaned up. Cyrus can show you to the bathhouse and bring you whatever you need.”

  “Oh. Okay,” I said, failing to hide my disappointment.

  Rebekah touched my cheek, and as I had last night when she touched me, I felt a pleasant charge on my skin, like a little bit of her anima had transferred to me. I didn’t know if that was possible, but that was what it felt like. She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “We’ll have plenty of time together. Don’t worry about that.”

  I nodded and tried to smile as Rebekah led me to the door and guided me out. “I’ll see you at dinner,” she said, and started to close the door, then paused with a look that said she’d just remembered something. “Kenna, one thing … you met Joanna?”

  I nodded, but didn’t elaborate on what Joanna had told my mom, that we should leave and not come back.

  “I would ask that you steer clear of her for now,” Rebekah said. “Joanna and your mom have a complicated history, and I worry that she might take some old grievances out on you.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I told Rebekah. I didn’t mention that I wondered if Rebekah might do the same thing.

  “Promise me that you will.”

  “What?”

  She stared at me with unblinking, expectant eyes. “Promise me that you will not talk to Joanna, even if she seems friendly.”

  “I—I promise,” I said faintly.

  “Good girl,” she said before closing her door, making me feel a bit like a puppy that had just been left at home alone for the first time.

  As I descended the stairs, I wondered what it was Rebekah was so busy doing alone in her room, while the rest of the Kalyptra worked in the fields and gardens, or tended to the livestock, or took care of the house. Maybe she saw her position as more managerial. Or royal. Regardless, the Kalyptra didn’t seem to have a problem with the way things were done at Eclips
e. They gave the appearance of perfect contentment and satisfaction with their lives. Joanna might be the exception to that, though. There was something different about her. She didn’t possess the same blissful tranquility as the others. Or maybe it was just my presence that was disrupting her sense of well-being. I wished I knew more about what had happened between her and my mom, but now that I had promised Rebekah I would avoid her I couldn’t exactly ask her to tell me all of my mom’s old buried secrets.

  So, of course she would be the first person I ran into when I got lost trying to find my way back to my room.

  “There you are,” she said when she saw me. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  She carried a guitar by its neck. Just looking at the instrument stole my breath. It was small and delicate, made from what I guessed was rosewood, and carved on the back was a design of moon phases and moths.

  Joanna held the guitar out to me. “Here,” she said. “It belonged to your mom.”

  “Really?” I accepted the guitar, cradling it against my chest and running my hands over the wood. This guitar was special, an instrument that might have a mind of its own. A voice it had earned from years of play. But I sensed it was a voice that had not been heard in a very long time.

  “Rebekah wanted me to get rid of it after your mom left,” Joanna said. “But I couldn’t do it. Your mom loved that guitar more than … well, more than a lot of things.”

  I opened my mouth to ask her to tell me more about my mom and how she’d been when she was Kalyptra, but then I remembered my promise to Rebekah and I closed it again.

  “Thanks,” I said simply.

  Joanna shrugged, as if it was no big deal, but I could tell by the intensity in her expression that it was. “She would have wanted you to have it. Your mom, not Rebekah.”