Were-

by Seanan McGuire

  Mara giggled a little, nervously, and felt her face flaming. She wasn’t embarrassed, though. She was triumphant.

  Garrett leaned over and whispered, “That was amazing.” His breath was as warm as sunlight. “You’re like a professional. Why didn’t you tell me you could sing like that?”

  “It’s nothing special,” she said modestly, though she was rather astonished herself. Her mother always teased her that she could barely follow a tune, but then, her mom hated listening to other people sing. This felt wrong, somehow, like a dream. Surely Mara would remember if she’d suddenly learned to sing?

  Garrett held out his guitar but she shook her head. She could no more play a guitar than she could fly to the moon. And she had no desire to ruin the perfection of this night with stumbling, halting attempts to recapture what she’d just done. No, as it stood right now, this was a perfect night to end her summer on. She didn’t want to ruin it.

  Sighing happily, she wondered if Mom had built a hotel on Park Place yet and won the game like she always did. She wondered if Dad had eaten the last of the fish steaks, and also wondered why her stomach rumbled so enthusiastically at the thought; he was a terrible cook. Of course, she hadn’t eaten much of the bruised steak he’d served her, so maybe that was why she was so hungry now. She wondered if Garrett was going to laugh at her for making these embarrassing noises.

  Instead, he said the words she’d been hoping to hear for the last month: “You want to go for a walk?”

  She set down her bottle while he tucked his guitar safely into its case. If her hand was empty, maybe he’d offer to hold it. They stepped away from the party, and walked in silence until Garrett took her hand carefully and threw out a teasing question about all the boyfriends she must have back home. She felt herself blushing with the effort of acting oblivious. This was it. She was going to kiss the handsomest guy she’d ever met, and she was going to tell Kyla all about it tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. Unless Ky’d had an amazing summer, this was so going to be the juiciest thing they’d ever had to talk about.

  She felt his thumb exploring the bandage on her hand. “What happened?” She told him the story of her great fishing adventure, only leaving out the part where she got sick, and he laughed at all the right parts, though she wished he’d leave her bandage alone. Didn’t he know that people bandaged things because they hurt? Still, this was Garrett, and she’d forgive him anything if he’d just look at her with those eyes again...

  His hand was slightly clammy, but his body radiated heat. She shivered and enjoyed the sensation of being surrounded by his warmth as he pulled her closer to him. When they were far enough away from the bonfire that the individual voices had blurred together, he bent his head down and kissed her gently, just pressing his lips against hers. The shock of electricity that careened down all her nerves startled her, but she felt more alive than she’d ever been.

  All her thoughts were centered on the taste of him in her mouth, salty and sweet as taffy. Warm as sunlight on a hot summer day. As delicious as a promise she meant to keep.

  “Ow!” He yelped, pulling back hard and wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. His grin was reassuring, though, as he reached out a hand and ran his fingers from her shoulder down the front of her t-shirt. “You’re enthusiastic,” he teased. “It’s ok. I like a girl who does more than just stand there. I can’t believe I thought you were such a goody-goody when I met you.”

  The sound of the waves was overwhelming. It sounded like the ocean was inside her brain, and she longed to be in the water, to bring him into the water with her. Laughing, she dared him with her eyes to follow, toeing off her sneakers and kicking them aside as she went, teasing him with glimpses of her flesh as she pulled her tee shirt over her head and unhooked her bra. Her long hair tickled her shoulder blades as she ran; letting him pursue her, letting him think he could catch her. Letting him think he wanted to.

  She dove headfirst into the surf, and it was like coming home. While the summer night’s air had been stiflingly hot, the water was perfect, cool and silver. Garrett splashed in beside her, his big clumsy body as out of place here as a bull’s, as a human’s. Mara reached for him, clinging as her legs grew weak. She cupped the back of his neck, pulling his face down to her in the shallows. He made a noise of surprise against her mouth, and it was like feeling the deep sounds of whale-song echoing in her bones. She felt her lips stretch wide, as if her mouth was growing to accommodate more nerves, more sensation there, at the tip of her tongue and there, along the line of her lips where the flesh was so sensitive...

  Her hands were all over his body now, plucking at his clothing, pinching the fat, hot flesh beneath. He tried to pull away, but she held him there easily, nibbling at him, then taking him in, so salty and rich in her mouth. When his moans turned to whimpers, she sang to him so sweetly that her voice harmonized with his ragged breaths until his life faded into the sounds of the sea.

  After that, it was a long night of swimming, of singing, of doing things she’d never even dreamed of in her home on top of a mountain. Then at dawn, she coughed and spluttered. The waves flung her to shore, rejecting her, keeping only the fiercest part of her and leaving her bereft, forlorn, completely alone. Gathering up her clothing, Mara staggered home. She did not look at his guitar, leaning against the driftwood log where he’d left it. She did not pause by the dying embers of the fire. And she certainly did not look back to see if anything might still be drifting like kelp in the surf.

  When her mother found her lying naked on her sandy, fouled bed, she just stroked Mara’s tangled hair and didn’t try to meet her eyes. “We’ll be home tomorrow, sweetie. It’s easier there, I promise. So far from the sea.”

  Something about her voice made Mara raise her head to stare at her mother’s tongue running along the edge of her front teeth, back and forth. “You knew,” she rasped, through her salt-roughened throat. “Why’d you bring me here? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The hand stroking her hair faltered, then continued its slow soothing motion: as rhythmic as waves, as inevitable as currents, as slow as a heartbeat pulsing through dying limbs. Mara’s mouth tasted of blood, and without warning, she vomited over the side of her bed. Her mother held her hair away from her face and dropped a beach towel on top of the mess, preventing Mara from seeing if that had really been a fingertip. His left hand, she thought muzzily. She’d seen the slightly yellowed callus left by the strings of his guitar.

  With a sigh, her mother sat up and looked out the window toward the sea. “You’re so much your father’s child. I didn’t know if you had it from me. I had to be certain.”

  Mara didn’t want to say the words, but she blurted out, “Did you ever do something like this?” Her mother nodded, and Mara forced out the question: “Is he still alive?” She was pretty sure Garrett wasn’t. She was pretty sure that was a good thing, given the parts of last night that she remembered.

  “My first boyfriend?”

  Mara nodded her head and her mother said quietly, “Yes, sweetie. But don’t worry. Next time it’ll be easier to stop before you get so carried away.” There was a long silence, broken only by the eternal sound of the waves on the strand before her mother sighed. Bending low she kissed Mara’s gritty forehead, like a benediction or an apology. “Let’s go tell your dad we’re nearly ready to go. He’ll need a few minutes to put his leg back on.”

  AMONG THE GRAPEVINES, GROWING

  Eliora Smith

  I was gardening when it happened. I called it that, but it was a long way from a garden. That summer, the most I managed to keep alive was the few potted plants I brought with me. Those, and the grapevines, and myself.

  But the grapevines didn’t need my help.

  I used to have a marvelous garden, back when I still lived with my grandmother, full of happy flowers and thriving herbs and more zucchini than I knew what to do with. My grandmother raised me. She was always there for me, even before my mother died, before the depression hit,
before any of it. She taught me almost everything I know: how to garden, how to cook, how to look things up, and how to fix just about anything that ever broke.

  And she taught me how to be alone, too. How to be alone, and how to know you aren’t.

  She used to talk to plants. She used to talk to everything—but only the plants talked back, she said.

  I told her plants couldn’t talk.

  “You just have to learn how to listen,” she told me.

  I didn’t believe her.

  I kept talking to her plants anyway, after she died. And they grew. Not as well as when she was taking care of them, but enough to share. And that, Grandma always said, was enough.

  But it couldn’t last. With my grandmother gone and her savings spent on medical bills, I got less than a year in her house. Just enough time to finish off one last crop, and see the next year’s perennials begin to bloom.

  Leaving was bittersweet. I grew up in that house. I had so many memories there, good and bad. I’d sat shiva there three times, once each for my mother and grandfather, when I was young, and then again for my grandmother. It was too many, and some days, in the quiet of the empty house, it was all I could think about.

  And besides, I could always start a new garden.

  So when I moved out here, I tried to do that. The place wasn’t in great shape—some of the plants in the yard threatened to overrun the house, and the wooden porch was unfinished and half rotten in a few places. But it was cheap, and it had a yard, and I wouldn’t need a roommate. Besides, there was something almost charming about it, like a house from a fairytale. Set back in the woods, tangled in roots and vines, like the earth was reclaiming it.

  I was determined to make it mine.

  I started off by hacking away at the vines—wild grapes, invasive bastards. My grandmother had taught me plenty about invasive plants. I started off hopeful, imagining myself a knight, my clippers a magic sword. I could do this. I could hack my way through the brambles to the castle beyond and rescue whatever poor soul lay trapped inside, sleeping away the centuries. The vines were thick in places, some of them an inch or more, and hard, like wood. I fought with them for hours, my muscles aching and my skin stinging as the sharp, broken pieces scratched at it. I heaved the corpses of branches off the side of my deck. I imagined them smothering the rest of the vines until they all lay, dead and dying, in the dirt. It was a satisfying thought.

  I went inside, exhausted but victorious, and past ready for a shower. Before I peeled off my sweat drenched clothes, however, I put some potted plants out on the deck—five of the six I had saved from my grandmother’s garden. The sixth pot I left in my kitchen window. I needed a piece of my grandmother there, with me while I ate. Food nourishes your body, but meals nourish your heart, and food can’t make a meal unless you share it.

  That’s what my grandmother told me, anyway.

  Inside, I undressed and stepped into the shower. Hot water cascaded over aching muscles and gave cuts a fresh sting. For a few minutes, the world melted away. It was only me and the water. I felt new. Refreshed. Slightly raw—but stronger.

  Finally, I forced myself to turn the water off. I stepped out of the shower stall, shivering and over-damp. Not so strong now. Just tired.

  Tired, and alone.

  Feeling empty, I went to my room. I lay on my bed, not caring that my wet hair was soaking the sheets.

  When I woke up, the sun was shining.

  Sitting up was hard. I felt anchored, somehow, to the spot. My skin stuck to the sheets in places. A little effort removed it, but what caused it to stick in the first place I had no idea. It was like being bound by pinpricks of hot glue. I rubbed at my arms. Everything felt strange, out of place. As if I was not quite myself.

  But then, I supposed, it shouldn’t be too surprising. The first few nights in a new house always feel strange.

  My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I had skipped dinner the night before. Food, though, seemed unappetizing, the very act of eating unpalatable. Impossible. I downed a bottle of water instead, even though it made my stomach slosh, and went about the rest of my morning routine.

  I thought briefly that I should finish unpacking. My stomach sank as I imagined going through the boxes with their cold, practical labels. Everything I owned had been my grandmother’s.

  No, it was too much. It couldn’t be approached all at once—a box at a time, maybe. But not yet. First, I would deal with the house. I had gotten most of the grapevines the day before; perhaps today I could finish. If I worked hard, maybe I could be planting by next week.

  When I stepped outside, though, my heart sank. The vines seemed so much worse than when I’d left them. They had once more wound their way up onto the deck. They weren’t as thick as I remembered, but they were almost as prominent, twisting around the railings and creeping towards the outer walls of the house.

  And at my feet, a broken pot, the plant inside it crushed in the grip of the vine.

  I repotted the remains of the plant and moved it and the others inside. After that I went back to hacking at the grapevines, the sun seeping into my skin, giving my arms strength for the fight. The vines seemed to twist around my limbs, trying to stop me in my tracks. I fought with them for the rest of the week, barely eating, barely sleeping either, but drinking several bottles of water a day. Every day the plant seemed to come back angrier and stronger than before—and something strange was happening to my body. My arms ached. My entire core ached. I kept the blinds wide open whenever I was inside, soaking up the sunlight as though I was starving for it, but I rarely felt hungry—at least, not for food. My stomach seldom complained, and even when it did, its emptiness seemed far away, as though it was happening to someone else. But there was a hunger deep inside of me, a hunger for something I couldn’t understand that ran deep into my core and through my veins, filling every part of me. A loneliness, and a longing, and a weakness for lack of whatever was lacking. And there was—something—growing on my arm, tiny sprouts of green that grabbed onto things when I sat or slept.

  * * *

  One week later, I found myself outside in the almost-light of early morning. I was kneeling, naked, my legs pressing down into the ground. The damp of the dew sat, pleasantly refreshing, in my chest and on my skin, and my hands…my hands were buried in the dirt. The hunger that had been growing inside me for the past 2 weeks—the hunger which sat, not in my stomach, but throughout the whole of me—was beginning to wane.

  I sank back against my heels, resting my hands on my thighs. I felt alone again. It was only then that I realized that, for a moment, the loneliness of the empty house had dimmed, replaced by a connection that I couldn’t define.

  Leaves brushed against my skin. The vine had snaked a tendril out around one of my legs. I could feel it squeezing, firm and gentle at the same time, like the hand of an old friend. I lingered in its touch—then moved to yank my leg away. As I did, I found my legs held fast to the ground. And I could feel why: little tendrils of self had tangled themselves in the dirt, breathing in its nutrients. I pulled hard and the roots, still new and shallow, came out. And roots were what they were. This wasn’t a fungus or a skin disease, it wasn’t growing on my skin like a parasite. This was mine: my body and myself and my being. For a moment, the roots felt more a part of me then my arms and legs themselves.

  I got to my feet, feeling displaced and strange within myself. I rubbed my hands on my legs, streaking the dirt across my tanned skin. Still bare—I had forgotten I was naked. Shame seemed foreign to me, but I glanced around, from habit more than nerve. The morning still held the wet grayness that comes when the colors of dawn have leeched away. Perhaps no one but me was awake yet. Either way, the yard was hidden by trees.

  “We’re not friends,” I said out loud. My voice was out of place among the chirping of the crickets and the birds.

  I stayed inside for the rest of the day.

  * * *

  Despite my attempts to stay away from the vine, m
y sleepwalking continued. Every morning I woke up with my hands in the earth, trying desperately to take my fill before I, in my waking state, denied myself. Trying desperately to soak up what sun I could before I shut myself inside.

  But whatever I was taking in, it wasn’t enough. I was weak and exhausted, starving no matter how much I forced myself to eat. A hopeless, gloomy numbness settled over me. I had felt this before, or something like it: The feeling of isolation and grayness that cuts into your stomach until pain turns into apathy. I had felt it for most of my life. And mostly, I had learned to cope.

  Perhaps that’s why it took so long for it to become unbearable, or perhaps it was just that the apathy of my renewed depression precluded any attempt to find a solution. I had plenty of tricks—self talk and socializing and keeping busy—but none of them worked. Not this time. Not when I couldn’t even leave the house. And so I fell back on the one thing that required little effort on my part:

  I waited.

  I began to isolate myself, to lock myself away from the sunlight and the greenery my body was screaming for. I woke up every morning in the dirt, then let the sickly grayness in my mind push away whatever had brought me there. I started keeping a blanket and a set of clothes out on the porch. Each morning I would numbly dress myself, with dead skin and fumbling hands, and I would go inside.

  But my body was changing in ways I couldn’t ignore, and the strange new urges were growing stronger. The tiny sprouts on my skin had grown into leaves, and the skin itself was beginning to change color, it’s ordinarily olive hue becoming more prominent, brightening toward a deep spring green.