by Dia Reeves
Fortunately she’d discovered the incinerator Grissel had mentioned—a tall, skinny furnace of red brick shaped like an obelisk with an oval window at its center—that stood between the patio and the garden. An incinerator Rue had passed many times but had mistaken for a grave marker for Elnora.
Discovering the incinerator was great; it burned things quickly, without smoke, and only a faint scorched-flesh smell that probably no one but Rue could detect. However, its small size meant she could only burn a few things at a time. So while the incinerator cremated some of the pupae to less than ash, Rue would grab an armful from the stockpile down in the root cellar and dump it below in the small stand of centuries-old pine trees at the foot of the hill upon which the plantation sat, a good dumping ground for the legions of dead pupae. Unlike Westwood’s dogs, the things that lived in the pines weren’t picky about what they ate.
As she entered the woods, she couldn’t help scanning for the giant winter-furred moth queen or ice-winged butterfly that had created the pupae in the first place, even though she knew better. Before she began her mass extermination, she had dissected one of the pupae, and no way would the oily, toxic bottle-green sludge that had oozed from her incision have turned into anything beautiful. Or friendly. But just in case, Rue had left two of the pupae alive and spirited them down into the pines. Looks couldn’t always be trusted.
She found an animal track and dumped her armload of dead pupae. Repetitive, boring work, but still it was much easier to destroy pupae than her horrible first impression.
Several days had passed since she’d misspoken, and the Westwood children refused to let go of their hurt feelings. Her practiced expressions didn’t work. Half the time, they wouldn’t even look at her. They didn’t care if she pretended to have sniffles or seemed on the verge of tears. She learned to sit quickly at her end of the table, and as soon as the meal was over, she escaped to the cellar and went to work.
On her way back to the plantation, Rue received two phone calls: one from an agitated servant and one from her sister.
“Nettle! Hi! Are you okay? Did they force you to join? Did you tell them to drop dead?”
“That is not what I want to talk about.” Rue wasn’t used to her bubbly sister sounding so discouraged. “I’m calling you for you to talk. You are the interesting one. What are you doing these days?”
Rue paused by the incinerator. “They talked you into it, didn’t they?”
“No.”
“You’re already joined, aren’t you?”
“No! Stop these questions. I’m telling you, nothing is happening.”
“Because I will be over there so fast—”
“No! No, okay? I just want to hear your voice.”
Rue made herself calm down. Stuffed the remaining pupae she’d left in a nearby bag into the incinerator. Lit it. “Fine. Talking. I can do that. I just got off the phone with a servant who was attacked by a rose bush. How’s that for interesting?”
“Attacked?”
“You have no idea how wild things can get up here. The servant wasn’t even that upset; they’re such troupers.” As she spoke, Rue followed the directions the servant had given her, found a blue flagstone path that led toward the back of the property near the kennels.
“You sound so proud, you and your pet humans.”
Red roses trailed along the ground and across the path, scenting the air. Like rambling roses, except the flowers weren’t in clusters and the canes that the flowers grew along were long. And more flesh than wood. Rue approached cautiously.
“If anything, I’m the pet. They whistle and I come a-runnin’. But you’re no pet. You don’t have to do what anybody says. Don’t let our horrible, life-stealing parents push you around. You can do a lot better than—ouch!”
“What?”
“It scratched me!”
“What did?”
“The roses!”
Even as she spoke, two more canes whipped Rue across the backs of her legs, shredding her stockings.
“Roses are blooming there? In winter?”
Rue leaped off the path as it whipped at her again. “Roses or something pretending to be roses.”
“Like the rug from your first day. Lots of pretending going on in that house.”
“What should I do? I can reason with beasts. At least most times. But how do you reason with a plant?”
“Gasoline and a match sounds reasonable. Or leave it and come home and join with Dodder so I don’t have to.”
“You chose Dodder? My Dodder? You said you didn’t choose!”
“I didn’t join,” Nettle said, miserable. “I said I didn’t join. And I did not choose. He was chose for me. I thought they want me for the older brother, Heath, but he is not interested.”
“Heath’ll never be interested in settling down.” Rue stormed toward the carriage house, panting not from exertion, but from a sudden difficulty breathing.
Dodder?
“That’s why Heath is so awesome. Unlike his brother. Dandelion fluff has more personality than Dodder. I told our parents that.”
“They like fluff.”
“What they’d like is to make me jealous. They think they’re so subtle, planning all this so I can run home and protest the joining. Get me back in their clutches without having to beg my forgiveness.”
“Only you are subtle,” Nettle said. “Only you have plans and schemes.”
In the carriage house, Rue veered around the six-wheeled black car Westwood liked to be driven in. Westwood himself was in the backseat with Grissel, who was being driven in a different way. Not the best spot for a rendezvous since the car barely had any covering, didn’t even have windows; just a bit of cloth stretched across the roof.
“What is that noise?” Nettle said, as Rue snatched a jerry can from one of the shelves.
“Humans. Mating.” She left them to it, retraced her steps.
“Dodder wants to mate, but I only kiss him. He is very good.”
“Heath is better.”
“No he isn’t.”
“So that’s how you spend your time now? Making out with my old boyfriends? Pretending to be something you’re not. Pretending to be me?”
“I’m not the one pretending. That’s you. That’s your whole life! I don’t even know you anymore. When you are bored playing house with your humans, call me.”
Rue stared at the silent phone and then doused the fake roses in gasoline, ignoring the canes tearing at her flesh. “I’m pretending? To be human? Me? Do I seem anything like a human to you?” When the can was empty, she hurled it at the roses, which had withdrawn into a tight protective ball.
Of fear.
Afraid of her.
Roses with feelings? Rue’s anger drowned under a rising flood of wonder. “Hey there. Hi. Listen, don’t be scared.”
The plant stayed in its ball. Was it shivering?
“I’m not really going to light you on fire. I mean I was going to, but I can’t because I forgot to get matches. Kind of an oversight on my part. I’m Rue. Do you have a name?”
She waited, and though the roses relaxed out of the ball, it said nothing. Couldn’t? Where would it hide a mouth among the leaves and stems?
“Can you resettle somewhere else? I know you like it here in this high traffic area, but humans get really ornery about things trying to eat them. How about we move you down to the pines? Lots of animals live there that you can feed on. I’ll show you.”
Rue walked up the path and marveled as the roses slithered after her.
“Is that what you were doing? Feeding on me? On my blood?”
She caught one of the canes—definitely more flesh than wood—and studied it. Found not thorns, but suckers.
“So what did I taste like?”
The leaves on the branch in her hand turned brownish-yellow and the roses wilted and turned pale. Rue laughed, delighted. Especially when the branch bloomed again in good health, its point made.
“Well if humans ge
t ornery, heartless go ballistic. We really don’t like being eaten. I mean, you know, not by strangers. We can make ourselves taste horrific.”
Once they’d reached the pines, Rue directed the roses toward a feral hog track where it set down its roots, positioning itself over the trail in fragrant sprawl.
“Hey. Why don’t you do me a favor? See those pupae attached to the tree?” She pointed out an old mesquite that had been split in two by lightning. Or a really giant claw. The two halves grew apart in agonized, twisting arcs and she had secured one pupae at the height of each arc. “Can you make sure nothing bothers them?”
The rose bush spread further to include the mesquite in its realm of influence.
“Thanks!”
Rue walked back up the hill. She should have burned the roses. It was weak not to have. Westwood thought so, her family thought so. Luckily she wasn’t at home anymore, and Westwood didn’t get to tell her how to do her job. Nettle could have her old life; Rue didn’t need it anymore.
But she’d always need her sister.
She called Nettle to apologize.
But Nettle’s stolen phone was out of service.
Chapter 6
“Jake, what the hell? What’re you doing on the floor with that girl?”
Rue sat up, her hands on the prone man’s chest. Stared over her shoulder at the crowd in the doorway, at a man with a clipboard standing in front. A boss? Jake’s boss?
“I think he was attacked,” she said, using her best of-course-you-can-trust-me face. “I’ve been trying to calm him, get some sense out of him.”
Jake looked terrorized, pale and sweaty. Shaking. Holding his chest. She’d definitely overstayed her welcome. Rue surreptitiously buttoned her bodice while her back was still to everyone.
“It’s coming.” Jake writhed on the floor, curled into a ball. “Can you hear it?”
“You’re safe here.” Rue was lying, but what did it matter? “Nothing can get you now.”
Jake’s boss came closer, concerned. “What’s coming? What did it look like?”
“Big. Teeth. Wants to kill me. Don’t let it!”
Rue tugged at the boss’s pant leg. “There are some things running loose in this house. If I were you, I’d give Jake the rest of the day off, make sure he gets home okay.”
“Will do. Come on, Jake. Keep it together.”
Rue disappeared in the tumult, heart beating strong. However a fragile quality had developed within the fibrous tissues. She’d had her current heart for nearly a year, and probably wouldn’t be able to hold onto it much longer. But she could think about that another day.
Rue went out to resume the chore that the arrival of the big-hearted deliverymen had interrupted. She hadn’t been able to resist the influx of workers, of strangers. Unlike Westwood’s staff, strangers were fair game.
On the way to the cellar, she almost crushed a baby bluebird beneath her heel.
She scooped up the bird. Carried it to the nearby laurelcherry she assumed it must have fallen out of. In the tree hole, well above Rue’s head, other bluebirds chirruped happily together, unaware that their relative was below freezing to death. Rue facilitated a family reunion but twenty minutes later, as snow sugared the air, the bluebird she’d rescued was on the ground again. Pecked to death.
While the bluebirds’ murderous jubilation drilled into Rue’s frozen ears, more deliverymen wheeling huge crates on dollies invaded the kitchen patio. Although Rue was barely above their heads, with only a snow flurry and a damp, evergreen tangle as cover, no one noticed her.
In the midst of the chaos, Grissel directed everyone like a traffic cop, yelling over the wind that raised not a goose bump on her bare arms and legs, nor disturbed a tightly wound hair on her head. In the light of day, Grissel’s resemblance to Elnora was striking—a version of Elnora that someone had emptied of color, save for the eyes.
Despite the frigid temperature, she wore only a black dress with elbow-length sleeves and a calf-length hem. She didn’t wear stockings either, and while everyone else’s breath hissed dragon-like from their mouths, hers remained invisible, as though the air inside her was as glacial as the air outside.
“Take those to the theater,” she was saying. “No, not those.” She stopped one of the workers and stood quite close to him. “Those belong in the music room.”
When he tried to wheel his dolly around her, she wouldn’t let him.
“How lovely,” she purred, stroking his lustrous gray hair.
Grissel was attractive, in her deep-sea succubus sort of way, but the worker quickly freed his hair from her clutches.
“I’ll just wheel this thing where it belongs,” he said and hurried away, leaving her to gaze longingly after him and his glorious tresses. Grissel might still have been staring if Karissa and the twins hadn’t returned home from school.
Karissa ran inside while the twins paused on the patio to talk to their aunt. They wore the snow well; it nestled in their curls and melted on their noses. Like snow angels, minus the wings and the confusing theology.
“We need a servant,” Sterling told his aunt.
“The last servant you ‘needed’ can’t listen to birdsong without screaming into his apron.”
The twins exchanged guilty looks.
“He’s in therapy now,” Sterling said. “He’ll snap out of it.”
Grissel brushed Sterling’s hair off his forehead, a spiderlike motion. “Why do you even bother? John doesn’t need you to think for him; he needs you to not die. Go inside before you freeze.”
“Don’t go into mom-mode with us. You’re way outta your league.”
“Mom-mode?” Grissel’s shriek silenced the bluebirds. “I’m barely old enough to be your aunt, let alone your mother. Don’t mistake my intentions.”
“Sorry Aunt Grissel,” said the twins.
“We know it must be hard.” When Stanton sighed, Grissel swallowed his breath, but her own exhalation was barren. “Just remember, this is temporary. When—”
Grissel moved close, as if to kiss him. When Stanton shoved her away, startled, she pouted and turned hopefully to Sterling, who took refuge behind his twin.
“Then give me her.” Grissel pointed at Rue, surprising her out of the languor she’d fallen into from watching them, from drinking their conversation like water.
The twins looked up…and then quickly away. They’d been doing so all week, at mealtimes, in the hallways. Ignoring her so aggressively that attention from anyone felt like balm.
Usually.
Grissel’s attention burrowed beneath her flesh like parasites.
“Have you seen the way she moves about that dark pile of bricks, lighting each room she enters? See her now, like a star entwined in those branches? Has anyone ever shone so brightly? I used to. I had this spot under my ear, and when Ethan would tickle me there, I’d laugh fit to bust. That spot has gone.” She touched herself behind the ear. “Perhaps the little star could burn my skin alive again.”
“We don’t have time to deal with your issues, Aunt Grissel,” Sterling said. “We just need a servant.”
“What about what I need?” Grissel said, hugging herself, since her nephews didn’t want to touch her. “Does no one care about that? I do everything John says, trying to be the kind of person Elnora would have been proud of—trying for your sake!—so the least you could do is care about my needs.”
Stanton said, “A servant, Aunt Grissel–yes or no?”
“Aye, directly!” Irritation had thickened her accent.
“We know what you and Drabbin think ‘directly’ means,” Sterling said. “We need someone a lot sooner than that. Like this century.”
“Well too bad!” Grissel stomped toward the kitchen door, the twins close on her heels. “The Spectacular is only weeks away, and I’ve no one to spare to help you satisfy your childish curiosity.”
After they had gone, Rue dropped out of the laurelcherry. The snow had mostly melted off her, due to her elevated tempe
rature. Her skin was flushed, yes, but not starry or shiny.
“Do I glow?” she asked the dead bird at her feet.
Who didn’t answer.
Rue decided to leave the bird where it was this time. Maybe the dogs would eat it after they were released for the night. The bluebird was a runt, but strong. Zero parasites. Zero reason to have been cast out. Perhaps the bluebird had found a way to cast itself out.
Perhaps it had grown tired of being ignored.
Chapter 7
Rue paused in the doorway of the twins’ bedroom. They sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace folding paper into hummingbirds, like little kids playing a grim and cheerless game. It was late, well past dinner. The twins, still in their school uniforms, had shed their jackets and ties and their feet were bare. Such pretty feet, smooth-soled with evenly clipped toenails. Pretty and useless. Rue could rip out someone’s guts with her “toenails” if she wanted to. Not that she did want to, but the twins didn’t even have the option.
When they noticed her in their doorway, she realized they didn’t need toe weaponry. The look they gave her was deadly enough.
Stanton said, “What do you want?”
“To volunteer.”
“Aunt Grissel sent you?” Stanton exchanged a look with his brother. “Figures.”
“You could have sent for me,” she heard herself say, “if you needed someone.”
“What we need is someone to experiment on,” Stanton said slowly, as if to his little sister. “You don’t want to be experimented on, do you?”
“I don’t have anything else to do. Not anything interesting.”
The twins exchanged another glance, and Rue felt viciously homesick. Heartless were big on nonverbal communication too. She missed that.
Stanton asked, “How much do you want?”
“Volunteers don’t get paid. By definition.”
“Everybody wants something.”
“Forgive me for calling Karissa a bastard.”
“You can’t negotiate forgiveness,” Stanton said. “It either happens or it doesn’t.”
“Then let’s see what happens.”
