by Dia Reeves
The bees flew into the museum just as a crowd was filing out. That alone was enough to cause a disturbance but, minutes later, a frenzy of people exited the building, yelling and trying to shield themselves and their children from the aggressive bees. Several people ran in Karissa and Rue’s direction, narrowly avoiding traffic as they raced for their cars.
“See those old people running down the street? In the jackets? Those’re museum people. I think the twins can go wherever they want now—Rue? Rue?”
Karissa touched Rue’s arm and then yelped as Rue fell off the hood of the car and smacked against the asphalt.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, kneeling beside Rue. “Is it your heart?”
“It’s my brain.” She barely had energy to push the words from her mouth, laughing weakly as Karissa helped her stand. “I’m stupid to have waited so long.”
“For what?”
“To eat.” Rue wiped the blood off her forehead and swayed, but remained upright. “I’m so hungry.”
Karissa hid her bandaged arm behind her back. “You want me to get the twins?”
“No!” Rue lowered her voice when Karissa winced. “I don’t want to be the reason their plan doesn’t work. Stay here in the car and wait for them. Lock the doors. Tell them I had to go to the dark park.”
Rue stumbled forward blindly off the lot. Everything went white, but a few moments later, her vision cleared. She walked but, after a few steps, couldn’t feel her feet touching the ground. She was afraid to look down to check, afraid she’d fall over again.
She was going to fall over.
A car honked in the street. The blue Dauphine, bunny-eared Karissa at the wheel.
Rue opened the door and sat on upholstery she couldn’t feel. Why couldn’t she feel anything?
“I never waited this long to eat. I’m not sure what’s happening.”
“I know what’s happening. You’re sick. I can’t leave you alone when you’re sick. You can’t even walk good. Besides, the car can move faster than you can.”
“Are you allowed to drive at your age?”
“Stanton left the keys in the satchel.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Ask me again later.” Karissa merged into traffic and sped off. “Do we have to go deep in the dark park?”
“No.” Rue reached for the flap on the roof of the car that could be used to block out the sun. Wanted to reach. Tried and tried to reach. Her arm remained at her side. “Just along the edge. Nettle left drake eggs for me with Mr. Beardsley, so I wouldn’t have to risk running into anyone.” But it hurt to think of Nettle.
“Which street is close to Mr. Beardsley?”
“The darkside of Acanthus. It’s not that far.”
“It would have been real far without me,” said Karissa.
When Karissa parked on Acanthus, Rue fumbled her way out of the car and faced a huge snarl of pine forest that comprised the dark park.
“Drive back to the twins. Back where it’s safer.”
She couldn’t feel her mouth.
Rue hurried into the dark park and remained upright until she was sure Karissa couldn’t see her. Once the tangled forest had swallowed her whole, she dropped to her knees and crawled.
And then she was on her feet again.
“Lean on my shoulder.”
“Dammit, Kissy!”
“I won’t tell the twins if you won’t,” she said, her arm curled around Rue’s waist.
“It’s not about them. The dark park is dangerous.”
“Where’s Mr. Beardsley?” said Karissa.
Rue gave directions as best she could despite the drool that sometimes dripped from her unfeeling lips.
A slight break in the trees revealed a mossy stump. Rue scrambled away from Karissa, crawled over and around it. Clawed inside and dug beneath it.
“Mr. Beardsley?” Karissa cupped her hands over her mouth. “Mr. Beardsley!”
“Hush. The stump is Mr. Beardsley. Nettle and I named it that because of the moss. The way it hangs like a beard. It was our place to hide things, to meet. She promised to leave food here. She lied. She...”
Rue fell face first in the dirt.
“Rue!”
“It’s just my body conserving the last dregs of energy. If I eat, I’ll be fine.”
Rue wanted to say all that, but couldn’t. Couldn’t move or speak. A free meal to anything that stumbled upon her.
Upon the both of them.
Chapter 31
Rue couldn’t see anything but treetops and faraway patches of sky. She lay as Karissa had left her, on her back near Mr. Beardsley, helpless and…worried? That couldn’t be the word. You worried about the weather, about a strange dog growling on the street. But Karissa had left her. Karissa had gone. Rue didn’t have a word for the feeling eating her from the inside.
After Rue’s collapse, Karissa had hovered over her for a time and then lifted Rue’s wrist. Checking the pulse? She must have found it because she’d seemed relieved.
“Can you hear me?” she said. “If you can, don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”
Karissa had then bustled about the clearing, out of sight, but very much in earshot. There had been the sound of branches snapping. Several such sounds. And rustlings. And heavy things hitting the earth. And then footsteps moving in the wrong direction, moving deeper into the dark park, instead of back to the car.
And then silence.
Not a true silence—a forest is never silent—but among the slithering and susurrations, Karissa’s particular brand of noise was missing.
Until:
“…glad I ran into you. Adele says you always come out around spring and that you’re real friendly, and she’s right! Adele knows everything.”
So many footsteps now. Rue had a crazy idea that Karissa had found her family, found Nettle. Had convinced them to come to her aid, but heartless didn’t “come out around spring,” and they sure as hell didn’t have a reputation for friendliness.
“That’s her. That’s Rue. She can’t move, and she’s too heavy for me. I made a litter out of twigs and some lianas from over there. She’ll be more comfortable in a litter and easier to carry.”
No one responded to Karissa’s chatter, but moments later, Rue began to move, the sky first rotating, and then scrolling past. She was still low to the ground though, as if whatever—whoever?—was carrying her was incredibly short.
It wasn’t Karissa. Her voice was too far ahead. Hers was the only voice. She kept speaking to her helpers, but they weren’t speaking back. Nor were they carrying Rue out of the dark park, but deeper within. The deeper they went, the darker it got, the treetops knotting together in an arboreal conspiracy to blot out any semblance of light.
But Karissa didn’t seem to mind the growing darkness, the eyeshine that occasionally marked their passage. She didn’t even sound scared. Although, growing up the way she had, there probably wasn’t much that did scare her.
Karissa asked, “Can y’all see? I can’t. Not well enough to track. No, no, no. No fires. Not here. Not with all these low-hanging branches and mosses and things. Smokey the Bear says, only you can prevent wildfires.”
Karissa came into view, shadowy and focused as she hovered over Rue. “Got it.” Rue’s phone cast a blue glow onto Karissa’s face as she slid her thumb across the screen.
Dialing the twins?
“Night vision app,” Karissa said, triumphantly. “Hooray!” She ran away out of sight.
After several moments, she said, “See that up there? Drake scat.”
Rue’s heart pounded. She felt it pounding, and she hadn’t felt anything since she’d collapsed.
Karissa said, “Yes, it is. I can tell because it’s cone shaped. Keep your eyes peeled for a nest. It’ll look like a pit in the ground, and it’ll be full of eggs.”
Not full. Not so late in the season. Rue would be lucky if one or two eggs were left. It had been stupid to wait.
They
slowed, almost to a crawl, searching the woods. Rue could smell the nest close by. So close. If only she could—
“Found ’em!”
Rue was lowered, rocks digging into her back. So nice to feel something. Be even nicer to eat something.
So close.
Rue heard more rustling and footfalls and branch snappings, and then firelight peeled a few layers from the darkness.
A fire? To cook the eggs? Her eggs?
“Just in time,” Karissa said. “You need to charge your phone, Rue.”
More sounds, like rocks slamming together. Repeatedly.
“This thing is like a bowling ball. Can you do it?”
More frustrated knocking. And then silence.
Karissa appeared before Rue again, kneeling over her with a drake egg, hard and stony, the size of a volleyball.
“Can you hear me? I found your drake eggs, but I don’t know how to—”
Rue unsheathed her claws and swiped at the egg in Karissa’s lap, startling her into a scream, which turned into a shriek of delight when a flood of drake spawn flew free of the stony shell, tiny, wingless snakes zigzagging through air as though it were water.
Rue thought she was too weak to catch them, but she was already on her feet, snatching handfuls of them out of the air and shoving them into her mouth. None of this movement was voluntary, and she felt very much like a passenger in her own body. Maybe this was her life from now on, relegated to the backseat while her body ran itself autonomously. It was no more than she deserved.
Rue leaped into the pit and found several more eggs, not a lot, but more than she’d dared hope for. Enough, anyway, to eat her fill. She broke the eggs apart and gorged until her stomach was gravid, until she fell back onto the ground, sated.
“I guess you’re feeling better now.”
“Mmmm.” Rue moved her arm and her leg and her head, deeply surprised the reins had been returned, and so quickly. She listened to chipmunks cheeping like birds in the trees, glad she was alive to hear them.
Karissa sat on the other side of the fire, eating raisins from a box and sharing them with at least ten puking Buddhas. Some of them toddled over to Rue when she sat up and climbed into her lap like they knew her. Maybe they did.
“Didn’t I meet you, way upsquare?”
They nodded.
“Thank you.” The inadequacy of the words lay heavy on her. “Thank you so much.”
Karissa waved the words away as though they were harassing her. “You’d have done it for me. Or the twins.”
“The twins!”
“Don’t worry. I sent them a text message right before your phone died.” Karissa handed it back. “So how come there aren’t more drakes around? There were at least twelve in each egg, but I hardly ever see any drakes. Maybe one a year.”
“Hardly any of them live long enough to grow up—they’re much too tasty. The only reason they have a shot at any kind of survival is because of us, our claws. The babies can’t get out of the eggs without heartless.”
“Symbiosis.” Karissa said it in such a world weary way that Rue smiled.
“What would happen if the drakes all died?” asked Karissa. “All the drakes in all the worlds. What would you eat then?”
“Nothing. I’d starve. Being a specialist really limits your options.”
“When will you need to eat again?” said Karissa.
“Not until the drakes lay a new brood. In about six months. So how did you learn so much about nature?”
“Adele. She has to go into the woods all the time for herbs and things for the shop. She taught me a lot, but some stuff I had to learn on my own.” She looked at Rue. “What’s sacrifice?”
“When you give up something you love to get something you love even more.”
“Like when we give up chocolate for Lent?”
“Bigger than chocolate.”
“Like how you gave up your fingers for us?”
Shrugged.
“That must’ve hurt.”
“It has to hurt, otherwise it’s just an inconvenience. Why do you want to know about sacrifice?”
Karissa chewed her fingers and stared into the fire. Would have spoken, but a furry thing flew out of the tree behind Rue and latched onto one of the puking Buddhas near Karissa. A furry thing with leathery wings and a proboscis that it buried into the puking Buddha’s eye.
Another flew at Karissa who easily dodged it. When it banked and came at her again, Rue leaped forward and sliced it out of the air. And another. And another. After a chorus of retching noises, the air was clear of furry critters. They were now pinned near the fire, trapped beneath pinkish globs that looked like bubblegum but smelled like death.
The puking Buddhas pushed at Rue and Karissa, shooing them along back the way they’d come. When Rue hesitated—there were more of those things in the trees; she could see them—Karissa grabbed her and pulled. “They can take care of themselves. Come on!”
Rue knew this part of the dark park well and had no trouble finding the path that led to freedom. She moved slowly at first, but when she saw that Karissa could easily keep pace with her, she began to run. In no time, they were clear of the dark park, shielding their eyes against a day that was now much brighter than it had been an hour before.
They headed back to Acanthus, to the blue Dauphine.
Where the twins were waiting.
And there was nothing bright about the looks on their faces.
Chapter 32
After Karissa had gone to bed, the twins sat in their room at their desks, building a computer from scratch. Something that would interpret the information they’d siphoned from Runyon’s brain.
“We had to go high tech,” Stanton said. “Despite how cute some people think hummingbirds are. We’re not just looking for one memory but everything Runyon knew about souls.”
“Hummingbirds are cute,” said Sterling. “Computers are shit. We’re going to be combing through this stuff for years.”
“Years?” Rue asked, hopeful.
“Not years,” said Stanton, twisting a screw into something. “We’ve got some systems in place to help us sort through it all, but it won’t happen overnight, that’s for sure.”
“As soon as your mother comes back, I’m leaving.”
“I knew she would start that.” Sterling looked at her. “You mad because we fussed at you for dragging our little sister into the dark park? God could have dragged her in there and we would have fussed at him. You’re not that special, Rue.”
“I’m not mad. I take full responsibility for what happened in the dark park.”
“So why’re you trying to run away?”
“I don’t want to be a fifth wheel.”
“You’re our girlfriend,” Stanton said. “A girlfriend can’t be a fifth wheel. The math doesn’t add up. You have a place here. Your own Rue-sized niche. Mother’s return won’t change that.”
“I can be your girlfriend without living here.”
“Where would you go? Back to your folks? Who wanted to kill you?”
“They didn’t try very hard, so obviously they care.”
Sterling said, “Even if in some bizarre way that made sense, even if they wrote I’m Sorry across the sky with whipped cream and framed it in a goddamn rainbow, who cares? Your family had their chance and they blew it.”
“Kissy thought it made sense.”
“You and Kissy are officially no longer allowed unsupervised visitations.”
“I don’t have to go home. I could go anywhere. Michigan. Madagascar. The moon.”
“You can’t run away to the moon every time things get weird.” Stanton draped his arm around her. “And you for sure can’t run away from us. We won’t let you.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“Sure we can,” said Sterling. “It’s called rope. I wasn’t kidding about that. We will tie the crap outta you.”
Passion, anger, love took so much energy. Nobody had ever felt energetic enough to
hold her hostage.
“You might have to,” said Rue, relaxing into Stanton’s embrace. “I feel pretty skittish.”
“For real?” Sterling said, as though he’d been kidding after all. “I mean...for real for real?”
“Maybe if I’m tied to the both of you physically, I’ll start to feel tied to you emotionally. Do you think that’s possible?”
“You know us,” Stanton said. “We’re all about the scientific method.”
They’d ended up in Rue’s room because her bed was bigger and Stanton was untying her.
“Shabby knots.” Rue yawned. “Could’ve got free anytime.”
“Is that what you think?” they asked, knotting their limbs around hers.
Rue stretched and purred and stayed put until the vulnerable skin of Stanton’s forearm drifted into view. She bit it.
Stanton smacked her lightly on the mouth with his forefinger. “Stop that and say it.”
“I love you.”
“You love who?” Sterling propped himself on one elbow.
“Good.” Stanton kissed her. “If you bite us in public, people will think we’re deviant.”
“Sorry. I love you.”
“You love Stanton? Just him?”
“That was even better. You looked me in the eye that time. You always have to look the person in the eye when you say it.”
“You love who?”
“Baby steps, Sterling. She’s getting there. Don’t scare her.”
Sterling flopped onto his back, scowling. “In heartless culture, is there a rule about how when you mate with someone, it’s for life?”
“No.”
“Is there a rule about how you’re forbidden to mate with more than, like, two guys at a time?”
“No.”
“Well those are the rules around here!”
“I love you, Sterling.”
“Really?” He bounced onto his knees. “You really love me?”
“How would I know?” She squealed when he bit her shoulder. “Okay, okay, I know, I know!”
Stanton’s phone beeped. He read the text and groaned.
“What is it?” Sterling and Rue asked.
“It’s Dad.” Stanton gathered his clothes from the floor. “The lightning must have sparked a brilliant idea. He wants me to bring him the bone machine, see what he can get done from bed. Say what you want about Dad, but his work ethic is killer.”
