Those small claimings had been completely different from the way I had claimed Soulwood. Feeding my attacker to the woods had made all of Soulwood mine. That was the blood of a sacrifice mixed with my will.
I had killed for my land. I was a soul stealer. That death, that feeding, had been my choice. And now, like an addict, I often thirsted for more blood to feed to the land.
I was a monster. I knew that. But if Mud was never put in danger, if she was never fighting for her life, could she have land, yet not feed it the life of another? Could she be a keeper of the land without being a killer? How would I keep her from creating a vampire tree? From becoming what I was, from doing what I did? Blood. Sacrifice. Polygamy. Interwoven bloodlines for two centuries had made me what I was, had given me my gifts.
My blood on the compound had made the vampire tree mutate, had made it mine. I had claimed it and changed it and then deserted it. And if Mud had claimed Rex the way I had claimed Paka and other sentient beings, then had the tree taken a sacrifice from my bloodline? Did any of this even make sense?
The simple truth was that I didn’t know what I was. Didn’t know what I could do. Didn’t know what any of the repercussions of any of my actions might be. I had blundered. I had done evil. And I needed to protect Mud from making any of my mistakes.
Blood. Sacrifice. Polygamy. Interwoven bloodlines for two centuries.My brain tried to wrap around concepts that were older than time. My mind whirled and stumbled and I felt myself flush. My finger-leaves curled in anguish. The church taught that females were pure until menarche—the very first sign of menstruation. That once that occurred, they became women, became impure, and had to be taken in hand by a man. They pointed to the New Testament, First Timothy, to claim that childbirth kept women pure, that they were saved by childbirth. They taught that the moon cycles were evil and proof that God cursed Eve for an unforgivable sin and, through her, down to all women forever. Women were taught to feel shame just for being women.
Animals knew when humans got the woman’s monthly curse.
Did trees? Did my trees? Did the vampire tree waken when Mud came near?
“Mud.”
My sister looked at me quickly, and I realized my tone had altered. Her name was wrapped in my worry.
I shook my head. “No problem. Just, well, did you bleed at any time when you were near the tree?”
Mud’s eyes went wide and fearful. “Did I kill Rex?”
“No, sweetheart. But, well, the vampire tree got the way it is because I bled on its roots. And if you bled near it and it sensedyourblood, and we’re sisters, well, it might have tried to protect you from the puppy.”
Mud scowled, and I had a feeling that it looked a lot like my own scowl. “I cut myself,” she said, holding up her left hand. “I slid a potato peeler on my thumb. It was leaking through the bandage.”
I took her hand and turned it to the light. The wound wasstill leaking; the commercial-style, pale beige bandage was red all along the central pad portion.
“I did it yesterday. It was still drippy when I left the house to go to devotionals.”
“And did you pass by the tree?”
Mud held the thumb up and studied it. “Yep.” She pushed me away and scooted into the couch corner. “That was afore I became a woman grown.” We fell silent, thinking about blood and being grown women and the strange tree.
“Your’n water’s boiling,” Mud said. “I want real tea, not some yucky herbal stuff. Mama Carmel done been making me drink some awful stuff on account a me being grown up.”
I remembered Mama Carmel’s feminine-soother concoctions from my own days in the Nicholson household. They had been pretty awful. “How about something with lemon and ginger?”
“And then you’un tell me about what we are. More’n you done told me last time we talked. ’Acause I’m thinking we’uns, you’un and me, we ain’t human.”
With those words ringing in my ears, I made tea with lemon and ginger and a handful of raspberry leaf, brought the pot in a tea cozy, on a tray with mugs, honey, cream, and spoons, to the low coffee table in front of the couch. I poured two mugs of the lemon honey tea and mixed my own, leaving Mud’s untouched. In the church compound, a woman grown made her own tea. She was a child no longer.
Mud stared at me, the pot, the mug, and I watched realization dawn in her eyes. Slowly, she leaned forward and added a small splash of cream and a drizzle of honey to her cup. Stirred the mixture and leaned back, holding the mug. “So this is what it’s like? Being a woman grown? I make my own tea? Kill my own puppies? And have this awful thing happen to me every month?”
Something in the statement made me want to smile, but my mouth felt frozen. “It’s not so awful. Churchwomen aren’t allowed to have relations with the men during this time. They aren’t allowed to work in the greenhouse or garden or withthe animals. I think this is the time each month that churchwomen get to sit quiet, to read books. To meditate and have time to be introspective.”
“Edith called it a curse.”
“Mmm. Not all our sisters or friends are very smart. Sometimes even the best women can be kinda stupid.”
“So what are we?” That was Mud. Cutting to the chase. Demanding answers.
“I don’t know. Not exactly. I do know that we can claim land with our blood. Maybe even accidentally. And that when we do, we become responsible for it. We become its caretakers.”
“And you bled on the vampire tree. You’un’s claimed it.”
“And deserted it,” I acknowledged. I knew on some deep-down level that my desertion had caused the tree to mutate. That fact left me mentally wringing my hands with guilt. My neglect had killed a puppy today. Taken back to its most basic beginnings,Ihad killed Rex. “To say that I didn’t know what claiming it might mean, and didn’t know that deserting it would make it bloodthirsty, is no excuse. We can make land healthy and fecund. We can make it grow crops or, seems like, we can make it spit out weeds and thorns. We do that by communing with it. And by bleeding on it. Little drops. That’s how we claim it.”
