Katherine:If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
Petruchio:My remedy is then, to pluck it out.
Katherine:Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies.
Petruchio:Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.
Katherine:In his tongue.
Petruchio:Whose tongue?
Katherine:Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell.
Petruchio:What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, Good Kate; I am a gentleman.
“Oh dear.” There was a time when I had been so unworldly that I hadn’t understood what the passage might mean. Now I saw it was possibly an improper sexual innuendo. I sat on the sofa and sipped my tea, not sure if I was amused or embarrassed or both to have quoted it to my boss.
I skimmedThe Taming of the Shrew, comparing it to the way women were treated in my youth in the church, and even in my marriage. And I wondered if I could turn it around and apply Petruchio’s methods on the men in my life. Or perhaps I had already been doing that.
I remembered Jane Yellowrock being the bigger shrew, never tamed, and wondered if she would have beaten Petruchio to a pulp for the things the fictional man had done to win the hand of his shrew.
I checked the clock and sent texts to Occam and to Mud, at school, telling them I was home for the rest of the day. I had energy to burn and winter gardening to do. There was a break in the rain, so I pulled on my yard clothes and my old gardening boots. When I was done with farmwork—not that it was ever really done—I’d fall on the couch with a good book and the afghan, turn off my cell, snuggle down next to Cherry, and fall asleep.
I put in hours of backbreaking work. By the time I was ready to stop, the rain had started again. I showered and napped to the sound of pounding rain.
* * *
I slept. And I dreamed. Of the earth and the deeps of the spirits of the mountains and hills that slumber. And the bones of the earth that spread and cracked and sprouted. I dreamed of the Peopleof the Bones. The first people. I dreamed of skeletons and graves and the death of sacrifice.
I dreamed of the People of the Straight Ways. Ancient seafarers and farmers and engineers, the killers of my own people.
Dreams of famine and war and pestilence. Of great floods that destroyed an entire worldwide oceangoing civilization.
Twisted, confusing dreams, warped images, potent smells, and swift, strange sounds.
Dreams of the man in the woods, the man who had been shackled with thorns and vines and filled with fear and horror, shivering, as Soulwood and the Green Knight together tasted his blood. Through them, I tasted his blood. Traces of vampire. A blood-servant. His heart pounding with the terror in his blood. Trapped. Trapped.Trapped.
I woke, my heart slamming in my chest. It was five p.m. Early night had fallen.
Someone was coming down my steps.
There was something on my land. Vampire. Evil.Danger.
SIX
“Yummy?” My voice was gravelly with sleep and my hands uncoordinated as I untangled my legs from the afghan and tried to stand.
“You’re awake?” Yummy called from halfway down the stairs.
“Yes.” I found my boots in the dark and yanked them on while I talked. “We’re in danger. While you slept, I trapped a blood-servant in vines not too far from Esther’s and he was picked up by the police. Now there’s some vampires on the property, prob’ly lookin’ for him, unless he knew to ask the local LEOs for a phone call and a lawyer.”
I tied my boots securely. I needed to pee, but there wasn’t time. With the lights off—because I knew my way in the dark—I found my gear.
As I worked, Yummy dashed back up the stairs, calling behind herself, “How many?”
The dreams had been all mashed up together. “Two? For sure two. Maybe a third one keeping watch near the main road.”
I checked my cell. I had two missed calls and four texts from Mud. My heart clenched painfully until I remembered that it was Friday. She would be spending much of the weekend with the Nicholson clan, going to church with her family and friends, according to the guardianship and custody agreement. While she had a taste of family, I was supposed to be working my every-other-weekend schedule. Instead I’d been told to stay home.
