“The women’s story?”
Mawmaw stood and whacked the table with her cane. The sound echoed in the empty main rooms. Sam flinched. The look she gave my elder brother should have broken his bones. “Git.”
My brother got. While she was up, Mawmaw brought more tea and coffee to us all. Mama Grace added wood to the cookstoves. The two other mamas stuck more pins in me. I was probably shedding a little blood here and there, but not enough to stain the dress.
When they all settled back to the table, I asked, “This shifting. Did it also take place on the full moon?”
“No,” my mama said. “Only in battle. We think thegwyllgicame from all that breeding too close, creating men for warriors and women for farmers.”
Mama Carmel said, “Long before the clans traveled to settle here, in America, that tribe of carefully bred people went west, to the islands, which we think were the British islands, and they intermarried with even more different people there. Very different people. On the islands, in the farthest west-lands they could go.”
Mawmaw took over the story, her townie accent clear and crisp. “The people they found in the west-lands were heathens who lived in the earth and in the trees and danced naked beneath the moon. They had been there for thousands of years, from back when there was ice over all the Earth and civilization was a single worldwide seafaring folk, one language, the language of the angels, and there was magic. The remnants of our group bred with the new tribe and again we became one.”
“And then, we’uns became Christian,” Mama Carmel said, “but our practice of Christianity was different from the Romans, and different from the Christians who came after. And they feared our warrior sons as abominations and our daughters as witchery.”
“We’uns heard about the Welsh man,” Mama Grace said. “Prince Madog ab Owain Gwynedd. He sailed west and found land. You’uns can look it up on your Google machine.”
“Hold still. Not now,”Mama said. “You done got stuck.”
I was bleeding, but I held still.
“Secretly,” Mama Carmel said, “we built or bought boats and went west, to this country. And here we’uns stayed. When the settlers came, they found us. They called our people the white Indians because we had blonds in our tribe and wove our own cloth. Later, when they forgot we’uns was already here, we faked the papers saying we come from Europe. The genes, the genes of the warrior people, the genes of the farmers, and the genes of Welsh and Irish people, they all are still there. Inside us.”
Mama Grace said, “Turn a quarter turn.” She pushed with a hand and I moved before she took over the women’s story. “Some family lines got the farmer genes, and they birth two-thirds females and one-third males from their lines, like the Nicholsons and the Vaughns. Other clans went the other way, and produce to this day a lot of males. Like the Jackson clan. And they all mostly go into the military or the police. But no one became a Welshgwyllgiover here, or a plant-person, until the last generation or so.”
“The Vaughns,” Mama said, “my family, were farmers and Mawmaw married into them, bringing fresh blood, or so it was thought.”
“Unfortunately, the Hamiltons were originally church stock,”Mawmaw said, “from a Lost Boy who found his way, made good, and became a proper townie, a rich and fancy townie, and he denied he had once been a part of the church. And since his name was stricken from official records, it was hard to find out who he had been or where he had come from. So when I married into the Vaughn clan, I brought back some of those genes. And when one of my daughters married into the Nicholson family line”—she sat back in her chair, looked at Mama, and blew out a breath—“we got what we got.”
“Plant-people,” I said.
“Plant-people,” she agreed.
“The genetics have been followed for how long?” I asked.
“We’uns have records for four hundred years,” Mama said. “The two groups have always been careful how often we’uns married into our own and the other lines. And careful to bring in diverse genetic lines when possible.”
“Like townie girls who fell in love with the charm of a churchman,” Mawmaw said placidly.
“Until Colonel Jackson began to demand girls from both sides of the lines without keeping track of who came from which family lines,” I said. Carefully, I added, “And his clans began to punish more diligently from the farmer side.” I was talking about Mama, who had been taken to the punishment house and had been impregnated with my half brother Zebulun.
Zeb was from mixed genetic lines, through Brother Ephraim, the Colonel’s toady. Ephraim was a man whose body Soulwood had eaten, but whose soul had been trapped and wreaked havoc on me and the land and on the vampire tree until I figured out how to destroy his soul…
Was Zeb in danger of becominggwyllgiif he got into a fight? He was younger than I was, not yet seventeen, but sometimes a danger is born, not made.
“I have to make a call,” I said, starting to step down.
“You’un will not move, young lady,” Mama demanded sharply. “Gracie, secure that sleeve. I have this’un.”
A good two minutes later, draped in two heavy afghans to keep my dress from being seen by any wandering eyes, I stepped down from the table and moved gingerly toward a semblance of privacy, managing to not stab myself too much. I peeked out the front door, saw no men, and stepped onto the porch. It wasdeserted, but my red truck was running in the parking area, Occam sitting in the driver’s seat. He looked up at me and I raised a single finger to tell him I needed another minute. Or several.
I dialed Sam. When my true brother answered, I said softly, “I need to talk to Zeb.”
“Zeb’s gone. Been gone for a couple weeks. Took off with the Lost Boys, when his best friend was taken into town. Causing mischief, most likely.”
My heart dropped deep inside me. “No one reported him?”
“Ain’t the church way to report a missing boy, Nellie. You know that.”
