The Harvest (32 page)

“I gotta go find Scooter and Squirrel. I think Mom should be here by now. . . .” Her words fall apart in her mouth, and she really just wants to say:
I’m gonna go find a blanket to hide under and cry and drink this awful beer until the sun rises or sleep finds me or the world ends or whatever
.

That, however, isn’t an option. Her mother really is here somewhere with the two kids.

Without saying anything else, she pulls away from Rigo and heads into the throng, putting on the bravest face she can muster.

“Why the long face, goat?” Lane asks.

Cael lifts an eyebrow. “It’s why the long face,
horse
.”

“Yeah, well, we ain’t got any horses, do we?” He smiles—a big, boozy grin. A few Heartlanders pass behind him and shout—
Mayor!
—before clapping him on the back hard enough that he spills a bit of whiskey from his glass. “Haha! Good men, good men.” He pops his lips. “Hey, besides, goats have long faces.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I am
in my cups
, as they say.” He gives a woozy wink. “Oh, what? Come on, this is Harvest Home, Cap’n! This is like all the grand old times getting secretly drunk around the adults, except this time,
it’s not so secret
!”

Cael finds a small smile at that: “It wasn’t much of a secret then, either.”

“Ha, probably not, probably not. Still, it’s nice to be the ones in charge for once, isn’t it?” Lane narrows his gaze, looks Cael up and down. “You look like a man with troubles on his shoulders. An ox with a too-heavy yoke.”

At first, Cael isn’t even sure if he wants to tell Lane. The lanky beanpole has enough to worry about: running a city, trying to undermine an Empyrean blockade, navigating the emotional bramble-patch that is Killian Kelly.

But Lane’s his friend. And he needs someone to talk to. Badly.

“Wanda’s pregnant.”

It takes a second to pierce the miasma of inebriation, but the news finally gets there. When it does, Lane’s jaw hangs loose like a door knocked off its hinges. “Holy shitfire and damnation. You’re gonna be a father. You’re gonna be a father!” He guffaws and slaps Cael on the arm, then wraps himself around Cael like creeper ivy up a crooked tree. “I don’t know whether to be happy for you or scared for the world. Look out, Heartland, another McAvoy on the way!” He whistles and loops his arm around Cael’s neck, then pushes his glass of whiskey to Cael’s lips.

Cael sighs and goes with it, lets the whiskey leave a trail of burning caramel down the back of his throat.

“I’m gonna be a shit dad,” he says to Lane.

“Nonsense. Cease those shenanigans, Captain. Quit it right damn now.”

Cael shakes his head. “No, seriously. What the hell, man, I’m no good for anybody. I’m a dope, a dumbass, as much of a donkey as Boyland Barnes Jr. is. I don’t know squat about squat, and I make good decisions, ohh, about half the time—and that half is because I got lucky, not because I got wise.”

Lane leans in, says loudly in Cael’s ear with the intimate proximity drunks so often favor: “The fact you recognized this fact? Shows you’re gonna be just fine. You’re the captain, Cap. Your crew’s just growing by one is all. We’ll figure this out together. We’ll all be the kid’s family.”

“You mean that?”

“Of course I mean it. Way I see it, that means I’m gonna be an uncle. I can’t wait to meet the little—er, boy?”

“Girl.”

“Haha, oh, by the sulfurous balls of Old Scratch, you are in
trouble
. I can’t wait to meet her, seriously. Cael. Cael. You listening?”

Cael sighs. “I’m listening.”

“You got this.” He leans forward, kisses Cael on the temple. “Now, I notice that both you and I are without a drink, and I have a bottle of eighteen-year Moon Isle malted whiskey squirreled away in a nearby bolthole. I don’t know what it is or what it tastes like, but I want to crack the cork and try it with you. Can I go get it?”

Cael grins. “You got my blessing, Mayor.”

Another kiss to the temple, and Lane is off, pirouetting through the crowd, clapping shoulders and cackling like a happy madman. Cael’s glad they mended fences. Lane’s a true friend. That boy is
bona fide
.

Lane’s fingers search under the shelf of rubble—they touch something cold, something that spins a bit away from his probing digits.

“Ahh, dangit, get . . . over . . . here.” His fingers spin the glass.

I hid this thing too well
.

It’s away from the crowds. The pile of rubble is one that still hasn’t been cleaned up, though it’s been drawn on with paint and chalk by some of the few children who are here in Pegasus City. In the distance someone yells: “Hey, Mayor, you lose something? The keys to the Mayormobile or something?”

Folks are laughing and he knows they’re laughing with him, not at him, but growing up where he did, any laughter still has the chance of making him feel oddly small and unwittingly persecuted—but he can give as good as he gets, and so while looking under the rubble, he lifts his free hand and gives the catcallers a well-extended, up-thrust middle finger.

He won’t let it ruin his good time. They don’t mean anything by it. Lane’s just drunk—booze can turn one’s mood the way wind turns a mill. Tonight, though, he has a great deal to be happy about. The city has come together for Harvest Home. A city he helped build with an event he helped put together. Heartlander solidarity on display—all with the help of the Boxelder Seven. Old friends. Even Boyland, that brick-headed dunk-tank. And now Cael and Wanda having a baby—

There!
There
. His fingers finally get atop the bottle and manage to pull it in the right direction. The bottle rolls out into his hand.

The label is weathered, worn, yellowed. A blue ink moon like an old raider tattoo next to a sketch of an island chain.
Moon Isle
. The number
18
handwritten at the bottom of the label. The cork sealed into the bottle with wax the color of blue spruce. The whiskey sloshes, and for a moment Lane thinks:
Maybe I’ll visit Moon Isle someday. Wherever it is.
There must be people there, right? Certainly the fish aren’t bottling whiskey!

When all this is done, when he’s a bit older, a journey is in order.

Bottle in hand, Lane stands.

And there stands someone right behind him.

He turns, frowns. “I don’t know you. Thought I knew everybody.”

The girl looks up—the electric lights strung up all around illuminate a face that looks almost like broken pottery. Her scar tissue—the “cracks”—painted with a shimmering gold, or bronze.

The knife-blade flashes.

Cael kicks a bit of broken brick. Not far away, the crowds seem whipped up even more than they were before—lots of laughing, lots of drinking. This was a good idea, Harvest Home. When Rigo came up with the idea, Lane thought it would be a mockery—as much a facsimile as a scarecrow, fake and obviously unreal, but damnit if it wasn’t a thing people really
needed
. He looks around. Folks venting steam. Letting it all hang out.

It’s nice to see.

More laughing around him. Somewhere: yelling, hollering.

A scream, too . . .

His vine tightens around his arm, cutting the circulation. He tells himself:
Just a few revelers getting out of hand
. Though even that could be a problem. Heartlanders aren’t exempt from monstrousness. A few drunks going after some poor girl, maybe. An odd thought:
One day you’ll be protecting your daughter from drunks like that.
Daughter. Lord and Lady!

He takes a step forward when, from off to the side, he sees Lane coming up. Cael flags him over. “Hey, Mayor—you got a plan in mind in case folks get
too
riled up at this thing . . . ?”

But Lane suddenly staggers into him, almost knocking him over.

Oh, gods.

His middle is wet. Gleaming red. Parts of his guts bulging out, cradled in his one arm like a just-born baby. In his other hand, he’s holding a broken bottle upside down—bloodless knuckles wrapped around the bottle’s neck, the base of it jagged and bloody.

“Gave as good as I got,” Lane says. His words are gummy, throaty, and when he licks his lip, it leaves a trail of blood so dark it’s almost black.

“Godsdamn, Lane, what the hell—” Cael catches Lane before he falls, props him up, gets his arm around his friend. “Who did this to you?”

“I don’t know who she was,” Lane says, voice cracking, eyes wet. “Got rats in the walls, Cap’n. They’re in. They’re here. This is them.” He lifts his trembling eyes skyward. “Am I dead? Am I gonna die? Shit.
Shit
.”

“Gonna get you some help right now, none of that dying talk,” Cael says. But then Lane points a finger and says:

“Her.”

A girl. Younger than Cael, maybe, but not by much. She’s coming up from the side, her skull bloody, the glass shards stuck in her scalp catching the colored lights. The knife in her hand—bloody.

She’s got her teeth bared. Her stare is as dead as a crow’s eyes. The girl marches forth with her body tilted forward, as if some grim gravity—some unbreakable tether—drags her toward them.

Cael thinks:
She did this to my friend
.

He wishes he had the rifle. But for now—

He reaches toward her. The Blight knows what to do. It lashes out, quick as a whip, and coils tight around her neck—then it stiffens, halting her momentum and fixing her to the spot.

Her eyes bulge. She makes a sound like a rabbit, screaming.

Then the knife flashes.

It cuts clean through the vine. Pain like Cael has never known recoils through the remaining vine, to his shoulder, to his mind—as the vine thrashes about, spraying dark sap, he feels the strength go out of his legs, and he drops to his knees. Lane collapses with him, crying out.

The girl tosses the Blight-vine aside.

She leaps for Cael, the knife hissing through air.

One minute, Gwennie is leading Scooter through the crowd to go find Balastair—because, as Scooter puts it, “he wants to see the little bird, teach it some tricks,” but the next thing she knows, she’s on the ground, flat on her back, and her little brother is screaming.

A scarred girl, her hair shorn to the scalp, sits atop her chest, perched like an owl on a roof-peak.

She has a long knife. The blade twirls in her hand, and suddenly it’s hilt up, blade down, and the girl plunges the weapon toward Gwennie—

Gwennie jerks her head aside. The knife sticks in the ground. The girl growls, “Your bodies will break! Your blood will water the corn!” then wrenches the knife upward—

But Gwennie spits in her eye, then rolls her whole body to the side. The girl yelps, scrambles off like a spider before she topples.

The girl is up fast—too fast, improbably fast, like all her muscles have been trained to be less a girl and more
some kind of nightmare
, and the knife drops to the ground and a pistol is in her hand—

By now people are screaming all around—

The shooter goes off, screaming a sonic wave—

But before it does, the hand jerks to the side, and the blast craters the dirt inches from Gwennie’s head.

A small knife-blade sticks out of the girl’s hand. The gun drops.

A shape moves fast from the side. Squirrel screams, leaps bodily atop the girl like some kind of shrieking demon, and begins to stab at the scarred girl with a knife—

The attacker makes no sound. She twists her body and flings Squirrel off her. The smaller girl hits the ground hard and rolls, the knife clattering away as she remains still. Gwennie yells for Scooter to run—“Go find Mom!”

Then she scrambles to stand. She manages, just barely—

Turns to run—

The girl yanks the other knife from the back of her own hand. A jet of blood follows in its wake, but her face barely registers any pain at all.

The scarred girl turns the blade around, then comes for Gwennie with it.

Gwennie picks up a hunk of dry earth and wings it toward the girl—she bats it away like it’s nothing, because it is nothing, and suddenly Gwennie is thinking,
Don’t let her kill you, you can do better than this—stay alive!

The girl emits a banshee wail, then runs forward with the knife twirling, dancing, cutting air with a whisper-hiss—

But before she reaches Gwennie, she’s whipped up into the air. Legs kicking, arms thrashing—

A thorn-studded vine coiled around her head and neck.

Gwennie remembers a time when Cael’s father caught a rock dove out by their chimney. Fat-bellied birds. He said a small apology to the bird before covering the bird’s head with his hand and giving the bird a little shake—same way votaries of the Lord and Lady’s manse might shake holy water onto those they are attempting to bless—the bird’s neck broke with an audible
snap
.

This is like that, but worse.

The vine gives the girl a hard shake like she’s just a toy, just a doll. The neck breaks like the sound of a tent pole snapping. The head goes sideways, and the vine tosses the body down like it’s naught but a broken tool.

Wanda steps forward, eyes gone all green.

The vine comes from her open, outstretched mouth.

It retracts into her maw. Her throat bulges as it becomes part of her.

“Oops,” Wanda says.

“Thank you,” Gwennie says, gasping, trying to find air. “For saving me. I know you didn’t have to.”

For a moment, Wanda just stares. Then, shaken from it, she says: “Check on the girl. Then we need to find the others.”

It hurts less than it should, all these cuts, all this blood, because Boyland Junior’s so deep in his cups that even his teeth are numb. He squeals and staggers backward, his big arms thrown up in front of him like a wall—beyond his arms, the knife slashes again and again, cutting through his flesh and muscles, maybe down to the bone. Blood comes off his arms in red curtains.

He’s not even sure what the hell is happening. One minute he was standing there looking into the crowd of people, letting his mind wander and his vision drift so that every person had a ghosted doppelgānger—one, then two, then three.
Four of everybody,
he thought.
My own version of King Hell
.