The One We Feed (36 page)

On the other
side of an empty chemistry lab, two huge observation windows flanked a heavy
door with numbered keypad. Pipettes and beakers were dashed to pieces. A
Rakshasa lumbered nearby, occasionally pounding on one of the inch-thick
windows.

I touched its
back. It calmed instantly and pointed at the sleeping girl.

“Go find
everyone else. You’ll go up as one.”

It obeyed me
instantly and ran so swiftly that it seemed to defy gravity. I turned back to
the keypad and shut my eyes. When I opened them, the echoes of the day played
out in wisps of smoke. The code became evident. I entered it and the door
clicked to. As it shut behind me, the silence became overwhelming.

I looked down
at her. She was smaller than I had realized and thin. Her skin was dry, and a
thick film crusted her eyes and mouth together. Purple blotches had formed
around abandoned IV sites. New tubes stuck out at every angle, so thick that
they looked like extra appendages.

I let go of my
hold on the altered form of the monster and sank back into my normal stance. Dead
skin and sloughed cells shook off me as I leaned over her and removed the
connections. Alarms blared, a tiny blipping turned to a whine. She gasped and
then breathed deeply, and all was still.

Her skin was
cool and covered in goose bumps. I pulled her hair back and untied it from its
haphazard braid. I ran my fingers through the thickness of it until it
surrounded her face. I took a piece of gauze, dampened it from the dripping
saline bag, and cleaned her face tenderly. Then I crawled onto her thinly
padded metal table and lay beside her.

Chapter
28

The Moon in
the Water

Gran’s breathing had
transformed from a slow procession of gasps to a foreboding rattle. Still Reesa
sat on the bed beside her, like a faithful pet, curled up with her head on the
old woman’s thigh. She drifted in and out of consciousness, in and out of
lucidity; and those moments of confusion terrified Reesa the most. Gran had
always been the wit and charm, the wisdom and poise, and now she spoke nonsense
and could not remember Reesa’s name. Now, Gran couldn’t even control her
bowels.

Reesa’s little
heart was pounding, her cocoa skin jumping with its miserable thrashing. It had
to end soon, she knew. When it did, what would happen next? What would she
feel? Or was she feeling it already? Would it be worse or was it already bad
enough?

The woman rose
from the depths with a half-voiced phrase of gibberish. Reesa’s head lifted.

“Gran?”

It took a long
time, an eternity of swallows and weak coughs, to shake loose the voice, and
when it sounded it had none of its richness, none of its resonance. It was a
rasp, a death rattle, and it terrified her.

“Come here,
child,” Gran whispered.

Carefully,
Reesa wiggled and scooted up the length of the bed and propped herself up on
the railing.

“Gran, you
want me to get the doctor? You want more pain medicine?”

“No.” She almost
snapped. “Things like this should be looked in the eye. Spend your life runnin’,
but when it catches you, look it in the eye and fight till the end.”

I could feel
Reesa’s skin tighten as the little bumps rose all over her. She kept her lips
pressed together though her teeth chattered beneath. It was chilly, and her
nerves were on edge, but there was no way she would ever complain, borrow the
blanket, or beg her mother for winter clothes instead of the summer shorts and
blouse she wore.

“Reesa,” Gran
said. Her eyes seemed glassy, wide, as if already seeing some other horizon in
the distance. “Listen to me, child. Someday, you’ll be sleepin’. Sleepin’ so
deep it seems like you can’t wake up ever. Hurtin’ so bad you almost never want
to. But you got to! You think the world is bad, but we was made to live. Not livin’
is like hell.”

Reesa frowned,
uncertain and uncomfortable with the irrational; but so engrained was the
loyalty to her Gran that her doubts died almost before she registered them.

“Okay, but….”

The frail hand
shot out and grasped her arm in a claw-like grip that held every ounce of
strength Gran could muster. “Listen! An angel...an angel’s gonna come to you. She’s
gonna make you stronger. She’s gonna call your name. When she does, you open
your eyes! You open your eyes and you do what she says! The world will change.”

Her chest
heaving, hand throbbing, Reesa looked from vague eyes to fierce fingers and
could not make sense of it. But she did not have to, because I had heard every
word, and the message was received.

In the
jhana,
all things were possible. I was in her mind, but I was also in my own. I could
not feel my arms lifting her, or my teeth as they gnawed through my wrist, but
I knew it was happening, because I had willed it. I could not smell the thick
blood tainted with a nectar just for her, but I could sense it, in the greater
connection to her, the sudden vibrancy of her memories.

Gran fell back
against the pillow. While Reesa sat, captive in her hand, the rasping slowed
even farther and eventually came to a shaky halt. All the muscles let go, until
she almost didn’t look like herself. Reesa’s heart sank painfully as the
fingers relaxed against her arm, and, even though alarms blared in her ears,
she did not hear them. What she heard was the song, sung the way it was meant
to be.

Through many
dangers, toils, and snares,

I have already
come.

‘
Tis grace hath brought me
safe thus far

And grace will
lead me home.

Someone picked
her up and roughly deposited her on the floor. Nurses in blurred swaths of
pastel swept in and out of her watercolor vantage, and she was jostled, tossed
about in their teals and sky blues, until she washed up in the icy white
hallway, alone.

Droplets
rolled over her cheeks, tickled her throat. Her hands were clenched so tight
her knuckles popped. For a long while, she forgot to breathe. Then soft, warm
hands came down upon her shoulders and turned her away. She fought them for the
right to stay and struggle in Gran’s stead, until they promised not to take her
far. She found herself on a bench, just a few feet down the hall, a heavy arm
around her tiny body and long hair brushing her face.

“As she
carried water from the well one evening,” a man’s voice murmured in her ear, “the
priestess gazed at the moon’s reflection in her buckets. Perfect and white, and
close enough to touch, she lost all thought for everything else. She did not
notice the rock on the path and tripped. The yoke fell from her shoulders, the
buckets were dashed to the ground, the water was gone. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘no more
water in the bucket, no more moon in the water.’”

It could not
be him, but of course it could. Arthur: my past, present, and future. All
places, all at once, ever the hero of broken little girls and their fractured
hearts. His presence answered my only question: how did Gran know I would be
here at this moment? She knew because she’d had the right candystriper.

Reesa
shivered.

What could the
story mean? No one would say something if it didn’t have anything to do with
the situation at hand, she was sure. What relevance, then, did it have for her,
in that moment, in that frightening ache? It must be a metaphor, she thought,
though she did not think in such convenient words. At last, she decided. If the
bucket was the body, then the water was the mind, and if the water was the
mind, then….

“But it was
never really there,” she mumbled thickly. “The moon was never in the water
anyways.”

Beneath her
head, his chest swelled and sank. “True.”

“Then….” She
leaned forward, pressed the moisture from her eyes with two angry fingers, and
turned on him. He looked exactly as I recalled; the smooth caramel of his skin
still caught the light just so, the long black hair left tendrils at his ears,
and the crystal of his eyes sparkled. She saw none of that. She was filled with
a sudden, all-encompassing rage. “What was the point! What’s the point in doing
the things she did, if the moon wasn’t never really in the water?”

He didn’t
reply for some time, and in the silence she seemed to realize what I had, that
Arthur was no enemy and had no interest in causing harm. He was a friend
always, and only wanted what was best for her. She calmed almost at once, for
that was exactly the kind of person Gran was...no, had been.

“Many people
want to believe that the moon is there, in the water. Some grasp that it is
not. They know that the moon is in the sky, but what is the moon really? If it
was not a beacon for us in dark times, we would not care about it at all, nor
would we even know it existed. The moon is nothing more than a reflection, even
it
is false.”

“Then what is
real?”

“The light. It
is the light that gives the moon its value. As long as we live, the light moves
through us, reflects off us. When we die, the universe loses another mirror,
but the light goes on.”

Her scowl
began to loosen. “Then there is no point? There’s no reason to be here.”

“No.” He
nodded. “There is no reason.”

She looked
away, gaze unfocused, head shaking slightly. In the room, the alarms cut off as
the nurses gave up with slumped shoulders and tones of finality, though none of
their actions or words made any sense to her.

That was the
end. Gran was gone, all the water in her bucket spilled out. But she’d been
spilling it out all the time, drop by drop, into her daughter’s child and that
child’s child. Drop by drop to the people, to her causes, to history and a
brighter future. Drop by drop, fed to someone else.

Drop by drop,
the moon had vanished.

“Reesa,” he
breathed in her ear, “chasing the moon is the only thing worth doing.”

The words
seemed to echo, rebound, and dance until the vibrations filled both of us and
went from a steady amplification to the simple rhythm of two hearts beating in
tandem. Drop by drop, I invigorated her with my strength and the individuality
of her fellows, until my chest tugged and sent me back into my own body. I was
limp, lying over her with my head caught in the crook of her skinny arm. I was
panting, I had given her much, but even as I opened my eyes, my breathing
reconciled. A tightness grew in my very bones, until I knew the marrow was
blossoming crimson.

I pulled
myself upright and, though it hurt to keep my eyes open, watched her face for
movement. “Reesa,” I whispered. “Reesa, you have to wake up, now.”

There was no
response from her. I cupped her face in my hands, so pale against her that I
frightened even myself. In the garish overhead fluorescence of the recovering
lamps, I must surely glow.

“Reesa, I’m
calling you. I know you hear me. This is the time. Wake up!”

She stirred,
one arm jerking spasmodically. Then the mouth opened and the tongue swept
across pinked lips. Finally, though we had seen each other many times, our eyes
met for the first.

Relieved, I
giggled, not realizing until it happened that I was so happy to see her I was
actually weeping. The sobs continued beside the laughter as I shivered against
her, delighted, vindicated, exhausted.

“Good girl,
Reesa. Good girl.”

She reached
out, and with a trembling hand, ran her fingers through my dark hair. “You...you
ain’t no angel.”

I looked up at
her and smiled, though every part of me was weak. “I’m exactly the kind of
angel your Gran would send.”

Chapter
29

Testimony

The Rakshasa had gathered at
the windows and were bobbing and fighting for a place to watch their child
leader rise from the dead. It took only moments for the effects of the
medications to wear off, then Reesa was sitting up, testing her bare feet on
the cold ground, her arms wrapped around mine.

“Who are you?”
 

“My name is
Lilith,” I said, smoothing the worry lines on her young forehead with the pad
of my thumb. “I know all about you.”

“Did….” She
looked around at the room, “did they tell you?”

I laughed. “The
scientists?”

She nodded
hesitantly.

“No, my dear. They’re
all dead.” I waved at the window where the largest Rakshasa had pulled a chair
over so that the smallest could see over everyone’s head. They grew more
coherent with each passing second. Soon they would be just like Reesa, able to
transform at will, sing if they wished, be under their own command. “They did
that, to help me get to you.”

“For me?” She
blinked at them, and, when they responded to her gaze, a soft smile awoke on
her lips. “I was afraid of them.”

“I know. I saw
you singing. Your Gran would be proud of you. You summoned Grace like a champ.”

She looked up
at me, confused to her core. “How do you know my Gran?”

I poked her
third eye. “I know her because you do. I know it’s difficult to grasp, but I’m
different from any person you’ve met before, and I’ve been trying to get to you
for weeks now.”

The full smile
transformed her face. It had been banished from her features for years by
suffering, but now she looked like her old self again.

“My Gran...I
know she’s dead, but there was someone….”

I nodded and
helped her stand. “That’s Mara. He’s the enemy. He did this to all of you.”

“Why does he…?”

“I don’t have
time to explain,” I said, looking back at the laboratory where the other human
test subjects were being held. If Mara had any sense, he’d be running away. Despite
my talents, I could not be in two places at once. “It’s a kind of magic.”

“Magic?” she
whispered.

“These
monsters, they’re just people, like me and you.”

With the
staggering gait of a zombie, Reesa walked toward the window. She lifted a hand
and flicked the window where a twisted nose was pressed.

“I could tell,”
she murmured.

“I know you
hate to do it, but you need to transform. They need you to lead them.”

She looked at
me over her shoulder, a mixed expression on her face. “Why?”

“Because they
love you, because they’re lonely.” I smiled. The window in front of her was
suddenly crowded by faces. “Because you can. The world is about to change,
Reesa. This army needs a general.”

She frowned
again and looked at the ground as if thinking it over.

“You were the
first person to reach out, to love them, to set aside fear and embrace
compassion. Sometimes that is more important than food or shelter or even life.”

Her sage eyes
blinked at me. Suddenly she seemed so much like her Gran it was terrifying.

“They picked
me?”

“You taught
them to.”

“And Mara’s
the bad guy?”

“He’s getting
away, even now. I need to free the others. Can you capture him without killing
him? I want you to keep him alive until I can get to him.”

She let go of
the thin blanket half-wrapped around her body and reached for the door handle. Before
her fingers found its shiny metal surface, they had stretched. Sharp talons
closed around it.

The Rakshasa
crowded her like a protective phalanx, licking her face, smelling her hair. I
heard her giggle more than once and was happy in a way I cannot describe.

Then they were
gone, as a group, having decided in low growls and snuffles to track Mara. I
wound my way through the last bit of the compound until I entered the prison. Like
experimental monkeys in wire cages, humans in simple white gowns waited. Some
of them were already past the point of insanity, gibbering to themselves or
screaming incoherently. Their solitary guard lay on the ground, a hill of torn flesh;
one of the subjects had reached through the bars and drawn words in the blood.

I sighed and
knew that this would take me ages.

“Go, Lilith,”
Ananda said from behind me.

I turned,
surprised. But of course he would already be there. He was the invisible man if
he wanted to be. Now I understood why there were so few bodies littering the
concrete floor. He had found the way in and begun vacating the premises of all
non-essential personal. He stepped over the corpse in front of him with a small
shake of his head.

“I’m sorry. They
wouldn’t have helped me if I didn’t give them something,” I said.

He looked at
me, and I was not sure he believed me. “The Sangha chose to harm others. They
took that risk. You cannot bend without expecting the break.”

“Are you sure
you can handle them?”

“Yes. Go. The
Rakshasa are running across the flat.”

“After Mara?”

“Yes. He ran
as soon as the alarms went off. I snuck in behind him. Go.”

I did not stay
to watch him work. I ran through the debris and wreckage as fast as possible,
through the vacant office, up the ladder, and out into the gas station. Mara’s
escape SUV had been rolled onto its side. Long gashes split the metal and the
gas tank smoked. A Siren lay on the ground, his face gone. Tracks in the sand
led to my left. I followed them to the edge of the line of wrecked cars and
spotted them.

A swarm of
dark red shapes tore across the vast open space of the dry, stretched earth,
tiny ants in a river bed, it seemed. I set out to cover the distance as quickly
as possible. The bones shifted as I crouched, my muscles seemed to surge and
tug at the reins of my control like war horses. In a sudden burst of bestial
energy, I hurled myself forward, my hands, now elongated and clawlike, tore at
the ground beneath me, steadying my wild dash.

Dust flew up
around me, pieces dislodged soil. The distant formation was growing ever
larger, and in the light of the shimmering moon, it seemed an odd shape: the
dark, sloping head, wide, arched ear, and down-curved trunk of an elephant. I
blinked for only a moment, and channeled Petula’s strange gift. Like an eagle
soaring above, wheeling in tight arcs, I could see Reesa leading the charge,
and they were gaining. Mara, wearing the shroud of my sister’s form, scrambled
up the uneven surface of the coppery stone, sanguine in the eerie glow, clods
of rock coming loose in his hands. Close behind him were the few minions who
had escaped our wrath, but they no longer followed out of loyalty, I saw, as
one of them shoved Mara aside in an attempt to outpace him.

With
werewolves, it was a universally acknowledged fact.
You don’t have to run
fast, just faster than
that
guy
.

Shrubs sped
past me, coming to life in shades of deep green as the moon crested formations
in the distance. Rays of light shot around the elephant, seemed to make it
glow, and revealed Reesa’s horde, scaling the bluffs and crags like mountain
goats, sure-footed and fearsome.

I challenged my
new abilities, threw myself into the chase, and, as Mara disappeared into what
seemed a long ledge that rounded the eye socket of an overhang, the others
close at his heels, I hit the base of the malformed body of the elephant and
began my ascent.

The ground was
soft clay, finer than sand. It clung to my hands and feet, stuck to me as it
rained down over my head, turning me to frenzied stone. Long ago, some indigene
had carved helpful hand and foot holes in the rock face like an eternal ladder,
but there was no way I could make use of them. I was much stronger, my strides,
even on this near vertical plain, much longer than their ancient ones. I leaped
from outcropping to outcropping and, as I found the ledge, heard the shrieks
and jackal laughter of slaves unleashed.

I slid along
the ledge, bowed low into the overhang, and rounded the top of the elephant’s
trunk, my strange, monstrous arms stretched out for balance. I turned the
corner just as Eva’s voice rang out in a wordless cry and discovered Mara,
backed against a cliff face, his borrowed face filled with long-deserved
terror. The Rakshasa, beasts of his making, had killed his cohorts and torn
them to pieces. Blocking every direction, they bobbed from side to side, flaunting
their grizzly trophies as if to show Mara what would befall him, snarling with
what I knew to be insensate bloodlust.

Reesa did not
lumber or creep. She stood tall and faced him, her refined features and bipedal
stance made more regal by the sharpness of her gaze. She advanced on him from
the center of the tangle, striding smoothly between the Rakshasa with a poised
gesture of her arm. Instantly, the sounds of aggression ceased and long ears
pricked in her direction.

The child
stared at the slave master and knew that the tides had turned. I could feel the
satisfaction radiating off of her as I came forward. The others tossed their
matted heads over their shoulders at my approach and, one by one, moved aside
for me. I joined the girl at the head of her brethren and watched Eva’s face
contort from terror, to rage, to dismay. She looked behind for a moment, and
threw her eyes upward in a dizzy gasp. In one final attempt, she reached for
Reesa, and smiled Gran’s smile with my sister’s face.

“Come on now,
child,” Mara whispered hoarsely, glancing again at the terrific drop behind him,
“don’t glare at me so.”

But that was
the last thing he should have done. Reesa’s eyes narrowed to bloody slits and
her self-control began to wane. Her Gran’s death was the start of her, the
beginning of her identity as the leader she had become. Gran’s voice gave her
strength, taught her truth in spite of suffering, trained her to think for
herself and fight for those thoughts. The ruse would not work.

I laid my hand
gently on her shoulder. The dark skin rippled and flexed beneath my fingers. “No,
Reesa,” I whispered in her ear. “Grace, child. Grace.”

The tension
instantly drained from her countenance. Her body released and her pulse slowed.
She turned and looked at me, her eyes searching mine. I left her and, with a
single stride, put myself between Mara and his creations, my children.

Eva’s chest
was heaving beneath the thin black shirt, her wide hazel eyes brimming with
desperate tears. The moonlight caught her precious golden curls and set them
alight. Her lips trembled. Tiny pieces of stone chipped away by her heels
cascaded down the precipice in staccato clicks, perfectly punctuating her
ragged breathing.

I took her in,
this image, different from the one I knew so well, the one of my brave and
selfless sibling, arms wide, smile in place, at peace. This wasn’t Eva because
Eva was the strongest person I had ever known.

“Your actions
cannot always be a reflection of the loss of your sister,”
I heard Arthur
say in his gentle teacher’s tone, and I smiled.

“No,” I said
quietly, “they can’t.”

I crouched
low, like a runner in the braces, and launched myself directly at her. In a blink,
her arms flew up, the light broke all around us, and the ground began to shake.
I struck her full force, wrapped my arms around her flailing limbs with such a
terrible strength that she did not struggle, and, with tears in my eyes, I tore
her throat wide open.

We plummeted. My
teeth, needle sharp, slid through my own lips and tongue, and our two bloods
mingled at her throbbing neck. I squeezed her to me, one final goodbye, I only
to the reflection, and saw the ground wheeling toward us, a broken plain of
boulders and sloping landslides. I did not feel the impact; it was too great
and my nerves did not relay it. My vision blackened. Some part of his body
broke open and lanced through my torso with a nauseating crunch.

When I opened
my eyes, I was still moving, sliding from a pile of crumbling shards to the top
of a great, flat boulder, stones skipping all around my broken body. As I
turned and rolled, my limbs mended. My flesh expelled particulates, and blood
seemed to seep back into me. At the base of the little sandpit, I came up into
a haphazard crouch in one semi-fluid motion. Mara was a twisted heap of
wreckage, still oozing down the hill, but I could see the telltale signs, slow
though they were.

After all, he
had never faced real danger; his gifts had always been infallible. It was
probably the first time his healing powers had been tested, and now they were
augmented by my own and the horde of his making.

As he
reconstructed, the skin seemed a different shade beneath the gore. The
structure that formed was tiny, almost childlike, a much different type of
human than the strong, unapologetically strident things we’d become. His head
was a mess of dark tangles; his face, split like an overripe melon, had the
bone structure of the back of a shovel, blunt and sloping. His eyes were glazed
and a deep shade of brown, and they stared out at me in unseeing disinterest.