The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (5 page)

Nikki hopped up on top of the picnic table and shrieked with joy, leaping around, the sugar and adrenaline and relief making her giddy.

She stopped jumping. “You know what?"

Doug looked up at her. “What?"

"I think my summer is starting not to suck so much."

He sat down on a bench so hard that she heard the wood strain. The look he gave her was pure disbelief.

"So,” Nikki asked, “you want to get some lunch?"

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There's a certain kind of boy who likes to read only about things that have really happened. Like Alex. He read about the
Titanic
and memorized how many people died (1,523) and the name of the boat that picked up the survivors (
RMS Carpathia
). He read about ghosts and werewolves, too, sometimes, but only when he was certain he was being presented with facts. (The vulnerability to silver bullets, for example, was made up by modern fiction writers—probably any bullet would do.)

In one of the books Alex took out of the library, there was a story about a white flower, the scent of which turned people into wolves. He worried about the flower. It seemed to have no proper name for him to memorize.

In the summers, Alex's parents took he and his younger sister, Anna, sailing. For two weeks, they slept on scratchy cushions in a tiny room in the prow of the boat. Alex mostly sat on deck, his skin tightening with sunburn even though it was slathered with coconut-smelling lotion and his hair stiffening with salt as he read. Sometimes the glow of the sun on the paper was almost blinding.

Anna swung around one of the fasts. She'd been running around the deck all day in a red bathing suit and a floppy hat, dancing up to him and trying to get him to play games with her. Meanwhile, Dad fished off the back and Mom steered lazily. There was barely any wind and the swells were small. Alex was bored but comfortable.

"Want a plum?” Mom called, reaching into a cooler.

"Nah,” Dad said. “Alex just wants to sit there with his nose in a book. All this beautiful nature around and he doesn't want to experience any of it."

Alex ducked under the mast and took the fruit, frowning at his dad. He bit into it as he resettled into the cockpit. The plum was mealy and less sweet than he thought it would be. The juice ran over his hand.

The book on Alex's lap was about sharks. He imagined them, darting beneath the boat, sleek and hungry. Mako sharks were the fastest—but pelagic, meaning they liked deep water. They seldom surfaced. According to what he had read, the great white shark could swim anywhere. In any kind of water. He kept his eyes on the water, looking for thin, angular fins.

Sharks would eat anything. He considered dropping his plum over the side. He bet that so long as it was moving, a shark would eat it. It was the movement that enticed them.

If one did come, then Alex would tell them what to do. Alex would be a hero. Even his dad would think so.

” M
o
m,” Anna said. “When can we swim?"

"When we anchor,” Mom said.

"When will we anchor?” Anna asked, the whine in her voice more pronounced.

"Depends on the wind,” Dad said. “But it won't be more than a hour."

"You said that an hour ago,” said Alex, but he didn't mind. He liked reading about sharks with all that deep water underneath him.

In a little more than two hours, they anchored off a lagoon in Jamaica. They'd flown into Montego Bay a week ago and had been working their way down the coast. Most nights they inflated the dinghy and rowed in for ginger beer and dinner at one of the little fish places along the shore. Tonight, though, there was no town, just a lagoon and Mom, boiling potatoes in the galley.

The beach was nice. No coral to cut up their feet. Anna paddled near some rocks, picking up snails and trying to catch the little lizards that seemed to be everywhere. She chased one into the water and then scooped it up, triumphant.

Alex walked on the beach, looking for shells. Dad scooped sand out of a hole, ready to start a fire and grill the grouper he'd bought the day before. Mom's potatoes finished boiling and she brought them over, wrapped in tin foil, to stick in the fire.

That was when Alex spotted them. The white flowers.

They grew among the scrub, near a banana tree crawling with ants. Tiny buds of white on long stalks. Like the pen-and-ink illustration in the compendium about werewolves. He wasn't sure, but what if they were the
same kind
?

In the story, two children had been out picking flowers when they stumbled upon the white ones. After gathering a few stems, they turned into wolves and raced home to eat their parents.

What if Anna picked one? Alex imagined her sprouting fur and how upset his parents would be, how convinced that she would never hurt them. When she went for Dad's neck, Mom would still be sure that Anna was only attacking because she was scared.

But what if Mom or Dad were the ones that picked a flower?

He'd have to run for the flowers, smell them fast and hope that he turned into a wolf too. But it was too easy to imagine if fast wasn't fast enough. He thought of sharks.

"Hungry?” Dad called to him.

His stomach rumbled in answer and he felt sick.

What if the scent could blow to them? What if they didn't even need to get close to the flowers?

He wanted to tell his parents about werewolves and have them row back out to the boat, but that plan would never work. Dad didn't believe the facts that Alex read if they contradicted his ideas about things.
Just because it's in a book
, he was fond of saying,
that doesn't make it true
.

Alex could just imagine his father sniffing the flower to prove his point.

Anna ran up to where Dad was cooking the grouper. Her legs were covered in sand and she had on a hooded cover-up over her bathing suit. “Is it almost done?” she asked.

The fire lit her eyes. As he looked at his father and mother, he saw the flames reflect in their eyes too. He shuddered.

What if he went and sniffed the flower first? Then
he
would be the wolf. Then he would have no reason to be afraid. And if he started turning, he could tell them to run and get off the island before he finished transforming. He would know what was happening. He would be
experiencing
nature.

And if the flowers weren't the flowers from the book, no one would know he'd made a mistake or that he'd been so worried about his own family eating him up.

He took a step toward the flowers. Then another. He imagined the scent of them drifting to him, a combination of his mother's perfume and sweat. That couldn't be the real smell.

"Alex,” Mom called. “The food's done. What are you looking for?"

"Is there a lizard?” Anna asked. She was heading toward him.

"No,” he said. “I just have to pee.” That stopped Anna.

The white flowers blew in the breeze. His heart was beating so hard that he felt like he couldn't catch his breath, like each beat was a punch in the chest. He reached for a bud, pulling it free. The plant sprang back, petals scattering. He brought the single flower to his nose, crushing it, inhaling sharply.

He was hungry, hungrier than he could remember being in a long while. He thought of the plum and tried to remember why he hadn't finished it.

"Wash your hands in the ocean when you're done,” his mother said. Alex was so surprised by her voice that he dropped the blossom. She didn't know what he was doing, he reminded himself.

Ripping the plant out of the ground, he shredded it. Just to be safe. Just to be sure.

He walked back to the fire, waiting for his skin to start itching. It didn't.

Alex ate two potatoes, three ears of corn, and most of the tail of the fish. He felt good, so full of relief that when Anna bounced up to him in the light of the setting sun and wanted to play tic-tac-toe in the wet sand, he agreed.

She drew the board in the sand and made a big X in the middle. “Okay,” she said. “Your turn."

He drew an O in the upper left-hand corner. Their mother was gathering up the plates to take back to the boat. He wondered if she was going to make dessert. He was still kind of hungry.

Anna drew an X in the bottom right corner. He hated going second. One of the facts of tic-tac-toe was that the person who goes first is twice as likely to win as the person who goes second.

Looking at Anna's red bathing suit through the hooded cover-up made it seem like he could see past her skin to the raw meat underneath. His stomach growled and Anna laughed. She found every gross body sound to be hysterical.

"Come on, kids,” their mother called. “It's too dark to play."

He looked up. There was only a sliver of a moon. The sun had slid all the way under the water.

Alex's stomach cramped and he winced. He thought about the fish, sitting in the ice chest all day. Maybe it had gone bad.

Anna laughed. “You should see your face. Your eyes got really big. Big enough to—"

His hands cramped, too, curling up into claws. Anna stopped laughing.

"Mom!” he yelled, panicked. His vision shifted, went blurry. “Mom!"

Anna shrieked.

"What's the matter?” His mother's voice sounded close and he remembered that he was supposed to warn them.

"Get away!” His voice broke on the last word as another wave of pain hit him. “Stay away from the flowers!” That made no sense. How was she supposed to understand that?

He opened his mouth to explain when his bones wrenched themselves sideways. He could hear them pop out of sockets. His scream became a howl. Fur split his skin.

New smells washed over him. Fear. Food. Fire.

Anna came into focus, racing across the beach toward their father. He could feel his ears lift, his mouth water. He leapt up onto all fours.

Sharks were right. It was the movement that was enticing.

"
Alex
,” his mother said, bending down, reaching toward him. As if he would never hurt her. His gaze went to her throat.

"Laura!” his father shouted. “Get away from that animal! Where's Alex?"

Alex opened his mouth to answer, but the words came out a growl, low and terrible. The quick flash of terror in his father's face made him salivate. He had to run. Before. Before. Before something happened. Banana leaves brushed his back, and he nearly tripped over long banyan roots. He kept moving, his nose full of rich scents. Lizards. Beetles. Soil. Salt. He was so very hungry.

Just keep running, he told himself. Like a shark through deep water.

Alex tried to think of all the things he knew about wolves. They could travel long distances. They hunted in packs and howled to demonstrate territory, but barked when nervous.

His red tongue lolled as he panted.

None of those facts meant anything anymore.

He came to a house in the woods with a roof of corrugated metal. An old woman with salt-and-pepper hair hung brightly colored sheets on a line. She sang as she worked. A basket sat beside her, full of laundry. She looked so kind, like someone's mother, someone's grandmother. His mouth watered and he crept closer.

She might be someone's grandmother, but at least she wasn't his.

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Tomasa walked down the road, balancing the basket of offerings on her head. Her mother would have been angry to see her carrying things like one of the maids. Even though it was night and there had been a heavy rain that day, the road was hot under Tomasa's sandaled feet. She tried to focus on the heat and not on the bottle of strong
lambanog
clinking against the dish of
paksiw na pata
or the smell of the rice cakes steamed in coconut. It would be very bad luck to eat the
parangal
that was supposed to bribe an elf into lifting his curse.

Not that she'd ever seen an elf. She wasn't even sure if she believed the story that her sister, Eva, had told when she'd rushed in, clutching broken pieces of tamarind pod, hair streaming with water. Usually, the sisters walked home from school together. But today, when it started to rain, Eva had ducked under a tree and declared that she would wait out the storm. Tomasa had thought nothing of it—Eva hated to be dirty or wet or windblown.

She kicked a shard of coconut shell out into the road, scattering red ants. She shouldn't have left Eva. It all came down to that. Even though Eva was older, she had no sense. Especially around boys.

A car slowed as it passed. Tomasa kept her eyes on the road and after a moment it sped away. Girls didn't usually go walking the streets of Alaminos alone at night. The Philippines just wasn't safe—people got kidnapped or killed, even this far outside Manila. But with her father and the driver out in the provinces and her mother in Hong Kong for the week, there was only Tomasa and their maid, Rosa, left to decide who would bring the gift. Eva was too sick to do much of anything. Rosa said that was what happened when an
enkanto
fell in love—his beloved would sicken just as his heart sickened with desire.

Looking at Eva's pale face, Tomasa had said she would go. After all, no elf would fall in love with her. She touched her right cheek. She could trace the shape of her birthmark without even looking in a mirror—an irregular splash of red that covered one of her eyes and stopped just above her lips.

Tomasa kept walking, past the whitewashed church, the narrow line of shops at the edge of town, and the city's single McDonald's. Then the buildings began to thin. Spanish-style houses flanked the road, while rice fields spread out beyond them into the distance. Mosquitoes buzzed close, drawn by her sweat.

By the time Tomasa crossed the short bridge near her school, only the light of the moon let her see where to put her feet. She stepped carefully through thick plants and hopped over a ditch. The tamarind tree was unremarkable—a wide trunk clouded by thick, feathery leaves. She set her basket down among the roots.

At least the moon was only half-full. On full-moon nights, Rosa said that witches and elves and other spirits met at a market in the graveyard where they traded things like people did during the day. Not that she thought it was true, but it was still frightening.

"
Tabi-tabi po
,” she whispered to the darkness, just like Rosa had told her, warning him that she was there. “Please take these offerings and let my sister get better."

There was only silence and Tomasa felt even more foolish than before. She turned to go.

Something rustled in the branches above her.

Tomasa froze and the sound stopped. She wanted to believe it was the wind, but the night air was warm and stagnant.

She looked up into eyes the green of unripe bananas.

"Hello,” she stammered, heart thundering in her chest.

The
enkanto
stepped out onto one of the large limbs of the tree. His skin was the same dark cinnamon as a tamarind pod and his feet were bare. His clothes surprised her—cutoff jeans and a t-shirt with a cracked and faded logo on it. He might have been a boy from the rice fields if it wasn't for his too-bright eyes and the fact that the branch hadn't so much as dipped under his weight.

He smiled down at her and she could not help but notice that he was beautiful. “What if I don't make your sister well?” he asked.

Tomasa didn't know what to say. She had lost track of the conversation. She was still trying to decide if she was willing to believe in elves. “What?"

He jumped down from his perch and she took a quick step away from him.

The elf boy picked up the
lambanog
and twisted the cap free. His hair rustled like leaves. “The food—is it freely given?"

"I don't understand."

"Is it mine whether I make your sister better or not?"

She forced herself to concentrate on his question. Both answers seemed wrong. If she said that the food was payment, it wasn't a gift, was it? And if it wasn't a gift, then she wasn't really following Rosa's directions. “I suppose so,” she said finally.

"Ah, good,” the elf said and took a deep swallow of the liquor. His smile said that she'd given the wrong answer. She felt cold, despite the heat.

"You're not going to make her better,” she said.

That only made his smile widen. “Let me give you something else in return—something better.” He reached up into the foliage and snapped off a brown tamarind pod. Bringing it to his lips, he whispered a few words and then kissed it. “Whoever eats this will love you."

Tomasa's face flushed. “I don't want anyone to love me.” She didn't need an elf to tell her that she was ugly. “I want my sister not to be sick."

"Take it,” he said, putting the tamarind in her hand and closing her fingers over it. He tilted his head. “It is all you'll get from me tonight."

The elf was standing very close to her now, her hand clasped in both of his. His skin felt dry and slightly rough in a way that made her think of bark. Somehow, she had gotten tangled up in her thoughts and was no longer sure of what she ought to say.

He raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. His too-bright eyes reflected the moonlight like an animal's. Tomasa was filled with a sudden, nameless fear.

"I have to go,” she said, pulling her hand free.

Over the bridge and down the familiar streets, past the closed shops, her feet finding their way by habit, Tomasa ran home. Her panic was amplified with each step, until she was racing the dark. Only when she got close to home did she slow, her shirt soaked with sweat and her muscles hurting, the pod still clasped in her hand.

Rosa was waiting on the veranda of their house, smoking one of the clove cigarettes that her brother sent by the carton from Indonesia. She got up when Tomasa walked through the gate.

"Did you see him?” Rosa asked. “Did he take the offering?"

"Yes and yes,” Tomasa said, breathing hard. “But it doesn't matter."

Rosa frowned. “You really saw an
enkanto
? You're sure."

Tomasa had been a coward. Perspiration cooling on her neck, she thought of all the things she might have said. He'd caught her off guard. She hadn't expected him to have a soft smile, or to laugh, or even to exist in the first place. She looked at the tamarind shell in her hand and watched as her fingers crushed it. Bits of the pod stuck in the sticky brown fruit beneath. For all that she'd thought Eva was stupid around boys, she'd been the stupid one. “I'm sure,” she said hollowly.

On her way up the stairs to bed, it occurred to Tomasa to wonder for the first time why an elf who could make a love spell with a few words would burn with thwarted desire. But then, in all of Rosa's stories the elves were wicked and strange—beings that cursed and blessed according to their whims. Maybe there was just no making sense of it.

The next day the priest came and said novenas. And after that, the
albularyo
sprinkled the white sheets of Eva's bed with herbs. Then the doctor came and gave her some pills. But by nightfall, Eva was no better. Her skin, which had been as brown as polished mahogany, was pale and dusty as that of a snake ready to shed.

Tomasa called her father's cell phone and left a message, but she wasn't sure if he would get it. Out far enough in the provinces, getting a signal was chancy at best. Her mother's Hong Kong hotel was easier to reach. She left another message and went up to see her sister.

Eva's hair was damp with sweat and her eyes were fever-bright when Tomasa came to sit at the end of her bed. Candles and crucifixes littered the side table, along with a pot of strong and smelly herb tea.

Eva grabbed Tomasa's hand and clutched it hard enough to hurt.

"I heard what you did.” Eva said with a cough. “Stay away from his goddamned tree."

Tomasa grinned. “You should drink more of the tea. It's supposed to help."

Eva grimaced and made no move toward her cup. Maybe it tasted as bad as it smelled. “Look, I'm serious,” she said.

"Tell me again how he cursed you,” Tomasa said. “I'm serious, too."

Eva gave a weird little laugh. “I should have listened to Rosa's stories. Maybe if I'd read a couple less magazines . . . I don't know. I just thought he was a boy from the fields. I told him to mind his place and leave me alone."

"You didn't eat any of his fruit, right?” Tomasa asked suddenly.

"I had a little piece,” Eva said, looking at the wall. “Before I knew he was there."

That was bad. Tomasa took a deep breath and tried to think of how to phrase her next question. “Do you . . . um . . . do you think he might have made you fall in love with him?"

"Are you crazy?” Eva blew her nose in a tissue. “Love him? Like him? He's not even human."

Tomasa forced herself to smile, but in her heart, she worried.

Rosa was sitting at a plastic table in the kitchen chunking up cubes of ginger while garlicky chicken simmered on the stove. Tomasa liked the kitchen. Unlike the rest of the house, it was small and dark. The floor was poured concrete instead of gleaming wood. A few herbs grew in rusted coffee cans along the windowsill and there was a strong odor of sugarcane vinegar. It was a kitchen to be useful in.

Tomasa sat down on a stool. “Tell me about elves."

Rosa looked up from her chopping, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She breathed smoke from her nose. “What do you want me to tell you?"

"Anything. Everything. Something that might help."

"They're fickle as cats and twice as cruel. You know the tales. They'll steal your heart if you let them and if you don't, they'll curse you for your good sense. They're night things—spirits—and don't care for the day. They don't like gold, either. It reminds them of the sun."

"I know all that,” Tomasa said. “Tell me something I don't know."

Rosa shook her head. “I'm no
mananambal
—I only know the stories. His love will fade; he will forget your sister and she will get well again."

Tomasa pressed her lips into a thin line. “What if she doesn't?"

"It has only been two days. Be patient. Not even a cold would go away in that time."

Two days turned into three and then four. Their mother had changed her flight and was due home that Tuesday, but there was still no word from their father. By Sunday, Tomasa found that she couldn't wait anymore. She went to the shed and got a machete. She put her gold Santa Maria pendant on a chain and fastened it around her neck. Steeling herself, she walked to the tamarind tree, although her legs felt like lead and her stomach churned.

In the day, the tree looked frighteningly normal. Leafy green, sun-dappled, and buzzing with flies.

She hefted the machete. “Make Eva well."

The leaves rustled with the wind, but no elf appeared.

She swung the knife at the trunk of the tree. It stuck in the wood, knocking off a piece of bark, but her hand slid forward on the blade and the sharp steel slit open her palm. She let go of the machete and watched the shallow cut well with blood.

"You'll have to do better than that,” she said, wiping her hand against her jeans. She worked the blade free from the trunk and hefted it to swing again.

But somehow her grip must have been loose, because the machete tumbled from her hands before she could complete the arc. It flew off into the brush by the stream.

Tomasa stomped off in the direction of where it had fallen, but she found no trace of it in the thick weeds. “Fine,” she shouted at the tree. “Fine!"

"Aren't you afraid of me?” a voice said, and Eva whirled around. The elf was standing in the grass with the machete in his hand.

She found herself speechless again. If anything the daylight rendered him more alien looking. His eyes glittered and his hair seemed to move with a subtle wind as though he was underwater.

He took a step toward her, his feet keeping to the shadows. “I've heard it's very bad luck to cut down an
enkanto's
tree."

Tomasa thought of the gold pendant around her neck and stepped into a patch of sunlight. “Good thing for me that it's only a little chipped, then."

He snorted and for a moment he looked like he was going to smile. “What if I told you that whatever you do to the tree, you do to the spirit?"

"You look fine,” she said, edging back to the bridge. He did. She was the one who was bleeding.