Bound into the Blood

by Myers, Karen

  CHAPTER 16

  On the drive to the nursery, as he called it, George was uncharacteristically silent. Benitoe let him alone and occupied himself with the people and the buildings in the town until they left it, heading east, and then he admired the mountain ridges to north and south, uniform in height.

  In just a few minutes, George turned north off the main road onto a smaller one and then pulled up to a long low building and parked in the graveled lot. He came out of his private thoughts as if surprised to find the car stopped.

  “Sorry to be such poor company,” he said. “I was thinking of something else.”

  Benitoe waved it aside. George would tell him about the problem when, and if, he wanted to. “What is this place?”

  “I’ve told you there are specialists who sell plants to anyone. Some they grow themselves, and some they get from even more specialized people. They call these garden nurseries, since it’s all young plants that will grow larger.”

  “Isn’t it easier to just buy seed?” Benitoe asked.

  “This isn’t for the big crop plants—that’s a whole different market. You’ll find some orchard trees and other edible things here, but it’s mostly for ornamentals, you know, flowers or herbs, or bushes and trees for landscaping your property.”

  At Benitoe’s blank stare, George said, “Look, someone buys a little bit of land and builds a house. The land might not have any trees on it, so he buys some young maples, say, and then adds some handsome bushes against the wall of the house, so it looks older and more settled into the land. Then his wife adds a flower garden. Like that.”

  Benitoe thought about a place where houses were so often new, on raw land, that entire businesses existed just to make them seem less new, less raw. Where gardens were assembled all at once, like going to market to buy the ingredients for a pie, instead of the work of generations and many hands. He couldn’t match that to the way the lutins lived.

  But then there were probably more humans in that small town he’d just visited than all the lutins he’d ever met. This is a big place the humans have decided to fill, and it’s true what they say—as many in the human world as fish in the sea. No wonder the korrigans can hide their trade here so well, just a tiny drop in that ocean.

  He glanced at George. And no wonder he worries about them discovering our world. They could overwhelm us, if they could reach us. You couldn’t kill them all in a war, no one could wield that much power for long enough. I hope Gwyn listens to him.

  George had gotten out of the car without waiting to see if Benitoe understood him, and Benitoe hastened to follow, listening to the crunch of his new shoes in the gravel. He paused to retie the laces of one of them and admired yet again the deeply incised pliable tread that gripped so well, even if all they’d encountered so far was level terrain.

  When he walked into the main entrance, the smell of green things and flowers stopped him in his tracks as he tried to unravel the complexity of the mixed scents. He hastened forward when he realized he was blocking the way in for other people. When he caught up to George, who’d waited for him, George gave him a quick glance of sympathy for his loss of composure.

  “It’s a good thing it’s a weekday, and not the height of the season in the spring,” he said. “Not so much of a crowd.”

  Benitoe stared up at him. This was uncrowded? He’d seen market fairs with fewer people.

  George gave him no time to look around. He led him along to a connected building, what he called a “greenhouse.” He explained how sunlight coming in through glass kept it warm, like the conservatory at Edgewood. On long rows of benches plants in small green containers with labels were crammed in abundance.

  Benitoe scarcely had a chance to take it in before George bundled him on out the back and finally stopped. He pointed to the left where bushes and trees of many varieties stretched out in long ranks for a few acres.

  “Sorry to hurry you along, but I thought we could start here and then work our way back up to the front. That way you have some idea of the size of the place.”

  Benitoe thought he knew the answer, but he had to ask, “Is this a special showplace, a large supplier?”

  George shook his head. “Nope. Just an ordinary nursery in an ordinary place. There are hundreds, probably thousands, just like it.”

  Benitoe walked over to an unoccupied wooden seat (also for sale, he realized, when he saw the label) and sat down. His heart was racing. He knew this, George had talked about numbers with him and what to expect, but seeing the scale of it was entirely different.

  He glanced at George, suddenly viewing him as a lifeline. How would he get home if they were separated? He fingered the token in his pocket. The name of that village was Woodward, was that it? He could ask someone how to get there. And he knew the name of Rowanton, in Virginia.

  George sat down next to him. “What’s the matter,” he asked quietly. “Too much? We have a name for this, we call it ‘culture shock.’ It’s what happens when a traveler suddenly understands, right here,” he patted his stomach, “how different someplace really is.”

  Benitoe nodded, then gritted out, “I was wondering how I would get home, if I had to.”

  “Your token…” George started, then paused. “But how would you get there? You don’t have any money,” he said, with alarm in his voice. “I didn’t think of that.” His hand dived into a back pocket and pulled out a wallet. He gave Benitoe a fist full of the green paper that he’d stopped to pick up from a machine after lunch. That’s what stood for gold here. Benitoe wasn’t too clear on how that worked.

  George reached for his pocket notebook, but his hand stopped in mid-air—wrong clothing. He picked up a scrap of paper on the ground and pulled out a pen instead. “Here’s the phone number for Mariah Catlett,” he said, writing down a string of digits. “The town she lives in, and the town nearest to the way in Broch’s barn. I’ll get you a cellphone as soon as I can so we can reach each other if we need to, or you can reach her.”

  He folded the paper and pressed it into Benitoe’s hand. “I’ll give you one of the maps I’m using in the car, so you have some idea where you are in relation to those places, and how to get there.”

  He spoke in earnest, watching to make sure Benitoe understood. “I’ll show you how to use a phone as soon as I can. If something goes wrong, and I’m not there, call Mrs. Catlett. If she doesn’t answer, keep calling until she does. We’ll call her together when we get you a phone so you can see what that’s like. And answering machines. If that doesn’t work, call my grandfather. Here’s his number.” He took the paper out of Benitoe’s hand to write it down, then gave it back.

  He frowned. “I can’t imagine both of those choices failing, but if worst comes to worst, you’ll have to get to Woodward, in this state—see, I wrote it down—and hike east to enter the woods to reach Broch’s barn, or get to Rowanton in Virginia, and ask directions to Bellemore. The rock-wights hang out in a new building behind Mariah’s place.”

  He stood up and laid his hand comfortingly on Benitoe’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to have been so careless about this. I was preoccupied. We’ll pass the spot on the road where Broch’s barn road comes out on our way west today, and we’ll stop and make a marker there that you can find in an emergency.”

  Benitoe stood with him, embarrassed by his panic. “I don’t know why it just struck me like that. I’ll be fine.”

  George smiled down at him. “I know you will.”

  Benitoe had made it back to the greenhouse part of the nursery and found the herb section. When George had described this, he’d thought it would be like a herbalist’s shop, full of bins and drawers of dried stock. Instead, there were dozens of containers of the living herbs, and helpful hints for how to grow them inserted into each little plastic pot.

  His head was swimming with the acres of trees and bushes outside. Some of the plants he knew, of course. When he started reading their labels, he realized that many were from foreign lands. Small wonde
r they were unknown to him. The flowering bushes came in varieties that were more exuberant than natural. George commented that they showed “the hand of man” by which he seemed to mean they’d been bred on purpose. What gardeners these must be, to have so many varieties. One of the benefits of being so numerous a people, he supposed.

  He brushed the back of his hand against a young rosemary bush, then raised his hand to his nose to sniff the astringent oils it left behind. That smelled the same, didn’t it. A familiar scent in a strange place.

  He glanced around and couldn’t spot George. A momentary panic rose, then he squelched it down. He had everything he needed to take care of himself. He knew where to find the car, and George had told him to go there if they were separated in a crowd. This place wasn’t so large that he thought that necessary. Still, there were enough people, all bigger than himself, that it wasn’t easy to see past them.

  He looked low, instead, through their legs, and started to retrace his steps back out the way he’d come. When he left the greenhouse for the fields of trees again, he finally spotted George. He was staring at a rosebush, and lost in thought.

  George gradually noticed Benitoe standing next to him after he’d made some small movement that caught his eye.

  “There you are. What do you think? I want to get this rose for Angharad.”

  He leaned forward again to smell the blossoms on the bush in the 5-gallon pot. Spicy and sweet, almost like cloves, he thought, and a strong red-purple double flower. She’d like that. Rosa rugosa “Hansa” they called it, some sort of hybrid.

  “Why?” Benitoe asked.

  “Hmm?” George was still reading the label.

  “Why do you want to get this for Angharad?”

  George gave him his attention. “I’m not quite sure.” He wasn’t sure, it was the truth, but this rosebush had snared him when he walked past, and now he was determined to do it. It felt right.

  “You know Gwyn doesn’t like roses,” Benitoe said.

  “Yes, I’ve heard that, but it’s not about him. Smell this one.”

  Benitoe obligingly leaned close, careful of the heavily defended canes with their thorns everywhere.

  “The label says it’s good for rose hips, too. Practical.”

  Benitoe eyed at him skeptically, and he babbled on, “Mag is supposed to report in to Gwyn. She could bring this when she goes. Today, even.”

  He didn’t meet Benitoe’s eye. “I bet the garden at the huntsman’s house would be a good place to have those meetings anyway. No chance of anyone straying in accidentally, Maelgwn or Rhodri could control the ways she makes. Perfect.”

  “What’s Gwyn going to say when Mag appears carrying a rose?”

  “I don’t care.” George felt unreasonably stubborn about this. He listened to himself and wondered why, as Benitoe had asked. It wasn’t just that Angharad had told him about missing roses. It was something else. Maybe it was just as simple as being something he could do, to give her roses, when there was little he could do about Cernunnos’s disapproval. He had to do something active, whatever it was. It felt like a good luck gesture, and that was enough for him.

  He wrestled the five-gallon container into one of the red children’s wagon that the customers used to collect their choices. “Anything you want, yourself,” he asked Benitoe, “or just the big fat catalog to remind you, for later?”

  *I do not know if she will answer me.*

  Seething Magma had met Senua in her feline avatar but she wasn’t sure if she could contact her directly or how her request would be received. When George had summoned her away from her exploration of these new mountains to a secluded spot on the road she’d been surprised. It was true that Gwyn had requested her to report to him as they traveled and Gravel had agreed she should, but she had thought to meet him at the Orchard Way or some other familiar location, not the garden of George’s house.

  “It will be a private place and easy to control multiple ways as you create them,” George said.

  She could feel there was something else behind this, some necessity for him, but she felt no harm in it.

  *I will try.*

  With one pseudopod she picked up the pot holding the plant that George wanted her to deliver to Angharad.

  *Great lady, will you greet me in the garden where you dwell? I would come to you there with messages for others.*

  The reply was immediate and strong. *Come.*

  She tilted the front part of her body to George. *Do you not wish to deliver this gift yourself?*

  She felt his longing, but he said, “I’d like to, but we should push on. I want to get to State College in time for dinner and our hotel. This way, you won’t be pressed for time and can take as long as you want. The sooner we’re done, the sooner I can come home for good.”

  It was odd. She didn’t think this was the real reason, but she wasn’t sure he knew what the real reason was. She saw that he felt somehow he could keep Angharad safe from his father if he didn’t visit her. That he distrusted this man, if he was his father, but wouldn’t admit that distrust to himself, because it was his father. A clash of loyalties. Very complicated, she thought it, and was grateful for her single-gender kind, one parent and no mate.

  She anchored herself on Senua and built a way to the huntsman’s garden.

  Angharad looked up as Imp bounded off the chair next to her in the study and ran out of the room. By the time she made it to the hall, Alun was in the process of opening the back door for the insistent cat, and they both walked out onto the veranda together to watch.

  Imp ran down the eastern garden wall, to the left of the path to the back gate, and then stopped. He retreated a few feet and sat upright, placing himself with sudden composure in the middle of the path, facing east. Angharad looked at Alun, who shrugged in response.

  Bedo came outside and joined them. “I heard the noise upstairs. What’s happening?”

  Maelgwn popped out the back door right behind him. “It’s Mag. I can hear her.”

  Angharad blinked, but indeed the rock-wright flowed out of a way-opening facing the cat and paused, as if to greet him. One pseudopod was wrapped around some sort of large plant. Flowers?

  “Son, will you please find Gwyn and let him know? Rhodri, too, if you can find him.”

  Maelgwn ran back through the house as the most direct route, and Angharad could hear the front door slam all the way from where she stood.

  Seething Magma turned right out of the way-mouth and narrowed her body so that she didn’t overflow the path itself. Her bulk extended back behind her into the way-passage as a result, so the effect was rather as if a very large snake had come partway out of an invisible rock wall.

  “My lady,” Angharad said, “it’s good to see you again. I’ve sent for Gwyn. Has anything happened? Is there something we can do for you?”

  The rock-wight flowed up the path to the veranda steps and put her burden down, then backed away. In a smooth green pot of some material Angharad didn’t recognize was a blooming rosebush, at least four feet high, with fat red blossoms. She could smell the scent all the way from the top of the veranda. A large incongruous stiff white bow bobbed from one of the branches.

  She choked on a laugh. “From George, I take it.”

  Mag rumbled, “A present from your husband, indeed. He and Benitoe are well.”

  Angharad walked carefully down the steps and bent, as best she could, to pull out the sticks with writing she could see stuck into the soil of the pot. As she straightened up, she took her time inhaling the perfume of an open blossom. “Ah. I’ve missed these.”

  “Have you, my lady?” Gwyn stood at the top of the steps, having come silently through the house and the open back door.

  Will he be offended, she wondered. She stood by her rosebush protectively. “Come see what George has sent.”

  Gwyn descended the steps and sniffed at a rose. “A pleasant odor.”

  With no further comment, he continued down the path to meet with Mag an
d hear her report.

  Alun moved the rosebush out of the way and Bedo offered her an arm back up the steps. She sat down heavily in her favorite chair and watched Gwyn and Mag deep in discussion. Imp sat there as though he were a part of it.

  Maelgwn stood behind her. “Mag says she used Senua as an anchor.”

  “Did she?” Angharad said.

  “I’ll get Rhodri to close that way until father can destroy it. Meanwhile, I’ll mark the opening with something so no one goes in by accident.”

  “Thank you, son.” She settled in her chair. George had left just this morning but it seemed like a long time already.

  Mag will be going back, she thought. I wonder why he didn’t come with her? There must have been a reason. She looked at the half-grown black cat on the path with Gwyn and Mag. Keep him safe, my lady, and bring him back to me.

  CHAPTER 17

  George drove west in silence, wondering how his gift was being received by Angharad. He poked around trying to flush some reaction from Cernunnos by thinking about his father—anything to get a response—but it was as though there were no one else home inside his head, something he was beginning to fear.

  Would I even know if he left? There I’d be with the pack at Nos Galan Gaeaf wondering where he was, he thought, in a black humor. And to think I used to enjoy my privacy.

  He glanced at Benitoe, gazing out the window at the active farms along the road. Some were owned by Amish or Mennonites, and it was usually a thrill to see the horse teams at work, four or six or eight in harness together, but nothing much lifted his mood today.

  The road rose up into the start of the pass over the ridge separating this valley from Penns Valley. A small black buggy was climbing the pass in his lane and, he slowed to follow it, keeping his distance, since there wasn’t enough of a view ahead to pass. His hands were twitching, and he didn’t like the way he felt, nervous and anxious, his stomach churning. There was a buzzing in his ears.

  Crawling along at the speed of the trotting horse, he noticed a small roadside sign—Hickernell Spring—and pulled off on impulse into the parking area, blessedly empty at the moment. He was afraid to drive on for a moment until he got his breath back under control. What’s wrong with me, he wondered.