The Green Memory of Fear

by B. A. Chepaitis

  “Wait,” Alex said, not sure what he was going to say next. But Maya wasn’t listening.

  She aimed the weapon at his leg while Peter stood picking at his fingernails. A shot in each leg. Then sex. Then death. He’d have to hurt her and he didn’t want to. The thought of delivering a kick to a little girl’s face was repulsive.

  “C’mon,” Peter said. “Hurry up, will you?”

  Alex searched rapidly for her thoughts. Found only a heart beating very hard, a ringing sound, a small voice speaking larger than it had any right to, saying Now Now Now. Do it now.

  She made a choking sound and turned the weapon on Peter, firing directly into his face.

  Alex gasped, and Maya stood very still while he dropped like a stone to the floor.

  The other children didn’t move.

  “Whadja do that for?” one of the girls whined. “He was gonna take me skating tomorrow.”

  “Shut up,” she said, her teeth clenched. “Shut up or I’ll kill you, too. Shut up.”

  “That’s enough,” Alex said, staying calm. “We’ll leave now. Uncuff me, and we’ll just leave.”

  “I’m gonna tell,” the boy interjected. “I’m gonna tell and Dr. Senci’s gonna be mad. He’ll probably eat you, but first he’ll—”

  Maya whirled to him and fired once, whirled on the girls and fired again and again. She kept firing until the children were dead, blood pouring out of them in many places, eyes vacant.

  She lifted her face to Alex’s, her pupils dilated, her face blanched, her jaw clenched hard. She let go of the gun and it clattered to the floor. She made a sound like howling withheld. She began to shake all over, dropped her face into her hands and crumbled into herself, sobbing.

  Alex stood, remembered his ankles were cuffed, and dropped to his knees hard. He felt the jolt, but didn’t attend to the pain. As best he could, he drew Maya close and petted her head.

  “It’s over,” he said. “It’s over now. You’re all right. You’ll be all right.”

  * * * *

  Maya uncuffed him and they left the house together, walking out into early morning mist and humidity. The air was thick today. Heavy and thick. Maya said Senci might not come back for days, so they had time to get away.

  Alex held her hand and led her. She seemed like glass ready to break. He wondered what damage this had done to her soul, and if she’d ever recover.

  They walked without any sense of goal or direction for a few blocks, the only important thing to put space between themselves and the house. Then, Alex stopped at a corner, crouched down and put his hands on her shoulders.

  “Maya, look at me,” he said.

  She blinked, eyes still wide and blank.

  He brought two fingers to her forehead and gently asked permission to speak with her this way. Inside her was a roaring of emotion. He couldn’t soothe it. He could only listen.

  She had to leave. Had to get away. And they weren’t going to let her. They’d already argued it out in the living room. Peter told her anyone who left was dead. The other children said they didn’t want to go. They said they’d kill her if she tried to leave. Maya had seen enough killing in Senci’s house to know they meant it.

  Okay, he whispered into her. You’ll be okay. I’ll take you somewhere where you can get help. A family. A mother.

  But where? He still had to find Jaguar. That was still the most important task, and he couldn’t take Maya with him. Couldn’t just leave her here.

  He stood, looked up and down the street. There must be a Child Welfare House somewhere in this city. He could call information and find the building, bring her there. Explain that she’d been traumatized and needed help.

  “Maya,” he said, “I want to take you to someone who can take care of you.”

  She shook her head. “I want to stay with you. She trusts you.”

  She. Jaguar. “Dr. Senci’s looking for me and for Jaguar,” he said. “You’d be safer somewhere else. You know that.”

  “If you bring me somewhere else, I’ll just run away.”

  “To where?” he asked.

  She looked around, then pointed west, toward a scouring sun. “I’ll go that way,” she said. “That’s the way Jaguar went, isn’t it?”

  He frowned. As a little girl, running from the horror of Manhattan, Jaguar pointed herself west and got herself to New Mexico. To Jake and One Bird.

  For the first time since this mess began, his gift worked for him, sending him a clear vision of Jaguar standing in a field of sage, raising her face to a southwestern sun. Her thoughts circled images of him, images of knives and snakes rattling in the dusty earth.

  “There,” he whispered. “Of course.” She’d been speaking with Jake and One Bird about Daro. If she wasn’t there now, Jake would know where to send him next.

  He took Maya’s hand and pointed them in the direction of an airvan stand. “Ever been to New Mexico?” he asked.

  Chapter 17

  The sun piercing the sky was a blessing Jaguar had forgotten, as was the clean and clear scent of sage it lifted into the air around her. She breathed it in to the bottom of her lungs as she walked with One Bird and collected the herbs she needed for her various medicines.

  Around them, the wind-smoothed cliffs and the close huddled groups of boulders at their base spoke in whispers of their business. The trail they walked, packed hard by many feet, was dusty. A dry spring had become a dry summer, and the people were worried about their corn and beans. Jaguar felt dry as the earth herself.

  “You want this?” she asked, pointing to a clump of paintbrush.

  One Bird turned toward her, considered, then shook her head. “Wrong moon.” She walked on, and Jaguar followed.

  Yesterday they’d completed a sweat and all her visions were of snakes. After the sweat, Jake pressed a finger against the corner of her eye and shook his head. He said stay another day.

  She didn’t want to. Being here gave her an illusion of safety that no longer existed. Listening to One Bird sing bad jazz as she washed dishes and chant for the corn as she walked the land, watching Jake scream invectives at the Dodgers when they lost the ball and make the morning offering at dawn—the familiarity of their daily gestures made it seem as if she’d returned for good to this place that sheltered her so completely. As if the Serials and the Planetoids were dreams sandwiched around what was real.

  This. Here. Gathering herbs under the widest sky, the warmest sun.

  She would lose her nerve if she stayed much longer, but she couldn’t leave until she knew what to do, and so she stayed another day.

  As they collected the gifts of the arid earth she remembered that the last time she walked here was with Alex, more than a year ago, the two of them collecting sage to bring back to the Planetoid. She’d come home for the summer sun ceremony and brought him along, wanting to share this place and these people with him.

  He fit in easily, his innate courtesy leading him immediately to the right words and gestures for the occasion. The people in the village recognized him as a skilled empath, sensed both the steely strength and subtle vision that belonged to the best Adepts. She’d been proud to claim him as her friend. Proud to bring him here.

  She remembered all that, then realized too late that memory was dangerous right now.

  Sorrow passed through her like a sword, and suddenly her legs wouldn’t hold her up. She sat hard on the ground, trying for breath and not finding it. She’d never known before this how physically painful grief could be, how it clutched at the heart with taloned hands. She wrapped her arms around herself and lay down against the warm earth, waiting for it to pass.

  One Bird walked to her and stood nearby, listening to her ragged breathing, the sobs she wouldn’t let rise from her throat.

  “What?” Jaguar groaned at her. “What is doing this to me?”

  “You gotta give in to it, Jaguar. You know that.” One Bird said, and walked on.

  It quickly became clear to Jaguar that she didn’t know
how.

  Instead, she stayed where she was for a long time. It was comforting to allow herself this physical collapse without fear of anyone walking by and thinking her insane. A simple gesture, to lie with your face on the earth and feel your heart beat out pain.

  The grit of the land moved under her cheek and the cool and prickly scent of sage filled her. A snake curled past her, paying her no attention. Nothing dangerous. Just a little whipsnake. If it was a rattler, she would have grabbed it and let it bite her heart and have done with it. Then let Senci find her. He’d feed off her, and he’d be eating poison before he knew it.

  And as she thought this, every other concern went away.

  “Snakes,” she said out loud. “The snakes.” She sat up fast and brushed the dirt from her face. At last, she understood.

  The Greenkeeper avoided snakes, Davidson said. The venom invaded them systemically, couldn’t be easily or quickly healed. Enough venom would certainly make them more vulnerable to other wounds.

  Her dreams of snakes. Her sure knowledge of loss. Her profound grief. And in spite of what it meant, she felt triumph because at last, at last, she had something she could do, even if she died doing it. She lifted herself up and walked back to One Bird, who noticed the change immediately.

  “Answers come easier when you’re not chasing them down, don’t they?” she said.

  “They do,” Jaguar agreed.

  One Bird didn’t ask for further explanation. From the look of sorrow on her time worn face, Jaguar figured she already knew.

  * * * *

  At supper that evening Jaguar told Jake and One Bird that she knew what to do, and was ready to leave. She didn’t elaborate beyond that, and they didn’t ask her to.

  “Tomorrow,” Jake said. “You can go then. There’s one more thing you gotta do for me.”

  They left her in the house while they walked under the stars, and Jaguar knew they were consulting about her. She was causing them sorrow. She would cause them more. She had no choice. And if they needed a night to absorb that, she would give it to them. They’d given enough of their nights to her.

  In the morning, Jake woke her early. The cool of night was still in the air, the sage and grasses dotted with dew that would dissipate quickly.

  “That all you wear on your feet?” Jake asked, looking at her thonged sandals.

  “That’s all,” she said. It was an old battle, trying get shoes on her, and they’d never won. The formula was familiar and comforting. A kind of love song they sang to each other.

  “What about the snakes?” Jake asked.

  “What about them?”

  He shook his head, “Come with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the garden. You gotta help me with beans.”

  “Jake,” she protested, “I’m leaving.”

  “I told you there was one more thing. Beans first. Then you go.”

  They walked to the field where the corn was tall, and the beans turned their leaves away from the scorching sun.

  He handed her a short hoe and a basket and sat himself down on a rock, opened an umbrella over his head, and pointed toward a row of bean poles. “Gotta weed it out, then pick. Start there,” he told her, and she did.

  The sun emerged fully, and in little time her back would have been drenched with sweat except that the dry air sucked it from her skin as soon as it formed. Her water bottle was empty by the time she went from weeding and hoeing to picking. Jake sat under his umbrella and watched her. He hummed to himself, occasionally closed his eyes.

  When her basket was full she held it up for him to view. “Is that enough?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “One more row.”

  She sighed and bent to her task. She reached around a pole that was heavily vined, picked a handful of beans and dropped them in the basket.

  “You missed one,” Jake said.

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “Where?”

  He pointed a bony finger to her left. “There,” he said.

  She stretched for it, found it just out of her reach. In pushing herself forward just a little further, she lost her balance and fell, chin first, into the dry earth. Behind her, she heard Jake chuckling. She cursed soundly, pushed herself up, grabbed the bean and pulled it down.

  “Here,” she said, standing and holding it out to him. “Happy?”

  His grin lacked nothing but a few teeth. “You forget how to pull beans in that place you work?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, “I’ve been busy.”

  He scratched at his hip and regarded her with his earth brown eyes, the wrinkles around them deepening as he squinted in the bright sun at her. “You forget everything else I taught you, too?”

  He was enjoying this immensely, she thought. “Jake, get someone else to pick the beans,” she said, brushing off her pants. She picked up the basket and walked out of the garden, toward the fields of sage between them and their home.

  “No, no,” he protested. He closed his umbrella, left his rock and trailed after her. “You gotta do it. It’s part of the plan.”

  “The plan to keep me here for a year or so? It won’t work. I’m leaving today.”

  He reached out, put a hand on her arm. She halted, turned to face him.

  His eyes were sorrowful, seeing everything. “You gonna go this journey?” he asked.

  “I am,” she said.

  “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Today,” she said firmly.

  He took his hat off, pulled a bandana from his pocket and wiped his head, then put his hat back on. “You’re not going alone,” he said.

  “Yes I am,” she replied. “I’m going today, alone, and it will be a good day to die.”

  When she was nineteen she went back to the city to collect whatever remained of her grandparent’s goods, gathered up in the general wreckage of the Serials. They didn’t want her to go. Jake particularly spoke against it. But she went, and while she was there she ran into the cop who saved her life in Manhattan. He was already working on the Planetoid, and he brought her there to see it. She ended up back at school in the white man’s world, and then working on a star, as Jake called it. Now she was back here, telling him she would die. Maybe, she thought, he’d been right about that trip back to the city.

  Jake stood facing her. “Tell me how you’ll stop Senci,” he said.

  “Jake, you don’t want to know that.”

  “Maybe not, but I need to,” he insisted.

  She’d wanted to spare him the painful particulars, wanted to spare herself the pain of naming them to someone she cared about so much. She steeled herself and spoke as dryly as she could. Just the facts.

  “The snakes,” she said. “I’ll milk them for their poison and inject it in myself. When Senci feeds off me, he’ll eat their venom. And he’ll die. We’ll both die.”

  There was nothing else to say, so she was silent. She understood why he couldn’t tell her this. It would be the same as advising her to kill herself, and it wasn’t his place to do that. Not his place, and it would break his heart.

  He rocked on his heels for a moment, staring at the ground. Then he lifted his gaze and studied her carefully. “Remember that story I told you about the directions of power? It’s from the Lakota.”

  She nodded. “There’s seven directions of power, and the seventh is the most powerful.

  “That’s right. Creator had a feeling humans might abuse that power, so he wanted to hide it. He asked all the animals to help find the right place. Eagle said she’d take it up to the sky, but creator knew people would get there pretty easy. Bear offered to hide it in her cave, but creator knew people would dig in there fast enough. Then, the little blind mole had an idea. Remember?”

  She swallowed. Something about this story tugged at her. She had a vivid memory of the first time Jake told it, when she came back from New York after her grandparents died. She’d refused to sleep inside because staying out under the stars somehow felt sa
fer. Jake came out, brought her a blanket, and told her the story.

  “I remember,” she said. “The mole told creator to hide the power where people wouldn’t think to look, a place only a few people would dare go to.”

  “That’s right,” Jake said. “But the ones who took the journey would know the right way to use the power. So the most powerful of the seven directions was hidden inside the human heart. And that’s where it still is today.”

  Her power was not in what she feared. That just appeared powerful. Her power was in what she loved. To know that was easy enough. To live it was something else.

  “I still have to go,” she said quietly.

  “I know,” he said. “Mary Hawk will sweat you this afternoon. Don’t forget to give her something. You can leave tomorrow.”

  “Today,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Tonight. Do the sweat first. You got an idea where to go?”

  “I’ll take suggestions.”

  He pointed toward the canyon. There was sacred land out there. She knew it well. “Lots of snakes on the Mesa next to Sundagger. You can milk them,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go there.”

  He pressed a gnarled hand to her cheek. “I won’t see you again before you leave,” he said.

  She wouldn’t see him again. Never again. She bit at her lip to chase away the deeper pain.

  Tears slid down the furrows of his face. He wouldn’t hide them. They were his gift to her, but she had none to offer in return.

  He turned, and started his slow and hobbled walk toward home.

  Home Planet—New York City, USA

  Senci squatted at the corner of an alley and rubbed his head. Even in Manhattan, nobody paid attention to this kind of behavior. Nor would anyone notice the teenage boy lying in the dumpster behind him, his final feed of this hunt.

  He lifted his head and sniffed the air. He’d been in this alley before today. In his endless circling of space and time, he once stopped here to feed. He searched through his memory threads, seeking the moment.

  Yes. A good taste. A pleasurable feed. A youngish girl who had not consented, but who had died well. Nice to call it back. But he had work to do, and couldn’t linger in it for very long.