Revenge and the Wild

by Michelle Modesto

  Isabelle was right; there hadn’t been cannibals near Rogue City for some time. Cannibals used to be a problem back when Westie’s parents and others like them were still traveling the wagon trail, but by the next year, after the creature war officially ended and air travel became more affordable, there had been very few attacks. The only ones Westie heard of were in the valley where she’d been hunting them.

  “Rubbish,” Nigel said. “It wasn’t a cannibal. The woman was working. You see, sometimes when two people are in the throes of passion—when they are . . . let’s see, how do I put this?”

  Isabelle giggled into her hand. Westie made a gagging sound.

  “Copulating,” Westie said. “Yes, I know what two people do when they’re alone.”

  The column of Nigel’s throat moved when he swallowed. He put a hand on his shoulder, massaging a knot. “Right, anyway, sometimes when two people are intimate, they can get carried away.”

  “I’m telling you, Nigel, that wasn’t a love bite,” Westie said.

  Nigel ran a hand down the front of his face, stretching his skin. “I need to go see if the doctor needs help with the stitching,” he said, hurrying to escape the conversation.

  As soon as he was gone, Westie asked Isabelle, “What were the mayor and the Fairfield men doing in the apothecary?”

  “Well, the mayor came in to complain about the Wintu, creatures, and pretty much everything else in Rogue City. I think that ridiculous little man just likes to hear himself talk. As for the Fairfields, they talked mostly about Emma. Cain told me they’re spending a fortune on Nigel’s invention, so they want to spread the word about its capabilities.”

  The hairs stood on Westie’s arm. “You’ve been talking to Cain Fairfield?”

  Isabelle smiled the devilish smile she wore when talking about boys. “A little. Though I have to say, it’s difficult to focus on Cain when James is around, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Westie looked at James, who was about four feet away, still in front of the apothecary. Their eyes met and his lit up. She scratched the back of her neck and brought her attention back to Isabelle. She wanted to tell her to avoid the Fairfields at all costs, but wasn’t sure how to do it without revealing her secret about them being murderers. Isabelle loved secrets. She had a trumpet for a mouth, and gossip was her favorite tune.

  “He’s all right, I suppose,” Westie said.

  “Well, I’d best get back to the apothecary. I’m sure the doctor will need alcohol and medicines to patch the woman up,” Isabelle said, though Westie was sure Isabelle was less concerned about the doctor’s needs than she was about being present in case any of those sordid details the sheriff seemed so concerned about just happened to slip from Nadia’s groggy lips.

  After Isabelle left, Westie realized she’d forgotten to grab the extra set of clothes she’d brought for Alistair. On her way back to the wagon, she noticed someone strolling down the center of the road and froze.

  Lavina wore a bright-yellow gown with lace trim and held a parasol shading her from the sun. Her hips swayed ever so slightly. So casual compared to Nadia’s screaming and fumbling as she ran down the same path.

  As Westie watched Lavina join the Fairfield men, she remembered briefly wondering, while she’d been drinking in the Tight Ship, if the Fairfields were still cannibals. Most who had turned to cannibalism on the wagon trail did it only to survive and stopped once they were rescued. But for some, it became a craving, or maybe it was just madness. Either way, they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—stop.

  It took animal savagery to tear at someone’s skin with their teeth, gnawing through fat and muscle, to hear someone’s agonized screams and feel nothing. Westie saw no compassion, no regret, as Lavina tilted her head back, laughing at something James was saying. Perhaps the rest of the family hadn’t been involved. Maybe they had moved on from hunting helpless families in cabins, but there was one thing Westie felt certain of: Lavina was still a threat.

  The Fairfields headed toward her. She was reminded again of being back in the cabin, woken up by the screams of her mother.

  “Westie, so good to see you again,” Lavina said when they were facing each other. Her dress was exquisitely made. There were no bumps or wrinkles at all in the fabric. Not something Westie imagined a cannibal would wear when on the hunt, but maybe that was the look Lavina was going for.

  “Good to see you too,” Westie said with some semblance of grace. She held her ground, not wanting them to see her squirm. She kept her parasol close and twisted a gear at the wrist of her machine that made her middle finger twitch. It reminded her she was no longer that helpless little girl in the cabin, even if she still felt like it. “What brings you out today?”

  “Actually,” the mayor said, “I was hoping to speak with the little savage girl I’ve seen you running around with.”

  Westie bit the inside of her cheek, wanting to tell him that Bena was a woman, not a girl, and she was far from savage. But that would’ve meant sticking around to give a lecture. Without Alistair and Bena by her side, she wanted to be away from her present company as soon as possible.

  “I’m sure I can get a message to her,” Westie said.

  “Good. Some folks around here are concerned about what’s happening with the dome.”

  When Hubbard took a step toward her, Westie flinched, nearly raising her arm to ward off an attack, but she stopped herself, remaining calm outwardly even when her insides rattled.

  “If I’m going to invest my money in this machine, I need to know them savages will pull their weight,” Hubbard said. He had a bovine look to him and talked like a man slow in the head. Perhaps that was what eating humans did to the brain over time. If that was the case, it wasn’t working on Lavina. She seemed as sharp as ever.

  “I’m sure whatever is happening with the dome, the Wintu have their reasons, and it will have no effect on Emma whatsoever,” Westie said. “I’ll see if I can set up a meeting with the Wintu’s chief as soon as possible.”

  “Excellent,” Lavina said, wiping the sweat from her brow. “Now maybe we can finally get off the topic of money.”

  When Lavina lifted her arm, Westie saw a brown smear on her sleeve and blurted, “Is that blood on your dress?” before she could stop herself.

  James leaned over Lavina’s shoulder for a better look. “You two must bathe in the stuff. Westie was covered in it too just yesterday. Is this some beauty regimen we should be concerned about?” he said with a smirk.

  Westie forced herself to smile at James’s quip, but her gaze remained on Lavina, who scratched at the dried brown swatch. She’d been in Rogue City less than a week and was already causing trouble. It was hardly enough blood to suggest she’d attacked someone, but it was there all the same.

  “I must have pricked myself with the needle when I was sewing Olivia’s doll’s head back on,” Lavina said. She smiled as if to say there was nothing Westie could do to shake her. “Speaking of Olivia, I’d best go check on her. If she wakes and sees I’m gone, she’ll destroy the place.”

  “I think I’ll slip over to the Tight Ship. I’d like to avoid that little terror when she wakes.” James looked at Westie in a way that might’ve sent a flutter through her had they been alone. But as it was, all she felt was sick. “It’s always nice to see you, Westie. Good day.”

  Westie watched the Fairfields leave. As soon as it was safe to turn her back on them, she rushed into the doctor’s office, locking the door behind her.

  Sixteen

  They arrived back at the mansion just before supper. Alistair was awake and, other than complaints of a headache, seemed no different than before he was shot. They sat down to eat. He wore a red handkerchief over his nose and mouth like a bandit after Nigel had taken his mask for repairs.

  Alistair lifted his kerchief with one hand and shuttled a broccoli floret into his mouth with the other, careful not to let Westie see the face hidden beneath. She wished she had peeked at him when she’d had the chance.

/>   He raised his hands. Stop watching me, he signed.

  “Sorry, Alley, I don’t remember what those signs mean,” she lied. “You wear that blasted machine so often I’ve forgotten the hand language.”

  He glared at her until she broke into a smile. His eyes softened.

  “Enough,” Nigel said from the head of the table. He’d been so quiet Westie had nearly forgotten he was there. “I want to talk about what happened at the airdocks before the two of you went off seeking adventure.”

  Westie looked down at the plate of food she hadn’t touched. “I was hoping to avoid it,” she said.

  “You have been, but no longer. Now”—he tossed his napkin onto his full plate—“I want you to stop all this nonsense about the Fairfields being cannibals.”

  “Nonsense?” She crushed her fork into a silver ball with her machine. “You don’t believe me?”

  Neither Nigel nor Alistair would look at her. She wished Bena were there. Bena would at least give it some thought before dismissing her completely.

  “I believe that you believe they are who you say they are, but please, Westie, look at this from all sides. You spent months searching for these people in the valley, always one step behind them, you say. You dug tirelessly into the cases, trying to dispute the reports of skilled pathologists on their findings—”

  “They were calling them creature attacks. I’ve helped you in the surgical rooms enough to recognize a creature attack. There weren’t any fang punctures on those bodies. I know a human bite mark when I see it.”

  Nigel’s mustache moved like a living thing as he chewed his lip.

  “I realize you saw . . . what you saw as a child, but you are no expert on human bite marks. Vampire and elf bites can look very much human.”

  Each word that came from his mouth stoked the fire that grew within her. No one believed her. She heard it in Nigel’s voice and saw it in Alistair’s eyes.

  He went on, “And don’t you think it is a miraculous turn of events that the cannibal family who killed your own seven years ago just happens to show up on our doorstep—quite literally—the day after you get back into town?”

  “You think I’m lying?” she asked with narrowed eyes.

  Westie had told some tall tales as a child, and she’d told a few whales to get out of trouble, but she had never lied to Nigel about the important things. It pained her that he didn’t believe her now.

  “Not lying—I believe you are mistaken. I think you want to find your family’s killers so desperately that you see them in every new face you encounter. I mean you no offense, but with the way you’ve been drinking lately, and some of the mistakes you’ve made in the past, I have to just come out and say it: you are not the most reliable witness.”

  Nigel’s words tore through her chest and ripped out her heart. She was quite aware of her past mistakes and regretted them, but it hurt no less hearing Nigel throw them back in her face. She felt ganged up on. Ashamed of the mess she had become. She needed Nigel and Alistair more than ever, and they wouldn’t stand by her. And worst of all, she had no one to blame but herself.

  She left the table without being excused, ignoring Nigel’s pleas for her to return.

  That night after everyone had retired to their rooms, Westie slipped out her bedroom window and went down to the barn.

  She saddled Henry and made her way to the Wintu village. Once she was outside the city limits and into the pitch darkness of Wintu land, she slowed her horse. To keep from getting an arrow between her shoulder blades, she spoke the Wintu word for friendship—that, or the word for being flatulent. The Wintu children used to find it comical to teach her the wrong words for everything, and with friendship and flatulent being so close in sound, she couldn’t remember which word was which. When she heard the quiet laughter of Wintu scouts coming from the trees, bushes, and crags, she knew.

  They let her pass anyway. Everyone in Bena’s tribe recognized Westie, and she was welcome.

  In a clearing was a circle of huts and a large campfire in the middle, with most of the tribe gathered around. Grah sat by the fire, scraping an animal hide with a sharpened bone. He was the closest to Westie’s age, and they’d played together when Bena would take her to the village as a child. She’d developed quite the infatuation with him back then, following him around, braiding his long hair when he wasn’t able to avoid her. He would tease her about her pale skin blinding him in the sunlight. She hadn’t thought about him much since Alistair had come into her life, but seeing him, his long black hair and shirtless broad chest, made her sweat a little. He smiled and winked when he saw her. She had to fight the urge to hide her face in her hands like she’d done when she was young and still shy.

  Sitting near Grah was Rek. He looked much older than she remembered, his black braids now woven with stands of gray. His wife had been raped and killed by a white man around the same time Bena had saved Westie, but that hadn’t stopped him from gently changing Westie’s bandages and treating her wound.

  Roasting what looked like a squirrel over the open flame was Chaoha, who’d told her grand stories of a giant eagle that flew around the sun with the earth on its back, and Tecumseh—also known as Tall Buck—who’d sung her songs when she’d woken up from nightmares.

  Seeing them brought a burning sense of longing. For Westie, the Wintu village was a place of healing, a place for her tortured soul to be nourished. She’d come to the Wintu with her heart in pieces, and they’d done their best to put it back together with what little they had left to work with.

  As she rode by, she was met with words of welcome and smiles as warm as the orange glow of firelight against their skin.

  Westie tied Henry up with the Wintu horses and made her way to Bena’s hut, which looked somewhat like a beaver nest. It was a round structure, dug deep into the earth. The roof was made of branches and was almost flush with the ground.

  “Come in,” Bena said without even looking up. She sat on a woven blanket, the blunt end of a spear wedged between her bare feet while she sharpened the tip. “It’s been two seasons since you were last here.”

  Westie looked around at all the weapons on the walls, bows and arrows, hatchets, spears, and guns. The evidence of the warrior Bena was.

  Breathing in the familiar smell of wood smoke, she smiled and sighed. “Every time I step on Wintu land it gets harder to leave. I fear one day I’ll come for a visit and never leave.”

  “Believe me, we fear it too.”

  Bena grinned when Westie glared at her. Bena was always more generous with her smiles when she was with her own people. It made Westie feel a little better after the crushing blow dealt by Nigel’s words.

  “So.” The smile slipped away from Bena’s lips as she concentrated on the tip of her spear. “What brings you out at night?”

  “I was hoping to speak to Big Fish if she’ll have me.”

  Big Fish was the Wintu chief. The name was much prettier in their native language, but Westie’s tongue could never move the way it needed to to pronounce it.

  “I am sure she will be happy to see you.” The smile was back. “She loves a challenge.”

  “Well, aren’t you just a riot tonight?” Westie said.

  Bena chuckled. “She’s up on the hill, talking to the spirits.”

  Westie turned to leave, then stopped at the opening of the hut and faced Bena again. “Is magic really as scarce as Nigel would have me believe?”

  Though Westie had seen it with her own eyes when Bena had failed to heal the houseplant and start a fire, she didn’t want to believe it was true.

  Bena looked up from her work. “I’m afraid so.”

  Westie had hoped Nigel was exaggerating so that she would behave around his guests, and that the change in the dome was some sort of natural phenomenon that could easily be explained away.

  “But how? Why now?”

  Bena put the spear to the side, picked up a blunt-edged stick, and began to whittle away at the tip. “More and more se
ttlers are calling this continent their home. As the population grows, so does industry. Entire forests are being destroyed to build cities, waterways polluted. Magic is the land. It is in the trees, the mountains, the water, the air. As all those things are destroyed, magic will recede into the earth, deeper and deeper, until those of us on the surface can no longer reach it.”

  That was why Nigel used gold for his invention, Westie realized. She’d seen Big Fish use nuggets of it during spells. She wore a chunk of it on a string around her neck. Magic had sunk into the earth and soaked into the gold.

  “I’m sorry,” Westie said.

  “As am I.”

  Westie ducked her head and left Bena’s hut. There was nothing she could do about the settlers, and she didn’t need another burden right then to wallow in. She’d come to the Wintu village with a purpose, and that was to ask a favor of Big Fish.

  Westie hiked up the nearly vertical hill. It was too dark to see her footing. She worked solely on memory to get her there, and it seemed her memory wasn’t all that reliable from when she’d been sober either. She didn’t remember trees and rocks in the path the last time she’d walked to Spirit Hill. She fell and scraped her knees. The pain of it nearly pushed her to a breaking point. She cussed the entire way up.

  She could see the glow of firelight up ahead and smelled the tangy scent of kinnikinnick burning in the air. The smell brought back a long-forgotten memory of when she had stayed with the Wintu. Big Fish had spent every night on Spirit Hill with her pipe, talking to her creator, asking the spirits for protection over her tribe. Westie had decided she wanted to talk to them too, ask why they’d allowed the cannibals to take her family. She knew only a chosen few were able to talk to spirits, but that wasn’t about to stop her from trying. One night after everyone in the village was asleep, she snuck into Big Fish’s dwelling, took the pipe, and climbed the hill.

  Though not a spirit talker, after smoking enough wild tobacco for three grown men, Westie finally saw them—as well as a pink buffalo and dogs dressed in human clothes dancing through the air. Somehow, through it all, she’d forgotten to ask the creator anything and woke up with a brain-splitting headache the next morning. Since then she’d decided to leave the spirit talking to the chief. It was a hard lesson learned, like most. Still, it was a memory that made her smile when so many others hurt.