Daughters of the Wild

by Natalka Burian

  Sil treated those plants better than he treated the kids. Cello had always partly believed it was because he was drawing magic from the ground, and that it was more about Sil’s practice than about profit. Letta, on the other hand, had always seemed very mercantile-minded with their work. More scams than crimes, at least that’s what Cello had believed.

  Meanwhile, Marcela chattered in the dark. “Are you serious? Sabina, she’s messing with us, right?”

  “Please be quiet,” Sabina whispered.

  “Joanie? Are you serious?” Marcela repeated.

  Joanie didn’t speak again, and soon they all fell asleep, even Marcela.

  After that, Cello watched Sil and Letta more carefully. He watched them especially on those regular visits to the Josephs’. They always left the little kids with Sabina and Marcela, and brought along Joanie and Cello, who sat in the back of the truck with the tarp-covered mounds of fragrant plants. They pressed their arms and legs down on places where the wind flipped up the tarp. For Cello, those afternoon drives were filled with the scent of languishing greenery and hot canvas, and the thrilling proximity of his limbs to Joanie’s. The cuttings they brought to the Joseph compound were unloaded into a barn, in a kind of anteroom—a large, refrigerated metal compartment. No one let Cello see beyond that, but he knew that now Joanie understood exactly what happened there.

  * * *

  Cello shook his head to loosen thoughts of Joanie from it. Just do your job, he told himself. The plot he’d outlined flickered green and gold under the sun. Sil would be happy with this, he thought, surprised by how much satisfaction he felt. He knew it was pathetic to crave that approval, but he also knew he’d done well.

  Cello felt the flush of his skin and the slick of sweat between his shoulder blades and across his chest. He wondered what time it was, and when Sabina would come back with the mower. Marcela still lay in the grass, curled like a sleeping fox kit.

  “Hey, Marcela,” he said, maybe too gently.

  “What.” Her face was buried in the crook of her arms, and her voice sounded distorted, like it belonged to someone different.

  “Are you going to do it, or is Sabina?”

  “I’m going to,” she hissed. “As if I would make Sabina. She doesn’t know anything about it. I’m not a monster,” she said, with a look that sliced right through him.

  “I’m sorry,” Cello said, without looking at his foster sister. “I wish I could help you.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said. “Believe me.” Marcela stood up and walked the perimeter Cello had outlined. He followed her, a few paces behind.

  “Can you get back, please?” she said, vicious. Cello stood still and watched as she crouched to the ground, her toes at the new plot’s edge. She yanked fistfuls of grass out by the roots and tossed them to one side, exposing a bald ring of earth. She scratched at the tiny, living fibers with her fingers, turning the soil beneath them. Cello had watched Joanie and Letta do the same thing dozens of times, but there was something different, less resigned, about Marcela’s movements. He wondered if it would even work.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he called out.

  “Of course I do! Letta makes us practice every month when we bleed.”

  Cello inched closer, split between curious and afraid. “I don’t know—I think Joanie and Letta do it different. What happens if you don’t do it right?”

  “Oh, my God, I’m doing it right, Cello. Plus, I’m bleeding right now if you really must know, and that’s pretty much a guarantee that it’ll work.”

  “Oh,” Cello said, flushing.

  “Yeah, oh—why else would Letta make me do this today?” Marcela’s hair hung around her cheeks in sweaty clumps, and her skin seemed to glow with concentration. She lifted handfuls of the soil out and around the shallow ditch she’d made, and pressed her fingertips around the insides, coating the interior with her touch. She spat once, and then again, as if to double down on the intention—but there was nothing loving or caretaking in the gesture. Sweat dripped from Marcela’s face, tapping into the ground.

  “Are you sure that’s right?” Cello asked before he could stop himself.

  Marcela glared at him and stepped over the boundary Cello had pressed into the grass with his feet. Marcela kicked the dirt she had removed, violent and sloppy, back into the shallow grave she’d dug for her saliva, and then stamped on the mound. Her skin flashed the scorched red of a sunburn, just as Letta’s and Joanie’s skin reddened when they did the Work, as though they were burning from the inside out. Marcela waited a moment, and then jumped on the pile of earth again. Her movements were the incongruous, joyful little hops of a small child, but her face brimmed with exhausted fury.

  Cello held his breath and waited—each time he’d watched Letta or Joanie complete this ritual, the results were immediate—but there they stood, and nothing.

  “Well?” Marcela shouted, not to Cello, or herself, or to any human being, but out to the world’s widest parts. She was answered with a rumble. The earth shook gently beneath them, as though a massive swarm of bees bounced and buzzed on the other side of the ground. “You see?” Marcela said to Cello, accusing and out of breath. “I told you.”

  The swirls of grass and weeds within the new plot began to gleam. Marcela waited until the entire shape intended for the fresh planting was coated in a uniform skim of radiance before she stepped back, outside of the lines. Cello blinked, and the grass was just grass, lit only by the strong summer sun overhead.

  “Wow, good job, Mar,” he said, and meant it.

  “Shut up,” she replied, and plopped back onto the ground, scooting back into a cooler patch of shade. Her face looked suddenly drawn, and the space beneath her eyes formed two purple crescents, dark enough to look like some kind of injury.

  “What does it feel like, when you do that?” He’d never asked Joanie or Letta. Cello had always accepted the Work as just another part of tending the Vine. It was a normal part of their lives, the same way he never asked Sil what it felt like to sink a new irrigation line. Marcela looked so different from her usual self that the question climbed out of his mouth before he could stop it.

  “It feels like dying. Like the worst fever you ever had.” Her breathing was audibly shallow, like a sick kid’s. “Please don’t tell Sabina I already did it, okay? Just say Letta wants to do it herself or something.”

  “Yeah, I will. If that’s what you want.”

  “It’s what I want. I also want some water. Please, I’m so thirsty.” She turned her face away from Cello and collapsed back into the grass as though her body had been wrung out by the ritual.

  Cello winced, and shaded his eyes against the sun, even though the sun had nothing to do with his grimace. “Okay, I’ll get you some.”

  He told himself that by taking those cuttings in the early morning, he hadn’t taken anything away from Marcela or any of his foster siblings—he had only really stolen from Letta. But as he watched, he began to understand how much, and from whom, Letta and Sil were stealing.

  3

  Joanie stood and swayed by the rusted water heater in the yard. She held the baby pressed to her chest, his body limp with sleep.

  “Hey, you alright?” Sabina asked, jangling the keys to the mower.

  “Shh, I just got him down,” Joanie said.

  “He’s still so little.” Sabina ran her finger across the baby’s dangling bare foot. “You sure he’s growing enough?”

  “Of course he is. Why would you say that?” Joanie turned more deeply into a patch of shade. “He’s fine,” Joanie said softly, speaking against the crown of the baby’s head. “Here, can you take him for a minute? I’m sweating like a hog.” Joanie handed the baby off to Sabina, nestling him into the crook of her elbow.

  “How could you not love this tiny thing?” Sabina fanned at his flushed face with her hand.
>
  “Girls!” Letta’s voice called out into the yard from her trailer’s open window. Sabina and Joanie shared an efficient, worried look.

  “I’ll go—just wait here a minute. I’ll be right back,” Joanie said, striding across the grass. She knocked on the scorching trailer door.

  “If I didn’t want you to come in, I wouldn’t have hollered for you, would I?” Letta said, her voice sharpened by some irritation other than the heat.

  Joanie pushed open the door, turning her own anger up, too, just so she would feel stronger. “What is it?” she asked, sliding into the trailer’s humid, stinking interior.

  “Light one for me, baby, will you?” Letta gestured to the squashed pack of Grand Prix Mediums beside her linty, slippered foot.

  “Is that what you called me all the way in here for?” Joanie stamped over and took up a lighter from the coffee table. She flicked one of the Grand Prix alive and passed it to Letta before lighting one of her own.

  “No, smart mouth,” she snapped. “Something is off today—do you feel it?” Letta massaged her jaw, loosening it back and forth. “I can feel it in my teeth. Like something’s missing.”

  Joanie froze for an instant only, before blowing a concentrated stream of smoke in Letta’s direction. “Nope,” she replied—simply, harsh. “I don’t feel anything like that.”

  “Then you’re not paying attention.” Letta prodded a magenta-polished fingernail between her eyes. “Try again. Really try this time.”

  Joanie closed her eyes, chilled. Had Cello followed her instructions early? Without telling her? It wasn’t like him to be so enterprising. She hated these checks that Letta insisted on; she hated that Letta watched her. Letta started her foster daughters on these inspections as soon as they started bleeding, once they were old enough to give to and take from the Vine.

  If she let her insides go silent, she could feel the faint outline of every plot in the garden—the ones she had tilled herself were brighter and more pronounced in that jigsaw legacy, but they were all there, if she was quiet enough. She opened her eyes. “Everything looks fine to me,” she said, shrugging in Letta’s direction.

  Letta rested her head on one arm of the stained, sunset-colored sofa. “Try again, Joanie. You’re being careless.”

  Joanie heaved an exaggerated sigh with her next exhale of smoke and tried once more, entering the perimeter of each plot in her mind as though there were a series of gates connecting them all. She waited until she felt the tiniest shock, like the prickle of static on a fingertip against a doorknob. It did feel strange and wrong, but small—like a tiny, dashed break in the perimeter of one of the plots.

  “Okay, there’s something,” she conceded, opening her eyes, straining every muscle in her face to stay still and calm.

  “Yes,” Letta said, sitting up suddenly, “there is.” Her eyes narrowed, but her smile was harmless, even sweet. Joanie shivered under that look, despite her best efforts at control. “Can you guess what’s wrong?”

  “Something’s missing?” Joanie said, trying to stay angry, understanding that this emotion was the only thing keeping Letta’s alligator-jaw suspicions away from her throat.

  “Yes, honey, fucking bingo!” Letta stood up. “Something is most definitely missing. And I have to find it before Amberly gets a whiff that something’s wrong.”

  “How’re you going to do that?” Joanie said with a very deliberate and obvious eye roll.

  “I think you know exactly how. I’m gonna go light me a fire.” Letta took one last drag before stabbing her cigarette into the pink glass ashtray on the table. Fire was how Letta, how any of the girls, could get a closer look at the Vine. If it wasn’t growing quick enough, they lit a fire; if the blossom’s color appeared faded, they lit a fire. There was always some kind of answer waiting for them in the flames. Joanie clamped her fingers down into her palms before they could tremble and give her away. “Maybe an animal got into it,” she said.

  “An animal?” Letta smiled coolly, incredulous. “Honey, in the forty years I been tending these plots, no animal has ever been where it shouldn’t have been.” She tilted her head as she looked at Joanie. “No animal with four legs, anyway.” Joanie stayed quiet, relaxing her mouth and resisting the urge to press her lips together. She waited for Letta to leave before she finished her own cigarette in a numbed panic and retreated to the yard where she’d left her son.

  “What happened?” Sabina asked, holding the baby out to Joanie. “Did you get in trouble?”

  “Why would you say that?” Joanie asked, mimicking Letta’s incredulous fury from inside the trailer.

  “Joanie, I’m on your side. I’m always on your side. If something happened, you can tell me.” Sabina’s face twisted with concern.

  “Nothing happened. It’s just this place. It makes everybody crazy.” Joanie stared down at the baby’s tiny, flushed face. “I’d do anything to get him out of here. I really would.” She tucked him more securely against her arm, jostling him nearly awake.

  Sabina jolted back, as though struck. “Do you really think it’s that bad? Where else would we go?”

  Joanie tried to force a kind smile for Sabina, but felt her face erupt, the tears already loose. “It’s not that bad exactly. It’s just...nobody has any choices here. Not even Sil and Letta, not really.” Joanie pressed her lips together until they hurt, and tried to swallow down that stinging feeling in her throat. “You better go,” she said. “Don’t give Letta any more reasons to be mad.”

  “Can I just wait with you for one more minute?” Joanie nodded in response. The two girls bent their dark heads over the sleeping baby, and waited for a breeze to pass their way. Joanie waved Sabina along as soon as she detected the scent of smoke in the air.

  * * *

  Letta finally stalked back into the clearing in front of the trailers, a rough branch still smoldering on one end clasped in her hand. Her robe was covered in a milky layer of ash, and her face was open with active curiosity. Joanie wobbled with dismay at the sight of her—the Vine had shared a secret with Letta in that ritual fire, but Joanie couldn’t quite tell what. Letta swiped a sharp, puzzled glance over toward Joanie and the baby and narrowed her eyes.

  “You should take him inside. It’s getting too hot,” she said as she strode out beyond the trailers toward the Vine’s first grove. She’d told Cello to take the cuttings at night, when Letta was tired and often drunk and wouldn’t notice the Vine’s throb of absence. Cello had taken something, but Joanie couldn’t understand why the loss felt so slight. Maybe he hadn’t taken as much as she had asked for. Joanie tucked the sleeping baby against her chest and trailed Letta into the oldest part of the forest, the place where the Vine had first climbed into their world. Letta stood among the cornstalk-height, mature plants and pointed the charred branch at the base of each one, directly, like a flashlight.

  The baby began to fuss against her sweaty breast and Joanie bobbed a bit to settle him back to sleep. Letta muttered under her breath. One of the stalks began to glow wound-red, as though Letta had set fire to it. Letta threw the branch to the ground and looked down at her crossed arms, her mouth set in a stern line.

  Joanie could feel the thrum of her heartbeat all the way up to her throat. Cello had done it, and hadn’t listened to her. She would have to think quickly and act faster—it was only a matter of time until Letta pieced together what had happened. Joanie prayed that she would at least have until that night. She prayed to the Vine, willing it to jam whatever signal it had transmitted to Letta, begging it to understand why she needed this so badly. I’ve served you my whole life, she pleaded, tipping her face forward in a humble bend over her baby’s head. I just need this one thing. But she didn’t feel that connection—the click of understanding was missing. Either Letta’s appeal was stronger than hers, or the Vine was deaf to her feeble plea. Joanie pushed the panic away, breathing in the scent of the child in
her arms. It would be alright. She traced her sign of protection across the baby’s chest, and headed quietly back toward the trailers to salvage her plan—to salvage their plan.

  * * *

  That night, everything went wrong. Cello watched the flicker of Joanie’s pale jeans dip and turn through the night-dark leaves and rolling-silver tall grass. She didn’t turn around to speak or to look at him, but Cello knew what she was thinking because he was thinking the same: hurry.

  Cello tucked the pilfered cuttings from the Vine down the front of his shirt while Joanie’s baby mewled and clutched the folds of his blanket in the wooden crate.

  Joanie drew her sign of protection across the box’s splintery side. “We’ll come back. I don’t want any of the Lees to see him. Anyway, we’ll be faster just us two,” she said, her voice dull, her gaze unfocused like a sleepwalker’s. It pinched Cello when she said it; everything about Joanie seemed suddenly so uneven. He tucked the crate into a divot between two blackberry bushes, camouflaging the dreaming baby beneath the stems drooping heavy with fruit.

  Their race through the meadow beyond the garden felt endless—they didn’t stop once. The scent of the garden receded as they ran through the ragged plots, and past Sil’s creaking tractor shed, fragrant with diesel. Joanie had arranged the meeting with Franklin Lees, calling him from Letta’s trailer earlier that day—Letta was elsewhere, occupied over one of her fiery concoctions. Cello could hear Joanie’s jolt of satisfaction, even through her panic. Cello hadn’t asked what would happen once the man paid Joanie.

  Joanie’s speed was meticulous—consuming. He could hear it in the rhythm of her breath. Every step away from the farm built something else, maybe something safer, something that was theirs. They would be fast; it was only three miles to the Leeses’ farm. Their fast, though, wasn’t fast enough.