Were- Page 6

  Summer had already begun to turn to fall when I finally gave in. I took my dinner out into the early evening, an hour or two before sunset, and sat amongst the vines as I ate. After a few bites I stopped, removed my shoes and socks, and dug my bare feet into the dirt.

  The change was immediate. The loneliness and hunger of the recent weeks began to lessen. I looked at the grape vine, which was already beginning to grow around my ankles.

  “We’re still not friends,” I said. For once, I half expected the plant to reply.

  The vine said nothing, of course. But I thought I felt it loosen, just a little. After that, we spent the evening in companionable silence. It was the first genuine meal I’d had in months.

  * * *

  Time passed strangely, the weeks slipping by in moments and eternities, and soon the leaves began to change. The trees outside were beautiful, flame-tipped branches burning to bare cold bones, standing incongruously against the wet grayness of the sky and the thick, squelching muck of the ground. The grapevines were turning dry and cracking, their leaves dropping off and leaving them bare. The few grapes they had produced ripened, then fell to the ground and were eaten by the birds and other creatures. There was something stubbornly undead about the plant beneath, stripped now of some of its verdant and insistent greenness.

  I was exhausted. I had started spending more time outside, but the days were getting shorter now, and the cold pricked at my skin and at my leaves and at my bones. Just as the leaves and the green overtook my skin they began to recede, the leaves dropping off and following me like footprints as I walked.

  Sleep came every night like a quilt settling over me, wrapping me in warmth. In the mornings I still found myself outside, hands trying to dig their way into near-freezing earth, but I was weary when I woke, and going inside seemed impossible. Waking seemed to take an eternity. I pictured myself staying out there, lying on the ground until autumn turned and the snow began to fall, until I was blanketed and buried and asleep.

  But I knew what to do with those kinds of thoughts, and so I pushed them back and went inside.

  * * *

  By the time Sukkot came I was too weak to do much. When I was younger, my grandmother and I had a sukkah every year. They were small, but the two of us would put one up, and eat dinner in it, and sleep in it if it wasn’t too cold out. The year she died, I was too caught up in bills and grief and paperwork to build one for myself. This year, though, I remembered. With my arms covered in leaves I couldn’t exactly go to temple for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, but Sukkot…Sukkot was different.

  Sukkot was the harvest.

  A harvest I didn’t have, because nothing could grow past the grapevines.

  A harvest I couldn’t do, because I was too weak for picking anyway.

  A harvest that I didn’t need, because I was barely eating and had no neighbors that I knew.

  But a harvest that I was determined to celebrate.

  I picked a few of the grapes that still sat on the vine, and collected some of those that had dropped onto the wooden porch below. They were small and sour and mostly made of seeds, but I ate them.

  I couldn’t build a sukkah, but I slept outside anyway. I was used to waking up to the sky by then, but for Sukkot I decided I would fall asleep to it. I dug my naked feet into the ground and sucked on sour grapes. The vines wove a roof over top of me, twining with the leaves which remained on my arm, and through them I watched the stars until sleep claimed me.

  When the week was done, I found it difficult to go back. My room seemed empty and isolating compared to the embrace of the vines, somehow both achingly vast and stiflingly small compared to the open air. The dimness of the starlight that filtered through the windows was off-putting. I tossed and turned, unsettled in my bed, unable to lull my brain into sleep. Finally, after an hour or so, I got up. One by one, I moved every potted plant that I had into the bedroom.

  Only then, reluctantly, did my mind allow me to rest.

  * * *

  By this time, I was taking all of my meals outside. I couldn’t manage anything heartier than broth, but that didn’t matter: the damp ground and the sunlight and the company seemed far more important than the food, and even as I resisted the urge to sleep among the vines, the need for these things was one I couldn’t deny. So I sat outside, and ate, and talked sometimes—to myself or to the vine, I didn’t know. I had developed a sort of routine.

  And then came the frost.

  I woke one morning in late October with my body numb from cold. I was outside, and naked, as I had been every morning for months, but there was something different. I was…less than before, somehow. Smaller. I rubbed my arms with my hands, trying to warm myself up.

  My skin was bare.

  The leaves and bursts of green which had sprouted from me were gone—all of them. And the grapevines which ruled my porch, even the green ones, hung limply.

  I dressed quickly, the cold biting at my skin. Looking down, I could see what had happened to my leaves. The ground around me was littered with them, an array of colors from burgundy to brown to green, leaves in every stage of their senescence.

  I knelt, and picked up the vines. They were cold in my hands. There was no life in them. I squeezed my hands around them, shutting my eyes and centering my mind on the cold stabbing into my skin.

  The vines rustled.

  I opened my eyes and got to my feet. The wood burned like ice, freezing against my skin—I hadn’t bothered to put on shoes. Whatever it was, it was coming from under the porch. I started to clear away the plants. It was slow work—even uprooted, the vines were heavy and tangled. The cold didn’t help either, my hands were numb after only a few minutes. And whatever was rustling beneath the vines was still there, pulling. We must have been working against each other at least half the time, but I kept going, my body screaming at the tension. My muscles ached, and my breathing grew labored, the cold morning air making my throat raw. Finally, the vines were clear.

  On the ground where they had been, there was a woman.

  She looked up at me, shaking, and wrapped her arms around herself. “Well?” Her teeth were chattering. “You gonna stand there staring, or are you gonna get me a blanket?”

  * * *

  Half an hour later we were sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in blankets, two now-empty bowls sitting in front of us. For the first time in weeks, I actually wanted food.

  “So,” I said.

  “So,” she said. A moment passed in awkward silence. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been a plant for the last few months. My conversation skills are…rusty.”

  I nodded and leaned back, drumming my fingers on the table as I tried to process what was happening. Everything that had happened since I moved into the house was catching up with me. It was like watching something on TV. I didn’t totally fit inside myself anymore, nor was I entirely certain that I wanted too. “So,” I said again, finally. “Care to explain why I woke up this morning to discover that the grapevine which has been taking over my life had turned into a naked woman?”

  “Did you expect me to transform wearing clothes?”

  “You were a grapevine,” I exclaimed, exasperated. “The lack of clothes was not the part of this morning’s events that confused me!”

  She bit her lip, utterly failing to hide her laughter. “You’ve done pretty well so far. I’d kind of like to see how far you can get with this.”

  I glared. “This is not funny. I have not left my house since August.”

  “All right, first of all, that is not true, because you’ve been coming outside all the time. Second of all, let me state once again that I have been a plant, and so I am sorry if my emotional reactions are a little out of whack.” She took a deep breath. “Just…give me a minute.”

  I folded my hands and waited, staring at her through the silence. She closed her eyes and ran a hand over her face, thinking. For a few torturous minutes, she said nothing. It was strange. There hadn’t been another human
in this house since I’d moved in, and I hadn’t been going out. Aside from some music and internet videos, the only voice I’d heard since I got here was my own. And for the most part, I’d been okay with that.

  Now, though, the silence between us was oppressive. It took everything I had not to break it. But even though there was plenty for us to talk about, I had no idea what I was supposed to say, let alone how to say it. I was getting that feeling again, like I didn’t fit inside my body, like my mouth and my brain weren’t actually connected. Like this couldn’t possibly be happening, it had to be made up, and everything I said was just lines in a film.

  Only nobody had given me the script.

  Finally, the woman spoke.

  “You know how, in movies and stories and stuff, werewolves change shape every month? The details vary, but basically, when the moon is full, they change. And there’s nothing they can do about it. While they’re wolves they can’t control what they do. It’s like this…wildness in them, and it just comes out. Man’s inner beast.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, well…this is kind of like that. Except it’s not so much ‘every month, with the full moon’ as it is ‘every summer, from last thaw to first frost, whenever the hell that is,’ and it’s not so much ‘man’s inner beast’ as it is…grapevines.” She gave a weak smile. “I’m like…a werevine? And now you are too, so, you know. Congratulations. Welcome to the club.” She stuck out her hand.

  I didn’t take it.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said.

  “No, I definitely can. Look, no offence, I get that you’re kind of freaking out right now, but could you maybe…hurry up? ”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, is there a to-do list I’m keeping you from?”

  “Yes, actually. We have to figure out what to do about this place, for one thing.”

  I sighed. “Okay. I get your point. The house is…an issue.” I frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t get it. You seem to know what’s going on here. If you knew you’d turn into a plant—and I am trying so hard not to think about that sentence—but if you knew, why didn’t you tell someone? I mean, not the truth obviously, but it was your sister that dealt with everything after you disappeared, right? That’s what she told me. Why didn’t you arrange something so that she wouldn’t sell your house? Or think you were dead? Because I don’t know if you’ve ever had a family member die, but it sucks. And if I was your sister, and I thought you died, and then I found out six months later that you were still alive? I would kill you.”

  “Wow, judgmental. I didn’t know, okay? I’m new to this too. Everything you were going through this summer? A year ago, that was me. I didn’t change fully until this past spring—I’m guessing it takes a while for whatever this is to fully take root, so to speak. But once it does…well, things become clearer, I guess, when you’re a plant.” She leaned back in her chair, and I saw her mask slip, just for a moment. Then it was back, a wry veneer of humor obscuring whatever she was really feeling.

  “Besides,” she said, “How do you think I feel? My sister didn’t exactly wait a long time before selling the house. I mean, I know no one had heard from me for a while, but come on, my hypothetical dead body was barely even cold.”

  I bit my lip. “People cope with grief in different ways, okay? And anyway, what about bills? Someone has to pay the bills, and I’m guessing you weren’t pulling in a lot of money under that porch.”

  She huffed. “Yeah, people tend to prefer landscapers who can actually, you know, leave the house. And hold shears.” She took a deep breath, like she was trying to center herself. “Look, I don’t want to fight with you.” She paused. “Actually, that’s not totally true. I don’t know if it’s me or the grapevines—very aggressive plant— but…I’m kind of enjoying this. A little bit. Sorry. But there are a lot of things we have to talk about, and if we can’t have a civil conversation about the living situation, we’re kind of screwed. It’s not like we can really take this to court. So.” She stopped, taking another deep breath.

  “You bought this house. I get that. And I guess since I stopped paying the bills, probably I have no legal right to it. But on your own…I mean, I know what it’s like trying to figure this out without help, and it’s hard. Plus, between the fatigue and the six-month cycle and everything else, I’m guessing you aren’t going to have a much easier time than me, money-wise.”

  She was right. I was burning through what I’d gotten from selling the old house way too quick.

  She kept talking. “I don’t want to have to leave, and I don’t really want to risk this same thing happening next year with someone else. I mean, I lucked out. You could have been a creep. But you’re not. You seem like…I don’t know. Maybe we could be friends. And maybe, if we work together, we can make enough to keep the house. Find ways to cut costs during the summer. Something.”

  I stared at her, my mouth hard. “You almost killed my grandmother’s geranium.”

  “You tried to hack me to death. Besides, geraniums are tough little bastards.”

  I didn’t smile.

  She sighed, her face softening. “I’m sorry. The vine…it wants to live. It wants to thrive. I had a garden, too, you know. But after the change…I’d rooted it out by the time you moved in. I couldn’t control it. But I’m sorry, anyway.”

  I dropped my accusing gaze. I couldn’t look at her.

  “So, what?” I asked. “We both stay? Try to live together? We know literally nothing about each other.”

  One corner of her mouth curled up, a little half smile, like her mouth had snagged on a secret. There was a brightness behind her face, a light shining through the cracks in her mask. “I know you talk to plants. You’ve been doing it since you got here. I know you’re strong. Stubborn, too. Didn’t matter how many times you woke up outside, you kept going back in. I know you grew up surrounded by people you cared about and people who cared about you and now that’s gone, and you have no idea what to do with yourself. I know that you think apples smell better than anything, and I know that sometimes when you talk, if it’s safe enough, you start to sound like a fairytale. I know the stuff you went through this summer wasn’t that new to you—the plant thing, maybe, but not the rest.” She reached out, and trailed her fingers over my arm.

  “I know that you have sunshine in your veins and earth in your heart. I know that your heartbeat feels like a rocking chair and that when you breathe at night it’s like waves lapping at the shore.” She grinned and ran her tongue over her teeth. “And I know that you talk in your sleep. It’s kind of hilarious, actually. But also adorable.”

  I could feel myself blushing. I rolled my eyes and looked away, unable to stop myself from smiling. But I let her keep her fingers on my arm, anyway.

  “That’s what I know about you,” she said. “So what do you know about me?”

  I shook my head, just a little. “You never talked back,” I said quietly.

  “Not even once. But you felt me. I know you did. You might not have changed completely yet, but, honey…I’ve been there. You start to change, after it happens, and all of a sudden you can feel things. Things that were always there, maybe, but they were too far under the surface for you to touch. Like your blood is always pumping in your veins, but you only feel it when you take your pulse. You felt me. So what do you know?”

  I shook my head again. “I don’t know how to...” I trailed off. Then, tentatively, I reached out the hand she wasn’t holding. I hooked my finger around hers, curling around it like a vine. “That’s what I know,” I said quietly. “And I know you still haven’t told me your name.”

  She smiled. “Laura,” she said. She drew her hand from mine, then stuck it out for a handshake.

  Her grip was firm, her skin soft and warm. I could feel the sunlight through her fingers.

  “Nahal,” I said.

  A PARTY FOR BAILEY

  David B. Coe

  "I’m going to have a party," Bailey said, pumping her legs as hard as she could
, the creaking of the swing echoing the word in a sing-song. Par-ty, par-ty.

  Lucy waved a fly away from her face. "Again?"

  At the same time, Chloe asked, "When?" And then "Can I come?"

  "Maybe. It depends."

  Lucy hooked her legs through the bars of the climber and let go with her hands so that she hung upside down, her pigtails looking like horns. "My mom says you have too many parties, and that’s why you get in trouble so much."

  "I don’t get in trouble that much."

  "Yes, you do. You get in trouble more than any of us. She says it’s ‘cause your parents let you do whatever you want. They’re too..." Lucy scrunched her face. "Lean-ant. I think that’s what she said." She nodded, pigtails bouncing. "Yeah, lean-ant."

  "Well, they’re not. And if you’re going to say stuff like that, you don’t have to come. Chloe can take your place."

  Chloe smiled, patting both hands in the dirt.

  Lucy grasped the bar, pulled her legs out, and dangled by her fingers. "I wasn’t the one saying it. It was my mom."

  "But you think she’s right."

  "What kind of party will it be?" Chloe asked, blue eyes wide.

  "I don’t want to talk about it anymore." Bailey scuffed her feet on the ground, slowing the swing until she could hop off. "Let’s play bears. I’ll be the mother."

  "You’re always the mother," Lucy said. She dropped to the ground. She was taller than Bailey and the others. That was why she was so bossy.

  "Not always. Sometimes Emmy is."

  Emmy sat on the other swing, walking her feet in tight circles to twist the chain and then lifting them off the ground to let the swing unwind. She nodded as she spun. "Yeah, sometimes I am."