Blood of the Earth (Soulwood #1) - Faith Hunter Page 0,106
be gracious, courteous, and genial. I didn’t expect to be successful at any of it.
I went inside, standing near the stove so I might warm up. I turned up a lantern, added a bit more wood to the fire, and tested the dough, which wasn’t quite ready to go into the oven. My toes were frigid but felt good pressed into the wood flooring, connected to the forest outside.
I wasn’t afraid—not exactly—of anything I had sensed in the land, but it was . . . disturbing. I splattered water droplets on the stovetop in various places to test the temperature. Moved the rice off the hottest part of the hob.
People in my house.
I wondered if I would be able to sleep in a houseful of people. I hadn’t done that since I was twelve. The panicky feeling welling up in me again, I pulled on boots and went to the garden. In the dark, by touch and feel, I harvested the last of the salad greens, hoping there would be no frost and the plants might yield some more, and raked the mulch up higher over the plants as protection. I pulled up a mess of turnips. I gathered the clean clothes out of the washer and into a plastic basket. Back inside, I hung the clothes up to dry on wood racks placed behind the cookstove to humidify the house as they dried, and turned on the overhead fans for a bit to move the warm air around. I cut up a fresh salad, put the greens to cook, and the turnips themselves to the side for later. I got out jars of preserves in case someone had a sweet tooth. Busy. I needed to stay busy.
I began pulling dried herbs off the shelf to make a tea to stimulate Tandy’s appetite. The boy needed to eat.
* * *
The beans and rice were done and the bread was just coming out of the oven when I felt Paka racing across the land. Another cat ran beside her, through the dark and up the hill, toward the church’s compound. I felt them startle a deer and, in the way of cats, they changed direction midstride, leaping to the side, almost choreographed. Together they took down the deer and started eating even as the buck struggled and kicked.
City folk would have been horrified—the ones who didn’t hunt or fish. For me, it was simply part of the wood. Part of the land. Part of the cycle of life and death and rebirth.
The van’s lights cut through the trees in strips of light and shadow as it pulled up the hill and into the drive. The PsyLED team—the ones still in human shape—piled out of the van. I had company. And just in time. Tandy’s first appetite tea was freshly brewed.
* * *
Rick had brought groceries. As if he’d lived here all his life, he put things into the refrigerator and freezer, while my mouser cats trailed around behind him, mewling as if he carried raw fish. I sat in my chair at the table and watched as he lifted the top off the bean pot and tasted the beans with a spoon. He pronounced them perfect. “As good as my mama’s. And you made rice. Even more perfect. Red beans and rice. It must be Monday.” Which made me blink because I didn’t make beans and rice only on Mondays, and it wasn’t Monday anyway. Maybe it was a New Orleans thing. Without a change in expression, he asked, “Where are Occam and Paka?”
It was a trap. I knew that even as I answered. “Eating a deer. They’ll be a while before they get to the compound. And then they’ll stop to eat again on the way home.”
“How do you know what’s happening with them?”
I shrugged. I knew. I wasn’t sure how I knew, as this knowing was different and unexpected. It had started when Brother Ephraim fed my woods. How it worked was something I was still figuring out.
T. Laine and JoJo started setting the table, asking me which stoneware to use, and hunting through the drawers for flatware, in the cabinets for glasses and paper napkins. They were stunned that I didn’t have paper anything in the kitchen, washing cloth ones as needed instead. “Paper’s wasteful,” I said, pointing to where the cloth napkins were stored.
Sounding horrified, JoJo asked, “Toilet paper?”
I let a tiny smile claim my mouth. “I do use toilet paper,” I said primly, knowing my mama