nobody with my cooking. Mighta thought about it some with my hus—my ex-husband. But I never did it.” I chuckled and Esther shot her eyes to my face. “Is that a yes?”
“You can stay here until the baby is born,” I said, “or until your house is finished if that happens sooner and you need privacy.”
Esther frowned and pulled at the leaves trailing through her hairline, smoothing them in her fingers. “I don’t rightly know what privacy is. But I reckon I better get good at it.” She sounded pensive, uncertain. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I put a chicken on at Mama’s. It’s stewed and sitting on the front porch. Mindy, go get it and let’s us eat.”
Working together, a team for the very first time, we set the table. I knew it wouldn’t last, but while it did, I was more than content, and Soulwood warmed its way all through me, my land as happy as I was at so many plant-people in my house.
Dinner, eating and sharing our days, laughing at Cherry’s antics as she licked crumbs from the floor, was wonderful, just the three of us girls, seven counting the dog and the cats. I felt an unexpected and welcome sense of peace. It was family. I had always planned to save my sisters, to offer them a better way. I had done the right thing taking Esther in, getting custody of Mud, I knew that. But I also knew that my time with Occam would be different and I wondered how he’d feel about spending time here with three plant-women. And maybe a plant-baby. And I wondered how my sister would feel about having wereleopards wandering the grounds and hunting at the three days of the full moon.
A mental image leaped from the deeps of my brain. Occam in spotted wereleopard form, curled around a plant-baby, green with leaves. I couldn’t help the smile that softened me, from my heart out to my face.
This was an experiment. I hoped Occam and I would survive it. Did he like babies? Maybe our babies? Did he want one? More than one? Did I? If we managed to have babies would they be leopard plants? All these were questions I couldn’t answer.
* * *
* * *
I slept again until five a.m. and woke with that heart-dropping fear of falling in a dream. I got up to find Esther walking the floors in the dark, rubbing her back, breakfast laid out to cook. It was fast, oatmeal with brown sugar and cinnamon and dried cranberries. While I ate, I dressed, repacked my gobags, and made a trip to the garden. Apologizing, I left Esther my nasty dirty clothes to clean, the ones that still stank of death and decay and that I had forgotten to wash. Without complaint, she threw herself into cleaning.
Someone must have picked up Occam, because my car was in my drive, so I loaded up my gobags and gear and a new plant and bag of soil. The sky was graying when I drove out of the drive and down the mountain.
I parked my car next to Occam’s in the parking lot, happy to see it there, and gathered my things, including the small purple cabbage I had dug up from the garden and potted to carry around. I wouldn’t be carting the vampire tree again. In hindsight it hadn’t been the smartest thing I could do, and I had begun to wonder if the Green Knight had influenced me to carry it around as a way to keep tabs on me. Was the tree that smart? This was a question and a worry to add to the worries about Esther and her future, both short term and long term, worries about Mud living with me, worries about whether I’d be a good mother figure, worries about money.
Once upon a time I had worried only about myself. Now I had people to care for. There was a big part of me that missed living off the grid and in isolation.
I loaded up. Besides the cabbage plant’s pot pressed against my belly, I was carrying coffee in my metal travel mug and had a sealed plastic bowl full of leftover chicken stew and a half loaf of Mama’s bread in a carryall, dangling from an elbow, with a passel of fresh greens on top. I had my one-day gobag on one shoulder and my four-day gobag over the other. I was holding my ID