raw, rotten beef, a stronger mix of decaying trees, and even more strong, the scent of blood and . . .” He shook his head slowly, thinking. “Perhaps graveyard dirt?” His face cleared. “Are there old graveyards near here? Or better still, battlegrounds?”
“Except for Virginia, Tennessee saw the worst fighting in the Civil War,” Occam said, pulling his phone to verify and identify any sites. “There are dozens of them listed, and that doesn’t count smaller skirmishes. The Battle of Stones River, near Murfreesboro; the battle near Gallatin; a battle near Hendersonville; and the Battle of Nashville were all close by. Sherman spent a lot of time in the state. And back a century ago, people buried their kin on their farms as often as they buried them in church graveyards. There are battlegrounds and unmarked graves everywhere. And before that, tribes fought each other for land and resources.”
T. Laine said, “You think the practitioner took dirt from a grave and dirt from a battleground and used it as part of the death and decay working?”
“The plants in the basement,” I said softly. “The soil felt . . . odd. I need to read it again.” I dashed to the stairs and down. There was a window at the landing and a dead plant on the high window ledge. I grabbed the ceramic pot and carried it back to the kitchen, placing it beside the potted vampire tree. Before I could change my mind, I stuck my left fingers into the dead plant’s dirt, and my right fingers into the tree’s pot. I expected it to hurt. A lot. It didn’t.
Thoughtfully, I inspected the dead soil, the dead roots. The oddity I had noted but paid no mind came clear. There were two kinds of soil in the pot. Most of it had come from here, from the horse farm. That part was rotted hay, dried manure, commercial vermiculite, crushed eggshells, the rotted detritus of green plants. The other was different. The different stuff rested on top of the pot. It was foreign. And dangerous. That small bit was electric, biting at my fingers like tiny spiders.
I drew on Soulwood.
My land raised its metaphorical head and pricked its ears, so much like a cat in my mind. It searched slowly out from the hills that were my home, out and out until it reached me and surrounded me in its embrace. Soulwood stretched like a lazy cat, wanting me back. It warmed me, pressing into me, much like a cat would roll over begging for attention. I thought to my land, This soil has been mixed with death. Where did this dirt come from, this dirt of death?
Holding me, or holding on to me, it swept out and back, from the hills to me, back and forth, as if tying itself to my location. It settled for a moment, then began to reach out, circling farther, hunting, tracking, shadowing, prowling. Searching out earth that was battlefield and gravesite . . . They were everywhere. Hundreds of cemeteries and family plots. Dozens of battlefields. A half dozen locations within a hundred miles where war and violence had taken place, where blood had been spilled. One was close by, within a few miles. It was a small, ancient plot of ground where a skirmish had been fought, a battle, and men had died, bleeding their life into the land. There . . . Yes. Right there. All the soil from all the pots in the studio were contaminated from there. But I couldn’t seem to locate it on the surface. It was just farmland, shaped by man for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. I could find nothing that would lead me to that land, nothing that showed me how to find it aboveground.
I marked the place in my mind and pulled back. Closer to the house was a bright spot of grass, the place where FireWind had shifted shape. The grass and roots and the dirt itself were glowing and dazzling. Beautiful. Soulwood wanted to know it, so I reached out to it, sank my mind into the earth there, and sighed with delight.
“Nell!” Occam shouted. He wrenched my hand out of the vampire tree. “Nell, stop. Stop now.”
I tried to speak. Tried to lick my lips. A faint croak came out. I looked at my hands. The skin of my fingertips was white again. Tiny pinpricks covered them. I looked at the vampire tree. It was putting out new leaves.