Chapter 31: A Taste for Blood — Part 1

Tó Naneesdizí is having a hot day despite the season, and Kia is sitting on the porch. The antifungal has done its job, the hospital beds are empty for but a few unlucky souls who are in need of healing from farming related injuries. Kia’s watching the road, always hoping that some magickal process will bring tens of thousands of men and women back to the city, that some miracle will give it back its life. She knows that the survivors of her region are far smaller in number. They come to the city in circuits, but their numbers are too small for perpetuation. Almost none of the women leave able to bear child. It’s as if the entire region knows its fate, from the top of the world, where the Hopi watch the skies, to the ravines where Coyote and his children lurk in shadows. Kia’s daughter is coming to the porch, sets an icy pitcher of lemonade between them.

“You are a sweet one.” Kia says, sounding bitter, the tone not focused at her daughter.

Kia’s daughter, Jenna keeps quiet as she settles. Jenna rarely hears her name, except from Jon and Terri, who have been training her hard, preparing her for a time when they are planning on leaving. The two are crazy, Jenna thinks, they heal people all day, train her half the night in books and procedures, and fight with live steel whenever a spare moment presents itself. Jenna timidly asked them once what war they were preparing for, and they laughed.

Jon had answered after a pause, her eyes all squinty with laughter. “Why, I dare say that we are preparing for war with ourselves.”

They had said this and went right back to fighting, until Jon got past Terri’s defenses, forcing him to yield. Jenna had spent the next three nervous hours stitching up Terri’s forearm, where the tip of the blade had made its mark. Jon and Terri never griped at each other, nor were there apologies, except to Jenna, for costing her so much of her time. The drops of condensation on the glass pitcher, the doppelganger of a hard sweat, are what remind Jenna of that moment, and she stays quiet while Kia watches the road.

“You’re becoming quite skilled.” Kia says. “Too skilled to be a bed nurse. I know because I am sleeping more, working less.”

“Walker says the Nine are coming soon. Two months, maybe three.” Jenna says.

“If what Tomas says about the arches is true, they may be sailing a ship of fools.” Kia snaps.

The afternoon passes in quiet quips between mother and daughter, until a distraction breaks the pace of the conversation.

“Somebody’s coming up the road.” Jenna says.

Neither of them get up immediately: People go up and down the road all day long, just usually not from so far south. The person is still just a dot on the other side of a mirage, hot air distorting the dot so it is different shapes at different times, growing large and yet more distorted with every step. Then the distortion breaks just enough to betray the face of a woman. For a moment she looks like she is wearing a cape, one so heavy it is pulling her almost to her knees. The next has her compressed into a line. Then the image breaks through the diffraction, becoming unexpectedly crisp. Jenna’s younger eyes are keener, and she is up and moving before Kia can register the need for haste. Kia at first sees the stretcher, thinks the person must be pulling supplies. She takes a deep pull from her lemonade, her eyes cooled of light for a moment. When she looks again, she sees patches of blood; some dried, some fresh, both on the woman pulling the stretcher and on the body being pulled.

“Damn it all if I can’t have one day off.” Kia says, pushing her body up from the ground and walking to the woman coming up the road.

The minutes getting to the woman might have been hours. The woman doesn’t talk, her hair is speckled with gray, her face aged but tended well. There is a boy some years younger than Jenna in the stretcher. He is wrapped down tightly, his eyes, also wrapped closed. This is a precaution against the sun, at least Kia hopes it is, because she doesn’t see any blood in the patches of gauze wrapped over the eyes. Jenna grabs the back half of the stretcher, and Kia takes the front. She’s blowing a whistle even as she moves, and people come around to help, gathering under the woman’s shoulders, giving her strength to walk the final distance, carrying her when her legs fail, getting her gently to a bed.