1,715 words - adult fantasy
The garlic plants were dead.
Sei knew before she pulled up the
first bulb. She been trying to save them for weeks now as the stalks turned
brown from the tips down, wilting until they lay flat on the ground. She’s
known they were dying. And now they were dead. All of them.
She
had outlined her property in garlic, a line of plants poking out of the earth
like bright green sentinels. And then she had planted another outline around
her house. It was impossible to have too much. But this year there would be
none at all.
Sei
dropped the rotted bulb and wiped her palms on her jeans, smearing them with
mud and decayed plant. More than the potatoes, more than the peas or the
watermelon or the corn or even the wheat, Sei needed the garlic. She wouldn’t
have time to die of starvation if she ran out of garlic.
Wiping
her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand, she got to her feet. The sun was
low, sitting on the ground and glaring. It was time to drink her tea.
That
was when she saw something she hadn’t seen in over a year. A stranger.
At first, he was just a dark smear
against the setting sun, but every muscle in her body from her little toes to
her scalp tightened at the sight. People did not come and visit Sei. There
wasn’t a soul for miles. And there especially wasn’t anything without a soul.
At least, there shouldn’t be.
And
the garlic was dead.
She
watched the man get closer. He was riding a horse of all things, which made her
hunch her shoulders when she saw it, like she could make herself smaller, make
herself disappear. She bent her knees like she was readying for a fight and her
hand darted to her pocket where a long smooth piece of metal protruded. She was
never without it, even after more than a year of solitude.
She
swallowed hard, twisted her foot firmly into the dirt, and waited.
She
watched him dismount, the horse throwing his head like he had been ridden too
hard and too fast and was glad to be rid of his rider.
“Who
are you?” she asked. Her voice was creaky from talking only to cats and
chickens.
She
saw him take in her stance, the metal stake in her fist. He raised his hands in
surrender. “I’m Drake,” he said. “I’m human.”
“I
can tell,” Sei said. But she didn’t relax her grip on the weapon.
“Are
you Sei?” the man asked.
It
was a stupid question. They both knew it, so Sei didn’t bother to answer.
The
man – Drake – cleared his throat. “I need your help,” he said.
“I’m
done with all that.” Sei narrowed her eyes. “So you can get right back on your
horse and go back to where you came from.”
“I
can’t!” Drake said. “There is no place to go back to anymore. It’s gone.” His
voice cracked. “My whole city is gone.”
Sei
closed her eyes, trying to block out his words. “How many?” she asked.
“I
think it’s just one.”
She
snapped her eyes open. “One? That’s impossible. How big is your city?”
“About
10,000. Or, it was. Only a couple hundred of us are left.”
So
it was small. But still.
“When
did it start?” she asked.
“A
month ago. It happened so fast, we didn’t realize what was going on until it
was too late.”
Sei
watched the rim of the sun slide out of sight. She couldn’t be out here now.
“I
can’t,” she said, turning away and striding across the garden toward her house.
“No!”
Drake ran after her, grabbing her arm.
She
turned on him, the metal stake raised. No one had touched her in years. Even
before she retired, before she came to the farm and chose solitude over death,
she was untouchable. People spoke to her with downcast eyes, keeping a safe
distance, like she wasn’t entirely human herself.
“I’m
sorry,” Drake said, dropping her arm and raising his hands again. The gesture
irritated her.
She started back to her house.
“But
if you don’t help us, there won’t be any of us left. My daughter-” His voice
broke again.
It
could all be an act. Sei knew this as she scuffed her boots off on the doormat
and opened the front door. It could be a trap. There were plenty who wanted
revenge on her. She just wasn’t sure how they would have talked Drake – a human
– into helping them.
She
flicked on the lights and turned to face him, her arms crossed. “I’m retired,”
she said. “You wouldn’t want me anyway. I’m rusty by now. I haven’t killed more
than a chicken in fifteen months.”
“You’re
the best there’s ever been,” he said. “And you’re the only one left.”
She
frowned and turned away. “That’s why I’m done,” she said. “If I go back, I
won’t live any longer than the rest of you.” Taking the kettle off the stove,
she filled it with water from the tap and replaced it, turning on the burner
and hearing the little drips of water on the outside of the kettle sizzle as
the stove heated up. She opened the kitchen cupboard and took out her tea ball,
a cluster of garlic cloves, and a ceramic dish of honey.
Drake
watched her from the doorway, unmoving. As she made the tea, she avoided his
eyes.
“I
couldn’t get within five miles of it anyway,” she said and crushed the first
garlic clove with the side of a butcher knife. The papery skin slid off and the
sticky pale flesh went into the tea ball. She couldn’t smell the garlic
anymore. But she knew that Drake could. She was sure he could smell the farm –
smell her – miles away. And he was only human.
“How
often do you drink that?” Drake asked as she crushed the next clove and added
it to the tea ball.
“More
often than I eat,” she said. “Eating is only important if you’re going to be
alive long enough to go hungry.”
Drake
looked around the kitchen, at the rows of braided garlic hanging from the
rafters, at the sliver cross above the table, at the boxes of matches piled in
a bowl next to the sink, at the hand-dipped candles standing on every flat
surface, and at the gun on the window ledge. He could probably guess that the
bullets inside were silver.
“When
you eat garlic,” she said. “It doesn’t just stay on your breath. It gets into
your system. It takes days to wear off.”
She didn’t just eat her garlic. She
saturated her bath water with it, made lotion out of it, wore it in a locket
that she never took off, stuffed her pockets with it, and made potpourri to
fill her drawers.
She didn’t just have garlic breath.
“I have garlic in my blood,” she
said.
Drake picked up the nearest candle
and examined it. It too was full of dried garlic. He set it down.
“Why did you start?” he asked.
The kettle began to whistle. Sei
pulled it off the stove with a hot pad and poured a steaming stream of water
into her mug, dousing the tea ball full of juicy garlic cloves. She replaced
the kettle and added honey to her mug.
“All those years ago,” he said, “if
you knew it was so dangerous, what motivated you to start?”
She stirred the tea and looked out
the window at the dark landscape. “Shut the door,” she said. “And turn the
locks. All of them.”
Drake did as he was asked. She blew
on her tea to cool it but didn’t take her eyes off the garden outside.
“It was my sister,” she said. “She
was a year younger than me.”
She
sipped the tea. It burned her tongue.
“She
was killed right in front of me.”
“I’m
sorry,” Drake said. “I’m sorry.”
Sei
set down her mug with a hard clink. “But I killed her murderer. It was my first
kill.”
Drake
met her hard gaze with his own. “Not all of us can do that,” he said. “You have
a talent. A gift.”
“I
have a curse,” she said. “They may not have souls, but each and every one of
them haunts me to this day.” She felt herself breath in made herself hold it,
lungs full, trying to block the memories. “Two hundred twenty seven,” she said
when at last she exhaled.
Drake
took in his breath.
No
one realized how many it was. She had a scar for each and every one of them. A
physical scar, either from their nails, or from their teeth, or from the fire
when she burned their bodies. Fights were messy. Fights left wounds. But
nothing on her body was as permanent as the scars on her mind. Teeth and fire
and blood could never do as much damage as a memory.
“What
would your sister want?” Drake asked.
It
wasn’t a fair question, and they both knew it.
She
gazed out the window even though it was too dark to make out much but the line
between the black ground and the star speckled sky.
The
garlic was dead.
She
turned away from Drake, putting her hands on the countertop and closing her
eyes.
“Give
me a week,” she said.
Drake
inhaled to speak, but she cut him off.
“That’s
the best I can do. Even after a week of detox, I’ll still have garlic in my
blood.” She would have to sweat it out, move away from this farm that had
garlic in the very wood the house was built from. A week wasn’t even close to
enough time.
It
was suicide and she knew it.
But
what else was there?
There
were the chickens and the cats. There was the garden. There was life. There was
the simple pleasure of breathing in and out.
But
how high a price was she willing to pay for those simple things?
Would
she give up her sister again? Would she give up this man’s daughter?
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