Marked In Flesh

CHAPTER 21

Moonsday, Juin 18

A vigorous debate between members of the Courtyard’s Business Association ended minutes before Jerry Sledgeman drove in from the train station, his livestock truck filled with bison. None of the Others had been happy about allowing Jerry so far into the Courtyard, but everyone agreed that unloading animals in the Market Square wasn’t a good idea, particularly if the bison stampeded down the access way and thundered into the traffic on Main Street.

That was the reason five yearlings were unloaded at the Pony Barn, and the female pack and Kowalski were on hand to witness the arrival of a future item on the menu.

Simon itched to shift out of his human skin and help herd the bison to the part of the Courtyard where they would be settled—once everyone decided exactly where that would be. Henry had just laughed, saying deer roamed throughout the Courtyard’s three hundred acres and the bison would do the same. Since Simon agreed with him, he didn’t offer any opinions. A full-grown bison would go where it chose, but most of the Others in the Courtyard hadn’t lived in the Northwest and had no experience with prairie thunder.

Meg looked at the bison and then at him. “You said we were getting little bison.”

“They are little bison,” Simon replied.

She waved a hand to indicate the female pack. “We thought you meant baby bison.”

“Yearlings are close to babies.”

“Don’t go there,” Kowalski muttered.

“Besides,” Simon continued, ignoring the man, “if we’d brought calves, we’d also have to bring the mothers, and they’re big.”

“Oh,” Meg said. She and the female pack stared at the bison.

“Even if they’re bigger than we’d expected, they are kind of cute,” Ruthie said. “And so docile.”

Jerry Sledgeman scratched his head and looked at the trees. Vlad pressed a fist against his mouth and stared hard at the ground. And Nyx gave everyone the complacent smile of a well-fed vampire.

Jackson was currently in Meat-n-Greens quieting a sharp appetite, but Nyx hadn’t gone hungry during the journey. Docile bison were testimony to that.

“What are you going to call them?” Meg asked.

“Lunch?” Simon offered.

The female pack gave him a look that made him think running away would be a good idea, if he wasn’t the leader and couldn’t back down.

“Simon? Shouldn’t you and Jackson be heading to the River Road Community to settle the other bison?” Vlad gave the female pack a pointed look. “And shouldn’t the rest of us be getting to work? I know some of you have to review the items Jackson brought from Prairie Gold.”

Ruthie and Theral rode off on bicycles. Meg and Merri Lee drove off in the BOW.

Simon looked at Kowalski, who was usually at work by now.

“Where are you going to put them?” Kowalski asked, nodding at the bison.

“Why?”

“Out of sight, out of mind. If they’re around where the girls see them every day, they’ll end up with names, and I don’t think the girls will forgive you if you put a platter of Fred or Henrietta on the table.”

Jerry nodded. “Oh, yeah. What he said.”

Simon thought this over. The Wolves wouldn’t be serving up their bison on any platters, but some of the meat would be sold at the butcher shop in the Market Square for the humans to buy. How would they know which bison had become a roast? Would it matter?

Humans were no end of trouble even before they did anything.

“Right,” he said. “Don’t name the food.”

“Jackson said males and females remain separate most of the time,” Nyx said. “We can keep the females in the Chambers. It’s fenced.”

It was also off-limits to everyone but the Sanguinati—not the best choice to establish the bison where they couldn’t be hunted. Then again, deer were plentiful, so there was no reason to hunt bison for another year or two, and the land inside the Chambers offered plenty of grazing and fresh water.

“Will Erebus agree to this?” Simon asked. “Bison aren’t dainty when they poop.”

Vlad shrugged. “Deer roam inside the Chambers. I don’t see . . .” One of the bison lifted its tail and demonstrated not being dainty. “Ah.”

“It will be fine,” Nyx said.

“I’d best be getting back,” Jerry said. “Anything you want me to deliver to Ferryman’s Landing?”

Simon shook his head. “Not today.”

The bison wandered across the road and began to graze.

“Anyone want a lift to the exit?” Jerry asked.

“Sure,” Kowalski replied. “It’s time for me to head out to work.”

“I’ll walk,” Simon said.

Nyx shifted to smoke and flowed in the direction of the Chambers.

Vlad set out with Simon, heading for the Market Square, where Blair and Jackson would meet them with the van, since two of the juvenile Wolves from the Addirondak packs were coming with them to the River Road Community.

“Wouldn’t a few cattle be easier to manage if you’d wanted something . . . exotic?” Vlad asked.

“We have access to beef and to dairy foods from terra indigene farms,” Simon replied. “Don’t need cows here. Besides, bison don’t need tending as long as they have food and water. And in another year, one of them can feed the whole Courtyard for days.”

“You think humans in Lakeside are going to continue to let earth native trucks reach the Courtyard to supply us with beef, eggs, and milk?”

“You think this city will survive if they don’t allow those trucks to reach us?” Simon countered.

“No. Fortunately, there are those in the Lakeside police who understand that too.”

They didn’t speak for a minute. Then Simon said, “You’ll keep an eye on Meg?”

Vlad nodded. “Henry is working in his studio—or, more precisely, he says he’s sanding a piece and is working in his yard. With the sorting room window open, he’ll hear enough of what Meg and the other girls are saying about the decks of cards Jackson brought—and what they think of the sketches Hope made for Meg.”

Blair passed them but didn’t stop, giving Simon a few more minutes before he reached the Market Square and had to deal with the next task.

Meg opened one deck and laid the cards on the sorting room table in rows.

“Lovely artwork on these fortune-telling cards,” Ruth said. “It’s almost like the illustrations make up an entire fantasy world.”

“Lovely, yes, but not realistic,” Meg replied.

“The art is supposed to be symbolic of what the cards represent, not realistic.”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Merri Lee said, watching Meg. “You’re not going to see visions about people or events in that fantasy world, so you need a picture of fire, not a picture of a dragon that represents fire.”

“Yes,” Meg said. “And we need to call the cards by a different name because saying we’re telling fortunes sounds like a kind of entertainment, and we’re trying to use the cards as a tool for prophecy.”

“Then that’s what we’ll call them—prophecy cards.” Merri Lee swept the rows of cards into stacks, her movements hampered by the splint on the left index finger.

“How much longer?” Ruth asked, pointing at Merri Lee’s hand.

“Hopefully the splint comes off tomorrow after Dr. Lorenzo checks the finger. Gods, I’ll be glad to have both hands to wash my hair.”

“At least it was a simple break. It looked . . .”

“Like the bone was sticking through the skin. Lucky for me it was a shard of bone china from all the dishes that had broken during the fight at the stall market. Sure looked like bone, especially since my finger hurt.” Merri Lee blew out a breath. “Most of us were lucky.”

Meg didn’t say anything. Girls had come and gone in the compound where she’d been raised and used, but she hadn’t known any of them well enough to feel the loss—not the way she felt the loss of Lawrence MacDonald and Crystal Crowgard. They had been friends.

I don’t want to lose any more friends, she thought as Ruth put the deck into its box and opened the next deck.

The next deck didn’t appeal to any of them, but the third . . .

Meg’s hands tingled lightly as she touched the cards. Realistic illustrations. She pulled out all the pictures of water—lakes, streams, waterfalls, surf.

“Here’s an illustration of the Great Lakes,” Merri Lee said, setting the card with the ones Meg had already culled.

“Specific and general.” Meg went to a drawer and took out the postcards she had gotten from Lorne. She pointed to one of the prophecy cards. “A waterfall would be a general image that could be anywhere.” She laid a postcard of Talulah Falls under it. “But this would mean a specific place.”

“How many specific places did you learn?” Ruth asked. “We had the impression that you were taught one image to represent a particular thing, like one image to stand for small dogs and one for large dogs, but no particular breed of dog.”

“But Talulah Falls is a distinctive landmark,” Merri Lee said. “Maybe different combinations of cards could mean different things. Meg, what does seeing these two cards together mean to you?” Merri Lee set the postcard of Talulah Falls on top of the card illustrating the Great Lakes.

“Lake Etu,” Meg said as soon as she placed her fingers on the cards, surprised that she didn’t have to think about it at all.

“It could also mean Lake Tahki,” Ruth said. “A third card might be needed to narrow down the location.”

“That’s a good point.” Merri Lee handed Meg a card that showed the sun setting behind a mountain range. “What about this?”

“West.”

“And together with this?”

She took the second card. “Sunset.”

Ruth eyed her. “How do you feel?”

“My hands tingle a little, but they’ve been tingling since we opened this deck of cards.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.” Ruth sounded disappointed.

“We haven’t asked a question,” Merri Lee said. “Let’s arrange these cards in categories, the way Meg did with the water, and then do a test. We’ll include the postcards too.”

“What about the other decks of cards?”

“Let’s start with what we have and see what happens. Ready?”

Meg nodded.

“Where did the Courtyard’s bison come from?”

“I already know the answer to that.”

“Yes, but if you had to give us the answer using cards, which ones would you choose?”

Meg looked over the cards and chose the card she’d said meant West, then a card that showed tall grass and little else. Then she frowned and rubbed her right hand. “It’s not here. The yellow pebble isn’t here.”

“Wait a moment.” Ruth opened another deck of cards and quickly went through them. Then she held up a picture of several bars of gold stacked in a vault.

“Yes,” Meg said, taking the card and setting it beneath the other two.

“West as a direction or region, a picture of what I’m guessing is prairie—Mr. Wolfgard could confirm that when he returns—and bars of gold.” Merri Lee sounded pleased. “The answer to the question is Prairie Gold, which is west of us.”

The tingling faded.

Meg stared at the cards. Could this work? Could she really answer questions this way?

“We would need cards that have pictures of bad things,” she said.

“Yes,” Merri Lee agreed. “But a picture of a bad thing doesn’t have to be graphic.”

“Okay,” Ruth said. “Is there anything in this landscape deck that doesn’t feel right to you, Meg?”

After looking at all the cards, Meg shook her head. “None of them feel wrong.”

Ruth reclaimed the card with the bars of gold before they collected the rest of the cards and put them back in their box. “That was the landscape deck. This deck is called cityscapes.”

Meg hugged herself while Merri Lee and Ruth sorted the cards into categories.

“Meg?” Merri Lee said.

The calves and thighs of both legs burned, burned, burned—the prelude to prophecy. Meg clenched her teeth and held one hand above the cards, moving slowly from one category to the next. Her hand buzzed painfully when it brushed against the last category. She pushed those cards to one side, then backed away from the table until her hand stopped buzzing and her legs stopped burning.

Merri Lee and Ruth looked at the cards and then at her.

“Meg?” Ruth said softly. “Why did you set these aside? They’re all cards that show skylines of different cities.”

Burned, burned, burned. She’d had the same sensation above her ankle when she’d seen the prophecy of Nadine’s shop burning. If she made a cut, if she saw . . . No. She didn’t want to see what was going to happen in those places. And she didn’t want her friends to carry that much of a burden of knowing.

“Meg?” Merri Lee said. “Why did you set these cards aside?”

She shuddered and swallowed hard. “I don’t think we’ll need them.” Her stomach rolled. “I can’t look at anymore today.”

She ran to the bathroom, but once she was out of the sorting room, her stomach settled. When she returned, the cards were put away, the decks set out in their boxes on the counter.

“We didn’t want to put them away,” Ruth said.

“But we can,” Merri Lee added.

“I made a note on the deck that was too fantastical for you, and on the deck that wasn’t of interest, as well the two decks we’ve looked at. And there’s one other deck that might be too fanciful to be useful.”

Meg nodded. “We can look at more tomorrow.”

Her friends exchanged a look.

“I don’t need to cut,” she assured them. That was true in a way. She didn’t need a cut, but she craved the euphoria that came from cutting. “I just need some routine now.”

“Anything we can do?” Ruth asked.

“No. Thanks.”

“Should we tell someone about what you said about not needing those cards?”

“We don’t know anything for certain.” When the Controller had cut her for his clients, she hadn’t known what she’d seen and certainly hadn’t had any say in who was told about the prophecy. “If you tell someone . . . make sure you tell them we don’t know anything for certain.”

They nodded. Promising to return during the midday break and have lunch together, Merri Lee and Ruth went out the back door of the Liaison’s Office.

Meg opened the Private door and studied Nathan, who looked too casually sprawled on his Wolf bed under one of the front windows. She’d bet a week’s pay that he’d been leaning on the counter, listening to everything they’d said so that he could report to Simon.

She watched the mail truck pull into the delivery area and felt relieved that she would have something routine to do for a little while. Before the mailman stepped out of the truck, she said to Nathan, “Make sure you tell Simon we don’t know anything for certain.”