Blood

“Reid!” I yell.

My twin smirks before swerving back to the right side of the road. He revels in my anger.

“Did I frighten you, Lorna?” Reid asks with a laugh.

I scowl before turning to look out my window. The countryside slides past seamlessly, like it does every time we drive past it. All hills, rocks and dull grass. Cattle are dotted across the hills, grazing on the poor roughage. The grass has already gone to seed.

David “Fletch” Fletcher lays it to the horn as he zooms past.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Reid stick his arm out the window, likely with his middle finger raised. A crude habit he’d caught off of Fletch when we were young.

“You’re a moron, Reid,” I mutter as we hit another bump in the dirt road. The whole cab shakes.

“Do you ever wonder why people don’t like you?”

“Not really.” I turn and watch Reid watch the fields over my shoulder. “It still don’t make you less of a moron.”

Reid rolls his eyes and says, “Fletch wouldn’t have hit us. At least not with you here.”

“And why’s that?”

“’Cause it ain’t right to hurt your family when they ain’t asking for it,” he says. “And you’d have told Dad.”

“So you’re saying I could hit you now and it’d be your own fault?”

He shakes his head, strands of his jaw length hair sticking partially to his face. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean.”

I turn my attention back to the contours of Faer. And what a mixed beauty she is, if you can stomach it.

Sure, from an outsider’s view it may just look like any crag of rock. But it ain’t. Faer is different than anywhere else in the world. Maybe that’s not a real good thing.

I can see the furthest reaches of Wanderer’s Wood stretching towards us.

The warped birch trees look almost sentient, as if they are the ones crawling towards Reid’s old Ford instead of the other way around.

The forest sings with life, even from this far away, with this much iron. I want to be there, in the reaches of those birches, letting the song envelop me.

Letting Them steal my soul.

I feel my brother’s eyes on my back.

“What?” I sound as though I’m an old hound.

I really do understand why I’m hated.

Reid watches the trees as well for a moment before jerking his eyes back to the road when we hit a dip. After he has our course back under control he says. “You know you shouldn’t do that.”

I roll my eyes. “I can’t read your mind, Reid.”

“You know what I meant.”

I do at that. But I wish I didn’t. I wish he’d just forget about things that happened so long ago.

“Lorna, you know the Wood is dangerous for you.”

Now we’re going past the bulk of the Wood, not just the far corners, meaning we’re near Tim Fionn’s farm, about five miles from Kappamor and ten from home.

“Is it? How do you know that?” I snap.

Reid doesn’t say anything.

I apologize under my breath.

My brother knows that’s the best he’ll get and starts to say something before he begins muttering.

I tear my gaze away from the Wood and fully turn around, drawing my legs up onto the seat.

The truck shutters and shimmies.

I can hear the alarm in my own voice when I ask, “What did you do?”

Reid scowls a little but doesn’t turn his concentration away from whatever he’s doing. He shifts down from third to second and second to first before using the brake.

“What?” I ask.

He shrugs and leans his head back against the seat, laughing in a way that sounds like what he means to do is cry.

“What didn’t you fix?”

He rolls his head and watches me with his chocolate brown eyes. “Why do you assume it’s my fault?”

Now here is when a normal, or at least half decent, person is supposed to say something supportive or at least funny, like sorry, or, well, I can’t really make up anything funny. Instead I say, “Because it always is.”

Reid turns away from me and opens his door. He stops before getting out and pulls the keys out of the ignition.

I do the same, without the keys part.

Burning something mixes with the natural island smells. Maybe rubber?

I lean against the box without closing my door and watch the dust along the road begin to settle.

We’re just at the edge of the Wood, at the Fionn’s main farm.

Tim Fionn is the island’s supplier of beef. My father says that years ago, when I was a young child, there had been a slaughter house by the main house, but it had been torn down upwards of ten years ago, although nobody understands why. It doesn’t really surprise me that nobody knows why Tim did something. He’s not exactly the talking kind.

My brother makes some unintelligible sound, muffled since he’s already crawled half way under the truck and looking up at the front tire. “Damn.”

“What is it, Reid?”

“Dunno.”

My heart races for a moment, and I see the truck explode in my mind with my brother’s head beneath it, all heat and pain and gas and death.

I walk back up to the cab and grab a packet of cigarettes from the plastic holder-thing on the side of the door. Can it be called a pocket? Or is that only fabric? I shake loose a couple of the white cancer sticks and place one in between my lips. Even before lighting it I can feel my nerves begin to calm.

I pat my pockets for a lighter, sticking the second cigarette inside my right pocket. No luck.

I jimmy the glove compartment open and search through the mixed contents—coffee stained registration papers, a couple pens, a handful of illegible receipts—without finding a lighter or matches. I grin to myself at the irony of looking for a lighter because I was afraid of an explosion, and drop my cigarette –“Shit.” It only takes a second for me to locate it and have it back in between my forefinger and middle finger. Now I needed fire.

I ponder my question and possible results before asking it aloud. Would he yell at me? Again? Maybe… “Reid… you have a light?”

His head jerks up. I can tell he’s taking in the spilling glove compartment, the blue box on the seat and the cigarette in between my fingers. Reid opens his mouth to say something, but instead glances up above the cab.

I look over my shoulder and see Tim Fionn’s eldest, Justin, wearing a partially undone flannel shirt, darker jeans and a broad grin.

I glance back at Reid, whose face has split into an equally wide smile. “Justin! By God, it’s good to see ya. How’ve you been?”

Reid stands up and swats at dust on his knees, sending clouds of dirt into the air before those settle back onto his tan pants.

And this is where the pleasantries would start. First Justin would respond in a friendly yet vague manner before inquiring about my father. Reid would then say something about how he’s doing well, busy though. And then Justin would say I bet, or something of the sort. The chatting would continue in a similar matter until both families and work had been covered, leaving only the inquisitions about me, which I would respond to in an un-wittingly ornery manner. I cannot stand pleasantries. Say I was asked how it was going, the proper response would be something like, Oh, can’t complain. The old truck stopped, but hey, what can you do? Where else I would more likely say, My brother’s an ass.

I know, very lady-like. But I just hate how fake everything about pleasantries is. Nobody says what they mean. They say whatever is socially and politically correct, not the truth. I’m not a fan of that kind of lie. Who is it helping? All it does is protect the pride of old men who don’t think most things proper.

Another reason half of folk hate me.

I let my eyes wander and almost immediately find a tall boy in a dark t-shirt and jeans standing a ways back. He’s facing the other way doing something with a calf, paying no heed to Reid or I or “Mary”, the name Reid gave the truck. I think the boy is Mallory, Justin’s younger introvert brother, although I can’t be sure. I don’t really know him, and all the encounters we’ve ever had have been fairly negative.

But I have to give him credit for paying more attention to a calf than to his “guests”. You aren’t really supposed to do that.

“Lorna.”

I turn my head quickly to my brother. “What?” I sound like a hound again.

“Justin said ‘hello’”

“What? Oh, hi.”

Justin’s eyes sweep my body twice. Down, up, down slowly and then he shakes his head and looks at my face with a lopsided grin, I think meant to be apologetic.

Reid hadn’t noticed, so it’d be odd for me to call Justin a creep, which I personally think he is.

“I didn’t know you smoked.” Justin continues to grin in a way that makes me shiver. Not pleasantly so.

I quickly jam the unlit cigarette into my pocket with the other one.

My sudden movement seems to give Justin an idea, as he turns and looks back over his shoulder. “Mallory!” he calls.

Mallory’s head comes up immediately. His crazy eyes included. Lord, how is it possible to have eyes that colour, white with black flecks. I don’t know why, but part of me loves his eyes, but I couldn’t care less about the person behind them. His eyes are just so incredible compared to my brown ones.

I realize I’m staring, because Mallory drops his gaze to the ground at his feet.

“Christ Almighty, Mallory. Come over here,” says Justin, as though it was obvious that Mallory should have done it in the first place.

I swear Mallory almost jumps to do as his brother asks. I take back anything I may have said previous to this about Mallory Fionn. If there ever were a more spineless creature than he, I’ve yet to hear about it.

I roll my eyes slightly and turn my attention to the Wood. God, without the iron all around me the place is crazy, even though the truck is still behind me, when I’m not enclosed in it the effect is minimal.

Beauty and cruelty always seem to go hand in hand, as I think my father has said about me. Wanderers’ Wood is the ultimate of both, teeth and lilies.

Its song is terrifying, but the ultimate relief as well. Why can’t anybody understand that?

I feel a pair of eyes on me.

Now the ultimate choice, continuing to watch the Wood with the possibility of Justin Fionn’s eyes on my ass or tearing my attention away and possibly getting to see Reid beat him to a pulp.

I reason that I could look back at the forest, but tearing my eyes away is still agony…

And of course, mostly a waste of time. I meet Mallory’s white eyes for an instant before his gaze flicks to the Wood and then to the ground at his feet. He didn’t look at me in the same kind of way that his brother had. Mallory honestly just looked curious for whatever reason.

He taps his fingers against his leg rapidly, but in a way that doesn’t necessarily draw the unmindful’s attention.

I stare at him, no not stare, I glower, glare, set him with a withering gaze, one that Reid says could scare away a hurricane, he says that’s the reason we ain’t had any here since we were born.

Mallory doesn’t meet my eyes, but I can tell he knows they’re on him, since his ears are going red, then he laughs a quiet little laugh.

“I have work to do,” he says before turning and walking off down his dirt lane, clouds of dust exploding behind each of his steps. He grabs a couple boards that had been leaning against the fence and a little tool box. The calf that had been licking the wooden rail ran off to follow him, bucking and balling. He turns and looks at it before taking off at a run as well.

“Oi, Mallory!” yells Justin. He turns back to Reid and me, shaking his head. “I swear,” he mutters, “if he were any less man he’d have four hooves.”

Reid doesn’t laugh but he grins a little, though there’s a dark look to him that I reckon Justin can’t see. Reid’s not too fond of, I don’t know, I think the word would be gossip. He thinks if you have a problem with someone you tell them, not somebody else.

If you were to tell Reid he looks like a hound dog he’d laugh, and probably agree, although he doesn’t, sure his nose is crooked, but that’s only because he broke it three times. Twice in fights, one with our elder brother over his bride-to-be, who happened to be Reid’s girlfriend at the time, once with Carson Lannon, because of something he said, I don’t know what it was, I wasn’t there.

The third time, which was actually the first, I may have “accidentally” pushed him off the roof of our porch when we were nine. He broke his arm as well. Anyway, what I mean to say is Reid has had enough girls go out of their way to be near him, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Actually, he’d be a woman,” I say and Reid shakes his head, but I know he would be laughing if it wouldn’t offend Justin.

Justin looks at me from a strange angle, his head cocked slightly to one side. “I reckon you’d know about that better than me.” His smile would likely take of most girls’ clothes, either that or his hands.

I don’t really think before speaking, actually, maybe I do and decide to speak anyway. “Probably not.”

Now Reid smiles apologetically and I know I’ve stepped over whatever invisible boundary divides humor and cruelty but I don’t care. If anything it makes me a little proud.

And it’s true what I’ve said as well. Half the island knows that Justin has slept with half the island. The funny part is the half that don’t know are the girls who’ve been in his bed. For some reason they all think they’re special—especially stupid, maybe.

Reid starts to make excuses. I don’t know what he’s saying exactly because I’m not paying attention. He’s always making excuses for me and then expects me to thank him later, as if I cared. I figure he thinks he can save me from whatever social suicide I may be committing every time I open my mouth.

The thing is, I don’t want to be saved. Dress me up however the hell you want but I’ll never be a proper lady without some kind of brain-washing facility. Maybe faerie magick would do the trick, but I don’t think the faeries would use their magick like that. They’d likely want me more as I am. Maybe it was faerie magick that made me this way.

Likely not.

I watch Mallory and his calf for a few seconds longer. He ducks under the fence rail and walks back towards his barn with the calf running madly ahead. There’s something wonderful to the way the animals are when so close to the wood, a little wilder, more dangerous. It doesn’t really seem that Mallory thinks so, as he treads just as you would in an empty field.

A strong wind blows and the dying grass blows to the west, sending dandelion and milkweed puffs into the air. A chill is in the breeze, an angry promise of snow to come later, and I decide to tell Reid exactly that.

What had earlier been a deep blue sky is now filled with menacing clouds, all dark and brooding.

“Reid,” I say.

He ignores me and continues to babble on.

“Reid.”

He gives me a dark look. “What?”

I glance up at the dark sky again. The clouds are rounded and moving fast, promising high winds and rain, again. “It’s going to storm.”

“So I suppose we should just leave Mary here, then?” he says.

“I dunno. Can you fix it?” I ask.

He glances at the truck. “Maybe you’ve just hurt her feelings.”

Meaning he can’t.

I kick at the dirt road.

Justin watches the dust spread and fall and then looks from me to Reid. His grey eyes look amused. “You could come in. Wait to see if the storm passes.”

Now Reid really looks at me and I look back at him. “I dunno,” he says in a distracted voice. He’s really asking if I’m okay with it. He knows I don’t feel right being in people’s houses.

I look back at the ground as the day grows darker.

“I—” he clears his throat and starts again. “Maybe we could borrow your car?”

I figure he’s looking at Justin when he says it.

“Uh, yeah, I guess. I can take the truck in to work…Right, take it.” His voice becomes stronger by the time he’s finished.

I figure if we weren’t George’s younger siblings he would have come up with some excuse, even though he and Reid get along. But he and George are really friends, as in they can skip pleasantries and actually talk. Like Reid and Fletch.

Reid smiles, but it’s fake, likely because he’s mad at me. I figure Justin can’t tell, even if he could, he wouldn’t care.

Nobody on Faer cares much for anyone outside their own family and very close friends. Everyone’s decent to their neighbors and such—unless that person is me—but it’s only pleasantries for the sake of tradition. Almost everyone on this rock was born here, though a lot won’t stay. Sometimes mainlanders come, but it takes a couple generations till they’re really one of us. My Mam’s family have been here since the beginning, and I think I’m fifth or sixth generation on my Dad’s side, almost as islander as you’ll get. I know Justin’s mom was from the mainland, and God knows where Mallory came from, but neither really seems the type to stay.

What Justin said would happen is what happens, meaning Reid and I borrowed his old white car that he bought off Reid if I remember right. Reid likes anything with a motor, and my dad worked as a mechanic when he was younger, when more people used cars on Faer.

The rain came while we were passing through Kappamor, the capital of Faer and the only town with a population over 1000 on the island.

The rain transforms Kappamor into a forbidding place to any that don’t know it. The honey-brown roofs and barn-board walls transform into a sea of darkness, the only break being the lights coming through windows and open screen-doors. But the light makes the buildings sentient, giving them eyes and teeth and a glimmering likeness only seen in a place as old as Kappamor. The road becomes a mud path filled with odd puddles, which Justin’s low car hits in a way that makes me and Reid fall forward. I figure Reid ’s gonna make me clean it tomorrow before he brings it back or does whatever he plans to do.

Watching the eerie magick spread all across the isle, I think about Wanderer’s Wood and blue lilies.