Chapter 17

 

Another Saturday morning was dawning bright and… not so early, now that November was well underway.

Aleda woke and tumbled out of bed with a groan. After a vague moment it occurred to her that she had been woken by a loud noise. Two seconds later she heard the even louder noise of somebody knocking at the front door.

Forget it—Papá would deal with whoever it was.

Ten seconds later the visitor tried again, rapping out an impatient cadence in C-minor.

Oh, fine. Just fine.

“C-coming!” Aleda called out hoarsely. “Ay! Stupid… Yes, coming!”

Half blind, and still in her pajamas, she opened the door to a vision of short, blonde, and perky. Aleda blinked at her.

“Talia? What… what are you doing here?”

“I’ll be out of your hair soon enough, just waiting for your dad!” Talia assured her. She brushed past the bewildered teenager and tossed herself onto the couch.

Aleda stared at her for a moment, completely bewildered.

“Oh, that’s right. You’ve been in school the past couple of mornings. I’m here a bit early today, since I have to work an earlier shift on Saturdays.”

Aleda reflected on this statement.

“…What?” she tried, a little desperately.

“To watch the feeders. It’s my shift. Didn’t your dad tell you?”

“…No?”

“Ah. Right, sorry. We’re watching the feeder nest.”

Aleda continued looking blankly at the girl for several long seconds. Finally she gave up and, shaking her head, found her way into the kitchen for breakfast.

Meanwhile, Talia flipped on the television, clearly quite content to make herself comfortable while waiting for Papá to get back so that she could …go …watch the…?

“Feeder nest?!” Aleda choked out, making a mess of her cornflakes. “What? Where?”

“In the woods. A bit southeast of here,” Talia replied, shrugging casually. “Your dad wants to clear it out, but first we have to make sure we have them all in the same place.”

“…There’s a feeder nest?!”

“Yeah.”

“Here!”

“Yeah. Well, a little southeast of here.”

“A feeder nest!”

Talia laughed. “Yes, a feeder nest here in Keeney. What’s wrong? Your dad said you already ran into them.”

Oh.

“Right. Yes. I did. Just one of them, though. I didn’t realize there was an entire nest.”

“Not huge—maybe a dozen. Once we make sure they’re all there, it won’t be too much trouble to clear it.”

“Is that where Mom is, too?”

“I have no idea. She might be. Maybe your Dad wanted a little company? Although, he’d better not get … distracted. We’ll never be able to account for all the damned feeders.”

Aleda rolled her eyes and dumped her breakfast in the sink. She needed to put some clothes on.

“Honestly,” she muttered, “It’s a wonder I’m still an only child.”

She walked upstairs while Talia cracked up on the couch.

Sure enough, Mom and Papá walked through the front door a few minutes later. Aleda had joined Talia on the couch, not really wanting to do her chores yet.

They were watching ‘Passions’.

“Good morning, sweetie,” Mom said. “Sleep well last night?”

Aleda nodded.

“Hey, Aria!” Talia said. “Are you helping us out now?”

“Well, somebody has to make sure this man gets back to do his share of the housework.”

“Oh yes, housework. Can’t forget about that,” Talia replied with a wink. “How’s our favorite nest of feeders faring?”

“I have seen thirteen therions so far,” Papá said. “The most I saw at a time was eleven today. Some of them still wake and leave in the morning. I think that they might have jobs.”

Talia groaned.

“Great. That’s just what we need—missing persons reports on the wrong end of things.”

Mom nodded empathetically. “They’re probably newly-turned. Still trying to live like people. Fortunately, at least they won’t be as strong as the rest.”  She sighed. “I just hate knowing they were probably bitten sometime since we got here. I feel like a failure.”

“Ay, querida, you could not have known,” Papá said, laying his hands on her shoulders comfortingly. “We have a family to care for. We cannot do everything ourselves.”

“I know,” she said.  “Well, Talia, I guess it’s your shift now. They were all asleep when we left—you should have a few minutes to get over there. Aleda, have you started your chores?”

Crap.

Aleda wrinkled her nose in distaste. She hated chores.

Talia saw her expression and raised a conspiratorial eyebrow.

“He-ey,” she said with a widening grin. “What if I brought the kid along with me? Give her a little field experience.”

Aleda raised her eyebrows in surprise and looked at Mom. This might actually work.

Mom considered it for a moment.

“You know what?” she said, “I don’t see why not. Just make sure she gets back in time for her musical.”

“No problem. What time do you have to be back, little Leda?”

“We have to be at the school by five,” she said, trying very hard not to grin. She wished she could spend every Saturday out in the woods instead of inside doing chores! She happily fetched her coat from the hall closet and was out of the door before Mom could even think to change her mind.

“Whatcha doing?”

Aleda stopped halfway to the driveway, confused. “Getting in the car?” she asked. Talia shook her head.

“We’re walking. Come on, little Leda.”

“Walking? How far is it?” Aleda protested, reluctantly following her to the street.

“Not far. Half a mile, maybe.”

Aleda blanched. Oh… wonderful. There were a dozen or so feeders… living half a mile from her house.

Talia had clearly come this way a few times already. She walked confidently down the street and, just as confidently, cut through a yard to reach the woods beyond. Aleda paused for a moment at the edge of the property, then shrugged and followed her. Chances were low that anyone would be watching, and it didn’t really matter anyway.

Aside from the chilly temperature, the walk was surprisingly pleasant. It had been a long time since Aleda had taken a nice walk out in the open like this, not counting her daily paved trek to school.

She watched Talia trip through the sparse underbrush with some amusement.

“Are you okay?” she asked, biting her lip to keep from laughing.

“Fine! I’m fine. Just—ow!—taking a walk through th—ow!—the woods. Don’t mind me.”

“Okay. If you say so. It’s just… er… well, you’re getting a bit scratched up.”

Talia looked herself over in a panic.

“I didn’t rip any of my clothes, did I?” she demanded, stopping abruptly to examine her clothing. Aleda gave her a cursory inspection.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “Your clothes look fine. It’s your face I was getting a bit worried about.”

“Oh, just that?” Talia asked, visibly relieved. She waved a dismissive hand and resumed walking. “That’s alright then.”

What an odd set of priorities. Then again, the scratches she had acquired since entering the woods had already faded away, soon to be replaced with fresh ones.

Fair enough.

“So… why are you and my parents trying to clear out a feeder nest? Usually they just kill anything they see when they’re out at night.”

“It was your dad’s idea,” Talia admitted. “I don’t think he likes having a nest so close to your house.”

“That makes sense, I guess. But why wait until now to clear it? Did he just find it?”

“Actually… we went looking for it. Wednesday night, while you were at rehearsal.”

“Okay. Still, why wait until now?”

Talia looked sideways at Aleda.

“I think you know why.”

And she did know. In a way it was… nice, that Papá was so upset for her sake. It did seem like a bit of an overreaction, but she wasn’t going to tell them not to bother. The truth was, she felt relieved to know that soon there wouldn’t be any more feeders left in Keeney. A little indignant to be—once again—treated like a porcelain doll, but mostly relieved.

She strolled silently through the woods, fighting the urge to pick up Talia and carry her. She eventually led Aleda to an innocuous copse of pine trees. When they were still a little ways off, Talia motioned for her to stay where she was and continued towards the trees. Aleda thought she saw a hint of tarpaulin between the branches.

Whatever Talia had seen must have satisfied her, because she returned and sat down on the forest floor, startling Aleda.

“You might want to sit down,” she said in a low whisper, leaning back against a tree. “We’re going to be here for a while.”

Bemused, Aleda joined her on the ground. Where they sat, they were hidden behind a bit of underbrush, although she could just see the trees that concealed the nest.

“Are we far enough away?” she asked Talia as quietly as she could.

“Don’t worry. We’re good. None of them come this way, and the smell of these bushes is strong enough to mask our scent.”

Aleda sniffed the bush experimentally. As far as she could tell, it didn’t smell like much of anything.

“…Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Talia said, grinning a little. “Count yourself lucky you’re not called yet. I can’t stand this stuff.”

Aleda cocked her head at the other girl.

“What, bushes?” she asked incredulously. Talia shrugged.

“I’ve never been much of a ‘nature’ kind of girl,” she told Aleda, using air quotes. “That’s more of my brother’s kind of thing.”

Somehow, knowing that Ryan liked being outdoors ruined Aleda’s enjoyment of the forest just a little. Now it just reeked of antisocial jerk.

They sat there for a long time.

A very long time.

Talia, usually so chatty, did not say another word for nearly an hour. To her own surprise, Aleda was the first to break the silence.

“Talia?”

“Yes’m.”

“What is it that feeders actually do?”

Talia opened her mouth to answer but paused, frowning. She closed her mouth and thought for a moment. “I’m not sure, actually,” She finally admitted. “These sort sleep all day, but at night?” She shrugged. “I’ve always killed them as soon as I saw them, so I have no idea what they do for the rest of the time.”

“So then, these particular feeders…” Aleda prompted.

“…are not likely to do anything,” Talia finished for her. Aleda made a face and had to bite her cheek to stop herself from groaning.

“However,” Talia continued, seeing the look on her face, “There are at least two feeders still away from the nest. Occasionally one returns in the middle of the day. The trick is learning what each one looks like so you can count them properly.”

“That part shouldn’t be too hard.”

Talia raised an amused eyebrow in her direction. “Try telling the difference between a dozen different wolves, and then figuring out which wolf looks like which person.”

Aleda swallowed and leaned back against her side of the tree, her eyes wide. Yikes.

“It’s easier for hunters,” Talia continued. “If you pay close enough attention, each feeder has its own particular brand of stink.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Aleda said airily, still taken aback.

Talia was about to say something else when she suddenly tensed and pulled Aleda towards their little patch of underbrush.

“Look,” she breathed, and pointed carefully through the bush.

Aleda looked.

Through the branches and leaves she could just make out the shape of someone—or, more accurately, something—approaching the nest from the opposite direction. When it came closer, she could just make out its features. Its face was average enough. It was the eyes that caught her attention. There was something … not quite right about them.

She squinted, trying to see more clearly.

It was too far away, though, to make out any details. If anything, she felt the wrongness more than she saw it.

It set her teeth on edge.

Without realizing it, she pushed even farther forward, pressing her fingers into the ground and leaning into her toes. She felt Talia’s hand around her wrist just as the feeder ducked into the nest.

She looked up at the other girl, who was staring into her eyes with an indiscernible, almost intense expression on her face.

“We can’t kill them yet,” she said in an odd voice. “We have to wait until they’re all here.”

Disconcerted, Aleda relaxed into a sitting position and tried to make herself comfortable against the tree again.

Neither girl spoke for the rest of the time that they sat there. At 4:30, Talia sent Aleda off in the direction of her house with an assurance that she would not run into any other stray feeder. The walk was uneventful, but Aleda hurried as fast as she dared, taking some pains to avoid making any noise that might betray her presence. She had to get back for the next show.