Leo
I wanted to crow about how I’d always known the flowers grew in Idaho, but the fact was that I’d started to doubt my memory of even the conversation, let alone where I might have seen them growing.
Maybe I’d been mistaken about their existence at all, and the whole conversation with Polina, even though I remembered it clearly.
I knew that sometimes trauma did funny things to people’s memories; I’d just thought that I was exempt from that particular symptom. Like somehow, just because I smiled through it all, I wasn’t feeling the strain as much as everyone else did.
I knew it was just a way I pushed myself harder than my family, but also, I wanted to take care of them. Them having to take care of me was a failure, because they all had enough to worry about.
But now, here was Altair, more traumatized than even Viktor, helping me with something I’d been convinced I knew, but hadn’t been sure about.
Mama smiled at us both, and then without the hesitation I’d been worried she would feel about a vampire in our midst, she reached out and patted Altair on the back.
He started to cringe away from the touch, but then paused when it was gentle and kind.
As she walked toward the counter, her back to us, she said over her shoulder, “Not too long now. Supper will be ready soon, and you can’t go missing meals if you’re going to be feeding your friend. ”
At that, Altair totally froze, and I had to admit, so did I.
I hadn’t said in so many words that I had not only fed Altair but intended to continue to do so, but it was true.
Viktor would have guessed it, because he thought it was a terrible thing and expected the worst of Altair.
But Mama? She said it like she was saying I was a growing boy, like she used to say when we were children.
Like it cost her nothing and didn’t change her opinion of Altair at all.
I watched her back for a moment, loose and relaxed and not at all frightened for the fact that I was leaving the house with a vampire. “Thank you, Mama. We’ll be back soon.”
She half-turned to look at me and gave me that brilliant smile of hers.
Mama was always smiling.
Maybe that was where I’d learned it.
Altair and I went out back, which led directly into the woods, and he glanced around, then motioned toward a clump of trees. “In Iv—in the garden, it grew on the trunks of trees, mostly. Like a vine.”
I hadn’t remembered that, but in my mind’s eye, I could see it then.
Polina’s weathered hands pulling the vine away from the trunk of a tree, wrenching the roots up from the dirt beneath, to show me the flowers.
It felt right, and more than that, Altair gave no indication that he was being cagey or deceitful.
The truth was that he never had, other than in the sense that he clearly held back sometimes, but every time he did that, I could see what was inside him from the pained, downcast look of him. Shame. Someone, perhaps many someones, had filled Altair with shame.
I could understand that. I’d felt it more than once in my life, and had little patience remaining for it.
Shame had no value, except to keep people from doing terrible things.
The problem was that far more often, bad people did those terrible things without so much as a hint of shame, while decent people felt shame when they’d done nothing wrong.
Simply caring about your own survival wasn’t evil.
It only became evil when you cared more about your own comfort than the survival of others.
Altair pointed to an aspen with a vine climbing the side, dragging me out of my own thoughts. “That looks promising.”
We went over and inspected the plant, but it wasn’t the right one, or at least, it didn’t have any flowers on it. Just past that tree, though, there was another, bigger, and the moment I saw it, a distinctive flash of purple caught my eye.
I almost shouted aloud, I was so damned pleased with us, reaching out and grabbing Altair’s hand, tugging him along to where the vine grew up the trunk of not just one tree, but another three nearby. The purple flowers were unfurling in the moonlight like little beacons, pale and sweet-smelling.
Altair grinned to see them, and together, we started picking the little flowers, dropping them one by one into the basket I’d brought along.
“We used to chew on the stems,” he said after a moment of silence.
His voice was hushed, like he was afraid of the words, or maybe like he didn’t want to hear them, but when I glanced over at him, his eyes were distant, like he was inside a memory.
“They grew in the night garden, and we would sneak in when—”
He jerked back and turned to look at me, dark eyes wide, like he hadn’t meant to say anything at all, and now he was worried that he’d said too much.
But it had hardly been anything. Yes, that’d been telling, because how many vampires found themselves in need of pain relief?
But it wasn’t as though he’d confided about murdering children. Just being in pain.
It was just like Viktor, I realized with a jolt.
Viktor also didn’t ever talk about what had happened to him after he’d been taken, and on the odd occasion he mentioned anything, he would freeze halfway through a sentence and stare into space, as though he’d realized what he was doing mid-atrocity, and felt ashamed. As though sharing his pain was wrong.
It never helped to prod, though. That only made Viktor retreat further into his shell and disengage entirely.
So I did what I always did best: I carried on and covered the discomfort.
“There was an old woman in the village in Russia who showed me the plant. I was too young to really pay as much attention as I should have, but she told me older wolves used the flowers for pain. I thought I’d try to brew them into a tea if I found them. ”
Altair took to the changed subject slowly, nodding along, then squinting and considering. “You could at least put honey in, that way. The plant is quite bitter to simply chew on.”
That made sense, from the smell of them on our hands. The flowers had a sweet scent to draw in pollinators, yes, but the underlying smell of the flesh of the things was sharper, heavy and almost metallic. It made my mouth dry just to imagine chewing on one of them.
I should, though, shouldn’t I? I certainly shouldn’t just give Henry a bunch of possibly poisonous flowers and tell him they were the solution to all his suffering without testing them out.
As though he’d read my mind, Altair picked one of the flowers and sniffed at it, then broke off the stem end and put it in his mouth, biting down. He closed his eyes, and a pained look crossed his beautiful face, then he nodded. “This is it.”
Gently, I reached over and took the flower from his hands, broke off a single petal, and stuck it in my own mouth.
Altair’s eyes flew open and he cringed, throwing up a hand as though to stop me and wincing in sympathy when I made a face at the bitter taste. My whole mouth went dry, as expected, but I didn’t flash straight to hallucinations and death, so I figured that was a good sign.
“It’s pretty nasty,” I agreed, even as I chewed and swallowed.
Altair nodded, his face all sympathy. “It was only worth it because it helped with the pain. It’s definitely not something I’d recommend eating for fun.”
I went back to picking the flowers, shrugging it off. “Can’t just bring something back to Henry and tell him to make it into tea without knowing it isn’t going to kill him. Henry’s . . . he’s important to us.”
“And you aren’t?”
I scoffed, but the words made me feel warm. Or maybe that was the bit of flower I’d eaten. “I’m young and strong and not missing a leg. It’s less likely to hurt me than him, so it makes sense.”
He stepped in, continuing to pick the flowers with our shoulders pressed together. “Do you think Henry would agree? It’s acceptable for you to suffer instead of him?”
And that? I sighed. “Of course not. But that’s the point of a pack, isn’t it? We take care of each other. Everyone wants to spare the others pain if they can. We all work together to try to care for everyone.”
Altair’s hands paused in picking for a moment, and his head rested softly against the round of my shoulder. He gave a sigh, and since he couldn’t breathe, I knew it was an emotional gesture rather than physical. “That . . . that sounds nice,” was what he finally whispered.
I reached down with my left hand while continuing to work with my right, and wound my arm around his waist. “It is. You should try it while you’re with us. Maybe you’ll find yourself right at home with a pack of your own, werewolf or not.”