Chapter 16 Love
LOVE
SHE OBSERVED THAT when the weather was good, it seemed to move him. Today was one of those days and in the courtyard of The Bleeding Grin, Baker watched Peter chop wood. He swung a long, sharp ax, splitting a piece in two. Sweat gave a subtle shine to his high cheekbones and straight, narrow nose.
The way he used the ax made him look like a machine, without staggering or shaking. Every swing and reset of the tool looked exactly like the last, and the perfect motion was a picture of his energy.
It had been fourteen months now, but to Baker it felt like years. She’d grown more accustomed to her accommodations, several floors above the slaves. The Strike were now almost her peers, and under Peter’s direction, she’d become untouchable to them.
In the eyes of everyone, she was unreachable and suddenly, every single person saw her.
A shadow flashed over her face, and she shielded her eyes from the sun. She looked up to see a crow flying overhead.
Without looking, Peter beckoned for the cloth beside her, and she tossed it over. Wiping the sweat off his face, he set the ax down and they walked up the stone courtyard path to the Bleeding Grin.
“Flyleaf,” Peter said aloud as she glanced at a nearby plant and made eye contact with him. “You remember the chemical reactions behind how plants grow don’t you?”
They passed another plant and Baker caught his eyes again.
“I thought you might,” Peter replied instantly, always catching the wholeness of her words. Through him, she’d become a very talkative and inquisitive girl. They turned off course toward the front of the Bleeding Grin, where the inner gates were closest.
Baker knew they were headed to the trough. She dreaded it. She could already hear the people wailing and didn’t want to see their glossy eyes and blubbering lips. Of course, that’s where her eyes went first when they turned the corner to the front gate.
Strike Perilous was standing a few steps back from them with a fresh apple in one hand. Sensing Peter, she turned, putting on her gloves as a sign of respect as he approached.
“They’re bad today,” she said as Peter approached beside her. Baker stood between them before Perilous rubbed Baker’s head and whispered. “Loud girl.”
“Strike Perilous.” Baker nodded up at the gold in her eyes. Baker had grown to like Perilous.
“You’re tense,” Perilous noted. “You always act like you don’t like them.” Perilous nodded to the people trying to push through the gate, her bright blonde ponytail flickering over her shoulder.
Baker shook her head. “Peter won’t tell me what’s wrong with them.”
Peter chuckled, though she wasn’t sure why. “Nothing’s wrong with them. They’re just hungry.”
“Why do they do that?” Baker asked at last. “They look like they want to eat both of you too.”
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” Perilous said, taking another bite of her apple with perfectly white teeth and full, pink lips.
“You’ll fall in love, like humans do, and will want to eat someone too.
” She chewed for a moment before offering it to Baker, glancing at Peter as if for permission.
Peter nodded. Baker took the apple but didn’t eat it. “I better not act like that,” Baker said.
“Some people search for a lifetime to feel how these people feel– completely carried away in feeling,” Peter said, “these people are free from choice, from burden, living in complete, fearless security.”
“I don’t want to get carried away. Not to where they go. They don’t act like people anymore,” Baker replied.
“One day, if you’re lucky, you’ll understand.” He glanced over at Perilous. “I don’t like to see them in pain. Must they wait like this?”
Suddenly nervous, Perilous nodded and created the meal with focused gestures of her hands. As they ate, Baker shuddered at the sight, stopping short when she recognized someone among them.
Marnie was there, eating with the rest, now part of the hoard with no feelings but hunger. Stifling the pain of the sight, Baker swallowed hard in disgust.
“I never want to act like them,” Baker said, and Perilous glanced down at her as if surprised she’d been thinking about it still. “They act like rats.”
Peter smiled, eyes flickering to Perilous, who waited there with a half-chewed piece of apple in her cheek.
She started chewing again, presumably in response to something Peter had said in her mind.
Baker realized in that moment that despite their behaviors the Strike treasured these people more than anything else, and she’d just insulted them outright.
Peter glanced down at Baker. “Remember this moment. Humility might have you looking back at it one day.”
She didn’t like that response, handing the half-eaten apple back to Perilous. She crossed her arms, looking around to find the rest of the space around the Bleeding Grin unoccupied. The courtyard was full of vast, green lawns and plants of every type and nature.
“Are there any new ones that have potential?” Peter asked in a low voice, signifying the change to a different topic he and Perilous must have discussed right before Baker had interrupted.
“I had a man a few weeks ago. Nothing, though. We have a few women coming tonight, but I don’t think anything is happening there either.
” Perilous sighed. “Some of them are getting very tired of this experiment. Amiel ate the last few. Looks like it’s up to you and you alone if there will be more of us. ”
“Hmm. Keep trying,” Peter whispered. “Creating Strike through the traditional method is...tedious now. We don’t have a lot of options. The human body cannot develop a Strike, but maybe their children have more receptivity to the virus.”
Perilous crossed her arms. “Well, I’ve never heard of a Strike having a child, and I’m tired of suffering the attention of these men. If it can happen, the chances are painfully low.” She reached her gloved finger to wipe something out of the corner of her eye.
Baker jolted as one of the people shook the gate. A few people started fighting, some even using words—which was rare when they got like this.
Perilous walked toward the crowd, waving a hand and separating those in the brawl before lowering her hand down and invoking some kind of soothing sensation inside them.
Still watching the people, Baker felt her mood darken. She crossed her arms over her chest, now cold and heavy on the inside.
Humility might have you looking back. Peter’s words churned over and over in her head.
She didn’t like the idea of that, determined that one day she’d leave the Bleeding Grin.
She wouldn’t look back on those people at the gate—those helpless, wanting people.
She’d forget about them, just like she’d forgotten about everyone else.
She barely thought about the ROSE or the servants or Marnie.
But in this moment, she remembered everyone more clearly than she had in a long time.
She jolted at Peter’s hand on her shoulder and looked up to see them both looking down at her again. Perilous gave nothing away in her expression, but Peter looked concerned.
“Let’s go inside,” he said, and she was relieved, blinking rapidly as she felt additional moisture in her eyes.
She nodded in agreement, and Peter turned with her back into the Bleeding Grin.
They found the main path to the entrance.
The large black doors of the Grin opened for Peter as he placed his hand on the door and walked Baker in with his other hand on her back.
Each room and hallway in The Bleeding Grin changed with the preferences of the day, and today it was like a mountain cabin with heavy wooden furniture and thick, auburn rugs in the hallways. Now, no matter the design, it all felt dark to her.
The surge of emotion did not subside, even though Baker was not in front of the crowd of civilians. She wiped tears hurriedly from her face as she walked beside Peter through the great, long hallways to his study.
He put her in her favorite chair which was a dark purple armchair next to his desk. He sat before the desk, the light from the nearby window illuminating his face. She avoided his eyes, focused absentmindedly on a white table in the center of the study, with two white chairs on either side.
She didn’t like these feelings. None of the Strike had sudden surges of feeling. Peter offered her a hot cup of tea, spun from the air into his hand.
He always gave her tea when she felt bad—as if her emotional state were some kind of illness. She would usually drink it, but this time, she did not.
Instead, she only stared at the cup as Peter set it at the edge of the desk. He rubbed his fingers, a neatly folded tissue appearing between them, which he set beside the tea. Peter did not push her, Baker keeping her chin tucked to her chest to hide her tears.
Peter removed a light blue shell from a box on his desk along with a small, sharp tool. By the light of the window, he used the tool to shape carvings into the shell.
Knowing his attention was occupied with it, Baker eventually felt comfortable looking up at the shell, but not at him.
“It’s a question,” Peter whispered after a while as he worked on the shell. “That feeling deep inside, it’s a question you’ve been too afraid to ask. You’re ready now. That’s why it’s come.”
Baker looked over at Peter after a while, comfortable now with him seeing the question, but he continued to stay focused on carving the shell.
“You need to learn to use your words,” Peter said.
“You’re learning to speak with the body in your combat training.
With me, you must practice speaking with the tongue.
Find the right words. The Strike’s ability to see your truth is a gift, but you must learn to communicate your truth—push it out into the world or you’ll cave in and disappear. ”
Baker’s eyes drifted to the shell now as she watched him carve it, “I,” she started but hated the sound of her voice, “don’t know.”
Peter didn’t reply, as if he wouldn’t accept the answer.
He tapped his carving tool on the desk before he set it down, leaning back in his chair as he looked at her. His elbows rested on the chair arms as he steepled his fingers in front of him pensively.
She took the teacup now only to hold something warm.
“Of all my fears,” Peter said, “the worst is that I would fail them. Your struggles, your questions, Baker, have provided me with a path to understanding how to quell the plight of their suffering. My ask is that one day you ask your questions for both our sakes.”
Them . He spoke of the people wandering out in the city, one of the only cities left. He spoke of them often, as one might discuss a single person, like the collective herd were one organism. To him, they were the most perplexing creatures, when to Baker they were more simple than animals.
Baker didn’t understand what he wanted to do for them. She hated them. Empty husks who’d sold out to the Strike for a life of ease and pleasure. She’d rather die than live that way.
She thought of Marnie’s face in the crowd and the teacup trembled in her hand.
She hated them and resisted all questions.
Silence remained for the rest of the afternoon.