Page 18 of The Guy Sure Looks Like Plant Food To Me
“How did you meet her—your mentor?” Meri asks as I walk her around the back of the property toward the vegetable garden.
The clearing that was once a defined ring around the property now has become overgrown and unkempt from time and lack of human attention. The surrounding forest threatens to take over, saplings growing too close to the garden boxes. Their roots threaten to damage years of hard work, a dismissal of the blistered hands that made this place what it now is.
Even if it could use a little more of that human attention again.
“Lessa found me panhandling in front of a candy store, trying to convince any passersby to pay five dollars for a tarot reading.” She asked if I was scamming to survive or if I was surviving from scamming, I didn’t understand the question then, I’m still not sure I do now.
“She saw the loneliness in my soul that night, that’s what she used to say at least. From that day on she became my mentor,teaching me everything she knew, from setting up altars and manifestations all the way to hexes and uncrossings.”
Meri says nothing, only waits for the rest. “I was the annoying responsibility she didn’t mean to get stuck with. There wasn’t a mom-ish bone in Lessa’s body, she was more of a big sister-type, you know? But I put the burden of parenthood on her.” I take a breath, feeling the pain of her memory resurface like an old tattoo raising up on my skin.
“I’m sure she didn’t think you were a burden, she took you in because she wanted to.” America’s voice is too soft, too caring, too full of kindness for me to do anything but break apart from it. She’s stopped walking, but I’m still going. “Hey.” Her fingers wrap around my wrist, keeping me from going on. “You had someone who picked you, who chose you and chose to love you, and I think that’s really special.”
I wipe the tear with the back of my hand before it has a chance to fall. “I’m sure she only meant for it to be temporary, but I couldn’t take the hint. She’s the one who had the dream for The Portal you know? I tried after she died, but I couldn’t even get that right.”
“Runa.” America’s grip on me tightens. “She loved you, I know because she wasn’t your blood and she stuck by you. It wasn’t out of obligation. Don’t spoil the memory of your time together by putting words in a dead person’s mouth.”
It’s the most serious I’ve seen her yet, but I’m grateful for it. I hear what she’s actually saying, and for once, I’mlisteningto the real message.
Lessa was magic herself, she was witchcraft incarnate, she was the divine feminine, she was karma, she was … my friend.
And she left me her home, to become mine.
Now ours.
“Holy shit.” Meri’s shock breaks me from my sad thoughts.
10
AMERICA
“Yeah, it’s perfect, right?” Runa asks once she sees my attention is beyond the clearing, directed into the dark of the forest.
“Yes!” I squeal, finally understanding her plan.
Just past the line of trees behind the cottage is another smaller, more hidden clearing. A metal tripod nearly eight feet tall takes up the majority of the space, and from the top of it hangs a chain from a loop. It secures on top of the handle of what seems to be an iron bowl, keeping it hanging about three feet from the air.
No, not a bowl, a cauldron.
Below it is a pile of ashes, indicative of the pyre that once heated it.
“We’re gonna cook him into plant food?” I confirm, unable to contain the excitement.
The cauldron is at least five feet in diameter, if we tuck him in like a little baby he’ll be snug as a bug inside that thing, and if the fire is going all night, he’ll be nothing but liquid in a day or two. “Bones are good too, once we get all the meat off of him we can bake the bones and turn them into powder for even more nutrients.”
Runa bats her eyes incredulously. “I-I—” she struggles with her words, fumbling so uncomfortably that I’m sure I’ve crossed the line.
Powdered bones? Meat falling off the bone? You went way too far.
“I don’t want to say I love you because it’s been at best like, a day if you don’t count the time we were put to sleep, and,” she laughs awkwardly, “the last thing you need is to be trapped in the woods with some crazy clinger girlfriend.”
“But?” I bite back the smile at hearing her say she loves me, even if the words before them might have beenI don’t want to say.
No one has ever gotten so close to saying the words.
She clears her throat uncomfortably, “But I know I’m going to, Meri.”
Her eyes meet mine for only a second before she shifts them down to the ground again, like she’s maybe trying to avoid the possibility of rejection here.
