Soul Mother
I think I was six the first time I knew my father was insane.
Its hard to know-after all growing up under the circumstances that I did there was little frame of reference-there was only Him, me and Mother.
It was Mother who brought it out in him that day. My father never beat me, never struck me except in what he still called play…I had bruises and scrapes and cuts from those blows but they held no malice, and not a fraction of the force that he could deliver in earnest.
It was during our 'play' in the sand strewn center of our cave that I saw the monster behind his placid gray eyes. It would gaze out at me momentarily when he threw me down, I didn't know what it was, not until that day.
He laughed, grabbing the front of the flannel shirt he'd brought back for me-he had to stoop to even our heights. I put both of my hands over his, twisting his wrist with all of my puny might. He let me lock his arm and kick his legs out from under him. I raised my foot and stamped it down next to his smiling face.
Back then I didn't wonder why his smiles never touched his eyes.
I forget what it was Mother said, her voice-always so melodious-she would sing the most wonderful songs, something about fetching fire wood.
I never understood why he let her cook…not then.
He grunted at her, throwing his legs up in the air and casually tossing himself to his feet and heading up to the mouth of the cave.
"Clemie!" Mother said, her voice pleasant and warm, "Clemie fetch me the skillet, please."
Mother always said 'Please'-she was a very polite person and took pains to ensure that my manners and hygiene were better then Father taught.
"Yes Mother!" I was still buzzed from the play-father had started teaching me LINE just a bit before that. He taught me other things later but always returned to the Marine Combatives because they were so simple.
KISS, that's what he'd call when he went away, blowing one at me before ducking out the cave, Keep it Simple Stupid.
I knew the Rules, but that day I was lax. She had her back to me, bustling over the stove and I didn't think when she told me to put it on the little table she would use to cut up food on. She really WAS a superb cook and knew how to make toffee when father brought sugar back.
"Thanks Hon…she dropped a few sticks into the stove and asked, "Do you think you could fetch me the Spoon?"
"Sure Mother!" I trotted over to the far wall of the cave, grabbing the big iron spoon that hung with the other implements where she couldn't get them. I stepped up behind her, crossing the yellow line father had painted on the floor. She turned, smiling at me for a second. Her eyes flashed in the lamplight, at the time I thought it was pretty.
She smiled again, reaching out to pet my cheek she looked like she was going to say something hesitating half a breath she gave a tiny shake of her head and took the spoon to stir at the stew she was making, humming under her breath.
"Mother…" I was breathy from the excitement of disobeying father and being on her side of the line when it was just the two of us.
"Yes Hon." She spared me a glance as she sprinkled Oregano and fresh herbs into the pot.
"Tell me about being a bat."
"Again?" She smiled, stirring one last time and turning to face me with crossed arms.
Her chain clinked a little as she leaned against the wall, "I had huge wings, huge to me of corse…and I could sing the most wonderful, WONDERFUL music…" Her eyes lost focus for a moment, looking sad "And I could fly!" she flapped her hands briefly.
She grinned at my smile, when your six being about to flap your wings and fly sounds like the most wonderful thing in the world.
"Song!" I commanded, stepping forwards eagerly.
"Oh me darling, oh me darling…" She sung ever so low, smiling indulgently, "Oh me darling Clementine…You are lo-" her voice trailed off and she went pale.
Father didn't say a word as I jumped back to my side of the line and he walked…Purposely is the word I think, he didn't hurry or run.
One hand on her shoulder and a jerk had her on the floor as he threw his right foot high as his shoulder into the air. It hung there for a moment, that instant frozen in time, or my memory, then its booted heel crashed down half an inch from her right ear. He looked down at her, his face placid and calm-I doubt his heart rate was over eighty.
"Don't ever touch my daughter when I'm not here." He smiled, and when he smiled I saw something behind his eyes, something looking out at us.
I think she wet herself; she was a very gentle monster after all.
….
I think I was four the first time I remember him chaining me.
Before that age there was no way that Mother could have used me to get loose. He would let her hold me and sing me to sleep, back then she was my whole world when he went away.
When he put the chain round my little ankle he told me that this was all part of being a grown up girl and that he would be back soon.
I cried. I didn't like sitting on the other side of the room. Mother soothed me with songs and told me about when she'd been a bat. I thought all mothers became bats at some point, having just learnt about caterpillars and butterflies. I asked her when I would become one and she went quiet for a long moment.
"When I get to be a Bat will I have to be chained up when Father goes out?"
"No Hon, you'll fly free and sing."
"Whooooo!" This exited me, and I drank up her stories about being a bat. She told me how she had come from a place way way far off in the sky and become a person.
"Was that because you wanted to be my Mother?"
She went quiet for a moment, and when she spoke her voice was oddly flat.
"I thought that it would be fun to be a human." She was quiet for a long time.
I asked her to sing me a song and she sung me Clementine.
Father brought me a pretty necklace that trip, it had a little gold butterfly pendant. Mother refused to acknowledge it when I tried to show it off and it vanished shortly thereafter.
I thought I saw tears in her eyes.
…
I was just before my 13th birthday the first time I saw someone die.
It wasn't like I'd thought it would be-I'd known that Father killed on his patrols. He taught me how, the same as he taught me to read and write and gut a deer. It was just something that I needed to know.
I'd been playing checkers with Mother on the board she and I had made last winter to replace the paper set she'd taught me on. Father had taught me chess, he and Mother played sometimes but I never liked the game when they played each other.
We sat cross-legged on the floor, she and I while father oiled his bow on the bench he'd made years before when mother asked him to.
"Sing me a song!" I asked and she smiled, brushing a long strand of greasy blond hair out of her face, "What song do you want Hon?"
"How about a poem?" My father glanced up and gave an almost smile.
It had been a good day for them-he'd brought her sugar from his last patrol and she'd made hard toffee. It was one of the few things that they had in common, a love of candy.
"Swap you for a beer?" She raised an eyebrow in an expression that I didn't quite understand-they would occasionally be polite to each other and I would be banished to the store room for the night while they "talked about stuff". I knew that this would be one of those nights.
He nodded, reaching up to the nook he'd roughed out behind the bench for one of the three precious glass bottles he'd risked his life to get.
Walking towards he twisted the cap off with his hands, tossing it into the far corner and pausing for a moment before handing it down to her.
"I want the bottle back in one piece." He said slowly, but without venom.
She nodded, taking a slow swallow, "That's Good!"
"Luke Warm and stale." He stepped backwards rather then turn his back.
"Just like you hon." She grimaced at him, sticking her tongue out "Just like you…"
He smiled, almost "I want Kipling."
"'If' or 'Earths last picture'?" Mother said that she had taught poetry a long time ago, or someone she knew had…
"Today's not an 'If' day."
"Thank Goodness for that…" She rolled her eyes, taking another draw on the beer.
"Can I?" I asked, holding out my hand.
"Uhh…" she shrugged, holding it out, "If your fathers going to teach you to murder I guess I can teach you to drink."
"No Clemie." Father shook his head, "Not after her."
"Jesus- its not like I'm contagious!" She snapped, eyes flashing sliver in the fire light, "You KNOW that."
"I know."
"Daaaad!" I whined, "C'mon!"
"She's dangerous Clemie."
"Sure!" I snorted in a fit of, well, I guess a fit of being twelve, "That's why you leave me here for days and days while you go patrol."
"Follow the rules and you'll be fine." The odds on me spending the night in the storeroom were dropping like the mercury in snowstorm.
"Jesus! If I wanted to kill her I'd have done it when she was a baby!"
"Yeah dad! Your always so damn mean to her AND me!" This had been building for a while-you cant live in a cave with 2 people who seriously want each other dead, alternating with hormonal sex, and grow into a stable teenager.
"You know your causing psychological damage to our offspring!" Mother spoke like that when she drank beer, father called it her University Speak. I think that she worked at a University before father caught her. He looked at her with pure loathing.
"Jesus dad, she IS, like, my MOM!"
"Your too young to drink." He said flatly.
There was a noise outside the cave then, just a twig cracking.
The look on his face was fear, pure and simple animal fear as he raced up to the entrance of the cave.
The first one was dead by the time I caught up with him-it had been a gangerly young man with a few wisps of beard and a bright orange windbreaker. His eyes looked very surprised to me, staring up into the forest canopy. The second one was bigger and stronger then my father and they rolled in the leaves, over and over.
Father ended on the bottom and the other man squeezed his throat. He looked up at me, registering a moment of surprise as Father took firm hold of the meaty hands and jerked his hips. The man rolled forwards and off with a grunt of alarm.
A quick flash of knife and the big man was on his back, holding his throat and making bubbling sounds. My father sneered over him, spitting bloody sputum in his face. He looked around like a watchful animal then motioned me to come closer.
I was frightened, the smell of voided bowels and hot iron blood making me sick.
"Come…" he sounded gentle, reaching out to take my hand and pull down into a crouch beside him.
"You're my daughter, Clemie, and I Love you…you know that right?"
I nodded, swallowing bile.
"I had a son, Clemie." He swallowed hard and I saw hot tears splashing out of his eyes, turning the body over he swiftly sliced the big mans coat off his body, exposing his back.
"I had a son and they took him…" he slid the tip of the knife under the mans muscle, slicing expertly as he peeled it back.
I'd gutted and quartered deer before but this was making me feel sick, I actually vomited when I saw IT move.
"The worm. THIS is what skin walkers look like Clemie…they put one in my son." He sliced it expertly, smiling thinly as it writhed, slicing again and again.
"School…at his school Clemie."
"Don't be fooled because they look like us Clemie…. NEVER forget. When you look at one your not looking at a person. One of these…your looking at one of these." He spoke evenly now, like he was discussing the weather.
"What will we do…?" I nodded at the corpse, "With…them?"
"There'll be a search…Cover them first…leaves…check the area. They'll have a camp. We clean up."
It was dark when we got back to the cave.
Mother looked at my face, the thin line of dried blood on my right cheek.
"Oh My God Clemie!" She took hold of my face, turning it to the light, "Are you hurt?"
"S'not mine." I said woodenly.
"Clemie…" She trailed off as I looked up into her eyes, trying to see the worm inside her.
"You never told me." I said slowly, the words didn't want to come.
"What did you…" She looked at my father, "You…You made her…Showed..OH! Oh! Ohh…Clemie, no, I...I never wanted…"
He reached up for a bottle of beer, popping the cap and taking a long slug before walking over and offering it to me.
I took a swallow and nearly choked-I'd never drunk a drink with fizz. He took the bottle back and walked out of the cave, picking up his pack on the way.
"Clemie!" My mother took my head and made me face her, "Clemie…I...I'm…I…"
I rubbed at the stripe Father had drawn on my face with the third Skin walker's blood.
"Who are you really?"
"Your mother." She blinked.
"If you were free what would you do?"
"Clemie…I grew you in this body. Felt you inside me. You're my child and I…I feel love for you. I truly do."
"If you were free…" I stepped forwards as she stepped back, "What would you DO?"
"I'd go back to my people…Clemie…Oh Clemie, Souls…we Souls…we're not...just not LIKE you…your all so hateful and angry!" She brushed tears from her eyes-tears had always angered her more the any other 'chemical' reaction her body sprang on her, "We're gentle…we hate violence, Clemie, we abhor it…we love peace and art and music and poetry. Please…PLEASE Clemie…don't be like him!"
"Would you bring them back here? To us?"
"I…" She began to cry then, knowing that she had lost me. I knew that she did love me, as much as she could anyway, "I can't let you keep killing! Souls are sentient beings, Clemie! Its Murder!"
I exhaled slowly.
"I…come with me Clemie…" she searched my face desperately, ignoring the laughability of my father letting that happen, "Come with me...we can go away. You DON'T NEED to be like him! OH Clemie…we could…could…" She trailed off downcast.
I felt no anger, just a wave of sadness-what COULD we do? Go shopping together like the moms and their daughters in the glossy magazines? Have a home together and eat out? I'd always wanted to watch TV but couldn't imagine the two of us on one of those soft sofas with her.
"I know…" She hic'd a little, composing herself and looking at the the cave floor, "I know what your going to do now. I always…always knew you…its why he didn't kill me as soon as you were weaned."
"The scorpion..."
When I was learning the Rules Father told me a story: a scorpion wanted to cross the river and asked a fox to carry it. When they were half way across the scorpion stung the fox who cried out 'why did you do that? Now we'll both drown' and the scorpion said 'I couldn't help it! Its my nature.'
"Yeah Clemie…the scorpion. He's evil and twisted and WRONG."
I wondered if he had ever told her about his Son and his Real Wife…even if he had she wouldn't understand. What she understood she only understood through the body of a woman she had killed.
My hand rested on the hilt of my camp knife, wondering how much of her was the worm and how much the woman, "Hush now."
She looked at me then, and I saw the thing behind her eyes…the incredibly ALIEN thing pretending to be a person watching me.
It wasn't evil, it wasn't good, it was just...incomprehensible and uncomprehending.
We trotted through the moonlight for three hours before he spoke, "What did you do?"
I was half breathless even though HE was carrying my pack; it gave me an excuse to mull over my words.
"Told her to head north."
"She'll reach the road in two days…maybe three." He didn't question my decision though I sensed he was disappointed.
"Where are we going?"
"Plans…your big now Clementine…big enough…We can strike them down, kill them all."
"They'll kill us." Seeing the madness in his eyes I knew that he didn't care.
"We're already dead, Clemie…one way or another." He shook his head, "Last ones…I never saw anyone else…not in years. But one day we'll pay them back Clemie…we'll pay ''em back , back in spades..." he grinned a happy smile then and I saw the thing behind his eyes laughing.
And I thought about the scorpion.