David Nickle - Eutopia

The jar was big—it would hold four or five quarts of liquid and the mouth was wide. It was only a little smaller than the ones that had held Maryanne Leonard, in her parts.

Andrew held it in the crook of his bad arm, and as he stared the little creature in the eye, and inched towards it, it dawned on him that a point had come and gone in which he had not only given poor retarded Lou-Ellen Tavish up for dead, but that he had ceased to care; because what he was truly after was this… this thing that had killed her; this thing, whose cousin had jumped onto his chest, the afternoon he was nearly hanged outside Eliada, and maybe driven him a step nearer to madness.

The creature spat a gob of bloody phlegm in front of it, and reared back on its haunches. Andrew tried to reach for it but he could not. The God-damned arm hindered him. The thing was too quick, too quick…

Norma was quicker. She let go of poor Loo’s shoulders, and lunged across the table. The creature made ready to leap, but Norma grabbed it, two hands around its narrow chest. As she did, it seemed as though a dozen mouths opened up along its side, and a terrible whistling rose up. But Norma did not let go, even as she slid down along the blood-slick edge of the table and grasped the twitching thing to her.

Lines of blood beading like a necklace rose up along her face where the creature had slashed. But she did not let go—just yanked her head back so the tendons stood out on her neck, keeping her eyes clear. Yet as Andrew watched, it seemed that she became both Norma and Loo at once, his perception crossing time and memory and making a single thing.

Andrew shook his head as if that might dispel the madness. This was some narcotic that the creature spewed from its orifices and it made him and the others hallucinate. Was that what caused the families to fall into prayer as they had?

He stumbled around the table to where Norma struggled with the creature. It was face-down on the sandy ground with her half-pinning it. She looked up at him, her eyes wild, and as he got closer he saw that her knuckles were nearly as white as the creature as she struggled to crush it.

Andrew intervened. Setting the jar down on his side, himself on his knees, he grabbed hold of the thing and pushed its head through the mouth of the jar. It squealed, painting the glass with a shifting fog. Norma squeezed harder, and Andrew heard a clicking sound that he felt sure was a tiny rib cracking, and Andrew then realized that if he meant to collect a live specimen—and he did—that Norma would be as much hindrance as a help.

She was trying to kill the thing.

Andrew took his good hand and twisted Norma’s wrist. She cried out and let go, and Andrew was thus able to stuff the Juke into the jar. It scrabbled furiously as he found the lid and jammed it on top. The creature lurched back and forth, claws clicking against the glass.

Shaking, Andrew stood up and faced the families. They were still prostrate, most of them, but they looked up at Andrew in a strange way. Andrew could not tell if they meant to tear him apart, or worship at his feet.

He drew a breath.

“You,” said Andrew, motioning to one of the children. “Fetch me a nail. We will have to make holes in the lid, if this thing is to live.”

The creature did live, for a time. They watched it through the day, keeping it safe in its jar while Andrew tended the cut on his own good hand with alcohol and gauze, then looked to Norma’s injury. Andrew could not say for sure that he wanted it to live—Norma certainly did not. But he insisted they keep it near them—probably away from the others—and watch what it did.

“I need to know what it is,” he said when she complained about keeping it.

Norma said she was pretty sure she did know what it was, and it was better dying there.

“It’s gonna take over the soul of my folk, you don’t deal with it.” She winced as the gauze settled over her cheek. “Look at them outside.”

Andrew was more interested in looking at the thing that slumped and squirmed behind the fogged glass. But he got up and cracked the door open.

The families had built a bonfire in the middle of the village. When he and Norma had stolen off back to the house, they were already gathering sticks for it. Andrew objected—he wanted to examine Loo’s body before they cremated it. But Hank had insisted the fire was not to burn poor Loo.

“We ain’t to burn the Mother,” he said, as though that explained everything.

And before Andrew could say anything else, Norma whispered to him: “Don’t fight him. You got wounds to tend, Doctor.”

Now the fire was roaring, billowing smoke into the pines, over the roofs of the other shacks up here. The forest was filled with the sound of it crackling, of it whistling.

“They’re fightin’ it best they can,” said Norma. “Smoke distracts them. But… it’s goin’ to be a hard fight. They could be headin’ to the hill, before too long. Worshipping.” She said the word the way other old women might say “fornicating.”

Andrew shook his head. “I thought you folk didn’t care for God and priests.”

“Faerie King’s changing ’em. Working ’em.”

“Why are they like that and you all are free?”

“I’m older,” said Norma. “They’re younger. They’re all more one family then I am.”

Andrew nodded. Norma was older—in terms of her own germ plasm, she was a generation or two removed from most of these others.

“And the Juke does best in a family.”

She shrugged. “If I let it, over time it’ll get to me too.”

“I met one of those things, you know,” he said. “At the hanging tree.”

She didn’t say anything—just squinted at the smoke coming up.

Andrew thought back, to that small face he’d seen for a moment, the thing crouched on his chest. He thought about the creature that had gone after Jason in the quarantine. The quarantine where Dr. Bergstrom had hidden away his own Faerie King, the strange hermaphrodite Mister Juke. Hidden away, like, Andrew thought now, some secret, mystical treasure. A treasure that he would not let an outsider—an infidel—a nigger—like Andrew Waggoner lay eyes upon.

“If they fail… They’re going to want the baby Juke,” said Andrew. “Aren’t they?”

“They think you’re carin’ for it,” said Norma. “That’s the only reason they’re leavin’ you alone. Soon, I’ll be able to help them. But soon ain’t now.”

He let the door close slowly and turned to look at her. “You have a pretty good idea about how this goes. Norma, have you seen this happen before?”

She looked back at the jar. From inside, the thing might have been peering out. She nodded slowly.

Andrew took another stab in the dark. “Feeger,” he said. “That doesn’t mean feeble, does it?”

Norma shook her head. “It don’t mean feeble,” she said. “It’s a name—a family, lived here as long as us.”

“And Hank doesn’t want to ‘turn Feeger.’ That means—this family, they fell into the thrall?”

“We should kill that thing,” said Norma, stepping toward it and staring at it. “Cover its air-holes and let it smother.”

Andrew kept Norma clear of the jar, but he wasn’t trying save the thing’s life. He was being a scientist, he told himself: staying near, watching it through the glass, wishing again he had something to write on to record his observations. Because damnation, they were inconstant.

Was it elongate, mantis-like? A fat toad, with silvery-grey flesh pressed against the side of the glass like bloated fruit in a preserve?

A baby?

Light?

It might have been all of those things at one time or another. Notes might have helped, later.