Butler, Octavia - Fledgling

“I live with Wright.”

“Bring him with you, of course, and any others you’ve come to need. I’ll have a house built for you and yours.”

I looked at Wright and was not surprised to see that he was shaking his head. “I have a job,” he said. “Hell, I have a life. Renee . . . Shori will be all right with me.”

Iosif stared at him with an expression I couldn’t read. “And you will teach her about her people and their ways?” he said. “You’ll teach her her history, and help her into the adulthood she is approaching? You’ll help her find mates and negotiate with their family when the time comes?” He stood straight and gazed down at Wright. He wasn’t that much taller than Wright, but he gave the impression of looking down from a great height. “Tell me how you will do these things.” he said.

Wright glared at him, his expression flickering between anger and uncertainty. Finally, he looked away. After a moment, he shook his head. “Where?” he asked.

“A few miles north of Darrington.” “I’d want to keep my job.”

“Of course. Why not?”

“It’s a long way. We’d . . . have a house?”

“You’d be guests in my house until your house is finished. We’re interested in keeping Shori safe and teaching her what she needs to know to get on with her life. You’re already a greater part of her life than you realize.”

“I want to be with her.”

“I want you with her. But tell me, what’s your life been like with her? What do your friends and neighbors think about your relationship with her?”

Wright opened his mouth, then closed it again. He stared an Iosif angrily.

Iosif nodded. “You’ve been hiding her. Of course you have—lest someone think you were having an improper relationship with a child. Once you’re living with us, there will be no need to hide. And to us, there is nothing improper about your relationship.”

eight

That same night, Iosif flew Wright and me up to see the community that was to become our new home. As we arrived, we could see from the air five large, well-lit, two-story houses built along what was probably another private road. There were also two barns, several sheds and garages, animal pens, and fields and gardens, all a few miles north of the lights of a small town—Darrington, I assumed.

Iosif promised to fly Wright and me back to the ruin later that night so that we could pick up Wright’s car and go back to his cabin. If things went as Iosif intended, we would move in a week. He gave us each a card that showed his address and phone numbers and that gave directions for driving to his community. He said he would send a truck and two people to help load Wright’s things onto it. Anything that didn’t

fit in our temporary quarters could be stored in one of the barns until our house was ready.

“You live in such out-of-the-way places,” Wright complained. “This is even more isolated than the other one. I’m going to have a hell of a commute. I don’t know whether it’s going to be possible.”

Iosif ignored him. When we landed on a large paved area not far from the largest of the houses, he said, “You need to know that it’s best to avoid cities. Cities overload our senses—the noise, the smells, the lights . . . They overload us in every possible way. Some of us get used to it, but others just get sick.”

“That’s a surprise,” Wright said. “The movies I’ve seen and the books I’ve read say vampires like cities—that their large populations makes it easy for vampires to be anonymous.”

Iosif nodded. “Vampires in books and movies usually seem to be trying to kill people or trying to turn them into vampires. Since we don’t do either of those things, we don’t need cities. Fortunately.” Iosif turned and jumped out of his side of the helicopter, while Wright slid out the other side, then reached in and lifted me out. Then Wright quickly caught up with Iosif and stood in his path like a human wall.

“I want to know what’s going to happen to me,” he said. “I need to know that.”

Iosif nodded. “Of course you do.” He glanced at me. “How long have you two been together?” “Eleven days,” I said.

“My God,” Wright said. “Eleven days? Is that all? I feel as though I’ve had her with me for so much longer than that.”

“And yet you’re healthy and strong,” Iosif said. “And you obviously to want to keep her with you.” “I do. I’m not entirely sure that it’s my idea, but I do. What will I become, though? What have I

become? You said she’ll ... find a mate. What happens to me then?”

“You are her first symbiont, the first member of her new family. Her mating can’t change that. She’ll visit her mates and they’ll visit her, but you’ll live with her. No one could separate the two of you now without killing you, and no one would try.”

“Killing me . . . ? Why would I die? What would I die of?” “Of the lack of what she provides.”

“But what—?”

“Come into the house, Wright. I’ll see that you get all the answers you need. You might not like them all, but you have a right to hear them.”

We walked from the side to the front of the large house. Iosif ’s community was clearly nocturnal. The

Ina were naturally nocturnal, and their symbionts had apparently adjusted to being awake at night. There were lights on in all the houses, and people—human symbionts and their children, I guessed—moved around, living their lives. A red-haired woman was backing a car out of a garage. She had a small,

red-blond baby strapped into a special seat in the back. Two little boys were raking leaves, and pausing now and then to throw them at one another. They were my size, and I wondered how old they were. A little girl was sweeping leaves from a porch with a broom that was almost too big for her to manage. A man was on a ladder, doing something to the rain gutter of one of the houses. Several adults stood talking together in one of the broad yards.

Wright and I followed Iosif into the biggest house and found ourselves in a room that stretched from the front to the back of the house. Wright’s whole cabin might have filled a third of it. There were several couches, several chairs large and small, and several little tables scattered around the room.

Iosif said, “We meet here on Sunday evenings or when there’s something that needs community-wide discussion.”

There was a broad picture window on the backyard side of the great room;it ran across the top half the wall from one end of the room to the other. At one of the end walls, there was a huge fireplace where a log burned with much snapping and sparking. Books filled built-in bookcases on the two remaining walls.

In a corner near the fireplace, two men and a woman—all human—sat at a small table, their heads together, talking quietly. There were steaming cups of coffee on the table. There was no light in the room except the fire. Iosif walked us over to the three people.

“Brook, Yale, Nicholas.”

They looked up, saw me, and were on their feet at once, staring. “Shori!” the woman said. She came around her chair and hugged me. She was a stranger as far as I was concerned, and I would have drawn away from any possibility of a hug, but she smelled of Iosif. Something in me seemed to accept her. She smelled of someone I had decided was all right. “My God, girl,” she said, “where have you been? Iosif, where did you find her?”

Both men looked at me, then at Wright. One of them smiled. “Welcome,” he said to Wright. “Looks like

Shori was able to take care of herself.”

Iosif put his hand on my shoulder as the woman let me go. “Is any of this familiar to you? Do you know these people, this house?”