Alexnya nodded and closed her eyes. Jun and Frere-Jones shut the door and walked over to the dinner table, where Jun stared at the remaining dregs of medicine in the mug.
“She’s taken enough medicine,” Frere-Jones said. “By tomorrow her connection to the land will be weak enough to leave. She’ll have to continue taking the medicine for another few days to remove the remaining grains, but you can give it to her on the road.”
Jun glanced with relief at the den, where Takeshi lay sleeping on a sofa with Miya and Tufte.
“What memories are the grains showing Alexnya?” she asked.
“Does it matter?” Frere-Jones asked with a growl. “Any memories she’s experienced are hers now.”
As Frere-Jones said this she shook with anger at the thought of Alexnya experiencing even a taste of Haoquin’s life. She didn’t care about the stored memories of her parents and ancestors, but Haoquin… those memories were special. Damn the grains. Damn these day-fellows for intruding on the most intimate parts of her life.
Frere-Jones’s right hand spasmed as claws grew from her fingertips. She dug into the wooden table, imagining the need to go into her son’s bedroom and rip Alexnya to pieces.
“Master-Anchor Frere-Jones!” Jun shouted in a loud voice. Frere-Jones snapped back to herself and looked up to see Jun aiming the laser pistol at her head. She took a deep breath and forced her body to reabsorb the claws.
The grains were pushing her, like they had as a young anchor when she’d attacked that day-fellow caravan.
“I will sleep outside tonight,” Frere-Jones said as she stood. “Bar the door. And windows. Don’t let me in.” She grinned at Jun, who kept the pistol aimed at her. “If I do break in, make sure you end me before I do anything we’d all regret.”
Jun chuckled once but kept the pistol aimed at Frere-Jones until she walked outside and the door slammed shut.
Frere-Jones didn’t sleep that night, instead patrolling the land to ensure no one came near her house. This also kept her further away from the day-fellows. Despite the distance the grains inside her shrieked at her land being defiled by the day-fellow presence. And Alexnya was right—the grains were also furious at Frere-Jones. They knew what she’d done to her son. The grains knew she hated them and that she would destroy every trace of their existence if it was within her power.
But despite this anger the grains also continued to share Haoquin’s memories with her. She saw the birth of their son through Haoquin’s eyes. Saw Haoquin and Colton playing chase in the fields. Saw the three of them going for picnics in the deep woods.
All memories from Haoquin’s life.
“What the hell are you telling me?” Frere-Jones yelled. But the grains didn’t respond.
When Jun unbolted the sod-house’s door in the morning, Frere-Jones was meditating under the oak tree in the front yard. Her body was coated in red smears from the countless fairies she’d killed during the night as she ripped apart every one of the red-glowing, grain-infused monstrosities she encountered.
Several chickens pecked at the fairies’ remaining grains in the dirt around her.
Jun stepped toward Frere-Jones with the laser pistol in her right hand.
“You okay?” Jun asked.
“Must be. You’re still alive.”
Jun shivered. Frere-Jones licked her lips before biting her tongue to silence the grains. They were easier to control during the daytime, but the longer the day-fellows stayed on the land the more demanding they would become.
“Are you safe to be around?”
“I can maintain control until you leave,” Frere-Jones said. “We’ll give Alexnya another dose of medicine after breakfast. That should be enough to enable your family to leave. You can travel well beyond this land before night falls.”
“Tak is cooking breakfast,” Jun said, gesturing to the sod-house. “Will you join us?”
Frere-Jones snorted at being invited into her own house but nodded and followed Jun in. She was pleased to see Alexnya looking even better than yesterday and sitting at the dinner table eating oatmeal.
“I missed you, Fre,” Alexnya said. Frere-Jones suppressed her irritation at the nickname and sat down in the chair next to her family altar.
The stone altar bubbled and snapped, the red sands swarming angrily over the statues of her family. Miya and Tufte stared at the flowing sands as if mesmerized until Takeshi tapped the table beside them so they returned to eating their oatmeal.
“We have to keep an eye on them constantly so they don’t touch the altar,” Takeshi said. “Did your son try to play with it all the time?”
“Yes,” Frere-Jones snapped. “But he was the child of an anchor—touching the altar wouldn’t bring death on his family.”
Jun and Takeshi stared in shock at Frere-Jones, and Jun’s hand edged toward the laser pistol before Frere-Jones sighed. “I apologize. The grains are pushing me even now. It’s… hard, being around you with them screaming in my mind.”
“That’s the price of protecting our sacred land,” Alexnya said.
Frere-Jones tapped the vials of glowing medicine on the table before her. She knew Alexnya wasn’t trying to deliberately provoke her. She remembered how confused she’d felt when she’d come of age and the grains had activated within her, and how a similar confusion almost overwhelmed Haoquin when he’d married into her anchordom. The sooner Alexnya and her family returned to the road the better.
“It must have been difficult when your son became a day-fellow,” Jun said, trying to change the subject. “You’re fortunate one of our caravans was nearby to take him in before…” Jun paused.
“You can say it,” Frere-Jones muttered. “The grains would have forced me to kill my son if he’d stayed more than a few days after becoming a day-fellow. But luck had nothing to do with it. I timed Colton’s change so a caravan was here for him.”
Jun and Takeshi stared at Frere-Jones, who shrugged. She knew she shouldn’t tell such truths to people outside her family, but she no longer cared. The grains pounded inside her at the admitted heresy. She wanted to slam her head into the table to silence them.
“Haoquin died when Colton was only twelve,” Frere-Jones whispered. “My lifemate had grown up on another land. When he married into my anchordom and accepted my grains, the grains from that other land deactivated. But my grains eventually tired of the… unsettling thoughts Haoquin expressed. His ideas for changing the world. So they reactivated his original grains, causing him to need to live on two separate lands to stay healthy. His body almost tore itself apart. There was nothing I could do.”
Frere-Jones reached out and rubbed Haoquin’s statue on the altar. The grains felt her hate and slid away from her touch. “Haoquin dreamed of a world without grains. He knew that was merely a pipe dream—we both knew it—but the grains decided even a dream without their existence was too much to tolerate.”
Frere-Jones flicked at the red grains in the altar’s basin, wishing she could throw them all away where they’d never harm another person.
“The grains calculated they didn’t need Haoquin anymore since we’d already created a son,” Frere-Jones continued. “But I refused to let them have Colton too. I waited until a caravan was on my land then gave Colton a massive overdose of the medicine, almost more than his body could handle. He turned day-fellow and had to leave.
“The anchor system is evil. To decide that a select few can live in one place while everyone else is forced to continually move from land to land… death for any unlinked human who stays too long on a land or pollutes or harms that land… to force me to enact the grains’ arbitrary needs and desires… that’s nothing but evil.”