I scream.
The eruption of blood paints the grass, the ground, and the wildflowers in a red so bright it’s obscene. It gushes in a horrible torrent. Harry drops his own knife and clutches his throat. Blood seeps through the seams of his fingers.
Without thinking, I rush forward. I forget that I’m not here and can’t participate. Or rather, I ignore all that. Because the only thing on my mind is that I will not let Henry’s father die. I hold my hands above his, that same gentle move I used with Mort’s umbrella at this same man’s funeral. For that to happen, this must. For Henry to live, his father must. There’s no other way. Harry Darnelle lives, and I’m going to make certain he does.
The meadow is silent the way the housing development always has been. No birdsong. No buzzing of insects. The wind whispers, and it’s a cruel sound indeed. Blood is hot against my palms, but my skin burns with something more. This wound is both physical and psychic. That field agents can do this to each other? That they’d want to? I can’t fathom that.
Then someone gasps.
I glance from my task to see both my mother and Reginald Botten staring at not me, but Harry. Or rather, the blood that isn’t flowing from his wounded neck. Even when he removes his hands, the blood bubbles but doesn’t flow, as if his body refuses to bleed out.
“How is that possible?” Botten begins. But he knows, he must know, because he glances around, guilt and guile in his expression.
Before he can speak again, my mother lunges for him, knife still clenched in her hand. She will kill him without regret or remorse. It’s there in her posture, in the way the knife finds its mark and tears a long, jagged gash down Botten’s arm.
Harry cries out, but no actual sound emerges. He brings his hands to his throat again, and they pass through my own. Then he turns his head, and my own gaze is drawn from where my mother is holding her own against Botten.
Harry’s eyes are as dark as Henry’s and flecked with that same gold. But there’s nothing unfathomable in this man’s gaze. He doesn’t have to speak. I already know what he’ll say. He does, anyway. Or at least, he tries.
“Thank you.”
These silent words crush me.
Across the meadow, my mother lets Botten go. But as a parting gift, she throws her knife. It spins, blade over hilt, before finding its mark in the back of Botten’s thigh. It’s a glancing blow, tearing his jeans, but not much more. Still, he stumbles.
With grace that belies his injuries, he takes the knife. He spins the handle between his palms, another incantation on his lips, one that makes them twist cruelly. Before he whips the knife at my mother, Botten slices open his palm and coats the blade with blood.
But in his haste, his aim goes wide. Then he runs, and the meadow swallows him up.
“Harry!” My mother races across the meadow but stops short when she reaches the clearing.
A fissure has opened up, that familiar gaping maw. It undulates as if it’s smacking its lips in anticipation of its sacrifice. My mother retrieves her knife and then returns to the edge of the fissure. She waits until my gaze is locked on her. How she knows, I can’t say. Except she does.
“Watch me,” she says.
And then she slices open her palm.
Her blood soaks into the earth. Her blood heals the earth, or rather, it’s like a gauze placed upon a wound. A crosshatch pattern that runs back and forth, back and forth, lines intersecting and then joining with the fence that borders the cemetery.
She nods to Harry, who picks up his own knife and, despite major blood loss, does the same.
It is, as my father said, a stopgap measure. The pattern is clear; the random spots that she painted in the spring are no longer random but crucial connections that hold everything in place. I understand now why, if the fence goes, we all do.
I wonder, too, how many times Harry Darnelle visited King’s End in secret, for his blood binds this wound as much as my mother’s does. I wonder, when the construction company broke ground, whether it broke part of him as well.
At last, the fissure shrinks and then vanishes altogether. It lingers, though, just beneath the surface, a festering wound that will plague my patrols in years to come.
I’m still crouched next to Harry, still holding my hands whisper-close against his neck, when my mother steps beside me.
“You can let go now.” Her voice is unbearably gentle, as if she understands that I, too, have experienced this trauma.
I ease my hands away. In a flash, I tumble through the years to come. I see what it is Harry Darnelle has done, how he stood sentry for three decades, protecting the world from the man who attempted to slit his throat. The strength, the integrity, the patience to do such a thing. The weight of the burden, the steel of his resolve. It’s easy to draw blood, easy to kill. How much harder is it to keep the vigil, to never waver, especially when there’s no reward at the end?
No wonder Henry is such a good man. His father most definitely was.
Before the blood can rush down Harry’s throat, my mother pulls off her T-shirt and catches it. They hobble away from me, a slow trek through tall grass that parts and then closes behind them. I try to follow, but a wave of sleep nudges me backward, a gentle push against my shoulder.
I fall through that endless expanse. I feel nothing except for the sticky sensation of Harry Darnelle’s blood on the palms of my hands.
