Gilda moved through the night air—quick and soft as a scent on the wind. She slowed her preternatural speed so she might take in the landscape around her; maybe for the final time. Here in the desert, just north of what had been the border between the United States and Mexico, lie the ruins of what had once been a domineering wall.
The combination of monumental cruelty, mundane carelessness, deliberate poisoning, a revolt against scientific principles, diseases, and war had turned this area and their planet into a wasteland. The polluted air and chemically-infused water had reduced life expectancy to fewer than 60 years for most of the population, especially the poor. The planet barely gasped out its last breaths for the tiny pockets of humanity who defied authority and refused to escape to outer world colonies. Known as the Blue Marble Group, they insisted there was a way to reseed and restart the earth if corporate control could be broken.
Exorbitant fees had been paid and a ship was waiting. Gilda could feel Effie, her lover, pulling her south to the place where they were meant to launch into a new world, leaving the decaying corpse of this one behind. Doubts wafted through Gilda’s mind, but still she moved on. Until it was her time to make an exchange for the blood that gave her strength and long life, she would remain invisible to the rare few out on the road.
When she reached the edge of what had once been a small village, she sensed someone ahead in the darkness. She moved more slowly, wary of encountering a Hunter, who might try to capture her and deliver her to a wealthy patron. Gilda would not relish being slowly drained and having her blood transfused to lengthen another’s life.
At the moment she recognized the stealthy movement of that Hunter, another one, much closer, leapt from his cloaking shadow, his gloved hand raised. In it—a soft, innocent looking pad that could deliver, on contact, a paralyzing toxin. One that would enable him to deliver Gilda to a buyer.
Gilda’s memory circled her head like projections whirling in the air. Hiding from a slave catcher 300 years in the past still seared her. The putrid heat of triumph and lust had risen around that barn as he’d towered over her. She’d seen enough lashes on the backs of others to feel them on her own flesh as she laid in a pile of hay, clutching a stolen rusty knife.
Rage had thrust her forward from the hay, stiffening her arm as she plunged the knife into his soft belly. Seeing his blood, red and rich as her own, had startled her. Somehow, he’d only seemed human once his humanity was ebbing away.
Gilda blinked hard, returning to the danger closing in on her. Electricity flowed through her body, an unstoppable current, sparked by the memory of that past pursuit and the stink of greed from this Hunter.
Gilda turned at the last moment and struck out with her foot in a clean move Bird would have applauded. She downed him smoothly without breaking his neck or his back. When she took his blood, she sensed the methamphetamine he’d used to sharpen his prowess. Clearly not enough, Gilda thought. She considered what she could leave him in exchange for the gift of his blood. She flooded his mind with the joy of building, of planting, and a memory she had of the Painted Desert. Perhaps these might set him on a new path.
Gilda turned toward Merida again, thinking of the fragrant roses that had once grown there. She felt Effie almost near, which sent a shiver of desire through her entire body. Soon they would lie together, wrapped in their home soil and each other.
In her head, Gilda heard Bird’s voice from long ago. “The despoilers have tried to steal everything from us through the centuries. The Lakota can not abandon the land again.”
“My people were dragged here in chains. Perhaps I can not have the same love for this land as you do,” Gilda had responded.
“Generations of your blood has fed this soil,” Bird had replied softly. “Would you leave your ancestors behind?”
Gilda had no answer for Bird back then.
With Bird’s voice in her mind, Gilda left all memory of the Hunter behind except for the pictures she’d planted in his head. Suddenly, the thought of never seeing the Painted Desert again was heartbreaking.
I have the blood of many in my veins, she thought, their blood racing to my heart and washing over my brain. She focused inward and felt Bird touching her, beckoning her to remain and fight for the land.
Stay? Fight? The questions burrowed into Gilda’s mind and she began to reason out how she would explain to Effie there could be a new way: Not running, but staying. Battling for renewal of the earth, rescuing it from its captors. This time she really understood Bird’s words and knew what she’d say to Effie. One of the primary precepts of their family: We take blood, not life, and leave something in exchange. They’d all consumed the blood of humanity for centuries, now they must give back. Now they had to return the dreams to the soil of earth, purging out the poisons that were doing their murderous work.
As she decided not to leave, Gilda thought of the Blue Marble Group. She knew that it would be no simple task to reclaim what had been stolen and violated. It would take uncountable time to route out the ancient evils that had infected those who’d ascended to power and those beneath them who still supported corruption. Power was impossible to resist.
Healing had always been women’s work, Gilda thought. She couldn’t imagine how many years, decades, centuries it might take to turn the tide of history, to make the earth flower again. But Gilda smiled. She and Effie and her family possessed as much time as was needed.
