Free Vigilantes of Love by John Everson Page B

umbilical waving like a wrinkled, severed worm. Its eyes, barely the size of a pinhead, were black, and open. Despite its size, Reind could make out every finger and toe. It was perfect.
    “Some things just can’t be said,” she murmured. “And some things just shouldn’t be born.”
    Reind could see a tiny drop of blood hanging like smog near the tiny cord, drifting in the preservative. He choked, and nearly dropped the glass.
    Erin rescued it from him, and flashed a sad, weary smile. “So what do you think?”
    “I think it’s going to be hard to walk for awhile,” he said.
    “Yeah,” she answered. “Yeah, it looks that way. But you’ve got me to take care of you. We’ll all take care of you.”
    She paused and met his gaze, her eyes hard. “We’re all family, remember? The circus takes care of its own.”
    Then she took the tiny child and left the tent, leaving Reind to cry in dry, empty sobs over the loss of his son, and his lover, as he stared into the other jar left behind on Erin ’s traveling shelves. Reind stared for hours into the deep, brown, floating eyes of Melienda, who would never see again.
 
    ~*~

SEVEN DEADLY SEEDS
     
    “You like to plant things, don’t you?”
    Bellinda looked up with a start from her digging. A moment before she’d been alone at the edge of the creekbed, plotting out her chrysanthemum garden in silence, with only the birds for company. Now an old woman stood nearby, her eyes cutting sharp as steel through the overcast of the chill spring day.
    “Yes, ma’am,” she answered, but offered no more. Mom had warned her not to talk to strangers. Mom didn’t let her talk to anyone .
    The woman stepped closer, then stooped to be at face level with Bellinda, dragging her thin black coat in the rich loam of the creek dirt.
    “You know the creek overflows here ’most every year,” the old woman warned, trailing a long red-painted fingernail through the dirt. “Your seeds may wash away.”
    “Dad said so, too,” Bellinda retorted, “but my seeds are strong. They’ll keep the creek away. And when they’re big and have flowers, I’m gonna build a fort here and everything.”
    The woman smiled, her lips a thin pink scar across her weathered face.
    “I could give you strong seeds to plant that would grow right in your house,” she offered. “Then you could watch them every day, even when it was raining or the creek was high.”
    A light broke in the young girl’s eye. “Really?” she asked in spite of herself.
    “Sure,” the old woman said. “What’s your name, child?”
    “Bellinda,” the girl said. “I’m seven!”
    “Well, Bellinda,” the old woman said, reaching into a deep pocket of her coat. “My name is Penelope. And I have seven different kinds of seeds you can choose from.”
    She pulled her hand from the coat and opened it. The hand was wrinkled as a raisin, but in its palm were purple seeds pointy as a porcupine, grape-sized seeds red as hearts, sunny yellow seeds with pits like pecans and grass-green seeds that looked withered and sickly. But Bellinda’s eyes lit when she saw the blue seeds. They were shaped like teardrops and glinted with the hue of a summer sky. She knew she shouldn’t take candy from strangers… but seeds would be okay, wouldn’t they?
    “Those,” she pointed. “I like those!”
    Penelope nodded, and carefully extracted two blue teardrops from her hand. The rest of the seeds went back into her pocket.
    “All right,” she said. “You can have these. You have a root cellar in your house, don’t you?”
    Bellinda nodded.
    “Plant them in the dark dirt in the cellar, then. But you must promise me two things. You mustn’t tell your mom or dad that you’ve planted them, because they wouldn’t like you digging down there. And when they’ve grown up and bloomed, you must bring me their seeds.”
    Bellinda nodded seriously. “Okay,” she said. “How will I know when the seeds are ready?”
    “They’ll be ready