Emi gazed out of the window, thinking about the piece that she had lost already. "It can't be that bad of a thing-"
"If they die-" he looked over at her "-you'll feel it. And it feels terrible." He glanced at the road and then saw Iggy through the mirror again. "We try to avoid this because our kind is being killed faster than we can manage. The illness that it causes only gives the enemies another chance to strike." His voice loosened and he drew the corner of his lip back. Both of his hands gripped the wheel tightly. "Now, about Nansen… He hasn't given anything away. Not a drop. Not once. However, he's a whore and takes a lot. I mean, he steals it most of the time." His voice tapered off into a whisper. "Which is very strongly against the law, by the way."
Emi cringed and looked over at him crossly. Her shoulders hunched forward. "Why would he do that? I mean, it should be an intimate thing, right?"
He lifted his eyebrows and nodded his head. "Oh yes," he agreed, "very intimate. What is most accepted in our culture is sharing to be done between a pair of lifelong partners only. That way they won't be alone, and it will be in their best interests to protect one another. But Nansen, he never really liked the idea. He doesn't care for the same kind of balance as most of us do. He's selfish. When he takes, he has more people who will protect him and love him."
Iggy peered up at the car ceiling, thinking about the thousands of faces he had seen Nansen with. If he had taken a little something from each of them, then he practically had an army waiting at his command.
"The negative," Baine added, "is that he takes their urges away within their blood, which increases his own. Love is a very hard thing to contain, so he's tried his hardest to compensate through parenting Iggy in a very human way. It helps the maniac keep himself distracted."
"That's one strange coping method," Emi snickered.
"So, why didn't you let him do it?" Iggy asked straight forward. "Why didn't you let him do what you did to me? He said that he wanted to do it. He didn't seem too sick… but you told him that he was." He leaned forward through the gap in between the seats and peered into the side of Baine's face. Baine returned his glance. His emerald green eyes were the last things Iggy saw with his blindness. A chill ran up along his arms and spine, and a swell of nausea passed through him. Maybe, it was still too soon to intentionally revisit the memory. He looked over at the passing forest and felt dizzy. "Uhhh…" he groaned, "so, this is motion sickness."
Baine turned his head back and looked back at Iggy without the aid of mirrors. "I never thought we would do it on our own," he claimed, then he turned back around to watch the road. "I always thought that our father would be the one to do it. But, after what happened, I felt a responsibility to do it myself. So, I made the decision alone." He swallowed and sighed. "I'd rather it be me to go down for all of this mess than Nansen. By the way, he had offered himself to you, didn't he? Maybe, if you take a little, it will help him."
Iggy folded his arms across his chest and whispered, "he's my brother."
"All the better," Baine interrupted. "I'll be honest. I've shared myself a few times. Our blood is, to say the least, potent. I couldn't resist the urge to share it for long. But Nansen? He's the strong one of us. Once he finds out how much it hurts, though, he'll probably be well off. Then he'll stop fussing around about it, like a pansy."
They pulled up to another tall brick wall with a thick metal gate. Baine activated the same button and the gate cranked open. The car drove through and they entered the village. Nice and slow.
It was a completely different world. There were clusters of shabby homes alight with flickering oil lamps. Water spouts with wet empty buckets stacked up against the walls. Quiet chicken coops. Wide trails rampant with bare footprints. Iggy opened his window and stuck his head out into the wind. Over the pungent smell of manure in the gardens, he noticed something more significant. He smelled the root vegetables that he had eaten nearly every day of his life- potatoes, carrots and beets. The smell was not delicious or appetizing, but rather rancid, however the same, and he recognized it like he would to a face. He understood the pungent displeasure as it filled his nasal cavity like fur and lingered there, contaminating his senses. He couldn't blame Baine and Nansen for cooking so horribly. Regardless of the ingredients, it would always be awful.
The car crept to a halt in front of yet another wall. This wall was different. It was structured from the bones of boulders and was held together with concrete. It was larger, thicker, and more intimidating than the other two walls before it.
The dashboard lights turned off and Baine opened his door and got out. Iggy rushed to follow, but as he turned to his own door and clasped the handle, he peered down at his hand, and for a split moment he thought that his hand had disappeared. He wiggled his fingers and couldn't see the movement, yet he could feel the armrest under his palm. He blamed the stress, shook his head, and opened the door.
The air was humid and even warmer now that they had stopped. Iggy could smell the dirt under his feet, the chicken dust floating in the wind, and the fresh leaves of rosemary all around. In person, unmoving, his surroundings were soaking into him with a limitless amount of possibility. A smile stretched so far across his face that it nearly hurt.
Emi came out and stood right next to him. She was too light for this night. Surely, too light. The glow came from her skin and hair and went even as far down as her feet. She had no shadow. She only had the soft reflection of light under her. As she walked forward, following Baine to the ladder standing against the outer wall, the light moved with her.