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NOTE: These stories are
intended for a mature audience.

Lambing Season
A "Vorare" Story
By
Ivan Ewert
Start at the beginning of the Vorare series

Waking came slow and steady, and as it came, the clouds and fits of the recent past left him behind. Gordon's mouth was dry and his eyes felt as though they had been stuck together with wallpaper paste, but he was coming to, and he was out of the snow.

The room was white, with pearl-grey curtains over the sole window. Sunlight filtered through regardless, thin but welcome to his eyes. The wall opposite the bed sloped down from the center of the room's ceiling to create an angular alcove, while the furnishings of the side on which he lay included a dresser topped with a mirror and an old vase made of the white-and-blue Dutch patterns his mother collected. A small chair stood to attention at the foot of his bed, unoccupied and Spartan, without cushion or ornament.

The twin bed in which he lay was not uncomfortable, but the heavy white sheets had set him to sweating. He lifted his hand to move the comforter aside and found that the wild energy which fuelled his long nightmare had passed. Indeed, he felt more like an invalid than he had at his sickest, back at the church where everything began. For the first time in months, his stomach roiled and growled with the emptiness it was born to and the sound brought a weak laugh to his lips.

He had not dreamed it. It was real, but it was past ? clearly and completely. Wherever he was, whatever miracle had brought him away from the road and the hunters and to this pass, he could leave it behind him. He thought of rich, buttered ears of corn, of a bowl of mustard greens covered in vinegar, and found that the thought of food no longer excited his distrust or his desire to run. Outside was the daylight and the world of rational men.

He grasped the edge of the bed and pulled himself up, wincing with the effort, then caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. Whoever had taken him in had apparently shaved him as well - he recalled the full and wild feeling of a tangled beard below his chin and looked away from the memory. It was gone, and though he was gaunt and pale, he had been cared for as well as any patient in a hospital. The gown he wore added to the medical illusion, but it was clearly a private residence he woke in. He owed somebody much, perhaps even his life. Had they kept the hunters, and Mike, from actually shooting him? He remembered being at the side of the road and the strangely dampened sound of the gun when the trigger had been pulled. He knew next to nothing of guns, but they sounded louder on film. Maybe they'd been stopped. Maybe.

He stopped himself. Time enough to ask his hosts what had happened once he made his way downstairs, or found some way of letting them know that he was awake. He stood carefully, and as he made his way to the window, the floorboards groaned and squeaked with age. Drawing aside the curtains, he squinted into the sunlight and looked over the farmland spread out below his second-story room.

There was a barn, red and white and clearly still a going concern. He'd been in the Midwest long enough to see more than his share of rotting roofs and caved-in structures that had once held a family's fortune. This building was clean and well-kept, like the room in which he had awoken. He spotted a green and yellow John Deere tractor working its way over the rich black soil of the fields which spread like a tablecloth before the barn and house and the shapes of a few workers in the fields beyond. There were a few other buildings scattered here and there, though only two other houses that he could see, and those in the far-off distance of several acres of farmland.

He heard other footsteps then, the high-pitched tone of well-trodden stairs. He turned from the window and began making his way back to his bed as even this short jaunt had tired him. He smelled coffee over the lavender that scented the sheets of the bedroom and, for a moment, Gordon's world seemed to be all right once again.

The door opened to reveal Sylvie. Her luxurious dark hair had been cut into a pageboy style, and she wore a modest skirt and full-sleeved shirt rather than the elegant suits she had been accustomed to in Madison. Still, it was undeniably her. Gordon suddenly wanted to sit down.

"Hello, Gordon," she said softly. For some reason, it was the softness of her voice that rattled him most. It sounded almost as if she were afraid - afraid of him, whom she had put through so much strife and fear. He couldn't speak, could only put a hand on the dresser to steady himself.

"I'm glad you're awake," she said, and held out a steaming mug. "It's soup. Just miso soup. It's made of soy, and some onions, and a thin broth. Nothing more. I promise."

"I'm too hot," he said in a thick voice.

"I don't blame you." She continued to hold the mug, looking at the floor. "They have bread downstairs but we weren't sure if you'd be able to look at solids yet."

"Sylvie."

"Because I had to, Gordon." She spoke before he even asked the question. "It's for the good of the many, and it's good for you, too. I knew it the minute I saw you."  Her voice turned even softer, more gentle than a novice at confession. "I saw you and I gave thanks that I'd found you, that I would be lucky enough to be so honored. You were my first and only. They've taken years, sometimes decades. But, you were my first, and to be of such a bloodline." A hot blush worked its way up her face. "I won't ever forget."

"I don't understand you," he said flatly. "I don't understand the first thing about this game, Sylvie. And I sure as hell don't understand what you're doing here. Did you stop them from shooting me?"

"No. They shot you with a tranquilizer. It's meant to be used on bigger predators, but you'd been missing for such a long time they couldn't say what the effects had been." Facing the floor, she smiled regardless. "It's worth being proud of. You came through like nothing before, just like we expected."

"Who's we?"

"The Gentleman Ghouls. I'm not one of them," she added quickly, with a sudden glance behind toward the stairs. "I'm a stalking horse. Nothing more. But they expected you'd be beyond divine, and they were right. Three months in the wild without shelter. A northern winter after a single meal, and most of that spilled at the cross." She shook her head. "You're practically a wind-walker as far as they're concerned. Blood will tell."

"I still don't understand." Gordon's hand wrapped itself around the vase, remembering how he had surprised Mike in the apartment. Her eyes remained downcast, never raising to meet his own. "Blood. You've said that twice now."

"It's not my place," she said. "I'm not of the blood, not really. Grandmother was the only one, and she was half-mad and unplanned and had already given birth. Enough to bring me to the Farm, but not enough to raise me up."

A sudden horror struck him. "The Farm. Christ, Sylvie. Is this the farm? This is the place you were talking about, isn't it?" His voice began to shake uncontrollably. "I'm in the place that delivers your food. Nobody saved me."

"They did." Her head snapped up. "Gordon, they did. They used the tranquilizers on you to bring you in safe and secure and see to you."

"They're going to kill me and eat me."

"No!" Sylvie almost looked as if she were about to laugh. "No. No. Not somebody like you, from the trunk of the tree. You're above food, Gordon. Why do you think you're in the farmhouse and not the stalls?" The expression slipped from her eyes for a second, replaced with something duller and more troubled. "If you were food, in the stalls, there would be the songs and the love and the gag and ..."

"Enough." A man stepped from the doorway, tall and lean and full of muscle, and Sylvie's eyes snapped back to the floor. A shock of red hair and a face full of freckles impressed themselves on Gordon instantly. "Go down and prepare bread, if he'll none of the soup. You've said enough."

Without a word she turned and left the room. Gordon eyed the new fellow, and quickly released his hold on the vase. He was weak, and already tired from the enforced bed rest as well as the shock that had come from Sylvie's appearance. He might have been able to overcome her, with her downcast eyes, bring the vase down upon her lying head and ... and what? He hardly knew. It was unimportant. The man who stood before him was older by some ten years, but he had the solid frame of a man who had spent his life at backbreaking labor. He'd surprised Mike, who had a similar physical advantage. It was clear that he'd have little chance to take this one by surprise, and the smile he gave as Gordon set the vase down showed that he knew the same.

"You've had several shocks, but I promise that you're quite safe here. Rest," he said, indicating the bed. "You will come to no harm in this room or this house. Believe me, we've put a considerable amount of effort into finding you after you fled the first supper. I've no intention of letting all that money go into the stew."

"I'll rest standing."

"Charming. But you won't for long, not without something in your stomach. She will bring bread alone if you've no taste for meat, and I don't doubt that soon you'll be glad enough to have that bread, no matter whose hands serve your meal." With that, the man sat in the chair at the foot of the bed.

"You will listen, now that you've slept. I've not heard of such a period of madness in over ten years. You should be rather proud. Tell me, did you speak to anything or anyone?"

Gordon remained silent, drawing an exasperated sigh from the man. "All right, then, we shall try it this way. You ask me anything. I'll do the courtesy of answering you. Then, we'll play in reverse, and so on ad infinitum until one or the both of us is full to bursting with the truth. Will that suit you?"

"Who are you?"

"My name is dead to the world but my title is Master Farmer. Did you speak to anyone in your wildwood fits?"

Gordon hesitated. "A deer," he said, "and the moon."

"Nobody else?"

"Nobody."

Master Farmer sucked in his lower lip, a strange gesture that did not allow his teeth to go unnoticed. "Pity. I'd hoped for more than roadkill, but needs must. Ask your question."

"Where am I?"

"You are at the Farm. We're not far from the border with Minnesota and Canada alike. You ran quite a long way and we carried you the remainder. Was your father's name Thomas?"

"Leave my father out of this."

"Impossible. Surely you're deduced the importance of family to us by now. He's dead, I believe, and quite beyond our reach or influence. Thomas was his name?"

Gordon paused. "Yes," he said at last. "Yes and yes. You can't touch him."

"Nor would we care to touch your mother's family, I assure you; and so your quick and your dead are placed beyond our concern. Your move." A smile came over the man's face, rearranging his freckles into strange new constellations.

"Why wouldn't you want to get involved with my mother's family?"

"Because her family has not tasted the fruit of this labor. They are innocent entire, as every man would have his mother be. What would you like more than anything?"

"To wake up back home on Christmas Eve."

"Home alone on the holiday? Such a terrible thought. Much better to have a warm meal made and warm lips awaiting."

"Shut your mouth."

"Temper. You're weak yet, Gordon. While me, I'm fresh from my breakfast." The Master Farmer gave a smile made all the more terrible by its simplicity. "Your question."

"When you say my mother's family was innocent entire ... what are you really saying?"

"Ah, at last, we are to the raw and bloody heart of the matter. The Velander bloodline is of your father's side. Thomas Velander himself died in the same state as your mother's family ? as innocent as the beasts of the field, as almost certainly as wise. His father before him dwelt in that same state of happy ignorance. But his father before him was a man, as the old imperialist would have it, of infinite resource and sagacity. He was, in a word, one of our very own; and from all I have read he was a prince among gentlemen."

If the past months of his life had been spent in utter shock and horror, the capacity for surprise had now been drained from Gordon. He listened numbly, and then ? to be certain ? he said, "Do you mean he was a cannibal?"

"I mislike the word. But yes, that is the heart of what I say."

Gordon sat on the bed. "I don't want to believe you."

"And yet your gut instinct says that you must."

"Yeah."

The Master Farmer nodded. "You're coming along. Again I swear to you that your breakfast will be naught more than wheat, if you would care to come to table downstairs and your strength permits it."

"I won't sit to table with you, no."

"Tch. Old Velander was said to have been a picture of manners. Whatever would he say to this withered seed of his line?"

"You really think I care what you think of me?"

"I think you had best learn to care," said the Master Farmer slowly. "But if breakfast in bed is more to your liking, I will send the food up when we have finished talking."

"I think I am finished."

"Ah, perhaps. But for my part, I've hardly begun."

Story and Photo by Ivan Ewert, Copyright 2006