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“I reckon it’s time.” Enoch drawls and flops the desiccated catskin in the Beast’s lap.
The Beast has been expecting this for some time. It’s overdue, in his opinion.
The cat’s teeth had fallen out nearly five years back, and that had been time enough, but Enoch had dug in his heels, and his Pottsfielders, ever falling over themselves to indulge him, had eagerly cooed at the gummy-mouthed thing, mincing the turkey cuts into paste and bottle feeding the damn thing like a babe.
He was cute, Miss Daisy had defended, cradling the bundle of black fur in her arms. Enoch had given the Beast a toothless grin from the crook of her elbow.
Then its fur had begun falling out in clumps, and he wasn’t cute anymore.
The baldness revealed just how long Enoch was pushing the deadline. He couldn’t hide the stretch of just how tight the skin was pulled across the bones beneath the fur or the numerous injuries that had stopped healing so long enough ago that the maggots festering inside them cried out at being removed from their generational home.
And still, Enoch turned down the Beast’s merciful offer of the shovel.
He’d gotten sunburned all the way down his pale pink back that summer, but he’d wrinkled his bright red nose and laughed the Beast off when he’d made a much more insistent offer, claws pressed against the visible pulse thrumming in the catskin’s neck.
The eyes had fallen out last, and it hadn’t been much of a loss.
Enoch hadn’t been able to see out of them for at least a decade, so when they rolled out and splattered across the ground all he’d done was laugh and flick his ooze-covered whiskers.
That had been a year ago, and the Beast had been the unfortunate victim holding the catskin at the time.
And still, Enoch refused.
Perhaps it’s something in the air that finally convinced Enoch it was time, perhaps it’s something in the earth, some unseen shifting in the soil, something white-hot and electric running like a current only the catskin can taste. Maybe it’s something in the catskin, something that’s finally broken beyond repair, something beneath the flesh that even Enoch cannot continue to endure.
Or perhaps it’s simply a whim.
The Harvest Lord is often prone to them.
So the Beast stands and gathers the catskin in his hands. It is so light that if he were not looking at it, he might think he was holding nothing at all.
It breathes a shaky rattle against his palms, and his fingers slot between its ribs easily.
Enoch does not have a grave prepared for the catskin. They cannot bury it, not even shallowly.
If they do, it will be Enoch’s, but it will never be Enoch again, and so it must remain above ground. It must belong to the Beast.
They have done this for centuries, they have made it into something of an art.
The Beast sets the catskin gently in a patch of rich, loamy soil. It lays there, pale and ugly, curled up on the dark earth, like a grub.
They used to do this with the Beast’s hunting song back before they’d worked out all the kinks. It had taken a hundred verses and all of two days and a night before it had taken, and for a time, it had been their habit.
But more recently, measured relative to the span of time they’ve been doing this than by any other measure, the Beast has sung a new song.
One he wrote just for Enoch.
It’s only four lines, strung across a skeleton of six notes, and it does in one minute what he used to struggle to do in a day.
It doesn’t feel any different when it comes bleeding out of his mouth and tastes exactly the same when it hits the air. He suspects it’s Enoch’s own sentimental nature that leaves him so susceptible.
“Lay down in the roots and rise in the corn. Wake with the sun, for the dead will not mourn.” He runs a hand down the catskin’s back. His splintered hand does not slide so smoothly across it as it did slick fur. Enoch leans into his hand anyway. “Grow tiny seed, you are called by greater need, rest your weary bones and sink through the soil.”
One might think, considering that this is a natural part of the Harvest Lord’s life cycle, that it would be easy, or at least instinctive, natural.
Perhaps it is.
Perhaps the caterpillars, melting in their cocoons, would also scream if they had the voice to.
The edelwood seizes the catskin eagerly, though it does not remain edelwood for long.
The catskin’s yowl pierces the sky like a needle, dragging a long red thread behind it.
The creeping roots, now more vine than trunk, devour the sound eagerly, insinuating themselves in whorls up the catskin’s flanks, climbing the column of its throat and curling into its hollow eyes. The catskin vanishes beneath broad rust-orange leaves, unfurling, vines sprawling, reaching out, even as the Beast steps away.
In seconds, a flower blooms, a starburst of untarnished yellow in the center of the faded oranges and browns, before it sinks, withering, as the fruit at its throat swells, growing large and round and brilliantly orange. Thin black streaks trail from the stem in long, dark fingers across the flesh. It settles, a pumpkin, nestled at the heart of the vine where the catskin had been.
And then, all at once, the flurry of growth, the rapid sprawl, is over, and the plant settles, a small pumpkin patch in an empty field.
The Beast leaves.
When he comes back, four months have passed.
He is carrying an axe.
Enoch’s folk welcome him as if it has only been a day, chirping their greetings before milling on with their business.
They do not treat him like the reaper he is. But then, they never have.
He stops at the edge of the field.
The huge edelvine has greedily engulfed it and is creeping across the fence to invade on the corn. Enoch’s folk have let it have the run of the fields, totally uninhibited, and it has run rampant under their indulgence, dense and tangled and monstrous, a sea of huge leaves concealing the gordian knot beneath.
He should be delighted.
But he knows, from experience, from instincts, that if he puts the whole thing through a mill, there will not be even a thimbleful’s worth of oil in it. He knows that if he sets the whole field ablaze, it will go up in seconds, and it will not leave even ash behind, disappearing like smoke between his teeth the second he bites down.
It is unfortunate, but whatever Enoch is, there is not enough of him to be made into oil.
Not enough hopes, not enough despairs to be boiled down and tasted.
If the catskin was not flesh and blood, he would not be sure Enoch existed at all.
The Beast wades through the leaves and vines to the center.
The pumpkin lays there, only a little larger than it was when he left it.
He adjusts his grip on the axe.
If the Harvest Lord does not come out, then the Beast will make him.
He plants one foot on the pumpkin, solidly, right above its stem, and raises the axe over his head.
He swings.
The pumpkin cracks.
He stops, and it’s a magnificent act of control, seizing up, halting all momentum, the blade inches away from coming down right through the thin crack running through the pumpkin’s hull.
He removes his foot carefully and drops the axe, and then he lowers himself to the ground and waits.
The pumpkin shakes, then goes still, before it begins to shift again, and orange leaves shiver all across the field. The crack widens, and the fruit groans open. The Beast watches carefully, trying to gauge whether his assistance is needed.
It is not.
With a sudden creak, the pumpkin hatches, splits apart into two halves, thin black blood spilling across the ground in a gush, staining the soil.
That, the Beast has learned, does burn like oil, but it tastes like nothing at all.
From the shards of pumpkin shell, something drags itself upright, it is wet, long fur wild and clumped, dripping.
It takes a few staggering steps forward, stumbling over its shell, before it regains its footing.
The Beast has always wondered if catskins all come in black fur or if it's the oil that stains them.
Enoch blinks open, brilliant yellow eyes squinting against the fading light of sunset. It takes a moment, huge black pupils narrowing into slits before blowing open again before he seems to recognize the Beast in front of him.
“Hello, Neighbor,” Enoch croons, delighted, his voice like roots ripped from the wet earth, dark and rough from disuse. “Did you miss me?” The catskin’s tongue flashes, swipes across its blood-blackened muzzle, and comes away stained black.
“No.” The Beast dismisses, taking up his axe again and inspecting the blade. “I only came to see if my edelwood took this time.”
It didn’t.
It won’t.
But that doesn’t mean the Beast will ever stop trying.
Enoch hums, and the sound rumbles through the sprawling edelvine around them, which shifts and shivers, no longer quite as inert as it was minutes ago.
“Well, since you’re here, Neighbor,” Enoch drawls.
“Yes, fine.” The Beast says standing up, flippantly agreeing to whatever the Harvest Lord is about to propose. He reaches down, and the wet catskin clamors into his hands. It settles against his chest, damp fur brushing against his own never entirely dry fur, with a satisfied sigh.
“Oh, thank you, Neighbor, I do so hate to bathe alone.”