The Night Sun Read online

  I roll my eyes and study the milky tea. “Yeah, well, been a wild-ass weekend and it’s hardly over. I’m pretty sure my husband punched me hard enough for a goddamn embolism, I just saw a bunch of deer with no fucking necks, and I’m naked, yet unbothered, in front of a very attractive stranger.” He clears his throat and I look up in time to see Casimiro’s cheeks redden. It was like he hadn’t noticed my nakedness until I mention it in terms outside of rescue, in terms of our bodies’ proximity and the fact that I find him attractive. The apples of his cheeks threaten to burst, so I look away, yet I don’t feel shame. I clutch the blanket tighter but only out of habitual propriety. Part of me feels stifled within the wool, but I’m still a married woman. At least I think so. “It’s taking a lot for me not to start snot-bubble crying in front of you and this is first time I feel like I can breathe in…” I smirk, look up from my mug, and lift one shoulder. “Fourteen years.” I snort. “Fourteen fucking years.”

  Casimiro shifts, the wooden chair groaning, and there’s something like sympathy on his face. “Honestly, there’s only so much I can tell you. We have to show you.”

  “There’s that ‘we’ again.” Casimiro doesn’t react, doesn’t appear to even try to respond. “Is this what you’re meant to show me?” I say, gesturing to the cabin, then the spiral of teeth.

  “No.” He clears his throat but says nothing more.

  “Ooookay, let’s start with this: Who is Bruce Hayword?”

  At this, Casimiro livens up, his back straightening, his black eyes sparking. “To put it plainly, he’s the white face who lets us live.” I lift an eyebrow, intrigued, and sit forward, my chin in the palm of my hand. Casimiro points at my mug. “More tea? You’re shaking.”

  I hesitate, thinking he’s buying time, but I sense, no, I smell something warmer to the question. “Sure,” I say, sliding the chipped white mug back to him. He grabs it and stands, heading toward the two-burner stove. I watch the twin globes of his impressive ass as they take on the solid weight of him. Those jeans were made for him.

  “Story is, his family settled here back in the late eighteen hundreds, claiming to be Native.”

  “Five-dollar Indian?”

  “Exactly. To add insult to injury, the Haywords were pretending to be abolitionists and kidnapping slaves who were making their way to Canada. They kept some for their own property, raped others, killed a few, and sent plenty back for the monetary reward. They grew pretty rich off it until they took the wrong family of slaves.”

  He stops fiddling with the kettle and turns to me. “Your family.”

  I swallow. This is most I’ve ever heard about any of our family. Mom and Dad always shrugged our questions off, saying we’d find out in due time. I briefly wonder if Kaya’s time has come already. Good ol’ Kaya, always ahead of the game. Or at least ahead of me. I nod to Casimiro and he turns back to spooning the loose tea into a silken pouch. I smile bashfully at the care he’s showing for the third time in a row—nothing rushed, all delicate.

  “It happened when Bruce turned twenty and was by all rights considered a property-owning man. He was getting ready to marry when he thought to prove himself to his father by managing a group of slaves on his own, your grandfather among them.”

  “Wait, when exactly are we talking about?”

  Casimiro lifts a shoulder as he seals the tea container. “Early nineteen hundreds?”

  I roll my eyes. “So illegal. Disappointing, yet not surprising. And Bruce was twenty?”

  “Yep. He’s a whole-ass hundred and thirteen years old.”

  It happens before I can help it; I pop a laugh so loud Casimiro’s father snores himself awake for a moment. We both freeze until the muttering stops and his soft breathing is recognized as slumber. Casimiro grins and I feel a tingle traipse across my chest. His smile is radiant, small teeth tobacco-stained and adorably uneven, the crinkle of crow’s feet leading to nearly swallowed eyes. I want to kiss him.

  I clear my throat nervously and ask, “How was he convinced to cover for y’all?” The question doesn’t taste right. I try again. “For us. How did my grandfather convince him?”

  Casimiro’s grin had fallen, but now the corner of his mouth ticks back up. “He bit the living shit out of Bruce’s hip after killing the whole rest of his family.”

  “Well, damn.”

  “Yeah. Told him his white God doesn’t live here and neither will he, should he not take this offer.”

  “How come he didn’t opt for death?”

  “Oh, he tried. But that bite brought him back every time, aging him just enough to feel a little worse, you know? You should’ve heard the wailing. The last time, your grandfather told him the truth: There ain’t shit waiting for him and his people in the afterlife. Plus, your grandfather promised protection from the other things going bump in the night around here.”

  “So there has always been weird shit around here, huh?”

  Casimiro nods as he grabs the kettle before it can scream. “Yeah. The Haywords weren’t exactly immune to the threats, either. A couple of Bruce’s older and younger siblings, cousins—those who dared to walk at night—had been snatched and never seen again. The Haywords had the land blessed by their white God, but the forest laughed at them. I think that may have informed Bruce’s choice as well.”

  I snort. “I’d imagine.”

  Casimiro returns to the table with my tea perfectly milky and sweet and I hide my content smile with a face full of mug. When I finish, he covers my fisted hand with his and I melt under the calluses, not daring a look at just how large his mitts are, how the veins bulge from strength, how teeth-trimmed and small his nail beds are.

  I notice nothing but the growing heaviness between my legs.

  But I realize he’s waiting for eye contact, waiting for me to be truly ready for whatever lies ahead. So, as he runs his thumb over my skin, I look up at him.

  He is beautiful.

  “It’s time,” he says.

  I nod and we stand.

  * * *

  The ride is quiet and like a child I want to cry, but Casimiro has my other hand in his and I try to revel in that fact alone. It works until he stops at the top of a wooded ridge, where Sheriff Bruce Hayword is standing ramrod straight with his hands deep in his jacket pockets. Casimiro gently lays my hand in my lap and exits the truck. I’m still staring at the sheriff when Casimiro comes back into view, making a grand gesture of opening the door and guiding me out.

  After he sets me in front of the sheriff, they nod to one another. I turn to Casimiro and he lends me a sweet smile. “I’ll see you soon. Promise.” He rubs my shoulder, then gets back into the truck and takes off before either one of us speaks.

  “Here comes the rough part,” Bruce says, then winks at me. He’s already walking toward the trees before I can gather my thoughts.

  My belly growls as I hurry to follow his lead.

  * * *

  We’ve been taking the ridge one zigzag after another. My feet are getting used to the grit of the disused road, blood trailing behind me until it stops, until the dirt clogs my wounds or my soles callus at a miraculous rate, I don’t know. I just keep walking. And thinking of Casimiro’s hand in my mine as he delivered me to the sheriff.

  “Awful quiet back there,” Bruce says and I flinch, surprising myself. I don’t know why it seems so wrong to speak with such beautiful moonlight casting everything in a mercurial glow, but it feels like a violation.

  Night sun.

  I shudder at the sound of my mother’s voice at the shell of my right ear. I can hear her smile, feel her arms wrapped around me from behind as she rocked me toward something like sleep. I was always stubborn—or nosy, if you were to believe my mom. Sleep is a luxury I could never afford, no matter how rich with time I am.

  “Five-dollar Indian.”

  Bruce’s voice snatches my attention. “I’m sorry?” I say.

  He chuckles. “I’m sure Casimiro told you.”

  I clear my throat. �
��Oh, right, yeah, he did.”

  “Hmph. Good. Shit is embarrassing enough.”

  It’s then that I notice the hitch in his left leg has worsened. He’s limping at this point, and I can smell the grimace on his face. I smirk. Good.

  I shrug. “Gotta say, you’re certainly aging better than most of your brethren.”

  “Ha! Kaya did tell me you’re a smart-ass.” Before I can ask, he winks at me, then turns toward an even steeper pathway. “C’mon, not that much farther to go.”

  * * *

  The lake is smaller than I thought it would be, the water still, deep, clear. The moonlight shines right to the bottom, the rocks littered on shore matching those of the lake’s belly. It smells crisp, nearly seductive in its soft scent after the stab of cold.

  The larger rocks dig into my feet, but I’m no longer being cut and I don’t feel as cold, though I’d dropped the blanket some hundred feet back, so the sheriff’s got my attention for now.

  But not for long.

  I smell something familiar in the distance. A stench, strong and distasteful. It was the rot back in the cabin, the licorice linger of pride at the back of my tongue. I hear the tickle of footsteps over the dirt, then over pebbles, but there is also dragging, heavy and ungainly, the sting of copper accenting the air every few steps or so. I sniff deeply at those spikes of flavor, find more than a few notes disgusting, and snort them out, threads of mucus slapping my lips and chin. I wipe at my mouth with the back of my hand, then lick it.

  It’s automatic and I think nothing of it until I feel the string of a hair in my teeth. I look down to see the same silvery glow of the moon is irradiating my skin, but not my flesh exactly, my hair. It’s not immediately visible, it’s almost like cilia, floating, swaying in the light breeze, pulsing with the moon’s heat, beating with my own veins, with the thrum of the forest beyond—

  I look up.

  The deer. More of them. Surrounding the lake. With people on their backs.

  One after another, they slide from the smooth hides of their deer and step forward into the night sun’s face, naked as I am. I recognize Casimiro, the same odd glow breathing from his skin. My eyes skip around, but I don’t recognize most of the people here.

  Except my sister.

  “Kaya?!” I holler. She smiles back, her smile benevolent, patient, yet tinged with regret.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers to me.

  I want to go to her, but I can’t; I’m rooted to the spot, my belly growling ferociously, and there’s this pain in my side …

  The copper smell gets stronger and I look up, distracted from the growing discomfort in my bones to see a man, a white man being dragged by his hair by a Black woman so beautiful, I nearly weep at the sight of her. It is not because she is attractive. In fact, most would say she was a hard woman, aggressive in the angles of her face, the pucker of big lips, the ebony of her skin.

  Most would say I look just like her.

  I’ve inherited her hips, her protruding belly, her southward, quarter-size areolas and jellybean nipples. She is glowing and she is smiling directly at me as if she’s missed me, as if she loves me.

  As if she’s forgiven me.

  The man in her grasp finds his fight and starts kicking fruitlessly at the gravel. “No! Get off of me, you crazy bitch!”

  I gasp at the sound of his voice, though I should’ve known him by smell alone.

  “Let me go! People know I’m out here! They’ll look for me! You won’t get away with this!”

  Still, Mom keeps walking forward, his head in her palm like ripe grapefruit, his legs losing strength. And my gaze is stuck with her. I don’t care that my husband is in her grasp. I don’t care that he’s scared for his life. I don’t care that he’s pissed himself until his bladder’s wrung dry. I don’t care about anything but my mother.

  She stops in front of me and it’s like looking into a mirror. Kaya was the softer of the two of us, taking on Daddy’s slight frame, high butt, and perfect sun-toasted skin, while Mom and I charmed folks with our wit, with an attraction they couldn’t quite explain.

  “I’m—” I rush, but her long fingers pressing against my mouth hush me, stopping the tears building in the back of my throat.

  “You didn’t kill me.” Her voice is exactly the same as I choose to remember it: light and airy and patient. “I’m here in front of you. I’ve always been in front of you. You just needed to find me.”

  She cups my cheek and I nestle deep within the warmth of her hand. Again, I want to cry, but something stops me, something much more important at hand.

  “I know you’re hungry,” she whispers, stroking my other cheek. I nod against her and my back breaks in half. I fall hard to my knees, but before I can cry out, my pelvis shifts and my clavicle separates. Agony wheezes past the O of my mouth and I feel every single one of my fingers and toes fracture, then snap, then dig. My back dips at my cervix, my shoulders curving. I yowl in pain, the sound raspy, deep, nearly pathetic.

  Mom stoops down to me after dropping my husband and pulls me up by my armpits. “Hand me the ivory, Avery, and stand. I taught you how to stand, now stand.”

  Pain flees as anger engulfs me. “You left me to fall.”

  “And it was your job to find a way, but you settled instead. And maybe,” she stresses, seeing me ready to pounce, “maybe I was wrong for that. Maybe I didn’t prepare you the way I should have, the way my mother should’ve taught me. But don’t worry, you’ll have your chance to teach your own.”

  I hold my breath in an attempt to stave off the pain and hand her the intricate ivory piece. She steps back, hands at her sides, as Casimiro and a young woman of color—maybe Native?— step forward with a writhing Jonas in their grip. Casimiro tosses me a wink and the pain subsides, if only for a moment.

  “Shit, Avery!” Jonas gasps, interrupting that moment. My lip curls in disgust as the young woman pulls his head back. His nose is gore-streaked with black blood, his left eye swollen, a short yet deep mocking smile of gash right above his cheekbone, just missing his eye.

  So I didn’t kill him.

  “Avery, baby, let’s get out of here, okay? Let’s start over. We don’t even have to go home! We can just … drive, just go wherever you want! Please, please, baby, just—”

  My mother rends his shoulder open with the ivory, shutting him up. The pale yellow fat swells forward, puckering toward the growl of my stomach. I lick my lips as the wound weeps.

  “Shh,” I coo, pressing an elongated pointer finger against his whimpering mouth. The tip of a serrated nail kisses his eyelashes, a nail with intricate whorls decorating it. I smile, my gums aching, my jaws crowding then stretching, and something clicks, something deep within me, something that I thought had been missing since my mother died. I feel restored. I feel whole.

  “We’re right here, Avery, and this time, family ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

  It’s like a jolt to my chest, those words, the words I’d been yearning to hear for so, so long.

  I smile. I step forward.

  I am so, so hungry. And my husband sounds so, so pathetic.

  He can no longer form complete words, shock shutting down his system, his adrenaline long abated.

  I look at him good. Close. I ghost a kiss over those trembling lips and I can deny my hunger no longer.

  I throw my head back, lower mandible cracking, jutting forward, incisors slicing against their distant twins. The pain is an engulfing madness, as sharp as it is wide as it is deep, so vociferous I scream for it, for me, for my mother, for us.

  It is only when I hear the chorus of the Night Sun surrounding me that I face my husband one more time.

  I take his head into my hands. “Figure me now. See me now.”

  One tear falls and it is all the seasoning I need.

  Thank you for buying this

  Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great
reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2020 by Zin E. Rocklyn

  Art copyright © 2020 by Xia Gordon