Fenna’s blood bulb gleamed like glass, a beacon across the marsh. Mallards and wood ducks glanced my way, wondering why this naked human hesitated at the water’s edge, hands pressed against chest—then a harsh ray of sun pierced the clouds to strike my back, and I finally moved.
The water was warm, the kind of warm that makes you forget it’s there, but my limbs remained stiff as I navigated between patches of woolly sedge. About 300 yards from Fenna, I could distinguish its scarlet sepals and its thick vines pooled on the ground; at 200 yards, the vines began to gently wriggle, as though waking up. Penetrating sunlight revealed in each a central vein enmeshed in a network of capillaries.
Once I emerged, I beheld the bank. Knowing that I would spend the next 6 months here bestowed a kind of ceremonial significance to my surroundings. To my right, bees and duskywing butterflies tended to a stretch of lupins and marsh buttercup; ahead, beyond Fenna, soft waxwing whistles emanated from tangles of serviceberry branches; to my left, a pond mirrored the pale blue sky. The clouds were faint, as though half-erased.
The remaining distance closed rapidly, until I stood not a leap away from the blood bulb, with Fenna’s vines curling and uncurling in apparent eagerness. Proximity bestowed a sudden realness upon the creature before me, an effect enhanced when its vine weaved through the fingers and traced the wrinkles of my proffered hand, and enhanced further when I waded toward its sepals and let it engulf me. I responded to its soft touch as I would have the caress of another human; the wind seemed to still with my breathing, the birds and susurrating grasses to hush.
Soon my whole body had been coated in slime, except for my head and neck. Tactile sensation had so intoxicated me that I didn’t notice Fenna straining to try to reach above my shoulders until it resorted to ceasing all other movement. I apologized—absurdly—and lowered myself onto one of its sepals. The slime’s sweet taste lingered on my lips, and a scent like pine and citronella wafted up to my nose.
At last a vine unfurled a wavy extension along its length, resembling a snail’s foot, and engulfed my arm with it. I did not feel pain as its lancets pierced skin, just a gentle suction like a kiss. Clear fluid transferred into me through Fenna’s capillaries, and as tribute for the ambrosia, blood crept into its main vein.
And as blood crept into the main vein, shadows crept along the ground, lengthening.
And as blood warmed the vine, the air cooled.
And as blood entered the blood bulb, drop by drop, to form a shallow pool, the wet gleam of my skin softened from white to gold, then from gold to tangerine.
Fenna’s vine released my arm and curled up on my lap. I blinked. By now I should have been sunburned and speckled with mosquito bites, but the slime had protected me; meanwhile, heat emanating from a vent between Fenna’s bulb and sepal had countered the chill of the evening breeze. I sat in comfort as the waxwings’ calls yielded to poorwills’ and crickets’.
Shortly after the moon emerged from behind surrounding maples, Fenna’s vines lifted my legs, and its sepal folded upward to envelop me. A small gap above let in pale starlight. My consciousness faded with the colors of the sky.
Raindrops beaded on my slime-coated knees as Fenna’s sepal unfolded. I felt light enough to float atop the surrounding sea of fog, into the pale gray sky.
In a morning full of caresses, I taught Fenna how to massage, pressing its vines against me and guiding them through the motions. It was strong when it wanted to be, sometimes nearly tipping me over. Fenna allowed me to reciprocate—there was a part of each of its vines where the cuticle softened, toward the tip. Fenna usually withdrew if a hand or foot brushed those places accidentally, but, with a little encouragement, I discovered that it would relax if I rubbed very gently and consistently. I wondered what my skin felt like to it. Smooth? Ticklish? It had traced the wrinkles of my palm before; could it discern my fingerprints too?
The heat of the rising sun brought with it the sticky scent of fermenting berries. A flock of gadwalls stopped by, signified by soft splashes and quacks, but I was content to focus on Fenna. My heart beat in time with dripping sepals.
The days soon blurred together. I watched tundra swans visit on their migration; I watched serviceberries thin and spicebush berries ripen; I sunbathed on clear days and weathered storms inside Fenna’s sepals. I came to know every vine, with their varying lengths and sensitivities. Day by day, imperceptibly slowly, Fenna’s blood bulb filled.
Until one day it was full.
And Fenna became lethargic, its vines moving like chilled snakes. It stopped taking blood, and the blood inside it crystallized into an airy white lattice suspending a crimson mass. The bulb swayed in the wind, dry, husk-like.
Biologists speculate as to how members of Fenna’s species persuade their human hosts to propagate them—as though it weren’t obvious. As though a person who had spent that much time with one wouldn’t know what it wants or help unless somehow manipulated.
I didn’t want to leave, though. When Fenna extracted its fleshy seed and placed it in my palm, I felt as though I’d been handed my own heart.