Harlan came up the garden path on Tuesday morning with a sack of flour on his shoulder, and Dumpling tried to eat him.
It was not a serious attempt. Dumpling opened its jaws, lunged against its pot with the noise of a bear trap, and clicked furiously. Harlan, who had once carried a calf out of a flood, stopped walking and held very still.
"Elise," he said calmly. "Your wife's plant is looking at me."
"It's a guard plant."
"Is it guarding something?"
"The porch."
"I see." He took one slow step backward. Dumpling leaned after him. "I've never been here before. Is that the problem?"
"Yes. Sorry. It's—"
"He's the flour man!" Toby shouted, flying out of the door in his socks. "Dumpling! He's a good one!"
Dumpling turned its round green face toward Noctavia, who had come out behind him with a dish towel.
Click?
"...I haven't told it about him," said Noctavia.
"You haven't?"
"I told it about us!" Her ears were going pink. "I told it about Toby, and Clara, and you. And Tomas, because he kept screaming. I didn't think about the flour man!"
"He's not 'the flour man,'" Harlan said faintly. "I'm Harlan."
Noctavia looked at the plant. Then she took a very deep breath and said, in her most solemn war-council voice:
"Dumpling. This is Harlan. He bakes the bread. He is not to be eaten."
Dumpling studied him for a long moment. Then it closed its jaws, leaned back, and went click.
Harlan set down the flour. He had gone the color of dough. "Is that it?"
"That's it," said Noctavia. "You're family now. Don't make it weird."
"I'd like some tea," said Harlan, to no one.
That night, Noctavia made a list.
She sat at the kitchen table after dinner with a sheet of paper and a pen she held like a dagger, and she wrote EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER BEEN TO THIS HOUSE across the top. Then, underneath, one name at a time:
Tomas.Sister Margaret.Harlan.Pell (stake).The girl with the tooth.Valeria.
She looked at the last name for a while.
"She'll flatten it," she said. "She'll land on the porch, and she'll step on it, and I'll have to kill her."
"She did step on the tomato."
"That's different. She's my general. She has a history with plants."
"Put her on the list."
"I am putting her on the list!"
It took an hour. Noctavia read the names aloud, one by one, to the little plant on the table, in a low, patient voice that I had never heard her use before. She described each of them. Sister Margaret wipes her feet and asks for salt. Valeria is large and says tolerable when she means please like me. Pell wears spectacles and ties knots loosely. Dumpling clicked after every name, and by the end, Toby was asleep against my side with a crayon still in his hand.
"It's like a bedtime story," I said softly.
"It's procedure."
"It's a really good bedtime story."
"...Shut up," said Noctavia, but she had lowered her voice, and her tail was curled very gently around the leg of my chair.
I looked up. Clara was sitting on the stairs in the dark with her chin on her knees, listening. She had been there the whole time.
"What about people you don't know?" she asked quietly. "How does it tell?"
Noctavia didn't look away from the plant.
"It doesn't," she said. "Not really. It only knows who it's been told about. Everyone else is a stranger, and it points." She paused. "Pointing isn't the same as knowing."
"So it wouldn't know if someone was dangerous."
"No."
"Just new."
"Yes."
Clara nodded, slowly, the way she does when she is putting something away. She didn't say anything else, and after a moment she went upstairs.
I wrote it down later, because I couldn't help it.
The peddler came on Thursday.
He was a thin, cheerful man with a pack nearly as tall as he was, and he came up the road whistling. Dumpling saw him from the porch, opened up, and clicked once, hard, like a lock turning.
"Oh, that's a fine houseplant," said the peddler, stopping politely at the gate.
"It doesn't know you," I said. "Sorry. It's a little shy."
"Don't worry, I'm used to dogs." He swung down his pack and untied it. Inside were ribbons, needles, and small bottles of ink. "Ribbons for the little one? Needles for the missus? A nice cold winter coming, you'll want warm thread."
"We don't need anything, thank you."
"Lovely house," he said, looking at the porch, then the windows, then the chimney. "Lovely. Quiet. Big family?"
"Big enough."
"Four, would you say? Five?"
I did not say anything for a second.
"I couldn't tell you," I said, smiling, and the smile came out exactly as it always does. "We've got a lot of chickens."
He laughed, a short, pleasant laugh. He sold Toby a green ribbon for a copper, and he whistled the whole way back down the road.
When I turned around, Noctavia was standing in the doorway with her arms crossed and her tail perfectly still. Behind her, in the kitchen, Clara stood with one hand on the back of a chair. Her knuckles were white.
"He was only a peddler," I said.
"I know," said Noctavia.
"He might have just been friendly."
"He might."
"Dumpling was probably only upset because it didn't know him."
Dumpling turned slowly in its pot, until it faced the road where the peddler had gone, and stayed that way.
"...Probably," said Noctavia.
The kitchen after dark belongs to us. It's on the schedule. I carried the last cup to the shelf and stood beside her at the basin, and neither of us said anything for a while.
"Do you want to put him on the list?" I asked.
"No."
"He didn't do anything."
"He asked how many of us there were," said Noctavia, and she dried a plate with great care. "He's a stranger. He stays a stranger." She put the plate away. "It's not the same as being an enemy. I'm not a fool. But I'd rather wait and be wrong than be sorry."
"That's a very Noctavia way to put it."
"It's a very sensible way to put it."
"It's what you said about the tomato."
"The tomato was different."
I laughed. She didn't say idiot. She only leaned against my arm, very slightly, and watched the dark window.
"He stays a stranger." means I'm not taking chances with you.
"I'd rather wait and be wrong." means I've already decided to protect all of you.
Dumpling is still watching the road.