“Five hundred?”
“Yep.”
I swallow. “Do I really have to walk on the grass? I could be walking right over someone’s grave.”
“You will be.” Patricia turns away with a smile. “But we’ll acknowledge them. Thank them.”
I huff and let loose a long breath, then follow her footsteps, imagining that maybe she knows where the graves are and has avoided them for us both. We stop at an unmarked section of grass.
“This is where two of my ancestors are buried,” Patricia says simply, as if she were just sharing where one could find a glass in a cupboard. This is where the cups are. Here’s where to find the mugs. She sits down cross-legged in her long skirt.
I instinctively step back, but she regards me with a raised brow. “Sit.”
I kneel carefully. The freshly mowed grass is warm and spiky on my bare legs. I sit cross-legged in front of her as she opens the velvet pouch she’d been carrying and sets out a few stones on the ground between us: a bright green one shaped like a small, gnarled fist; a purple-and-white stone with a few rocky points—amethyst, I think; and a smoky quartz. To my surprise, Patricia arranges a few other items in front of us, items I’d never thought to bring to a grave: a smaller pouch with a bit of fruit in it, a plate with cornbread, and an empty mug that she fills with tea.
“I don’t know who my ancestors are, past my great-grandmother anyway.”
Patricia shrugs. “Lots of Black folks in the States don’t know their people more than four, five generations back, don’t know names before the late 1800s—and why would they? We didn’t exactly inherit detailed family records when we were freed.” She keeps arranging her offerings, not looking in my direction as she does.
I’m filled with a sour sense of betrayal, akin to the feeling I felt looking up at the Order’s Wall. “I never even met my grandmother.”
Patricia’s head tilts toward me, her expression curious. “You never met your grandmother?”
I bristle. “No.”
“She died before you were born?”
“Yes.”
“No aunts on her side of the family? Great-aunts?”
“No.” Frustration sparks in me, like a match has struck my insides, turned them to fire. Suddenly, my skin feels too tight all over my body. The fine hairs on the back of my neck lift. My vision blurs. I don’t need to be reminded how alone I am. How lost.
“Bree, breathe.” She speaks softly, but her order is firm. “Take slow breaths in through your nose.” I hear Patricia speak, but her voice arrives from far away.
I do as she says until my heart slows down, but my throat is still the size of a straw. I have to clear it twice to get any words out. “So, what are we doing here?”
She smiles. “Do you trust me?”
I blink. “That’s usually what someone says when they’re about to do something weird to somebody else.”
She grins. “I can handle weird if you can.”
I think about all that’s happened in the last week of my life. “I can handle real weird.”
“Then we’ll proceed.” She draws herself up tall and folds her hands in her lap. “As you know, there is an invisible energy all around us, everywhere in the world, that only some people know about. Some of those people call it magic, some call it aether, some call it spirit, and we call it root. There is no single school of thought about this energy. Is it an element? A natural resource? I think it is both, but a practitioner in India or Nigeria or Ireland may not agree. The only universal truth about root is who—or what—can access it and how. The dead have the most access to root, and supernatural creatures have the next closest connection, but the living? The living must borrow, bargain for, or steal the ability to access and use this energy. Our people—Rootcrafters—borrow root temporarily, because we believe that energy is not for us to own.” She waves a hand over her stones and food. “We make offerings to our ancestors so that they will share root with us for a time. And then, after it’s returned, we thank them for being a bridge to its power. This is the unifying philosophy of our practice. Beyond that, families have their own variations, their own flavors, if you will. So it has always been, and so it is.”
“You said you don’t know how my family practiced.”
“I don’t. In your circumstance, it seems your family’s way is gone. All I can do is introduce you to the craft as my family understands it, using my way of sharing its truths.”
It makes sense, but… “What do you do with root?”
As Patricia looks at me, a soft, fuzzy warmth falls across my cheeks and nose, like sunlight uncovered. “Take my hands, and I’ll show you.”
Once I take her hands, there’s a heartbeat of sensation—her skin is warm, dry, and soft—before the world around us twists, then disappears.
PART THREE ROOTS
26
IT FEELS LIKE the hand of the universe has reached inside me and just… pulled.
The sensation of movement is so strong—I’m flying, expanding—then, just as suddenly, it stops.
I fall forward on my palms, dizzy and heaving large gulps of dusty air. Air that clings to the back of my throat and coats my mouth with the taste of copper.
“You’re all right, Bree.” Patricia’s voice soothes from somewhere near my shoulder. She’s standing beside me, her small, flat dress shoes right at my wrist. I open my eyes to find that my hands are spread wide on packed, crumbling clay that’s been brushed and smoothed into an even surface. A floor. I’m inside a building. No, a cabin.
But we were just outside in the graveyard.
A woman moans nearby, a strangled sound of pain. My head snaps up to find the source, and I nearly fall forward again.
The small, rectangular space is lit only by a waist-high fireplace in the middle of the longest wall. The walls are made of rough-hewn wooden planks, and between every few boards are small scraps of cloth stuffed between gaps to shore up the openings against the night. Beside me on the dirt floor are two thin blankets, smudged brown, with tattered and uneven edges. Once I see the fireplace, the heat of it hits my face and I know then that this is not a dream, that this is real.
And so are the two figures in front of its hearth: a Black woman lying prone on an area of straw-covered ground whose body is mostly blocked from my sight, and the other, a middle-aged Black woman bent over her companion and wearing a long, plain dress and a white cotton cap.
The prone woman moans again, and the other soothes in a low, reassuring voice. “Hold tight, Abby, hold tight. Mary’s coming.”
Abby hisses in response, and it’s the sound of sudden pain, so sharp it steals one’s breath.
“Where are we?” My voice is barely a whisper and is almost lost to the sound of Abby’s cries. I push up to my feet. Beside me, Patricia’s face is pinched as she takes in the scene before us.
She speaks full-voiced, no whisper. “About twenty-five miles from where we sat down in the graveyard.”
“How did—”
Patricia’s face is a strange mixture of sorrow and pride. “The branch of my root allows me to work memories, understand their energy and power over our present day. I’ve taken you on a memory walk: a sort of time travel, if you will, into a memory of my ancestor, Louisa, whose grave we visited. It’s a bit unorthodox for a memory worker to bring someone from outside the family along for a walk, but I’d hoped my intentions would be clear. With my offering, I asked Louisa to help me show you the world, and the people, that birthed our craft. And this is the memory Louisa chose.” She inclines her head toward Abby, whose body I still cannot see clearly. I can just make out her head and shoulders. Her wide-set doe eyes are framed with the long lashes people pay to re-create, and her tight curls are thick and full around a heart-shaped bronze face. She can’t be more than twenty.