She takes both of my hands in hers and squeezes our fingers together as if to push her love into me by touch.
“When the time comes, if it comes, don’t be scared. Fight. Take risks. Follow your heart. And move forward.”
My mother squeezes her eyes shut, and when they open, they’re glassy with tears. She looks over my head again and gives a subtle nod. “And she won’t remember any of this until… after?”
“No.” A woman’s voice says from directly behind me. I turn again, but my mother’s hand shoots out, gripping my shoulder hard before I can see who’s there.
“Bree, Bree, look at me, baby,” she says quickly. “Just look at me.”
The last thing I see is my mother, holding me still while she whispers, “I love you.”
* * *
I come back from the memory on my knees. All of it, every word and image and sound, is there now, like a file in a drawer. Like something I’ve always possessed but didn’t have the key to open. The flame on the bracelet in my hands dies down, but her message echoes in the air around me. I let the words flow through me and over me until my eyes close and I’m full of her words.
Move forward.
That’s the message my mother planted in my mind for the moment I’d most need to hear it.
When I open my eyes, I know what I need to do.
43
THE AIR IN the cemetery is charged. Unsettled. Even the leaves on the trees stir and shiver, like the whole place knows I’m here for root.
I wait in the unmarked grave section after last class, feeling more bold than frightened.
Two figures in light jackets approach over the gravel path. I recognize Patricia immediately; as she comes closer, I can see that her scarf is a deep copper. Beside her, Mariah is in jeans and fur-topped boots, sleek poof exploding into a puff of curls that add at least eight inches to her petite height. She carries a basket of offerings, just as I’d asked.
“Bree,” Patricia murmurs, clutching me in a tight hug that soothes my nerves. “Your call scared me. You said it was an emergency? Are you all right?”
I pull back and swallow hard, take a deep breath. “I will be. Thank you for coming today. Both of you. I know the way we left things was… I’m sorry. I’m sorry for my behavior.”
Patricia tilts her head, and her eyes roam my features before she nods. “Apology accepted.”
“Same here.” Mariah shifts the basket to her other arm. “As long as you tell me what we’re doing here? Not that I don’t mind a graveyard, of course, but I don’t come to one lightly.” She peers around me. “Restless spirits follow me home if I’m not careful, then I’ve got to clean house, and it’s just a whole process… ugh.”
“I need your help to speak to someone in my family.”
Patricia and Mariah exchange glances. “Bree, what’s going on?”
I tell them about my mother’s box, and I don’t hide any of it, even the Bloodcraft. In the moment of silence after I finish, the wind picks up Patricia’s scarf, Mariah’s curls and my own.
Patricia has been studying me, and I’m worried she won’t help after all. “You deserve to know why this bargain was struck. But even though I want to, I’m afraid I won’t be of much help. Bloodcraft among our people is so shunned that those who practice it keep it secret. I don’t know how your abilities work or where they came from.”
“I know. Which is why I need to speak to an ancestor of mine who can explain. I want to know more about what I am and why.” I take a deep breath. “I don’t want to get lost in the past. I want to embrace it and understand.”
Mariah shrugs. “I’m down to help, but I can’t promise you’ll hear from anyone,” she warns. “And even if you do, there’s no promises about who shows up, remember? Could be your mom, could be someone else.”
I say hastily, “I actually don’t want it to be my mom. I need to go further back.”
Patricia considers this and nods slowly. “Okay, Bree.”
Five minutes later we’ve settled into a triangle, hands linked, our knees faintly touching around the offerings in the middle. Since I didn’t know what offerings my ancestors would prefer, I’d asked them to bring a small bowl of fruit, some candy, a glass of juice, and nuts. Things my mother liked and I like too.
Patricia repeats her previous instruction in a low voice. “Focus on your love for your mother, to start.”
I pull up an image of my mother from memory and there’s almost no pain, just a tiny smidge of it around the edges like a bit of burned paper. I see my mother in the kitchen, humming and mixing a bowl of deviled-egg fixin’s. She dips a pinkie in to taste and calls me over to test it too. It feels like we’re making magic. That’s how it always felt when we made food together.
Patricia whispers, “Now imagine the love stretching to your grandmother, and stretching back again.”
“Like a strong thread,” I murmur.
I hear the smile in her voice when she says, “Yes.”
I imagine the thread, thick and wound tight, from my mother to my grandmother—and it stops. I can’t go any further. I’m blocked…
By a wall.
I’ve known that this image, this internal construct of my own making, was part of my survival toolbox. I just hadn’t found any reason to take it down.
But now I do.
Now I have to.
I imagine my wall crumbling to pieces, one brick at a time. I pull down the chains, the metal, the steel. I peel it all away until I can see beyond it to find that hard, tight knot of pain in my chest, the one wrapped in layers of bright, unending fury—the part of me I call After-Bree.
And then I unwind her.
One strand for my mother.
One for my father.
One for me.
I unravel the rage until it courses through my veins like fuel in an engine. I let it become a part of me, but not all of me. Hot, scorching pain under my skin, under my tongue, under my nails. I let it spread through me—until there is no more “Before” and no more “After.”
I am her and she is me.
“I’ve got the thread,” Mariah says excitedly. “I’m following it.”
I feel warmth pulling at my fingers, like the tide of the ocean is inside me and it’s flowing out to Mariah.
“I hear someone,” Mariah whispers. “A woman.”
I take a deep breath and focus on the thread. Please, please. Please help me.
“She’s powerful. She has a lot to say,” Mariah says, her voice strained. “No, a lot to do. Oh wow, oh wow—” She stops speaking abruptly, and her fingers curl into claws around mine, squeezing the bones of my pinkie and forefinger. I open my eyes to see hers rolled back in her head, her rapid breathing.
“Mariah?” Patricia leans over, but does not break our connection. “Mariah?”
I start to call her name too, when the ocean comes rushing back through my hand so quickly that it sears up my wrist and forearms and swirls in a hot whirlpool in my chest. I cry out, but I can’t let go.
A low voice burns into my ears and onto the back of my eyelids. White curls, bronze skin, barely any wrinkles, my mother’s eyes and my own. She cracks a wry grin.