by C C Daniels
The white portion sparkled and fizzed filling in the light scratch I made. Even expecting it, it freaked me out. I dropped the magnifying glass, and pushed my chair away from it. That’s when I felt a tingling on my arm. There in my wound were several skull flakes.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I whispered. I tried to wipe them off. But they burrowed into my flesh, sparkling and tickling me as they went in. “No,” I said louder and jumped from the chair shaking my arm as hard as I could.
And then the flakes and the tingling sensation were gone—and so was my wound. The flakes completely healed my arm.
I couldn’t breathe from the shock of it. I stood across the room from the skull.
“What the hell are you?” I whispered.
Chapter 5
Socks still on my hands, I opened the file drawer and roughly pushed the skull from my desk. It fell with a thud into the drawer, which I promptly slammed shut.
“Wray?” MawMaw called from her room. “Are you okay?”
“Sorry, MawMaw. It was just my desk drawer.” I peeled the socks off my hands. “I’ll be quieter.”
“Thank you.”
I closed my mouth, inhaling through my nose, and tried to calm myself. Was I okay? Nope. Bits of that weird skull were inside me. I was not okay with that at all. “Oh, hell,” I whispered to myself.
A soft breeze of emotion drifted from my desk. It wasn’t a blissful energy. It was a plea for forgiveness. “Stop it,” I grumbled in a low whisper. Thankfully, it did.
I turned off the light and crawled into bed with my e-reader like I normally do. MawMaw was an early-to-bed kind of person. Until she fell asleep, she could hear a pin drop anywhere in the house. So, every night I did the quietest activity I knew of — read in bed. Once MawMaw was asleep, I could do normal things like go to the bathroom or get stuff from the kitchen. Reading, though, wasn’t going to happen. Neither was sleep.
For long moments, I alternated between staring at the desk drawer and marveling at my arm—my completely healed arm. Eventually, I rolled onto my back and stared up into the dreamcatchers hanging over my bed.
One in particular, the smallest one, served as a talisman of sorts for me. Not in a lucky charm type of way, but in a trataka kind of way. It was something I stared at to help me reel in my negative thoughts and emotions. It wasn’t a dreamcatcher in a genuine sense of the word, but more like a baby’s mobile.
For one, it was a triangular shape, not round. For two, the web was crocheted, not woven. And, for three, instead of the hanger being mounted on the outside of the frame like the others, it was attached to the exact center of the crocheted web.
It wasn’t made to hang on the wall, but from the ceiling. MawMaw said they’d hung it over my crib when I was a baby and that I’d stare at it for hours.
Strips of lace—some crocheted, some tatted, some knitted, some needle-laced, some techniques I didn’t even recognize — were knotted to the frame.
The weight of it pulled a point at the hanger, and the ribbons of lace hung down in a wall of fringe. It looked like a miniature version of a shabby chic pyramid or fancy tipi. I brushed the bottoms of the lace strips with my fingers and studied the tiny seed beads randomly scattered into the webbing.
My parents told me that the piece came with me, tucked into the bassinet left on their doorstep. It had always soothed me, and somehow my brain linked it with a pretty lullaby-like tune. Sometimes, I’d hum it silently to myself.
As a teenager, I still stared at it for hours, too, especially when I couldn’t sleep. The beads against the gray walls almost looked like a constellation somewhere far off in the cosmos. That night, I stared at it to stay awake. I vowed that if the skull started putting out vibes again, I’d get it out of the house. For MawMaw’s sake. I’d take it back to the Garden and leave it where I found it.
Off and on, despite my best efforts, my tired eyelids fell. Every time I dozed, I dreamed of my parents and the life I had with them in New York. My imagination abruptly changed the scene each time, though, to a strange woman, one who looked like me. Pale skin like me, but hers luminous. Blond hair similar to mine, but hers almost white, and her eyes were a lighter blue than mine. She sang that sweet lullaby-like tone in a language I didn’t understand. I stared at her like I was a baby being rocked in her arms.
The dream, including the abrupt change, had been a recurring one since the shooting. Each time, it got longer. Same serene rocking, same song, same woman, but one moment I was in her arms and in the next moment, as though I were a balloon she had let go, and I floated above her.
Her song changed to sobs as she jumped and reached up to try to catch me. But I just went higher and higher into the sky. When I got so high that she faded into a tiny dot on a blue planet, I’d wake with fresh panic, gasping for oxygen.
That night, if thoughts of the skull weren’t haunting me, the woman singing her lullaby was.
Overnight, in brief moments of lucidity, I came up with a plan. That plan was my science teacher, Ms. Savage. If anyone knew what the skull was, it would be her.
Before daybreak, I was up. I dressed fast and using my trusty socks, put the skull in my backpack and tucked the socks into the front pocket.
I pulled the first jacket I found in my closet—one that wasn’t shredded—and after a quick stop in the bathroom to brush my teeth and hair, headed for the kitchen. There I plopped the pack by the back door and made a batch of raisin oatmeal for breakfast. I wolfed down my portion and wrapped MawMaw’s in a bowl for when she woke.
Who knew when that would be? She used to get up super early, long before me. She still did some days, on her more normal days, which were becoming fewer and further between. I scribbled a quick note to let MawMaw know that I went to school early for a project and left the note on top of the oatmeal.
Jacket on, I slung the pack over my shoulder and hurried out the back door to feed Ella. She neighed her happiness…at first. As I got closer to the barn, though, her low whinnies turned into wild snorts and high-pitched squeals. She stamped her legs and even kicked at her stall.
Feeling guilty that I forgot about her dislike of the skull, I ran back to the overhang between the garage and house. That helped tremendously. She still snorted but stopped stamping and kicking.
Was it really, truly the skull that freaked her out? I didn’t sense anything from it. Its aura stayed mute since last night. What if it was me? I now had flakes of its pixie dust inside me. My heart sank. It’d break me completely if my horse couldn’t tolerate me anymore. There was only one way to find out for absolute certain. I set my pack down behind the brick garage, which was even better for Ella. She calmed.
I, oh-so slowly and with fingers crossed, went toward the barn listening carefully for her reaction with each step I took. Nothing. Well, nothing except her typical happy whinnies that it was chow time. Slowly, I opened the barn door.
“Hey, girl,” I called in my most soothing voice.
She greeted me with her normal neigh and gave me sweet nudges. I closed my eyes in relief. I couldn’t imagine not being able to be near her or ride her. Hungry, she nudged me harder. I smiled and scooped alfalfa pellets into her feed bucket hung in the corner of her stall, tossing in her supplements near the top.
I watched her for a minute or two making sure she ate her vitamins. Then, I went back to the overhang to validate the initial results of my experiment. Pack on my shoulder, I took one step toward the barn, listening carefully again for Ella’s reaction. There was none. So far so good. I took another step. Still no reaction from her, so I took a good four steps forward.
That induced her high whinny and a snort. I stood still until I heard her stamp her feet. That’s when I went back to the overhang. No doubt about it. She sensed the skull and didn’t like it. Join the club, Ella. I wasn’t a fan either.
I turned to leave from the front of the house. It added an additional block to my walk to school, but I didn’t want the skull to get close to the barn again. I w
ouldn’t take chances with Ella’s safety. As I passed other properties in the neighborhood, their horses had similar reactions.
I let out a long breath and moved to walk down the center of the street, even more determined to see Ms. Savage before the first bell rang. She was the one person I could count on to be rational and logical, no matter what.
Ms. Savage was the department head of Manitou High’s science department. She had been a science professor at the Air Force Academy for more than a decade. The rumor was that she got fired for being too eccentric.
The Air Force didn’t want her, but she was a perfect fit for eclectic Manitou Springs—a town known for its diversity of personalities. Manitou even had a reputation as a haven for witches back in the 1960s and ’70s—again, if you believed in that sort of thing.
I quickly crossed Manitou Avenue, cut through the junior high football field, and took the stairs up the steep hill to the high school. As I’d hoped, Ms. Savage’s car was in the teacher’s parking lot. She often worked on personal experiments and research, so she was in her lab early most days.
After showing my student ID to the secretary, he let me into the building. I went to my locker to put away my jacket before heading straight to the science department. Taking a deep breath, I scanned my student ID to open the door to Ms. Savage’s classroom. She was at a microscope, intently studying something and scribbling notes on a pad to her right. The little radio on her desk was tuned to a jazz channel. The deep bass of Richard Elliot played low. I cleared my throat.
Ms. Savage looked up at the sound and seemed stunned to see me, of all people, standing there at the crack of dawn. “Science first thing in the morning?” She adjusted her glasses.
I got completely tongue-tied. How do I start? Tell her that I found a magic skull? I exhaled the stale air from my lungs.
Just when I was about to tell someone about it, I got an odd sensation that doing so would betray the skull—that I shouldn’t be showing it to anyone. It wasn’t energy from the skull causing that reaction. At least, I didn’t think so. The emotion was my own.
After a moment, Ms. Savage narrowed her eyes. “Wray? Are you all right?” She put the pen down and came closer. “You look ill.”
“Yeah, no.” I squeaked out. “I found something yesterday and wanted to show you.” It came out in a rush. “I’m not sure what it is.”
“Sure, let’s see what you got,” she said.
I set my pack on a stool, took the socks-turned-mittens out of the front pocket and then unzipped the main compartment to take out the skull. The second she saw it, Ms. Savage gasped. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped open. She was speechless, but she definitely recognized it.
“Where did you get this? From your grandmother?” Her tone was almost worshipful. That tone combined with the awestruck look she gave me amped up my concern. “May I?” she asked as though she were asking to touch the queen’s crown jewels.
After another weird pang of protectiveness, I said yes. She gently took it from me using her bare hands. That meant it wasn’t toxic—to most people. “What is it, Ms. Savage? I mean, it doesn’t look completely human, but it’s close—” I stopped talking because she wasn’t listening to me.
Gingerly, she moved the skull under the bright lamp on the lab table. She picked up a magnifying glass and stared at the skull for so long that I thought maybe she went into a trance like MawMaw had. “Ms. Savage?”
“So the legend is true,” she whispered under her breath. “The Nuutsiu origin is true,” she said a little louder with a slight bounce on the balls of her feet.
“What?” I stepped a little bit closer to the lab table. The word Nuutsiu literally means the people in the ancient Ute language. Misunderstanding and mispronouncing the word, the white man called the tribe Utes or Utahs. But the Utes call themselves Nuutsiu. “What do you mean by legend?” I asked.
Ms. Savage looked up from studying the skull. She had a look of pure joy on her face, but it wasn’t a trance. It was the look of a scientist who just discovered something enormously important. She caressed the skull much like Amaya did. “This is such an important link, Wray.”
“Link?” I shook my head. What was she talking about?
The lock clicked at the door just before it flew open.
“Carol, I need the ninth grade chem—” Mr. Smith looked up from his clipboard and stopped speaking. “Wray?” he greeted me with no small shock in his voice.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ms. Savage move sideways to shield the skull from view. She wasn’t fast enough, because the reaction in Mr. Smith’s face made it clear that he saw it, even if for just a fraction of a second.
The skull’s aura erupted. Terror radiated from it in thick waves. Heavy panic coated the inside of my mouth. Was it a physical response to the skull’s vibe? My own emotional reaction? I wasn’t sure. And it really didn’t matter. I had no choice but to protect it, especially if it was somehow related to the Nuutsiu.
That’s when my ears popped.
Mr. Smith moved to step around me. “What do you have there, Ms.— ?” He froze in mid-step and mid-sentence.
The radio went silent.
Even the white noise from the HVAC system was gone. The world was completely still.
When Ella had thrown me, I was able to move. Could I again? I concentrated on turning my head toward Ms. Savage. And, yes, those muscles worked. Her eyes, big and round, stared appalled at Mr. Smith. At the same time that I turned my head forward, again, I tested my arm—the one I was able to move last time. It too worked on command.
A buzz, like a far-off plane getting closer, was a new sound. As it got louder, I recognized what it was—time whooshing back. I readied myself for a collision with Mr. Smith and his ever-present clipboard. He wouldn’t get any closer to the skull. I’d make sure of that. My forearm went up, and, just as the buzz morphed into the more familiar roar, my leg muscles engaged. I had just enough time to step right in front of Mr. Smith and brace myself.
The radio flickered back on, and, bam, Mr. Smith ran right into me. He flailed his arms and staggered backward. I took up that space with a couple of steps forcing him farther away from the lab table. Richard Elliot’s saxophone played almost in time with Mr. Smith’s blinked confusion.
“It’s just a craft project of mine,” I fibbed using Amaya’s theory. “Ms. Savage was helping me match the glitter.”
None of the students seemed to like Mr. Smith. He was an abrasive teacher who clearly didn’t like teenagers, but I never saw him scowl quite as horribly as he did that very moment. Smith wrinkled his brow at the socks still on my hands.
I shrugged. “I ran out of glitter and need to know which kind to buy for the rest of the project.”
Kanaan was right. I was a terrible liar and I wished right then that I was better at it. My only goal was to get the skull safely out of there. The aura of fear aside, Ms. Savage’s mention of the Nuutsiu stirred a protectiveness for my adoptive tribe as much as for the skull. If there was the slightest chance that this thing belonged to the Ute people, then to the Ute people it would return. I fake-giggled like girls I make fun of and turned to look at Ms. Savage.
Until she met my gaze, I wasn’t sure if she would lie to protect the skull from Mr. Smith. She had slipped the skull back into my pack, and to my relief, she played along with my bluff.
“It’s definitely glass glitter. This isn’t that cheap synthetic stuff.” She looked very pointedly at me. “You should protect it and take extremely good care of it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I took off the socks, zipped them into the front pocket, and put the pack on my shoulder. “If I paid more attention in class, I could’ve deciphered this for myself.” I fake-giggled again. “Thanks, Ms. Savage,” I said on my way to the door.
“No problem.” She smiled.
Mr. Smith smirked as I passed him. “Have a good day, Wray.”
We didn’t fool him. I was certain of that. Back in the hall, I closed the door
to Ms. Savage’s classroom and leaned on the wall to steady my shaking legs. My heart raced and so did my mind.
More teachers arrived for the day. I forced smiles and nodded back at them when they greeted me. They didn’t seem affected by the massive cloud of terror oozing right through my backpack.
Blood pounded in my ears. My leg muscles twitched. And, even though I was at rest physically, my heartbeat accelerated with each passing second. So did my breath—so much so that I thought I was going to pass out. Chills shook me, yet, I was sweating. Even though I’ve never had one, I recognized the symptoms as a full-fledged panic attack. And I wasn’t sure it was mine. I hugged the pack closer to me.
Ms. Savage’s voice got louder behind the door. I glanced up and there, in the door’s little window, was Mr. Smith—staring at me. Not me exactly, but at my pack.
I ran for the nearest exit. Bashing the push bar, the door flung open and I smacked hard and headlong into Kanaan. I hit him so hard that I fell backward. I didn’t knock him down, but the force with which I hit him did catch him off guard. He stumbled a bit to catch his balance.
“Oh, sorry.” I panted and got back on my feet.
“Wray?”
I just ran.
“Wray!” he called after me.
But I just kept running and didn’t stop until I was down the hill, had crossed Manitou Avenue, and was on the bridge over Fountain Creek. Huffing and puffing, I stopped only because I had to. I needed to catch my breath and take a minute to think. I was torn. Should I go home and tell MawMaw? Or should I talk to Amaya first? That decision was made for me. Amaya was just up the street, a few blocks away, walking toward me on her way to school.
From behind me, a hand grabbed my arm. I screamed and swung my backpack as a weapon. The person fended off the attack of my pack with their forearms.
“Wray!” It was Kanaan.
I exhaled a breath of relief and slumped against the bridge railing.
“Girl, what is going on?”