Chapter 7: Mom
My sessions with Theresa were long and draining, and I came out of every one of them needing a nap.
The sessions involved some really challenging work, especially emotionally. I was doing better clamping down the panic every time we’d go to a memory in the ocean, but that didn’t change the exhaustion that came from that disconnect between how I felt in real life and how I felt in my memory.
But we’d made progress, so I couldn’t complain too much.
In the short time I’d been around Theresa, I’d been able to remember several summers spent out on the beach surrounded by a loving family. And before that, I remembered playing in the springs in the wild countryside of the New World and enjoying the solitude of a long bath in the Mississippi River.
Before that, I remembered sneaking out to the docks to stare longingly at the ships and do my best to come up with a way to sneak on board without being caught by a sailor and mistaken for some kind of ill omen that would keep them from launching.
There was plenty to remember—a lot of it little things, everyday memories, nothing earth-shattering like the memory of surrendering to Christopher in order to save Angelica. But those small memories kept building, painting the picture of a girl who used to like the ocean . . . and I simply couldn’t reconcile that girl with the person I had become since my father drowned me.
On top of the panic attacks I had in the water, I had to deal with the simple fact that my mind was worn down from the constant fighting. So to my friends on the outside, it seemed like all I’d done since we arrived was nap or snap at them.
I wouldn’t have blamed anyone for not wanting to be around me when I was such a mess of exhaustion and frustration—especially not anyone who hadn’t gotten to know me before my head had been split open and therefore knew that I wasn’t usually this hard to deal with. So I was more than a little surprised when Tara came to sit down beside me one evening as the day was turning into night and the pinks and oranges of the sky peeked through the leaves.
“Hi, Tara.”
“Hello, Balance,” she said, rearranging herself to mirror my body language, her legs dangling over the side of the deck.
We sat there in silence for several long minutes. I didn’t know what Tara wanted or why she’d come to sit with me—or if I was simply company and nothing more. But I was too tired to put forward the effort to be sociable, so I simply watched the sunset until the stars started to come out.
Finally, Tara broke the silence. “I want to help you.”
I turned her way, one eyebrow raised. “What?”
“I want to help you,” she repeated. “You have so much yet before you, and I am not so blinded by the threads of fate as I watch them weave themselves together into the larger tapestry that I cannot see the individual stitches—the lives and the people involved.” She tipped her head. “I believe I can help you reach those memories you have not yet reached with my sister’s aid—if you are not opposed to working through Time and not your mind.”
I frowned. “I’m not sure. . . .”
“I know you are angry with Time,” Tara said. “I know you feel it has wronged Elaine and that it is a cruel taskmaster. But Time is an old friend of mine, and I would like to show you that side of things.”
How could I argue with someone who looked so perfectly serene one moment and then almost pleading the next? I let out a long breath and nodded. “Alright,” I said. “But if it’s horrible—”
“Then we will stop,” Tara assured me with a warm smile a lot like her sister’s.
I swallowed and nodded. “Alright,” I said again.
Suddenly, the warm smile completely disappeared from Tara’s face. Her bright, brown eyes quickly filled with tears, and she reached out to grab my hand. “Oh,” she said in such a small voice that I could hardly tell she had spoken. Her tiny, thin fingers wrapped so tightly around my wrist that I could see fingernail marks in my skin.
And then, as quickly as it happened, she released me, returning from whatever vision she’d seen.
“What was that?” I asked, wide-eyed as I pulled my hand to my chest and massaged my wrist.
Tara blinked a few times, obviously trying to deal with the emotions associated with the vision she’d just seen. It occurred to me that this must have been what I looked like to my friends when I would come out of a memory. They had no idea what I’d seen—and until I chose to share with them, they had zero context for my emotional state.
Finally, Tara shook her head. “Do not concern yourself,” she said. “What I saw had nothing to do with you. I saw instead The Traitor, caught in his duty and trapped by his heart.” She closed her eyes and looked honestly forlorn. “His soul is playful and loving; his mind is violent. He can only betray himself, no matter what he does.”
“That . . . is actually one of the most accurate descriptions of Andrew I’ve ever heard,” I admitted, though I could hardly take my eyes off of Tara. I had never seen someone have a vision before, and I wasn’t sure if I should do anything about it.
Tara nodded to herself, staring past me into the trees. “The Family means to destroy him—and they will. He will never be the same. And yet with his fall comes a rebirth.” She closed her eyes, concentrating on something I couldn’t see. “I lied when I said this has nothing to do with you. I did not see the vision fully.” When she opened her eyes again, she looked more intense, somehow. “Your fate is so tangled in his and in Elaine’s that I was wrong to attempt to separate them.”
“That’s okay,” I said—because I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“All fates are intertwined, of course,” Tara said; I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me or not. “We cannot take any action without affecting those around us. That is the way of the world. And yet there are times when those threads are so tightly wound within each other that they are impossible to separate. The more you walk your path with your friends at your side, the more you marry your fate to theirs. This is true of all
friendships. . . .” She trailed off and then shook her head before she looked back up at me. “I’m sorry. I came here to offer my aid, and instead, I have forced you to listen to a prophecy of your friend’s destruction.”
“Yeah, but now I’m glad I heard it so I can be properly concerned,” I said, my eyes wide as I leaned forward. “What’s going to happen to Andrew? Can I help—can I stop it?”
Tara shook her head slowly. “You know the hatred his Family hold for him,” she said. “They are unaccustomed to rebellion, especially within the ranks of the immediate family—the sons and daughters. They will not stop until they destroy everything he has built.”
“I won’t let them,” I said.
Tara smiled softly at that. “Balance, you have no say in what happens to him,” she said consolingly. “The wheels are already turning, and you cannot make them reverse their course.”
“If it’s going to destroy Andrew, I’m not just going to let it happen, either.”
“No, you will fight against it. So will he, and so will Elaine.” Tara shook her head slowly. “It will happen all the same—but it is not as terrible as you think it is,” she added quickly when she saw the look on my face. “As I said, there is a rebirth. A new beginning. This journey for him and for Elaine and for you—all of you must choose your path, and this destruction will force the choice. You will not be allowed to waver between paths as you have all done thus far.”
“That’s . . . something.” I really had no idea what to do with Tara’s attempt to make me feel better. It wasn’t all that comforting, but she was trying. And a “rebirth” didn’t sound like Andrew was going to die, at least.
Tara smiled sadly. “I wish I could give you more to be hopeful for, but I know how difficult it can be for those that walk the linear path to see beyond the trials of the present.”
“Mostly because that’s life for us,” I said.
“Oh, I know,” she said. “I did not mean to imply that your way of living
was anything less. I simply meant that I wish you could see what I see.” Her expression softened, though she was still looking somewhere beyond me. “I wish everyone could see how their threads of fate lead them toward their destinies—the ones they choose for themselves. Time does not force anyone to do anything against their nature. Good and evil shape themselves, and Time takes those choices and weaves a fabric of history out of their futures.”
I had one eye closed as I watched her. “I think I understood about half of that.”
Tara let out a light laugh. “I know,” she said. “I know how I sound to others. I wish I could be clearer. But I sometimes feel I am not speaking the same language, even if the words are familiar to us both.”
“That’s alright,” I said. “I get it.”
Tara smiled a little more at that before she cleared her throat and nodded. “Yes, well, I came to offer assistance. Please let me.”
“Right.” I straightened up. “So, what’s the plan here?”
“A simple one,” Tara said with a smile. “I want to take you with me into Time. Usually, I look to the future, since the past does not change—but for you, I will take that different path.”
“O . . . kay.”
Tara reached over to take my hand, and I felt that same sort of tugging invitation that Theresa had used to invite me into my mind. (They really were so similar.) But this time, Tara was pulling me toward the vast, unyielding entity that I’d already mingled with way too many times for my liking.
I had to force myself to step into Time, since I still didn’t exactly trust it, but when I followed Tara, Time felt so vastly different, like nothing I had experienced in temporal spells before.
The past seemed warm and inviting, calling to me with smells of fresh bread and crooning lullabies. I didn’t recognize any of these things by themselves, but together, they stirred strong memories, memories of being loved and loving in return, of growing up with fully human brothers and sisters and then pretending to be their daughter when they outgrew me, as humans will do when they live with a Halfsie.
I could almost see them. I could almost hear them. I could almost reach out to them.
I was drowning in a sea of smells and sounds and shapes. I didn’t recognize most of them. The past, the history of everything, all hit me at once. The past was overwhelming; there was so much of it already, and it was constantly growing. With each second that passed by, the past grew larger and more powerful. It encompassed all the seconds, all the moments that passed, gradually filling my life until it would be longer than my future. No one mind could comprehend it. Just as I thought I would be lost in it, Tara grabbed my hand. Her presence, even if it wasn’t really physical, grounded me enough to keep me from getting lost, and she guided me along until something in all of the chaos coalesced.
Unlike when Theresa would walk with me in my mind, in the past, I was a visitor. These weren’t my memories; they were part of Time. And so I didn’t experience them as myself; I experienced them all at once. I could see every blade of grass and hear every sound. I knew everything at once about this memory—and yet my connection to that moment helped to keep me from getting lost in the details. Because I recognized myself—albeit a much younger version of myself—I could find someone to follow.
Still, viewing my memories from the outside was an odd sensation.
“Mother, would you please tell Miriam to leave me alone?” I complained, running to my mother. I was still barely five years old in the eyes of the humans, even though I was sixteen now. My mother was much taller than I was, and she towered over me. I clung to her skirts to get her attention, feeling very childish.
Outside of the memory, I could hardly breathe. I hadn’t ever remembered my mother before, and now, thanks to Tara’s decision to bring me into Time itself, I could not only see her but could be aware of every part of her, every movement she made and every detail of her face, in a way that memory didn’t quite capture.
I wanted to cry.
I knew her name from previous memories, but no peripheral knowledge compared to seeing Marie herself and looking up at her long, curly, black hair and her deep brown eyes. She had a smile that made me want to hug her all over again, and as she crouched down to wrap her arms around me, the part of me that had never experienced this before—or, at least, the part that couldn’t remember experiencing it—wanted to lean into that embrace and get lost in it.
“Is your sister bothering you again?” my mother asked gently. As she spoke, she absently reached up a hand to brush through my unruly, white hair, as she had been doing since I was young.
I let out a noise of frustration from the back of my throat. “She keeps threatening to tell people I’m a witch.”
My mother frowned when she heard it. “She knows better, my darling. She knows that would bring trouble down on our whole family. On me, on your brother, on your father—”
“Stepfather,” I said bitterly.
“Be kind,” my mother said. Her tone was sharp, but not hurtful, and I was so desperate for memories of her that even that gentle correction felt like warmth as I watched her taking care of my oh-so-young self. “Very few men would do what your father has done. To marry a woman who already has a child, especially a beautiful half-witch child like you . . . you have no idea what sacrifices he has made for our family.”
I narrowed my eyes but dropped my gaze all the same. I knew she was right, of course, but I hated it. I’d had my mother to myself for the first twelve years of my life, and then this man had come along to take her time and attention. She seemed happy with him, and my stepfather was always so careful to help me stay hidden away from the humans that would want to kill me if they saw me and knew who I was. But I missed the closeness my mother and I had enjoyed when the two of us had been on the run together, hiding away—just us, with nothing but our love, my mother’s power, and my own burgeoning magic to keep us going.
And now I had a little sister who seemed to resent my magic and a new baby brother who was obviously my stepfather’s favorite. A boy to carry on the family name. He didn’t even try to pretend he wasn’t pleased about it, especially since they had named him Thomas too.
I knew I was old enough now to put such childish frustration aside. But I still struggled all the same. My mother said that witches aged slower, and that applied to my mind and emotions as well. I was still processing things with a child’s mind—but I wanted to be better. I wanted to help. I knew I could help.
“Still,” my mother said, bringing me out of my thoughts, “I’ll talk to your sister. She should know better, even if she truly feels that angry.” She shook her head. “I’ll deal with this. I don’t want a word spoken in anger to destroy our family.”
I nodded and darted over to hug her again. “Thank you.”
My mother smiled and kissed the top of my head, tenderly taking my face in both of her hands. “I love you, my little angel,” she said.
“Love you too.”
The memory faded as my mother left, but in the present world, I was sitting with tears streaming down my face as I held Tara’s hand. Thankfully, Tara didn’t try to say anything as I grappled with the emotions of what I’d just seen; instead, she simply sat with me, holding my hand, providing me with an anchor.
I couldn’t stop a few tears occasionally leaking out of the sides of my eyes, but I had a slightly better hold of myself when I finally looked up at Tara, wiping at my eyes. I opened my mouth to thank her, but all of a sudden, that felt too small. Instead, the only acceptable thing I could think of was to throw my arms around her.
I think I surprised Tara, but after a slight jump, she returned the gesture—gently at first and then much tighter when I finally managed a quiet “thank you.”
I could hear the smile in Tara’s tone even if I was still clutched so tightly to her that I couldn’t actually see that smile. “I told you,” she said gently, “I want to help.”
“You did.” I finally straightened up, wiping my eyes with
the back of my hand as if that would help keep the tears from falling. “I’ve never remembered my mother before. Not since my father hid her from me.”
Tara smiled softly. “Then I’m glad I decided to come to you,” she said and then held her hand out to me. “If you like, we can try that again. This process isn’t as exhausting to your mind, since we aren’t fighting the mental block itself but allowing you to see what you’ve forgotten and letting the pieces fall away naturally with this knowledge. We could continue for a while longer—as long as we are careful not to get lost in the past and lose our will to return.”
I nodded slowly; I could see the danger there. Already, I knew I wanted to stay in my past—to get lost in everything I’d missed. Tara’s method was so much easier than the uphill battle I faced with Theresa, and it allowed me to see the family I’d had even before Jacob. I could easily lose myself in remembering my mother.
I missed her. I barely remembered her, but I missed her so much.
I took Tara’s hand again, and once more, I found myself watching the past as a younger version of myself stood in front of a new grave.
I had been so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t hear my half-brother approaching until he was standing beside me, staring down at the place where I had buried our mother. Some kind of sickness had spread through most of the area, and at this point, the dead outnumbered the living.
For the first time, I had seen the real consequences of my half-witch existence.
I was cursed to outlive everyone. Even my mother, who had magic in her blood, didn’t heal the same way I did. Spells that only took a few days off my life took weeks off hers. She didn’t have the advantage I did of having two parents with magic in their blood to pass on to me.
She had done everything she could to save my stepfather, but all that time spent trying only drained what little magic she had to heal herself.
I couldn’t do anything to save them. I didn’t know how to heal people. I didn’t know more than a few basic spells. I didn’t know anything beyond the simple fact that my mother was gone—and I was still barely a child, even by a witch’s reckoning.
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