Her name came up once, Flies with Crows crowing that once Micah hit the rag then there would be four women bleeding in the family. StarTruth intoned wisely that if their moon times ever coincided, this house would become a place of deep magic. As everyone agreed with awe and Flies with Crows puffed up for being the one to recognize it first, Micah resolved to not start bleeding until one of her mothers hit menopause. Her body decided differently, but she bled for three months in secret before announcing that she’d begun. Then her family couldn’t be quite so excited.
Drums and camping, or tears and chatting. It was like ice cream or asparagus. But in truth she would have just been using her period for the drumming, not because she found anything significant in her body making a mess once a month. It wasn’t magical or mysterious; it was basic human biology. Who cared that she was now capable of pregnancy? So were most women. Uma said they were celebrating the poignancy of transformation, girl to woman, but this was poignant and transformative only to her mothers. They needed the ritual, not Micah.
So she quit. Everyone in the coven was concerned to have one of its children drop out, even though they all talked about following one’s path wherever it led. For years now StarTruth and others had asked gently after her, and her family passed along the messages. Uma wanted Micah to know that there was no pressure to attend rituals or more informal gatherings, yet even saying it was subtle pressure. Tuma was more direct, wanting to know how Micah could turn her back on a community that had embraced her from birth. She’d been born right into StarTruth’s hands, and StarTruth recognized her as another old soul. That was irritating, the high priestess thinking they had some kind of mystical connection, that they formed a bond over an experience Micah was too young to even process.
And her community? The coven was just people who got together to pretend that singing in harmony raised energy to change the world. Like school was just people who got together and pretended that spending a lot of time in the same classes meant they had a connection and should go to reunions every ten years for the rest of their lives. They didn’t have a connection. They just shared space. But the conversations at dinner about colleges and language schools were growing extremely tiresome, so she agreed to the Imbolc ritual just to give her parents something else to talk about.
Once at the ritual hall, she was sorry. It was every bit as annoying as she remembered. Everyone wanted to hug, although now it was with a glance to her stamp and a determined set to their lips to be brave. Everyone wanted to talk about college (could she not get away from it anywhere?) and welcome her back to the fold. The ritual commenced and they all held unlit candles while StarTruth and Willowman did Brighid’s blessing to celebrate the return of longer days. Come the green! Come the warmth!
They lived in California, for God’s sake! It was green and it was warm compared to other places in the world. The ritual milk (organic from a local family farm with pastured cows) was passed around the circle (in one of Willowman’s lumpy clay creations). But here the ritual hit an unexpected snag, mouths opening in silent protest as Micah drank from the cup without thought and passed it on to Tuma. When she passed it in turn to someone else, the cup stopped its progress. The woman stared at the milk and at StarTruth in desperation. Did she have to share a cup with a zombie? The high priestess nodded encouragingly, as she could afford to do since she drank first. Then the woman whispered, “I can’t,” and passed it on.
Uma and Tuma took Micah’s hands to give her support. To Micah it was funny to watch the cup pass from one hand to another and only once ever touch another lip. All of the conjured energy fell, the ritual lost its tempo for good, and when it ended she sat outside in the lobby feeling satisfied at her wholly unintentional disruption.
Flies with Crows spoiled it of course, coming over to jabber incoherently about reincarnation and karmic payments and illnesses being life lessons. Illnesses were drawn by negative thoughts, and positive thoughts eradicated them. That was how she had cured her cancer, by chemo and positive thoughts. She launched into a favorite spiel about sending out positive energy to attract positive energy. Like a magnet! Be a magnet of good energy and more good energy will come!
Micah had had it. Did Flies with Crows believe in the power of magnets? When the old woman nodded fervently, Micah said, “Magnetism occurs on an atomic level with the movement of electrically charged particles. One pole of a magnet is negatively charged and the other pole is positively charged from the flux. But like doesn’t attract like with magnets. Like repels like. So by extending these scientific principles to wider philosophical applications, it follows that by sending out good energy to others, you’re actually attracting bad energy to you. Send out bad energy and attract good energy. Do you know what that means?”
Flummoxed, Flies with Crows said, “What?”
“It means Hitler went to heaven,” Micah said.
“Jubilee!” Tuma burst. Both of her mothers were standing behind the bench with expressions of total aghast. Micah dug her nails into her legs the whole way home to keep her laughter on the inside. Then she slunk to Austin’s room and fell apart with him in quiet glee until her mothers called from downstairs for a talk. A very long and boring talk. Honey . . .
So that was Imbolc, and the month got no better from there. Her family was concerned that she was acting out from the stress of her illness and emotional fall-out from the party, so they sent her to therapy. The therapist was also a member of the coven, a woman who called herself Merry Meet in ritual and Cheryl outside of it. The appointments started and ended with hugs, and there was always a box of tissues at the edge of the coffee table. Cheryl had too many teeth when she smiled and a part in her lips when she didn’t. Micah saw nothing but those teeth in the hour-long siege of questions. How did she feel about her Sombra C? A little worried. (She loved it.) How were people treating her at school? Not very well. (She’d shoved Dale Summit into a locker the other day, hiked up his arm behind his back, and whispered if he ever prayed for her again or told, she’d infect him and his whole family.) What did she do to de-stress? Reading and TV. (She and Harbo drove through red cities at night.) Oh, how sad that one of the Sombra C students at Cloudy Valley High had killed himself! Yes, it was so very sad. Micah hadn’t known him. (Carsen should have told her who was bullying him and Micah would have taken care of it.)
It would have been perfect if the therapist were one of triplets, with her siblings named Merry Part and Merry Meet Again. Since Micah had a role to play in this office, of a troubled girl fighting nobly to find her way, she brought up the triplets’ names at the end of one appointment with a weak laugh. Cheryl smiled toothily and hugged her, telling Uma and Tuma that their daughter’s soul was battered but strong.
Micah wasn’t battered. Dale was. Micah was fine. The hard clank of his body striking the locker was nearly as good as watching the brick go through his windshield. It had been an impulse, the two of them happening to be alone in the hallway at the same time after school. He wouldn’t even meet her eyes when they passed since then. Now he’d think twice about bullying someone. Micah wasn’t going to run home crying and feeling suicidal. If he learned to fear her, maybe he’d fear what his next target might do.
But she couldn’t bring up her triumph over Dale in therapy. She talked about college stress and made up trouble with a teacher purely to give Cheryl something to solve. Then the therapist felt effective and Micah hadn’t given anything private away. Only Austin knew that she visited the cemetery almost every night. It wasn’t anyone else’s business.
It was easy to break in. A locked gate blocked the driveway and a high wrought iron fence ran along the front of the property. It was shorter on the sides. Lore said that spirits could not cross wrought iron, so it was to keep them in the cemetery. At what precise point did the fresh slap of bereavement for the dead turn to fear of them? When she was bored in class, she researched facts about cemeteries and learned the lingo of gravestones. Anchors, broken branches or wheels or chains,
lambs, Greek letters, apples, beehives, bells, doves . . . at night she applied her new terms to the graves on the way to visit those murdered at the party. There was an anchor on the third headstone she passed, a dove on the sixth. A dead child farther down had a lamb. Old newspaper records listed his name in an article about a car accident fifty years ago.
Micah had watched Trevor die, the actual moment of his life transforming into his death. Anyone with Sombra C was required by law to be cremated, so his angry face frozen by rigor mortis passed into the flames of an oven to be licked to ash. She stood by his plaque and saw his body crumple, his spirit vacate. There were always flowers at Shelly’s plaque, teddy bears and cards as well. But Trevor’s never had anything. All that Micah had in her pocket at the first visit was a penny. She put it beneath his name, and added another penny every time she came.
Harbo loved the cemetery, not even minding to be dropped over the fence to get in and out. He sniffed around while she wondered about Trevor’s last thought. Shelly never knew what hit her, so Micah did not have the same curiosity. Boys or school or cookies, the typical minutiae, but Trevor knew what was coming. Merry Meet/Cheryl had asked gently about what Micah saw at the party, but this was between Micah and Trevor. Unless the therapist had been there in Blue Hill that night, she hadn’t any right to ask. Micah daubed one of the ever-ready tissues to her dry eyes in the appointment and copped only to watching Nan Hormel die. Everyone knew that already.
Trevor hadn’t wanted to live badly enough. There must have been a point where he let go, conceded to the bullet. Micah believed this yet didn’t at the very same time. One could not argue with a bullet through one’s brain, nudge it into a less damaging trajectory. But she would not have conceded to that culler and his bullet! She would have forced herself to live long enough to bite his ankle. Continue on through her Sombra C passing to him.
She’s always been a little controlling, Tuma had told Merry Meet/Cheryl after an appointment while Micah listened from the hallway. Was that what she was trying to do at Trevor’s grave? Control the manner of her own death, out of shock from seeing him lose control altogether?
She didn’t know why she kept returning to the cemetery. It was just part of the sweep before going off to some red city. Finals were coming up fast and she needed the relaxation. Imbolc and therapy and studying, and in the third week of February, she caught a cold and had to stay home. That drove her wild, being trapped in the house with an equally sick Uma. Micah slept as much as she could in the day in order to stay out all night. Austin was pissed since she was too ill for that, and his anger made her stay out longer. Once she drove all the way north to Napa. It was eerie that that was the night Brennan’s house burned down, Micah in the V-6 coasting by vineyards and thinking his mother was insane to make the commute. Three houses had been lost in the conflagration, and the next night found Micah on the block to look at them. Two looked very ghostly, naked beams exposed in a sea of blackened debris, and the fire had been arrested in the process of consuming the third. That one was much more intact, though still uninhabitable. How could she have missed this? Why did things always happen to other people in other places?
That was the night her mothers caught her, both coming outside when she drove up. Micah said that she’d spotted Harbo running down the road and had given chase. They did not believe the story and accused her of drinking. Offering her pee or blood to be tested, Micah returned the dog to his backyard and went inside for the interrogation. Austin hadn’t tattled; Uma just came downstairs to check on her sickly child and discovered an empty room.
Lies slipped from Micah’s tongue. The nest of blankets in the car? She thought the dog might get cold. The dog treats? She bought those at Pet-Pet (and here’s the receipt!) as treats for Bleu Cheese when everyone went to Corbin’s for the afternoon. The pillow under her blanket? That wasn’t intentional. She had pillows all over the bed to prop her up and let her nasal passages drain. Why hadn’t she left a note? She didn’t think anyone would notice she was gone, but the dog took a lot longer to catch than expected. What’s really going on, Joob? Micah sighed. She was going to bed and spotted the dog running down the road. It was probably her fault. She sneaked over some of Bleu Cheese’s treats now and then and played with Harbo in secret since no one paid any attention to the poor thing. She must not have closed the gate all the way. When he saw her coming to catch him, he mistook it for another game and bolted. Forcing a look of worry, she begged. Please, please don’t tell the neighbors! They wouldn’t want a girl with Sombra C playing with their dog. Uma winced, as she always did at a mention of Sombra C.
Reasonable doubt. She established that much and was allowed to go to bed. Since they’d be alert now to nighttime activities, she had to curtail her adventures for a period. It was crazy making. What worked in her favor was that Austin hadn’t been out with her, and that Shalom called in the morning with thoughts of coming home. The current unrest in Massachusetts was spilling down to Rhode Island and Connecticut. The university was still open and their mothers encouraged her to stay, but be cautious. And not to say anything more about driving cross-country! Tuma transferred money to Shalom’s account in case she wanted to fly.
I shouldn’t give up a semester, Shalom wrote in a text to Micah. It just makes me nervous being here, and the stores’ shelves are practically naked in places.
The day before finals started, Micah had a therapy appointment after school. Wild from being so cooped up, she fretted about college acceptances and not knowing if she even wanted to go if she got in.
“Why do you not want to go to college?” Cheryl asked.
“It’s not creative,” Micah said. College seemed like advanced high school, she explained, but all of her friends were eager to go! That was because Micah was so much brighter, the therapist answered.
They talked about spirit quests, one of which was happening not that far away over the same week in April that Cloudy Valley High had spring break. It was hard to hear one’s inner voice in the hustle and bustle of modern life. For four days, Micah could rove around communing with nature and listening to its whispers, sleep under the stars and get back in touch with her five elements. She could find her animal totem, and that animal would guide her home to herself. Cheryl’s totem was a lizard.
Micah left the appointment on the verge of an explosion. Driving home, she went upstairs and shoved Austin, who was bent over his studies. He wrapped her up in his arms and she fought for freedom. Being unable to win it made her wilder. Thumping her head against his chest, he grunted in pain and forced her down to the bed face first. Then he sat on her ass and pinned her there until she quit.
“I can’t live this life,” Micah whispered in distress. It was a dishtowel slung over a screaming kettle of boiling water, a car that was capable of one hundred and sixty miles an hour but hobbled to twenty-five. She flashed to a memory of an amusement park when she was small, Shalom afraid of a towering rollercoaster and Micah pulling Tuma to it eagerly. Rollercoasters wouldn’t do any longer, jumping off fences wouldn’t do, sitting still for her finals tomorrow was going to be impossible!
She had to go out tonight. It didn’t matter if she was caught.
Since it was decided, she calmed and kissed Austin’s chest. She felt badly for hurting him. Through dinner she was sweet, and afterwards she sat in the den to study and walk Elania through trigonometry problems over the phone. Zaley needed help just as badly, but her father had dragged her off to a Shepherd youth meeting followed by a night’s pace in Penger. Elania was scandalized at the thought of not being able to cram.
It grew later and later, Micah’s mothers going to bed at ten. Austin gave up at eleven, sick of everything to do with his subjects. Half an hour later, a sleepy Tuma came out to collect her forgotten cell phone by the armchair. She told Micah not to stay up too late. Nodding, Micah gathered up the French translations and other assignments. In her bedroom, she packed everything away, shook out a penny from her piggy bank, and waited.
There was nothing interesting in the news, nothing that she hadn’t seen to the point of boredom for months. Murder, assault, explosion, murder, assault, explosion . . . shoot-outs here and shoot-outs there, rumors of Zyllevir shortages and Mirror Lake under attack . . . Now the Shepherd Prime insurgency was declaring war on the United States government . . . Been there, done that, so she read more about cemeteries, death rituals, and haunted homes. It was better to read about stories that had ended than ones still in progress which didn’t involve her.
Since she had to be somewhat functional to pass her finals, this escapade was limited. No jaunts down to San Criata or up to Napa, no winding through the streets of Oakland or going out to the ocean. Two hours at most, and home to bed. Thinking of the lizard animal totem, she grimaced. How dumb to believe that one had a spiritual connection to a reptile. Micah had watched people die, and there was no more intimate or spiritual a connection than that. StarTruth might find the profound in birth, but it wasn’t there. Micah was just joining a known force, primed to walk a familiar path trod by billions of others. Death, now, death was special. Trod by billions of others yet not one single person breathing on this planet knew where all of those billions had gone. Her totems should be Trevor and the doctor, linked to Micah on the road of life with their last seconds, and then diverging to a place she had yet to follow.
She wished that Trevor had not died. She missed his angry face. It hadn’t seemed real in January, but now it was February and too real. That was another reason this month sucked, people going on about life like he never existed. Obsessing about colleges and what their boyfriends were getting them for Valentine’s Day, Trevor was gone and they did not appreciate the significance.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 48