by Jadie Jones
“It’s like she’s been waiting for you all this time. And only you.” Vanessa’s face contorts into a grimace. Moonlit had lunged to bite her any time she got within striking distance.
“I never thought I’d see her again. And I have you to thank. If you hadn’t made me come, I never would have. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Teach me how to ride like that.”
It makes me laugh. I drift back to the reunion with Moonlit and daydream about what our future might hold. I finally have a piece of my family back. I can’t wait for Lucas to see me ride, to see what I’m like outside of a hospital.
The foothills fade to black as the sun sets behind them. I stare hard at the horizon, holding on to the daydream that Lucas is watching me from the trees, happy and proud. But the coming twilight is still. There’s no magic left in it for me tonight.
16 Playing with fire
While I took my time with Moonlit, Vanessa had called to cancel our other appointments now that her barn was full. Our barn. I can’t wait to get back to Moonlit Farm, to get started where I left off. Where Dad left off. We’d had so many plans for Wildwood. Before he died I knew exactly how my life would go, exactly what I wanted. Afterward, I wasn’t sure about anything. But now everything was back on track. Except that he’s not here to see it. And it’s my fault.
“What are you thinking about over there?” Vanessa asks from the driver’s side. Even though her voice is soft, the sound of it makes me jump as I crash out of my head.
“My dad.”
“What about him?”
“That he should be here. How thrilled this would make him.”
“So why do you seem so sad?”
“Because it’s my fault that he’s gone,” I answer in a whisper. Admitting it out loud for the first time hurts just as much as I always feared it would.
“What do you mean?”
“The accident was my fault.”
“If it was an accident how could it be your fault?” she counters.
For the first time, I tell someone the whole story about the day he died. About looking down into the flooded ravine and seeing Teague’s unmoving body floating broadside in the muddy water. About waiting for my dad to surface. About the three seconds of silence between the moment they went over the edge to the moment the worst sound I’d ever heard filled my ears. About the instant Teague took off like a shot through the trees lining the ravine. About letting Dad go ahead of me on a trail we didn’t usually take to see if he’d see it too; that black, shimmering, crackling nothingness that had been there the last time I rode the seldom-traveled trail alone. About how it lunged at him from its hiding place among a thicket of blackberry bramble.
He didn’t see it. Teague did.
“What about Moonlit?” Vanessa asks, nearly breathless.
“She didn’t flinch the first time I saw it, which is why I thought it was all in my head. I just wanted to see if he noticed it, too. But when it jumped at Dad, Moonlit spooked and ran back for the barn. I jumped off but I was too late. Teague was basically side-swiped by it and took off. Dad never saw it coming. And it’s my fault.” I hide my face with my hands.
“That was not your fault,” Vanessa insists. “Accidents happen. It was awful, yes. But it was no one’s fault. If anything is to blame it’s whatever that thing was that jumped at his horse.”
“It still feels like my fault. He wouldn’t have been there in that moment if I hadn’t asked to take that trail.”
“Would your dad want you to feel like that?”
Even though I know the obvious answer, I turn the question over in my head. Nowhere do I find a reason he would want me to blame myself. Intentions are everything, Tanzy. You can’t always control how the chips fall. His voice repeats within me, what he always said when a plan went awry. The warmth of his voice lingers even as the sound of it fades.
“No. He wouldn’t.” I whisper, studying my hands in my lap. Hightower hands. They’re shaped just like his.
“You deserve to have good things happen to you. He would want this for you, wouldn’t he?”
“He really, really would,” I answer, swelling with bittersweet joy. He would be so proud of me.
“I know how you can be sure.”
“Sure about what?” At first I think I’ve misheard her. I swivel in my seat, studying the side of her face. My insides hum like they know what she’s about to suggest.
“If you could talk to him again, would you want to?”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s a woman that usually shows up for the drum circles. She does all kinds of voodoo stuff. Reads tarot cards, palms. I bet she could try to contact him for you.”
“No way,” I answer, shaking my head.
“Okay,” she relents immediately. “But if you change your mind, I’ll see if I can find her.” We let the topic drop, but the offer buries itself in my brain, refusing to be tossed out. It reappears each time I let my guard down.
The lights of Louisville fade as Vanessa drives away from the city and into the dark countryside. She makes several quick turns down roads without street signs, and then pulls into a grassy field. A handful of other cars are tucked into a curve in the tree line. She carefully maneuvers the Maserati into a protected space and turns off the engine. The field falls into inky black the moment she extinguishes the headlights.
“See there? That’s where we’re going,” she says quietly and points at a glow of flame light at the bottom of a long hill. We get out of her car and silently follow the line of trees until the mouth of a trail appears. “Are you okay?” she asks over her shoulder before she starts down the path. The question is more loaded than I’m willing to admit, so I muster a smile in place of the words I can’t find. She gives me a knowing look and then moves into the trees.
The rumble of the drums below peppers the air like closing thunder. My breath quickens so I hold it, listening as every beat defines itself from the din. A rustle behind us whips my head around. Two glinting eyes flash in the thick black. They disappear a moment later.
“Vanessa, I think something’s out here,” I whisper.
“There are lots of things out here. We’re in the middle of the woods. We’re the outsiders here.” Her confidence catches me by surprise, challenging the girl within me who used to feel perfectly at home among the trees and darkness. She stirs beneath my skin, stiff and out of practice. But she’s there.
The riverfront is aglow with a ring of torches. A huge bonfire that sends a column of smoke into the clear night sky. People dance around the bonfire, backlit by the flames. Their bodies move in time to the drummers’ music like a heartbeat. My pulse reacts the instant we step inside the throbbing fray.
“Come on!” Vanessa says, towing me toward the bonfire. She finds a spot just big enough for two people and lifts her hands above her head. Every strike of a stick on the taut surface of a drum pushes and pulls at her body as she sways to its rhythm, setting her free and keeping her prisoner. And I want it—I want to know how it feels to need everything and nothing at the exact same time.
“Who do we have here?” A woman’s voice rasps behind me. I spin toward the words, somehow sure that they’re for me. “Now you’re something special, aren’t you?” she says as she reaches a curled finger toward the mark hidden under my clothes.
I want to take a step back, but there’s nowhere to go without bumping into someone. The whites of the woman’s hazel eyes leap from her bronze skin. Twists of waist-long dreadlocks spill over her shoulders. Shells and pieces of sea glass are woven into her black hair. She brings her finger within a hair’s width of my jacket and then snatches her hand away with a hiss.
“What do you want?” I whisper, still frozen in place. I can’t believe Vanessa hasn’t intervened. The woman’s nose is so close to my neck that I can feel the air rush past me and into her nostrils as she inhales. She leans away from me and cuts her glowing eyes to disbelieving slits.
�
�Don’t let her scare you,” Vanessa says, breaking the intense spell that had settled in the sliver of air between us. “Why are you scaring my friend, Maris?”
“She came with you?” she asks, her bright eyes moving from Vanessa to me. “But of course she did.”
“You two know each other?” I finally ask, flexing my hands at my sides.
“I know everything,” Maris says with another sly grin. I can’t place Maris’s accent, her voice tropical and worn like a piece of driftwood. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard before.
“Don’t let her scare you. She’s harmless,” Vanessa says with a wave of her hand. “She lives here. Illegally, I’m sure. She just takes some getting used to. This is the woman I was telling you about. The one who might be able to help, if you want.”
“Right,” I answer slowly, studying the woman’s face. Something about her glows. It’s not something I can see with my eyes, but I can feel it. She has a draw on me like the moon to the tide. “I don’t want any help. But thanks.” Maris tilts her head and stares straight at the location of my mark again. Her eyes burn through my coat and make my skin hot.
“How do you know about the scars?” I cover the place on my coat with my hand.
“Because I know you. And I know your mother,” Maris says. As soon as the word mother leaves her lips, every other sight and sound around me blurs.
“What are you talking about?” My world spins. Vanessa moves between us but Maris waves her back.
“You come with me. I will tell you what I see,” she says and stretches out her hand. I reach back and then pause, my hand suspended over hers. “I can cause you no harm, girl. You have strength beyond any other human, do you not? You have nothing to fear from no one. Not like that anyway.” She stares straight through my eyes. Her pupils dilate so far that they blot out her gold-green irises. I’ve only seen one other person do that before. Lucas.
Without a second thought, I clamp my hand around hers. Her lips pull back in a satisfied grin as she leads me through the crush of people and toward a little tent at the water’s edge. Vanessa follows close behind us.
“Ah-ah, bella. This is not for you,” Maris scolds Vanessa once we step clear of the crowd. I hold my breath, waiting for Vanessa to argue. But she obediently steps back and gives us a wave. I cast her one last glance over my shoulder as Maris pulls me forward.
We step inside the little tent and she takes a seat on the ground, which is covered with a heavy blue blanket. A weathered wooden chest is nestled in the corner. It’s the only thing in the tent besides the two of us. She lives in here? I cautiously lower myself to the floor. Crystal prisms dangle from the low ceiling. They catch light from sources I can’t see and paint dark rainbows all over the canvas walls. She strikes a match and brings it to the wick of an antique lantern. The rainbows fade a bit in the new light. With a start I realize that the prisms had been reflecting Maris’s invisible glow. What are you?
“I am the hand in the undertow. I am the rainbow in the mist,” she says as she settles to the ground.
“You can read my mind?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from shaking. Quick on the heels of my question comes the startling realization that it won’t seem strange if she says yes. It just means I will have to watch my mouth and my thoughts. I will them both to silence.
“I know everything,” she repeats. But this time it sounds like she’s trying to reassure me. It does little to help. My eyes dart from Maris to the opening and back. I can beat her to the door, and that does help.
“What do you want with me?” I finally ask.
“I must fulfill the promise I made to your mother.”
“How do you know my mother?”
“We go way back,” she says, her eyes softening.
“She said she wasn’t my real mom. Is that true?”
“It was the best thing. The only way to keep you protected. To keep us all protected.” Her cryptic answer makes me ball my fists at my sides. I let out a hard breath and lock stares with Maris, silently begging her to say anything that makes sense.
“So is she my mom or not?” My question obviously takes Maris by surprise. She closes her eyes and a knowing smile spreads across her face.
“A piece of wind and sky, she was,” she says, her voice low. “It’s the only reason they finally had to let you come back.”
“Say something that makes sense!” My cheeks flush, betraying my desperation.
“I have already wasted too much time. Now then. You need to quiet that tongue and that mind of yours and listen to me.”
“Maris, please!” I cry out, smacking my palm against the ground between us. She jumps, clutching her fingers to her chest. My wild breaths come out wet and ragged, each one squeezing past the sob I won’t let out. You’re only mad because it matters, and that’s okay, my father’s favorite bargaining chip haunts the edges of my mind. “She matters, Maris. It matters.”
“No, girl. You are mistaken. You matter. You matter to us all.”
“What are you talking about?” The sting of threatening tears finally breaks free, dripping unchecked down my face.
“About his mark. About your purpose.” She reaches for the rings again. I close my eyes, but I don’t move away. I can’t. My body is heavy, useless—weighted down by these half answers that act as a paralytic instead of a springboard. “And yours is marked with a purpose that will affect us all.”
“What do you mean? What is my purpose?”
“The same as anyone’s purpose. To make a choice.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Everything in me is suspended over the gap between what I’m sure of and what I’m not, and the ground is crumbling beneath my feet. The meager space inside the burlap walls begins to whirl, picking up speed with every evolution.
“But it makes perfect sense. You are not destined to complete a single action. You are destined to choose between two. And the choice you have to make is truly dreadful. I know now why your mother made the decision she did.”
“What decision? What did she do?” I steel my hands by my sides.
“I say too much and waste precious time. I must fulfill the promise I made. Which is to keep her secret, and to show you yours.” The word secret instantaneously stops the slow spin in the tent, making me pitch forward. I catch myself on my knees.
Does she know about what happened to Dad? Thoughts of my mother vanish from my head the moment his face appears in the same space. I don’t feel like a traitor for choosing his face over hers. She’s made it clear she would’ve rather lost me in the river instead of him. For the first time in years, it seems we’re on the same side. The recognition brings a new round of bitter tears.
“Your father has no part in this,” Maris says as she leans back and unlocks the wooden chest. It groans with protest as she lifts the heavy lid. “But what happened to him certainly does.”
“Part in what? What is this? What does it mean? You know something. I know you do,” I demand, motioning to the mark on my sternum.
“Asher. And what he intends to do.” She plucks a little red bottle from the chest and snaps it shut.
“Give me one straight answer,” I seethe, quaking with desire to burn her little tent to the ground. In a flash of a vision I can even see it smoldering on the riverbank. My mind begins to toy with whether or not Maris is inside when I set it ablaze, but I catch the thought and toss it from my mind, horrified and embarrassed. She levels her eyes at me and I wonder if she saw what I saw. The pile of ash I wish for her home.
“This life is not your first.” She delivers the sentence in even words, each one a puzzle piece. They click together one at a time. They paint a picture I can see. A picture that starts to make sense. A wave of doubt overtakes them, scattering the pieces far and wide.
“That’s not possible.” I shake my head, agitation drying up the wells behind my eyes.
“I have no time for your doubts, girl. Listen to what I have to say now and reject it all you like once you
leave.” Arguing with her has only served to march me in a circle. My father’s voice whispers in my mind again, reminding me of something he told me about the pecking order in a herd of horses: the one in charge moves the least, instead showing dominance by forcing the movement of the others.
Be still, Tanzy.
“Okay, I’m listening.” I press my lips together in a hard line and focus on inhaling slowly and deliberately.
“Before this life, you were given form once before, nearly a thousand years ago. During that life, your soul was marked for a terrible choice. So terrible that once your physical form perished, the powers that be took every measure to make sure your soul would re-enter this world as seldom as possible. Never, they hoped.”
“What am I choosing between exactly?” My voice doesn’t shake, but my hands do. I ball them into fists and press them against my thighs. Maris’s hazel eyes drop to the floor. She absently spreads her long skirt across her lap. Finally, she meets my gaze.
“Endings.” She blinks the shine in her eyes away as her answer hangs in the air between us. My blood understands her meaning before my mind catches on, speeding up in my veins and drumming in my ears. My hands twitch reflexively, remembering the way it felt to reach into John’s flesh and shatter the bones beneath.
Endings. What if Vanessa was wrong? What if all of this is part of something very, very bad? Maris reaches out to steady me and hands me water in a small crystal cup. I accept it, but I don’t drink it.
“Go on,” I say, refusing to expose any further emotion. She takes a long breath and studies me before she continues.
“They required two conditions for your soul to be reborn. First, that you be born to a mother who has seen both sides of the veil.”
“What veil?” I ask as calmly as I can manage.
“Second,” she snaps, holding up a finger. “That the original blood be joined with the original soul for your path to be set in motion. And I can smell it on you. He did it somehow.”