by Su Williams
The thundering feet of his older brother jolts him from the ground and pushes him on. Water splashes in diving arcs as he sloshes his way downstream and to the opposite bank. Profanities, that his mother would chastise them with a leather belt for using, are cast at his back and usher him faster. The ground grows wetter and wetter as he nears a giant mud hole. Mud sloshes up his thighs, and with each step, his feet grow heavier and heavier, like wading through quicksand. His angry brother howls curses from the shore, but has no desire to plod through the gumbo mud. Daddy stops and swipes the layers of mud from his feet before diving forward away from his pursuer. As he slogs to the shallows, more mud cakes to his feet. Soon he must stop again to clear it away.
“Emari?” Nick’s hand was at the small of my back. I whirled on him and brought my fists up, but his lightning reflexes caught my wrists. “Emari? What’s going on?”
I squeezed my eyes closed and shook away the images and sensations of gumbo mud stuck to my feet.
“Em? What happened?”
“My dad…” I rasped out. “I saw a memory of my dad.”
“Like, you remembered something about your dad? Or you saw one of your dad’s memories?”
Pushing myself away from him to get a little distance, I stammered over my thoughts. “I…it was his memory…like when I memoryprint something. A memory of when he was a kid. My…his brother was after him. He was gonna beat him up for something.”
His hand drifted toward my face, but his fingers retracted like I stung him. “May I?”
I scowled. “No. I can figure it for myself. I don’t need you to babysit my every thought.”
“As you wish.” This phrase that told me how much he loved me, held no affection at all. Just frustration and ire. He was having a hard time separating himself from his role as my protector. So, he tried a different tack. “Remember when we were downstairs in the hidden room? You were touching the ash and dust on the boxes and you said you remembered Mount Saint Helens blowing back in 1980?”
I nodded. “Yeah?”
“But you couldn’t possibly remember that. You weren’t even born yet.”
“I know.”
“You need to…would you find that memory? Figure out whose memory it is?” His attempts to pacify the raging beast inside me were heroic—but it only made me madder.
I snorted at him. So lady-like. He growled, low and quiet in his chest. “Why?”
The corners of his mouth quirked up. A smile that nearly liquefied my resolve. “Something’s just—off. I’ve never seen a Weaver, newborn or not, display the type of memories you’re talking about. It’s like you’re a chalice.”
“A what?”
“Um, like you’ve collected your dad’s memories.”
“Uh, yeah,” I tried and failed to rein in my snark. “Isn’t that what we do?”
“Yes, but—you’re different. What you’re describing is different. It’s like someone gave you the memories—used your head to store them in. Make sense?
“Sure. Sure. Of course it does. Not.” I was beginning to sound childish even to my own ears. “Fine. How?”
Nick gestured me toward the couch. “You can do it all on your own. I’d—like to see them for myself—if you don’t mind.”
Maybe I’d throw him a bone. He had been overwhelmingly patient with my snotty attitude. The dark phantom inside me screamed ‘no!’ But I ignored it and gave Nick a stiff nod.
“What do I do?” I conceded.
“Same as always, like a search engine, but you’re going to trace the memory back to its root. Just slide your thoughts along the thread of the memory until it comes to the genesis.”
I settled on the couch and pulled a pillow to my chest as a shield. Since when do I need protection from Nickolas Benedetti? Maybe, I always needed it. Nick sat next to me, a modest distance away. He faced me and propped his hand on the back of the couch. “You know the drill, Em. Just relax.” His voice still did its magic to soothe the inferno inside me. I rested my head on the back of the couch, but I could still feel his eyes on my face—still feel the wringing of his heart as its wreckage echoed inside him.
I opened my eyes and gazed into his. “Will you help me?” In all honesty, the thought of what I might find frightened me and I didn’t want to be alone. Nick’s pupils dilated with the surge of his heart, but he reined in his hope, trying not to seem too eager.
“Of course,” he murmured and held his hand out to me.
My hand trembled over his as fear clenched my heart in a vice. Can I trust him in my head anymore? I slid my hand into his with feigned bravery. Heat raced up my arm and exploded like fireworks in my chest. His unrestrained emotions spilled into my mind. Pain unbearable. Grief and loss. Love and passion. Fear—and an inkling of hope. With a gasp, I jerked my hand back. The pain was no longer hidden under his brave facade. Now it twisted his brow.
“I’m sorry, Em. I…”
“I don’t think it was your fault, Nick. Remember? You tend to leak around me.”
He pursed his lips and nodded, so I took his warm hand in mine and placed them in my lap.
“Just relax…” Like that expert hypnotist, his words lulled my heart and quelled the raging storm inside me. I grinned at his warmth and familiarity, and his smile in return fluttered in my heart. Comfort. That’s what each of us had been missing: that comfortable place we’d shared with each other for so many weeks and months. That comfort that brought us rest and peace, and support from the onslaught outside of us. A sigh wheezed from my lungs and he echoed me. “Locate that memory…good…see the thread of light that sparks away from it?…Follow it.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking out loud or just in my head, but the words spilled over me like anointing oil.
The same memory blossomed, my father’s feet beating the Mississippi Delta dust into low, dry clouds. The gumbo mud caking thicker and thicker layers and dragging my feet.
Keep going. Back to the source. His voice reverberating inside me distracted me from the task at hand. Concentrate, Em. My soul, my energy, whatever it was bent to meet his, drawn by the polarity of his. Emi. Concentrate. Slow and steady. Nick guided me back to the memory and walked me to its source.
*
“What do you mean ‘you know’?” scoffed Nick later when we told Sabre about my father’s implanted memories.
Without looking up, Sabre said, “I put them there.”
“What?!” Nick and I said in unison.
“You don’t really believe you were the only one holding secrets for Zecharias.”
“Seriously?” I fumed. “And just when were you going to tell me?”
Sabre just shrugged. Ass! Somehow, I’d momentarily forgotten that we’d established that’s exactly what he was. An arrogant, self-righteous ass. Since when did I start thinking of Sabre James as the ‘good guy’?
“And you didn’t think that was important information for me to know?” Nick raged.
Sabre glance up from his project and shrugged again. “What all did you put in there?” I asked, though my fingers itched to wrap around his neck and squeeze. Another shrug nearly jettisoned me across the room to pound on him. Nick angled himself in front of me. To protect me or Sabre?
Slowly and meticulously, Sabre finally set down his tools and turned his full attention on us. “He didn’t say and I didn’t ask.” He must’ve noticed my nostrils flaring and the steam rising from my ears. “I helped him gather some memories of stuff he wanted you to know. Memories of his childhood—I don’t know what else. Your mother’s are in there too. You just haven’t found them yet.”
I raked my nails through my hair, laced my fingers at the back of head and squeezed my skull between my forearms…like that would curb the raging headache that throbbed in my brain. Nick’s hand grazed my back, but I jolted away.
“Do you guys ever tell the truth, even to yourselves?!” I raged. “’cause obviously you even lie to each other.” Nick winced, then shot a glare at his mentor.
Goddammi
t, Sabre! Nick’s rage roared through the room.
I snarled at them both and phased from the house.
The light of Nick’s ethereal form blazed after me until I reached my little house in the woods, then he veered off and streaked away across the black night sky.
Eddyson wasn’t fazed by my phasing in and out of the house anymore. I guess he just thought that’s how coming and going was done. I didn’t doubt his super-puppy powers alerted him to my presence as much as the Rephaim. His boisterous bays and waggling hind end coaxed a smile to my face and warmth to my heart. I scooped up his growing body and fell into bed with him. He licked my face with his warm wet tongue. Finally, his head came to rest on my shoulder, and with great sigh of contentment, he nudged himself closer to my side and closed his eyes. Only moments passed before soft snores rumbled from his nose, and the twitch of a dream raced behind his eyelids and flicked in his paws. And I wondered what puppy dreams were like.
Chapter 13 When You’re Gone
Huddled on a blanket on the hardwood floor of the cottage with Eddyson, I continued to fume over the Weaver’s deceptions. But the texture of Eddy’s soft fur under my fingertips soothed the rage in my heart until I could fully take in what Sabre had told me. Not only did I retain my father’s memories, but my mother’s as well. She felt so far away from me now. And I needed her more now than ever. How was I supposed to sort out these feelings that swung from cold to hot in an instant? Should I ever trust this man—these men, ever again? How did I make the passion for him go away if I decided to cut him out of my life?
My hand came to a standstill on Eddy’s coat as my thoughts drifted. But the boy was sound asleep and wouldn’t notice if the house fell down. Or maybe a Wraith came calling. I rolled to my back and stared at the dark wood built-ins that separated the living and dining rooms. My mother helped me strip the old varnish off, and re-stain and seal them. I didn’t need to touch the shining wood to pull on the memories of us together for many long hours, laughing and talking and sharing our lives. Until this moment, I’d thought they were completely gone from me. But now I knew, I held their memories in my heart and mind. I reached deep inside myself to stroke the memories of them to life.
She is so young. Younger even than I am now. She and Daddy lay on a blanket in a park. The sun leaves its kiss upon her cheeks. The breeze toys with the wisps of her fine strawberry blonde hair. They’d just run off to get married, even though they are little more than children. But she knows that he is the one for her. She just knows. They listen to Elvis on a transistor radio and leap to their feet to dance the ‘Jail House Rock’ atop the blanket. They fall together in giggles at the finish of the song and gaze with smiling eyes at each other.
She leans back into a nursery rocker, a soft pink blanket bundled in her arms, feeding a wriggling babe who insists her leg be propped over the crook of her mother’s arm. She smiles and gazes down at me as though I’m a miracle. And in her heart, I am. The green of her own eyes reflect in mine, her same strawberry blonde hair whorls in a wispy halo around my head. Such profound love radiates from her smile.
Cool, textured linoleum chills her knees as she holds my pudgy hands to keep me balanced. Daddy sits a few feet away coaxing me with outstretched arms. Her hands hover ever near, even when I boldly release them and toddle my first steps into the arms of my father. She stands, clapping and smiling and telling me what a good girl I am, how smart, how brave.
I didn’t feel brave anymore as tears rolled down my face. Will I ever stop crying over them? Does it mean I’m forgetting them if I don’t cry? Will I ever feel normal without them? Yeah, not sure normal and Emari Sweet are synonymous. I swatted at the tears. These weren’t necessarily sad tears. Some of them were happy. Happy to know the love she held for me. How I’d been such an answer to prayer for her. How proud she’d always been of me even for the smallest things.
Sabre’s words drifted back through me. I helped him gather some memories of stuff he wanted you to know. What else did my father want me to know? I delved into my memories, rabidly searching for anything that seemed out of place. Suddenly, my father’s words caressed my mind.
Follow the map.
The map I’d found behind the old mirror that he’d left for me to find? I tugged on the ingrained image of the scribbled map on brittle yellowed paper and followed the tug of my father’s instructions down to the hidden room Nick and I discovered in the basement. Ari thrummed against my chest and I pressed my palm over her pulsing body.
‘So. You’ve found my memories at last, have you?’ My father’s voice speaks straight from my mind.
‘Yes, Daddy.’
‘We’ve left you some treasures to remember us by. But there are secrets hidden within you as well,’ he says without preamble.
‘What kinds of secrets?’ I am again a child of four, wide-eyed and full of questions.
‘Wonderful secrets. And dangerous secrets. And I would ask you not to seek them all out at once. There is time, plenty of time to unearth them.’
‘How will I find them?’
‘As you find any memory. Set your mind to the answer and it will reveal itself to you. What do you want, above all else, to know?’
I think for a moment. About how much I wish ‘normal’ could return to my life. I want to ask, ‘how do I destroy Thomas? Once and for all?’ But I already possess the knowledge to kill the Rephaim. I want to ask how to survive without him and Mom, but I’m surviving, already. Finally I say, ‘I want the truth of all of my memories restored to me.’ My mind zings with pulses of electricity as though I can see it arcing from synapse to synapse, neuron to neuron, memory to memory until every sight, smell, taste, sound, sensation and emotion that, in one way or another, had been manipulated, returns whole to me. So many. Many I didn’t even realize were altered: the memory of the jet ski accident as it truly happened, the truth of what Emma became, mind tricks Nick used to dull my grief, the secrets Nick and Sabre wove to hide themselves from me before I knew the truth of what they are, and the secrets they keep even now. The flaring sparks of memories dim like a lamp depleted of fuel.
‘I miss you Daddy.’ I feel the tears singing my cheeks.
‘We miss you, honey.’
‘What else do I need to find in the hidden room? And why is there a hidden room in the first place?’ The 1903 craftsman home was moved from its original foundation on the South Hill to this location in Mead in 1963. Over fifty years it’s stood on this spot.
‘Nick and Sabre are not the only Caphar who entered our lives. The original owner of the cottage, Asa, was Caphar, and he built the room for his secrets. When we moved out here from Spokane, he sensed pre-Caphar abilities in me. He implanted the desire for the house in my mind so he could pass the cottage down to one of his kind.’
‘Is that why I fell in love with it, too?’
‘No,’ Daddy chuckles. ‘That was purely organic. You’ve found Ari and the magic she possesses. And the crystalline phials for collection of blood.’ I nod, and my father’s memories lead me into the darkest corner of the hidden room. ‘There, in the wall you will find a prophecy of sorts. Where you can see the near future, Asa could see it far off. And he saw a burgeoning, powerful Weaver with abilities beyond what most of them dream of. He saw a Weaver defying the natural laws of their kind. Who teaches the old and young alike how to be more powerful. Who brings down the last of the Rephaim.’
‘I don’t want to be some sort of savior!’
My father’s chuckle unsettles me. ‘The Caphar need no saving. If they did, they would be Rephaim. You have seen the damage a single Wraith can do in so many lives.’
I remember Nick telling me that no Weaver steps into the life of a Wraith without complete knowledge of what he is doing. And once the line is crossed, there is no redemption. ‘So, what about Sabre?’
‘Aw, yes. Sabre James, so like his infamous, bank robbing namesake. Did he tell you that’s how he got his surname? From Jessie James?’
‘No
. But it makes complete sense.’
‘That choice is still within his hands.’ Maybe Nick isn’t the only who believes in choices.
Tucked in the eaves of the room I find another leather-bound journal like the one from the ash and dust covered box that triggered memories of the eruption of Mount Saint Helens. ‘Are the memories of Mount Saint Helens yours?’
‘No. Those were your mother’s.’
‘They felt so real, like they were really mine.’ Dad doesn’t answer, just hums in understanding, like he always did when the answer was obvious and nothing more needs to be said. I dust off the cover of the book and press it to my chest. I don’t need to open and read it, the memories and wisdom find my heart all on their own. The darkness of the room ensconces me as I absorb the memories from the ancient journal. I don’t realize my father’s voice has fallen silent until I get up to leave. I trail my fingers through the ash and dust, and memories of the volcano flash into my mind. The presence of my mother is now obvious in them. ‘I miss you Mom.’ The memory of her embrace, warm and sincere, floods my mind, so vivid, so real, my breath catches in my chest.
As the memory subsided, I dragged myself back up the stairs and sat beside a snoozing Eddy on the couch, trying to piece together all of the information my mind had absorbed. No wonder Dad cautioned me about learning too much at once. I could never make sense of all this information at one time.
Chapter 14 Life Ain’t Always Beautiful
Ivy’s eyes sparkled like the sun dancing on Dead Man’s Creek. If the sun weren’t already out, her smile would’ve lit the day. Eddyson snuffled along the path parallel to the railroad tracks, inhaling the scent of every critter large or small that had ever come this way. I nudged her arm as we walked side by side down the tracks, each balanced on a rail, hands clasped in the center for balance.