by Tracy Deonn
I watch Mary settle on her knees, palms facing up on her lap. I watch as she begins chanting beneath her breath, a low pulse that feels like warm drums beating in my feet, in my belly, my heart. Then, I watch as those drums become more than a feeling, as they take shape and become visible.
Light curls up from Mary’s knuckles and coats her palms and wrists, as yellow flames grow and pulse along her skin.
“Mage flame,” I whisper in awe. Patricia startles beside me, but somehow, that doesn’t feel like it matters. Not when I see Mary lean forward over Abby’s back until her glowing golden hands hover over the injuries and the wounds begin to slowly, slowly close. Not when Mary’s breathing and Abby’s ragged breaths come together until their chests rise and fall in the same rhythm, and the root knits muscle to muscle, muscle to fascia, skin to skin.
The smells of honey and blood mix together in my nose and mouth.
The two women breathe together for a long, long time, while the blood of Mary’s ancestors comes forward to heal wounds wrought by a horse whip in the hands of an evil man.
Finally, Mary leans back, beads of sweat glistening on her forehead.
But Abby’s wounds have not fully closed. “She’s not done, is she?”
“She is.”
“But Abby’s still bleeding!”
“Look at the herbs.”
Beside Mary’s knees, the bundles of plants and herbs have turned withered and black. The moist roots have dried and curled into small, sooty fists. “I don’t understand.”
“Wildcrafters borrow power from their ancestors in order to use the energy of the plants. That power is finite, and so is the living energy of plants, as is Mary’s ability to operate as a vessel, as with all crafters of her branch.” Illustrating Patricia’s words, Mary herself sways on her knees. Louisa rushes to her side to help steady her.
I shake my head. This is not what I’ve seen William do. He can close wounds fully, seal them up and heal them almost overnight. When I think of him and Sel and the other Awakened Scions, their power seems to have no limit. Why? Why not Mary’s? “But Abby’s still in pain.”
“She’s saved Abby from deadly infection. Abby’s body will heal the rest of the way. Perhaps if another Wildcrafter were nearby, but even then, the ancestors may not allow a double treatment. We can’t turn them on and off like a tap. They allow us to use their power, after all.”
“Bless you, Mary,” Abby whispers, her voice drowsy with exhaustion. “Bless you.”
“Of course,” Mary soothes as Louisa helps her to her feet. “Rest now.”
“Mary, stay,” Louisa says, gesturing over to the blankets I’d seen earlier. “You need rest too. The ancestors used you up, I expect.”
Mary nods in agreement, her eyes half-lidded. “All right.” Louisa guides her to the far end of the cabin, walking right past us, and helps lower Mary to the smooth clay floor.
“What did you say earlier?” Patricia tugs on my hand. “About Mary’s power?”
I watch Mary settle under Lousia’s blankets and feel an urge to give her my sweatshirt, my socks. Anything that could help her or Louisa or Abby feel warmer. “Mage flame. I saw her gather aether—root—into her palms before she healed Abby. It’s the same color of aether surrounding the Unsung Founders Memorial.”
She moves into my field of vision, eyes round. “You can see root?”
Her question catches me off guard. “You can’t?”
A mixture of wonder and confusion transforms her face. “I feel it, but I don’t see it. A Reader or a Medium or a Prophet could, perhaps, if she asked the ancestors to lend her their eyes. But never for more than a short time.” Her expression shifts. “Who taught you these words, Bree?”
I don’t want to lie. “The Order of the Round Table.”
Dismay overtakes Patricia’s features, and suddenly the air in the cabin runs cool. “Bloodcrafters,” she whispers, fear plain on her face.
“Is—is that another word for the Legendborn?” I stammer. “The way you call aether ‘root’?”
“No, not just a word.” She wraps her hands around mine, drawing them together between our bodies. The softness of her skin is only a sheath. Underneath, her hands are unyielding steel. “Bloodcrafters don’t borrow power from their ancestors, they steal it. Bind it to their bodies for generations and generations.”
“I—I know about the bloodlines,” I sputter, a pool of dread forming in my stomach. “What they use their powers for, what they fight.”
“Then you know their sins,” Patricia says. “Bloodcraft is a curse brought to life.”
Patricia’s eyes hold every Legendborn horror I’ve heard of and witnessed, every evil I’ve imagined, and then some: the Merlin who stole my mother from me. The Merlin who took Nick’s. Sel’s ruthlessness. The Regents. Fitz’s losses. The Lieges who abused a child they called king. “They’re… It’s—”
“Colonizer magic. Magic that costs and takes. Many practitioners face demons. Many of us face evil. But from the moment their founders arrived, from the moment they stole Native homelands, the Order themselves gave the demons plenty to feed on! They reap what their magic sows.”
Suddenly, Louisa appears mere inches beside us. Patricia releases me, and we both stumble back. Then, without warning, Louisa turns her head, her eyes looking vaguely in my direction.
“I thought she couldn’t see us?” I gasp.
Patricia’s brows furrow as she watches her ancestor search the space where my head is. “She can’t.”
But Louisa’s brown eyes fasten to mine like a button snapping into place, throwing sparks on my skin. “I see you,” she whispers harshly.
Before I can say another word, Louisa wraps her hands around my elbow, and the world disappears again.
* * *
I open my eyes, gasping and choking on the tight clenching sensation around my spine. The feeling is less dizzying than the first memory walk, but I have to bend over, hands on knees to catch my breath before I can look at my surroundings.
I’m in another cabin like the first, but this one is smaller, brighter, and full of bustling Black women. Again, a woman’s wail fills the space, a single torturous note drawn out, then ending. Voices of encouragement, another low moan.
“What was that?” I turn to ask Patricia. But Patricia is not with me. There is only Louisa.
The older woman stands beside me, still in her bloody dress, and stares across the cabin without answering me. Her eyes track two women who exit through a side door carrying a heavy metal pail held between them.
Seeing that she’s not going to explain what she just did—or how she can see me at all—I try another question. “Where are we?”
Louisa answers without looking at me. “Not far from my home in the other memory. The better question is when, girl.”
I stand up. “When are we?”
“Fifty years from my time, when my grandmother was young.”
“1815. Why did you bring me here?”
Louisa regards me with shrewd eyes. “Because you need to see this.”
“Where is Patricia?”
“So many questions!” Louisa snorts. “My descendant is back in her time. You’ll return when we’re done. Come.” She grips me hard around the elbow and pulls without care that I’m stumbling behind her. The closer we get, the stronger the hot, copper smell of blood grows.
And then, the loud wail of a newborn.
Three women in long dresses kneel around a fourth, who has just given birth. The mother—a young girl who’s maybe eighteen or nineteen—is propped up on blood-soaked blankets wrapped around a lumpy collection of straw and grass. Her skirts are bunched around her waist, her hands wrapped like vises around her bent knees. She’s panting, exhausted, and sweaty, but the fierce determination on her warm golden-brown face makes her… striking. Gorgeous.
“It’s Pearl that’s just had the baby,” Louisa says. She jerks her chin at the other three women, the youngest of whom looks Pearl’s age
and the others in their late twenties. “Cecilia, Betty, and Katherine.”
“You know them?”
Louisa smirks and points out the youngest woman. “That’s my mother’s mother. She brought us here.”
Cecilia wipes at Pearl’s forehead while Betty works at the afterbirth. It’s Katherine who holds the crying baby out of sight, wiping it down, I think, with one of the wet rags hanging over a pail of water. My eyes are drawn to a bloody blade on a wooden board beside her. It’s hard to not think of the risks here—germs, infection, dirty water—even though I know women have done this for centuries with the same or less. “Why did she bring me here?”
Louisa tilts her head. “I don’t know.”
Katherine hisses, a sharp intake of air that turns everyone’s heads. Pearl, a new mother on high alert, reaches for her child. “What is it, Kath? Is he all right?” Katherine turns around, and for the first time I can see the baby wrapped in her arms. He’s still stained with blood, wrinkled and wet. His cries have gone quiet, replaced now with whimpers. Betty moves closer, and she and Katherine exchange glances. Pearl notices this too. “Betty? Something wrong?” Pearl asks cautiously, her eyes darting between the two other women. “Am I still bleeding bad?”
Betty shakes her head. “Seen worse. The bleeding’s not the problem.”
Pearl is frantic now. “Then give him to me!”
“Give him to her, Kath,” Betty says quietly. Katherine obliges and passes the newborn to his mother. When Pearl reaches out, worry and love are written on her face. When she holds her baby close, a quiet horror takes over.
Over her shoulder, Cecilia gasps. “His eyes!”
A small curl of apprehension buzzes along my skin.
Maybe Cecilia has that feeling too, because she looks ready to bolt from Pearl’s side.
Katherine shakes her head. “Told you not to mess with that red-eyed devil, but you did, didn’t you? Ain’t nothing good coming from a man you meet at the crossroads, Pearl. Nothing.”
Pearl’s eyes are filled with tears. She shakes her head twice, to deny Katherine or to deny what she’s seeing, I don’t know. “He’s my son,” she says with a trembling lip.
I speak to Louisa without looking, my feet already moving closer to the scene. “What’s wrong with his eyes?”
“A crossroads child,” Louisa says cryptically.
She doesn’t stop me or call me back. I’m almost at Pearl’s side, and my hands are shaking like my entire body already knows what’s wrong with this baby. What—and who—he’ll look like.
“He may look like a baby, but that is their disguise,” Katherine says, sadness and chastisement equally strong in her voice. “They cannot be trusted because it is in their nature to lie. You know this, Pearl. Just like his father, he will turn on you one day.”
I’m close enough to see the newborn now, standing between his mother and Cecilia. I lean forward, Pearl’s desperate voice loud in my ear. “He is my child!” And I see what I dreaded I might.
Two amber eyes, glowing and bright, stare up at Pearl from the baby’s soft brown face.
Then, defying Patricia’s comprehension like Louisa before her, Cecilia grips my elbow. Her eyes blaze with awareness and lock firmly with mine. I try to turn away from their fire, their burning—but she holds fast. “This is not a child,” she says fiercely. “It is a monster.”
The world spins and disappears again.
* * *
After we land, Cecilia pulls me with her in a fast walk. I don’t need to turn to know that Louisa is not with us. “This way.”
We’re back at Carolina, and it’s the pitch black of the middle of the night. Cecilia drags me toward the center of the campus at a dizzying pace.
“Why did you show me that?”
“Because you needed to see it,” Cecilia says breathlessly, echoing Louisa’s earlier words.
“I needed to see that baby?” I gasp. “What was he?”
She explains without stopping. “A crossroads child, born of a crossroads man. The father walked among us and shared our form, but in truth he was a demon born of the shadows. The child is half-human.”
I trip at Cecilia’s cold, distant explanation. She yanks on my hand to pull me up.
Born of the shadows, but shaped like a man. A crossroads man. Is that what Rootcrafters call a goruchel? If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d never think such a union could be possible. “What happened to Pearl’s baby?”
“They forced her to cast it away before it could grow large enough to do harm.”
Cast away.
“We are close now. Pay attention.”
I look around. I don’t know when we are, but it must be somewhat recent, because I recognize the buildings, the trees, the walking paths. “Are you taking me back to Patricia?”
“No. It’s Ruth that wanted you here.”
“Who is Ruth?”
Cecilia doesn’t answer, nor does she seem interested in talking. She stops us near a stone bench tucked under an old-growth poplar. Before I can ask another question, a familiar-looking woman walks past, hands tucked in her pockets, a modern messenger bag slung over her shoulder. She looks every bit a student.
“Ruth. Patricia’s sister.”
My eyes widen. Patricia’s sister?
Cecilia pulls me along with her again until we’re walking beside Ruth, who doesn’t seem to see us. She has headphones in, the old wired kind with a metal band over her straight brown bob.
The three of us—an enslaved woman from the nineteenth century, a teenage girl from the twenty-first, and a college student from the twentieth—weave between Carolina students lingering in the low brick courtyard of the Pit. I don’t know what will happen if I touch the undergrads nearby, and I don’t want to find out. We descend the steps down to the street level behind the Stores, and Ruth leads us down South Road and through the crosswalk toward the very center of UNC’s campus—the Bell Tower. Once we reach the edge of the Tower’s shadow, Ruth freezes, then abruptly ducks down behind one of the Tower lawn’s hedge borders and yanks her headphones from her ears.
“Why’d she stop?” I ask.
Cecilia points. “Because of them.”
Together, the three of us peer into the shadows behind the brick patio at the base of the structure, where a hooded figure stands in a dark patch of grass on the far side of the lawn, nearly hidden from sight. Whoever they are, they have placed themselves strategically, pausing right where the imposing landmark shields them from late-night passersby and blocks the dull orange glow of campus lampposts. The sound of low, harsh chanting reaches my ears. It’s not English. Not the Order’s Welsh, either.
I sway on my feet while listening, momentarily captivated. I’ve taken a half step forward before I snap out of the sudden daze. I shudder. Something isn’t right, here beneath the Tower’s shadow.
Cecilia nudges me. “Go on. Get closer. They can’t see you.”
“Just like you and Louisa couldn’t see me?” I hiss.
“Forces bigger than Patricia are at work with you,” Cecilia says, narrowing her eyes. “Her original walk has been pulled into the current of our family’s ancestral energy like a leaf in a river. The ancestors won’t release you until they’re done. Now, go.” She shoves me hard until I move around the hedge onto the lawn.
As I approach, the chanting figure turns away so all I can see is their black hooded sweatshirt and jeans. They look over their shoulder, as if a noise has caught their attention—maybe Ruth—and I freeze, but they look right through me like I’m not even there.
Even two feet away, I can’t make out their features. The hood is pulled low, but even their nose and mouth are shadowed shapes. Satisfied that they’re alone, the figure turns back, fishing out a small item from their pocket. A vial of dark liquid. The figure unscrews the vial and pours it over a gloved hand. It’s blood, I realize, and they coat their palms and fingers until the leather is glistening.
They walk slowly across the gras
s while swiping their bloodied glove in the air, palm out, leaving an arc of green mage flame in their wake. The flame hangs in the air like an emerald rainbow, then turns into liquid. Glowing aether flows down to the ground in thick trails. The figure backs away, chanting, and the aether spreads until it’s a shining veil taller than a man and at least twenty feet across. There’s a roaring sound, rising like a wave in my ears, and then a thick tear.
I feel the tug on my spine again, but just before the world disappears for the last time, I see dozens of partially corporeal clawed feet extend through the veil and land on the grass. A low howl begins out of sight, the garbled sound growing clearer, louder…
Hellhounds.
* * *
I come to with a gasp, sitting just as I was before Patricia’s walk. There’s a sound I can’t quite parse. An “—ee” sound. I hear it again. “—ee?” A question. I blink and see Patricia on her knees, her hands trembling on my shoulders. Her mouth moves, and this time I hear it. “Bree?”
“Patricia.”
“Oh, thank God.” She pulls me in tight for a hug, then sits back. “You were here, but you weren’t here. Breathing but unresponsive. Louisa wouldn’t let me call on her again. I had a feeling I should wait, but—”
I shake my head to clear it of the fog, but the memories—my memories now—cling. Images paint the inside of my mind, pulsing through my consciousness like drums. Abby’s back. Mary’s hands. Bloodcrafters. The determined look on Pearl’s face. The crossroads child and his golden-orange gaze. The Shadowborn Gate.
A pack of hellhounds crossing to our world.
My eyes find Patricia’s. “You have a sister named Ruth.”
She blinks. “I did. She passed a few years ago.”
“Oh,” I whisper. “I didn’t realize.”
Patricia smiles like she knows what I’m thinking. “I’ve walked with her. I miss her, and yet I see her when I need to. Why do you ask?”