by A N Britton
By the time Saturday rolled around, my life seemed calm again. That morning I found myself sullenly perched on my bed and plucking Fiddle’s strings. I was being smothered by a hideous navy blue dress, something I’d worn for a musical performance; you know the kind, so aggressively innocent it was kinda porny. Yeah, delicate, embroidered white collar, slim bodice, slightly flared, too short skirt. It might have looked appropriate on an 8-year-old, maybe. I completed the ensemble with gray tweedy skimmers and a gray cardigan. While it was a poor choice, I had nothing black and conservative to attend the baby’s funeral, and I’d refused to go shopping. I thought I could plead emotional distress and an inappropriate wardrobe, but nope. Even appealing my case to dear Papa didn’t spare me, he believed we needed to pay our respects as a family. He wanted us all to attend and close the book on the whole affair.
Not that I didn’t feel bad or understand mourning for the baby. That wasn’t my issue at all. I didn’t want to see Maala. She’d been in the wrong and I’d only done what I had to do, but it still felt wretched. How was I supposed to just show up like a regular mourner when I’d been there, faced her down? And, who was she even going to be at the memorial? The Maala I’d known for years or the mama-beast I’d seen last? Would my presence antagonize her? I didn’t know. I also resented the sham of the service. We weren’t gathering together to remember what was lost; we were going to put on a show for the people who hadn’t been there so we would appear normal. Ugh, it filled me to the brim with a disgust that just kept growing. The whole thing seemed like a mockery of grief. Yet, there was no point in even thinking about it, all the adults in the house thought we should attend.
I glanced at the clock on my desk, 9:53—Mama had said we were leaving at 10 sharp. I sighed (it was a horrible habit that took me years to break) and stood up. Still holding Fiddle in one hand, I smoothed, flicked and picked with the other. Grabbed the little gray clutch with my necessities and tucked it under my arm. Just figured I’d continue to pluck Fiddle until someone told me to stop, it was comforting. Once in the hallway I heard the doorbell and frowned. This was so not the time for the dudes in the white shirts. I hurried in that direction, unsure if anyone else was near enough to answer it. As I rounded the entryway, Nana was right there with the door open and accepting a delivery.
She looked severe and stoic standing there. She’d plaited her hair and pulled it back into a low bun and she was wearing what looked like the blackest black dress I had ever seen. And everything was black, shoes, bag, pearls, Nana rocked it old school. Except for the garish lipstick that made her lips a red gash as she pulled them back from her teeth in a smile.
I stopped short, standing there needlessly, but it would have been stupid if I’d just scampered back to my room. Plus, I wondered, why were we receiving flowers? We’d sent an arrangement to the funeral home, and we weren’t immediate family so there was no reason I could imagine that would explain it. Nana turned to the sideboard and deposited the display so she could look for tip money in her purse. I inched closer to get a better look. It wasn’t like any funeral flowers I’d ever seen. It was tropical and modern. While large, it wasn’t crowded with stems. They had placed every flower and leaf with extreme care and artistic sensibility. It was gorgeous, more like one of those floral studio arrangements than I-800-FLORALS. Papa sent stuff like that to Mama periodically, but I didn’t think it was for her. She loved orchids and there were none in it. Nana was still chatting it up with the delivery guy, softness and light while the young man at the door oozed boredom with a Cheshire cat smile. Finally she closed the door.
Nana didn’t glance at me or acknowledge me. I sidled up and approached with a conciliatory tone, “What’s up with the flowers Nana–are we taking them with us?” She was silent for a moment as she plucked up the card, her tone was cool… level… distant, “No, seems someone sent me a token of appreciation. It used to be normal to send such things to a Holder of the Circle following an auspicious birth. This is an oddity, but..” Nana extruded a claw on her pinkie and slit open the little envelope, “some still remember how to honor.” She grasped the card inside the envelope and she never said another word.
Nana exploded.
Well, that is what it would have looked like to the human eye and it is the short, simple and less terrifying way to describe what I saw. But I can observe milliseconds, so I wasn’t that lucky.
At first Nana stopped, a toy with a dead battery. Then she pulsed. As if an electrical current was running through her, she brightened and expanded followed by darkening and constriction. Both increased in frequency and intensity. There was no sound, no contortion of her face until she became fuzzy around the edges.
And then she was… indistinct. And distorted. Pixelated. Something pulled at her, stretched her like a rendering of Munch’s painting and the harder it pulled the fuzzier the edges became. And still the pulsing quickened. Then her face disappeared, at least the face I most identified as Nana. Different faces and bodies flashed in this new ether that was Nana. I knew some and not others, but I recognized on some level that these were all a part of her. Nana was struggling to hold her shape. It was like birth, all over again and she was losing the fight.
Standing frozen, it took less than the blink of an eye, an endless blink of an eye. Waves of anger bled off of Nana, followed by a deep bottomless fear. Her many lives contorted and twisted before me until there was nothing left. Until Nana was the amorphous gathering of deep black, the true form, and that was not a good sign.
It wasn’t until I saw the nothing that is everything that I realized what was happening. Disincorporation. Specifically, a forced disincorporation, the bogeyman fear that children were fed. “Be lazy or forgetful and a rouge witch will steal your form and take your power!” I would love to be the hero in this tale, but while I recognized what was happening, I had no way to stop it. The Nana I esteemed and despaired, evaporated; I shrank back from what remained of her… No one tells you what to do when the nightmare proves itself true. Nana’s essence grew larger and thinner… the joint of energy that formed her was no longer cohesive. Sentience faded and streams of energy rushed outward, searching for a new home.
This rushing out–this was the explosion. I sensed it coming and raised my arm in a defensive gesture as if Fiddle could protect me. I screamed with the wholeness of my being, and I didn’t stop until my entire world went black.
14 - Plainsong
Kai
Kai was engaged in a vigorous discussion (not an argument!) with Yesmin and Kels when he felt a twinge. That familiar pull let him know Chymaera was about to share some strong emotions. He let the sensation roll off him, he’d formed a peace with this new reality. Besides, Kai was trying to make a point. Last minute, Yesmin had decided that Kai’s solo trip should include Kels. Kels would accompany Kai during his introduction to Duana, a reinforcement in case she didn’t want to take her unknown baby brother seriously. Kels would also be tasked with reaching out to the Keros-Ki in the area, perhaps a hybrid could make inroads with them. Kai thought that was the wrong tack to take.
Duana was brittle and prideful, everyone knew that much. Showing up at her door, with a court guard, right after she’d just experienced what had to be a dangerous (and humiliating) failure as a leader. That could nudge her into more idiotic behavior.
Kai wanted to present himself, alone and unassuming. With no one else in tow, he could play it off as family reaching out to reestablish ties. Kels, was his buddy, but he was also a blunt instrument; Kai didn’t think his less than circumspect cousin would be much help during a covert mission. Duana had no contact with the court in hundreds of years, he wanted to handle her carefully until he had more information. The werebeasts could wait.
Kai worked better alone. Bringing anyone along meant that was someone he had to worry about and look after. He wanted to avoid having to explain that, certainly as long as Kels was in hearing range. Still, he was feeling cornered and about to go there when Yesmin’s fac
e dropped.
To be specific, she became statue still just before her mouth fell open and elongated until her chin rested on her collarbone. Like saltwater taffy that had been worked too long, her skin just pulled and pooled around the distorted shapes. Her eyes rolled and turned black. Then she howled as if she was being consumed from within. It was the most mournful thing Kai had ever heard.
Yesmin was the second warning. Kai realized that as the swells of emotion rushed towards him. First anger, then fear, followed by a blinding terror that paralyzed him.
The panicked fear invaded his very sense of self and was just as all-encompassing as a physical assault. He collapsed to his knees and then the floor, but his perception of his surroundings was already distant. It was like a movie being played in the background while a storm raged on. He was getting crushed under the weight of his uninvited passenger and forced deeper into his own mind. Kai was nominally aware some new horror must have befallen the future Queen, but he couldn’t think, couldn’t wrap his mind around anything but his current predicament.
There were sounds of agony, but there was no way to know if the screaming was in the room or within his head.
Kels, held still by shock, looked from one to another. His beloved grandmother’s face was a torment and his uncle was spasming like a fish on a dry dock. A thin line of hair from his tailbone to his neck stood straight up and he resisted the urge to howl himself. He didn’t run for his mother - there was no way she hadn’t heard Yesmin and wasn’t already on her way. All he did, all he could do was watch and remember.
In the few seconds it took for Leah to reach them; Yesmin’s howls turned to whimpers and Kai’s body stilled as his mind withdrew further away. It was the natural response to pull inward and preserve oneself. He attempted to extinguish external input by diving into a deep meditative state while Yesmin keened, loosing cries of anguish for the dead. Leah ran and knelt by her side, placing hands on her mother to remind her they were there, that she was not alone. Her movements were such that Kels was sure this was not the first time she’d done this. She directed her son to do the same; yet when Kels sat on the floor and held Kai in his arms, it was though he held an empty husk.
Kai kept going deeper down the rabbit hole, yet even as he approached his center, he wasn’t safe. He was the beach and Chymaera was crashing relentlessly upon him. He couldn’t disappear, he had to wait her out. Through intense focus he drew boundaries within himself, moving away from the part of himself she connected to. He could see what was happening and that scared him in a way he didn’t think was possible.
She wasn’t alone.
Whatever had happened, it had reduced her to hysterical terror, and she had projected that into the world. And Kai wasn’t the only one swept up this time. He felt other consciousnesses with her. Fragile minds breaking under the sheer weight of her horror. Human minds.
When Kai removed himself as far as he could within and looked upon her, she was a whirlwind. She was a great, anguished wail spinning and dragging the screams of the dying with her.
In this nameless space he stood separate from her and from the other parts of himself that he walled off until they were necessary. He saw her as her core self as there was no subterfuge there. It was strange, but he didn’t feel invaded by her presence, though he questioned it. He should have been alone in his center, surrounded only by mirror images of himself, different aspects, but all Kai. But this torrent in his midst belonged here somehow. He knew instinctively that there was no way to push her out, and he didn’t want to. More than anything he wanted to reach out to her, offer her something to hold on to.
Ever hesitant, Kai approached, ever edging towards the danger of being sucked into that fear and anger. He knew that his reaching out was metaphorical, and he expected nothing, he wasn’t an Empath, he couldn’t project he could provide no comfort. Still he touched, her.
It was akin to falling, this touch. He was falling inside her somehow. This was worse than the wailing inside his head, he was a part of the wail. He felt like he was spinning, tumbling out of control and on the verge of being torn apart. Kai had one thought, “Please STOP!”.
It had the strength of a primal scream and somehow; she heard him. There was a moment like a hiccup–everything stilled as if she was in shock at being heard. There was confusion in her as if she hadn’t realized she was projecting. She ejected Kai from the whirlwind and he landed back in his center, sputtering like a drowning man granted a reprieve. What had been, was gone, but there was something still there, some tie to her he couldn’t understand or access.
The absolute insanity of the experience overtook him then. Quite involuntarily, Kai disappeared inside of himself.
15 - Can't stop what's coming next
Chymaera
When you wake up from a nightmare, you scan your surroundings to orient and stabilize yourself. Then you breathe a sigh of relief knowing your dread has no basis, your imagination is fearsome but impotent. I wish that would have worked for me when I found myself on the floor in the foyer, curled in the fetal position, with echoes of “Please, stop!” reverberating within me. I hugged my knees while my eyes darted around the room and I screamed “no, no, no, no, no” inside my head. The nightmare was real, as real as the “thank you” card on the floor, the flowers on the cabinet and the vacant space my Nana used to occupy.
I whimpered as I clambered to my knees, then my feet. Everything was familiar and nothing was comforting.
Someone had assassinated my Nana, I knew it but couldn’t comprehend the reality. Surreal was far too simplistic to describe being in that violently undisturbed space. How could Nana, the epitome of power in my world, have been snuffed out, reduced to memory in seconds? Disincorporation was a freaking childhood taunt! It was an ancient thing, something I hadn’t believed was a danger. Yet, it had just walked into our home and stolen someone away.
I slunk back from everything; I didn’t think the curse, or whatever it was could work on multiple Thumbras, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Shuffling into Fiddle, I startled myself before realizing my mistake and snatching it up. That’s when I noticed it, the silence. No one had ventured to find out why I’d screamed (I had screamed out loud, right?) No one, was running, walking, stirring…
“Mama?” I backed into the hallway. “Papa?” There was a pleading note to my question as I turned and stared down the empty hall. “Mama, Papa-I need you!” I was like a small child, it was too quiet and I stumbled like I didn’t know my own feet. I continued calling for my parents until I almost fell over them. They were just inside their bedroom. Both had slumped to the floor with horror-stricken faces. Paralyzed, pain and fear visible in the tension in their bodies. Whether it was instinct or the normal desire to touch a loved one in distress; I went to my knees and held Mama’s face in my hands. There was no stirring of power or the feel of doing anything within me. I know I felt an overwhelming need for my mother to be okay, and I needed her to know that I loved her.
Her eyes, which had been open, but unfocused, cleared. Hopeful, I took one hand and placed it on Papa’s shoulder. His eyes regained focus as well.
“Chy, what happened? I felt you, O Bondye, I felt you!” Mama sputtered. She clasped the hand that held her cheek, kissed it and pressed it back to her face, rooting us to each other.
“Nana’s gone.” My voice felt hollow, but sounded confused and both of my parents got to sitting up right away. They were typically extraordinarily skilled at hiding their emotions from me, but not this time. Their joint fear musked up the room.
Papa reached for my hand. “Mon fille, tell us.”
I tried to just recite the facts as if they’d happened to someone else so I wouldn’t experience them again. “She answered the door. It was a floral delivery, for her. She said, she said they used to send them to a Holder of the Circle sometimes. She said, someone wanted to show ho-honor. There was an envelope and once she touched the card inside. She’s gone, she’s gone.”
&nbs
p; “Oh my god, how, how could this happen?” Mama whisper wailed her words and clutched me to her. Pulled into her lap, my face in her neck, her hair in my face and she was holding me vise tight. I was re-wombed in that embrace and I wanted to stay there.
Then my father stammered, his contents under more pressure than I knew of. “Martine, we have to get Chymaera out of here. If there is a witch this powerful and bold; she isn’t safe here.”
From there my parents argued in a torrent of French and Creole. I knew bits and pieces but their words flowed almost too fast to hear, much less for me to translate. I heard bits, “desert”, “brothers” followed by Papa bellowing a condemnation. Then there was a flurry of “queen”, “court”, “north”, and something that might have been “destiny”.
With reluctance, I pushed away from Mama. “Stop it! Stop talking like I’m not even in the room. You can’t just send me away. I am not going anywhere.” It was more shock than anger, someone had taken Nana from us and the conversation wasn’t even about her. It was about me. I stood up on uncertain legs.
“What are you even talking about? Where do I belong if not here?”