Chapter XXII. 2007 #5
She saw as Anne tried to explain to Florence that the magic had given back all she’d asked for. It knew no difference. So many of the women carried betrayal in their hearts. They betrayed their friends. Their loved ones. Themselves. The curse manifested with the same intensity as their abundance.
But if they could accept all parts of themselves, the illness would ease. A virus lulled back into sleep.
Some women were able to accept that darkness and found themselves improved. But others were not.
Camilla wept then, her hand still splayed over the bark. She thought of Tania Fullerton, in love with a man who was not her husband. Of Brianna, who betrayed her out of anger. Of her mother, who would not admit the truth of what she’d seen and allowed her daughter to be punished for it.
And then the last vision came.
A man beneath the tree, his mouth pressed against Florence as he drank her blood.
Her husband. The first minister of Hawthorne Springs.
That same man, along with other men, taking blood from other girls, as they lay drugged and passive in the dirt.
Grant and her father and the other church leaders bent over the girls as their distracted, ignorant fathers imagined their daughters safe under the watch of those holy men, never knowing how their blood would stain the leaders’ teeth. Never knowing what they stole.
The blood. He wrote those first names in his Bible. The same Bible in her father’s study. The same Bible that had her and her mother’s name written in it.
And from their blood will we prosper.
Their wealth. Their abundance. They believed it came from the women’s blood.
And they took it for themselves. The Purity Ball a thin disguise for their vampiric ritual. Of course, they would not share it, would not consider that such magic might also benefit anyone loved by the women of Hawthorne Springs. No. They would take it for their own.
And then she saw the man standing beneath Anne as he forced Florence onto the branch.
Anne and Florence, their hair tangled together as Anne called upon the light and dark beneath the world that one of their blood might see them.
Might see them and open themselves so they might punish those who had stolen what rightfully belonged to them.
What rightfully belonged to their daughters and all who were blood sworn to the tree.
She could feel it then. The power. How it burned through her blood.
Through the earth. Through the bones of Anne and Florence.
How they called out for their daughters.
For their sisters. For the bond that had always flowed through them—the chain damaged again and again only to reknit itself. The way a bone will heal when broken.
Anne and Florence could not speak, but she understood their question.
Will you let us in?
“Yes,” Camilla whispered. She worked a hand beneath the waistband of her jeans. There were so many places on her that bled, but it felt right to use the blood from her thigh. The blood Grant and her father had taken from her.
“I let you in. Anne Bolton. Florence Dudley. I let you in.” She smeared the blood on her palm against the tree. “Let all those whose blood has been taken against their will come here to this place. Let all those who stole it come here to this place. I think it’s about time for a reckoning.”
She had never wanted to be a witch, had always been told such things were evil.
But she was one now.
CAMILLA TOLD brIANNA and Noah about the illness. About the blood. Noah’s face blanched when she told him about Grant and her father. The cut on her thigh and how they’d drunk of her.
“Bastards,” he spat.
“If you want to leave, I understand,” Camilla said.
Noah shook his head, his jaw set in a hard line. “No. I want to be here. I want to see it.”
“Me, too,” Brianna said.
In that moment, Camilla could not have loved them more.
Together, they waited. For the women of Hawthorne Springs. For those who called themselves the leaders of The Path. Who called themselves representatives of God. This walk to the tree would be a pilgrimage of sorts. A letting out and gathering in again.
The forest was silent. The birds paused in their song to observe the procession of women as it went.
The trees were still, the wind unmoving.
The moon rinsed all it touched in a pale glow.
Each of the women marked by its light. Had there been crowns, they would have worn them like goddesses reborn in a world that had long forgotten them and the magic they carried.
It did not take long for the women of Hawthorne Springs to begin arriving. They left their children and innocent husbands, sleeping and calm in their beds. Camilla and the Dark Sisters had called them, and their blood, however diluted, responded to that ancient connection.
The church leaders came. Youth Pastor Trent and Pastor Wade and their colleagues with bulging eyes and twitching limbs that fought against this command they could not help but obey.
Camilla had not given them the option. They had never granted it to her.
To the women whose blood they stole. She had seen no reason to be gracious now.
Grant Pemberton openly wept as he stepped into the clearing, his eyes locking on her as he passed. “Camilla? What the hell is this?”
She did not answer but watched as he joined the rest at the tree.
In the distance, someone screamed. The voice was deep. Distinctly male.
Camilla smiled. His scream was a gift.
She hoped the men heard it and knew what was coming.
The women locked away on Retreat took longer to arrive, and Camilla spied Robin among them, her face triumphant as she took her place.
Vera came, pausing to hug Camilla before she too drifted toward the tree.
But there were still two missing. Camilla would not begin until they were there. She kept her eyes locked on the tree line. She was not worried. She knew they would come.
Ada came slowly, her body curled into itself, the disease having left so little of her, but her eyes were bright as she came to the tree and took Camilla’s hand.
Behind her was Camilla’s father. Pastor Burson. The shepherd brought to his lambs. The slaughter in reverse.
Now, they could begin.
She told it all. The story of the Dark Sisters. The story of Anne Bolton and her daughter, Florence. Of the tree’s magic. Of their blessing and their curse and how they might heal themselves.
And she told them of the bloodletting. The blood the church leaders and her father had stolen from them.
She finished and looked at their faces. Took in their shock and rage and sadness.
“This is no trial, make no mistake, but if you do not want to see what’s about to happen here, you’re free to leave now.
Some of you will lose a brother. A husband.
But you deserved to know what had been taken from you, and who took it. ”
She waited, but the women remained at the tree, unmoving.
Camilla gripped her mother’s hand, her voice dropping so only she could hear. “It’ll be him, too.”
Her mother’s voice was clear. Strong. “I know.”
A part of her would mourn. She knew that. She had loved her father. She spent years of her girlhood thinking he was her sun, but she wondered if he had ever actually loved her, or if she had only ever been a usable vessel. A sack of blood to drain.
When Camilla raised her arms and tipped her head to the sky, it was a final revelation. The Dark Sisters—Anne and Florence, mother and daughter—stepping once more into flesh as the magic took root. Their promise finally fulfilled.
“Sisters, let us reclaim what belongs to us,” Camilla said, and the women opened their mouths. Yes. They were ready. And she was an instrument. The scale and the flaming sword. A blessing and a curse written in blood.
The tree expanded, a pair of lungs remembering what it was to breathe, the branches unfurling their growth so it draped over her. Camilla marveled at the sensation against her skin. How soft. How silken. Not at all like leaves.
What fell over her was not leaves but hair. Braids like rope. The branches thick with them.
Camilla remembered the hair her mother coughed up. It felt like a prophecy.
Gideon had joined mother and daughter on a single branch, their hair tangled together as they died. It was only right the men suffer the same fate.
When the braids wrapped around the men’s throats, the women sighed.
Camilla stepped forward, the women lifting their voices as she watched the men gag, their lips forming a dying prayer.
A pleading she would not hear. Whatever agony lay in their voices she heard only as music.
The horror of those delicate tendrils creeping toward their mouths she saw as a beautiful justice.
She went among the men, searching until she found him.
Her father. How he choked and gibbered, his fingers bleeding as the nails tore away from his skin without loosening the hair about his neck.
Grant beside him, his tongue swollen so it poked from between his lips.
She waited for sorrow. For regret. But where her tender heart had once slept, there was now only a stalwart flame burning.
She took Grant’s tongue between her fingers and yanked until she felt it tear away.
Smiled as the blood trickled down his chin and jaw as she drank in his strangled scream.
Once, she’d dreamed about drawing her tongue over his skin.
Tasting the salt there. She drew her mouth over him now, bit into his tongue and chewed, the blood like honey.
The taste was beyond anything the ignorant girl she’d once been could have dreamed.
She drew what remained of Grant’s tongue over her father’s face.
Wiped his tears with the bloodied stump.
“Did you cut me yourself, Daddy? Or did you have your little pet Grant do it? Never could get your hands dirty.” She lifted her own hands so he might see.
Showed him the blood. How it could all be hers. Be theirs.
“Camilla—please,” he choked, but the hair tightened around his neck. She had no further use for his words.
All those years. Daddy’s precious little girl. He’d pretended to protect her with his commandments, and she’d believed it. No matter. This would be the final bloodletting.
Camilla cupped his chin, let her fingers stroke his cheek. “Bye, Daddy. You should pray. Ask Him to take your pain. See if He listens. Because this will hurt.”
She stepped backward as the hair snaked up the men’s throats, reached past their teeth to the roots of their tongues.
The wet sound of torn flesh like music as the women writhed beneath those hanging forms, their mouths open to receive the blood raining over them.
Their hands slick with it. Their lips and teeth stained as they drank in the power it held, as they licked their skin clean.
Screamed together as one voice as they felt it settle back into their bodies.
Anne and Florence ensured their deaths were slow.
That when they hung the men who’d stolen their blood, when they pierced their chests with those same branches stained with the blood of their daughters, they did it with an agonizing deliberateness.
Their vengeance required it. Camilla could understand that.
Even without their tongues, the moment the branches broke their skin, the men screamed.
THE SKY HAD begun to lighten when the clearing finally quieted. The bodies hanging from the trees were bloodless and still as the women embraced one another.
Camilla watched as the women drifted away. Some of them would mourn. She knew. It was expected after a loss, no matter how justified. But there was so much before them. So much to learn. To build upon. She placed her hand on the tree and looked up into the leaves, but Anne and Florence were gone.
“Camilla.” Her mother stood arm in arm with Vera as they turned away from the tree. She was still frail, her mouth still marked by the sores of the illness, but she stood taller, and her skin had regained its color. “Let’s go home.”
Camilla blinked away grateful tears and nodded. “Y’all go ahead.”
Vera and Ada walked on. She had no reason to fear.
Her mother would get better. It would take time, but she would get better.
Their power was their own, and no one could take it from them.
And now they understood. There would be no more denial of the darker parts of themselves.
No more guilt or shame that led to betrayal.
They were the sum of all their parts, and there was a beauty in such knowledge.
She knew Anne and Florence would never fully leave her. They were stitched into her. A thread that would not be easily broken. The same stitch that connected them all. Friends. Sisters. Mothers. Blood and sap and earth.
Brianna and Noah came to stand beside her.
“There’ll be police,” Noah said.
“Yeah. But this sort of stuff happens in Hawthorne Springs, doesn’t it? People get sick. Commit suicide on that tree. It’s happened before. And we can always pay someone to say exactly that,” Camilla said.
She hugged them both to her. Brianna and Noah, who had seen all parts of her and accepted it without question. Her chosen family.
“Thank you,” she said.
They hugged her back, and together, they walked away from the tree. Camilla would go home. She would take care of her mother. Maybe she would look for Sharon Hutchins, the woman her grandmother had loved. After that, she wasn’t sure. The world was so big. So filled with possibility.
Camilla kept her gaze trained ahead until they reached the edge of the clearing, when she allowed herself to turn back. To look at the tree that had her past and future traced in its bark.
Anne and Florence did not look back at her.
They had gone. But the wind still carried their voices and the voices of the women who came before.
Her ancestors. A reminder to embrace the truth of who she was in all parts.
Not to deny even the darkness she’d hidden out of shame.
It was all part of her. It was all beautiful.
She could contain it all.
All the light and all the dark.