Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
A week after the Midsummer Festival, Oaklin’s hands were still glowing red. And just like the last time the Inquisitor came to the village, they found themself wallowing in bed, sick right down to their marrow with fever and aches.
They missed the next farmer’s market.
They ignored every knock at their door.
They let the fields suffer and wither.
The glow seeped through their gardening gloves.
They had tried, once, to pick tomatoes, but left them to rot on the vine instead.
Better that they go back to feed the soil than to feed Oaklin’s tainted soul.
They couldn’t bear to tend the land with hands stained by their past deeds.
The soil was alive with worms and bugs and mycelium and who knew what else, a thriving world that begat new life.
If left bare and unplanted, it would plant itself, sprouting in a matter of days with grasses and wildflowers, weeds to some but essential life to the soil.
Oaklin’s hands brought only death and suffering.
Instead, they spent their days curled miserably in bed, flipping through their stack of library books, searching for any possible way to break the curse that had caused their hands to glow.
They spent their nights with their hands hidden under several layers of covers so the glow wouldn’t keep them awake.
It did anyway.
Granny hovered in the corner of the bedroom all week, keeping vigil. But finally, after the farmer’s market came and went, Granny spoke up.
“So, are you planning to just let yourself starve?” she asked.
Oaklin’s muffled reply came from under a pile of blankets. “Maybe that’s what I deserve. Did you ever consider that?”
“Of course I did, and after much thought, it turns out you don’t,” Granny replied matter-of-factly. “You can’t stay in here forever.”
“Sure I can,” Oaklin shot back. “It’s my farm and I can do what I want.”
It’s the only thing I do seem to have control over, they thought, squeezing their glowing hands into fists.
Granny’s exasperated sigh was so strong it would have taken the walls down if she were corporeal.
“Fine, you could, but I know you’re not going to just abandon Daffodil like that,” she said, a dirty move if ever there was one. “Now, get up and eat something. It’s not too late to save those tomatoes—”
“Stop, okay?” Oaklin snapped, shocking themself with the force behind the words. The next ones came out thready and bare, as if that one command had sapped all their strength. “Just…stop. Please.”
They took a shuddering breath and forced themself to look up at Granny’s silhouette against the far wall, somehow seeming more distant than the few feet of blankets and dirty clothes.
“This farm, this life…everything,” Oaklin said, voice hoarse. “It’s over. I’m done pretending I could make this work. I should have known the first time the Inquisitor came to the village.”
A bitter laugh. “I did know, actually, but I let myself be…be seduced by Mossley’s Rest and Lior, and now I can never show my face again, so how am I supposed to sell at the market?
They’ll take one look at my hands and run me out.
Sorry, Granny, but I’ve failed the farm. You’ll have to find someone better.”
After an uncomfortable length of silence, Granny settled onto the edge of the bed, her incorporeal body leaving the blankets undisturbed.
“Maybe it is all over. Maybe they’ll hate you and fear you and you’ll have to leave,” she said.
The last remains of Oaklin’s heart began to crumble.
“But maybe you won’t,” Granny cut in, voice almost harsh. “Maybe they won’t. Doesn’t the village deserve a chance to surprise you? Don’t your friends?”
She stood, pacing to her corner, then whipping back around. “And besides, is living in this halfway world truly any better?”
The truth of that settled in Oaklin’s chest, a near-suffocating, unavoidable reality.
They could keep hiding, but eventually, something would happen.
If they did nothing, someone would force their way in to check on them.
Or Oaklin would crack and confess to their friends.
Or they would flee Mossley’s Rest once and for all.
Right now, they lived in a world where all of those scenarios were equally possible, but still undetermined, and there was a comfort in that.
Things might somehow work out. A secret fourth option that fixed everything might emerge.
Logically, Oaklin knew there was no secret fourth option, but did Granny have to point it out like that?
There hadn’t been any secret options after leaving the cult either. Only hard choices. Necessary action. Paths permanently severed by the actions of others.
Look how that had worked out.
Oaklin clutched the blanket tight in their fists and dropped their forehead against their hands, breathing hard behind the makeshift curtain until they felt capable of speech once again.
“You’re probably right,” they finally rasped.
One more breath, then they let the blanket fall, revealing their anguished face.
“But the idea of finding out for sure terrifies me. I’d rather not know.
But I guess I can only keep that up for so long.
I just…wish I was getting to tell them on my own terms, instead of having my hand forced. Literally.”
Granny pointed a stern finger at the mug of day-old tea on the bedside table and kept pointing until Oaklin drained it, their body gratefully accepting the pitiful effort toward hydration.
Oaklin set the mug back down on the table with an awkward thunk and looked back up, only to find Granny suddenly much closer, reaching a tentative hand as if to stroke Oaklin’s hair, then drawing back.
“Have you noticed that you seem to get ill every time something from your past comes up?” she asked, voice gentle.
“That’s trauma, love. That’s all the burdens you’re holding eating at you from the inside out.
Maybe it’s time to share some of them. Lighten your load.
Some wounds can’t heal until they get some air. ”
Oaklin’s gaze fell to the jagged scar on their right arm, stomach roiling at the remembered putrescence of the original wound.
It had festered for days until Oaklin hastily applied a too-tight wrapping; even mind-controlled, Oaklin’s brain could only draw upon their own knowledge unless they were being actively directed.
The only thing they knew about a wound was to wrap it up and go find Mama.
There was no Mama in the cult of the Enchantrix.
There was no care at all. The wound stayed tightly wrapped in filthy rags until the skin had grown around the cloth and it was ripped off in battle. They were lucky to have kept the arm.
Oaklin squeezed their eyes shut against the flood of unwanted memories, anger rising in a surge like a summer heat wave.
It figured those would be the crystal clear memories: putrid wounds and violence, fear and horror.
It couldn’t be anything useful, anything that could keep them going.
And of course it couldn’t be anything soft and warm: cuddling with the family dog while they read next to the hearth, playing corn monster with their siblings among the withered brown stalks in the fall, baking bread with their mother, all things they knew had happened…
But they were like things that had been told to them rather than experiences they’d lived. Distant. Emotionless. Rote.
Oaklin felt themself teeter on the edge of spiraling, despair wrapping tendrils around their heart and pulling, pulling…
They paused. Pressed their hands over their heart. Breathed.
Breathed.
Slowly, the tendrils receded.
Well. If they couldn’t find anything worth saving in their old memories, then they’d just have to overwrite them with new ones. But it wouldn’t be in Mossley’s Rest.
Or…could it?
Maybe no one had seen. There’d been no pitchforks at their door. No one had come to demand they turn themself in. If they could order some books from the library, figure out a way to remove the glowing curse from their hands, then maybe…
But no. They were grasping for a simple, neat answer again. An easy path. If there had ever been an easy path, though, that choice had been taken from them, like so many other choices had been.
“I can’t keep doing this,” Oaklin said to the empty room, half expecting Granny to appear and talk the matter out with them.
She never did.
It figured Oaklin would be completely alone for this decision. But as the thought bloomed in their mind, each petal unfurling in a slow revelation, Oaklin knew it was right.
They couldn’t hide any longer.
They had to tell their friends the truth.
Oaklin rubbed their hands over their face, then threw the covers off with a sigh and sat up, running their hands through their rumpled curls and staring at the spot where their socked feet met the wooden planks of the floor.
There was grime in between the floorboards.
It would need cleaning, one day. If they stayed.
With a burst of energy, Oaklin rolled out of bed and strode purposefully to the “odds and ends” kitchen cupboard, which contained an ink pen (a gift courtesy of Grer’s wife after the sawbug incident) and a small stack of wrinkled parchment.
With shaking hands, they counted out three sheets and three envelopes, then sat down to address them.
One to Ryn, one to Jules, and one to Lior.
“Here we go,” Oaklin muttered, pausing to take a deep breath three times before they finally put pen to paper.
Dear Lior,
My deepest apologies for the way I left you the night of the Midsummer Festival. Could you please pay a visit two days hence?
I owe you many explanations…and many more apologies than this.
Once all three letters were sealed and sent, a strange sort of calm fell over Oaklin.
One way or another, they would know their fate soon.
***