Chapter Eight Emma Baldwin #3
“Look around you.” Grandmère points to the pictures on the wall.
“We are descended from people who survived slave ships and dirty cotton fields and lived through the vicious pecks of Jim Crow and still went on to build, to achieve, to exemplify greatness. To make music and spread joy. Despite oppression and abuses that are too awful to speak about, our people survived. And tonight, I will teach you how to do the same. Survival is the real magic, Emma. It’s in our blood.
” With a smile she adds, “Little bird, step into the sparring ring and earn your wings.”
Despite my reservations, I comply, knowing that if I fail at stopping this Tether, I may be forced to fight for survival in it. But, to my surprise, Grandmère joins me inside the ring.
A ball of white moonlight explodes from her palm.
WHAM!
It catches me in the face. The power of the blow rocks my body. My vision goes black, but there are small bursts of light, like I’m seeing stars.
I’m standing on spaghetti legs.
“Holy crap!” I shout. “You didn’t warn me!” Heavy bags, speed bags, and martial arts equipment blur around me.
Grandmère’s grin smears in my fuzzy vision. “Baldwins can’t let their guard down, Emma. Foes will attack at the least-expected moments and from a direction you’ll never predict. To survive, you must be vigilant.”
I know my grandmother thinks she’s helping me in her weird, “tough love” way, so I scan the room in case she’s hinting at nearby threats.
Past the heavy bags, Martin Luther King Jr.’s face smiles in a frame.
Is he amused, watching me get beat up by an old lady?
Demetri looks like he’s about to explode with terror or laughter as my grandmother stretches her wrinkled body into a roundhouse kick. I attempt to dodge.
SMASH!
The force of the blow bends me in half anyway.
Her attack is cold, a vicious punch to the gut, but her eyes look concerned.
“Little bird, you’ll die if you don’t learn to fight back.
” She gives me an encouraging look. With a wave of her fingers, a bright beam of moonlight twists and arches its way from the window to the elevator. The doors slide open with a ding.
My knees are weak. I blink misty eyes and try to steady myself. I do a double take when I see a girl step out of the elevator. My mouth hangs wide. I cover a pain that pierces through my chest with my palm.
She has midnight skin and blinks beautiful sloping eyes. But her eyes are different now: Once rich brown and beautiful, they are static silver today. She smiles with dimples like Demetri’s, but her dimples are off too. They are a bit too deep and too close to her lips.
My heart screams, “It’s Grace!”
But it isn’t.
Grace is dead.
My eyes moisten. My sister—or this thing that looks like her—walks closer.
“Gran!” Demetri cries out. “How could you!” A tear rolls down the side of his nose as he gapes at our dead sister. He, too, knows it’s an illusion, some cruel trick used in a misguided attempt to make me stronger.
“How could I not!” Grandmère dances on her feet like a boxer, her fists high, ready. “Do you think our enemies won’t use your heart, your weakness, even your grief and fear, against you? To survive, you must mask them. Fight through them.”
Pain stabs pieces of my heart. It’s my fault. Grace would be here if I hadn’t fallen …
“No, no no,” I mutter, staring at the girl’s braided hair and fierce gaze, my soul weeping.
I step back, blood boiling, but eyes locked on Grace.
“Focus, before you get your teeth knocked out,” my dead sister hisses.
But it’s not really her. This ruthless game is not only to teach me, but to punish me for sneaking off.
I sputter. “H-how? Did you?” I wanna ask my grandmother how she created this fake Grace, but I can’t find the words.
Grandmère laughs.
I haven’t seen Grace in so long. I wanna run out of this ring and hug her tight. There’s a flutter. No, something wheels and zooms in at the edge of my vision.
BAM!
Grandmère’s fist is raised. Her silver bob flops over a smiling face as she dances across from me. “Stay on guard.”
The metallic taste of blood bursts in my mouth.
I feel a slim cut on the inside of my lip.
“What is wrong with you?” I yell. I lift my fist up to guard my face and run my tongue across the inside of my teeth to be sure they’re all still in place after she punched me.
Bleeding and furious, I charge Grandmère.
Grace appears on my right in a blink. She wears a sleek leather catsuit with tiny chains across the chest. Bombs of starlight explode from her palms. I dive onto the mat to avoid being burned.
She misses me, but a circle on the mat right by my head is charred by her light.
I reach up to yank her ankle. She jolts away, and I miss.
“You have to be faster,” Grandmère shouts. “Smarter. Stronger. More alert. Use your power! Spin stardust into wishes.”
I push myself to my feet, only to be met with another attack. While I sway from my grandmother’s kick, she shouts at me.
“Wish your enemies gone! Wish them dead! It takes magic, might, and cunning to survive the Tether, girl!” She gives a shrill laugh. But her hooded eyes carry fear. “Right now, you don’t seem to have any.”
“You can do it, Emma!” Demetri says, shifting in his dark catsuit near the heavy bag on the side of the sparring ring.
“Boy, stop cheering and use your power on her!” Grandmère snaps.
“I can’t.”
“Then be prepared to bury another sister.”
Demetri’s face couldn’t look more hurt if Grandmère had punched him. His fist shakes.
I flop to the right to avoid Grandmère’s kick as Gracie, or this thing that looks like her, spins around to face me on the left. Her brows lift in surprise as she looms closer.
“Sorry, Emma,” Demetri mutters as he pulls out shiny blue moonstones. He blows on them, and with a puff of blue smoke my shoes become rock.
“Come on!” I yelp. Grandmère’s games. Her vicious way of loving. Do I really need to endure all this to win? “How is this fair?”
With my feet trapped, I bend and dodge attacks from Grace, as Gran drones on.
“War is hell,” she coos. “Hell no, it isn’t fair.
Life isn’t fair. You live in a world that would label you angry or strong so they can ignore your pain.
They’ll call your sons and daughters a drain on the economy, thugs, future prisoners, and welfare queens until some believe those lies.
” She tries to punch me but misses when I bob again.
“You’ll tuck your babies in at night knowing how vulnerable they are.
Knowing the world can steal their innocence, their freedom.
Or kill them at any moment. And you can’t stop it.
” Her eyes are teary as she adds, “So you sure as hell betta teach them to fight.”
I bend my knees fast to duck another starlight bomb from Grace.
As I straighten, Grandmère’s kick to my gut folds me in half.
I gasp for air as she says, “If you wanna live, learn to defend yourself. Move smarter. Win the Tether.” She swings at my head and misses.
“You’re a Black woman, Emma. Every day is a fight for victory.
A fight to prove the world wrong. In the Tether and in life.
You can’t let the enemy crush you or make you bend. ”
My feet ache in Demetri’s stone shoes. I struggle to get free. White starlight bombs blast close to my skull. I twist my upper body backward, weaving out of their path. One barely misses me and bounces down, burning the mat with a sizzling boom.
This girl may have the look, but she isn’t my sister, Grace.
Her accuracy is good, but this illusion is not as powerful as the real Grace was.
The real Grace would have killed anyone she needed dead with the first starlight bomb.
She would have been the perfect warrior to defeat Malcolm and win this Tether.
If she hadn’t been murdered.
If Grace was that perfect and she still got killed … I am toast.
Grandmère punches my face.
Burnt toast.
I struggle and kick. I free my feet from my stone shoes with an aching crack.
Demetri smiles proudly, standing outside the ring by a heavy bag.
“Stop grinning like an idiot, boy,” Grandmère commands. “Charm her like a snake. Use your mind control.”
“On my sister?” he yelps. “Grandmère … I can’t.”
“Now, boy!”
My brother squints his eyes, like he does when he’s staring down a tiger, ready to make it dance around the circus ring on its hind legs. I continue dodging kicks and bombs of moonlight and starlight from Grandmère and my dead sister’s look-alike.
Something grips me. I can’t see it, but it sends my body into a backward dance.
“That’s the moonwalk!” Demetri laughs. “Saw it in the future.”
“GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” I shriek, and I counter with my power.
My brother’s head leans backward like I’ve punched him in the face, but he still controls me, making me spin on my toes, narrowly avoiding another attack from Grace.
Grandmère brutally slaps me. Her lips sneer, and the muscles in her thin arms become rock hard and bulging. “Keep your guard up, dear.”
Using my power, I push Demetri harder. His head bobs like I’ve punched him again. But this time, crimson streams run from his eyes and nose.
Oh, God. I didn’t really want to hurt him.
A smile curls on his lips. “She did it, Gran! I can’t control her!”
The elevator dings again. I bob and weave to escape getting burned by the bombs flung at my skull by Grandmère and this thing that looks like Grace. My mom comes out of the elevator in gray sweats. Thank God! She’ll help me.
Weapons dislodge from the black wall under the barred window to the right of me.
They arc and fly close, as Mom’s telekinetic mind hurls arrows and blades at me.
My dodges are more desperation than skill, as I flop to the right and jerk to the left.
A dagger whizzes by my cheek. I roll my head to the right in time to avoid being sliced.
Is she serious?
Mom flinches. Her teary eyes lock on me. She grips her chest like she’s being cut open by the pain of doing this. Or from the agony of seeing me being attacked by her mother and her dead child.
I know my mom would never hurt me. She wants me to learn to defend myself better. But seeing her here scrapes me raw.
“Use your power!” Mom shouts.
“Wish them to stop!” yells Demetri. “Kick them out! Do something!”
“She can’t,” Grandmère grumbles.
My dead sister punches me, and it’s like a baseball bat to the belly.
I spit out blood. A light bomb soars from her open palm. It hits me, making me fall and twitch. My mouth opens in a silent scream as pain claws at my guts.
Grace’s double stands over me. A fog of midnight smoke surrounds her body.
The haze hisses and coils with crackling bolts of silver lightning.
Inside the dark cloud, the doppelg?nger’s silhouette doubles over.
Gasping. There’s an audible snap as bones crack and shift.
A sharp cry slices the air as the haze thins, her flesh moving and contracting.
Grace’s double shrinks before my eyes, bubbling and bending in the fog until the form of a dark-skinned, red-eyed woman is hunching and panting in her place inside the ring.
The smoke vanishes, and she pushes herself up to stand.
Wobbling on unsteady feet, she lets out a screech.
My eyes widen as I realize it’s one of the bodyguards that always protects the entrance of our home.
She pats her afro with thin dark fingers and says, “The magic wore off, Miss Clair. But I could have killed Emma at least four times if I’d really wanted to. She’ll never survive the Tether.”
I knew my sister had never been here. Grace is dead, and she would never hurt me. I want to shriek from the agony of seeing this woman pretend to be her. But I refuse to give Grandmère the satisfaction.
So I bite my lip, hating my teardrops as I choke on the hurt, and I vow to prove I’m capable. I’ll survive. Somehow. But it’s hard to feel like a winner when you’re sprawled out on the floor of a sparring ring and the world is convinced you’re a loser.
I hear my grandmother say, “Sheree is the best fighter out of all my bodyguards. Be thankful that she cared enough to help train you.”
Suddenly there’s pressure, like a witch’s red claws digging into my brain. I feel a jolt, a magical punch to my power. It tosses my head back and makes my nose bleed faster. I puff, twisting and sobbing on the mat.
“You okay, sis?” Demetri asks.
If he’s asking, it can’t be him doing this.
“Em?” he says. “You okay?”
I’m too wounded to respond. Is it Mom? She has tears streaking her cheeks, but she stands still as a statue.
Is she smashing my brain telepathically?
Searing pain curves through my body. I wipe the blood off my nose with the back of my hand.
It bleeds more. My head pulses with red-hot agony, and even the spongy flesh behind my eye hurts.
“Fight back!” Mom screams. “Please!” She weeps.
As I lie in my own blood and humiliation, a satisfied smile curls on Gran’s lips. “As I said … you needed to be humbled. This, naughty bird, is why you can’t afford to miss practice. It will take a lot of lessons for you to learn how to fight well enough to survive the Tether.”