Chapter Twenty-Seven Emma Baldwin
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Emma Baldwin
My heart thuds as Malcolm speeds toward Sabine, his jaw and fist clenched tightly and his hazel eyes ablaze with justifiable fury.
My vision goes fuzzy. The room stutters, twists, and warps like a funhouse mirror.
The checkerboard floor stretches into black-and-white streaks, and the statues of slave children morph and blur together in horrifying ways.
Everything flickers and shifts. I look toward my family members, bound to their chairs, horrified as their brown flesh stretches and darkens.
As my vision twists and swirls, Sabine’s figure fades. Malcolm blends with the distorted room, his body darkening to a silhouette before getting lost in a sinister forest of shadows. Some stretch and elongate into twisted, gnarled trees that materialize from thin air.
My heart stampedes, and my eyes blink rapidly.
I struggle to stay grounded as the world becomes a nightmarish wood.
The sky is dark and ominous. Thunder roars.
I flinch and stumble over fallen branches.
With a thump, I land on the damp ground.
Chilly rain slaps my cheeks. Wet soil and rotting leaves surround me.
When I push myself to a standing position, the ground is squishy, like decaying flesh.
Tall dark trees cast eerie shadows as they loom all around me.
Twisted branches reach down like knobby fingers.
Drops soak me. My breath comes out in pants.
I’m alone. Malcolm, my family, everyone is gone.
An icy spider of fear creeps up my spine.
I look for familiar landmarks, but I only find vines, more trees, and undergrowth that’s perfect for killers to hide corpses in.
I’m lost.
Sabine’s cackling laugh echoes over the treetops, sending chills through my body. I look for her, but she’s nowhere to be found. Still, her voice echoes on the wind.
“Round two,” she booms out. Her voice shakes the damp leaves and branches as icy rain falls, but she’s nowhere in sight. “Try not to get caught,” she adds. “The Tether hungers for blood. Play well, little ones—or watch Mommy shed hers.”
How can I choose between saving my mom and hurting my first love?
I look up at the full moon, raindrops mixing with the tears on my face. Glowing spiderwebs cast a magenta light in the forest. I walk onto a path, my feet sinking into wet mushy moss and crunching, dying leaves.
Goose bumps prickle up along my arms when I hear a sudden scratching sound.
Scritch scritch …
Something soft slinks by my ankle—something warm and furry that crawls across my foot. Scritch scritch …
Ewww! Is that…? “Ahhh! A rat!”
I kick violently. The black creature slams into the bark of a nearby tree and runs off into the dark, rustling the underbrush.
My wet arms shiver. “What am I supposed to do?” I scream at the rainy sky. “What do you want from me?”
Reflective stones shimmer with golden light.
“Trust no one,” Sabine’s voice purrs.
The cracked stones shine with visions of a brutal past—my ancestors, brows glistening with sweat, charging into battle, swords raised high.
Blood splatters. Bodies fall into the dust. Many of the warriors have proud dimpled smiles like my brother’s and eyes like mine.
Too many broken people lie twisted and lifeless in pools of red.
The Tethers of their times are violent, overwhelming—this is the violence expected of me. And Malcolm.
I’m terrified that being forced to play will lead me to the bloody fate of the many fighters before me. I grip the wet roughness of the bark of a tree. “Am I ready for this?” I ask the shadows.
The light in the rocks beams brighter as raindrops stick to my eyelashes.
“Of course Emma’s not ready,” Grandmère’s cold voice says.
The glowing gold stones reflect her in another scene from the past. My family sits at a mahogany table, their faces somber, eyes red and puffy, tissues crumpled in their hands, wearing the black suits and dresses they wore to Grace’s funeral.
This must have happened after they left the service.
In the low light, Grandmère Clair’s golden-brown skin is darker. She smooths her silver bob. “If the Tether chooses Emma now, she’s as good as dead. She’s in no condition to fight. Too overwhelmed by grief to even get out of bed and attend her sister’s funeral.”
Her disappointment is a weight, pressing me down.
Gran says, “She needs the cobbler.”
Demetri’s voice is soft. His honey-brown fingers nervously rub the tabletop. His blinking eyes are swollen with concern. “She doesn’t need peach cobbler.” He sighs sadly. “Emma needs time to heal. We all do.”
Grandmère insists. “We don’t have the luxury of time, boy.
Grief has made her suicidal, mentally ill.
She’s ready to disrupt time, risk altering history and causing a global catastrophe to go back and save Grace.
And with the ravens and omens that have appeared, we know a Tether is coming.
With Grace gone, it could be any of us. We must protect Emma.
Even from herself. This is the best way I know. ”
A tear escapes my mother’s eye, sliding down the light brown skin of her cheek before she brushes it away. “She’s right,” she says softly, before licking another tear off her lips.
“We already lost Gracie,” my dad agrees, his salt-and-pepper curls flopping over his brown forehead and into his eyes as he nods at my grandmother. “I can’t lose Emma too. Make the forgetting cobbler. Fix my baby girl. Please.”
Fix me? My dad thinks I’m broken. Something in me shatters at the realization, and then I’m sobbing, shaking in the rain. Vibrant green vines start to curl and climb toward me.
“No one believes in you,” Sabine’s voice echoes through the trees. Her words aim to suffocate me. “Not even you. You may as well quit.”
“Stop!” I yell, kicking the stone. I clench my fists, determined to prove my family wrong. I am not mentally ill, and even if I were, depression wouldn’t make me broken. It would make me human.
I’d needed time, compassion—hell, even therapy—but they’d chosen to poison me with magic food and wipe my mind of my most painful memories instead. How can I ever trust them again?
The vines thicken, slithering over my feet like serpents.
I stagger forward, my toes slipping on damp leaves.
I pause, eyes wide. The glowing stones are reflecting a different scene.
My bedroom, bathed in amber light. Steam rises from a bowl of buttery brown peach cobbler on my nightstand by a small square of glittery blue paper stamped with gold constellations.
Curly black letters on the paper read: For Emma.
I want to scream in frustration. My stomach growls, twisting in hunger as I see a projection of myself, lying in bed and eating the peach cobbler.
I see myself grab my temple in the vision, complaining that my head feels light, wavy, as Grandmère glides in.
She’s dressed in cream and silver, adjusting her pearl necklace and silver bob.
She looks like an ancient angel, yet her eyes hold a demonic glitter.
“I’m glad you’re eating my cobbler, birdie,” she says, before yanking open the blinds.
“Thanks,” I stammer. I place the empty cobbler bowl on the nightstand with shaky hands.
“You need energy for what’s ahead,” she says.
“I can’t go back to work at the circus,” I reply.
“Isolation won’t bring Gracie back,” Grandmère says.
“I lost my sister! She’s gone forever,” I choke out, starting to weep. “You can’t tell me how to feel. Or force me to heal before I’m ready.” My voice breaks.
“I won’t let grief consume you,” she says, gripping my hand. I bet her touch is as cold as the rose made from blue ice on the nightstand. “I love you too much. And you have a family who needs you.”
Rain hits my head, and tears well up in my eyes as I see myself in this vision of the past. This moment that I don’t remember.
I watch myself shaking on the bed. “It’s my fault. Grace is gone because I—”
“Enough!” Grandmère shouts. “Let it go.”
“I can’t,” I reply, my voice thick with emotion. “Not now. Not ever.”
“Time heals all things, Emma.”
“No. It makes us masters at hiding pain.” I see myself wobble, gripping my head with my palms. “Gran … I feel dizzy. Something’s wron—”
She sits at the foot of my bed, her sharp gaze watching, unsurprised. “How are you feeling, birdie?”
I wish she were here in the woods right now so I could yell at her for faking kindness and concern while poisoning me and punishing me for mourning.
I see myself go limp on the bed, drooling, holding my head, flailing, and moaning. And as I watch, I feel pain pierce through me. Hollowness, like claws reaching inside me to scrape out what isn’t needed. I grit my teeth against the agony. Is this how it was? How I had felt?
“Don’t be alarmed,” Grandmère says, her voice calm and commanding.
“When the pain fades, my forgetting cobbler will help get you right and ready. The worst of your trauma surrounding Grace’s death will be removed so you can move on.
” She looks at me lovingly, but when I try to respond, more drool and gurgles escape my lips.
I’m just lying there, helpless and vulnerable on the bed, and I hate that I couldn’t defend myself or demand an explanation.
Grandmère looks at a raven perched outside the window.
Her voice trembles as she speaks of enduring racism, the curse of the Tether on this family, and the weight of all our family’s trauma.
“I’ve always tried to shield you from the worst of it.
” She leans forward, her hand stroking mine. “And I’ll protect you from this too.”