Chapter Thirteen #2
It was a clear statement of fact. I stared, shamefaced, at the ground, thinking of how much she must’ve suffered. The first witch in our line, no grandmother to guide her, no ancestors to turn to.
‘You worry too much about the past and hold too much fear of the future,’ she said when I eventually found the strength to look at her again. ‘When you tear yourself in two, it becomes impossible to exist in the present.’
‘To be honest, these aren’t the answers I was hoping for,’ I said, pressing my pointer fingers into my temples and making small circles that did nothing to help the headache that throbbed there. ‘Can we take this inside? I need an ibuprofen or a cyanide pill or something.’
An unfamiliar look of alarm upset her usually placid expression.
‘This is as close as I can come to Bell House. I can visit the square but no further.’
‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Wasn’t it your home too?’
‘It was,’ she said. ‘But it does the dead no good to cross onto the ground where their lives were taken.’
My head jolted backwards as though someone had slapped me hard across the face.
One by one, the buildings on Lafayette Square faded away, the homes, the houses, the cathedral, all the centuries-old buildings, replaced by a moment from the distant past. Where Bell House stood, I saw a wooden dwelling, a bonfire and a little girl running after a pig as her redheaded mother watched.
‘Decades before your Bell House was built, my second husband owned this land,’ Emma Catherine’s gentle voice intoned over the scene.
‘We had a house, little more than a shack really, but it was our home. We grew crops, raised animals to eat. My daughter played under different trees. After that man passed away, it was decided that I would be allowed to keep the plot. Not everyone was happy about the decision. Some didn’t like the way I helped the women in the community with my apothecary skills, some resented my refusal to marry for a third time.
Others simply disliked me for what I was. ’
‘A witch?’ I said.
‘A woman,’ she replied.
The echo of my ancestor and her child walked into the house and outside, the fire died down to its embers.
When the door opened again, the daughter walked out, older now and hand in hand with a kind-looking man.
Emma Catherine waved them off, watching them go from the doorway before returning inside.
As soon as she was alone, shadowy figures emerged from all corners of the memory, surrounding the house, each of them carrying a different weapon.
‘There are too many ways for a woman to make enemies,’ she said. ‘A fact that remains as true today as it was back then. They came in the night, not long after my daughter was wed, a dozen of them or more. I never saw another sunrise.’
‘But I thought Bell House was supposed to protect us,’ I said, my jaw clenched at the violence. I felt a sudden grief that cut so sharp I could hardly tolerate it. ‘Catherine said nothing could hurt a Bell in Savannah.’
‘You must remember, sometimes Catherine spoke with the tongue of a loving grandmother and not a witch,’ the ghost replied. ‘Bell House will protect you. My last gift to my line.’
The men entered the house and the scene faded away, returning Lafayette Square to all its present-day glory.
‘Tell me you killed them,’ I demanded, hot tears spilling from the corners of my eyes. ‘Tell me their names. Do their descendants still live in Savannah?’
A cool hand rested on my shoulder, tempering my rage but not subduing it entirely.
‘Revenge is never worth the price you pay for it. Today, those men are all dead, gone and forgotten, they took my life but not my story. And no, I didn’t fight. I knew it was my time; I knew my blood would run through the bones of Bell House. I live on in her, and in you.’
She touched a finger to the ground between us and drew a circle. Slowly at first then all at once, a flurry of tiny white flowers with golden hearts pushed their way up through the grass.
‘Daisies are my favourite flowers,’ she said contentedly. ‘Isn’t it wonderful that something so perfect can grow just about everywhere you look? Everything feels right with the world when I see their pretty faces.’
‘Everything?’ I replied, still reeling from the violence she’d endured.
The flowers shivered with delight as she stroked their petals and something sharp poked at the back of my neck, scratching at my skin. I pulled a white feather from my messy braid and laid it on the ground beside her flowers.
‘A feather from a dove,’ she said. ‘See? There is hope.’
Using the tree to pull myself up, every part of my body in pain, I struggled to my feet. Emma Catherine rose with graceful ease. We stood face to face, the same height, the same hair, the same eyes. My ancestor. My beginning.
She raised an opalescent hand and instinctively, I did the same, reaching towards her until we were touching, whatever she was made of cool against my warm flesh.
An electric thrill ran through me and the door inside my mind cracked open, the good and the bad all fighting to escape at once. All our knowledge, there inside of me.
‘I want to get things right, make you proud,’ I said, still marvelling at her touch when she pulled her hand away and the door slammed shut.
I staggered back into the tree, immediately grieving the loss.
‘But I’m afraid. All the things I saw, everything I knew when we were together in the chapel, it’s gone.
Half of what I’ve experienced contradicts most of what I’ve been told.
How am I supposed to make the right choices if I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t? If I can’t control the magic?’
‘The pursuit of control is a dangerous waste of time.’ She was calm again, as though my rising panic was all for nothing. ‘Your grandmother sought to control the blessing and look what happened.’
‘Which means?’
‘Our magic does not give us what we want but what we need,’ Emma Catherine said. ‘When your sisters come, the messages will be clearer.’
‘And when will that be?’ I asked, stepping towards her at the exact same moment she took a step back. ‘Why can’t you just tell me what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen?’
‘Because answers are easily obtained, the truth less so.’
An echo of her own words.
‘If nothing else, I have to protect my friends,’ I said, pleading with her though I knew there was no point. ‘At least tell me how to keep them all alive.’
‘I cannot.’
‘Because you don’t want to or because you don’t know how?’
‘Because I do not know if they are meant to live.’
It was a punch to the gut. In spite of everything, all the fear, the nightmares, the dark visions.
I’d felt sure she would say something consoling, even something vague, what was meant to be would be, the blessing would take care of them, my sacrifice would be enough to save them.
But no. There was a very real chance my friends would not survive whatever was to come.
Emma Catherine traced a finger around one of the late-blooming azaleas by the fountain, her expression indifferent. She didn’t look regretful or apologetic. She looked accepting.
‘The prophecy says you will make the choice, Emily, not me. How could I know the outcome?’
‘My dad taught me not to make any kind of decision until I had all the information possible,’ I said softly, trying to find the same kind of peace but acceptance without hope felt a lot like defeat. ‘If you don’t know, how will I know the right choice to make?’
Emma Catherine only smiled and shook her head.
‘There are no right or wrong decisions,’ she replied. ‘No good or bad. There will only be a before and an after.’
‘Then I choose to save the world,’ I said fiercely. ‘Now and forever, that will be my choice.’
My magic thrummed under my skin, rising up to meet my declaration as I looked at the world around me. The square, my home, my friends, my family, the whole world. How could there be any other?
My ancestor cocked her head to one side, as though she heard something, though the night was eerily quiet to my ear.
‘It’s time for you to go inside,’ she said, a breeze picking up out of nowhere and pushing me in the direction of Bell House. ‘Quickly now, he mustn’t know you saw him.’
‘Who?’
I spun in a circle to check the square for signs of life.
‘There’s no one there,’ I said, but when I looked back to the ghost, she was gone.
‘Two steps forward, one step back,’ I whispered to myself as I started for home, walking quickly across the street and opening the gate. The second my feet were back on Bell property, I felt infinitely more at ease. Emma Catherine’s sacrifice. Her first gift to her descendants.
The front door opened without a key, swinging on silent hinges, but something made me pause.
Hiding behind a pillar, I peered back to the square and watched with wide eyes.
A tall boy with dark ash hair was stalking away beneath the trees.
Jeans, a grey T-shirt, a familiar graceful, loping gait.
I held my breath until he disappeared completely then exhaled a choked sob.
I’d followed Emma Catherine’s instructions: he hadn’t seen me.
But I had seen Wyn.