Chapter Twenty-Nine
Last night they burned Ms. Bessie’s house to the ground.
At first I ain’t know what was going on. Woke choking on the thick black smoke. Had to drag Mama out damn near by her hair, screaming the whole way for her to snap out of it. To come back to me. To leave wherever she goes to get lost.
She just stumbled out onto the porch, eyes all blank and wide.
Outside the night was lit up bright orange and red. The light drifting slowly through the smoke. Like an illusion. Like a dream.
If only this was all a dream.
Those of us that didn’t wake, or that sleep farther from the covenstead, were pulled out of our beds. Forced to watch as they stuck a cross right in Ms. Bessie’s garden. Lit that thing ablaze, too.
The smoke is why it took me so long to see them.
Crimson hoods with points sharp enough to cut. Horses bucking against their reins.
Faces of obsidian feathers and a long, curved beak, only an abyss where their eyes should be.
The Midnight Guard.
Though they call themselves Guardians, what they really are is wicked.
A flame of my own raged inside me when I saw the one with his hands raised, the air around him swirling with shadow that burns like fire and brimstone. They are darkness made from flesh and blood, and it leaks out of them in arms of searing gloom.
In the distance Lucille watched on, mouth pinched.
When her eyes met mine, she turned away, her face hiding in the crook of another girl’s neck. Odette Jones stared straight ahead, the light of the flames dancing across her face.
All the while, Ms. Bessie stood in the middle of the road and screamed.
Screamed and screamed until her throat bled.
Screamed until the sound rang too shrill for the men to take.
Until their horses went galloping back down the mountain, until we were left with a burning fire and no way to put it out.
Or woulda been if it wasn’t for our powers.
Those of us with the water flooded the house from the inside, dousing the flames.
Air cleared the smoke.
When it was all over, Ms. Lois stood on the stump of the old cottonwood.
She said we’re on the verge of a great war. She said we can’t keep going like this, hiding who we are to avoid dying. To avoid giving away our power.
These so-called “Guardians” are born all wrong. They are crafted in the image of the one made to oppose the stars. These are the men built to bury us. The men with the ability to consume our power and wield it as they own.
They pretend it’s ’cause we Black. Because down here we still got to separate everything. We got to stay where we wanted and run from where we ain’t. But them? No, they don’t care too much how our skin look. All they care about is what we can do.
And still there are murmurs from some of the others. They say this also about the ley lines. Hunters want to buy up our land because maybe they know what secrets we keep. They want to find the source of our power. They want to become infinite.
Out of everything, this the thing we cannot allow.
The Daughter saw what that kind of power would do. In the wrong hands, it would be worse than the end of our people.
It would be the end of the world as we know it.
So I went back to the tunnels. I put my hands in the soil and begged Mama Mae to show me something different. But each time I see the same. Each time I understand what the ancestors want us to do. Even if it feels wrong.
In the end, there ain’t no other way.
No path without bloodshed.
Without sacrifice.
I carry the way of the water in my belly. The long-forgotten whispers of the sky and sea.
The fated four are coming.
And my line will lead them all.
—Nora