Chapter 11 #2
Heaving a sigh over my tendencies, I reached out and wrapped my fingers around the sickle’s hilt, which was covered in the same leather from thousands of years ago. I lifted the weapon off the velvet, which smoldered away until not even ash remained in a matter of moments.
Well, that would be a problem, assuming the sickle didn’t end up coming with me.
Aware I’d been in a rather public place, I considered the situation. My purse had made the journey with me, slung across my body so I wouldn’t have to hold it.
While it wasn’t the largest of purses, it might do the trick, assuming I stashed my phone and wallet in my pockets. Holding the weapon in one hand, I used the other to stuff my pockets before easing the blade inside. To my relief, I was able to fit the whole thing within and zipper it closed.
The liner would never be the same, as the blade proved to be far sharper than the silky material could handle, but the exterior fabric, some form of fake leather, survived.
I viewed buying a new purse as penance for my unscheduled use of magic.
That left me with one notable problem: getting back to the right point and place in time with the girl’s sickle. Once then and there, I’d worry about reuniting the pair and returning them to their homeland in the hope their oasis might be reborn.
* * *
Thursday, January 16, 2076
The Fringe
Dragon Heights, Wyoming
Madam Merorie situated the girl’s body beside the skeletal form of her son.
I recognized the ritual as the same I’d witnessed from just under ten years prior.
Unlike with the baby boy, despite her incantations, despite the green and purple light manifesting around the girl’s body, the darkness failed to make its appearance.
The mercury dragon’s son remained untouched by the necromantic powers.
I did, however, spot one change.
As though refusing to be a participant in the ritual, the girl’s cut wrist refused to yield even a drop of life-giving water.
Shrieking her frustration, Madam Merorie stormed out of the room, leaving the bodies alone. In what I viewed as a complete disregard for life and death, she slammed her hand on the light switch.
Rather than plunge the room into darkness, the green and purple glow brightened, shifting to the radiance of the sun.
First, I regarded the girl with a heavy sigh. As I couldn’t allow the sickle to fall into Madam Merorie’s grasp, I said, “One day, I’ll see you reunited. Today is not that day. But one day, even if it takes me to my last breath, I will see you taken home with your blade.”
In the grand scheme, my promise meant little, but I would do my best to keep my word.
Then, as everything revolved around the woman’s lost son, I braced for the worst, reached out, and brushed my fingers against the boy’s skull.
* * *
Tuesday, May 2, 2034
The Diamond Ward
Dragon Heights, Wyoming
My awareness of time puzzled me, as according to our records, Adam Merorie had died in 2035 due to a car accident, one horrific enough his casket had not been opened. The truth had come out following the exhuming of his grave, proving he was not the child resting in his burial plot.
I still had no idea who had taken his place. I held some confidence his mother had put someone else’s body in his casket, however.
Conjurations tended to not leave even bone behind when they did decay, returning to primordial goo.
In reality, the boy had been climbing a tree he shouldn’t have been, his mother making the mistake of taking her eyes off him for a single moment. One fall and a broken neck later, and his life had crashed to a halt.
I found some comfort in his passing, for it was swift and merciful. I pitied the grieving woman, who clutched his body and swore she’d do everything in her power to bring him back from his grave.
I understood her fate, and I mourned for all those who would suffer because of her ambition, leading to so much death and pain for everyone unfortunate enough to become involved.
I wondered if knowing he had been four instead of five mattered any—or if it at all changed anything understanding his death had been a freak accident.
I couldn’t even accuse her of negligence.
In the blink of an eye, a single turn of her head to check on the grill she used to make their lunch, circumstance and the free will of a child had twisted his life to death. It hadn’t taken him more than a breath to scramble up onto the first branch, making use of the picnic table to reach.
The second, and a fall of only a few feet, had left a mother bereft of her son along with many future parents dead, their children sacrificed in her misguided effort to perform a resurrection.
I checked my purse to discover the sickle had jumped through time with me, and it continued to glow with the light of the sun.
I swallowed, fighting the burn in my eyes over the child’s death, the simplicity of it all, and the moment a mother’s deep and true love for her son had sparked madness.
Then Adam’s spirit separated from his body, and he cried, flailing his arms and begging his mommy to forgive him for having climbed the tree.
She couldn’t forgive him, but I could. No matter what his mother had done—no, would do—I couldn’t abide by watching him suffer beyond the final moments of his life. “Adam,” I called, my voice wavering as I struggled with my emotions, turbulent and heavy with grief of my own.
He hadn’t deserved to die.
He turned to me, his eyes watery. “Why can’t Mommy hear me?”
“You died falling out of the tree,” I told him, careful to keep my tone soft and gentle. I failed at keeping the tremble of my encroaching tears at bay. “She can’t hear you anymore. I’m sorry.”
“But how will she know I’m sorry?”
In that moment, I wondered at how much of a monster I might become, willing to lie to a ghost to offer comfort in his passage to his final rest—and if I might be the reason why, if his ghost went to his final rest, that his mother’s attempts at necromancy were doomed for failure.
But after witnessing the lingering spirits, I couldn’t tolerate the thought of cursing him to witness his mother’s future sins.
I wanted to send him off feeling love and having the confidence someone would forgive him for having been a child.
“She knows,” I promised, approaching and crouching so I was at his eye level. “She loves you very much, and that will never change.”
That was a painful truth, but I could accept that her willingness to do evil was matched solely by her love for her child.
The first of her delusions would be the car accident, a tale of a driver, likely drunk, who’d swerved and hit her baby while missing her, an accident that left her blameless in Adam’s death.
Having witnessed the reality, that all she had done was turn to tend to their meal, I refused to blame her for her son’s death.
In that moment, I learned a valuable lesson from her tragedy.
There would be no picnic tables near the tempting lower branches of trees that a persistent child might climb upon. Anything any child of mine could climb would be made as safe as possible, used with supervision.
But like with Madam Merorie, supervision might not be enough.
Life could end in the time it took a mother to turn and flip meat on a grill.
For her, the pain of it had never ended.
If I could, for Adam, there would only be peace, safe from his mother’s reaching grasp, even if that safety for the child meant the downfall of so many others.
“I’m tired,” Adam whined after he worked through his tears. “And Mommy’s sad.”
Yes, she was, and she would be for many years to come.
But that was where the lies would come, the ones meant to put him at ease no matter what dark days would come for those left behind.
“I know your mommy is sad, but it’s okay to rest. What happened wasn’t her fault.
” Then another lie, the kind meant to comfort a child.
Worse, even I believed the lie, because children would be children, and if left alone to their own devices, they would do as children did, investigating everything and climbing places they shouldn’t.
“What happened isn’t your fault, either. ”
“Can I have a hug?”
During my many years of service to my community, time and time again I’d met beautiful little children who lived to be held, who truly believed that any and all problems could be solved through a simple hug.
I held out my arms for the child, my heart shattering into a thousand pieces over the cruel realities of life and death.
Adam threw himself at me, and after a brief moment of living warmth, he faded away to nothing, leaving behind memories and grief in his wake, free from the inevitable future awaiting those who would endure the days to come.
In my purse, the sickle’s light dimmed, as though it too wept for what had been and what was yet to come.