3. Asteroid
Asteroid
I sat up too suddenly.
My back protested in thousands of places, making me gasp. I was tangled in my bed sheets from a sleepless, dreamless slumber. Pops’ old police academy shirt and a pair of my shorts clung to my body from a cold sweat. My braids were scattered around my shoulders, with some plaits wrapped around each other.
I put on my glasses, combing out the snarls in my braids with my fingers. I was back home. My room was dark for the most part. The soft light of my bedside salt lamp cast shadows against the walls. My cracked bedroom door also brought in a bit more light from the hallway.
This room was the only bedroom I had ever lived in, but the air of it just felt… different. Before, it felt like it was always going to be the same house, always full of laughs and smiles, always smelling like my mom’s cooking, always full of life.
Whenever I was in my bedroom, there was constant noise outside. The house was never quiet. Maybe it was Pops telling a joke along with Mom’s deep laugh. Possibly, Uncle Ever or Auntie Max telling a vivid story. Perhaps it was Mom talking to a coworker on the phone. Either way, the house stayed loud and full of a fun, infectious energy.
But now, there was only silence.
I threw back the sheets and got out of bed, tiptoeing to the door. The last thing I remembered was being carried by Pops through the forest. My back and legs had been hurting too much to walk. At first, we were quiet. The rain had stopped, leaving the air muggy. The sun had set already with night settling in, and the clouds covered any stars we would’ve been able to see through the trees above. Pops’ flashlight on his shoulder was the only source of light to guide us.
“Nothing is ever going to be the same now, huh?” I whispered.
“I won’t lie to you, baby Byrd.” Pops’ voice was like a plate of soul food to my starving heart. Pops was born and raised in Louisiana, with the Southern Cajun accent to show for it. “Things will be different. But we will find your mother.”
“What about Uncle Everett?”
“He’s alive. After you ran away, he took on as many of the hunters as he possibly could. But some slipped by to capture you and take Doe away. He couldn’t take on everything at once. So…” He let his words trail off as the reality sank in. “We’ll find her. Your Uncle Everett is searching for her as we speak. I have him scouring the skies while your Aunt Max is on the ground. Between those two, we will find her. I know it. We will find her.”
So, Mom was missing. She was hurt and missing. She was hurt real bad, and she was missing . I tightened my grip around Pops’ neck.
It was going to be okay. Pops was right. If anyone could find Mom, it would be my Uncle Everett and Auntie Max. Uncle Everett was a master at tracking people. Like Pops, he knew how people functioned like no other. It was part of his charm and proof that he was the embodiment of the animal he could shift into: proud, regal, and powerful.
Auntie Max was as much my aunt as Everett was my uncle. Aunt Max had grown up with Pops. They were next-door neighbors for decades until he married Mom. Then she became Mom’s best gal-pal. But, they were polar opposites. Whereas Mom was more materialistic and more structured, Aunt Max was far more spiritual and free. Plus, Max’s head-in-the-clouds personality was directly at odds with her true nature. She was a hellhound shifter. A legendary demonic creature meant to guard hell’s secrets, she was a trained fighter from some sort of career that she had before I was born that she also refused to talk about with me. Now, she used her skills to watch over those who mattered most to her—only when absolutely necessary. She was non-violent to her core, never even swatting at flies. On the rare occasions she became aggressive, she tore the world apart to bring hell to earth.
She was tall and willowy. Her black Bohemian goddess locs flowed down her back. But she always had them styled out of her face. Her face was covered in piercings: her eyebrows, nose, cheeks, lips, and ears were a dazzle of gold charms and chains. Her light-brown body was equally covered in tattoos from her neck down to her toes. Aunt Max’s terracotta red eyes were always bright with wisdom and amusement, especially when it came to my antics. I always went to Auntie Max for real-world advice: how to handle friends or how to choose a future. I even went to her for love advice, as she always had some new lady friend around. Of course, she would never tell Mom or Pops anything we talked about. It was our secret until I was ready to say otherwise.
I could see Uncle Ever and Auntie Max now. Uncle Everett was in the skies with his brown wings spanning the length of a large heavy-duty truck. His golden hazel eyes would scan down searching. Meanwhile, Aunt Max’s paws would pound as she raced through the forest. Her black fur was covered in locs, too, her pointed ears pierced, and her body the size of a Clydesdale, she would follow her nose to pursue Mom’s trail. Between the two of them, they would find Mom. There was no way they wouldn’t.
I just couldn’t accept a reality where I was and Mom wasn’t.
Under his breath, Pops said, “We’ve gotta find her. We will find her. For your sake. We have to.”
He kept repeating this as a mantra. His eyes and feet focused forward. I knew that look and feeling. I tightened my grip around his neck.
That’s the last thing I remembered. I must have fallen asleep in Pops’ arms not long afterward.
I opened my bedroom door and stepped forward to look down from the stair banister overlooking the living room and the kitchen island. From above, I could see the heads and legs of Uncle Everett and Aunt Max lying on each of the couches. However, I didn’t recognize the person standing in front of the fireplace. They appeared to be a tall, white woman. Her hair was wavy and half-dyed blonde and ginger brown under her black sun hat. She was in a vintage black dress with a matching thin long-sleeved robe and high-heeled platform boots. From under the brim of her hat, I could just make out a black lip to go along with her aesthetic. I loved her look, but I couldn’t place her face.
Their conversation trailed off into silence as they all turned to look up at me from below. They were already talking, barely above a whisper. Their super hearing must have caught when I was coming so they could stop their conversation. Their faces were mixtures of great sadness and concern.
It made my stomach churn.
“Kiddo! We didn’t even hear you get out of bed,” Uncle Everett said, rising from the couch as I came down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, I was able to make eye contact with the mystery woman from across the room. Recognition finally dawned on me. She was one of Mom’s incredibly old friends. Her name was Tallis, but she went by Talli, and she was a very powerful witch. She came to town about three times a year to visit the family. When she wasn’t here, she was a literal traveling witch doctor, going from across the country to heal supernaturals wherever she was needed. During her visits, Talli never did any doctoring with the family. She called her time with us “one of her few vacations out of the year.” Instead, she would always bring me a rock from her travels. The rock would be one she “found” at one of her destinations. But it was always in the shape of where she went and painted with memories that moved like a slideshow. It was like the moving pictures in Harry Potter, but a moving postcard chronicling her journey. I had a shelf in my bedroom that was full of her rocks from the various places she had been.
Uncle Everett pulled me into a warm embrace. “How are you doing, Byrdie?”
I shrugged and then cringed at the pain the action caused. I didn’t want to truly consider the question. Instead, I cleared my throat. “Where’s Pops?”
“Oh… Well, he’s…” Uncle Everett stuttered, clearly unsure of how to say what he wanted—no, needed to say. He exchanged glances with Aunt Max and Talli. Uncle Ever was never unsure of what needed to be said. He was always so clear and confident.
“What is it, Everett? Where’s Pops? Is he okay? Where’s Mom? How long was I out for? Why aren’t either of them home?” I asked. My voice betrayed me by raising itself an octave toward the end.
“He’s… uh…”
“Everett,” Aunt Max stepped up behind him, putting a hand on his shoulder. They exchanged a glance. A full conversation happened there in a matter of a few seconds before she met my eyes. They were determined, yet full of so much sadness and exhaustion, that my heart leapt up and caught in my throat.
“My darling treesong,” Aunt Max started, using her nickname for me. Her Cajun accent, just like Pops’, shined through her deep voice. “Your daddy is okay. He is at the police station.”
I held my breath, tense. I rasped. “Why?”
“Well…” Auntie Max sighed. “After you ran off, Everett fought the hunters as best he could to try to protect both you and your momma. Your momma, Doe, tried to help, too, with her lava and fire-breath. But there were too many of them. Doe and Everett got overwhelmed. A group splintered to find you. Another one captured your momma and took her away while Everett was overpowered. By the time your uncle had dealt with the hunters, both groups had long escaped. Everett shifted back and called me and Forrest to come help. Your daddy went to find you, while Everett and I went to find Doe. We followed her trail from the meadow… as far as we could… As far as it was able to lead us.”
“W-what does that mean? What do you mean that you followed her ‘as far as you could’?”
“There… There isn’t an easy way to say this, Byrd. Maybe we should wait for your father to get back?—”
“No! No, you can tell me! I can take it. I can handle it, I swear.”
“Byrdie, I?—”
I grew frantic, panicked. “Please, just tell me. Why is Pops at the station? What happened to Mom? Where is she? Is she okay? Did you find her? You have to tell me if you found her!”
“Byrd, please. There’s just no gentle way to say it. Doe… your mom…” Uncle Everett sighed. He cleared his throat. He waited a beat. Then he cleared his throat again, straightened his shoulders, met my eyes, and pressed on with a stern voice.“The… Th-the scent trails can tell you a lot about a person, like what they’re feeling, what they’re doing, and more. It can also tell you… Well… The reason we could only follow your mom’s scents so far… was because… was because we… lost her.”
“L-l-lost her?” I scrunched my eyebrows. “What do you mean you ‘lost her’? You aren’t making any sense. Like, you l-lost her scent? What are you saying?”
Aunt Max shook her head. “No, we followed her scent to where the hunters… We followed the hunters to where they put Doe in their car and drove off. When we say that we lost her, we mean that… As we followed her scent, it changed. It lost its vibrancy… She… She died, Byrd. Your momma is gone.”
Your momma is gone.
Uncle Everett continued. “The hunters took Doe’s body with them. She held on for as long as she could… Probably to give us the chance to track her for as far as possible… So that we knew…”
Your momma is gone.
“Forrest went to the station to begin an investigation into what happened. He has wolf-shifters, vampires, air elementals, witches, and everything else you can think of following the scent we picked up?—”
Your momma is gone.
“They should have been powerful enough to track Doe to the ends of the earth, but they lost them somewhere in Tennessee. I told Forrest to let me and Max go. We could have easily found her. No one knows—knew—her scent like either one of us does—did?—”
Your momma is gone.
Your momma is gone.
Your momma is gone.
“Everett! Enough! She has enough to process,” Auntie Max interrupted. “Treesong? Byrd?”
Your momma is gone.
Mom. My mom. She was…
No. No . No, no, no.
No, that couldn’t be right. No.
No, that couldn’t be true. No.
No, this couldn’t be real, couldn’t be my reality. No.
No, she was not dead. No.
No, it didn’t feel like she was gone. No.
No, it wasn’t true that I would never see her again. No.
No, it couldn’t be.
No, it felt like she would walk through the door at any instant. No, it felt like she was already here. Her presence was all over the room, all over the house. It felt like I could almost hear her from-the-belly laugh now, large, deep, and contagious. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck were standing up, thinking that she was close. If I turned around, I felt like I would see a beaming smile and an awaiting hug. Then this would just be a nightmare, a horrible nightmare that we would all wake from.
Because that’s the thing about nightmares.
Eventually, you wake up and forget all about them.
“Byrd? Treesong? My love, are you okay?” Auntie Max touched my face lightly. I blinked as her face came into view. Her eyes were wet with tears, and she was frowning. Aunt Max never frowned. It looked strange on her face with her laugh lines.
I took in the rest of the room. Uncle Everett was facing away from us, his shoulders shaking. As I looked at Talli, I realized she wasn’t looking at us at all from the front of the fireplace. Arms crossed, her eyes stared just past us, far off elsewhere. Her features were etched with worry and thought.
I should be crying. People cry when they find out their loved ones have died, right? I saw that on television and in movies. That’s what happened. That’s what’s supposed to happen. I knew I should be crying, an emotional wreck. I should be screaming to the heavens. I should be asking questions like why my mom or why did this have to happen to her . I should be sad. But I couldn’t bring myself to cry. No tears burned my eyes. Instead, I was numb. I just felt empty.
“Your daddy will be home soon. How about I make your favorite: salted caramel hot chocolate with whip? It will take some of the edge off,” Aunt Max suggested.
I allowed her to guide me toward the bar area that separated the kitchen from the living room. I was on autopilot. Aunt Max’s hot chocolate was her specialty, one of the many things I used to look forward to as soon as the leaves began to fall. Now, though, I didn’t feel anything when I saw Aunt Max take down the ingredients from the cabinets and start a kettle of water. She even plucked my favorite mug with Sailor Moon on it from the cupboard close by. Robotically, I went to sit at the bar to wait for the drink that would hopefully make me feel something .
Suddenly, I heard a loud clack against the countertop. I looked down. There, hanging from my neck by its gold chain, was Mom’s large obsidian pendant necklace. It was still around my neck from the cavern, but it felt different there now. The pendant rested past my chest, too long and big for me.
I took the pendant in my hand and gripped it so hard I felt pricks in my palm and fingers. I squeezed my eyes shut. An ache punched me in my chest.
We’ll always be around to keep you safe.
Mom .
Suddenly, laughter. It was faint, like an echo, yet deep and boisterous. It cut through everything else in the house to hit me right in my core.
I knew that laugh.
My eyes burst open. I scanned the kitchen, the living room, the stairs. Where had it come from?
Then I heard it again. This was louder this time. It sounded like someone was slowly turning the volume up higher and higher.
Soon, the laugh became loud. Too loud. I covered my ears as the laugh became deafening, too much for me to take.
When I felt like I couldn’t take anymore, I called into the ear-bleeding cacophony. “Please, Mom!”
The laughter vanished. Silence was left in its wake. Now that was too loud. My ears rang from the sudden change. But I could hear myself think again.
I took my hands from around my ears and looked around. I was alone now with Auntie Max, Uncle Ever, and Talli gone. The house was too quiet, too still. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end.
Then a familiar sound: the lock on the front door clicked. I turned.
There, at the door, was Mom.
Alive.
Here.
But also very clearly not.
Her color was all wrong. She was devoid of it. She was a black-and-white caricature of what she once was. But her hair was as I remembered it was this morning. A long, voluminous afro as long as it was wide. She was still in a dress and all dolled up for her job as a Reading and Language Arts Teacher at the local middle school. She came into the house, shutting and locking the door behind her. No sounds came from her as she took off her heels, hung her purse up, grabbed her house shoes, and stepped into the laundry room. I saw her exhale as she passed by me, but no sound came from her lips as she did. I couldn’t smell her sweet, woodsy smell in the air, either. She changed quickly into a tank that flattered her boobs nicely and a long skirt where her tail tattoo peeked from the long slit. Her bare feet made no pitter-patter noise as she stepped on the hardwood and then the tile.
Her presence was silent, but her life had been so loud.
She started to take things out for dinner. Chicken and vegetables. My stomach plummeted. This… This can’t be what I think it is.
Mom took out the chicken and sat it on the counter. She laid out seasonings, washed the vegetables, and cut them into the perfect bite-size servings for dinner. Then she preheated the oven and poured oil into a cast-iron skillet. She snapped her fingers—a still soundless action—before she went to the fireplace. Why was I here? How was I here? What was going on?—?
A knock at the door reverberated through the house. It sounded more like a pounding than a knock, causing me to jump. As loud as it was to me, it must have been normal volume for Mom. She said something to the door before she wiped her hands from the wood, rose to her feet, and went to answer. Opening the door, I watched as more color drained from her colorless face. I followed Mom to the door.
Standing there were the hunters. Masked. Armed. Lethal.
Mom turned to run. Everything played out in slow motion. Mom raced past me, determination clear on her face. Despite the black and white coloring, I could see the beginnings of Mom’s shift take hold in living color. Her skin hardened, thickened, and tightened into brilliant red scales. Her wing and tail tattoos pulsed and moved with the beginnings of reality. Her body was stretching, changing to become the beautiful spectacle that I long looked forward to becoming myself.
But this would be the last way I would see my mom.
My last image of her…
“Mom, no!” I cried out, my voice cutting through the quiet world. Tears spilled down my face. I knew how this would end.
And I hated it.
I had to do something to change this.
As if she heard me, Mom turned her head to face me in the middle of running mid-stride. Our eyes met. For a moment, color blossomed throughout her face, so my dirt brown eyes met her almost-black ones.
Mom smiled at me. Her eyes twinkled enough to dazzle a whole room, and her smile was just as bright. “I did this for you. Everything has always been for you, baby Byrd.”
“Wait. For me? Did you know you were going to—? How did you know—? Mom, please. Please don’t go! I love you! Mom, don’t do this. Don’t leave me. Don’t die !” I pleaded. I reached out for her, begging to touch her.
“I love you more than all the stars in the sky, baby Byrd. Never forget. It’s always been for you. Even this. Live happily, my darling. Do whatever it takes to live happily and safely.”
For me? All of this because of me? Why would she say that? How was losing her going to help me in any way?
For me? Does that mean this is my fault? No, it couldn’t be. I didn’t want this. I never wanted any of this. I just wanted her.
For me? She promised she would always keep me safe. She said she would always be there for me. And now?
For me? Live happily? How could I do that without her? How could I do anything without her?
For me! Now she was dead. She was murdered .
For me ! She was gone because of me. She was gone. Gone . The hunters almost killed me because she wasn’t there to protect me. No one was. And if she couldn’t keep me safe… if she couldn’t protect me… If no one could protect me again…
No .
Never again.
The memory of Mom ran out the back door and the hunters followed behind. They aimed their weapons: their guns, crossbows, and rifles. The leader, the one I saw talking in the meadow before with a deep, commanding voice, took aim with his large pistol.
Then he fired.
As the gunshot echoed, as loud as the knock and the laugh that brought me here, I screamed.