Chapter 2 Seedbound
“Gods, I cannot get over that face!” Luz gushed for the third time since we’d sat at our table in the crowded outdoor food court, her gold hoops catching in the early fall sunlight.
The breeze ruffled her curls, scattering them across her shoulders.
“Seriously, who authorized him to be that fine and teach mythology?”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s all right. For an old guy,” Amy chuckled, not looking up from her writing.
I snorted into my lukewarm breakfast sandwich. It was eggy and mediocre at best, but somehow still tasted amazing.
“Girl, bye!” Luz laughed. “That man could make a grocery list sound like prophecy.”
“He looks maybe in his thirties,” I mumbled around a mouthful of food.
“Exactly. Greek statue in a damn tailored suit,” Luz said, grinning. “Prime-time fine.”
Amy glanced up. “That man has ‘no dating students’ written on his forehead. You’re gonna catch a Title IX case.”
“I don’t want his heart, honey,” Luz purred. “Just a chance to see what he’s hiding under that syllabus.”
“A restraining order, probably,” Amy muttered.
I nearly spat my chai while Luz cackled.
I watched them bicker, warmth spreading through my chest. Amy shook her head, ink-stained fingers tapping her pen against her notebook.
The white poplar branch tattooed across Luz’s shoulder peeked out from her tank top as she gestured wildly, while Amy’s sun-and-moon ink was visible on her forearm, the bow and amaranth beneath it stark against her pale skin.
I had always felt small between them, and not just because of my height.
I barely cleared five feet on a good day, while Amy and Luz seemed to tower over me in both height and personality.
I pulled my cardigan tighter around myself, bracing against the chill as a breeze carried through the quad, sending various colors of leaves across the ground.
Amy’s eyes lit up as she turned to us. “Oh, did I tell you? I looked into that study by the psych department. They’re paying a hundred bucks, so I signed up.”
Luz’s nose wrinkled with distaste. “Sounds sketch.”
“I promise, it’s legit,” Amy insisted. “It’s through the university. Memory recall and cognitive patterns. Very official.”
“I’m sure you read all the fine print in the contract, too,” I snorted.
“I skimmed. A few sessions, they ask questions, I answer, and they take biometric readings. Then they pay me, and I buy May’s textbooks.”
“Brain waves?” Luz’s voice went up. “That is wires on your head!”
“Little sticky things. Spa day for nerds.”
I laughed, but something about that unsettled me. I told myself it was just my own medical trauma and shook it off. “You don’t usually dream, though. Isn’t that weird?”
“They’ll probably put me in their control group or something,” Amy shrugged. She tapped her pencil on the table. “They asked about my childhood memories, if I had any déjà vu, or if there are places I feel connected to, outside of here.”
“And?” Luz leaned forward.
“No, no, and no. I’m boringly normal.”
But she wasn’t looking at us. She was looking at the bow on her arm, thumb tracing it.
“Just… be careful?” I hesitated. “It feels weird.”
Amy shrugged, grinning at me. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“They hypnotize you, and you come out convinced you’re Cleopatra,” Luz said, leaning back in her chair. “Deprogramming will be a nightmare.”
“That’s not how that works,” Amy rolled her eyes. She stuffed her notebook back into her bag, moving on. “So, what do you guys think about this class project?”
“Obviously, I’m picking a fertility goddess,” Luz declared. “Maybe Aphrodite. Or Freyja. Someone who understands pleasure is power.”
Amy rolled her eyes. “I’m going for Artemis. A virgin goddess who chose her own path, and murdered a dude for seeing her naked. Absolute icon.”
“Sounds on-brand.” Luz looked at me. “Mel?”
“I have more research to do.” The truth was, I didn’t know which deity to pick, but something deep in my chest told me I’d know when I saw it.
We chatted for a while longer, the conversation drifting between classes and weekend plans. Eventually, it circled back to my collision with Professor Ward.
“So on a scale of one to ten,” Luz said, grinning playfully, “how firm would you say he is?”
“I’d better get to work on this project,” I said quickly, rising and sliding the book into my bag, cheeks burning.
They laughed but didn’t argue.
“Don’t dream too hard about Professor Ward!” Luz called after me. Amy cackled.
I flipped them off over my shoulder, their laughter carrying across the quad.
My phone rang over and over. I ignored it, grateful that it stopped by the time I reached my dorm room. I already knew who it was before I even pulled out my phone.
Candace Blumenthal (3 missed calls).
I could already hear her voice: “Melanie Cora, I just don’t understand why you won’t come home and finish your degree online. You’d be so much happier here…”
I’d heard it enough to memorize it.
My mother still watched me like I was that tiny, premature baby in the incubator. She still flinched at any hint of a wheeze and acted like I might drop dead if she wasn’t careful. I locked my phone screen and tossed it onto my nightstand.
Instead, my eyes landed on the small note taped above my desk. It had turned yellow with age, the edges curling from years of handling. The floral paper still smelled like Aunt Reenie’s cinnamon tea, and her handwriting stark against the page.
It was the last note she’d ever written me. I peeled it carefully from the wall.
Mel-bug,
I hope you’re raising a little hell this summer, but in a good way. Don’t let your mother clip your wings before you’ve had a chance to fly. She loves you, but sometimes love squeezes too tight.
Promise me you’ll let yourself be big, even if it scares you. The world needs your voice.
Love, Reenie
Tears pricked my eyes as I read the note, the words settling into the space my mother’s calls had carved out.
Reenie had been everything my mother wasn’t.
Reenie was wild and unafraid. She spent years as an investigative reporter, asking the questions people avoided, digging into stories that made powerful people uncomfortable.
Reenie took every opportunity to teach me that healing didn’t always come from medical science, that the old ways knew things modern medicine had forgotten. She’d been the one to tell me I could be more than what I was.
When I was sixteen, she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. They said she had six months, but she was gone in just three weeks. My mother cried for a week, then stopped mentioning her altogether, as if speaking about her would tear the wounds open again.
I taped the letter back above my desk and collapsed onto the bed. My thoughts drifted to my dream, from the frost and the feel of those arms around me, before shifting to Professor Ward. That gaze had felt timeless and somehow familiar
Question everything, Reenie’s voice whispered. The truth is usually hiding beneath the surface.
I sat up and pulled my bag onto the bed. The textbook landed with a soft thud.
I flipped through it, waiting for something to jump out. It was mostly standard stuff: dog-eared corners, doodles in margins, underlined passages.
My fingers traced a faded illustration of a woman with flowers in her hair, a pomegranate in her palm.
Strange heat prickled along my fingertips.
I flipped ahead, finding familiar deities like Zeus, Odin, Ra, and Inanna. But none stirred me. None made my skin prickle the way the woman with the pomegranate had.
The next page was darker. The image of a woman in a field of withered flowers, shadowed by a cloaked figure in the distance, etched in heavy charcoal.
The heading read:
The Seedbound One
A deity of death and bloom. Forgotten by time, erased by doctrine.
There was no legible name. The print was water-streaked, blurred like time had tried to erase her.
Just a handful of titles remained:
The Venerable One
She Who Walks Both Worlds
Bringer of Destruction
Bride of Death
My pulse stumbled. A deep tug echoed in my chest.
I knew her. I didn’t know how, but some part of me did. A name on the tip of my tongue I couldn’t find.
There was a faded footnote at the bottom:
… many early references to this goddess were redacted during the monotheistic shift… pomegranate… binding ritual… memory cycles…
The rest blurred into nothing.
I turned the page, and my eyes widened.
The paper was scorched, edges crumbling. A faint black ring bloomed outward, eating through what had once been words.
It looked like someone had tried to destroy this page. The smell of smoke and charred fruit faintly wafted from the page.
I shut the book, heart pounding. A rental. This page had been intact before. This felt targeted somehow.
Question everything, Reenie’s voice whispered. Dig deeper. Ask why.
Why would someone burn this page in particular?
Reenie’s letter seemed to glow: Promise me you’ll let yourself be big, even if it scares you.
My phone buzzed. Another call from my mother, I didn’t answer.
Instead, I opened the textbook again and started reading everything I could find about the goddess with no name.