‘Everything is a choice. Talking to me now is a choice. Walking into the craft room was a choice. What you do next, it will all be your choice, Emily. Sadly, our choices aren’t always as simple as deciding between something we want or something we don’t. Sometimes it’s what’s best for us or best for others. Oftentimes, we must select what we consider to be the lesser of two evils. The idea that the right decision is always the one that makes you happy is an optimistic fantasy.’
Strangely enough, I did not feel better.
‘Do you have another question?’ she asked, casting her eyes upwards to the sky, and though I couldn’t see it, I could feel dawn beyond the horizon.
‘Why can’t I see ghosts anymore?’
She cocked her head a little, a bemused, upward tilt to the corner of her mouth.
‘Obviously I can see you right now,’ I added for clarification. ‘But ever since my Becoming I haven’t seen any others. Did they leave Savannah or did they leave me?’
‘No one left anyplace,’ she replied, her eyes roaming the square as though she could see things I could not. ‘Ghosts are still the people they were before they passed and sometimes people do not wish to be perceived. The whispers of your destiny are louder where we are. Until the ghosts are certain of your intentions, they may not consider you a friend. Try not to take it personally.’
‘What about you?’ I pushed. ‘Where were you?’
‘I’ve been here.’
‘If that’s true, why couldn’t I see you?’
‘Because you didn’t need me.’
‘Of all the absurd things I’ve heard in the last few months that might be the craziest,’ I replied, uncontrollable laughter bubbling up out of me. ‘No, I think you’ll find I definitely needed you.’
‘You needed time,’ she corrected me kindly, ‘to find your own feet and your own feelings. There comes a day when we all have to learn to fly.’
‘So you kicked me out the nest and hoped I wouldn’t come crashing to the ground?’
Crouching down in front of me, her white gown billowing around her, she nodded.
‘And look at you. You’re soaring.’
Nothing about the past few weeks felt like a success to me. No Wyn, no Catherine, no closer to understanding the prophecy or interpreting my visions and nightmares, and every day it felt as though the danger around us grew.
‘There’s only so much I can do without guidance,’ I said,terrified she would vanish again if I so much as blinked. ‘And I have no one to guide me. Do you know how frightening it is to go through this alone?’
‘Very much so.’
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 voiceintoned 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.
