She cradles a bundle in her arms. As I watch, she ducks her head and begins to croon to it, her voice soft and gentle. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”
At the sound of her voice, the longing within me intensifies. I edge closer, but the woman doesn’t glance up, and as I pass through the bars of sunshine that stripe the floor, I leave no shadow. Finally I’m standing next to her, peering down. My heart flutters, then starts pounding, so hard I can barely catch my breath.
In her arms, wrapped in the yellow blanket that’s all I have left of my childhood, is a baby who stares up at her with my too-wide, thick-lashed gray eyes.
Holy crap. I’m looking atmyself.And the woman holding me…this lovely, sweet, kind woman…is my mother.
I’ve always wondered if my biological parents loved me. If they couldn’t wait to give me away, because I was different and unlovable,wrong,from the moment I came into this world. But here, watching my mother rock the baby that I once was, seeing her stroke my cheek, I know the truth. The ache that’s always simmered inside me subsides, replaced with a relief so profound, I fall to my knees next to the rocking chair. I want to savor this moment. To stay here with my mother, forever, as she sings to me about how I make her happy, even when skies are gray. Here, in this cocoon of a moment, I’ve found perfect, absolute peace.
And then it splinters.
The sky outside the windows darkens, the bars of sunlight fading. My mother’s head turns, and her eyes go wide. She leaps to her feet with me clutched in her arms.
“David!” she screams. “David!”
A man comes thundering into the room. He’s tall, bearded, built like a lumberjack. Deep within me, recognition thrums: This is my father.
“Run,” he says, his voice urgent. “Go!” Then he faces the window, raising his hands. “Hic sunt dragones,” he chants, louder and louder.“Hic abundant leones.”
As my mother sprints for the door, honest-to-God dragons and lions materialize in the room, forming a barrier between my father and the window. The glass shatters, and hooded figures climb through, one after the other. “Don’t be a fool, David,” one of them shouts. “Give us the child, and we’ll let you and your wife live.”
I know that voice. I’ve heard it before. But where?
“Fortius!”my father bellows, and one of the dragons opens its mouth, unleashing a stream of flame at the man. He dodges it, but the curtain behind him catches fire, and the baby I once was shrieks in terror.
The man in the lead, the one who spoke, tsks at my father, as if scolding an errant child. He pulls a knife from his pocket and cuts his arm, then dips his fingers in the blood and flicks it at the beasts. “Evanescere,”he says, his voice echoing off the walls, the floors, the ceiling. I can feel the power of it, as if the word has actual weight. And one by one, as the blood hits them, my father’s beasts wink out of existence.
Blood witches,I think. Is this who they are? What they do?
What do they want with us?
The heat in the room is rising, degree by degree. Sweat slicks my father’s forehead as he looks from one figure to the other. “Get out—” he begins, just as my mother screams again.
He wheels. Between her and the door is another group of darkly hooded figures. One of them grabs for her, and she kicks them in the shin. But she’s holding me, and she can only fight so hard. Still, she struggles against the figure who holds her—holdsus—prisoner.
“Non ducor—” she begins, but the man claps a hand over her mouth.
“No you don’t,” he snarls. “You think we don’t know what you are? What you can do?”
My mother tosses her head, biting at his hand. She thrashes and kicks, but it’s no use. One of the other figures wrests the baby from her arms, and it shrieks—Ishriek—even louder than before. The flames are raging now, gobbling up the curtains, racing along the walls. I want to put the fire out. To save my parents. But when I tear at the man who holds my mother prisoner, my hands pass right through him. Because of course, I’m not really here.
Three of the men who climbed through the window have my father pinned, holding him back as he screams for me, for my mother. The leader dips a finger in his own blood again, but this time he paints it across my father’s lips, trailing a bloodied fingertip down his throat. My father’s mouth opens, but no sound emerges. The veins in his neck bulge as he tries again and again, struggling vainly to break free.
“We ruled once,” the leader says, his face invisible beneath the hood, his eyes dark pits. “We will rule again. Let this be a warning to those who stand in our way.”
And oh God, I know where I’ve heard his voice before. In my premonitions, sayingOur day will come.
He stalks closer to my father, until their faces are inches away. My father stares back at him, and in his eyes I see only defiance. Not fear.
“Goodbye, David,” the man says, and cuts my father’s throat.
I hurl myself at the man, screaming, trying to rake my nails down his face, to gouge out his eyes. But he feels nothing, hears nothing. I know it’s too late, that all of this happened so long ago, that I’m helpless to stop it. But I press my hands against my father’s throat all the same, trying to staunch the flow of blood as he crumples to his knees.
It does no good. His eyes dull. He falls, face-first, to the floor in a pool of his own blood.
Across the room, my mother howls from behind the hand that’s clamped over her mouth. “It’s time,” the leader says to the man that holds her back.
Oh. God. No.
