I opened my eyes again. Nearby, the light of my lantern flickered against the ancient darkness. Lady and Church were huddled over me, their eyebrows drawn together, their shoulders slumped. They scooted back as Chuey crawled through some dead thistle and wrapped his heavy arm around my shoulder, rosary dangling from his fingers.
“I hated her for leaving, Chuey.” I shook my head. “I still do.”
Chuey put a hand on my back, leaned close to my ear, and in his terrible voice started to sing my third verse.
I lay there, dumbfounded at what I was hearing. The words sounded right. The notes sounded right. And Chuey, maybe because he knew my story, even gave it some feeling. “How?” I asked.
“You gave it to me, man.” Chuey gently shook me. “I can see it all.Hearit all. And it’s a hell of a thing for you to try and see her side of it in your own song.”
The problem was that, even hearing it now, I felt no forgiveness for Mama. Whatever change had taken place inside me at Wembley was more than just music and words. Without the memory itself . . . the large scar inside me still burned. I dropped my forehead to the frozen ground, all but done.
He gently shook me. “But Ese, that’s never been the best part.” He launched into the chorus. The fight chorus we’d shared since our library days, a declaration, despite all things, that we would stay close. For each other. Like brothers. Like family.
The sound settled inside me. For a sweet, beautiful moment far down at the bottom of history, all the other moments of my past went away. It was just me and Chuey, and that old familiar chorus. Tough and certain and defiant as hell.
I hadn’t even understood my own song. “I never stopped wanting her back. Made me blind to a lot of good things, didn’t it.”
Chuey managed a smile. “You think?”
On my wrist, I noted the simple bracelet given me by the child Emily. “I always knew you and the other guys had my back. But maybe I thought it was mostly about the music, not us actually being a family.”
“Ah, brother, musicisfamily. Now, you gonna make me keep singin’ alone?”
I smiled, took a long, steadying breath, and together we sang our chorus?—
When the silence of those you know should love you Steals your childhood days
When the only people who ever tried to hear you Lie cold and silent in their grave
When the promises that were once made to you Have all been traded and you’ve lost faith
Please know for every heartbreak deep inside you That I will be one who stays
We finished, letting the last words linger between us. Then Chuey whispered, “Westmont strong.”
“Damn straight,” I replied.
I nodded my thanks to Lady and Church. They were part of it, too. The pain of burrowing into the past had shown me, memory by memory, that I may have lost my brothers, my dad, and Mama, too, but along the way I’d also found not just friends who’d back my play but another kind of family. And I was going to stick this out for them, right to the bitter end.
Some thirty yards away, the Ward was still fending off the wraith. I picked up my lantern, grabbed my bow, and pushed myself to my feet.
“We’ve got to stop it,” I said, “but we still need it to renew her.
Lakshmi, can you give it another target?” She bolted right, into the darkness.
“I need to find its Rupture,” I said. “Do what you can to help me focus on that.”
They pulled their weapons, and we circled left to the wraith’s flank.
I played a hard, revelatory stroke. Amber light flared across the barren plain. Gleaming patterns of souls erupted in the wraith’s shadow, with occlusions too numerous to count.
The wraith screamed a shivering note that pulled at the sutures in my shadow, nearly dropping me back to the ground. Then it began whipping the Ward again with its black cords. Her luminosity flickered, dimmed, and she fell hard to the dirt.
“Leave her alone!” I screamed, my voice echoing across the desolate flats. The wraith whirled toward us, undulating, thrumming with deep, earthy tones.
Again, it boomed out a note, stronger this time. The ground beneath our feet shook and whitened, deeper cracks spreading across it like a sunbaked dry pan. Church’s and Lady’s bindings darkened. Chuey and I staggered. Only Lakshmi stood firm, though she was breathing hard and now holding just one sword with both hands.
I regained my footing and pulled a hard, bracing stroke, driving it with thoughts of Lady’s foundlings and Church’s sense of propriety. They both straightened and raised their weapons.
