Her own world was growing faint. Marigold pressed her cheek to the gate and held her breath. The colors of the world—the bright gasps of fiery orange, the arid yellow of the garden’s treetops, the cerulean sky, the white-painted house—bled to gray.
I’m sorry, Mom,Marigold thought. Her hand slid down the iron bar. Smoke was in her lungs. She couldn’t hold her breath any longer.
Her knees fell, then the rest of her. As she lay among the weeds and the dirt, the fire impending, she could hear the earth itself singing to her. It hummed a low and resonant song—serene, unlike Seet Ling’s, and before Marigold could wonder whether she was losing her mind, a rush of glittering cold lapped at her skin. In a wave it fell over her—and stole her into the darkness.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Marigold woke under the expanse of a gray-blue sky. It looked like the sea, vast and never-ending, and her first thought was that she’d died—for how else could the world be upside down? Then she smelled the smoke.
It came from below, coiling into the sky in a bulbous black cloud. Sirens blared, their red lights flashing. As Marigold sat up, she saw the remains of 12 Harbourage still burning brightly.
She had no recollection of how she’d ended up here in the safety of the hills above the house. The last few minutes were forever lost to her, as though she’d fallen into the deepest dream. But she knew who had saved her.
She raised her arms, searching the air with her hands. “Mom?” she cried. “Where are you?” She searched, panic growing inside her with each passing beat. Then—a few steps down the hill, she felt something.
It was little more than a wisp, a thread of cold that caressed her fingertips. Marigold closed her hand, latching on. Through her fingers, she felt a spark leading to the secret world where Helen Yuen had vanished.
She couldn’t let it fade.
With one hand, she opened the Altoids tin. Still wrapped around the wooden comb, the shadow had become tenuous, as thin as a dark strand of hair. Just like her mother’s presence on this earth.
“I know it’s hard for you to hear me where you are,” Marigold said, her voice shaking. “It’s like you’re trapped in a dream and it’s a goddamn fight to wake up.” She swallowed, tasting the ash in her mouth. “You might not even want to wake up. But don’t go yet. You came out of nothing to save me when I needed you. I still need you.” She uttered the words she’d been frightened to say for so long: “I love you, Mama.”
The shadow flickered. If it could hear her, her words weren’t enough.
Marigold didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what else to say.
The answer came softly, a mere whisper amid the tumult in Marigold’s mind.
Music.
Helen always said it made her ear hurt, but there was one song she used to sing, so long ago Marigold couldn’t even muster the opening words. But Helen’s shadow knew. As Marigold worked it free from the comb’s wooden teeth, as if she were untangling the yarns of the past, suddenly she remembered every word:
There are two hwamei in the tree,
Singing their sweetest song
For at last, the rain is lifting,
Chattering into the sea.
There are two hwamei in the tree,
Snow melting off their feathers.
They perch upon the blossomed bough,
Ready to fly wing to wing.
She sang haltingly, her voice gaining strength with each tremulous note. But when the song came to an end, the spark inher fingers fizzled into nothing. Gone, too, was the thread of cold in the air.
Marigold crumpled to her knees. She’d forgotten about the smoke in her lungs, and all at once it rose up her throat in a fit, making her cough. Then she wept.
Green saturated the hills, and blue returned to the sky. She didn’t see the clouds begin to drift apart, the sun sieving through in pinpricks of light. She didn’t see Helen’s shadow beneath her, sweeping across the wild grass like a mantle of ink. From this darkness, a woman’s shape unfurled. Her mother’s figure, with its long and sturdy limbs, the black swath of hair, the familiar fan of tapered fingers. From her mouth whistled filaments of a song, the melody an echo of the lullaby that Marigold had just sung.
Under the sun she swelled to life, and it was then, when the sound of the wind became a breath, that the grief in Marigold’s heart began to stir into hope.
“Mom?” she dared.
