Page 93 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

“Thereisalways choice,” sneered another mother. The most bitter of my mothers, in fact.Richalle.

I glanced between her and the new mother who had so calmly rebuked me.

“You are Richalle’s daughter?” I asked her.

“If that is what she can still be called,” hissed Richalle. “Does a daughter abandon her withering mother in her last days? Does she, Yasmin?”

Yasmin’s shoulders tightened, as did the small lines around her full lips. She did not meet my gaze, nor her mother’s, but peered straight ahead.

“Yasmin, you are welcome here,” I said. “I imagine you have dreaded my stitch and this vigil since you have known of it. Among mothers you will encounter guilt and regret and shame. You will find acceptance and learning and gratitude. These exist in us all, and not just in you.”

She swallowed but kept her focus on the tower.

“Shame,” hissed Richalle.

Cassandra said, “If this is how you treated her as a mother, then I can fathom her choice.”

Richalle tore at her stitches, ignoring the cries of pain from the mothers either side of her. “You know nothing, you who started this inheritance of agony! I gave her everything. I gave her all. There was my mistake, because I should have let her suffer sometimes, so that she might survive the loss of me. But I was too weak to witness her disappointment and heartache.” Richalle’s chest heaved and the furious spark in her gaze drained away, water disappearing down a pipe. “That was my mistake. But how I paid for it.”

Tears flowed over Yasmin’s cheeks, and she was as vibrant in death as all mothers except mine. “I paid for it too. I did not know how to be without you or to survive. When your time came… I could not face it. Far easier to deny your death. Maybe then, you would not die at all. I could return from nightmare to find your warnings of withering a falsehood. But I did return to be met with your remains and emptiness.” She turned to look around the circle at her mother. “What regret and shame and guilt crashed upon me. What dread crushed me to the floor for the rest of my life. What fear and franticness drove me in the decade after your withering. I hated you, Mother, and I blamed you for leaving me weak. I blamed myself for my denial and contentedness with that weakness too. For I had known that I could not look after myself even then. I had banished the thoughts, though, just as I had banished all thoughts of you leaving me too soon.”

There was no sound but her tears and her mother’s erratic breaths.

Yasmin drew herself tall. “Mother, I am sorry that I abandoned you in withering. I could not bear it, but I should have. I was weak, and that was not entirely your doing. In life, from that moment and that mistake, I became determined to be stronger. And I did, Mother. I withered knowing that had you still existed, and had you needed me in death later in my life, then I would not have left your side until your last breath was emptied to the air. I was not what you nor I needed then, but I was in the end. I am now. The loss of you shaped me forever. I will not deny. I will not pretend. I will accept. I will do hard things.”

I was not the only one to look at Richalle. As apologies went, this one was thorough and humble.

Richalle tried to rub away a tear with her shoulder. I had not thought of how their stitched hands removed their ability to rub away tears. There was some beauty in the inability to hide such emotion.

“I was alone,” she said hoarsely. “I was alone, and part of me wished to be. Such a sight was not one I wished for you. My heart could not bear it, and yet I hoped. At the end,myweaknesses were undone to reveal the lonely and fear-filled soul of me.Shewanted her daughter. But I had always covered her and smothered you, and so how could I be surprised when there was not enough resilience to carry you through hardship. You abandoned me for three days, but what I failed to teach you lasted you a lifetime.Iam sorry, Yasmin. I am sorry that I failed you. I have existed in death so filled with fear of how your life might have gone.”

Both mothers were crying, and I noticed how Yasmin clasped at the fingers of the mother next to her.Herdaughter. Her daughter that, I could feel in a stitch, was formidable in every bone of her body.

My inhale trembled. “I am full beyond words that death has provided opportunity for healing.”

So full that I could say no more.

Yasmin did not answer me, and whatever healing she had gained and given did not appear to have warmed her thoughts of stitched vigil.

I returned to the tower. Three of the mothers were unconscious, and I felt guilty about the wave of relief at the sight. The remaining three mothers were stitched into place with varying levels of resistance. One did not speak a word to me. Another attempted to run back to the haze. The last took to beating a stone against my tower while I stitched the sixth into place.

I scanned the mothers—all forty-four of them—after. “I am very sorry to force your choice in this matter. I am very sorry for all you have endured and must continue to endure.”

“Your apologies mean nothing,” said the mother who had tried to damage my tower. “We do not choose this.”

“You do not choose this, and I did not choose to be queen,” I replied. “We each give ourselves eternally. I can still be sorry for those who struggle to accept whatis.”

Fire sparked in her gaze.

“Daughter,” whispered my mother. “Another.”

I followed her haunted focus to the haze behind my tower. I tipped my head this way and that in an attempt to sense the mother. “I cannot hear her. You do?”

“We do,” said most of the mothers in unison.

“The haze renders me numb in sense,” I confessed.

Cassandra said, “Is this why you fear it?”

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