Page 141 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
The stinger of a fatta scorpion rests beside Lucian. The poisonous stinger. The kind that kills a soul.
I glance back at Azaire, worrying he is too far gone.
“How long?” I plead.
“It’s too late,” Lucian answers.
No.It can’t be—he can’t be gone, not so permanently. Nothing can kill energy, nothing except for the fatta’s stinger. Nothing can eradicate a person, nothing but what’s happened to Azaire.
I gave him the rose—I tried to protect him, and somehow the worst has happened.
“I won’t accept that,” I mutter, picking up one side of Azaire’s limp body.
I have to fix this; I have to save him. Give him life or, at the very least, protect his soul.
Lucian lifts the other side of Azaire, and I carry him, trying not to let my emotions muddle with feelings of Ma. Feelings of anything.
But I can’t help myself from wondering if this is what Pa felt when he came to the garden and saw his wife dead, half of her body buried in the ground like a plant.
Tears fall. Burning flesh reeks in the distance, and I don’t know if it’s real. Is it a manifestation of my emotions?
Is this the boy, showing me my worst fears come true? The darkest parts of myself?
“It’s not me,”he answers.“This is very real.”
“I don’t want it to be.”
“I know, love.I can help. Just close your eyes.”
I do, because I can’t imagine doing anything else. But what I see is the field where Ma died. I wiggle away immediately, hoping to free myself from this. The boy holds my hand tightly.
“This isn’t where it began,”he says.“But it is where it solidified. In the aftermath.”
He points to two bodies: my body and Ma’s—alive. Ma steps in front of me, pushing me back.
“Wendy,run,”she demands.
My fourteen-year-old self shakes her head no. She trembles with fear, but she doesn’t run. No, she wants tohelp.
She doesn’t realize she will do the opposite.
Ma’s arms rise, summoning the trees that surround her. She used them to fight the pernipe, just as I had with the kapha.
I hadn’t noticed back then, but hers is the stance of a warrior. There is comfort in her power.
Yet, no matter how many blows she lands, the pernipe continues moving. And when it rushes for me, Ma screams. “Run!”
My younger self freezes. I want to turn away—I know what happens next—but my mind won’t let me.
The boywon’t let me.
Ma holds the pernipe off until she can’t. At the hands of the pernipe’s magic, she sinks into the world, her legs becoming roots. The pernipe throws my younger self through the air. I land against a tree, the memory going dark.
I don’t see the rest; I don’t know the rest. All I see is younger me, waking up with a face full of blood. Red pours from the wound at my lip, now a scar.
Tears form in my younger self’s eyes—trying to wane off the sting of the blood. She wipes her face, searching for answers, searching for what happened.
Then she wishes she hadn’t.
