Page 142 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
The first thing my younger self sees is Ma, dead and debilitated. Her legs are still rooted in the floor.
Her severed top half lies somewhere else.
Little me doesn’t scream. She doesn’t even cry. Her face freezes as she stares at the two pieces of Ma’s body, once whole.
The world beneath me shakes. The shock waves move through my stomach exactly as they had that day, shaking up the knots that formed. Younger me clutches Ma. Current me nearly pukes.
But I’m too busy watching the story unfold.
I never remembered what happened next—the way I sat with Ma’s severed, dead body. It’s hard to watch as I hold her, the trees shaking violently above me.
Pa runs to us. He holds Ma’s cheek with one hand and mine with the other. He doesn’t blame me. Not yet.
“It’ll be okay,” Pa promises me. The me I watch from a distance. ThemeI watch in the same way I watch other people. But for once, I don’t feel jealousy.
I’m watching myself lose everything.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Pa says.
It will never be okay again,I think.
And my fourteen-year-old self knows he’s only saying it to calm me down. To stop the tremor that she’s starting in the world.
“It’s my fault,” little me whimpers.
“Look at me.” Pa holds my face. “It’s not your fault.”
“I could have run,” I say. “I should have stopped it.”
“This is not your fault,” Pa says again.
Looking from the outside in, I can see him gulp down his horror. I watch as he wraps an arm around little me’s shoulders, holding himself together just enough to stitch me up.
He pulls me close, whispering in my ear, “Let’s bring her home.”
Little me clutches the rose amulet—Ma gave it to me when I first left for Visnatus. Ma told me it would always protect me.
I think of the boy who holds it now.
Azaire, who’s dead in my arms in the real world.
What little good the rose did.
I follow Pa and my past self, staying paces behind as they enter the house.
On this day, Ma and I had been picking flowers for my birthday. That’s why I was home. No one could have ever guessed this would happen.
No one could have imagined.
As we enter the house, my brother Jasper stands, rushing to meet Pa and my younger self.
I stand behind the three of them: my younger self, Jasper, and Pa.
No one says a word.
Terran and Cassius run into the room while Pa gently sets Ma down on a bed of grass and roses. The cries are muffled beneath the ringing in my ears.
It is exactly how I heard them when it happened.
