Page 27 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
She worked for the kingdom. That’s the only explanation. My mother, a philosopher and Eunoia, worked for the Folk. It seems impossible. Yet I can’t deny the logic of this. She managed to secure my enrollment at Visnatus, an academy built for future leaders.
Shehadto have ties with the current ones.
I’m halfway through the pile on her desk when it dawns on me: I need something more personal. There will be nothing about Isa in government papers. Stepping back to her bookcase, I’m prepared to look for a journal… Only to stop short, my handsinching toward the books but never touching. I don’t understand why at first. Maybe there’s a magical barrier, stopping me.
Until the boy comes to life in my mind, saying,“You’re looking for the final words she penned.”
That’s why I didn’t start with the bookshelf and why I can’t touch it now.
I feared this would be too much.
I try to swat at him, like he’s a persistent fly. But he says, “I’m not here to annoy you,” and I understand. “Close your eyes. Join me.”
The offer is a tempting one, and I take it. I have enough mercy upon myself to place the two of us back at Visnatus Academy, in the garden. I can hardly bear the grief of Ma’s study in the real world—I don’t know if I could handle it in my mind.
The sun shines over the boy and me, the colors around us spiraling lazily. As if painted of water color instead of reality. Yet reality weighs heavily on me. My body still stands in my hometown, where everything tastes of bile and blood.
“This is hard for you,”the boy says, staring at me from a foot away. His features are more muddled than usual. No part of him is easily defined, like a smeared piece of art.
He is dark, even in the light.
“Yes.”
“I know, love. It wasn’t a question.”He steps closer, his movements like water flowing downstream. Then, he folds me into an embrace.
Years ago, when I discovered him in my mind, his presence and touch felt strange. Over time, our embraces have become the only I receive.
The sun shines in my eyes.
“Things like this can be healing,”he murmurs into my hair, his voice weaving with the wind. A tear slides down my cheek.“Since she died, you’ve only avoided her. Sometimes you must let things in.”
“I miss her,”I sob, leaning into the boy.
“You always will.”
“I don’t want her to be gone.”
“These are the things we cannot change.”I clutch him tighter, and he continues,“There is something in the bookcase, I can feel it. Find it.”
Slowly, his touch dissolves from under me, his edges softening like a shadow met by the sun. I clutch onto him tighter as he slips away.
Then, my eyes open, leaving me standing before the bookcase in Ma’s suite. Alone.
But the boy left me with a parting gift.
I follow his instruction, scanning the spines. I assume I’m looking for Ma’s classic leather-bound journals, something that looks battered enough to be my age.
Something she penned her thoughts in.
Instead, my eyes stop on a philosophy book:The Mendacity of Good and Evil. I glide a finger down the rough spine, feeling every crease and indentation, stopping just over the author’s name. This copy is attributed to Marto, but I know it was written by Shenlin. As I pick up the book, something foreign comes to life.
This is what the boy pointed out. What I pointed out to myself. I felt it the moment I stepped into the room. It was pestering in the back of my mind. But something off isn’t always so easily defined, like trying to recognize a wrong note in a song you’ve never heard.
Until it sticks out.
This room is the song—the book the wrong note. It doesn’t feel like Ma.
It feels like magic.
