Page 64 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
The same way Ma did a million times.
Because I have something to do—whether I clear her name in my conscience alone or find justice before the masses, I have something to do.
I dare myself to open her desk drawers. Inside, pens, scattered pages, and small, worn books crowd together. The papers are filled with philosophical scribbles, their words heavy with thought. But when I touch them, the stack crumbles in my hands, disintegrating into a fine dust that slips through my fingers and vanishes before my eyes. Beneath, leather-bound books lie waiting, their covers etched with the marks of time.
Each one is homemade. Journals upon journals, carefully hidden, Ma’s secrets pressed between the pages.
I look at the door to the study. Closed.
Opening the first journal, I flip through the pages, reverently touching the edge of each one. I peruse every word Ma penned. Soaking in the scribbled sentences, learning her mind in a way I never thought possible.
There’s nothing about a weapon, but Isa’s name comes up a few times, and I pass a picture of Ma at my age.
She looks so much like Terran and me.
She’s with a Folk in a home I recognize. The woman’s hair is dark brown, highlighted by the sun. Iknowthis woman in the faintest of ways. A distant, foggy memory.
Beneath the photograph reads:Willow and Isa.
Isa. The memories return to me now. I don’t know how they hadn’t before. I heard Ma say that name a thousand times before. Ma and I would visit her when I was a child, and I’d play with Isa’s daughter, but we stopped visiting before I could grow.
Certainly, Ma had a connection to the woman taken by the Arcanes. It opens a million doors, connects very few pieces.
As I open the second journal, it feels like an overstepping of boundaries. By the third, it feels a little less intrusive. Ma writesabout her parents a lot. They wanted her to be a gentle, tame, and kind Eunoia.
For her to be like all the rest.
A healer, a helper, always second—never best.
The entries grow in intensity.
They see me as something soft and gentle. I can’t be a fighter; I have to be the one that heals the fighters. I can’t have strength; I have to be the one propping up the strong. I’ve held this anger in me for so long, it feels to be an eternity, but I’ve never been so aware of it as I am in this moment. It floods out of me like a secret that needs to be shared. I’m going to prove what I can do, that I’m strong first and a Eunoia second.
The further along I go the less these sound like Ma. The sentences get shorter, hastier.
Angrier.
With every page, she talks more about being a fighter. Proving herself. Ma, thephilosopher. These are someone else’s journals—not the woman who raised me.
Then I find a particularly peculiar passage.
They’re back. The two little girls, Marbella and Annabetha, I think, were killed by “mysterious” means. That means Arcane, even if no one is willing to say it. I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but if there was ever a time to prove myself, this is it. If I could kill one—orall—of them, no one could doubt me again. I’m going to Isa tonight. Freyr is the one with the greatest chance against these creatures.
She wrote this a year before I was born.
She made the Weapon to defeat the Arcanes.
It all makes sense—she was doing somethinggood, and the Arcanes took her friend as a result. The Royals killedher.
Ma might have been more volatile than I remembered, but it was for a good reason. She still wanted to help. She had to.
Thisis why I picked up my broken pieces—this is why I always have. There is more for me to do, more for me to prove.
I continue searching her journals, looking for something to tell me about the Weapon. Is this the birth of it?
There is nothing more. Ma continues to talk about proving, proving, proving herself.
Until…
