Page 84 of Veil of Death and Shadow

In her story, he was a hero. In mine, he wasn’t even a villain. Just a fleeting footnote.

Levi didn’t look convinced, but he decided to be merciful and drop it. “And after that—you lived with your father’s aunt?”

I nodded, the tension easing from my body. “Amto Amani. She’s the reason I’m on the West Coast. I was born in Ohio, but I moved to a small, isolated town on the Oregon coast when she took me in.”

“What was she like?”

“Warm. She had a really great, but kind of dark sense of humor. And she didn’t give a single fuck what anyone thought about her.” I smiled, remembering her fierceness, the confidence she radiated in every room she walked in. Now that I was older, I wondered how much of that was innate, and how much was a shield or weapon she could wield when she needed it most. “Which was really impressive, considering she was a bit of an outsider, and we lived in a super small community. The sort filled with judgmental assholes just looking for someone to cast out. People thought she was a witch.” I laughed, my chest feeling light and free with the memory. “They hated her for it, but thatdidn’t stop them banging on her door in the middle of the night, begging for spells and talismans for whatever misfortune had fallen on them. We had a lot of fun over the years, collecting random things and pretending to enchant them.”

During my time with her, I never once felt like I was cursed, though I’d asked Amto Amani about it when I was older—like as I grew, the more aware I became that death was close. She often brushed it off, called my fears unwarranted, but sometimes I’d catch her watching me when she didn’t think I noticed, her features carved into a frown, lost in thought.

Of course, after I arrived, and throughout the nine or so years I lived there, people in our small town grew mysteriously ill. Several even died, but no one cast the blame on me.

Who would blame a child? Especially one orphaned so tragically?

No, it was far easier to blame my great aunt, a woman who’d always lived on the outskirts of their community, as mysterious as a stranger.

My memories of the town, even now, were laced with the sharp sound of their whispering behind our backs—an occurrence that took place nearly every time we walked down the main street of shops. They swore that she was a witch, cursed; threatened time and time again to have me taken from her and sent away to a more suitable guardian. Someone who could give me a family, a future, a more palatable life.

Or at least one that better suited their idea of a palatable life.

I loved living with Amto Amani, and never once felt like my life was lacking in any way.

She’d always pull me tight against her side, gluing us together when those threats would resurface—her warmth sinking into me, a calming promise, the vicious hiss and nonsensical chanting she shot back at the pearl-clutching townspeople a dark dare.

It was enough to keep their threats just that. And their fear never stopped any of them from haunting our driveway in the early hours of the morning, begging for a love spell to draw back a cheating spouse, or a protective talisman to keep their investments from slipping through their fingers.

She would always acquiesce, whispering gibberish over her table of found objects and rocks—most discarded trinkets I’d collected from oblivious tourists during the summer months. Worthless.

Then, when the townspeople threw her a few wrinkled bills, noses crumpled in disgust—disgust that seemed directed half at her and half at themselves—they'd stow away their useless talismans and the cloudy vials of water they’d assumed she’d ‘blessed’ and brought back from the Mediterranean Sea. They had no idea that I’d collected the liquid from the shoreline just a few steps from their very backyards.

Of course, those moments of desperation also never stopped them from whispering behind our backs the next day when we'd go in for the week's groceries or keep them from hugging their children close to their bosoms whenever we passed by.

I'd asked her once, why she did it, why she fed into their fears and carved space for the lies they harbored to root and grow, but she only laughed, her answer so clear and so her, that I remembered every word til this day.

“Fear is a powerful tool, habibti,”she’d said, her words filtered through the soft curves of the accent that only occasionally made itself known. “Don’t underestimate it. Their money spends the same, no matter what names they might call me. And it’s far better for their ignorance and hatred to land on me than on you. I can make better use of it."

Her fearlessness wrapped around me like a cloak, and I grew to revel in her cleverness, amplifying her fake chanting with my own whenever I was feeling particularly brave.

“She sounds kind of like you,” Levi said, drawing me back from the recesses of my thoughts.

With slow, steady strokes, he started pushing us down our path again.

He had no idea how very wrong he was—or how much I wished that he wasn’t.

“I can tell you really loved her.” He smiled, and this time it stretched all the way to his eyes. “You light up when you talk about her.”

My cheeks warmed under the weight of his gaze. “She was just that kind of person, you know? The start of my life was chaotic, but when I was with her, it never really felt like I’d suffered some great loss.”

Even with the solitude of our town, made more obvious by the disdain of the people who lived there, I loved my childhood with her. Possibly, in part, because I didn't know anything different, but mostly because she had a way of infusing warmth into every room of our small cottage—her every exhale breathing comfort and light into each crack and cob-webbed corner.

As long as I had her, I hardly noticed the things I lacked—friends my own age, my parents. She was all I needed. And she put my needs before anything else, even when they created more work for her.

“During my first week of school,” I said, recalling the memory with a sudden urgency, “I'd been picked on so badly for living with a witch, that I begged to be homeschooled. It was a request she’d refused, at first, until the afternoon I came home with a black eye and a gash a few millimeters short of my eyeball where the sharp edge of a rock had hit. She gave in instantly after that, securing a stack of textbooks and various homeschool curriculums. Just like that, she sacrificed so much of her time and so many resources to keep me safe, to keep me happy.”

Our life went back to being cozy and quiet after that day. Just us. She never let me go a single day without knowing that I was loved, without making sure I understood that my life was a gift, not a curse. That I was not defined by what I’d lost but forged stronger because of it.

“How long did you live with her?”

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