Page 11 of Prince of Masks
Butmother’smother, my favourite, is Nonna.
Ethel is a decrepit, gnarled thing, all spidery and wispy and mean with a cane. One hundred and sixty years of life and she’s still holding on, as firmly as she did when she used to grab my hair too tight and yank it whenever I backtalked as a child.
I waited for her to die. I wished for it.
Every time we meant to visit, I hoped we would find her dead in her favourite chair on the porch, or at the bottom of the stairs, all folded up like a pretzel. And then I could cry, milk the grief, and get all the attention from my parents.
But it never happened. Still hasn’t.
Truly, I don’t know how that creature is still holding on.
More than one hundred years is a fair life, even for witches.
The magic in our blood fuels us, it powers us. Witches can live to around one-hundred-and-forty, maybe even one-hundred-andfiftyyears before we take our final breaths.
Grandmother Ethel has too many years to boast, and she’s still going.
I hate that woman.
Her print explains the long life—rituals.
Bet she made a deal with the devil or drinks the blood of infants in exchange for more time, just so she can use it to flood me with as much self-loathing as possible.
She has never liked, not for a moment, what I am.
A‘stain.’
She called me that once.
I was thirteen, I’d just endured the first semester of hell at Bluestone, my life turned inside out, and over the holidays, that’s what she called me.
‘That little stain.’
But Grandmother Dorotea?
Oh, she would never call me any such thing. She’s my favourite. Not just of the grandmothers, but of my whole family.
She’s warmth. Summer and Spring. She’s cosy armchairs and mismatched mugs in glass cabinets. She’s a garden of wildflowers because ‘roses lack character and tulips are for those with beige souls.’
I writhe my legs, slow, and start to kick down the blankets from my body.
Mother takes the hint and slips off the foot of the bed. She makes no move to leave, and rather, wanders to the tall window where she starts to tug open the curtains.
Flinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I reach for the silky black cord that loops above my nightstand, the servant call. I tug the corded rope, once, twice, thrice. Just one tug will ring the bell in the servant hall and send someone up to my room with fresh coffee, but I make sure they rush.
Drawing away from the curtains, Mother has let in enough light to squint my eyes.
I stretch out with a gaping yawn that splits me.
But she doesn’t leave, yet. She picks through the row of bags on the narrow table that’s pushed against the back of the settee. All my things from Bluestone must have arrived this morning. The luggage is stacked under the Victorian-era table, the bags piled in rows. Guess I slept through the imps hauling in my belongings.
Mother’s tone is light, “What is this?”
She has her back to me, so I don’t know what she’s plucked from the unzipped bags until she turns and, there in her firm grip, is a small leatherbound pocketbook.
“Oh,” I blink, as though just now remembering I have that, because truly I did forget that I bought it. “I found that in a bookstore in VeVille. It’s neat, right?”
Mother’s smile is fleeting, but as tight as her grip.
