Page 20 of A Winding Wave of Magic
Her eyes were still white where the pupils should have been. Her mouth opened in an O of silent pain.
Behind me, the creaky French doors leading to the kale yard banged open. “Sybil!”
Gran ran in, her red skirt billowing around her like a blood-soaked bandage.
“What’s happening?” I cried. “Gran, what’s going on?”
My face was wet. Tears, but it felt like it could be blood.
“Quick!” She grabbed my hand and pulled me up to my mother, then gathered us into her warm, capable body with one hand around my neck and her other at Sybil’s waist.
I was back on the dusty street, just in time for the road in front of me to blow open. Chaos erupted. And then my body did too.
“Aieeeeeeeee!” a voice keened on the wind.
Sybil, I thought in a voice that wasn’t mine. A deep voice. A familiar voice. Sibyl, I’m sorry.
Daddy.
Pain shot through my body.
And then I was no more.
The house returned, and we split apart—Sibyl to the couch and me to the floor, desperate to touch the uneven wood. Something solid. Something real.
That strange wail still filled the room. I looked up to find my mother rocking in Gran’s embrace, tears streaking her pale white face.
“Jimmy,” she whispered in between siren-like sobs. “Oh, my Jimmy!”
“Dad?” I croaked, tears already starting to fall. “Was it Daddy?”
It was Gran who answered, not my keening mother.
“He’s gone,” she told me in her matter-of-fact way. “To the next world. You’ll see him again there. Come, girl. We’ll find comfort together.”
She beckoned me close again, and despite what I’d Seen, I didn’t hesitate. Sometimes touch is the only thing that heals. Even if it brings pain right along with it.
But as I allowed my grandmother to encircle us once more, pressing my cheek to my mother’s to weld our grief together, the truth both of them forgot to hide flew through our touch with the fluidity of the tears on our cheeks.
Sibyl burned Jimmy’s death into all of our minds, the memory I’d just lived flashing like a strobe. But I Saw more there than she intended. I Saw how much my mother loved my father, andhow much he grounded her, tied her to the earth in a way she could never do herself.
I also Saw that she had always known.
That she had been waiting for years for this to happen, allowed the bitterness of the fact to poison her insides and her love for him and me.
I Saw that Sibyl had known my father was going to die, and she hadn’t done a thing to stop it.
7
ARRIVAL
The King whom thou seekest here,
Unless thou bring Him with thee, thou wilt not find.
— ANONYMOUS NINTH-CENTURY POET, “THE PILGRIM AT ROME”
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to welcome you to Portland International Airport. The approximate time is four-thirty p.m.”
