Perfectly Preventable Deaths

27 Mustard Seed

I haven’t heard from Oona since that night. She hasn’t been at school. I’m trying not to send her any more messages. I don’t want to pressure her. Scare her off me. I want to make it easy for her to be with me.

Like at the lake.

I traipse up the stairs, smelling dinner, ignoring it. I cannot cope with people wanting things from me right now. I thought that I would get a straight answer from Mamó, about Lon. I thought that maybe she would try a little harder to convince me.

I want to be wanted, and I want to be left alone.

Things that are impossible together. Witchcraft and a normal, happy life.

I spoke in anger, but my words were true, I think. I need to kill that part of me. I remember when Mam started going to church every Sunday. It was when we were about seven or eight. We all went, until I was thirteen, and then she let me make the choice myself.

I think of the driftwood woman, on the altar, surrounded by candles. The shadows dancing on her wooden flesh. That’s the sort of strange that people tolerate. Charms and spells to keep God on your side. It could be magic too, but not for me. It makes me feel uneasy. Helpless. Small.

I don’t want Mam to light candles for my mental health and worry as I drift away from her. I don’t want her to lose another person that she loves to something strange. I think of my father, burnt inside a glade. I close my eyes and almost smell the tang of something in the air. Leaves on the forest floor. Charred body, verdant trees. There is a puzzle there, if I could solve it.

So many things around me feel so … paused. On hold, until my life is normal life again.

I’ve still been keeping things inside, not telling anyone. I’m not ashamed of how I feel or anything. Or only a little. It’s not that I have fallen for a girl, but that I’ve fallen so hard for someone who doesn’t care about me. I don’t want Mam and Catlin to know I’ve been rejected.

And I don’t want to be her second best.

I think of the story of the forest devil. You take a living thing to certain crossroads. Something full of innocence is best. You bring a sharp knife and a steel resolve and you take the thing and plunge the dagger in. And you can play with it, if that’s your thing. It makes the call you’re sending ring a little louder.

The devil listens to the sharpest hurts. The little death is like a signal flare. A statement of your need. But something else as well.

Permission.

And if he comes, you have more work to do. Lay out a bargain. Offer him your soul. He can say yes or no. Or even maybe. But if he listens, you can do big things.

Before you die.

I think of what myself and Mamó silenced. The Ask, she called it. A sort of prayer, Brian said.

What did whoever hurt that little creature intend?

I wonder what I’d sacrifice for Oona. I couldn’t kill a thing to get me her. But it wouldn’t be real then. It mightn’t work. I wonder, when the fox was sliced apart, was it for love, or health, or power? Or if it’s just a story in a book, upon a tongue. Putting sense upon things with no reason. I think of all the stories in Dad’s book. They ended well, more or less. You can thwart almost anything, as long as you know the rules. It’s just I’m not familiar with them yet.

And there are rules. And there are rules for everything. No one tells you what they even are – you pick them up by getting things all wrong, and then when you’ve made sense of them, they break, and turn to something new.

It makes no sense.

At night I dream of my father, his face above me, mouth shaped into something like a prayer. The tang of lemongrass. The hum of bay.

Small white stones pitted in the bottom of a mug.

Small white crosses rising from the ground.

My heart is racing.

Everything is still.

I gasp awake.