She felt…timeless. Weightless. Disconnected.

Estella was somewhere else again. Somewhere vibrant. Bright light filtered through sky high trees while she trekked through a sea of ferns dampening her clothes.

Like before when she lay unconscious after her attack and creatures hunted her in her dreams. But this time there were no hooves thundering in her ears making the earth beneath her feet vibrate softly; no decaying flesh of a man breathing down her neck. Instead, Estella felt…not easy exactly but an emotion like it — just off from comforting.

In the vibrant forest around her birds were chirping, there was a creek babbling, and…singing? All coming from the same direction.

Estella’s feet walked her towards the sounds — as if drawn by some sort of magnet. It was like this place itself was untethered and tilted the very earth she stood upon so that gravity led her towards the source, the waves of ferns drawing her deeper in.

After a time, she found herself approaching the edge of a small clearing, bright light shining like a beacon through the brown trunks of trees and ferns. Through the trees she could see the top of a stone building, the beginning of symbols or characters peeking out at her from the top from a decorative frieze. It reminded her of the ancient structures her grandfather showed her in their history studies.

The chanting was getting louder — for it was chanting that she heard, not singing. Estella could just begin to make out the cadence of the words, like a prayer or an incantation. To witches there wasn’t always a difference.

The birds were drowning out all other sounds of the forest, the brook was like a river in her ears, surrounding her, suffocating her.

Estella stepped through the clearing.

Deafening silence pressed in on her now from the woods, save for the lone person kneeling before an altar. Their head was covered with a deep green veil, a gold chain anchoring it to their head, a similar colored fabric was tied across their waist tying the robe together. Tassels and bells hung as their waste. Bracelets glistened off their wrists, clinking softly together.

The person’s chanting was so quiet that Estella instinctively drew closer into the small clearing to catch their words. Near and nearer she crept, trance-like to be part of the ceremony but not to disrupt. It needed to end. She needed to see how it would end.

She couldn’t identify the language, it wasn’t anything her grandfather introduced her to. Not her native French, Italian, or English. Not the Spanish, Latin, or Greek nonno insisted she should learn. It was mellifluous, silvery and drew Estella ever closer. She tried to mimic the sounds, forming and feeling the words in her mouth.

She must have made a noise, the next moment the person had Estella in a death grip. The young girl didn’t even see them move. They were before the altar and then simply weren’t. Their eyeless sockets bored down on her, their skin stretched over bone, their jaw tendons and ligament exposed. Words hissed through their bloated purple tongue, “This is not your time, child of the gods! This is not your time!”

Estella doesn’t know if she wrenched her body backwards, if the priestess hurled her away, or if it was a combination of the two but regardless, the world came screaming back as violently fell backwards.

The birds. The creek. The chanting. All roared in her ears.

Then she fell.

Then she fell.

Then she fell for a very long time.

____

Estella woke up in a hospital, sitting up on a bed with a nurse checking her chart. She did not know how she got here. She did not know where she was.

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“Is there someone we can call, sweetie?” The English the nurse spoke grated on her ears after the melodious hymns she had just heard.

“¿Pardone?” Someone to call? Why was a nurse talking to her? Why was there a nurse at all? Someone to call? She felt sick. She would be sick. She was sick.

All of the contents of her stomach were now on the floor. What did she even have in her to throw up, she wondered. When was the last time she ate? What day is it?

“Oh dear. No worries, no worries. We’ll get that all cleaned up. You just lean back now.” The nurse repeated her question carefully, slowly. “Is there someone to call?” she mimed the action to the girl, wondering if she didn’t speak English very well.

Estella’s chest tightened. Someone to call? What about — this is not your time.

But it was someone’s time. The car accident. She shut her eyes against the onslaught of memories. The rain. The squeal of tires. The stranger. The priestess. Is there someone to call?

Her grandparents believed that when a person died their soul wandered the earth in a ghostly procession. It was why they put out food and drinking offerings for the dead, so that the spirits may replenish themselves on wine and bread.

One would not wander the afterlife without the other. Where one soul went, the other would follow so bound together her grandparents were.

Is there someone to call?

____

It took twenty hours for Jacques to arrive from France. He was younger than Estella thought he was. As her grandparents' oldest friend she imagined him gray and soft like her nonno. But looking at him now, his youthful appearance felt right. It was the energy, probably, that made his youth acceptable to her. There was a magic about him. His age too was off set by the gravity in his eyes, which were slightly reflective in the harsh lights of the hospital room. Is this how she will be in time?

“Bonjour Estelle.” His voice was smooth and deeper than she expected. His pointed features made her think that he might squeak like a mouse.

Sharply, too sharply she corrected him, “It’s Estell-a. Italian.” Was now the time for correction? What is proper when one is stuck in the throes of grief and its shocking numbness? How is she supposed to act right now? Besides, she heard about this man her whole life. He was her grandparents oldest friend. Surely he knows her name. “Didn’t they tell you my name?”

He looked at her hard for a moment, searching before answering, “No, they did not.”

“Did you know who I am before now?”

“Yes. You’re their oldest friend.”

“At least they told you something.” Was that a hint of bitterness she heard in his biting tone?

She was too exhausted to search for the deeper meaning in his statement but there was something there, simmering under the surface. Her grandparents were dead. There were things to do and Jacques was their executor and her guardian now.

“What do we do now? Plan a funeral?” Her grandparents had few friends but surely those they did have would want to say good-bye.

She wanted to say good-bye.

Jacques ignored her question in favor of a different one, “Have you eaten?” Not ‘are you hungry’ but ‘have you eaten?’

“No.” Truthfully, she didn’t remember. Maybe the nurse fed her.

“Do you want hospital food? Restaurant? Home?” He said ‘hospital’ and ‘home’ like her grandmother, without the initial h. ‘ospital. ‘ome.

“Home.” Home without mémé. Home without nonno. Was that really home then? What was home without your loved ones in it?

Jacques must have read Estella’s thoughts on her face because his hand hovered in front of her, unsure of how to comfort this girl he’s never met. He settled on resting his hand on her forearm.

It wasn’t enough. The scarcity of touch, the brevity of it too made her loss unimaginably keen.

As if sensing her pain, Jacques leaned into the edge of her hospital bed, propping his chin on its railing. “How about we get you out of this hospital and get you home with a big bowl of risotto? Your grandparents would never be without the ingredients for risotto. It was Timoteo’s favorite dish.” He was right, they could always make risotto on a whim in their kitchen.

Estella nodded her acquiescence, her throat tight again. He knew they loved risotto. It was better than nothing.