Twice now, I accomplished a miracle. I defied death. Now, I’m able to walk like my spine was never damaged. It’s like the little girl who healed me said, I was the one who was stopping me from it. Just because you’re aware of something doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do something about it. Shame is not easy to heal.
It’s Halloween night now. Mom and I are trick o’ treating. We get a few weird looks from a few houses, but most don’t mind that an 18-year-old and her mom are doing it. This is something I’ve never done.
It’s dumb, I know, but it's nice to feel like a kid again. I won’t ever get to be one, that time has passed. But just because it has, doesn’t mean I can’t ever do the things I always wanted to. I have that freedom now. It doesn’t replace what I could never have, but it fulfills it in its own way.
I’ve been doing a lot of things like these with my mom and we’ve never been closer. Just like I can do everything I never could, I’ve been helping her do that too. She needs to heal as much as I do.
We stop by the town’s park when we walk home after a successful night of collecting candy. Both of our bags combined have to be at least five pounds worth of sweets. My mom places her bag on the ground then sits on the playground’s swingset. I join her, but not before I grab a few candy pieces to suck on. I kick off the ground and start swinging.
The stars are clear. Darkwood is so far removed from light pollution that I’m able to see them shine brightly. The moon looks massive tonight too.
“I had a lot of fun tonight,” my mom says.
“I did too. Thanks for doing this with me.”
“How have you been feeling?”
“Better.”
“What’s bothering you?”
“I feel like I didn’t do anything to earn all this help. I couldn’t save myself. Even after I knew that I had to, somebody else did it for me.”
“I don’t think you never did anything. Just look at everyone who you helped.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know what I did.”
“Do you expect it to be like what happened back in the hospital? I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.”
“Can it be that magical?”
My mom giggles, “Isn’t it always?”
-
Emmah explained everything once I was ready.
We’re children born outside existence. We are all bound together because we share this fate. We are the path to a kinder world. It’s what we can do. There’s not many of us and yet we always manage to be around one another.
I knew of Chris. The boy who sees through time. Emmah, who connects emotions and gives them a tangible form. Adanismee who accelerates physical injuries to heal. Marina; she brings memories of the past to the present. I met Audrey. She speaks to those who are unable to pass. There are a few others I have yet to meet. And then there’s the one who opened access to the soul, the creator of Winter. Its creation made the threads visible to each other. It allowed us to be discovered and known.
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I wasn’t fully connected with everyone else. They knew I was there but I never could feel them. It was this disconnection that allowed Lyle to replace it with his own. Even after it was removed, the threads are still visible. Someone else could find them and seek after them.
Emmah said I have the power to hide them.
-
I haven’t visited Chris in a few years. It’s been too sad too. I was never close to him to start with so it was just a thing that happened to me. But Chris saw through time. He saw what Elizabeth’s death would bring. He knew what it meant for me. He gave his sanity away to me.
And I’m the only one who could make him better.
Emmah came with me. Chris was still unresponsive. That didn’t change. He’s no different than a corpse. He’s always sitting in his hospital room, trapped inside his mind. He met the woman in the white dress too. Emmah says each experience with the encounter is different. I wonder what she told him. He’s only here because he believes he failed her–failed me too.
I placed my palm over the back of his hand.
“Chris? It’s me. Grace.”
I still think about how subjective emotions are from person to person. For example, experiencing something as little as being unheard could amount to the same amount of sadness and pain to someone who lost their parents. But grief is grief. The amount doesn’t change that.
Joy is much the same.
Comparison destroys that shared connection.
I held Chris’ hand and wrapped my fingers around his.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Everything is okay now. I’m okay.”
Emmah assured me that this’ll work.
“I broke the cycle, Chris. It’ll take time, but I’m healing from it. Let me heal you too.”
The grip on my hand tightened.
His eyes moved up and looked at mine.
Emmah connected our emotions and gave them form. The threads that we’re all connected become able to be touched. They’re all tied to a singular point.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I asked her.
“You’re overthinking it. Just touch it.”
I did and it shattered. Every presence that I felt faded away. I disconnected everyone.
Chris woke up.
-
Is my power that unremarkable boring? It’s so plain that I couldn’t notice it. Even if I did, it was so ordinary that I thought nothing of it. Can’t everyone do what I can do?
Yet it’s the greatest gift. Because I exist, it exists.
A distant high-pitched meow gets louder every few seconds. A tiny little white kitty cat with black spots meows its way closer to us. I drag my foot on the dirt to stop myself from swinging. The little cat meows like it’s asking me to pick it up.
“Now how did it end up here?” My mom asks.
The baby kitten stops meowing once it’s in my hands. “Do you think it belongs to somebody?”
I look back at my mom. She’s smiling.
“Do you want to keep it?”
“Can I?”
“It’s the cat who picked you.”
I sit back down and let the cat rest on my lap. It wastes no time getting comfortable and falling asleep as I pet it with my finger.
“I don’t know anything about having a cat.”
“I don’t either. We can learn together.”
“What if I can’t keep it happy?”
“What if you can?”
I look up at the stars. What if it's that simple? What if that’s all it was? What if there wasn’t anything else?
I look back down and to my mom. She’s entranced by the cosmos. The air is calm and the night is warm. All the kids and their parents are walking back to their homes. There’s teenagers hanging out on top of the hill. I’m sitting on a swing set and my mom is next to me. My mom is still young and has her whole life still ahead of her. I’m no longer frozen in time and I have my whole life ahead of me too.
Everything is alright now.