“Oh, Kiandra. It’s not that I don’t want you.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s …” Maybe this is a misunderstanding. She didn’t see the wound in my body. She didn’t see how much blood I lost. There’s no way I could go back to living. That’s not possible. I’ve heard of people who die for a few minutes and come back to life, but I’ve been dead for hours. “What are you talking about?”
“You will have this power, too. Many of our ancestors do. We are the only ones.”
I shake my head. “Are you talking about … making me alive again?”
She doesn’t have to say a word. Her expression speaks volumes.
I stop breathing. “But how? That can’t be done.”
She crosses her arms. “It can be. But if I do this for you, you must leave here and never come back. Not until you are one hundred years old. Preferably later. And please realize it’s not because I don’t want to see you again. I will see you again.”
“It’s impossible,” I whisper.
She puts a hand on mine. Her eyes glint with pride. “I assure you, I can do it. As long as certain conditions are met. I would prove it to you now, but I need to ensure a little something before I can start. Trey is working on that. Now I have some duties to attend to. Do not stray too far.”
She brushes my wrist with her thumb and turns to walk back to the crumbling stone house. I’m just standing there, numb, in disbelief. The sun is hot on my face, and it’s then I realize that we’ve climbed through the woods, and I’m standing on a peak overlooking the river. The wind blows hard and cold against my skin. Down below, yellow rafts dot the river, returning from the day’s white-water expedition. I can see across to the east bank. Trey is there somewhere, performing some task for my mother, in order to send me back. Send me back. To the living. How is that possible? If it is, why can’t she send herself back? Why didn’t she kill me herself to spend just a few more days with me, if she knew she could send me back? I turn to ask her the hundreds of questions percolating in my mind, but she has already disappeared among the trees.
Chapter Twenty
Still not feeling right alone, I head back toward the old stone house. Trey must be back with a new group, because a new long line is snaking up from the dock, all people I don’t recognize. It’s hard to believe so many people have died on the water. The little girl I saw before is having her hair braided by an old woman. She smiles at me and waves. I’m about to go over there when I catch a bright light shining through the pines. Trey. I move away and see another figure beside him. My mother. He’s listening intently, and I can tell from his expression that he’s not happy. Something’s wrong.
He scowls and storms out into the sunlit path, nearly colliding with me. The worry on his face quickly dissolves into a smile. “Hey!”
I study him. “What was that all about back there?” When he shrugs, I say, “You looked upset. Is something wrong?”
“Nothing for you to be worrying about,” he says, digging his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. He looks over each shoulder, for someone, I guess—my mother? “You want me to show you round now?”
“I don’t see what the point is. She’s sending me back,” I whisper. “Did you know she could do that?”
He gives me a small nod, then pulls on my sleeve, beckoning me back up the pathway. He leads me on a new path, which begins to slope downward, toward the river. I follow him silently, thinking about the fiends, about the sad, angry souls that still miss their human lives. Did Jack do this to me because he’s jealous of me and the life I have?
Finally, when we’re almost near the river, Trey says to me, “Yeah.”
“If you knew that, then why is it such a big deal? Why have you been watching me so closely—”
“It is a big deal. You don’t understand. Your momma has powers none of us have. But it’s not an unlimited supply. Bringing someone back has never been done before, and it will weaken her. We don’t know how much. It might take away all her power.”
“All her shine?”
He looks at the ground. “Yeah.”
“And then what?”
“She’s gone. Like I said, I don’t know where. And that relation of yours? The one I told you about? That person will take over. And I don’t expect things will be very good here after that.”
“Jack?” I ask.
“Yeah. No. I don’t know. It’s going to be a mess here. But your momma’s right. You got another chance at life. You need to take it.”
“You would take it?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“But I could take over. I could be the Mistress. Now.”
He squints at me. “You don’t know nothing yet. And you want that? You want to leave everything behind?”
I don’t even have to think about it now. Of course I don’t. But I would, if I were needed. I would … I stop when I realize that’s just what my mother did. And I hated her for it. I don’t want to leave my dad and have him hate me. Right now, I don’t want to think about it. So I concentrate on Trey, the edges of his form shining so very brightly. Not as luminous as I am, but for someone who has been here since the Great Depression, he’s certainly not lost a lot of his glow.
“Your shine,” I say gently. “It’s so bright. And you’ve been here so long. It’s almost as bright as Jack’s.”
He looks down, his face reddening. “Yeah. For a long time I wanted to go back. I was like Jack. Bitter. Angry. I volunteered to be a guide just so I could go over to the other side and see what was going on. See what I been missing. And I missed a lot. But I don’t mean to go against your momma. She’s a good lady. Treated me like my momma would’ve. I won’t do that to her.” He looks up at the sky, shakes his head. “But I come to realize there’s no point thinking about going back. It can’t happen. Not for me. Come on.”
We reach the edge of the river. There’s a small rowboat there, tied to a stump. He motions for me to get in, so I do. “Where are we going?” I ask.
“You’ll see.” He takes up the rope, pushes the boat out a few feet from shore, and hops in.
As he starts to row, I’m suddenly aware what this means. We’re going across. To where Justin is. To where my father is. They won’t be able to see me. I’m remembering how I was screaming at Justin and Angela, and how they just looked through me. The thought of that empty look in their eyes makes my chest hurt. I don’t know if I could stand it if my dad looked through me the same way. “I thought my mom was going to make me alive again?” I ask. “She said that it has to be done quickly.”
“Problem with that.” He looks over his shoulder. “We need your body. That’s what she sent me over to get.”
I nearly choke. “My … body? Why?”
“Well, it won’t do no good if your momma brings you to life and then a month later a fisherman stumbles on your bones, will it?”
“Okay, okay.” I shudder at the idea of seeing my lifeless body again. “Did you get it?”
He shakes his head. “It’s gone. Someone took it.”
“What? Who would do something like that?”
“Don’t know. Humans may have found it. Maybe I didn’t hide it good enough. That would be a problem.” He looks up at the sky, where the sun is beginning to slump from its highest point. “And if we don’t have it back before a search party finds it … Yeah. It will be too late.”
I slosh in my hiking boots through what feels like thick mud. When I come up on shore and attempt to clean my boots, I realize they’re almost perfect. Trey glances at me, and I wonder how the rest of me looks. It feels like I haven’t had a shower in ages. I think of my mother, day after day, wearing the same Phillies shirt she died in years ago. I guess I don’t need to shower, and that thought makes me instantly miss the heavenly spray of hot water on my face and back. And then I look at Trey and realize I’m being stupid, that unlike him, at least I have a chance of getting back, which I’ll probably blow if I keep thinking silly things like how much I miss showers.