By he, I know she means Phillip, and her words anger me.
“He was the only good thing in my life,” I tell her, and I see red with my rage. “He never asked me for anything. He loved me for me, he didn’t love me for what I could provide him with, or for what I could do for him.”
My mother actually flinches at my words, because she sees the barb for what it is. She knows that I was born for a purpose, and while she has loved me my whole life, that doesn’t change the purpose.
“I love you, girl,” she croaks. “Nothing can change that.”
“I will die,” I tell her firmly and limply and matter-of-factly. “That changes everything.”
My mother can’t argue because she knows that much is true.
Chapter Eight
The stories The stories
The stories.
The rich stories that I’ve been told since I was small swirl in my head and I see the vibrant words and rich tapestries come together in front of me.
Salome.
The step-daughter of the ancient and great King Herod.
She danced for him one fateful night, a dance so full of seduction that he’d told her that any wish she had was hers, that he’d give her anything. She’d demanded the head of John the Baptist, and Herod had delivered it on a silver platter.
She was a seductress, she was wily, she was brilliant.
Her blood is my blood.
She dabbled in black magic and necromancy, and she became powerful and great. She had a line of great descendants, and I am one of them. Her blood would always avenge her, she said. I am her blood.
I am her blood.
Am I crazy?
I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and ponder the stories and feel my child under my hand, moving moving moving, and I don’t know if I’m crazy.
Was the story of Salome real? Or have I imagined her?
Is my pregnancy causing me to be sick?
Am I hallucinating?
I don’t know
I don’t know
I don’t know.
All I know is that every night, I see the blood. It fills my room like a great great ocean, and last night, a woman pulled herself from it. She was covered in it and wearing a silver ring.
“This is yours,” she uttered in a hoarse hoarse voice, and I’ve seen the ring before, but I can’t think of where.
I don’t take it, because I feel the energy coming from it. I feel it from here, from my bed. I close my eyes and Phillip is there, and the room is not bloody, and I am drenched in sweat.
“My heart,” he croons and he holds me, and Richard doesn’t even wake up. “My heart. It is almost time. Come to me.”
“Come to you where?” I cry. “Tell me, and I will.”
But he’s sad because he shouldn’t have to tell me. “You’ll know,” he says wisely and he’s gone, and monsters stay in his place.
Black black monsters with red eyes. Their teeth are white as they gnash in the night and glisten in the moon and I scream.
I scream and scream, and writhe and moan, and Richard never wakes up.
My mother comes, though, in the morning.
“I heard you screaming,” she tells me, and I don’t ask her how. Knowing her, she felt it in her bones.
She places her hand on my swollen tight belly and her mouth draws into a gnarled smile. “It’s almost time,” she nods. “This is almost over.”
I twist away from her touch because I can’t trust her now. I love her and she loves me, but I can’t trust her to do what is right by me. She is ruled by the stories, by her beliefs, by what she thinks is fate.
“There is no such thing as fate,” I tell her. “Your stories aren’t real, mother. The only thing that is real is us. Our babies, our lives. We determine what is real.”
She looks at me blackly and mutters under her breath. “You don’t even know what is real anymore, Olivia. That is the problem.”
I have to agree, but I don’t say it aloud. I don’t know what’s real anymore.
It’s this place.
It’s Whitley.
Or it’s my pregnancy.
Or it’s England.
Or it’s the air.