“What did you think?”
“I saw our circumstances differently,” Aidan continues, raising his voice like he wants to make sure I’m listening. “I thought perhaps the surge of energy released when you were born was something else. A tragedy, yes, but not one without purpose.”
“What did you think it was?” I ask, turning around to face him.
“The next step on the evolutionary scale. Like the big bang or the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.”
“That’s why you think luiseach are going extinct? You thought I set an asteroid in motion?”
“Not exactly.” Aidan turns to face me and takes my hands in his. “I thought you were the asteroid. I thought you would be the luiseach to end all luiseach.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Middle of Everywhere
Spirits behave differently this close to the equator. What about the rest of us? Is the air different here? Like, if it’s thinner up at the North Pole, is it thicker down here? Because no matter how many times I try to take a deep breath to calm myself down, it feels like the oxygen can’t get in. I try to imagine exactly where we are on the map: somewhere north of Mazatlan, deep in the jungle, in the middle of nowhere. Come to think of it, we’re actually in the middle of everywhere: close to the equator, almost perfectly centered between the north and south poles.
“I handed you to Victoria so she could take you up to the nursery,” Aidan continues, releasing my hands. “I knew you couldn’t understand what was happening, but I didn’t want you to hear us arguing about your fate.”
“Victoria was there?” Aidan nods. Somehow the idea of my old teacher carrying me up the stairs to that breezy room is comforting.
“It seemed like we argued forever, but it can’t have been more than an hour. The sound of your cries floating down from the second floor finally ended the argument.”
“How?”
“You were hungry, and your mother—Helena,” he corrects quickly, “refused to feed you. It was then that I knew there was no changing her mind.” His gaze drops to the ground, as though he can’t look at me when he says, “So I gave in. I offered to take care of the matter myself. I insisted on . . . finishing the job.”
Finishing the job. As though murdering your own child is just a workaday task, like taking out the garbage or doing the dishes. Despite the shade from the trees above us, my skin feels like it’s burning.
“But you didn’t finish anything.”
“No. Victoria brought you to me, and we drove for hours. I didn’t have a car seat, so she sat in the back with her arms around you. I wanted to get you as far away as possible, but we didn’t have time enough to go far. I didn’t have anything to feed you, but you stopped crying when Victoria started playing with you.”
“She played with me when I was just born?”
He nods. “Luiseach are different from humans at birth. They can see clearly, form memories, even respond to what’s going on around them. She brought a toy from a nursery. Some sort of stuffed bird. She made it look like it was flying over your face. You were riveted.”
“An owl.” Victoria must have put the stuffed animal back when they returned here. Years later, when her own daughter was born, she must have remembered the comfort that toy gave me and bought an identical toy for Anna.
Ashley always thought I was weird for keeping a taxidermied owl in my bedroom. Now I know that some part of me was trying to replace the toy I loved.
“I sped every mile of the way,” Aidan continues. “You fell asleep as we crossed the border into Texas. You were still asleep when we left you at the hospital. We drove back, stopping in the jungle to dig a grave so we’d be covered in mud when we returned. So everyone would believe I’d done what I said I’d do.”
“You lied to Helena, to everyone.”
“Yes.”
“Because you thought I was the luiseach to end all luiseach.” That sounds even more ominous than The Last Luiseach did.
“Not entirely,” Aidan shakes his head in surprise. “True, I didn’t agree with Helena, and I still don’t. I don’t believe luiseach can continue working as we have before. There simply aren’t enough of us left to do it—even before you were born, that was the case,” he clarifies quickly. “But that’s not why I didn’t eliminate you.”
“Then why?”
“I didn’t eliminate you because you were my baby.”
“Oh,” I say softly, shifting my weight from one leg to the other awkwardly.
“There was no scientific explanation for the way I felt about you,” he continues. “Mothers experience a release of hormones after they give birth to help them bond with their babies. I experienced no such thing, and yet I was even weaker than Helena. How could I kill a helpless creature looking up at me with my own eyes?”