by Zoje Stage
Finally her daughter’s body started to relax, and the howls turned to noisy, ragged breaths.
“Oh, Mother. You hurt me.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Not me, I was talking for the other self.” Eleanor Queen went rigid again, her eyes in a frozen gaze. A moment later she gasped and fought to free herself from Orla’s arms.
“What is it?”
But Eleanor Queen pushed her away and scrambled on her knees toward the tree. She flung off her mittens and groped the bark, feeling for something with clumsy fingers. Seeing her daughter’s wide, unfocused eyes, Orla feared she’d lost her sight; she pawed at the tree like a person suddenly blind.
“What are you looking for? Tell me what’s happening!” Orla crawled over on her knees, ready to envelop her daughter.
“He’s here,” Eleanor Queen whispered.
“Who?”
“He’s here—now I know!”
“Who? What’s She saying?”
“Tycho. She’s saying…he’s here.” Eleanor Queen’s voice pitched high at the end, full of surprise.
A silence descended. A stillness. Orla shut her eyes. A river coursed through her: Blood. Hope. Fear. Longing. It surged in rapids around her heart, dove past her organs, gushed down her legs. The force of it escalated inside her until she half expected her skin to fissure from the pressure.
Orla rose, her focus drawn back to the tree, where Eleanor Queen was still desperately in search of…a way in?
“Tycho?” The question came from Orla’s mouth, but she heard it as if from a distance.
Eleanor Queen suddenly became animated. She jumped and sprang back and forth. “He’s here, Mama! He’s here!”
Orla struggled to make sense of it, of her daughter bounding around the tree, clapping the bark in excitement. Tycho…how could he be…was it true?
Her legs wobbled beneath her but she joined Eleanor Queen and touched her bare, trembling hands to the bark, ready to help her look. “Where is he? Tycho?”
“He’s inside, Mama! I understand everything now! He’s here, he’s okay, I can get him out!”
“How…how, love? Tycho—Mama’s here, we’re here, baby!”
Eleanor Queen stopped and listened for a moment.
“Can he hear us? Can you hear him?”
“No. He’s sort of…sleeping. But Mama—” She gripped Orla’s fingers. “She was telling the truth. She wasn’t trying to trick you. All I have to do is offer myself to the other self—”
“You can’t become Her new…” For a fleeting moment, she’d almost believed she’d get her son back. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—if it meant exchanging one child for another.
“I can, Mama!” Her eyes glittered with a strange, foreign excitement. “She can live in me, and teach me about Her power, and the moment She moves—when She leaves the tree and comes to me—this tree, Her old home, will crumble and I can get Tycho out! She’s been keeping him safe, until we were connected enough that I could—”
Orla shook her head. “Just tell Her…tell Her to let him go!”
“She can’t, Mama—”
“Why?” Orla was aware of her daughter’s coat, Eleanor Queen’s arms, gripped in her white knuckles. The madness was coming on fast, a herd of murderous circus clowns. Her eyeballs felt like stuffed balloons ready to burst. But Eleanor Queen remained calm. No, she wasn’t calm. She was radiant. At what she could be. A supernova suddenly aware of its own dynamic potential. The fucking spirit had given her daughter a way to be a hero—the girl couldn’t say no. But was it a trick? Would it cost her both her children?
“I can’t live in a lesser creature now. I’m too…conscious. And I know you offered—I wish that could have been a solution. But we aren’t…compatible. If I don’t move, the boy will die with me. I’m sorry.”
It sounded like her daughter, but…not. The words belonged to the motherfucking entity.
“Let her go!”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen. Didn’t mean to imperil your family. But it’s your daughter who can make all the difference now, she is a queen—”
“No! She’s a little girl!”
“We’ll live here together—”
“No!”
“And you’ll be our mother. It’s the only way. To give your boy back.”
Orla fell to her knees, clinging to the pockets of her daughter’s coat.
“Mama!”
At the sound of her daughter’s voice—Eleanor Queen’s true, bright and childlike voice—Orla locked her in an embrace.
“I forbid you. Make Her leave you, don’t let Her—”
“She’s not inside me yet, not physically. But it’s easier to let the other self speak than to repeat all of Her words.”
“Please ask if there’s another way.” She looked into Eleanor Queen’s face, beseeching. Her brittle body wanted to break apart. The world had become glass; she was glass; everything was about to shatter. “She can have me—”
“Mama, there isn’t another way.”
“I can’t give you to Her, I can’t give you…” Her words bubbled, turned frothy with tears and snot. “Does Tycho know? He’s sleeping, he’s peaceful?” Eleanor Queen nodded, and Orla mirrored her. “So he won’t know, then. He won’t feel any pain?”
“I don’t want to leave him, Mama.” Now it was Eleanor Queen’s turn to succumb to despondency, to beg. “Now that I know he’s here, he’s okay, I can’t leave him.”
“Oh, my baby.” Orla rocked Eleanor Queen on her lap. As much as she didn’t want to leave her son behind, entombed forever in the carcass of a tree, she didn’t want to lose her daughter. It was too cruel to force her to choose. “I can’t let you die.”
Eleanor Queen wriggled out from the vise of her mother’s arms. “I won’t die. I keep telling you that. I’ll be me. Me and the other self. She promised I’ll still grow up and be like a person. But I’ll have other…different abilities. And I might even be able to leave here someday, when the other self gets used to moving around.”
It was like listening to a foreign tongue she didn’t understand. “So you wouldn’t…you’d have to stay here?”
“Not outside. We’d live in the house, with you and Tycho. A family. And we could move around the land. And…not sure about the next part, how long it might take. The other self is connected here, beyond the tree, to this place. But we think, as our boundaries grow, we could take short trips. Into town. And later, with practice, maybe farther.”
Our. We.
Orla shook her head, the disbelief as strong as her refusal. Eleanor Queen already thought of herself as joined with the entity, as if it were her long-lost twin. But at least there was still enough of Eleanor Queen’s true self to seek her mother's permission, and to obey. Orla would accept the devil’s deal of staying in the place she’d fought so hard to leave if it meant the survival of both her children. But she didn’t trust Her. Who—what—would Eleanor Queen truly be if she accepted the union? It would be unbearable if she looked the same but lacked the essential humanity that made Eleanor Queen her wonderful, loving child.
“Can’t She…can’t She just let us go now? You and me?”
Eleanor Queen frowned. “What about Tycho?”
“I know you love your little brother, but…how can I agree to this?”
“I thought it was the perfect solution.” Her sweet daughter’s crumpled face looked so wounded. “I want to do it, Mama.”
“I know She’s very persuasive.”
“And She’s dying faster because of everything She’s trying to do—communicate with us, keep Tycho alive. We’re running out of time, we have to—”
“I don’t want to lose you! Eleanor Queen, I don’t want to give you to some immortal…thing that makes ghost animals and snowstorms and glaciers.”
“You’re not giving me away—you’re letting me be something that no one has ever been. Something only I can do. I’ll be special, Mama.”
“You�
�re already special.”
“You know what I mean.” How easy it was to convey annoyance by overemphasizing the right words.
Something shifted inside Orla. A door appeared in the wall of resistance. She dared to crack it open and catch a glimpse of what lay beyond.
“Can you…will you be able to control it? The power?” A temper tantrum would look entirely different if it came with a hailstorm or a blizzard.
“Yes…” She hesitated. “Once we’re together, as one, I’ll know everything then. I’ll be young, but the other self will still be old.”
“And the girl? How old was she? Is she still there too?” In truth, Orla feared the human part of the entity almost as much as the supernatural part, perhaps because humanity’s dark side was eminently more familiar.
“There’s a bit of her, the part that builds the bridge between what she became and me. I think she was…a teenager. You have to believe us, She wasn’t trying to scare you.” The girl's pupils grew large and black as she spoke for the other self. “I emerged onto a plane of consciousness that was different than where I’d been. I was scared; I knew I was dying. I finally understood the whole of my essence; I’d tapped into something greater than I’d ever expected, and just as quickly I was poised to lose it. I want to live. Please, Mother.”
Orla could relate to that. After she’d turned forty, she’d started thinking of dying more and more, and not as an abstract possibility but a very real one. She’d weighed the merits of various types of death—quick versus slow, aware versus unaware, catastrophic injuries versus terminal diseases. She opened the door of possibility a bit wider. “So you couldn’t…if you and Tycho got in a fight, you couldn’t—” Blow him away into the sky. “What are Her limits? Can She do other things, in other types of weather, environments? What is She capable of?”
“She hasn’t explored everything—She took Her long life for granted. Now we understand better. Consciousness, the elements. I don’t know everything we’re capable of—that’s the truth. But I’ll still be your daughter.”
“And so will…?”
“It still scares you, the part of Her that isn’t human, and the part that is. The girl missed her mother. Her mother died before she came here, and how it scared her, knowing she shared the same fate. It’s a wonderful gift you could give Her—give us, the spirit the girl became and me—to have such a mother as you.”
Mother of an immortal spirit. Orla felt the tug of an infant working its way into one of the blackened chambers of her heart. Were her maternal instincts so strong that she couldn’t deny this orphan?
“Eleanor Queen, promise me,” Orla begged, on her knees. “Promise. Promise me you’ll always tell me the truth. From now on, no hiding. Tell me…the absolute truth. No more shutting me out.”
“I promise. I didn’t want to, Mama, but I needed to know. I needed to listen, because what She had to say was bigger than me, or you, or anything I’d ever heard of. But I won’t shut you out. Ever again. I can learn from Her, like She learns from me. We’ll both…we’ll do better with each other. Be the best parts of ourselves.”
Orla imagined her family—herself, her parents, Tycho—many years in the future, traveling with an adult Eleanor Queen to restore the polar ice caps. Could she do something like that? The entity might not even know such a need existed, but if She was powerful enough—They—and if They were more mobile, with Eleanor Queen as Her home and Their combined will…would her daughter live longer, be stronger, smarter, healthier? Did She deserve Her second chance because of all the good Eleanor Queen could do?
“Could you quell a hurricane? Summon rains to a parched land?”
“Maybe, Mama. We’d want to try. I want to try.”
She looked at her daughter in a way she never had. Saw her limitless, awe-inspiring potential.
Maybe she really could have both of her children.
44
What do you have to do?”
“Open myself. Tell Her I’m ready.”
“Invite Her in? That’s all?” Like a vampire. But Orla kept the shadowy doubt to herself.
“Like She said when She came to you. All this time, Mama, She was never going to take me. She needed me to fully understand, fully agree. Even if I am only nine. She waited.”
“Then…I’ll be able to leave? Get food for you and Tycho?”
“Yes, of course!”
“It isn’t a trick? Offering me my son to get my daughter? What if you say yes—but Tycho might still be gone, and She gets rid of me, and you become—”
“Mama, I’ll still be me. She wants to live; She doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Please let me do this. We can’t fix what happened with Papa, but the rest of us can live on together.”
Do I have a choice? Eleanor Queen would starve soon. They’d be trapped in the house. Her daughter was already half gone, and her son…if this being was telling the truth, her son would go from “gone” to dead if the tree died before She merged with Eleanor Queen. For so long she’d been afraid of losing both of them; resuming her life as a mother to two children had been an impossibility.
Orla’s resolve—her fight—was waning. She still had so many reasons to say no, but equally as many to say yes. She still questioned Her claim that She regretted what happened to Shaw and hadn’t meant to terrorize them. But she had faith that her daughter would maintain her integrity no matter how the spirit might tempt her to change. If she’s strong enough. It lay unspoken between them that their relationship—their souls—would forever be riven if they walked away without Tycho. Though Orla suspected her daughter would have tried to convince her to allow this even if Tycho’s life hadn’t been a piece on the board. Eleanor Queen was already so deeply entangled, her understanding so recently refined. Was she already a different girl? Or had she simply taken up her mother’s challenge to become fearless, the hero of her own crusade?
At least Eleanor Queen was still waiting to receive her mother’s permission. And Orla wanted to believe in the magnitude of her daughter’s character—to tell the truth, to remain herself, to use the powers she gained toward the betterment of their world. Eleanor Queen deserved a mother who’d have that much faith in her.
“You’re ready, then?” Orla asked her.
“Yes.” She bore an aura of confidence, a sense of peace. “Okay?”
Orla gave the smallest of nods. Eleanor Queen replied with a grin, then shut her eyes.
Mere seconds later, the young woman from the photo emerged from the tree—her hair, her dress, the pentagram clutched in her hand, all identical to the photograph. She wasn’t a ghost floating through a wall but a girl climbing, pushing, wrenching herself through a surface that appeared solid.
Orla gasped; she’d expected high drama. Tornadoes of snow. Lightning strikes. But not this.
Eleanor Queen opened her eyes and smiled. “Don’t be frightened, Mama. I showed Her what She looked like once. We thought it would be easier for you. Just a girl, not the unknown thing you fear.”
Orla watched as Eleanor Queen waited patiently, rosy with excitement, while the girl crawled out of the tree, the opening barely big enough to accommodate her. The tree sealed itself behind her once She was free.
It was uncanny to see a photograph come to life; Orla wanted to shut her eyes but couldn’t. She needed to bear witness, to know what happened. The young woman and Eleanor Queen locked eyes, their grins sweet mirrors of innocence.
The dying girl turned toward Orla. “Thank you, for trying so hard to understand me. I’m sorry for the sorrow I’ve caused. Your love is a palpable thing, and I’m honored to join your family.” Orla only swallowed, unsure what to say. The girl turned back to Eleanor Queen. “Do you accept me?”
“I accept You.”
“We’ll be the best of ourselves, together. Just as you promised.”
“I know.”
And they embraced.
Orla pressed her fingers against her mouth, against the temptation to scream, afraid this would be
the last time she ever saw her daughter.
As Eleanor Queen kept her arms around the dying girl in her Victorian dress, the young woman’s form dematerialized. She became disintegrating particles that passed through, into, Eleanor Queen. When she’d absorbed the last speck of the other self, Eleanor Queen turned to Orla, a broad smile on her face.
Orla was torn between feeling let down by the anticlimax of it all and the relief that it had been painless, effortless.
“Step back. It’s starting.” Eleanor Queen gestured for her mother to move out of the way.
A shiver ran up the tree. Orla didn’t know how far to go; if the tree collapsed, which way would it fall? How much of the forest would it crush beneath it? Eleanor Queen stayed beside it, focused, unalarmed as bits of dead branches began raining down.
“Bean?”
“It’s okay, Mama.”
At least she still called her Mama; her daughter wasn’t gone.
“Thank you for the years you housed me,” Eleanor Queen said to the tree. “Your protection, your vision. The gift of the slow course of your life and your intrinsic knowledge. You are free to resume the course of your evolution.” She held out her hand, monitoring something, controlling something in the air.
Would this spirit speak such words to Eleanor Queen someday as she lay on her deathbed, elderly and empty? A hollow shell after her other self moved on?
The sound of splintering wood multiplied, amplified, as it surged upward from belowground. Small branches broke off and fell around them, but that wasn’t the worst of it.
Orla tilted her head back to see the very top of the tree. At first she thought it was on fire, engulfed in black smoke. But no; it was crumbling from the top. Soon darkened flakes began plummeting downward. Filling the air. Making it hard to see, hard to breathe.
“Eleanor Queen?” She said her daughter’s name, but it was her son she was thinking of. Where was he? They were almost out of time. They needed to retreat before the ashfall buried them. She tugged her scarf up over her nose to keep from inhaling the fine debris.
Eleanor Queen concentrated on a lower part of the massive trunk. She brought her hands together, a silent clap, then flipped them so they were back to back. As she moved them apart, a crack appeared in the trunk. The farther apart her hands moved, the wider the crack became. Her arms trembled with the unnatural effort as more of the upper reaches of the tree cascaded as silt all around them.
