by Gina Linko
Tempest and I exchanged a look.
“Your mother and I were just horsing around. We were trying to light the campfire for Pa Charlie. He used to have this metal spark lighter, where you just—”
“I’ve seen it,” Tempest said. “I mean, I was playing around with it one time in his garage. It’s just two pieces of metal that rub against a bit of flint to make a spark.”
“Yes, exactly,” Aunt Grania agreed. “Pa Charlie used to use it to light his pipe.”
Tempest added, “Pa Charlie got real upset when he saw me with it. He grabbed it right out of my hands.”
Aunt Grania nodded. “Pa always used these little chunks of cedar wood as kindling. I imagine he still does. Well, Genevieve was fussing with the kindling in the bottom of the fire pit. She had rolled up some newspapers as well, and I came along with the old-fashioned sparker.” Aunt Grania became real still for a moment. This memory was a powerful one.
“I remember that I was kneeling right next to Genevieve. We were both leaning over the fire pit, our heads just a hairsbreadth away from each other, Genevieve adding more newspaper, me just about to click the sparker.” Aunt Grania’s breath shuddered. “We felt it, what was between us. It was harsh and building by then. I shouldn’t have lit the sparker. I should’ve been more cautious.” Grania’s voice broke.
I watched Aunt Grania’s face as she relived this, the guilt there. How many times had she made herself remember?
How many times would I remind myself of what had happened earlier on the beach? I would have to live with that. Just as Aunt Grania lived with this.
“I clicked the lighter again and again. I couldn’t get it to take.”
Aunt Grania’s eyes shot to mine and quickly moved to Tempest’s. Digger seemed to be holding his breath next to me.
“Our mama, your granny, came by with one of her quilts tucked up around her shoulders, and she bent over the kindling, just exactly between Genevieve and me. I can still see it in my mind’s eye, the tilt of her head over the fire, the way her long, dark braid swung over her shoulder. Your granny reached over to grab the sparker from me, to show me how it was done. But I was too stubborn. So I quick clicked the lighter again, once, twice. On the third try, it took, producing the tiniest of sparks.” Aunt Grania’s voice trembled.
“What was between us—the power—it caught fire and erupted into an explosion. The force of it threw Genevieve and me away from each other. But it lit your granny’s quilt right up. Full-on, crackling flames. And it was hurting her—” Aunt Grania stopped then, her voice catching in a sob.
“Pa Charlie came from out of nowhere and rolled her in the dirt, suffocating the flames, but not before it singed her braid, burning inches of her hair.”
“But Granny was okay, right? Her hair grew back, and everyone was fine?” Tempest asked, fingering her scalp where she’d been injured in the water.
Aunt Grania shook her head, her voice a strangled whisper, “No. The left side of her neck was burned pretty badly. She had a terrible scar after that.”
I remembered that scar, all puckered and shiny. I’d never known what it came from.
I could barely swallow around the knot in my throat.
I understood then. This thing—what we had—it was a weapon.
“We separated after that. We’d been building up to that explosion for years. It wasn’t a surprise, I suppose. We—I—I had to keep my sister and my family safe. Right?” Aunt Grania gave us a sad smile.
“But maybe it would have waned with the lunar cycle?” Tempest asked, a hint of desperation in her voice. She was still looking for a loophole that didn’t exist.
“It never waned, not after the Flower Moon. We tried …” Aunt Grania shook her head. “That last Flower Moon, when we were eighteen, it was like it broke the dam, pushed everything between us into the stratosphere. Multiplied everything between us. And it never, ever went back.”
There it was.
Their story.
Aunt Grania was no coward. Mama was no coward. They just loved each other. They split up before this thing … before it could do worse.
Grania left to keep Mama safe. To keep her family safe.
That’s why they agreed to live apart, because … they knew.
I knew now too.
I understood what I was up against, how wild and unruly this all was. I got it now. It wasn’t something I could stand up against and power through.
And today, on that beach, I’d been so darn sure of myself. So reckless. I hurt Tempest. She had blood streaming down her forehead.
I could’ve done so much worse.
Finally I understood what the real enemy to my sister was. The enemy wasn’t the moon. It wasn’t the tide or the black sand, or an old-fashioned spark lighter, or a generations-long family curse.
The real enemy was me.
Aunt Grania went on. “I’m sorry to tell you all this, girls. But history repeats itself. In new, but similar ways. Your grandmother and her sister were near nineteen. Your mom and I were eighteen. That’s the real family legacy, not just all these twin girls.”
“Oh, Tally Jo.” It was Tempest now, and her face was crumbling. None of this was a surprise, but it was just so hard to hear it said out loud.
Like a confirmation, a nail in our coffin.
I got up, and I moved toward Tempest without thinking. But when I got a few steps away, I remembered.
I couldn’t comfort my sister. The push was still there.
I fought my tears out of sheer pride. Tempest tried but failed, her breath coming out in a little sob. Aunt Grania went to her, gathered her up in her arms. They sat down at the picnic table.
Right in that moment, watching my sister cry, hearing her ask Aunt Grania, “Why?” I desperately wished I could take back all of our hurts of the last year, get back my time with Tempest. I had to blink my eyes hard and fast to keep my tears at bay, and fury and fear welled up inside me.
“You were lucky,” I said to Aunt Grania. My voice was hard and serious. “You could’ve done so much worse.”
You could’ve destroyed your most favorite person in the world.
“You’re lucky you didn’t kill anyone, actually,” I said, meaning Aunt Grania, but meaning me too.
“Tally,” Digger said, and his face was ashen. Tempest’s lips were tight.
“You’re right,” Aunt Grania said, looking at me. And I could see I was stoking her pain. I didn’t care. She got up slowly, gave us a nod, and left us to stew in all this terrible reality.
I needed to remember this moment: that I was a … a weapon. Heck, we weren’t even at the Flower Moon yet, and I gave myself chills just remembering the wave poised above us earlier this morning. Mama and Aunt Grania’s close call had been terrible, but nowhere near as enormous.
Still, Aunt Grania and Mama had had the sense to separate.
I thought of the innocent old couple in their green windbreakers on the black-sand shore, the toddler digging in the tidal pool in his tighty-whities. They had been fine, unaffected. But what if they hadn’t been? What if they had been swept up in the wave? What if next time…?
“I’ll start the new cuff tonight,” Tempest said, breaking the thick silence in Aunt Grania’s wake. She reached for my hand, but I jerked away, an unconscious reaction to the painful pressure of her fingers coming too close to mine. It was there, not just a pressure, but pain. Still growing.
It felt reckless not to tell our parents everything. To even stay near each other at all.
I had to give up on besting this thing. Before I hurt someone. Before I hurt Tempest again. Because I needed Tempest to be okay, more than I needed anything for myself.
And the hollow feeling in my breadbasket, it was new to me. Heavy and still, a weight that wouldn’t budge, only expanding on each breath.
It was maybe the feeling of giving up.
18
Two days passed, and Tempest and I avoided each other. I slept in the animal tent, on a hay bale
near Pork Chop, too afraid to let what was between my sister and me have free rein while we were asleep inside a little metal pod. It seemed too akin to tinder inside a box.
And I tried to think of how to say goodbye to my sister. How would I do it? When? I couldn’t wait too long. And who should I tell? Mama or Daddy? Who would take the news better? Would they divorce, each of them taking one of us?
These were impossible questions. I put them off, but with our birthday and the Flower Moon looming only three days away, I knew I couldn’t ignore them much longer.
Tempest spent her time working on her inventions. I spent mine avoiding her.
•
But the very next day, she caught me coming out of the bathroom, and she waved me toward a picnic table. “Tally, you have to come over here.”
I hesitated, weighing what was in the air between us.
“Come on. Closer. We’re okay right now.”
I did as she said, carefully. The pressure itched at my eardrums, pushed against my eyelids in a jagged, unpredictable rhythm, but it was nowhere near like on the beach.
“This will repolarize you … or me. One of us.”
Tempest sat down at the picnic table, once again strewn with all kinds of tech supplies. Some bigger equipment sat on the ground: jumper cables, a handsaw, and an ominous-looking, black suitcase.
Digger sat at the table already, eyeing us with interest. He held a light bulb in one hand and he absentmindedly kept touching its lead to a battery, the bulb lighting up and shutting off again and again with his motion.
“Hey,” Digger said to me.
“Hey.” I stood nervously near them, and I watched the light bulb flicker.
Tempest used tin snips to cut a smooth edge on a flat, copper-colored piece of metal about the size of a Pop-Tart. This was obviously the new copper cuff. The replacement for the one I’d made her lose in the surf.
“I think I’ve finally adjusted the mechanism correctly,” she said.
Tempest pressed a small, modified watch-like contraption into the middle of the metal sheet, laid what looked like a series of magnets attached to small disc batteries at the opposite end, and then she folded the metal sheet over, closing it up. In a few quick movements, she used pliers to press the rough edge over. Then she picked a tiny hammer out of her tool apron. She used it to pound the edges smooth, leaving a metal band, about two-and-a-half inches wide, with the little contraption and magnets hidden inside. She lifted it up, looking pleased, and then with some more hammering, she bent it into the form of a bracelet. “You’ve got to wear this,” she said, handing me the cuff. “I just have to add the clasp.”
“But what—”
“Put it on.” I took the thing from her, feeling the pressure surge between us when I reached my hand out to her. Digger’s light bulb grew bright and began to buzz in a strange, insect-like way.
I slipped the cuff over my hand. It was cool and smooth.
“Here,” she said, definitively, shooing my hands away. Digger’s light bulb grew brighter still, and then with a strange puff and click, it burned right out.
Digger jumped up and pulled the lead from the battery, and at the same time I jerked away from Tempest. But she held tight to me.
“Stop. That’s nothing,” she mumbled. She peered closely at the inside of my wrist, made some kind of measurements, and marked something on the copper cuff with a black marker. Then she took it off me again. “Not quite. It’s got to fit perfect-like, really hug your skin.” She put on a pair of safety goggles. “Stand back.” She reached down to the black suitcase on the ground, fiddling with the metal closures.
Tempest stood up and produced a real, God-fearing blowtorch. “Holy smokes!” I yelped. “Who let you get ahold of that?”
But Tempest paid me no mind, firing the thing up like she’d been doing it for years. She stuck out her tongue in concentration just like our Daddy often does, and she got to work melding something to the copper cuff. “I mean, what’s the tide other than just a big push and pull, you know?” she said. “The moon pulls on the earth; the sea responds. There you go: tides.”
“Okay.”
“The earth and the moon, they dance. We need to dance again.” Tempest smiled like that explained everything. “It’s like I was supposed to lose that first cuff in the sea. You did me a favor, Tally. This one’s better. It’s gonna work.”
She handed Digger the cuff, then he handed it to me. The metal still felt warm from being under the heat of the blowtorch. I peered at the fancy new eyehook fasteners.
“Put it on,” she said. “Digger, help her.”
I did as I was told, slipping it over my wrist, and it fit right against my skin, conforming exactly to the shape of my wrist and arm. I fumbled with the fasteners, until Digger grabbed my arm to close them up himself. It wasn’t instantaneous, but the air around me calmed, little by little. I felt it in my eardrums first, lessening, pulling back by degrees. Eventually I took a big breath, only then aware how thin the air had been before. I settled onto the bench of the picnic table across from Tempest, and Digger sat by my side. My sister and I stared at each other for a while, exhausted.
I thought of Tempest asking me on the Ferris wheel why I didn’t trust her, didn’t believe in her.
“I’m going to have to work on it again. It’s not perfect. We might need more … power in it.”
“I can really feel the difference.” I couldn’t quite let myself admit it, but it was true. I wasn’t just imagining it. “It’s working,” I told her. “It really is.”
“Switches the poles,” Tempest said.
Dear God, Tempest was saving us. Better not to look at it head-on, better not to question it. Better not to let hope rear its ugly head.
So I let this weird, new calm settle between my sister and me, and I watched Digger. He was playing with a roll of the thinnest copper wire, and in front of him sat a couple of animals he’d made. He’d gotten better since the dragonfly. He had a butterfly, a jellyfish, and a beetle lined up on the table, and they looked so lifelike, with this perfect sense of motion to them. Now, he sat working on a new one: what looked like a tiny bird. There was something calming in watching him coil the wire, snip it, and bend it just so. The tiny sparrow had such a pleasing little form when Digger finished and sat him up on the little round table, his wings up behind him like he was just about to take flight.
Digger started on another creature, something a little smaller. I tried to make out the outline of the thing, but Digger was taking his time, and it looked like just a series of intertwining circles. But then he got far enough into it, and I realized: a starfish!
At that moment, something slipped into my mind, sharp and clear, and I knew immediately that it had come from Tempest.
It wasn’t a thought really, not an image, but an impression. A nudge, like when she had stopped me from punching Bradley Ballard.
I looked across the table, and I saw my sister. I tried to open my mind to her. To this thing between us, this change. And I asked myself if I believed in Tempest’s wrist-cuff gadget enough to delve inside myself again, to find my own magic, to test it out.
I’d promised myself I wouldn’t. It was too scary. Too unwieldy.
I watched Tempest.
She eyed Digger’s copper animals.
I could tell what she was trying to do. I knew.
It wasn’t working though.
She couldn’t do it herself. She wanted me to help. She wanted me to try.
Tempest could build a liar gauge. She could reassemble a car engine. She could darn near bend a spoon with her mind.
And she could create this wrist cuff that could make us sitting in tight proximity pretty darn comfortable.
But she couldn’t do what she was trying to, right now. No, she needed my help. And I was too scared to give it.
I had put the cork on what was inside me. And I didn’t want to—no, I couldn’t—let it loose again. We had come very close to something very bad on that
beach, something worse than us being separated.
Then there was just one word in my mind: Please?
I looked into Tempest’s face the way she was trying so hard to smile at me, to give me that, even when everything was going down the drain. Tempest had built this cuff for me. She had stolen for us, at the very least, some more time.
It’s only a couple copper bugs, I told myself. It isn’t half the ocean suspended above your sister’s head.
I was worrying about hurting my sister, or someone else. And I knew, as my heart thumped a hard, guilty beat against my ribs, that I would always and forever be worrying about that, every moment of every day, until the dreaded horrible moment when we were separated. For good.
But for now, I was going to risk it.
Because I believed in my sister. I had to.
She asked me to trust her, and I was going to do it.
I concentrated on the butterfly. I found that writhing thing inside me, the magic that so badly wanted to be let loose, and I slipped the lid off, just a tad.
Then, Tempest’s voice was in my head again. I need you with me, Tally.
I got what she meant. I looked for her. Her energy. Like I had with Pork Chop.
What if this, what was inside me—what if I could do this with my sister?
It seemed so simple. It really did. But it was a revelation to me—the strong one, the leader, the brave warrior.
I could share the power.
I closed my eyes, dug deep inside myself, harnessed the slip of magic I’d let loose, and searched for Tempest’s force.
I reached out for my sister’s energy, and I found it, with the same wash of warmth I’d felt when I connected with Pork Chop. I had latched on to Tempest’s energy somehow—my will weaving together with hers. My … whatever. Maybe it didn’t even need words.
Maybe we didn’t have words for it yet.
We’re in this together.
I watched the copper-wire butterfly shake a little bit. Just the tiniest, nearly imperceptible wobble.
“You can do it,” Tempest said.
“We can do it.” That was the difference, right there. We. I tried once more. The butterfly trembled, and it flopped onto its side. “We have to work it together,” I said.
