“And you’re sure he can do it?” Mr. Milne said.
She glared at him. “Thomas, when the unseen wind takes your second-life days, what happens to the well?”
He blinked at her, confused. “What? I don’t—.”
“Does it empty, you fool? Does the level of the liquid light go down?”
Thomas closed his eyes and summoned the well. It came to his mind, brimming with the liquid light, the second-life days. He tried to imagine what happened when he cast the spell. Did the level of the liquid light go down? Did his second-life days decrease?
No. No, they didn’t. The well always remained full, as if days flowed into it from the bottom.
How could that be? How could he have endless second-life days? He shook his head, and practically whispered.
“The well stays full. Always.”
Relief washed through Mr. Milne’s face. Then terror. Then regret.
“I’m sorry, Thomas,” he said. “I had no idea.” He turned to Mama. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He looked at Thomas again. “So much struggle could have been avoided.”
Regret covered her face. “I wanted to save him as long as I could. I wanted him to be free of it as long as possible. If you knew, it would have affected how you treated him. That burden would have come upon him sooner rather than later. I planned to tell him before dying.”
“Clearly that didn’t work out,” Thomas said.
She looked at him, her eyes dripping with pity. “I’m sorry, Thomas. Whoever chose me, also chose you. It was not me that gave you the endless second-life days.”
Thomas couldn’t comprehend any of this. He couldn’t understand everything going on because it was too much, too monumental.
Charles, his face enraged, stepped up to the altar. He pushed Mr. Milne aside and glared down at Mama.
“Why not me? How come I’m not the one?”
She seemed to have no strength left. Her arms trembled as they held up her torso. Lifting her head to look at Charles seemed a great effort.
"Charles. My son. You don’t understand. I did not choose these things.”
He didn’t seem to hear. “I thought you loved me the most.”
Her face dripped with pity and disgust. She hesitated. “In the days since I died, I have seen my life—every instant. I have re-lived it in my Life Vision. And in you I have my greatest mistake.”
Charles’s body jerked and his face twisted as of someone had just driven a knife into his heart.
Mama shook her head. “Charles, I should’ve let you die when I found you. At the least, I should have made you take on some responsibility. Instead, I took you up as my own son and let you live the life I wanted—free of cares. It was a mistake. I ruined you. You're as useless as William. I should have raised you to be more like Thomas."
Those words seemed to drain the will to live out of Charles. His face contorted in shame and sorrow. His entire body trembled as he fought back tears. He took a step away.
But just the opposite happened to Thomas. While he didn’t understand everything that was going on, he could understand this.
Her words filled him with elation, for they were all the words of approval he’d ever gotten out of her. He was the favorite son. Not Charles. Him. Charles was the mistake. Not him. He was the one she had pride in. He was the one she’d raised properly. He had stronger character. Though it may not have been the case while she lived, at least now, after her death, she’d realized the truth: he was the good son. Charles was the useless brat Thomas had always known him to be.
All the beatings he’d ever taken from Charles—all the work he’d ever done to cover Charles’s slacking—all Charles’s teasing, cursing, and mocking—any suffering Thomas had endured because of his brother—they all disappeared. They all became worth it, because now, finally, Mama saw it the way it had always been.
Thomas was the good son, the favorite.
Charles took a step back. He looked down and away from Mama.
“What do you mean," he said. "'Found’ me?”
Mama could no longer support herself. Her hands slid forward on the stone, lowering her torso to the altar. She breathed hard.
“I gave you that note,” she said, “a few years ago.”
“I have it here,” Charles said, and he pulled from his pants pocket the piece of paper he’d used in the first part of the resurrection spell. “I cherish it.” He said it as if that, alone, would bring him back into her good graces.
“The letter says that William is not your Papa.”
She glanced around the group, making it clear that she said those words not for Charles’s benefit, but for theirs.
Thomas couldn’t fathom it. He was Charles’s twin. If William wasn’t Charles’s Papa, he also wasn’t Thomas’s. Thomas loved the idea that his Papa was someone besides a piece of dung.
“Not my son?” Papa said. A strange anger touched his face. Thomas had never seen him get mad, like that—as if his rage came from pain. It almost seemed genuine. “Then whose son?”
She shook her head. “I can’t say.”
Thomas knew.
He looked at Mr. Milne, who stood aside with a calm face, as if trying not to look conspicuous. All these years, Thomas had thought that Franky had a different Papa. But he’d been wrong. It had been Charles. And him.
Thomas felt an unfamiliar, strange pride, a respect and love for his Papa.
“Mr. Milne,” he said. “He’s the Papa. Our Papa.”
William took a step toward Mr. Milne. He balled his fists. Thomas had never seen him do that, before.
“Is that true?” Papa said.
Mr. Milne didn’t even look at him. Instead, he turned his solemn gaze to Thomas. “Thank the heavens—you’re dead wrong.”
The thoughts of pride vanished in confusion. “Then who?”
Mama coughed, and turned her head back to Charles. As she did so, she stretched her legs out straight, so that she lay on the altar on her stomach.
“I can’t say who your Papa is, because I did not give birth to you.”
“What?” Charles said. His mouth hung wide open.
Thomas couldn’t say anything.
“I did not give birth to you,” she said. It seemed to take great effort to speak. Her voice didn’t have the power of only minutes before, and they all had to move closer to hear. “When I first cast the barrier spell and the Moabites fled, and our people pursued, I entered the tents that the Moabites left behind.”
She struggled to turn over. Thomas stepped the last few feet to the altar, took her shoulders in his hands, and helped her roll to her back. She didn’t so much as glance at him. Her eyes, turning hazy, focused on Charles.
“In the tents,” she continued, her voice not much more than a whisper, “I found a woman giving birth. I brought you into the world as she died. And with you lying in the blankets beside me, weeping, I gave birth to your brother.”
Charles shook his head. He seemed incapable of speech. Along with everyone else. They’d all moved to within ten feet of the altar, to hear her quiet voice.
Thomas couldn’t believe it. Not only had Mama cast Charles down from his high horse, she’d practically disowned him by confessing that she’d never actually been his mother. He was a Moabite. The son of a zombie raiser. From the expression on his face, Charles didn’t like the thought.
And he wasn’t Thomas’s twin. Not even his brother. Now he understood why he'd never felt a connection with Charles—the kind of bond that twins usually shared.
“No matter,” she said to Charles. “You are my son. I am your mother.”
He stared at her, shaking his head, trying to process the information.
Mama turned her head back to Thomas, and lifted one hand. It fell on Thomas’s arm, and gripped him more tightly than he would have thought she could grip at that point. She pulled him down toward her face. He could smell her rotten breath. Her voice came like the sigh of a ghost.
"You have to cast the ba
rrier spell, now. I can't do it. You have to."
Thomas shook his head. She’d revealed too much. He couldn’t handle all of it.
"I don't know the spell."
She tightened her hand on his bicep, and for a moment her eyes grew sharp.
"You know it. I've taught you the spell.”
He shook his head again as he cast his mind back through his memories. She pulled so hard on him that he dropped to his knees.
“I don’t know it,” he said. “I don’t remember you teaching it to me.”
She nodded vigorously. “I taught you over the years. Son, you are the only one that can do it. For so many reasons.”
“I don’t remember it,” Thomas said.
He wanted to, though. He wanted to know the spell so that he could cast it and please her. But instead, all he could remember was the spell for softening dirt. He’d learned that from her.
“Thomas,” Mr. Milne said, “it’s okay if you don’t know the spell. I can teach it to you.”
All eyes shot to Mr. Milne. He stood a few feet back from the altar, his face solemn.
“You know the spell?” Papa said.
He nodded. “I’m the one who first learned it, and I gave it to Caroline on the day these two boys were born.”
“Well,” Franky said, “that’s unexpected.”
Thomas understood, then, finally, the connection that Mr. Milne had to his family and Mama. That was why he’d always come around, taken an interest in the family, and even helped support it. He had always known Mama’s secret, and had even been the one to place her under that obligation.
So many more questions came to Thomas. How had Mr. Milne learned the spell? How had he known to give it to Mama? What was Mr. Milne’s history? How the devil was Miss Sadie his daughter?
Mama squeezed Thomas’s arm, getting his attention again. Her eyes focused solely on him, despite the far-away mist that covered them. The whites had turned milky, and her pupils had dilated. Yet she looked at him with intensity. And something else. Something he’d never seen in her before.
Love. And pride.
He saw it in the corner of her eyes and the cast of her lips. In the lines of her brow. The tilt of her head. He’d never seen it there, before. It was so foreign in that face, yet he could not mistake it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “that the burden falls to you.”
In the background, Stanley began to bark. Everyone else looked up, and Charles swore. So did Miss Sadie.
But Thomas couldn’t look up and away from Mama. Her eyes held him captive. Her voice held his attention.
“I knew you were like me.” She reached her other arm over her torso, and touched his face with shaking fingers. “You were the only one, because you are the only one with endless second-life days. I'm sorry."
He had nothing to say. He couldn’t speak. Everyone around him had started to move away from the altar in a panic. He didn’t even spare a look up, or a thought to wonder what they saw. Vaguely, he heard Stanly going bonkers.
“I raised you well,” Mama said. Her voice came only as a whisper, now, just the sounds she could generate as she exhaled. He moved closer to her, so that his face was only six inches from hers—so close he almost couldn’t focus his eyes on her.
“You are the best person I could ever have made.”
He grabbed the hand she had against his face, and pressed it harder to his cheek. Despite being bony and thin, it bore warmth.
“I’m sorry I didn’t teach you more about love.”
A smile, as slight as the wind created by a butterfly wing, touched her lips. She nodded ever so slightly.
And in that moment, Thomas knew that anything that had ever passed between them—the arguing and the fighting, her lording over him, her neglecting him in favor of Charles, her constant demands that he work harder and do more—all of it didn’t matter any more. It all disintegrated in her expression of favor. The fact that he’d always thought she hated him didn’t matter anymore.
Because he knew it wasn’t true.
She’d put her whole life into raising him, into making him into a person who could protect their people. She’d taught him to work and sacrifice because that was what he would need to do for the rest of his life. She’d made him into a person like herself. And there was nothing greater she could do for him.
He lost himself in her eyes, in that expression of love. He memorized every line of her face, the deepness of her eyes. He wanted to remember it forever, to be able to recall it when he was an old man. He wanted to be able to know and tell others that if he ever knew one thing, it was that Mama loved him.
Mama loved him.
“Thomas,” she said. Her eyes fluttered closed and open. Her words came slow and soft, and trailed off into nothingness. “Thomas, choose the right . . . .”
One last breath rattled out of her throat. Even so close, he couldn’t feel the exhale out of her mouth.
Her hand went cold as if she’d been dead for a week. Her eyes dimmed. The love disappeared.
Thomas choked back a sob.
“Thomas!” Mr. Milne said. “You’ve got to cast that barrier spell.”
“Lord knows he’s right,” Papa said. “The zombies are here.”
Stanley barked.
A gunshot registered.
The first time I met Mr. Milne, he taught me the barrier spell. I do not know how he knew I had endless second-life days. Until my death, I never learned how he learned the spell. I was too angry at him to hold any meaningful conversation.
Chapter 32: Worst shot in Sanctuary
“Eli!” Clara May shouted.
Thomas’s eyes went to Eli. He stood at the front of the Bakers, facing west, the direction Thomas had come from only a few minutes before. Eli stood on a rock, two pistols in his hands, both of them aimed at the oncoming group of zombies. The creatures held back, half hiding behind the bushes and trees that Thomas had hidden behind when ambushing his family. Smoke rose from one of Eli’s pistols.
“Who the blessings gave him guns?” Mr. Milne said.
“I took them,” Eli said. “I took them when everyone was preparing this morning.” He glanced back at the rest of them. “What? You all have guns, too.”
Thomas looked around at his family, and saw that Eli spoke the truth. Everyone had a pistol or a rifle. Even Papa. Thomas hadn’t noticed it, before. He’d had a few things on his mind.
“Put those things down,” Miss Sadie said. She stormed past the group, toward Eli, and waved her arms at the zombies. “Those guns won’t do any good against this many zombies.”
More zombies crested the landing and gathered at the trees, spilling out around them, unable to hide behind the sparse bush. Most of them had six-shooter pistols. All of them had knives at their belts. There must have been twenty of them.
Charles, who still bore a humbled, stunned expression, apparently still had some fire left in him. He glared at Miss Sadie.
“What do you want us to do? Fight them with our bare hands.”
“You can’t fight them,” she said. She stood at the front of the group and placed her hands on her hips. “There’s too many of them. There’s not a chance you would win.” She lowered her voice and widened her eyes at Thomas. “He’s got to cast the spell.”
The barrier spell. He’d almost forgotten about that in those last few moments, when Mama had finally accepted him, loved him.
“I don’t know the spell,” he said. “I don’t know what she was talking about.”
“Miss Sadie!”
She turned. So did the rest of them. They all looked along the length of the landing. It sounded like Brady, with that English accent, but Thomas couldn’t see him.
“Miss Sadie! Your friends don’t have to die!”
She scowled and shook her head, and turned back to give Thomas a stern look.
“Cast the spell. I’ll stall him.”
She turned and started toward the ridge.
“I’ll talk!�
� she shouted.
“Tell them to put down their guns!” Brady called from his hiding spot. “I don’t want to get shot.”
She stopped and turned around.
“Lower your weapons so I can negotiate with him. Maybe you can get out of this alive.”
Her grim expression said she clearly believed it might not happen.
Everyone obeyed. Except Eli. She raised her eyebrows at him, and with a growl he holstered his pistols at his hips. She started forward, again.
“Wait,” Mr. Milne said.
He looked like he wanted to go to her, but faltered between her and Thomas. She looked back at him, her face stern, determined.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Mr. Milne said.
“Of course I do. I’m just buying you time.”
He nodded, and she continued along the ridge.
Thomas hated to see her go. He didn’t have as much confidence as Mr. Milne apparently did, and could only imagine that she went to her death. Or to something worse.
“I don’t know the spell,” he said. More to himself than anyone else.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mr. Milne said.
“How does it not matter?”
Panic rose at the fringes of his mind. Mama had tasked him with this important thing. She’d prepared him for it. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t fulfill his responsibility.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mr. Milne said, raising his hands, palms down, and lowering and raising them in gestures of comfort, “because I know the spell.”
It returned to Thomas. He’d completely forgotten that Mr. Milne had said he’d taught Mama. How could that be?
“There’s no time to explain,” Mr. Milne said, stepping close to Thomas. His eyes bore regret. He looked near tears. “Thomas. I’m so sorry, Thomas. I didn’t know. I had no idea things would happen like this.”
Thomas didn’t quite understand the apology. His face must have said as much, because Mr. Milne grabbed his biceps, pulled him close, and locked his gaze. His voice grew gruff and pained.
Keep Mama Dead Page 29
