Shadows at the Doorstep
In the late afternoon, the lingering unease of the hospital has given way to the familiar comfort of our kitchen. Even with the smell of warm butter and vanilla extract, however, our home isn’t the safe space it has been these last three years. I can’t shake off the disquiet in the air. Doing my best not to let Veronica see the shadows of my anxiety, I’m frosting a new chocolate cake, the rich aroma filling the air, a paltry attempt at normalcy.
But normal feels like a distant memory. The birthday cake from two days ago—a casualty in the rush to save Veronica—fills the trash bin in the corner of the kitchen, its remnants stiff and discarded.
I glance at Veronica, who is sitting quietly at the kitchen table, her eyes distant. I’m not sure if she’s a million miles away or a thousand years into the past or somewhere in her own lifetime where the earth no longer resembles our home.
“Want to lick the beaters?” I ask, a gesture to revive an old, cherished ritual.
She looks up, her expression indifferent. “I don’t really like chocolate frosting,” she says, her voice a mix of childlike innocence and unsettling maturity.
It’s a simple statement, but it feels loaded with meaning, a reminder of how much she’s changed since the cave-in. Even a child not conceived within the priesthood would be traumatized, but what I see in her aura is layers of lifetimes of trauma, including the lifetime ahead. Even her aura is different, as though she’s much larger than the body her soul resides in, and she seems to have regressed in some of her physical abilities as if the muscle memory doesn’t match her tiny frame.
I set the beaters down on the edge of the sink, my hand trembling slightly. Frosting the cake now feels like an act fraught with memories of terror. For a normal child, the fresh memories of being swallowed up by the ground might overshadow the joy of baking, but for Veronica, I swear I can see in her stunned expression that she sees the earth swallowing whole populations in a memory that won’t happen for decades from now.
I want to ask her what she sees ahead for her, for me, for the entire planet, but I don’t dare. My nightmares last night alternated between an apocalyptic future the priesthood has prepared for for millennia and whatever really happened in Veronica’s last incarnation. I don’t know if I was walking through the future or the past, but last night, I dreamed again and again that I heard wolves, terrifying and vivid, howling outside my window.
Veronica had her own demons to fight in her sleep, crying out names in a language I don’t understand. Occasionally, phrases in Latin. Sometimes, Chaldean prayers. Once or twice, she pleaded with someone called Kyranyx, a named soul within the priesthood annals, but not one currently in physical form. Probably a good thing not to share time on this earth with that one, given that Veronica had clearly been begging for her life, or somebody’s life. Most of her cries were in another language that may have been Old Irish or Old Norse. Maybe Gothic. Some language that either evolved—or declined and became extinct. I wish I’d studied harder with our tutors instead of goofing off with Siobhan, but I couldn’t have imagined four years ago how I would need to know anything about saving the world in our own lifetime, despite being trained repeatedly for the possibility. Siobhan, yes, but not me.
I wasn’t the important one.
Maybe if I had been a better student, I could help Veronica now. In last night’s dreams, she sobbed. At other times, she called out a name that shifted and changed, settling into the future and a clearer version of the name: Shelby. Only, that name is as foreign to me as the language she spoke in her dreams. I don’t know anyone by that name, whether associated with the priesthood or someone who might be important in her future. Whoever Shelby may be, Veronica is lost without them.
Despite the beautiful weather, she refuses to play outside today. I won’t make her: I’m content to keep her close to me. She’s been contemplative all day, lost in thought, trying to reconcile her newfound knowledge but unwilling to share it with me. Yet.
Her gift—or curse—of recalling memories across a lifetime is something meant for members of the priesthood, not for someone so young. There’s a reason the ability to remember one’s own future is optional to new Initiates: because knowing how your life will turn out can drive a person mad. I had wanted to know, but I’d followed Siobhan’s insistence that “knowing everything would be boring.” When the Ranking High Priestess—Siobhan’s mother—offered the gift to us at Initiation, Siobhan declined the gift first, so I declined it, too. Siobhan could learn enough through her natural gifts of divination, she said, and she didn’t want to be influenced in the secret plans she’d shared with me: rewriting the rules of the priesthood and restoring it to its former glory, back in the Age of Jaryx.
And look where that short-sightedness has gotten the both of us.
I hold up the two beaters to Veronica once more. “Last chance, Peanut.”
“Don’t call me that, Maeve.” She shakes her head, a note of finality in her voice. “It doesn’t fit me anymore.”
I guess calling me “Mommy” doesn’t fit anymore either.
Her words hang heavy between us as I drop the beaters into the sink with a clang and swipe at the cold-water knob. Water rushes out over my fingertips. Suddenly, everything seems as if it could be normal, even though I know it isn’t. I want to comfort my little one, to hold her close, but for now, she keeps a wall between us that I’m hesitant to scale.
“Maeve, do you think. . .do you think I’m evil?” She scrambles clumsily off her chair to stand at a narrow kitchen window, her silhouette etched against the backdrop of the sunny outdoors. She glances over her shoulder at me, her eyes searching mine.
“Who told you that?”
“You’re wondering it.”
I’m struck speechless, my mind racing to find the right words to say. The legends of the Daeganean High Priestess, willing to sacrifice every life on the planet for her own selfish reasons, come to mind. The heartless murderer of her enemies within her own priesthood. Too much power for one person. So much power that the rest of the priesthood had to come together to bind her soul so that she couldn’t incarnate again for a thousand years while other priests’ and priestesses’ power increased through multiple lifetimes to match hers.
“Of course, I don’t think you’re evil!”
“You worry, though. I remember you struggled with doubts. That’s what’s happening now, isn’t it?”
I hold my breath. I’ve never felt so psychologically naked before, not even under the inspection of the priesthood’s High Council to ensure I’d carry out my mission to protect Veronica in the shadows so Siobhan could shine. I don’t know if Veronica has the power to see into my brain or my heart or my future, but at this second, she terrifies me to my core.
“I-I don’t know. Honestly? I don’t know what to think. I don’t even know how we’re having this conversation instead of talking about numbers and colors and whether the chicken goes ‘cluck’ or ‘cock-a-doodle-doo.’ I don’t know. Are you evil?”
What the hell is wrong with me? How can I ask that of a three-year-old with dimples?
“Am I evil? What do the eyewitnesses say?” she presses, a hint of challenge in her tone.
“I. . .I don’t know of any,” I admit, feeling helpless.
“Exactly,” she says, a small smile playing on her lips. “Stop listening to what you’re told, Maeve. Your heart knows the truth.” With that, she turns back to the window.
My eyes follow hers towards the yard, panic rising in my chest as I spot an enormous wolf sitting calmly on the bare ground where the sinkhole has been filled in and leveled by the city’s Water Department. The beast’s eyes are fixed on our house with an eerie intensity.
We’ve never had wolves in our neighborhood. Ever.
Veronica watches the wolf with a quiet fascination, almost as if she recognizes it.
The sharp, insistent knocking on the front door jolts me. Mr. Casey usually comes to the kitchen door that leads into the back yard. I freeze, my hand still hovering over the newly-frosted cake as I listen for him to call out.
“Maeve! Don’t answer it.” Veronica’s voice is startlingly calm. “It’s Child Protective Services.”
“Child Protective Services? What’s that? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Oh. In this decade, it’s the Alabama Department of Human Resources,” she informs me with an unsettling certainty. “In this decade, you refer to them as welfare workers. They’re here to take me away from you.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I assure her, but I’m not confident at all. I press my finger to my lips. “Shhhh. You stay here and out of sight.”
“Maeve—”
I bump my finger against my lips three times and give her that warning look I always give Veronica when she’s about to be in trouble. Tiptoeing into the living room, alongside the wall so that I can’t be seen through the open curtain, I press my spine into the grooves of the wood paneling and hold my breath. Through the gap between the wall and curtain, I see a woman in a navy blue suit and white blouse, her posture rigid with authority. Clipboard in the crook of her elbow, she knocks again. She’s about the age of Mrs. Casey, but the deep furrowing of her brow makes her look much older.
After a visibly heavy sigh, she leaves a note on our door and drives away in a green Gremlin, a mirror image of my own blue car but for the color and denim interior. I wait until her car drives through the big, black bars of the security gate down the block before I retrieve the note.
Miss Winzler:
It is of the utmost importance that I speak with you regarding a matter concerning your child. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.
Below her scrawled signature is a local phone number and her name, printed in block letters.
Panic seizes me. “We have to leave,” I tell Veronica, my voice quivering. “Now!”
But where will we go?
I’m torn. Mr. Casey can only do so much to protect me, and it’s as likely that Mrs. Casey called the child welfare workers as it is that the doctor called them before Veronica’s prediction of an arrest came true. I wouldn’t trust Mrs. Casey to help us flee. I know she’d be delighted if I left, but simply running away won’t appease her. She’s possessive of her husband and doesn’t want anyone else in his life. She’d want to see me punished for his kindness toward his neighbor, simply because he speaks of me with fatherly affection.
I can’t call the High Council or Siobhan’s mother. They’d probably take Veronica away from me for no other reason than an underground pipe burst on my watch and I couldn’t stop it. If I told them about the changes in Veronica—that the child in my kitchen is a thousand-year-old witch who can either destroy them or save the human race—they’d take her from me and begin shaping her immediately into their tool, just as they have tried with Siobhan.
Calling Siobhan seems like the only option, but it’s a direct violation of the mission the High Council gave me. Siobhan, living her life under the assumption that her best friend, her baby, and her lover are all dead so that she can have a second chance, eventually, to snare the soul of Jaryx or maybe another powerful witch, like Kyranyx. What if I unveil the truth to my best friend? What if I tell Siobhan that Veronica is the fulfillment of prophecy that Siobhan botched? Wouldn’t that be better than losing my little girl to some faceless bureaucracy sent by the welfare office?
Veronica watches me pack, her expression unreadable. “You shouldn’t call her, Maeve. It’s not safe,” she says, as if reading my mind. “She won’t forgive you for your good deeds.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but Veronica is right. I’ve had three years to seek out Siobhan and tell her the truth, at the risk of the High Council clipping my wings, metaphorically speaking. Siobhan wanted power, and I could give it to her by returning her daughter to her. I also could be punished—by her or by the priesthood—for my next actions, either for hiding Veronica or for returning her. I couldn’t win. Neither could Veronica.
“Maybe. . .maybe it would be best if I—”
“No! You can’t think about sending me away from you. You’re the only mother I’ve ever known.”
“How did you. . . ? Are you reading my mind?”
“No, just remembering. It’s years from now, not long before I take back the priesthood from ruin. You and I and Shelby—” Tears fill her eyes, and she blinks them away. “You and I,” she starts over, “sit together on your front porch and you tell me everything. Well, not everything. But as much as you think will help me so I’ll be the best leader I can be. It’s not an easy task ahead of me, but I have over forty years to prepare.”
I stare at her. Nothing in her earnestness sounds like an evil leader.
She opens her mouth to speak, but suddenly her body locks up and her eyes widen as if she just remembered something new. “Wolves are coming,” she whispers.
Shuddering, I check the yard for the wolf we saw earlier, but it’s gone. What does she mean? Is it a metaphor, or should we expect more than welfare workers at our door?
“The one in the yard? Just a stray,” I tell her as if her soul is three years old. Habit. “Nothing to worry about as long as we stay inside. Probably escaped from the zoo. Or maybe it’s somebody’s pet. I’ll talk to Mr. Casey about it tomorrow.”
I cram the last of the clothes and essentials into an overnight bag. I’m sure the social worker will be back, probably in the morning, maybe with the police.
We could leave tonight. That might be best. Find some place safe. I could ask Mr. Casey for money so we could hide out, but. . .I don’t have a job other than to protect Veronica. I can’t afford the kind of life we’ve had here in the Country Club estates. I can’t even afford the kind of life we might have off the grid if—
“Stop it, Maeve. If you and I have to go into hiding, I remember the bull and bear markets, so we’ll always have plenty of money. At least until the earth shifts on its axis, and water and bullets become the new currency.”
My heart races as I try to think of a plan. “Okay,” I say, my voice shaking. “Okay.” We have to be careful and stay completely under the radar, avoiding any attention from the priesthood at all costs. And from mundane authorities, too. “I’ll grab our things and put them in the car now,” I say quickly, trying to keep my alarm under control.
With trembling hands, I snatch my car keys and sling the bag over my shoulder, making my way towards the kitchen door. But as I fling it open, a blood-curdling scream catches in my throat as I come face to face with a shadow on the doorstep.
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