Spirit Walk - part 2

Evaine opened the door to a warm blast of air thick with the smell of holiday cooking and the fresh pine. The house was just as magnificent as she remembered, glittering with strings of lights, a softly cracking fireplace, and a giant tree in the living room decorated every inch with baubles.

"Who are you, dear?"

The woman standing in the living room was as tall as a giant, or at least that was how Evaine remembered her. She was dressed in a fluffy Christmas sweater with her blonde hair in springy coils around her face, leaning to stare down at the floor where a toddler sat playing by herself.

It was her mother's sister, and this was the last time Evaine ever saw her.

"Barb, I told you to stop that. You may think it's funny or cute, but it makes her feel bad."

Her mother, fifteen years younger than the woman who had seen her off to school that very morning, stepped in and bent to pick Evaine up from the floor. She had been playing with a set of novelty elephants, entertaining herself while the other kids at the party had their own fun.

"Mary, that isn't your girl, is it?" Aunt Barb asked, clearly embarrassed and confused. "I thought you adopted an infant, didn't you? I mean, good on you for choosing one a little older, I just could have sworn when you called last month—"

"I did, I adopted a sweet baby girl two years ago," her mom hissed, meaning to keep her emotion away from Evaine and failing. "What the hell is wrong with you? What's wrong with this whole stuck up, bigoted family? Not one of you has bothered to get her any Christmas presents, you never call on her birthday, and I suppose you just can't deign to learn her name!"

The child in her arms began to hiccup and cry over the disturbance, her chubby little fists rubbing at her eyes as she melted into a wailing tantrum. At the time, Evaine remembered thinking how unfair it was to hear that she wouldn't be getting any presents when all night she had heard the other kids going on about what they hoped to find under the tree.

"You know what, I have had it with you, every single one of you," her mother said, already reaching to grab her purse from the coat rack in the corner of the room. "We're going back to Jericho, and don't bother calling until you're ready to embrace her as a member of this family."

That was when the bite of magic hit her, and it was only now that she recognized what it was. First on that Christmas Eve as Aunt Barb had watched her so intently, and again every day that the painful memory had played on repeat in her head.

Evaine turned away from the memory, away from the hurt on her young mother's face, the sorrow and lost apology on Aunt Barb's. She had meant to seek the door back to the garden, but the scene behind her was no longer a part of Barb's house.

It was her own home, the dining room to be exact. A younger version of herself sat at the old table, the one they had donated just a few years ago in favor of something new. She looked barely five years old, that Evaine, her wispy red curls held out of her face by a scrunchie.

She had been flipping through a picture book, something featuring cartoon animal children talking about manners and friendship, and she came to a stop on a page where the main character and his friends were shown having a picnic with their families. The rabbit with a family of rabbits, the squirrels with other squirrels...and then she looked up at her mother.

"What are you thinking right there?" Chelle asked with an intrigued tilt to her head, watching as the younger Evaine's face fell with discomfort, her little chest rising and falling with a quickening heartbeat. "Why are you so upset?"

"I'm trying to ask her about my birth parents," Evaine answered, looking up to watch as her mother scurried about the kitchen trying to cook too many things at once.

She remembered that moment with perfect clarity, the way her simple curiosity had been instantaneously met with the swimming nausea and sour burn at the back of her throat. To her young mind, it felt like guilt, like it was something inside telling her she should be ashamed for trying to bring it up.

"I must have thought about it a thousand times," she continued, letting her eyes drop to the table, to that open book with the colorful animal characters. "I never even got the words out, not once. I always thought...I was too much of a coward to face a difficult conversation."

"It was keeping you subdued, preventing you from seeking the truth," Chelle said, connecting the dots like it was a puzzle in front of her face, like it wasn't a life-changing revelation for Evaine.

The image of her mother from so long ago, that quiet scene in the dining room, began to shift and change—the light outside the windows transitioning from day to night and back again, the old dining table suddenly becoming the brand new one, the pictures on the wall displaying hers and her mother's faces rapidly aging.

"Hey, slow it down," Chelle warned, grasping Evaine by the arm as if to ground her. "This place is only as stable as your own energy; take a deep breath and focus."

Evaine tried to do as she was told, taking a slow breath that she could feel her body mimic back in reality, but still the memories kept changing, passing them by like a slideshow that was only gaining speed. In the rising chaos of days and nights and voices and emotions bleeding over each other, one sound could be heard above the rest, a disembodied voice that came to them from out of nowhere.

"Eyes of glass..." it said, sounding deeply feminine, but not like anyone that Evaine could recognize. Just as soon as it appeared, the sound faded away, carried off by the swelling storm of her memories.

"What was that?" Evaine asked, instinctively tucking herself closer to Chelle as she looked around wildly for the source of the strange voice.

"It's your subconscious mind reaching for the magic, putting the pieces together." Chelle pulled at Evaine's arm to get her to stop searching for someone who wasn't there and face her directly. "We need to leave; if we can't keep the peace the curse magic may react and try to force us out. Evaine, take me somewhere safe, now. Somewhere you feel comfortable and still."

Evaine nodded once, more than ready to be away from this place that warped her memories of her home, her childhood. She looked around for another door like the one that had taken them from the garden, and instantly found the front door of her house. As she walked toward it, the changing memories followed, showing scenes of the living room, the entryway, visions of her mother and herself sitting together on the sofa as they had so many times before. Evaine ignored it all, grasping the handle of her front door to yank it open.

Where there should have been a concrete porch, a decorative bench, and the lush green lawn of her front yard, she instead found herself in the familiar corner of the library where she had spent nearly every afternoon for eight years. Here, there was complete silence aside from a few light whispers and the occasional turning page. The air was filled with the smell of paper and ink, and that scented candle that the head librarian kept on her desk. There were the two chairs where she would sit and read, where Alec would snack on whatever he could fit into his shirt pocket. From the window, she could see Jericho plaza, just as it was on any given day.

"Good choice," Chelle noted, glancing around the library as she went to take the empty seat that was usually Evaine's. She plopped herself down, feeling out the bounce in the sagging cushions.

"Chelle, what was that voice?" Evaine asked, keeping quiet even though there was no way she could get in trouble for raising her voice in the library. Not in this place. "I've never heard anything like that before; why would it be in my memories?"

"I think it might be an echo of the original incantation," Chelle explained, watching Evaine with curious eyes as she worked it out. "We should lean into it, see if we can't hear the rest. Carefully, though. We can't afford for you to go freaking out every time you see something you don't like, understand?"

Evaine's eyes dropped to the floor as shame burned at her cheeks. She hadn't meant to have such a drastic effect on the spirit walk; it had just been hard to relive the memory of Aunt Barb so vividly, to feel that frustration and loneliness that always came with wanting to know about where she came from, yet never able to get the words out.

"What do I need to do?" she asked, steeling herself to proceed, determined not to let her emotions get the better of her. Chelle was right; she needed to be more level headed going forward. She needed to remember that there was more at risk here than just dredging up the past.

Chelle watched Evaine for only a moment longer, nodding as if she approved of what she saw there. "Think of the voice, the way it sounded, the way it made you feel. Reach for it, but gently, like you're trying to remember song lyrics that you haven't heard for forever."

It was an oddly specific sensation for her to describe, but a familiar one nonetheless. Evaine went to sit in the chair beside Chelle, Alec's chair, as she prepared to think. She recalled the sound of the voice, the velvety depth of it, the almost sad note in the tone, and the words immediately began to dance around her head, repeating over and over.

Eyes of glass

Eyes of glass

Eyes of glass

She held onto it like she expected there to be more, another word, another phrase, anything to complete the line, and like it had been dying to be heard, the next line came.

Ears of cotton

"It's working," Chelle said in a whisper, like she didn't want to disrupt the voice.

Evaine followed her line of sight to find that another door had appeared, blocking the narrow pathway between a bookshelf and the wall. This door didn't look like any that she recognized as she had with Aunt Barb's or the door to her own house, and somehow that served to confirm for her that it would reveal the secret of that unknown voice.

Without hesitation, Evaine sprang to her feet and made for the door, but when she pulled it open, it did not reveal a scene of memories on the other side as it had the last time. Instead, there was the small space of a darkened stairway, wooden steps leading down so far into the black that she could not see the end.

"Stairs of repression?" Chelle guessed, coming up behind Evaine to peer over her shoulder. "Hope you're not scared of the dark."

"No, not the dark," Evaine said, sighing heavily as she tried to gauge just how deep they were about to descend into this long forgotten memory. "I do have a healthy fear of the things that live in the dark."

"Remember, control your energy, don't let the memory control you," Chelle warned, like a coach readying her to dive headfirst into the game. "Let's proceed."

Evaine nodded and took a deep breath to try to summon her bravery, and then she began to step down into the stairway. There was no handrail or anything to hold onto, so she walked slowly with her arms braced ahead of her, feeling with her feet for each new step as all the light from the library faded into the distance.