Page 28 of Night Songs

She had already given me so much.

But then she was touching me as well, and I stopped thinking my petty thoughts.

It was just us, back in the forest of our sound, rolling around on the moss.

As we touched each other, the buds of my tree sprouted into enormoustriumphant blooms. They dripped nectar, coating their petals in fragrant honey.

When it became too much to bear, the flowers violently unfurled to their most exposed beauty. They stayed like this for a moment, raw and burning in the sunlight.

Then they curled at the edges and fell to the ground, spent but not dead. They would be absorbed back into the earth of me and come alive once again.

Afterward, we held each other on top of the bed and tried to catch our breaths. I felt soft-shelled and safe, like I never had as a child, and I wanted to tell her what I’d kept secret all these months. What lay at the hidden center of me, where my demon child heart beat.

“Hess?” I asked against her chest.

“Yes, my love?”

“My mother didn’t just die in a tragic accident. Or, that’s not the whole story.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her mother also died in a tragic accident at the same age, 33. And her mother before that, and her mother before that. The women in my family are cursed.”

Hess stopped playing with my hair and went silent. I continued, “When she was 33, my great-great-grandmother traded her soul to the devil for a beautiful singing voice. She didn’t know she was cursing every woman in her bloodline thereafter with the gift to sing and the fate to die at 33, condemned to hell.” Her cursed soul was handed down through the generations like a tattered wedding dress. I paused. “Which means when I turn 33, I’m going to die.”

I had never dared tell anyone this outside the holler. I knew most would think I was out of my mind, or worse, stupid. They wouldn’t understand that I grew up in a different place. After centuries living on this planet, people have thrown their own veil over the world. But in the holler, the veil is thin. We can see through it to nature and its truths.

I watched Hess carefully. She was calm and impassive, contemplating what I’d revealed.

“How does it feel? Knowing when you’ll die?” she asked.

I thought on it. “Sometimes I can feel the seconds ticking by, and it makes me feel like I can’t breathe. Every morning when I wake up, my first thought is:Fifteen. Fifteen more years.”

Hess nodded, urging me to go on.

“But it also makes me a little wilder, like I can take chances, ’cause I only got a bit of time left to do everything I want. It’s now or never.”

She took my hand and kissed it lightly. “It must be hard to live with, especially all by yourself.”

I nodded and clenched my teeth, willing myself not to cry.

Shebelievedme.

It was the best gift I’d ever received. She pushed me onto my back and lowered herself. She smiled. “We should make the most of our time, then.” She kissed me, and I forgot about time. There was only her.

Hours later, I woke to cool air brushing against my bare skin, and I imagined someone barging in and seeing us like that. I tried to remember the noises we had made and how loud, and I wondered if the rooms on either side had heard. I’d been so possessed by the need to be alone with Hess that I hadn’t paid attention to our neighboring room assignments. I sat up suddenly, seized by panic.

She sat up, too, and asked me what was wrong, and I told her. Then she smiled and lay back down on the bed, stretching her arms languidly above her head.

“Oh, darling, I’m sure no one heard. They’re all passed out or having their own fun. No one cares about the sweet little Walker Sisters.” She giggled and tried to pull me back down to her. I saw that this was one real difference between us. Hess had never lived in fear like I had.

I wasn’t afraid of death; I knew when it would come for me.

But the world could make you wish you were dead if you weren’t careful.

At each stop on the tour, we played the morning slot in the tent meant for women and children seeking shelter from the heat. I could see our audiences perking up at our music, so I knew we had some effect.

But without an original song, we’d just be the nameless girl singers with the nice voices who played the classics with a swing. It was no longer enough that we got to play, on a stage, for people. I wanted to play our own music.