Page 3 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
Touching any tree was like grazing the veil of history. If the sun kept shining and the water kept flowing, trees could flourish for millennia, remaining steadfast and solid as the world changed around them. But Angel Oak—she was something extra.
My fingers tingled to connect with her, the way they had when I was a child, pretending I could commune with plants. Like it was my superpower. And Danu, my religion’s deity, had always welcomed me into her network of greenery.
Wind gusting me toward the nearest branch, I faced my friends. Grace held my camera to her eye; Olivia checked for rangers. I tugged down the hem of my Pitt tee, just a smidge short for me, and grinned. Placing my hand on the branch.
In my past communing with nature, Danu had always extended herself in friendly greeting. Gently, placidly. Afterward, she’d recede back to her proper realm, expecting nothing in return. This time, however, as I imagined sinking into Angel Oak’s capillaries, into its rushing, branching lifeforce, the tree also sank into mine. Weighing me down, gripping me in place as a gaze, invisible and eternal, peered through me like glass.Ah, it’s you, its essence seemed to say before energy, kinetic and sizzling, jolted through my fingertips, zinging along my arm, into my heart. Igniting something both wild and dangerous.
Abruptly, the grip freed me. I hopped like I’d been goosed and whirled to gape at the towering tree, its leaves now flittering like jazz-hands.
My superpower was only childish fantasy, but I hadn’t imagined that shock. Danu had just revealed herself to me in a very real way, stealing something intrinsic from me in the process. And I already knew—she’d never give it back.
Istruggledtofocusfor the rest of that day. My friends couldn’t hold a proper conversation with me at lunch, none of the other historic sites we visited held my interest, and I’d gotten no enjoyment out of our ghost tour through Charleston. Because I just couldn’t stop thinking about what happened at Angel Oak, that shockwave still echoing.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Not just because I’d crammed myself into a full-size hotel bed with Olivia, but because I couldn’t quiet my mind, things I always kept anchored from my thoughts bobbing to the surface.
I dozed off sometime after 3 AM, but still, I didn’t rest.
Something happened in my sleep. Something that had happened many times before, though not since I was in pigtails and Polly Flinders dresses.
I’d forgotten my night terrors, as I’d forgotten many things from early childhood—memory of my first years, an intricate conflation of both reality and fantasy, mashed together by an overactive imagination hell bent on coping with tragedy.
Tragedy the night terror always poached.
As the dream begins, I’m tiny, no older than four, and the scent of honeysuckle clings to my every breath. I sit upon satin cushions in a gilded carriage bedecked by carven runes. I graze tiny fingers over the one by my head, somehow gleaning its meaning—Larkspur—my family name.
The head of my family stands outside the carriage in finery not of modern design. A smile lights my father’s long, oval face, the floral breeze ruffling the ebony curls beneath his crown of golden twigs. A motley assortment of men in shiny, engraved armor and horned helmets chortle with Daddy before his midnight gaze catches mine. His grin spreads, his eyes crinkling as he points into the mountainous distance at a black, foreboding crag. I justknowhe intends to climb to its desolate peak. And I justknowif he goes up there, the world will end.
I’m too little to warn him, any of them, and frustrated, I cry.
My tears usher me into another setting. When my vision clears, I’m with my mother. At least, that’s who I sense she is; she died when I was four.
On a feathered carpet, she kneels over me, her copper hair cascading in silken sheets. She has a lovely heart-shaped face with a broad, round nose and a voluptuous mouth, but she isn’t smiling. Her expression is strained, her orange-green eyes intense and hypnotic as she chants something beyond my understanding. I’m shaking, near to wetting myself, but can’t look away.
Static electricity crackles in the air, and my mother becomes a supernova of blinding amber light.
When my vision returns, I’m on the cold floor of a glass corridor, my knees tucked to my chest. Moonlight streams down on me from an unknown spring as I rise to my bare feet. My father’s crown sits atop my head. It doesn’t quite fit.
I call for my parents, my voice tinkling down the hall with no response. Because they’re both gone. I’m alone. Orphaned.
A burning frenzy builds in my chest, and I wail to the fates who’ve forsaken me until the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard responds. Singing, an invisible woman chucks my chin high, guiding me forward.Follow the trail of my song, she croons. You’ll find home in the end.
Weeping, I scamper after the music. The closer I get, the sweeter and louder it grows until it’s a swelling symphony accompanied by ghostly panpipes and fiddles, and there’s only one place left to go.
I reach for a glowing door at the end of the hallway, but it opens before I make contact.
The music quiets to a poignant hush as I step into a grand bedroom brimming with toys, books, and frilly pillows. Flowers garland the vaulted ceiling. The subtle fragrance of Sweet William tickles my nose.
I know this place. It’s my room. Moonlight pools in from the tall arched windows behind my scrolling bed, where my baby sister and brother sit, entwined and weeping for all we had lost.
I rush to them. One step, a child, the next, an adult. I sweep them both into my arms, promising to take care of them, that we’ll take care of each other.
Their small fingers grip me when a shrouded figure appears in the doorway.
The looming specter embodies shadow—siphons the remaining light from the room. My hairs prickle as onyx streams of oblivion reach to engulf me. I’ve always been afraid of the dark.
Despite an overwhelming compulsion to run for my life, I rise to shield my siblings. I’m the only thing standing between them and certain doom. And I don’t know if I’m enough.
Two
