“You have,” Gordo said. “You pissed in my kitchen. You remember?”
Gavin shrugged. “Nope.”
“Really? Because that was a lot of piss that I had to—oh, fuck you, man. You’re yanking my chain, aren’t you.”
Gavin laughed. “Yeah. Yanking your chain. So much piss.”
Gordo glanced back at us. “You hear this motherfucker? Jesus Christ. Robbie, come here. You need to hear this too. Don’t touch anything, though. I don’t need something else catching fire.”
Robbie went.
I leaned back against the wall and watched the three of them as the afternoon went on. Every now and then, Gavin would glance back at me, as if to make sure I was still there.
white willow/die squirrel die
My mother said, “Tell me. About where you went. What you did.”
We were sitting in the clearing. The full moon was only a couple of days away. The others spread out in a loose circle, watching as Chris and Tanner sparred, claws out, fangs bared. Their blows landed heavy, but they were laughing, even when they began to bleed. Jessie paced around them, barking orders, telling them to straighten their stance, to stay light on their feet. Gavin was watching too, standing between Ox and Joe, bouncing on his feet like he was itching to get in on the action. I shook my head at the sight of him.
I looked over at Mom. We were on a blanket. She had a thermos of hot tea she made me drink from, as if she thought I would die of thirst. Kelly told me she was going to smother me for a little while. I needed it. “It was mostly quiet,” I told her as I turned back to the others. “Long stretches of days and weeks when nothing happened.”
“My wandering boy,” she said. “What did you see?”
I said, “Good things. Bad things. People and their never-ending rage. Roads that seemed to go on and on and on.”
She said, “I should have told you. I shouldn’t have let it drag on.”
“Mom?”
She smiled sadly. “About Gavin. I thought… I thought it was yours to figure out. And I knew you’d get there one day. But the longer it went, I… don’t know. I worried. And there were so many things to worry about. I allowed myself to become distracted. And I’m sorry for that.”
I was alarmed. “You don’t need to—”
“I do,” she said firmly. “And I will. Because I still see the look on your face. In Caswell, when Gavin left with that… that beast. Your heart was breaking, and I could do nothing to fix it.” She looked away, blinking rapidly. “I should have told you.”
I took her hand in mine. Her skin was cold. “We’re here now.”
“We are,” she said. “At last. Never leave me again. Not like that. Promise me.”
I said, “I promise.”
“Liar,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But I’ll allow it. How did you find him?”
I told her of this thread in my chest, how it pulled me forward. How I’d learned to trust it, even when it went quiet. I told her about the notes he’d left for me, the same notes that were now hidden in a box under my bed. I hesitated before I told her about Madam Penelope, the witch, the psychic, the woman with the bones who hadn’t really been there at all. I still wasn’t sure if it’d been anything more than a dream. But this was my mother, and she wouldn’t judge me. Not for this. Still, it was hard to get the words out. They came in fits and starts.
She said, “Madam Penelope.”
I winced. “Yeah, I know how it sounds, trust me. But I was losing it, you know? I don’t even think she was real. Everything was fraying, and I was slipping—”
Her grip on my hand tightened. “Did she have feathers in her ears? A Mohawk down the middle of her head? Did she have black powder that she told you to inhale?”
Reality felt thin. Translucent. It was like she was in my head. And maybe she was, because that low thrum of packpackpack was growing by the day. “How did you know that?”
She tilted her head back toward the sky and smiled. “You were being watched over. Even when you were so far from home. They were with you on your journey.”
“What? Who?”
“Abel’s mother was a witch. Your great-grandmother. Did I ever tell you that? Her name was Rose.”